The “Ewoks were created for merchandising” theory appears to be just that, a theory. A little cursory googling doesn’t bring up any quote by Lucas stating as much, but it does bring up a quote where he said he rejected Wookiees because Chewbacca was a technological whiz. Thus making any “the primitive tribe killed the empire” allegory moot. So Ewoks it was.
Back to the OP, I think the problems with the prequels is that Lucas came so close to getting it right. A nip here, a tuck there and they become really great movies. As it is, I still think they’re good and I chalk most of the hate up to fanboys who would have hated anything Lucas did.
So give up, stop posting in forums, continue facing in the Lucas ranch direction when you pray 5 times per diem and keep stuffing your kids with junk food, and we’ll live our separate lives.
(Don’t fret, I’ll say only the obligatory nice things at your funeral, irrespective of truthfulness. )
If a surgeon only knew 62% of the required pre-operational hygiene practices, 66% knowledge of the instruments he’s to use and 80% of human anatomy, I’d be booking my vas deferens libation in with Dr Nic!
<80% = straight-to-video with much inebriation advised. Anything below is about as “fresh” a 3am hooker!
This is actually the only point I’m trying to make - Lucas whored the series once Kurtz departed. A whoring that just got worse, egregiously so, with the prequels.
This isn’t about whether Han should be dead per se - that’s a matter of taste and the willingness to make a sacrifice of certain ‘parts’ in order to improve the ‘sum’. This ‘rant’ is about whether the Star Wars films suffered at the hands of Lucas’ unbridled control. As an extension of this, whether the successful aspects of the series can truly be attributed to Lucas, and thus, whether his wealth and the reverence he demands is in fact warranted.
Finally! I’ve been hanging on to this cookie for what seems like an eternity…
*hands prize to perspicacious poster *
Gotcha. You’re a pedant who believes putting someone to the grindstone regarding frivolous statistical information - information you yourself could easily procure - is an effective way to detract from the mediocrity of the films and movie director in question. Explains the ArchiveGuy user handle, if nothing else. :rolleyes:
I’ve already made mention of the fact that this ‘overdose’ of CG is a circumstantial and tenuous way to qualify the prequels’ craptasticity given the three most prominent entries in this genre - the SW prequels, The Matrix trilogy and LotR - all came about around the same time. 2003 was the latest any of these films surfaced, save for SW:RotS (2005). So arguing that this final installment’s true quality is diminished by those that came before it (despite the fact it’s actually the better of the three in question), doesn’t hold water. You’d be laughed out of a kangaroo court with assertions like that.
Your defense may as well be “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything’s soft… and smooth…”!
I tend to prefer the Trek films to SW probably mostly because I’ve not seen them as often as I’ve seen the Star Wars trilogy (which I’ve most likely watched hundreds of times). Also, the acting, overall, is better in the Star Trek movies. And at this stage of my life, I get much more enjoyment out of the easy rapport the original cast had (on screen, yes; not necessarily off screen, granted) with each other than I do out of watching actors being badly directed, and reciting lines of (sometimes) wooden dialogue.
I know these views aren’t popular, but I have never courted popularity.
Except he kinda has with the original movies. It’s one thing to be able to ignore the prequels. It’s another thing when the only way to see the original movies is to go buy the DVDs that have a second disc that has a laserdisc transfer as bonus material and watch only the “bonus” disc.
And fitting, since the original films were an adolescent-level fantasy delivered to adolescents. And adolescents— including arrested adolescents like myself— want nothing so much as to be distinguished from the “little kids.” Give us Dora the Explorer and we’re going to scoff and roll our eyes. It’s an obligation.
This isn’t against you Miller, but I’m just dying of curiosity. I see this “specrapular” and “what they could/should have been” meme all of the time.
What exactly SHOULD the plot, characters, endings have been in order to quell all this hatred and satisfy people?
I’m not saying I was totally happy with the last three, there were things I would have liked to have seen done differently also, but I didn’t see them as these total ruination/MST3K wannabes that others seem to. Would someone please take at least one (preferably a few) scene that was SOOOO crappy, and what it should have been instead?
I mean, all I ever see is vague and angry “they sucked” comments, and never a specific concrete example of “and here’s why”.
Thanks in advance for helping satisfy my curiosity.
)