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Dunno. That’s still a ton of money, though. Still a lot of people.
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No the Dope in particular, more like online in general, as indicated in my post. It’s probably a groupthink thing.
Would you care to elaborate on this? I’m curious to know what you hated about the OT. While not a ‘religious experience,’ I found them to be damn fine movies, for the most part balancing great (for the time) special effects, a compelling story, and sympathetic characters.
What was lacking in them that you’ve seen in the prequels?
This is a genuine question…trying to understand the problem from the other POV. Anyone else that can answer, please do.
I hated all the characters in the first three movies - they were 2D and unlikable(especially Luke) and the poor acting didn’t help. The plots were predictable bored the hell out of me - of course good is ultimately going to win, even if seems like the chips are down in the middle, because that’s what good does in 95% of stories that set up the G Vs E plotline. The special effects didn’t impress me to any great degree; besides the light sabers and other weaponry, it wasn’t much different than stuff I saw on the muppets every week.
I only dislike most of the characters in the prequels, so that’s an improvement. At least in the newer movies there’s something to wonder about plot-wise. Why is the earnest little brat going to grow up to be such a horrible monster? What the hell is the princess thinking about when it comes to him? Will she die or just wise up and go far far away? That, and we can hope that Jar Jar Binks dies in a spectacular manner.
While i can’t speak for the “fanboys,” i can tell you that a movie does not need to be a “life transforming event” for me to enjoy it. I’ve seen plenty of movies that i liked well enough while watching them, but that i also don’t hold any long-term abiding love for.
Furthermore, my dislike of Phantom Menace stands alone, without any reference to my attitude towards the original trilogy. If i had seen Phantom Menace without ever seeing Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, i think i still would have thought that it was an awful film. And, as i said before, while i really enjoyed the original trilogy, i certainly was obsessed by it.
You believe that the new movies are “VERY GOOD.” Fair enough. I don’t, but i also realize that this sort of aesthetic judgment is a very subjective thing. But it’s a little over-the-top to suggest that my dislike is the result of some sort of religious zealotry.
See, this is the most frustrating thing in the prequels. I’m asking myself, " What the fuck is she thinking?"
That sort of spoils the whole romance thing for me, and, given that so much of the prequel ‘magic’ depends on it, spoils everything.
Don’t get me wrong- the action sequences are all quite good. But they can’t carry the movie. And we often underestimate the effectiveness of humor in film- the OT was great at moving things along with dialogue- all of the humor in the prequels seems so heavy handed, relying on slapsick where the OT used wit.
I have deleted the first three or four responses I wrote to this post. Suffice it to say that I disagree vehemently with you.
It seems the majority of the Original Trilogy fans are like myself. I was born in 70’ so I got the StarWars effect between the ages of 7-12?
While there sure were a lot of us fans I don’t necessarily recall my parents or anyone else over the age of 18 going crazy over these movies. Why? Because they are movies made to appeal to the pre-teen crowds. C’mon, star wars cards, action figures, lunch boxes, etc. Lucas hit the nail on the head.
So now it’s 20 years later and the fanboys want a starwars prequel that is marketed at the 30 year old?? Lucas makes a prequel (like the originals) marketed at the pre-teen crowd and all the fanboys cry their eyes out calling foul.
They all want the adult version of starwars now. They’ve seen the originals so many times that they won’t admit they were made for kids. C’mon, would soap opera plot lines like “Luke, I am your father” or “I have a twin sister” really pass today without making you roll your eyes? Or yoda’s “Talk backwards I do” appeal to anyone besides a 10 year old?
Lucas wanted his movies to fit together and stay focused on the younger audience. Would it feel right when all was said and done that episodes 1-3 were adult themed and oriented but once you get to episode 4 it seems like they were made for kids?
Lucas has said repeatedly “These movies are made for kids!”. Just because fanboy want’s his adult starwars movie doesn’t mean Lucas owes him.
There are plenty of smart, engaging films that were made for kids, and have stood the test of time.
As some others have said, fans of the original trilogy have to make sufficient allowance for the fact that they were children when they watched the first films. There’s no way that you can recapture, as a thirtysomething, the excitement of watching Star Wars for the first time as an eight year old. Well, not with a film at any rate.
That said, the new films are undoubtedly poor, mainly because:
- George Lucas is a terrible screenwriter, with no sense of pacing and a tin ear for dialogue
- George Lucas is a terrible director- he has a strong visual sense but no idea how to extract good performances from a cast
- There’s too much CGI
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But a lot less money, meaning far fewer people saw EP2 than EP1, which seems to indicate the fact that a very large amount of people disliked the first one - enough to avoid seeing the second in the theater. Additionally, not everyone who saw in EP2the theater liked it. Many people saw it because they like seeing “STAR WARS” written across a really big screen while John Williams is playing.
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Groupthink? How can we share groupthink with people on messageboards we don’t even know? Are you saying that everybody on the internet - all countless millions of us - just happen to think of the prequels differently? Because even if that’s true, and I doubt it, you’re talking about a whole lot of people. Us message board types are the mainstream.
Does all that rubbish about galactic trade disputes and senatorial machinations really scream “kids’ movie” to you?
I think Lucas has been trying to eat his cake and have it too WRT the prequels. He wants to make innocent kid-friendly entertainment, but he believes too much of his own hype about what a myth-maker he is and how Star Wars is its generation’s Homerian epic. So you have the usual dogfights and lightsaber battles, but you also have klutzy stabs at big-canvas epic film-making and the bland, deadly serious expository dialogue that goes with it. The SW prequels are remarkable for how they embody seemingly contradictory flaws: they’re full of movement, yet almost nothing ever seems to happen; they aspire to epic grandiosity while constantly bogging down in trivia; and they strive to present a personalized cosmos that valorizes the power of the individual while presenting nothing in the way of interesting or likeable characters.
I like all of them. I can’t wait for Revenge of the Sith.
I have to agree that they are probably more like the originals than I can possibly recognize due to oversaturation, but as somebody just said, they actually do try to be smart about why this war is happening. It’s over kid’s heads.
Have I enjoyed them? Yes.
Do I really like them? I’m not sure. I actually have engendered a sort of “selective memory” when it comes to the prequils - I remember all the plot, battles, and coolness while deleting the crap about Aniken and Padme, etc.
With that said, I think the books and EU are much better than the films.
I have to disagree with this. I got the exact same feeling, as a [sub]forty[/sub]something, from The Return of the King that I got as a teenager from Star Wars (including the part where I go back and see the movie again the next day). On the other hand, I can’t disagree with this:
That’s funny … much of my liking for the new films are because there’s finally ENOUGH CGI. Too little CGI has been the problem with most SF films.
Thing is, there’s a time and a place for it. I LOVE space battles. One of the reasons I loved Babylon 5 so much was that there was honest to goodness space combat! But you’ll notice that when the scenes called for dialogue and exposition, substance took priority over flash.
When you’ve got too many scenes where actors are just talking at each other (or tennis balls) in blue rooms, the chemistry of the entire film suffers.
No one is disputing that both of the prequels qualify as eye candy. But that does not save them from being forgettable in virtually every other aspect.
I think they went because they anticipated an got a good movie. Hey, I can read minds, too! TPM is my least favored of the SW films, so it’s natural that there’s some dropoff between it and ATC, but I think ATC will draw in more to see RotS.
- Groupthink? How can we share groupthink with people on messageboards we don’t even know? Are you saying that everybody on the internet - all countless millions of us - just happen to think of the prequels differently? Because even if that’s true, and I doubt it, you’re talking about a whole lot of people. Us message board types are the mainstream.[/QUOTE}
Hate to burst your bubble but it’s quite commonplace for people to visit more than one messageboard, read the messages on those messageboards, and by so doing, discover the opinions of others. It’s also generally true that online posters are heavily skewed toward male.middle-class.obsessive.nerd. In terms of politics, frinstance, Howard Dean would be the Democratic nominee, leading Bush comfortably – if online = real world. Which it doesn’t.
Or else, like myself, they saw TPM 3 times in the theater out of denial, and then saw AotC only once. I’m not a wagering man, but if I were, I’d place money on EP3 failing to pass $250 mil U.S. B.O. Hell, I’d be surprised if it reached $200.
You know who else skew towards male middle class obsessive nerds? People who watch Star Wars movies. I’m sorry to tellyou, but the audience of the prequals (at least) was not am exact cross section of the population. The only people who care about new Star Wars films are little kids, who’ll watch anything, and us. Us internet people may differ from the “normals”, but we’re also 80% of all grownup SW fans.
And for the record, I hated TPM long before I started reading this or any other essage board. Guess I’m just ahead of the curve.
Hey, don’t hold back. I’m a big boy, I can take it. I’m more than happy to go point-by-point with any of the movies on that list and explain why I liked them more than AotC. Should I do all of them, or do you want to pick out some highlights as starting points?
This simply isn’t accurate. Star Wars was an across-the-board success. It came out in the late '70s, and broke every box office record. This was categorically impossible to do in the seventies by appealing only to the pre-teen crowd, because there simply were not enough pre-teens in America at the time: it came out in that gulf when the Baby Boom generation had all grown up, but hadn’t started having kids of their own yet. It was an entirely different market from the youth-dominated one driving current pop culture. On top of that, it received almost universal critical support, and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (Alec Guinness). The original trilogy were absolutely not kids movies: they were aimed at the late-teens and early twenties, and were succesful with virtually every age group.
All of which is completely irrelevant. So Star Wars is a bunch of kids movies, designed with no higher aspiration than pleasing a bunch of ten year olds. This doesn’t change the fact that these movies suck on virtually every level. Lucas may be able to get away with it by marketing his films to the least discriminating sector of the US populace, but that by no means excuses it. In my mind, it makes it the films even less enoyable, even more cynical and lazy. Instead of trying to evoke a sense of child-like wonder, he’s merely exploiting it. It’s Barney with laser guns. It’s a Superfriends for the next generation.
I agree with Miller on this point. I was born in 1952, which put me at the tender age of 25 when Star Wars was released. Everyone I knew – and I mean everyone (though admittedly, I didn’t at that time know many 7 year olds) – went to see the movie. Many of them multiple times. I can only claim four theater viewings, but I’ve been a big fan all my life.
At the time, it was NOT considered a kid’s movie.