I'm feeling extra nerdy right now, so I went to check out Star Wars related junk.
IGN.com posts some early thoughts about KoTOR 2. They were able to play the demo at this weeks E3 show. Nothing earth-shattering, just a fine continuation of the original.
MSNBC has an opinon piece on the prequels. It's pretty harsh, but difficult to disagree with, even the more tongue and cheeck parts. What they say about the actors:
Fire Hayden Christensen, whose single emotive capacity is sullen petulance, and whose attempts to put on the magisterial rage that must become Darth Vader’s hallmark instead sound like a tenth-grader whose dad won’t let him borrow the car.While you’re at it get rid of Natalie Portman, who as Queen Amidala has all the regal presence of a mallrat shopping at her local Fashion Bug. Keep Samuel Jackson, Frank Oz, Anthony Daniels, and Ian McDiarmid, and thank your lucky stars that you’ve got Christopher Lee, who’s been showcasing his considerable talent in Z-grade horror flicks for decades and knows better than perhaps any living actor how to pull a terrific performance out of truly awful material. Tell Ewan Macgregor, who’s proven elsewhere he’s a fine actor, that it’s safe to come out and emote now. Fire everyone else.
According to Theforce.net, Hayden will appear in the Original Trilogy DVDs coming out late-summer. Oh good, Lucas hasn't changed ENOUGH with these movies.
This link I bit from Tainted Bill, but it's the Sun's article on the name (probably Birth of the Empire) and the highlight lava-surfing lightsaber battle. Now, this doesn't seem to be a joke.
Oh, and the title of this post is from a comic book (I think it was The Outsiders) that featured a space battle around the time RoTJ came out. I've always remembered it for some reason.
Posted by Frinklin at May 19, 2004 07:41 PMMy wife tells me that Natalie Portman is actually a good actress. I wouldn't know, having been scared off watching anything else she ever does thanks to Star Wars prequels, but I'll take her word for it. It's altogether possible that the problems with the prequels were all about Lucas.
There was a great comment about working on the first Star Wars, attributed to Carrie Fisher. She said that Lucas had two stage directions: "Faster" and "More Intense".
Yup.
I keep thinking Lucas was lucky.
Posted by: Rob McMillin at May 19, 2004 11:05 PMNo matter what Natalie Portman achieves in her career, she will always be known for the worst on-screen scream ever.
Posted by: frinklin at May 20, 2004 08:02 PM