# Are STAR WARS I, II, & III the worst big-budget blockbuster movies of all time? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 30, 2008, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521 "2008-04-30T21:06:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/41 "2008-05-01T19:01:18Z")
Next to _Battlefield Earth_ or _Batman and Robin_, any of the _Star Wars_ prequels is Citizen Freakin’ Kane. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/42 "2008-05-01T19:02:54Z")
[QUOTE=TWDuke] While I agree the Han-Jabba scene was awful [/QUOTE] Thanks for using a hypen rather than a slash. I’m fresh out of brain bleach. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/43 "2008-05-01T19:16:36Z")
[QUOTE=Steve MB] Next to _Battlefield Earth_ or _Batman and Robin_, any of the _Star Wars_ prequels is Citizen Freakin’ Kane. [/QUOTE] True, but as RickJay mentioned in his thread, **Battlefield Earth** (the most expensive Scientology recruitment film ever made) was a box office bomb so it doesn’t qualify in this thread. **Batman and Robin** also doesn’t qualify since it was a box office disappointment (which differs from a box office bomb in that a box office disappointment is a big-budgeted film that makes what in most cases would be a fair amount of money but is nonetheless regarded as an underperformer given expectations). ---
**Author:** ![bubastis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d07c76/32.png) [@bubastis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bubastis)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/44 "2008-05-01T20:28:59Z")
Seems people really have forgotten Van Helsing, eh? ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/45 "2008-05-01T20:46:18Z")
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl] Strange, that is _exactly_ how I would describe the first Matrix movie. [/QUOTE] and here I thought I was the only person to hate the entire Matrix trilogy. ID4 or Independence Day is a really bad movie. It’s just a bunch of scenes stolen from other movies cobbled together. I hated I am Legend. Which was nothing but Will Smith taking a crap on a great novella as opposed to I Robot which was Will Smith taking a crap on a great novel. ---
**Author:** ![Gorgon\_Heap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f475e1/32.png) [@Gorgon\_Heap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorgon_Heap)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/46 "2008-05-01T23:30:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Batman and Robin also doesn’t qualify since it was a box office disappointment Especially since no such move exists. Seriously. Never happened. And _Van Helsing_ was so bad that, had I not watched it alone, I would have asked soembody to punch my teeth in so I could mercifully choke to death on them. ---
**Author:** ![bubastis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d07c76/32.png) [@bubastis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bubastis)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/47 "2008-05-01T23:41:00Z")
This Just In; Lady In The Water. Just finished ignoring it. Watch only to see how much M. Night Spellchecker resembles an early-eighties Michael Jackson. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/48 "2008-05-02T00:42:27Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] :smack: But while on the subject anyway, HAN FIRED FIRST! * * * Really another OP almost, but I’ll do it anyway and feel free to add your own: Assume that it’s 10 years ago and you are Lucas’s script doctor. [/QUOTE] You mean, assume you were [Tom Stoppard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Stoppard), award-winning playwright and screenwriter? Consider: the travesty that was the SW:I-III was the result of Stoppard’s _improvements_. How much worse was it before? Honestly, Ewan McGregor did an excellent job in those movies, and Natalie Portman did the best job possible given the awful script she was given. And to answer your question, the straight-up removal of Jar-Jar Binks would have improved the movies immeasurably. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/49 "2008-05-02T01:30:46Z")
[QUOTE=bubastis] This Just In; Lady In The Water. [/QUOTE] Again, not a blockbuster. We’re talking about movies that were very commerically successful. “Lady in the Water” made just $42 million in US/Canadian box office, which by modern standards isn’t successful. It’s easy to name bad movies that weren’t successful. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/50 "2008-05-02T03:01:04Z")
[QUOTE=Zebra] I hated I am Legend. Which was nothing but Will Smith taking a crap on a great novella as opposed to I Robot which was Will Smith taking a crap on a great novel. [/QUOTE] I couldn’t disagree more. Not about the movies themselves, but about Will Smith. _I, Robot_ was a piece of crap. _I Am Legend_ was good for the first hour, bad for the last half-hour. But replacing Will Smith with someone else would not have fixed what was wrong with those movies. In fact, i thought Smith actually did pretty well with the atrocious material he was given. What killed both of those movies was the scripts. They took excellent stories and removed much of what made those stories so compelling. In the case of _I Am Legend_, i’d go even further and say that it was Akiva Goldsman that fucked it up. Mark Protosevich’s screenplay, which you can read [here](http://www.horrorlair.com/scripts/legend.txt), was not a completely faithful rendition of Matheson’s novella, but it was far more true to its vision than the final version of the film. Goldsman was brought in later by the studio, and mutilated it in his typical hack fashion. Unsurprisingly, Goldsman also worked on the screenplay for _I, Robot_. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/51 "2008-05-02T03:13:05Z")
Yeah, I agree. _I, Robot_ is worth watching for Will Smith and Alan Tudyk. The plot itself is best left to gibber to itself in the corner. ---
**Author:** ![bubastis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d07c76/32.png) [@bubastis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bubastis)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/52 "2008-05-02T19:24:02Z")
[QUOTE=RickJay] Again, not a blockbuster. We’re talking about movies that were very commerically successful. “Lady in the Water” made just $42 million in US/Canadian box office, which by modern standards isn’t successful. It’s easy to name bad movies that weren’t successful. [/QUOTE] I know, I just wanted to have a swing at that movie, cos it sucked so much. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2008, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/53 "2008-05-03T00:56:13Z")
[QUOTE=mhendo] I couldn’t disagree more. Not about the movies themselves, but about Will Smith. _I, Robot_ was a piece of crap. _I Am Legend_ was good for the first hour, bad for the last half-hour. But replacing Will Smith with someone else would not have fixed what was wrong with those movies. In fact, i thought Smith actually did pretty well with the atrocious material he was given. What killed both of those movies was the scripts. They took excellent stories and removed much of what made those stories so compelling. In the case of _I Am Legend_, i’d go even further and say that it was Akiva Goldsman that fucked it up. Mark Protosevich’s screenplay, which you can read [here](http://www.horrorlair.com/scripts/legend.txt), was not a completely faithful rendition of Matheson’s novella, but it was far more true to its vision than the final version of the film. Goldsman was brought in later by the studio, and mutilated it in his typical hack fashion. Unsurprisingly, Goldsman also worked on the screenplay for _I, Robot_. [/QUOTE] Will Smith was an executive producer on I Robot. I was suprised that he didn’t have the same credit on I am Legend but I’m sure that Mr. Smith had script approval. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2008, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/54 "2008-05-03T01:11:55Z")
[QUOTE=Zebra] Will Smith was an executive producer on I Robot. I was suprised that he didn’t have the same credit on I am Legend but I’m sure that Mr. Smith had script approval. [/QUOTE] (a) I assumed you were talking about Will Smith’s acting. Considering that’s what he’s best known for, you might want to be more specific when you’re talking about him as a producer. Especially considering he _wasn’t_ a producer on the second movie you mentioned. (b) It’s not really fair to blame him alone for _I, Robot_, considering the number of other producers and executive producers on the film. (c) Do you have anything other than a wild guess regarding his script approval of _I Am Legend_? I’d be surprised if the actor getting an 8-figure payday, and who was not also an executive producer, would be allowed by the producers or the studio to veto a script he didn’t like. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/55 "2008-05-05T19:53:18Z")
They were both ‘Will Smith Movies’. Wether he was the exe producer or not. You don’t get Will Smith to sign without him approving the script and he probably had his own personal writer(s) do a rewright for him. It’s not like you say, we’ll I paid you, you do this. Will Smith is big enough to get script approval on everything he does. He’s pretty careful with his movies because he likes being Mr. Huge opening weekend. If he is in a movie it was written for him and the ‘let’s change the end so Will Smith isn’t the bad guy, but the good guy’ has Will’s finger prints all over it. (has he ever played a bad guy? 6 degrees?) I personally have about 20 years expeirence working in ‘the industry’, which although I was on the sales and distribution side, I have more than a passing familiarity with how things work on the production side. In fact I can tell you specifically about a movie called Snakes Eyes, which was going to have Mr. Smith but, he wanted two things. He wanted 20 million dollars and he wanted to change the script so his character wasn’t the bad guy. Sorry if my personal opinions aren’t ‘fair’ enough for you but now, tell me, what insight do you have to the business side of film production? ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/56 "2008-05-05T19:56:05Z")
[QUOTE=Intravenus De Milo] Godzilla 2000. [/QUOTE] Oh, that’s a good one! ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/57 "2008-05-05T20:10:54Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] — On a similar note, why make Owen his stepbrother? Why not have him as a half-brother, his mother’s child with her husband? That way it would make more sense for him to take in the infant Luke, for the baby’s a family member and he would feel obligated to do so for the sake of his dead mother (rather than for the sake of a dead stepmother only briefly married to his dad). [/QUOTE] You’re limited there by the fact that Uncle Owen in Star Wars was considerably older than Luke. So, having Owen be Anakin’s younger brother puts him dangerously close to Luke in age. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/58 "2008-05-05T20:17:59Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] What would be your changes? [/QUOTE] I think [this essay](http://tomatonation.com/?p=855) pretty much sums up the problems with the movies, especially this part: > [@](#): > > From a story-arc standpoint, the entire transformation from Anakin into Vader is…wrong. I really can’t find another word for it. It just doesn’t work, for a number of reasons, and we may as well start with his motivations for turning to the Dark Side. Ostensibly, Anakin turns on the Jedi because 1) he is told that only Sith powers can protect Padme from the death he has foreseen for her, and 2) he is an impatient, short-tempered, somewhat petty apprentice who wants power he hasn’t earned. > > The “and” is key. Why two motivations? After all, we’ve seen evidence of #2 going back into the previous prequels, and what with the hard sell Palpatine gives Anakin vis-à-vis the Jedi trying to fuck him over, #2 is, on paper, the more believable stimulus. But I suspect that Lucas felt he had to give Anakin a good reason for turning — not “good” as in “understandable” but “good” as in, you know, good. Honorable. Sympathetic. > > But the thing is, you can’t have it both ways — not with the way these motivations would play out in the plot, and not with Hayden Christensen tasked with acting them. Christensen is a fine actor; I liked him a lot in Shattered Glass. But he’s just not very good in the prequels. He looks too much like Uma Thurman, for starters; he doesn’t make a convincing conflicted hero or a convincing nascent bad-ass. He just doesn’t have the weight, emotionally. He’s too young, too light and pouty. But in his defense, almost nobody could have portrayed Anakin with these two motivations, because they work at cross-purposes. My edits would all center around excising one of the motivations and leaving the second. Make Anakin older in the first movie, and make him powerful and sure of himself. Always powerful, always sure of himself. Not “evil” per se, but unwilling to listen to the guidance of others because everything has always come easily for him. When Darth Olddude tells him that he, unlike the Jedi, can actually teach him a thing or two, his reaction should be one of interest. A lot of the pieces of the movies would fall better into place with that. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/59 "2008-05-05T20:32:39Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] -why do technologically advanced civilizations (they can travel between stars!) wear such dingy, cheap-looking clothes? Here I am (21st century), and I wear fine Italian suits and silk ties -why do they have such backward forms of government (monarchies)? -how come their houses are so crummy? -why all the domestic animals around? In 21st century America, we don’t use horses -why are their macnies so ponderous? We have much better stuff now! [/QUOTE] To quote from [Darths & Droids](http://www.darthsanddroids.net), re: the pod race scene: "It’s somewhat staggering that on a bright desert planet where there are two suns providing glare shining off the burning sands, and they have the sort of technology that they do, that not a single person in that entire crowd scene is wearing sunglasses. " ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2008, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521/60 "2008-05-05T20:50:13Z")
I don’t think I saw it listed in the above, but I think that **The Swarm** qualifies as an intended blockbuster. Big name producer. REALLY big name stars. Really bad movie. I could say the same for **The Storey of Mankind**. These have a legitimate claim to “blockbuster” than, I think, **Battlefield Earth**. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-star-wars-i-ii-iii-the-worst-big-budget-blockbuster-movies-of-all-time/447521.md?page=4)