Your first indication the prequels would be bad?

[Mr. Sin]

^There's the scene in the movie where Palpatine says "The Republic will be reorganized into the first galactic Empire."

Also in ROTS we don't see the bridge interior of the Venator-class until the end of the film, so presumabely the green suits were there earlier. I'm sure the officer corps was also expanded eventually, to fill the command void left by the Jedi's demise.


There's also a deleted scene where Palpatine says he will be installing regional governors (Moffs) Tarkin is a Moff.

Also the Imperial officer design is a bit different I think than the one in the OT.

 

[Trekker4747]

For me, it was an article in Newsweek I think that stated that Jake Lloyd was the worst miscasting in film history (This was about a year before the film came out). Also around the same time there was a leaked audio clip of Jar-Jar from the underwater scene that didn't bode well for the film either.

I didn't follow much of the pre-release news but the first movie dealing with Anikan as child left me nervous.

My first real indication came very, very, early in watching the movies. It came when the opening crawl was talking about taxes as trade blockades.

As we see in X-men, Ray does have sort of an Irish accent that wouldn't have worked with Maul.

In a movie with so many silly Earth-based accents (Jar-Jar's island accent, the Trade Federation guys' Japanese accent, etc.) this seems like a silly point to make.

 

[Kegg]

Yeah, but you shouldn't have to read the books to find out about some of the most fundamental aspects of the trilogy. The way it was presented was almost an after thought like "Oops, we haven't haven't shown were the Empire came from!"

I don't think 'where did the officer class come from' is a fundamental issue of the trilogy. It's not even vaguely tertiary, honestly. Twenty years have passed, and the annihilation of the entire general class of the army in Revenge of the Sith has created something of a vacancy.

It's true the films really didn't delve into the apparatus of state all that much though. Palpatine is seen communing mostly with forces he's plotting the destruction of - the Jedi, the Separatist leaders, and so on. Scenes of him with future or present supporters, besides his Sith apprentices, are pretty scarce - he's far more implied to do things than we see him doing them.

 

[DigificWriter]

I'm sorry, but the entire premise of this thread is flawed and is predicated on the assumption that the opinion 'the prequels were bad' is the 'majority opinion', which, as I can attest to from years of personal experience interacting with and participating in the SW fandom at large, is far from the case. In fact, I can confidently state that those who view the Pequels in a positive light actually outnumber those who take the opposite viewpoint, but because the 'haters' tend to be more vocal, they have come to represent a 'majority opinion' in the eyes of many.

That said, the Prequels are by no means perfect, but neither are the 'Original' films, despite nostalgia indicating otherwise.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

I didn't spoil myself. I only had the trailers to work with, so the first inkling was Tatooine ... again, and the Kid Vader angle. I hate movie children. There are no OK child actors. They're either really good or ruin whatever they're in. Then the opening crawl talked about taxes and a blockade and I was like "Is this going to be The War of 1812 in space?" Which actually would have been much cooler than what I got.

Didn't care too much about the accents and Jar Jar was actually OK right up until they decided to take him with them and go to Gunga Central. Ugh. The entire city-to-planet core-to-Theed sequence was abysmal. Padme was more robotic than the droids, then we get the weak-ass escape and the never-ending second act on Tatooine where we're introduced to the human blackhole that is Anakin Skywalker.

Palps was fun, the duel was cool until Maul was killed by act of plot and the space battle was pretty cool minus Anakin's antics.

Biggest letdowns: The Jedi and Sith not carving up people left and right (when Qui-Gon started to take down the bridge blast doors I was ecstatic. Finally! Lightsabers were going to ruin people's shit! Then they ran like bitches using a power never again displayed in all six films, inlcuding this very same one where it would have saved Qui-Gon). Obi-Wan being a tertiary character until the very last action sequence. The SE Jabba equivalent CGI Yoda. Anakin and Jar Jar sucking so hard. Tatooine. Short space battle won through childish oopsies. Oh, and the god damn never-ending podrace with that bullshit announcer. And the Force boiled down to simple, poorly explained biology in a throw-away scene.

EDIT, I'm going to expand my points instead of triple posting: Overall, a big thing that irked me throughout all of them I still don't get was, aside from random shit like Midichlorians, everyone watching the film is assumed by Lucas to have seen the OT and read extensive EU material such that basic information isn't given to the audience. You either know it or you don't before going into the theatre, cause you're not going to glean it from the films themselves.

Never once directly explained in TPM, or any of the PT films really:

-The Sith (not even mentioned in the OT)
-The Jedi
-The Prophecy
-The Force (no, Midichlorians don't count and lots of people haven't seen Yoda explain the Force in Empire/Return yet unless you buy into the everyone follows the 4-5-6-1-2-3 official episode viewing order)
-Anakin's Immaculate Conception
-Clear motivation of the Trade Federation, how the taxes were affecting them and how they thought the blockade would help (one second they're ready for war, then they want a treaty, then they send the only person who can sign the treaty away, then they occupy the planet but disperse the fleet)
-Palps original plan for TPM before the Jedi fucked things up (his orders as they stand make no sense when his apparent goal is to create a crisis, destabilize the government and seize power.)

The Sith thing, the Prophecy and the Force are big. It's like reading Lord of the Rings but skipping over every section that tells you who Sauron was in the distant past and why he's so evil now and really wants that One Ring plus what the One Ring actually does. He'd just be That Guy who wants the Ring Which Does Stuff because of Evil and Power.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

I'm sorry, but the entire premise of this thread is flawed and is predicated on the assumption that the opinion 'the prequels were bad' is the 'majority opinion', which, as I can attest to from years of personal experience interacting with and participating in the SW fandom at large, is far from the case. In fact, I can confidently state that those who view the Pequels in a positive light actually outnumber those who take the opposite viewpoint, but because the 'haters' tend to be more vocal, they have come to represent a 'majority opinion' in the eyes of many.

That said, the Prequels are by no means perfect, but neither are the 'Original' films, despite nostalgia indicating otherwise.

I would say the thread is predicated on the assumption that those responding to it would agree with the thread title's premise: assuming you thought the prequels would be bad, when did you first think this?

Sort of how the occasional "What do you love about the prequels?" threads assume those posting love something about the prequels and wish to share.

The percentage of SW fandom that like/dislike the PT or OT isn't really at issue here.

Matter of fact, the OP's wording could be read as asking when and why you thought the PT would be bad early on in the production, but turned out to be wrong. But again, debating who is more a fan or in the majority opinion-wise has nothing to do with it.

 

[HarryM]

I don't think they were all bad. TPM was bad, AotC was watchable, RotS was good. The "Taxation of trade routes is in dispute" in the crawl was a high suckage indicator for TPM.

 

[Shazam!]

I don't think 'where did the officer class come from' is a fundamental issue of the trilogy. It's not even vaguely tertiary, honestly. Twenty years have passed, and the annihilation of the entire general class of the army in Revenge of the Sith has created something of a vacancy.

I disagree. All the 'forces' presented in the PT were aliens, clones, robots or Jedi... so where did this massive 'human' army spring up from? It would've made far more sense to have either the Trade Federation made up of future Imperials or to have at least shown on Coruscant that there were alternative authority figures running around other than Jedi.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

I had my first inkling in the first scene, when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon go aboard the Trade Federation ship and there is dialogue between them... I can't explain it exactly but there was something so.... deflating about the whole thing. Something about the way things looked, the way the dialogue was delivered, and these doofy villains.

 

[iguana_tonante]

We have that scenery for real near Lake Como.

^
Yes, but Lucas made it better.

If by "better" you mean "cheesier", that I agree.

 

[Kegg]

I disagree. All the 'forces' presented in the PT were aliens, clones, robots or Jedi... so where did this massive 'human' army spring up from?

Twenty years of institutionalized imperial rule. That's not springing by anyone's book. They didn't emerge from under a rock, they were clearly part of the appartus of state that has evolved since then... like the recently commissioned Death Star.

It makes sense to me that they emerged to replace the Jedi also; and there's even a whiff of that about Tarkin - Vader's the last of an old guard of wizard nonsense, he's the technocratic future of this organization.

 

[Shazam!]

Twenty years of institutionalized imperial rule. That's not springing by anyone's book. They didn't emerge from under a rock, they were clearly part of the appartus of state that has evolved since then... like the recently commissioned Death Star.

Going by the end of ROTS, they pretty much did just that.

It makes sense to me that they emerged to replace the Jedi also; and there's even a whiff of that about Tarkin - Vader's the last of an old guard of wizard nonsense, he's the technocratic future of this organization.

They just turn up at the end of ROTS though. That scene is like a pay-off for all this cool stuff that we never saw or even really knew about.

All those ridiculous aliens and robots on Geonosis should've been the early Empire as opposed to disposable cartoon characters that disappear from the saga completely.

 

[Captain Pike]

I loath the very concept of a prequel. We rarely get a sequel that surpasses the original. We NEVER get a prequel that surpasses the original.

Why? I've never understood this attitude. The concept of a prequel story is perfectly valid, and when handled correctly can be very interesting.

It is true that Hollywood keep fucking them up, but thats another matter.

 

[Admiral Shran]

My first indication was when I heard there was something called "the Federation" in them.

 

[RandyS]

I loath the very concept of a prequel. We rarely get a sequel that surpasses the original. We NEVER get a prequel that surpasses the original.

Why? I've never understood this attitude. The concept of a prequel story is perfectly valid, and when handled correctly can be very interesting.

It is true that Hollywood keep fucking them up, but that's another matter.

Agreed.

 

[Showdown]

When I heard there would be kid Anakin.

I gave the movie a chance, but Jar Jar and the long boring pod race killed it for me.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

That said, the Prequels are by no means perfect, but neither are the 'Original' films, despite nostalgia indicating otherwise.

It's not nostalgia. It's taste.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

That said, the Prequels are by no means perfect, but neither are the 'Original' films, despite nostalgia indicating otherwise.

It's not nostalgia. It's taste.

Oh, I disagree. It's definitely nostalgia. People like the OT better because those films came first. They wouldn't accept ANYTHING from the prequel trilogy, no matter how good those films could have been.

It's like Bonds, Doctors, or Life on Marses: Everyone prefers the first one they saw. They usually don't deviate from that.

 

[Sykonee]

Everyone prefers the first one they saw. They usually don't deviate from that.

Nah, I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that the Peter Jackson version of the Fellowship Of The Ring is much better than the Ralph Bakshi version.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I think we're all trying to block the animated LOTR from our collective subconscious.