STAR WARS PREQUELS - a love/hate relationship

[HAL.9000]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

And yes, the prequels (and the "Special Editions") are awful films. A New Hope really does appear to be a fluke and Empire good in spite of his (Lucas') involvement.

I was thinking the same. In hindsight "A New Hope" is comparatively equal to the "one-hit-wonders" you find in the music industry.

The best thing Lucas did was let other people direct "Empire" and "Jedi."

Before he became the "almighty George Lucas," I think he was more open to suggestion and criticism. The prequels however, reek of him alone..as if there were no other decision makers.

As a fan-boy all I can say is that originally the SW saga was to be nine movies....three sets of three. Them middle was produced and succeeded. Fans waited for news of the other movies. We went from little boys to middle aged men hoping and waiting. Finally when they were made and release, we expected the same magic we experienced with IV-V-VI.

We were let down, and it's not like they can be re-made. (though they can but I doubt it will happen...maybe once George dies, but then I'll probably be dead too.)

Give me a good story with cheesy special effects any day. Spectacular special effects with no story is just a waste of time and energy.

As for those complaining about the topic for being dated: I thought this was a ST forum. You know....sci-fi? How old is the original ST series? ...and yet is still discussed here.

Cut me some slack, I'm bored so I'm posting.

 

[HAL.9000]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

Now see, of late I don't even find myself very impressed by "A New Hope", errr Star Wars redone, or not. I tend to yawn while watching Threepio and Artoo wandering about and I ask myself: why is this movie supposed to be so great?

Is that heretical?

It was "great" at the time.

It's like Hitchcock's "Psycho." I fail to see the "greatness" of the film personally, but I'm sure it was a great movie at its time.

Personally I think Kubrick's "The Shinning" blows it away in terms of sheer terror..

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: I love the Star Wars prequels!

....uh...

Oh I get it. Sarcasm! You had me going there...

 

[Gepard]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

Before he became the "almighty George Lucas," I think he was more open to suggestion and criticism. The prequels however, reek of him alone..as if there were no other decision makers.=

I don't think he was more open to it, so much as he didn't have any other choice. Read any of the accounts about the making of the original trilogy and Lucas was always chaifing at the restrictions imposed on him by the technology, by the studios heads, by the financiers, and so on. I think he always wanted to film that really terrible first draft of "The Star Wars" but was forced by circumstance to rewrite it again and again into something filmable, which, by dint of endless revisions, also happened to be good. Once he got the absolute control and unlimited visual effects powers he always dreamed of, he hasn't needed to concede to someone else's taste again - and his films have been the worse for it.

 

[Skywalker]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

Now see, of late I don't even find myself very impressed by "A New Hope", errr Star Wars redone, or not. I tend to yawn while watching Threepio and Artoo wandering about and I ask myself: why is this movie supposed to be so great?

Is that heretical?

HERESY! BURN HIM!

 

[Kegg]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

Now see, of late I don't even find myself very impressed by "A New Hope", errr Star Wars redone, or not. I tend to yawn while watching Threepio and Artoo wandering about and I ask myself: why is this movie supposed to be so great?

Is that heretical?

Nah. I remember feeling pretty underwhelmed last time I sat through the original trilogy. I loved that trilogy as a kid and watched it to death a thousand times over, but aside from more or less still grokking Empire I wasn't really engrossed anymore.

And yet I'm still a Star Wars fan... if only by default.

I was thinking the same. In hindsight "A New Hope" is comparatively equal to the "one-hit-wonders" you find in the music industry.

Hey, I like THX-1138. And there are worse films than American Graffiti.

Was a good decade for Lucas, is what I'm saying.

As a fan-boy all I can say is that originally the SW saga was to be nine movies....three sets of three. Them middle was produced and succeeded.

Gary Kurtz tells that story a little differently. Apparently Lucas kind of intentionally dropped the sequel trilogy plot by having Leia be the other Skywalker and having the Emperor show up to die in Return of the Jedi. So the original plan for the final trilogy didn't survive the third film.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

Water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, the SW prequels suck. We get it already!

Dropping into this forum sometimes makes me feel like I've egressed ten years to a world trapped in ambergris.

There are so many things wrong with that statement...


...even though it may actually be true.

Yikes! Must be stinky trapped in whale barf like that.

Speaking of whale barf, that's a good description of the SW prequels!

 

[Sharr Khan]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

Now see, of late I don't even find myself very impressed by "A New Hope", errr Star Wars redone, or not. I tend to yawn while watching Threepio and Artoo wandering about and I ask myself: why is this movie supposed to be so great?

Is that heretical?

It was "great" at the time.

It's like Hitchcock's "Psycho." I fail to see the "greatness" of the film personally, but I'm sure it was a great movie at its time.

Personally I think Kubrick's "The Shinning" blows it away in terms of sheer terror..

I found myself growing less, and less impressed by it the more available it was. I own all the movies and now they would be last on my list of things to put on while being bored.

I see how the F/X a the time might have been impressive of course. Maybe I've been exposed to too much deconstruction of the elements of Star Wars to a point where the roots of it all tend to jump out at me now.

 

[InklingStar]

Re: I love the Star Wars prequels!

....uh...

Oh I get it. Sarcasm! You had me going there...

See, that's the funny thing...

 

[Kegg]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

Speaking of whale barf, that's a good description of the SW prequels!

Speaking of whale barf, I've name dropped Wing Commander, but offhand I can think of another, much bigger disappointment than Phantom Menace the year of '99.

Wild Wild West.

 

[HAL.9000]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

Say, did "Robot Chicken" ever do a take on the prequels? Or "Family Guy" for that matter?

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

A New Hope is still a great film. No super fast editing, a slow buildup is there, we follow a simple story. When the story is ready to EXPAND, it truly does.

The whole film is lost on modern day audiences in the same way the scene in Empie - where Luke in the ice cave first calls the saber to his hand using the Force - is lost on the audience today. All the exposure to the prequels and films in general that are comic book-y have sucked the magic out of this moment, and the bulk of the early sections of a New Hope. I loved how there is so little dialogue in those early scenes

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: I love the Star Wars prequels!

I love TPM and AOTC and will defend them with at least half of the energy I put into defending Enterprise. It's only half because I know it's a hopeless cause whereas I have converted quite a few people into Enterprise Love or at least Like over the years.

I saw AOTC 9 times in the cinema which bested my previous record of movie going which was ANH 7 times. I find TPM and AOTC epic, tragic, bittersweet with foreshadowing, and beautiful to watch.

TPM I liked well enough but it grew on me with repeated viewings and I really appreciate the political build up that sets the stage for all the events that follow. Qui-Gon Jinn is my favorite character in SW, a great story of heartfelt compassionate decisions that proved ill in the end. Very interesting person, I would love to read a book of his life pre TPM.

AOTC is stunning to look at.. some things that I love: CORUSCANT (I love this city), Kamino waves, the fantastic Temuerra Morrison as Jango Fett ("peck your thinngs"), the Gaudi like structures on Geonosis, Bail Organa at the end overseeing the clone army..

ROTS I have trouble with, find it too cumbersome in places and dull, though I will rewatch it again I'm sure.

 

[Showdown]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

I really enjoyed Plinkett's reviews.

For the few out there that haven't watch them, here's a small taste of it.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hpJzK9NzTI[/yt]

If you like this, I highly recommend watching the whole thing.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: I love the Star Wars prequels!

I liked the prequel trilogy better than the original trilogy.

And I'm not joking either.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Re: I hate the STAR WARS PREQUELS!!!

As a fan-boy all I can say is that originally the SW saga was to be nine movies....three sets of three. Them middle was produced and succeeded.

Gary Kurtz tells that story a little differently. Apparently Lucas kind of intentionally dropped the sequel trilogy plot by having Leia be the other Skywalker and having the Emperor show up to die in Return of the Jedi. So the original plan for the final trilogy didn't survive the third film.

Gary Kurtz was part of the reason that Lucas decided to end SW at ROTJ. Kurtz's incompetence as a Producer set Lucas back by quite a bit financially and in the end it made a mess of George Lucas's personal life.

But from what others have pieced together, SW was always meant to be open ended. The plan was always for directors like Kershner to get a shot at directing it. It's just that the production of ESTB really soured George Lucas to SW.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: I love the Star Wars prequels!

I liked the prequel trilogy better than the original trilogy.

And I'm not joking either.

I believe you.

 

[Gotham Central]

Re: I love the Star Wars prequels!

I love TPM and AOTC and will defend them with at least half of the energy I put into defending Enterprise. It's only half because I know it's a hopeless cause whereas I have converted quite a few people into Enterprise Love or at least Like over the years.

I saw AOTC 9 times in the cinema which bested my previous record of movie going which was ANH 7 times. I find TPM and AOTC epic, tragic, bittersweet with foreshadowing, and beautiful to watch.

TPM I liked well enough but it grew on me with repeated viewings and I really appreciate the political build up that sets the stage for all the events that follow. Qui-Gon Jinn is my favorite character in SW, a great story of heartfelt compassionate decisions that proved ill in the end. Very interesting person, I would love to read a book of his life pre TPM.

AOTC is stunning to look at.. some things that I love: CORUSCANT (I love this city), Kamino waves, the fantastic Temuerra Morrison as Jango Fett ("peck your thinngs"), the Gaudi like structures on Geonosis, Bail Organa at the end overseeing the clone army..

ROTS I have trouble with, find it too cumbersome in places and dull, though I will rewatch it again I'm sure.

Well you also like Enterprise and Voyager so liking the prequels is not a huge jump since they are about the same calibre creatively.

 

[Agenda]

Re: I love the Star Wars prequels!

The third one isn't half bad. But the first two...well...they're just not good movies, never mind good Star Wars movies.I just can't fathom how anyone can *like* them. The most I can say about them is that they have an epic scope. We rarely get epic space fantasy flicks, and they succeed in that sense through their mere existence. But that's really it.

 

[Gotham Central]

Re: I love the Star Wars prequels!

I think that one thing that has become abundant,y clear since the release of the prequels is that there really is an audience for just about everything. I've never fully understood how it is that people can be entertained by bad/bland acting, sterile and unimaginative film making and stories that defy basic logic....and then you see that there are people that love that stuff and not in an ironic way. I guess if there are people that actually like living in dictatorships, or can knowingly fall in love with axe murderers...the existence of people that like really bad art is not that much of a stretch.

It does, however, leave me baffled as to why? The Redlettermedia videos pretty much sum up everything that was wrong with the prequels at a basic level...as bad films. Yet there are people that will swear up and down that they were pure gold...and I can only ask..why?