But, there is nothing about the Jedi in their presentation in the PT that makes me want Luke to be come one. So, the entirety of the evil of the Empire is the Jedi's fault and there is no reason for them to come back.
Why Do People Hate the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy?
- Thread starter VulcanMindBlown
- Start date
A lot of people here don't hate the prequel trilogy it seems, but I'm one of those people who do. I think all three are absolutely unwatchable. I used to say that Episode III was "the good one." But I tried rewatching it last year and I thought it was just as bad as the other two. It's the poor casting, the awful writing, the stilted dialogue, the wooden cringe-worthy acting, the pervasive CGI that looks dreadful now, bad editing, bad directing, it's really just a mess from top to bottom.
That said, I've never really been pulled in by any of the Star Wars movies. But I acknowledge that Episodes IV, V, and VII are good films. Episode VI I could take it or leave it.
That said, I've never really been pulled in by any of the Star Wars movies. But I acknowledge that Episodes IV, V, and VII are good films. Episode VI I could take it or leave it.
The Jedi fall - and the Old Republic falls along with them - because of their own hubris, so that when Yoda and Obi-Wan come to train Luke, they train him completely differently in order to directly atone for their own failure, and it is the way that Luke ends up responding to that training - after a brief 'false start' where he's making his father's mistakes - coupled with his realization that there is still goodness in Vader that leads directly to the destruction of the Emperor and the Rebellion's victory.
This is explicitly laid out, BTW, in the movies themselves, so it's YOUR fault if you missed the point of why things played out in the Prequels.
Ah, yes, please blame me.
I am aware of how things played out and the whys. I'm saying the Jedi do not come across as "good guys" or the moral superior. There is no reason to want them to win out of their nature-we just don't want the Dark Side to win.
Hubris? Yes, absolutely, but we never see the Jedi do something that is worth cheering them on, that makes them the moral good guys in the story, even s their own failings lead to their downfall.
In other words, the result of the prequels is all the Jedi's fault.
Which, again, is entirely the point. It's not the fault of the films or their narrative if you (or anybody else) can't or aren't willing to accept that or insist on the narrative giving you reasons to care about an entity that you were never supposed to care about in the first place.
To me the prequels suffer from having 3 of worst characters in all of movie history. Jar Jar,kid Anakin, young adult Anakin. To make it worst is the Jedi tend to be really boring people. They are way to serious and were to refined for a regular person to really relate to them. There isn't really one great villian in the trilogy that comes close to matching Darth Vadar. Darth Maul might have been that but even he is kind of overated because he really just has one great moment and that is the final lightsaber fight.
Other bad things were the droids and the asian sterotype aliens that controlled them just weren't intresting.I They are basically the stand in's for the Empire but the Empire worked because they gave off a Natzi vibe. The trade alliance and the seperatist all exsit because of some very unintresting backstory that nobody really cares about because there is no real world thing about them that helps us really understand what they are about. It all revolves arounds some politics for a government we don't care about. Political stuff in a "Star Wars" movie is never going to work because the universe is not built for that kind of storytelling. To many wierd aliens and planets to take anything serious enough to care about that type of stuff.
The special effects are bad but to me that isn't a problem. Special effects never age well. What doesn't work is that you can tell they are spending most scene's behind a bluescreen. Nobody really walks or talks in a normal way. Everthing feels like a cartoon.
Jason
Other bad things were the droids and the asian sterotype aliens that controlled them just weren't intresting.I They are basically the stand in's for the Empire but the Empire worked because they gave off a Natzi vibe. The trade alliance and the seperatist all exsit because of some very unintresting backstory that nobody really cares about because there is no real world thing about them that helps us really understand what they are about. It all revolves arounds some politics for a government we don't care about. Political stuff in a "Star Wars" movie is never going to work because the universe is not built for that kind of storytelling. To many wierd aliens and planets to take anything serious enough to care about that type of stuff.
The special effects are bad but to me that isn't a problem. Special effects never age well. What doesn't work is that you can tell they are spending most scene's behind a bluescreen. Nobody really walks or talks in a normal way. Everthing feels like a cartoon.
Jason
Then the Jedi are terrible protagonists and I do not want them to return, not in ROTJ or in the sequel trilogy. They are not "guardians of peace and justice" but self-serving wizards. That's what is shown. If the point was to make the Jedi look like terrible beings, then, yes, the PT succeed.
It is the fault of the narrative if I am not supposed to care about the outcome, the characters or entities in a film. That is a narrative structural problem.
"Nevertheless, grave danger I fear in his training."
"Warned you I did. Listen you did not. Now, screwed we all are."
Palpatine's influence can't be understated. I think he was using his Dark Side power in a broad way to somehow affect the Jedi's perception of things. He was out in plain sight, right under their nose the whole time, and they had absolutely no idea that he was an extremely powerful Sith Lord. Yoda commented that "the Dark Side clouds everything," but they didn't know where it was coming from. And Mace said, "our ability to use the Force has diminished."
Kor
Kor
Which is fair, Palpatine had things in motion long before the start of the films. But, the Jedi do not appear to have any sense of how to defeat this enemy beyond "I sense danger" but do nothing about it.
The ROTS novel at least expressed it better, that the Jedi lose regardless of what choices that they make. But, that doesn't give them the moral high ground.
The thing is, Luke was probably taught by Obi-Wan and Yoda about what went wrong, what to change.
Yoda realized near the end of the war that the Jedi had changed, and there was no saving them. Obi-Wan gained wisdom during his exile on Tatooine.
Luke also probably doesn't have any of the texts about the Jedi, so he wouldn't be teaching them the same way they were during the PT era.
Which is also true based upon how things were presented from the PT to the OT, that the Jedi were trained from infancy, that they shun attachments and pretty much did everything wrong with Anakin. I'm not arguing the presentation of that, because that is pretty apparent.
My question is, what about the Jedi in the PT is moral, upright, good that makes it worth while that they should win in the PT, and if they lose (which they will because OT) what is lost? That's my question.
And, if I'm not supposed to want the Jedi to succeed in stopping the Sith, then why is Order 66 so bad? What connection is there supposed to be between me and the Jedi that their loss is is a loss to the galaxy? If Yoda is realizing that the Jedi cannot be saved, than was anything worth saving?
Kor said:
In addition to the fact that their ability to use the Force had diminished, he was presumably smart enough to not use the Force right in front of them.
fireproof78 said:
They've been manipulated into a virtual no-win scenario by an opponent who was described by one of the prequel tie-in novels as a master chess player.
That's basically what many a film critic said in the early 80's about episode 5 and 6, and to a lesser extent, 4.
The Jedi are comprised, politically entangled, out of touch. In TCW it's the same way. All three films end with them losing. In the first film the win a pyrrhic victory, but it's really Palpatine who wins. In the second, they are rescued, but Palpatine's war has started. He wins again. In the third, the Jedi lose everything. As does Anakin, but at the very end, there's a bit of hope.
It's an epic tragedy/fate/downfall of civilization story. An ensemble where the protagonists are flawed. To a kid watching the movies, the Jedi are heroes, but to an adult, it's like "portents of doom."
Yoda's order isn't worth saving. Luke ends up ignoring Obi-Wan and Yoda's plan. He finds his own way. They just want Luke to kill his old man, and the lie to Luke to ensure his success.
Going back to the original posting...for me, it was basically that TPM was such a failure to meet expectations and anticipations that it soured the taste of the other 2 for many people.
I remember as a boy when Jedi (or I guess I have to call it RotJ now) came out, or I think even during empire, there were rumors of a prequel AND sequel trilogies being planned. We longed for that faraway year 2000 when they would come out.
So that when after a decade and a half of speculation and "meditation" on the Star Wars galaxy... we got some major disappointments. Obi Wan had said Anakin was a great pilot when he first met him... but he was a slave boy (emphasis on boy), so that threw it off. Jar Jar Binks did not bring the funny like C3PO & R2-D2...and C3PO;s origin seemed contrived.
Also, the acting of Young Anakin, and Hayden Christensen as older Anakin were a problem...and since he's the lead, that's also leaving a sour taste. To me, Samuel L Jackson was just kinda there, but no one seems to complain about it.
Other details that were annoying..for me, was that the Clone Wars were kind of one sided, in that it wasn't Clone vs. Clone, but just that one Army had them (and they were the "good guys" of the war)
I actually liked Revenge of the Jedi and consider the opening scene the most epic opening of the Star Wars films. Had the rest of the films been like that, we wouldn't be complaining about them today.
Also, some of the other acting, particularly that of Ewan McGregor as a perfect young Obi Wan, and Ian McDermid as the Emperor, was really good.
Contrast that to The FOrce Awakens, which DID seem to match the hype & anticipation. Part of it was the advantage of being new, so not bound by something previously set up.
I mean, if go back and watch it (haven't yet), then I am sure the flaws will pop up...but the feeling of getting ready to watch it , and doing so, was a good feeling,
I remember as a boy when Jedi (or I guess I have to call it RotJ now) came out, or I think even during empire, there were rumors of a prequel AND sequel trilogies being planned. We longed for that faraway year 2000 when they would come out.
So that when after a decade and a half of speculation and "meditation" on the Star Wars galaxy... we got some major disappointments. Obi Wan had said Anakin was a great pilot when he first met him... but he was a slave boy (emphasis on boy), so that threw it off. Jar Jar Binks did not bring the funny like C3PO & R2-D2...and C3PO;s origin seemed contrived.
Also, the acting of Young Anakin, and Hayden Christensen as older Anakin were a problem...and since he's the lead, that's also leaving a sour taste. To me, Samuel L Jackson was just kinda there, but no one seems to complain about it.
Other details that were annoying..for me, was that the Clone Wars were kind of one sided, in that it wasn't Clone vs. Clone, but just that one Army had them (and they were the "good guys" of the war)
I actually liked Revenge of the Jedi and consider the opening scene the most epic opening of the Star Wars films. Had the rest of the films been like that, we wouldn't be complaining about them today.
Also, some of the other acting, particularly that of Ewan McGregor as a perfect young Obi Wan, and Ian McDermid as the Emperor, was really good.
Contrast that to The FOrce Awakens, which DID seem to match the hype & anticipation. Part of it was the advantage of being new, so not bound by something previously set up.
I mean, if go back and watch it (haven't yet), then I am sure the flaws will pop up...but the feeling of getting ready to watch it , and doing so, was a good feeling,
That really brings us into false equivalence territory.
Though I do clearly remember all those critics in the early 80's complaining about the pervasive CGI that already looked dreadful by the time their articles were written.
Prax said:
"They" didn't lie. Yoda never lies to him even once.
Morpheus 02 said:
I don't see why this should have been annoying or disappointing. The Clone Wars just weren't what you thought they would be ( or what some EU authors thought they would be ).
No, but they said things like "Over reliance on visual spectacle" or "basically a two hour long SFX reel."
It's not a false equivalency. All six films were made by the same people. The critical response was very similar to the two trilogies. Episode 4 and Episode 3 received the most praise, and everything commonly cited as "wrong" with the prequels were the exact same things that were cited as "wrong" with the originals.
I'm surprised to hear people on a Trek forum complain about CGI. It's usually spoken of as a positive when discussing Star Trek. Whats worse, is that the Prequels, by today's standards, were done with "practical effects." CG was mostly used for animated characters(not all), animated artifacts, and enhancing lighting. All environments were sets, locations, or miniatures, save one scene. All set extensions were miniatures, or plate photography. Space scenes were a combination.
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