Oh yeah, and the irony of this, at the end of a rant against popularity, it burns:
I’m having hard time following what you are claiming then. You claimed that box office gross is an indictor of popularity, or so it seems. Now you seem to be denying that was your claim.
Not sure what list you are using. I’m using the Wikipedia list. Not the most reliable source, but pretty good for these sorts of things. It lists Star Wars at number 26.
. So have you also adjusted for population size and ticket purchasing trends? Because you do realise that without doing those adjustments it’s a meaningless comparison, right? You do understand that just because more kids buy tickets now and tickets are cheaper and theatres are more abundant and there are more people a comparison adjusting for inflation without adjusting for demographics and trend is meaningless?
Or as Wiki says “no film prior to 1977 appears in the list because inflation, population size and ticket purchasing trends are not considered”.
What is that based on? It seems perfectly circular. We know it was good because lots of people watched it. And we know that lots of people watched because it was good.
So lots of people can’t watch a bad movie purely because of hype? Or because it’s a good movie to take the kids to that no adult would find to be good?
I personally thought it was shit the first time I saw it, but I paid because of the hype. And I watched the next one because I figure it had to get better. I didn’t watch it because it was good.
The only irony is that your post concerning irony contains no examples of irony.
Dude I asked for an example of what you consider a failed movie that we had both seen to see how you define a failed movie. I have no idea TWTF you find ironic about that.
I can only assume that you believe that any film that is popular is artistically successful. Fair enough. It sets a pretty low bar when you consider Big Brother to be good and succesful art. It certainly epxlins why you think that these movies are good art.
If you adjust for inflation, Episode I comes in behind the original three films, and Episodes II & III don’t even make the Top 50.
But isn’t exactly the same kind of mistake made in the OT when Luke is sent to his uncle and keeps his real surname . If you want to hide him from Vader and the emperor that would seem to be a spectacularly misguided move.
I agree with everyone that Phantom Menace is a lousy film but I actually liked AOTC and especially ROTS ; both of them more than ROTJ. Most of the faults of the prequels, like bad acting and stilted dialogue, are present in ANH and ROTJ as well IMO.
Well, obviously there isn’t a standard galactic currency. Tatooine isn’t in the Republic, there’s no reason to assume they’d use the Republic’s money. Try and spend British money in a junk shop in Arkansas and see how far you get.
Maybe the currency exchange was on the other side of the planet, who cares, the point is the movie did explain why they needed money, their money wasn’t good with the guy who had the part they needed. Maybe they could’ve gotten money other ways than a pod race, so what? Of all the things to pick on the movie for this is small potatoes.
Just like most of what happens in every movie ever. Things happen so they can set up other things the filmmaker wants to show. Why doesn’t Han land someplace else and check the Falcon for a tracking device instead of heading straight for the Rebel base after they realize they got away too easy? Just clumsy Plot Logic that obviously only exists to make the Death Star battle all or nothing for the Rebels? Or because that’s the movie?
If you don’t like the movie, that’s great, but don’t fault the movie because of little niggling details like Qui Gon not having the right money when your real problem is you just didn’t like pod racing. If you didn’t like the pod race (and if you didn’t that’s fine), then no matter how they got there you still wouldn’t have liked it, and if you did like that part (and lots of people think it was the best part of the film) it’s not such a big deal that they only got there because Qui Gon didn’t go down to the local Bank of Tatooine and swap his credits in what would’ve been the boringest Star Wars scene ever.
That comparison doesn’t work particularly well. One, Han being too cocky to believe he’s being tracks fits in with his established character. It’s not a smart move, but he’s not a character who always does smart things. The problem with the setup for the podrace is that is a dumb, illogical, and unethical thing to do for a character who is supposed to be smart, rational, and upstanding.
The problem isn’t the pod race scene itself, which, by itself, is a decent action set piece. The problem is that it’s so clearly an action set piece, and not an organic part of the story. It destroys the films pacing, eating up all the momentum and tension they’d been able to build up with the escape from Naboo (and considering how well those scenes worked, they didn’t have much to spare). It steals the narrative focus from the films established characters, turning them into spectators instead of protagonists. And worse, it does so in favor of a character who is both underwritten and underacted, as compared to the films original leads. It’s an unnecessary, over-long, unnecessary scene, and it takes up the bulk of the second act, which should be the emotional and narrative heart of the movie.
Show up at a Bolivian junk shop with a briefcase full of $100 bills, and I can assure you you’ll be able to buy anything and everything. They may not give you a good deal, but believe me, they’ll take your money.
Besides - ever heard of exchanging currencies? I find it hard to believe that not a single bank or money changer in all of Tatooine would be willing to accept he most commonly-used currency in the galaxy.
The sudeen appearance of Republic currency would have alerted the authorities that some meddling Jedis or their lackeys had landed and were up to something.
/fanwank
Dude, this is just bizarre. I’m gonna go ahead and walk away from this.
Well, FWIW, I would take ten minutes of Qui Gon standing in line at the local branch of Bank of Tatooine (even with bad alien Muzak laid in) over ten minutes of Jar Jar’s jabbering, any day of the week.
Or possibly that someone else from the Republic had landed. Or just somebody who had done business in or near the Republic at some point.
Nitpick: Jaws 4: The Revenge.
Nitpick 2: No one was “pretty good” in that movie.
Qui-Gon lies and says it’s his, not Anakin’s, at Anakin’s suggestion (“Watto doesn’t know I’ve built it. You could make him think it was yours and get him to let me pilot it for you.”)
And so, when first discussing betting on the pod race, Watto snarks that Anakin has no pod to race after wrecking out in the last race. Qui-Gon tells Watto that he’s won a pod, ‘the fastest ever built’, in a game of chance, and that Anakin can race that one.
So he’s a liar as well as a cheat, and “He’s not here to free the slaves.” Would it not just be more ethical at this point just to shoplift the damn thing?
All of the problems present in The Phantom Menace are present in the original trilogy as well. Every single one of them. The issue is that George Lucas is a hack. There’s nothing wrong with being a hack. Edgar Allan Poe was a hack. Shakespeare was a hack. The difference is that, of course, the hack writers we remember and celebrate today are good writers as well. George Lucas is not.
But The Phantom Menace can be viewed more or less objectively–and the first trilogy simply cannot be. Nobody has nostalgic memories of TPM. Nobody thinks it shaped film making. Nobody marks its release as any sort of shift in the culture. Furthermore, the people who were kids when ANH was released are only going to have good memories of it because that’s the level Lucas writes at. He’s like a particularly deranged and sociopathic child. When you’re 8 or 10 or 12, that shit is awesome. And it becomes lodged in your memory as awesome shit.
Except, the entire series is nothing but shit. The dialogue sucks in all the films. The acting is wretched in all the films. The plot line is boring and uninspired in all the films. My husband tells me that ROTJ is considered the best of the six–I don’t know. I just watched it a few weeks ago and it was exactly like sitting through AOTC–a massive waste of time and an exercise in tedium. It’s like saying that crabs is the best STD. I’ll believe you, but I’d rather not have any STD at all.
Except for Harrison Ford.
The more I rewatch the movies, the more I become convinced he’s the reason they worked. Hell, I think he got more screen time in ESB than Hamill did, and that’s the best one of the three, right? 
Come on, pepperlandgirl. IIRC you’re a writer and you seriously have no appreciation for what Shakespeare did? You’re free to your opinion, but the vast majority of scholars, theatre-goers, and Shakespeare readers in the western world disagree with you, for what I think are very good reasons.
And IMO Lucas is not a hack, either. I think he accomplished exactly what he wanted to accomplish with Star Wars: a trilogy of fun movies that look nice, and a trilogy of nice-looking movies that would’ve been fun if we weren’t so nostalgic for the first trilogy.
At least Lucas’s hackiness is legitimately debatable, though. Shakespeare? Really?
I’ll disagree with this. Dune without politics is just Tremors.
In fact, the politics was the only thing that got me to watch it a second time. And the second viewing clarified what was half-formed in my mind the first time I saw it, and continued to think for the next two movies: These prequels are the very embodiment of misplaced priorities and missed opportunities.
This is a popular theory - that Star Wars is well remembered because the people who are fans of it were kids when it came out. The problem is, when Star Wars came out, it was a monster hit across all ages. Adults were lining up to see it over and over. Critics raved over it. It was nominated for Best Picture. It wasn’t perceived as a kids movie when it was released, and it wasn’t just kids who made it the cultural phenomenon of the '70s.
Your husband is incorrect. Prior to the prequel trilogy, RotJ was widely considered the worst of the series.
This is correct, except that IME - with both trilogies - it was the kids who really internalized it and “geeked out” about it (and again, I include myself.)