Me and a Cow-orker were debating the relative merits of the Starwars series and how perceptions of the movies seem to change with time. So, on a scale from 1 to 10, rate each movie as you saw it and how you see it now.
TPM: 7 5 (Suffers from prolonged Jar Jar - itis)
AOTC: 7 7 (The Lovey Dovey stuff isn’t so cloying if you skip those chapters)
ROTS: 8 9 (I saw it at 12:01 pm on opening day, I think I missed some of it due to fatigue)
ANH: 10 9 (Everything a 8 year old could want in a movie)
ESB: 7 7 (I don’t understand why folks call it the bestest)
ROTJ: 8 8 (I liked it better than most, I guess. Ewoks don’t bug me.)
I figure you can’t possibly HAVE this much film and not have good and bad parts…On balance, I REALLY liked the whole tamale.
First off, I took them as they came. None of that renumbering and renaming nonsense for this viewer.
From best to worst
1 - The Empire Strikes Back - The peak of the series
2 - Star Wars - A strong opening
3 - Return of the Jedi - Got a little cutesie at the end; a warning of bad things to come
4 - Revenge of the Sith - Enjoyable in the middle, the beginning and ending were weak
5 - Attack of the Clones - Sat through it asking “why?”
6 - The Phantom Menace - The crushing of the memories was what really hurt
I’ll just do the prequel trilogy as the change has been more dramatic.
With TPM, I first read the novelization, and then saw the movie. I thought the novelization was pretty good, and the movie was all right. I guess I was just excited to see Star Wars again and didn’t really analyze it much. Upon watching it now, the ridiculousness of it can no longer be ignored. I can hardly bare to watch it except for the Darth Maul battle.
With ATOC, I was so overwhelmed with the final half hour that I mostly blocked out the silly romance stuff in the first half. ATOC was much better than TPM, but to watch it now is still pretty painful. Still, as long as you ignore the non-action scenes, it’s more watchable than TPM.
I only saw ROTS in the theaters and haven’t seen it since, so I don’t know how it’ll measure up to a repeat viewing (when’s it out on DVD?). On the whole I found ROTS much better than ATOC, but I had since been disenchanted with the previous movies, so I was able to pick out the flaws even in the first viewing. So maybe my view of ROTS won’t change much.
A New Hope. Still just as good, except for that bit of interference when it seemed that Han didn’t shoot first.
Empire Strikes Back. Didn’t move as fast, but almost as good.
3.Return of the Jedi. Ewoks never bothered me, and the faceoff between Luke and the Emperor just gets better with age.
Revenge of the Sith.
Phantom Menace. We were stoked for this, and after it looked at each other, and decided we didn’t want to bother seeing that again.
Attack of the Clones. Except for Natalie Portman’s bondage scene, absolutely nothing to recommend it. I can remember almost nothing of it except lots of clones milling about in no apparent order.
Ep4 - A New Hope (Still a great movie IMHO. Drama, action and a good plot)
Ep5 - The Empire Strikes Back (A good follow-up to Ep4. It fleshes out Vader’s role)
Ep6 - Return of the Jedi (It got cutsie at the end, but it does a great job of finishing out the series)
Ep1 - The Phantom Menace (Was OK, but there were some very annoying parts)
Ep3 - Revenge of the Sith (Was OK. It wrapped up all the unanswered questions, but it could have done it better. Definately there were some inconsistancies.)
Ep2 - Attack of the Clones (Just didn’t make much sense to me.)
The Star Wars Holiday Special (I had to have three people hold me down so I wouldn’t gouge out my eyes with a spoon when I saw this!)
From the thread title (septology? heptology?), I was hoping that the OP would have included that long-forgotten treasure, currently unavailable to movie renters, and which I have never had the good fortune to see:
purl=“http://imdb.com/title/tt0193524”]The Star Wars Holiday Special, starring the original cast.
From reading the description, I am positive that this is the crown jewel of the series.
The live action bits are every bit as awful as described. There is a cartoon in the special, though, featuring the first ever appearance of Boba Fett. It’s by no means a great cartoon, but it does have a neat historical value.
Empire Strikes Back - The final act of this one is just fantastic. The special effects still look fantastic today IMHO.
Return of the Jedi - I really am surprised how much people are affected by Ewoks. They are in it, but they don’t dominate it. I think this movie really provided the best space battle in history.
A New Hope - Amazingly good even though Lucas can’t direct actors. Harrison Ford and Alec Guiness show they are really good actors by doing a good job in spite of Lucas directing.
Revenge of the Sith - Great movie, but it should have been two. I follow Anakin’s fall getting to the point where he cuts off Mace Windu’s hands, but I don’t follow that he would at that point become a fully evil Sith. Him chopping off Windu’s hands should have been the end of Episode II and his turn should have happened in episode 3, partly coming with him dealing with keeping such a big secret.
Attack of the Clones - The last 40 minutes are good, but the rest is pathetic.
Phantom Menace - Wow. Terrible. Honestly this is probably the most I’ve been let down by a movie. Lucas should have made another movie to practice directly again before making this.
Holiday Special - Proof that a terrible Star Wars “movie” can be made without Lucas directing it. The wookie watching porn is surprisingly disturbing.
Actually I have the Star Wars Holiday special on my list. It is about 1,000 meters under your feet. I saw this show, and my TV exploded right afterwards.
Mark Hamil’s appearance on the Muppet Show had a much better plot.