I was a big Star Wars figure collector at the time, but TPM is what made me stop, and later I wound up getting all the figures I wanted for $.75 each on clearance anyway.
And as far as I’m concerned, I don’t think the line has ever really recovered (although the next year is looking nifty).
Btw, let me add my voice to the chorus which thought the prequals didn’t kill Star Wars. The originals were no masterpieces either. Furthermore, Ep 1 was basically all exposition, and so was destined to be slow. Ep 2 I actually really liked. Sure the acting was bad, but it isn’t like Mark Hamill won an Oscar or anything.
Guinastasia, I think it’s clear by now that you’re not alone, but I’ll add my name to the list of forgiving fans.
And ISiddiqui, I pretty much agree with what you said, although I suspect I hold the original movies in somewhat higher regard…
The originals may not have been masterpieces, but they had much more life to them. Ep. I for me was nothing more than an expensive yet soulless copy of the original: a poor kid from Tatooine becomes a kickass fighter pilot and saves the planet from the Death Star - er, I mean the Trade Federation fleet. And then he gets a shiny medal at the end. Whee. Darth Maul could have been a cool returning bad guy, but he was wasted in more ways than one. The Gungans were not believable as a warrior race, especially when Jar Jar shot a bunch of droids by pure dumb luck. The pod race was sorta cool but ultimately boring and pointless. Nobody interacted convincingly with the environment, even when crazy big fish tried to eat the submarine but got intercepted by crazier, bigger fish.
Episode II was much better, but still not as good as the originals. And that’s all I have to say about that. Now let’s get moving!
Ahem, sorry, I was channeling Jolee Bindo there. Go play Knights of the Old Republic, dammit!
Yes. If you’re talking about the scene where Watto sends him home, that’s the one Anakin moment in particular that makes me sick. Blech.
I could somewhat rationalize young Anakin’s cavalier attitude as being a product of living on Tatooine. And being a slave. (Although Watto is an awfully soft master. One of the New Republic era novels expands on this.) But his overly-optimistic attitude was too much. (Sure, he wanted to make it easier on his mother, but he doesn’t have to be like that when she’s not around.) And the scenes which tried to show his underlying sadness were just not believable at all. He just came off as a pouter in those scenes.
And even though he’s brave, and gifted when it comes to technology, he just seemed too much at ease flying a fighter ship. I could see him being that comfortable in a pod-racer, but he should have shown at least more awe and some trepidation (at least at first) when he ended up in that situation. And even then, he should have been in awe of just being in space. And, just like the other “yippee” scene, his exultations while flying and blowing things up were just as unconvincing and forced. Blech. Blech. Blech.
Anyhoo…
Here’s a few of my thoughts about it. Like 8 billions other people, I was a HUGE fan of the originals, a kid when they came out, had all the action figures, knew all the lines, blah blah blah.
That said, I’ve really enjoyed Ep I and Ep II. This is what I think and maybe this has all been hashed out before, but I don’t really follow fan boyz or much movie talk on the 'net so its kind of new to me.
Titles: The first three movies were called “A New Hope”, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Return of the Jedi”. Are “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones” really a step down?
Jar Jar. I give you : the Ewoks, or C3-P0. Imagine if Lucas introduced C3-PO in Ep 1. . .a fruity, british, upper-class shiny copper robot whose mouth moved when he talked and said things like “Oh dear!” Go ahead and dislike Jar all you want, but don’t act like there’s never been a moronic Star Wars character before.
Acting. Has always completely stunk. Its clear Lucas has no idea how to write good dialogue or get a good performance out of his stars.
The story. Star Wars has always been about galactic alliances and rebellions and federations. Is this a complaint? Maybe I’m making a straw man.
Beyond that, if you’re really worried about continuity or how characters personalities got a certain way, or mitichlorides, well, stop being a nerd.
I know this sounds like I’m defending 2 movies by saying they’re just as bad as the originals. And I kind of am. But all 5 are bad in the same way (operatic stories, hammy acting, crappy dialogue) and some of us like that sort of badness.
For my money, these movies show a lot more originality and imagination then LOTR – which really just amounted to a faithful and talented re-creation of another author’s work.
As far as creating races and planets and cities and languages and settings and spaceships these recent 2 have been every bit as rich and original as the first 3, and if you’re not digging it, I’d offer that it’s YOU who’s lost it, not Lucas.
BRAVO!!!
Either that, or he just wants to make movies and doesn’t really give a damn whether whiny anonymous poster on message boards like it or not.
No, its because people like his movies and wil pay money to see them.
Is it so hard for you to understand that his movies are popular? Quite frankly, not long ago I watched the originals. They suck on any rational scale. They are clumsy and often poorly acted. The onyl reason we like them is part nostalgia and partly because they appeal to the child within us. Beyond that, they’re not really all that good.
Of course, the flip side fo this is that Lucas and Spielberg went out and actually made movies people wanted to watch rather than crappy, pretentious champaigne flicks. I hate pretty much any movie that came out in the 70’s for that exact reason. People like Spielberg and Lucas have vision, dammit.
Sigh, at least you haven’t yet gotten into saying he’s evil and hates people, like my local paper did.
Y’know what? I’;ve begun suspecting that you people don’t dislike the movies half as much as you claim and deliberately go out and think about every mistep you can find or imagine so you can complain about it.
Trunk: I was a fan of Star Wars as a kid, and I, like many others, can’t stand the prequels either. Your defense makes some good points, and I often find myself making similar points to Star Wars fans online (yes, I participate in these arguments way too often).
Here’s the crucial distinction: the first two SW movies may have had bad acting, lousy dialogue, choppy scenes, et al. But they had spirit, a certain warmth and dash that the subsequent movies have lost. Lucas’ naive impulse to entertain is all over the first two movies, and no matter how many people on screen are being killed or menaced, the actors always seem to be having a great time. It’s that unaffected joy that made the movies so popular, Lucas’ subsequent wheezing about Joseph Campbell notwithstanding.
Then something happened—I don’t know what, but by the time of RotJ, the fun went out of Star Wars. Maybe Lucas started to believe his own hype about being a modern-day mythmaker and could no longer deign to do something as lowly as merely Entertain. Whereas Star Wars movies had maintained a light, humorous touch throughout, they’ve now become piebald mélanges of deadly-serious exposition and clomping comic relief. Furthermore, the characters in the original movies may have been thinly-sketched archetypes, but they were brought to life with a great deal of old-Hollywood B-movie flair; stock characters can work if you bring to them the appropriate touch of humor. The characters in the prequels are stiff, serious, and bereft of personality; they stand in their computer-generated environments like characters in a video game. A lot of this comes down to Lucas, to be sure; the man has gotten quite a bit worse as a director, or maybe his actors are too in awe of him to stand up to him.
Anyway, it’s true that the prequels are very much in the same mold as the original Star Wars movies (the two good ones, anyway). But the execution is much different, and the prequels lack the childlike sincerity that enabled the earlier movies to overcome their flaws.
Well, I think Ep I and II had more warmth and spirit. As a matter of fact, I have the newest Sony Warmth-spirit-ometer and I plugged it into each movie and Ep I came out slightly ahead of Ep IV.
Seriously, your argument is based on a very nebulous, personal, and arbitrary notion. The movies were similar but the early ones had more warmth and spirit??? Forgive me if I’m not convinced.
In Eps I and II, I found the landscapes, cityscapes, characters, uniforms, starships, guns, and fights inspired, interesting, imaginative and clearly the product of a man who loves what he is doing, endeavors to entertain, and spent a lot of time, money, and sweat on it.
Anyway, I get that some people don’t like these movies, but clearly a lot of people do, and I don’t think the franchise is dead at all because some Klingon only counted two Wookies at the last bi-mon-sci-fi-con. :rolleyes:
What an interesting calalogue. In the midst of “landscapes, cityscapes, guns, fights, uniforms” et al we find … “characters.” IOW, just another detail to flesh out the landscape in Lucas’ head, rather than the reason that all of those other things must exist in the first place.
I’m sorry you’re only able to appreciate the films for their inventories of cool stuff, rather than for their emotional qualities or their narrative style or tone. But then again, if there’s one thing Lucas knows how to do, it’s to come up with Cool Stuff™.
Given that over 30,000 people attended DragonCon (spread out over two hotels) I think it was pretty representational of what people are currently interested in. If just the number of people dressed as Willow* exceeded the number of people dressed in all the various SW costumes combined, isn’t that a sign of waning popularity, especially among the more casual fans?
Regardless, I’m not too sure what the “Klingon” jab was supposed to add to the discussion. Given that I attended as a favor to my wife, spent two whole days walking around with my 2 year-old little girl showing her the sights (while my wife went to the various functions/meetings/presentations - in many ways, it was an exact re-creation of my Vulcon experience), and have little respect for almost any video presentation of science fiction (books are better!), I’m not even sure where you got the idea that I was a Star Trek fanboy or any fanboy for that matter.
*A character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
As opposed to “A New Hope” where the jawas, stormtroopers, droids, wookies, trash-compactors, Death Stars, X-Wing fighters, Y-wing fighters, Tie-fighters, tractor-beams, landspeeders, sand-people, and light sabers were really just necessary elements in a small personal story about regular people with names like Skywalker involved in a rebellion against a Galactic Empire. Spare me.
Trunk, please, it’s called Star Wars. Not A New Hope.
Thanks.
No, it’s a sign of waning popularity among RABID fans (a smaller base than I suspect some of you think), which doesn’t surprise me because after the first mention of mitichlorides, they were lost forever anyway.
It was no klingon JAB. I don’t even know that was a JAB. For all I know, that’s a compliment. The point was, saying that Star Wars is dead or dying after some second hand report on the number of costumes at some sci-fi convention doesn’t make it so(*).
*Picard
I’m not sure if any more discussion on this is necessary. People have already weighed in with what I’m going to say.
I think a lot of people who remember the good old days of Star Wars were kids when the original came out. I was somewhere around 12. I don’t think episodes IV & V were nearly as good as we would like to remember. They were great popcorn entertainment though, especially for a kid.
There are a lot of direct comparisons between the first episodes and the newer ones. I agree with the person that mentioned 3PO being as annoying as Jar Jar, well almost. I’ll take Natalie Portman’s acting over Carrie Fisher’s. Mark Hamill was not good. The saving grace of the original series was Harrison Ford. No one has captured that in the second set of movies.
I do think that Episode I was the worst of the five. I did enjoy Episode II. A lot of it is just perspective. A PG rated popcorn-muncher looks a lot better through the sci-fi fresh eyes of a 12 year old than the now sci-fi saturated and jaded eyes of an adult.
The big issue I have is that aside from the technology, the prequels, at best, are of the same quality as the originals. 20+ years laters, and little has improved. But, in this genre, as well as movie in general, much has. When series like B5, Farscape, SG-1. etc are out and do so much more with less (money-wise) I expect more from Star Wars.
Heck, I LOVED the Clone Wars cartoons. To me, they captured what made SW great, without the crap (the “acting” was better and the action cooler). If Lucas doesn’t really like direction (telling actors what to do is his JOB) then he should just produce and technical direct. Let someone with some chops take the directing reigns. And let someone edit your scripts. Someone with the balls to tell you “sorry George, the future Darth Vader does not say ‘yippie’”.
The originals were great for their time. And call the acting crap if you will, but the one liners delivered by Ford, and the chemistry between the actors felt real.
Where’s Irvin Kershner when you need him?
Phew, I din’t notice the asterisk at first. I immediately envisioned that other Willow, and pictured a convention of fans dressed as cherubic curly-haired toddlers…shudder…
[Quote]
The originals may not have been masterpieces, but they had much more life to them.[/qQuote]
To be fair to Episode 1, the entire movie was just an exposition piece, to make Episode 2 and 3 fall into place and set the stage for the originals (the prequals as a whole are, after all, exposition as well). So Episode 1 was kind of like the first half of Fellowship of the Ring in the LOTR saga… dull, dull, and more dull (at least in IMO), but it was meant to build up the rest. That also, I’d argue, explains the soulessness of it. It wasn’t meant to do anything other than explain.
Episode 2 WAS better. I think it is on par with Return of the Jedi. The exposition of the exposition was done and now onto the story.
I do have a feeling Episode 3 will be at least as good as A New Hope, simply because of the story and the Fall of the Jedi (btw, how cool would that name be for Ep 3, I’d love to see ‘Fall of the Jedi’ or ‘Rise of the Empire’).
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Like I said the originals weren’t great moviemaking pictures, but I love them all the same. I like the B-movie with the A-movie special effects and hokey explinations (the Force). It may not be Citizen Kane, but it’s incredibly fun, nevertheless. That’s the reason I like ‘The Mummy’ and all of its derivatives.