When the recent 3 movies came out (episodes 1,2,3) I heard some people were not happy with them. But I had no idea idea the level of complaints until I started visiting this board.
I must say I am surprised that Lucas and those 3 movies are ripped to shreds here so much, it’s seems to happen a few times per week.
For the record I thought those 3 movies were pretty good, but Christensen did a bad job. BTW, I saw the first 3 movies in high school and college , I am almost 50. I’ve heard that older people like me usually don’t like episodes 1-3, not sure why. I guess we are supposed to like the first 3 (episodes 4-6) a lot more.
Is this amount of disdain common or is it unique to posters here?
As a general rule, people I talk to, even younger folk, dislike episodes 1-3 in comparison to episodes 4-6. Remember, Hayden Christiansen wasn’t in Episode 1, and it still was a stupid movie. It had an Anakin who couldn’t act at ALL. It had ridiculous stereotyping of both the Gungans and the Trade Federation (one sounds like a bad version of a Carribbean creole, the other sounds like someone making fun of the Japanese or Chinese). And it had a race scene right out of Ben Hur, which did little to advance the plot, and wasn’t even all that exciting.
Of course, if you will recall, Lucas got some criticism for Episode 6 back in the day. People thought the Ewoks were silly, and that the battle between the Ewoks and the forces of the Empire seemed somewhat ridiculous and contrived. So it may be that criticism of Lucas simply comes from the fact that a) the bar got set pretty high with Empire Strikes Back, and b) people just love to criticize and complain.
It’s pretty common among folks I know. General consensus seems to be that the prequel trilogy exemplifies bad, special effects-driven filmmaking (although Michael Bay’s Transformers movies may have taken that crown). The dialogue is stilted, the story is uninteresting, the characters are cardboard. Even the action sequences are long and suspense-free due to the copious overuse of CGI. The acting is pretty awful as well, and given that most of the actors (including Christensen) have done stellar work elsewhere, it’s generally felt that the poor performances are due primarily to bad direction by Lucas, since he’s the only common element.
Episodes 4-6 benefited from a more charismatic cast, dialogue that crackled (even if it wasn’t poetry), memorable characters, and most importantly, a George Lucas that hadn’t yet become the mad-with-power egomaniac he is today. It’s important to note that Episodes 5 and 6 were written and directed by people other than Lucas, while Episode 4 was produced by a Lucas under incredible pressure to prove himself since nobody expected it to do well in the first place. Many people do their best creative work under constraints and Lucas was no exception. He might have been just as bad of a director back in the 1970s, but he simply didn’t have the pull to insist on doing everything his way. Not so much the issue once “Star Wars” became the biggest franchise in the history of franchises.
Edited to add: Also, most of the people I’ve spoken to who dislike the prequels aren’t fanboys foaming at the mouth about George Lucas raping their childhoods. They just think the original trilogy was fun and the new trilogy is badly-made shite.
I was seven years old when I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater. Part of the problem with watching the new trilogy is that I’m no longer seven years old.
Because people are generally catty and negative? I think its easy for the audience to sit on a high horse and criticize creators, but never create anything of their own. Sci-fi fans, imho, are the worst. They seem to take everything personally. I think its because we discover sci-fi at an age where we are very impressionable and turn these characters into something akin to imaginary friends. As we get older we see that the art we worshiped is very much flawed, and instead of embracing nostalgia, we attack the creators for not being able to make us feel 14 again.
I expect complaints for pretty much any movie, album, TV show, book ,etc.
What I did not expect was stuff like “all 3 moves are total garbage” or “Lucas is a total moron/jerk/idiot/etc” and similar stuff which I read here on a regular basis.
In a way this reminds me of some sports fans when their team is doing badly - everybody on the team + the coaches is suddenly horrible, stupid, morons, etc. I’ve even seen fans want to get rid of really good players when the team does not win.
Here’s a funny and entertaining blow-by-blow explanation of why The Phantom Menace was such a piece of crap. And it’s not just the reviewer complaining about Jar Jar Binks. It’s 70 minutes long, which may seem insane, but its a brilliant dissection of how the movie fails, on multiple levels, to meet the needs of the audience.
Now, you may be thinking “Why would I want to watch 70 MINUTES of commentary on The Phantom Menace?” Well, for one thing it’s far more interesting than the Phantom Menace itself ever was. And for another it provides a lot of insight about how characters and plot function in movies in general.
(Warning, the commentaries are sometimes NSFW with inappropriate language and offensive jokes. I haven’t linked directly to them, but to a page that links to them.)
I think there’s also a bit of an “I could have written a better movie” sentiment among fanboys of the really big movie franchises. You see it a lot in discussions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Terminator 3 & 4, Indiana Jones 4, Spider-Man 3, X-Men 3, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
Anything with a big, dedicated fanbase will have fans who have been writing the next sequel in their heads for years. And often, those imaginary movies are better than the real thing that comes out.
I’d rather drive needles through my eyes than watch 70 minutes of commentary on pretty much anything. Sounds like that guy needs to find a hobby or a girlfriend. I’ve heard/read all the complaints about these movies many times so I doubt I’ll hear anything new.
Shrug. Your loss. It’s both hilarious and educational.
There’s a great bit where he compares the characters from the original trilogy to the characters from the Phantom Menace by interviewing people and asking them to describe different characters as if they were talking to someone who had never seen the movies. Their growing realization that they’re unable to give a coherent description of the personality of anybody in the Phantom Menace is really funny.
“Han Solo?”
“He’s a rogue … a bad boy … he’s a scoundrel, but he’s got a heart of gold … .”
“Qui Gon Jin?”
“He’s … um … uh … hmmmmmmm … ha ha ha … this is impossible … he’s got a beard?”
If George Lucas had died in that car wreck in 62 there would be no Star Wars and possibly a lot less SciFi movies and TV shows. But don’t think about that - he’s a moron/jerk/idiot who ruined childhood memories!
This is what I think Bijou is talking about in his OP about people being extra hard on the prequels.
Qui-Gon is the wise old master, the same role Obi-Wan held in the original trilogy. The only way someone wouldn’t know that is if they’ve never seen the prequels.
The problem is that Lucas had 3, maybe 3.5 good movies in him. As a writer/creator, that is. He had 1 good movie in him as a director. Yet he continues to mine the same story for more and more hack-work, rather than let people with talent do it while he rakes in royalties. This cheapens the good movies every time he does it.
