Question for fans of both MI and SW
Just doing some research for a theory of mine.
I welcome your comments explaining why you voted the way you did, how you feel about your favorites, and your non-favorites.
I'd rather this not turn into a "bash other people's opinions" thread. Those can get nasty. If possible, just say why you like what you like and dislike what you dislike.
Thanks.
I welcome your comments explaining why you voted the way you did, how you feel about your favorites, and your non-favorites.
I'd rather this not turn into a "bash other people's opinions" thread. Those can get nasty. If possible, just say why you like what you like and dislike what you dislike.
Thanks.
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Comments
LCR just rocks.
I also like Jedi more than Empire, but MI2 isn't my favorite by any means.
MI1 > CMI > MI2 > EMI.
(TMI not ranked because it's too early to tell.)
I really thought it would be winning already for some reason.
But it's funny to compare the first two MI games with the old star wars trilogy (i'm leaving the non Gilbert ones out, not because any "boohoo it ain't worth poo it god ron didn't design those", just because, they're still not part of any orginal plan).
In both first installement you pretty much get a story that could stand on its own and feels finished (in both cases they didn't know if there was qoing to be a sequel), and both stories are the old cliché about some pretty wimpy guy on his way to become a man (a kight/a jedi/a pirate), while saving some captured princess from the "bad guys" (a dragon/darth vader/Le Chuck).
And thenin both second episodes, things get darker and gain a LOT of depth. The story ain't so simple anymore, things get ambiguous, ann the bad guys pretty much win in the end. Plus there's your obvious "i'm your brother" joke, but seeing how close the games are to the star wars movies story wise, this clearly wasn't JUST a joke.
I guess it's for the whole "less cliché and darker" thing that i prefer the second episode in both cases, which, in both cases too, got a bit lost with the third game/movie (they're still pretty good, but seem to go back to a simpler, "goodies win in the end" kind of story).
If you want to not count CMI, EMI, and TMI, especially for comparisons to the Star Wars Saga, I think you could do it based on the "the original creator wasn't involved in those sequels," whereas Lucas was involved in RotJ and the rest.
I'd also say that the similarities between ESB and MI:2, that you very correctly point out I believe, can't really be used as evidence that the "I'm your brother" bit in MI:2 isn't just a joke. Clearly "I'm your father" wasn't a joke in ESB. But that doesn't mean it was similarly intended to be true in MI:2. Now, it may be that Gilbert intended it to be true. We don't know. But ESB can't really be used as proof. Just speaking logically.
Keep the opinions coming folks. Thanks.
My thoughts exactly.
- Dark atmosphere.
- Difficulty - playing it takes a lot of time and is very rewarding.
- ESB refferences ; )
- Weird ending.
- Unique Scabb Island.
- Memorable characters (Largo, Govenor Phatt)
- Unique puzzles (acid pit, spitting contest, monkey wrench, PICKING UP the dog)
- Scarry LeChuck and final confrontation.
- Remake by Chris Ushko.
ESB:
- More realistic view on the Galactic Civil War.
- Introduction of Boba Fett.
- Final duel (for me it's more epic than the one in RotJ)
- Yoda (totaly messed up in later movies)
- Bounty hunters.
Okay, so first of all, i wasn't trying to prove anything with the brother joke, except that the similarities between the two stories probably weren't a hazard. Maybe it does make sense in the "intended" story, maybe not, but what i meant is that it's almost like saying "hey guys, we're remaking star wars, but with pirates!"
And concerning the "original creator not involved" thing, i don't quite see your point. You're right, obviously, but, well, so what ? Lucas changed his plans along... Gilbert could have done so as well... But as far as one drawing inspiration from the other, what does it change ? And besides, i was just pointing out a bunch of similar things, i wasn't really giving it any significant meaning
It's WAY more epic than any other lightsaber duel that has ever been filmed indeed
It was just that you said this:
So for comparison's sake, you were leaving out the non Gilbert ones because "they're still not part of any original plan." My point is that ESB and RotJ aren't, if the stories are true, part of any original plan either. Heck, Lucas himself has said that originally there was only going to be the one Death Star. But he liked it so much he put it in ANH, then had to have a second one in RotJ, with a different way of destroying it.
My point is simply that just like CMI, EMI, and TMI weren't apparently part of any original plan, neither were ESB, RotJ, TPM, AotC, or RotS. Yet you're not leaving them out.
So you were being inconsistent in your reason for leaving things out of the comparison.
I was saying that if you wanted to exclude CMI, EMI, and TMI when doing the comparison, I think the more consistent way to do it is based on the presence of the original creator. Lucas was involved in all SW films. But Gilbert was not involved in CMI or EMI.
Thus to compare what Lucas and Gilbert were doing, we can only look at the works they were involved in. That means all SW movies, but only the first two MI games. (That's what makes those games different from the others. Not that they were part of an original plan...because who knows if they were. But that the creator worked on them.)
Regarding the "I'm your brother" stuff...
Again, reading you literally it seems you were saying that MI:2 intentionally parallels ESB. And since Vader was telling the truth to Luke in ESB, it's clear that LeChuck really was telling the truth to Guybrush.
But I submit that it's not clear. I mean, the ending of MI:2 isn't just a "the bad guys win" ending. It's this surreal thing where the walls of what we thought were reality in the game start breaking down. ESB just ends with a cliffhanger.
In ESB we ask, "Is Vader telling the truth?"
In MI:2 we ask, "Is this last scene telling the truth, and this game and the previous game were just figments of a character's imagination?"
Regardless of how we answer those questions, they are most definitely different questions. MI:2 is charting its own territory here. It's taking the 'revelation at the end' muuuuch further than ESB.
So why assume that since it meant something in ESB, it clearly means something here? I think the significant disimilarity between ESB and MI:2 should make us hesitant to draw conclusions about one based on the other. Even "probable" conclusions. But...I'm just being analytical.
I understand that you weren't trying to prove anything. But, then again, you were giving evidence and saying that the conclusion you were drawing was "clear."
So, sorry for sort of violating my own request here. I'm not arguing Astro is wrong about his/her likes and dislikes. We're all entitled to our opinions. I'm talking logic here. But still, it may be distracting.
How is it more realistic than ANH? And what benchmark do we set for realism in movies taking place long ago in a galaxy far far away anyway?
Yoda's portrayal to me seems quite consistent throughout the films. He's more goofy when we first meet him in ESB because he's playing a part. I didn't like the look of puppet Yoda in TPM. But that's me.
But...well...anyway....
1. Realism: Imagine there is a war. One side of the conflict is rich, well-equiped and has a lot more soldiers. The other side is a group of people without military training, some of them are ex-soldiers of the other side, but that's all. We have smugglers, ex-buisnessman, a few ex-senators, some old military officers. They don't have too much military equipment nor manufactures.
Now - which side wins? In ANH - Rebellion, in ESB - Empire.
That's what I meant by realism.
2. Yoda: In ESB he's wise, old master. In RotJ he's dying. In prequels he's just another warrior.
But still, if we assume gilbert went for a sort of "star wars parody" thing (which i ain't claiming he did - stories like the first one's are so classic anyway, he could pretty much have "stolen" it from anywhere and we'd still be able to compare it to quite a bunch of other things), well... The three star wars movies were all done then, so the fact that Lucas changed or didn't change his plans at some point still doesn't matter much.
But i guess you're right, "same guy in control" (= same vision) is more what i meant (although i heard a lot of the stuff in star wars weren't Lucas' ideas at all, but i forgot too much about that to really argue here).
As for the joke, i was again phrasing it wrong, and i agree that it sounds like i'm making it huge as far as the plot is concerned. I really wasn't, tho. Sure, the endings are different, but they're, at a VERY basic level, still the same : the hero fails at killing the bad guy. But when as said it was not a joke, all i really meant is that is really felt like a acknowledgement of the smiliraities between the two stories. There were making a silly reference, and at the same time it was a way to tell you "so, yeah, this all sounds pretty star warsy, let's make fun of this fact too". This is really ALL i meant when telling it was more than a joke, since as you said, we just have no way to know if it could have had another meaning or not.
As to monkey island being a parody of star wars, I asked Ron Gilbert about that once on a chat in the IRC #monkeyisland channel about ten years ago... He said it wasn't intended to be a parody, but was "just ripe material".
1. Real world history shows the the victory doesn't always go to the side with the most numbers. Especially when the smaller group is better trained, and the large side makes mistakes because of their overconfidence.
2. I disagree that in the prequels he's just another warrior. He's the most prominent member of the Jedi Council. He spends more time in the prequels talking than he does fighting. But he's not directly training Anakin as he did Luke. So I can see how he feels differently.
You make good points there.
RoS sure was the best onf the new trilogy (which doesn't mean it was very good) because of that : it finally made its point.
But still, it's after watching it that I realized that in the end, i just didn't CARE about knowing how it had happened.
In the old movies, you were told that there was this guy, named anakin skywalker, who had turned to the dark side and blablabla... There was some mystery in it, you sure wondered what had happened but not knowing made Vader an even stronger character.
I was twelve when they announced the Phantom Menace, so just like everyone else i was uber excited and loved it when it came out, but now i just think that it would all have been better if left unsaid.
And then, assuming that we DID need to see that part of the story, they spent the two first movies focusing on usless crap. I don't see how the fact that anakin was a pod racer pilot helps in fleshing out the character. "OMG, HE build 3PO?" yeah, whatever...
Then the second movie started setting up a few things, but spent so much time on the sily and mostly "empty" romance that it got boring as hell. And they decided to add bobba feet (or his father or whatever) to try and fool the old fans into thinking it was cool... Didn't work for me.
So yeah, they got to the last one and probably started to think that it was time to deal with the story they were supposed to tell... Which made it finally interesting, but well, wasn't it a bit too late ? It all feels rushed, cause there's so many things they could have started in the previous movies that had to fit into the last one.
And they screwed up a scene which could have been beautiful by having Vader scream like a sissy right at his long awaited "birth" :eek:
As Wedge said earlier, i'm not criticizing YOUR opinion, just explaining MY thoughts on this
And i probably rushed it myself again, too.
Please note that the suggestive way the poll options are chosen would automatically advance the idea that there is a connection between liking MI2 and SW V:ESB, and any data collected from this poll could never be regarded as valuable research.
I would not support such faulty science by voting; nonetheless, I may give my reasons for my own preferences, and even link them neatly from game to film.
I am torn between MI 2 and 3 as my possible favourite, but concerning the Star Wars movies, it's pretty definitly Empire Strikes Back, so let's focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the two you mentioned, or rather: where the two are actually comparable.
First focus: The endings! Neither game nor film offers closure. But wheras MI2 is just plain "open ended" (with, to be honest, no real possibility to continue the plot that way, ever), ESB ends with a very smooth cliffhanger. Interestingly, the remaining conflict in ESB can not be immediately resolved, which makes this ending special as a cliffhanger. I liked this bitter-sweet ending with the faint hope to remedy the situation someday. However, I did not like the ending in MI:2. Monkey Island always tried to be funny through anachronisms, so the ending of MI:2 tried to be the ultimate, grotesque anachronism, which, of course, destroyed the fundamental possibility of anachronism altogether. Maybe great as a punchline, also not too bad as an intellectual touch, yet detrimental to the series as a whole.
Second focus: Characters and storyline. ESB shows how Luke becomes a Jedi, how Leia and Han Solo become a couple, it has the ultimate revelation about Darth Vader (and along with it, possibly the second-most-cited oneliner of the whole series right after "May the force be with you"). George Lucas has never achieved similar character interaction and viewer immersion again. MI:2 mocks the "I am your father"-paradigm heavily by stating that LeChuck could be Guybrush's brother; but that is about the part where the game becomes bad for me, at its ending. In her two scenes, Elaine is fleshed out as someone who might still care for Guybrush, but could never be with him because of his fundamental piratey ambitions. This is a stroke of genius, mind you - the games themselves must end for Guybrush to actually have a chance to win the governor. Guybrush himself is wonderfully characterised as a half-pirate; the emerging, but never fully grown beard illustrated his transitional stage. It's the point where Luke and Guybrush might be compared in the respective game/movie: Not yet a jedi - not yet a pirate.
As for the storyline, MI2 gracefully reinvents the idea of a long journey (by travelling from island to island), the very piratey treasure hunt and the jungle labyrinth. The backgrounds are masterfully drawn and are still nice to look at. Likewise, ESB features some of the most memorable settings of the series, and may compete with MI:2 in that respect.
As I said initially, I'm doing research for a theory. And you are correct, my theory involves some kind of connection between MI:2 and ESB. Indeed.
I want to see if there's a correlation in which installment is people's favorite. And if there is, through folks' comments, maybe even some hint as to why such a correlation exists.
But, how does the way I've set up the poll questions invalidate any findings? I mean, it's not a scientific poll by any means. The sample population (people who responded to the thread) is not guaranteed to be a sufficiently random sample from this sub-population (people who frequent this board) let alone the entire population (people through-out the world who like both MI and SW). So it couldn't be used in "real" research, of course. And that's not my aim. I'm not that nerdy.
(Plus, what paper would I publish it in? The Star Wars Insider? ba doom boom tshh??)
But I don't see how the options as I've given them somehow invalidates the results. Just because a person sees that the questions deal specifically with MI:2 and ESB, and that leads him/her to suspect my theory involves some kind of connection, that doesn't mean his/her views about which ones are his/her favorite are in any way going to be altered.
Is it a touch leading, with the options I have? I suppose so. Does that invalidate it? I wouldn't think so.
And ultimately, if I wanted to eliminate any leading element to the poll, I'd have needed to include 30 options in order to get every combination (and technically that's assuming people can only have one favorite for each franchise). I don't figure people would want to wade through 30 options. I'll get more responses this way. And the leading element is so minimal that I don't see it skewing results. It's certainly no, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
But anyway, thanks for your subsequent thoughts about MI and SW.
Well i haven't.
Thanks to all who have so far.
I also love all the MI games. Even EMI.