OK, I don’t want to turn this into a Pit thread, but…
I made the mistake of presuming to speak for others when I said “us”, so I’ll forgive you if you’re saying “you” as a collective, but in that case we’ve both made the mistake of lumping a lot of people together in this.
I, personally, have never read any of the novels. From what I understand, the “official” word is that the novels do relate to the movies in the same sense that, say, AOTC relates to TESB; there may not be a direct continuity, but there is some connection and some recurring characters, and (correct me if I’m wrong) the novels are considered “Officially” correct unless something in the films supercedes them. As part of that “official” universe, the novels are certainly part of the series of stories as a whole. (That being said, I have to reiterate that I have never read any of the novels. I think I only ever read maybe three of the comic books when I was a kid and that was during the time between TESB and ROTJ.) If some people do care about the overall continuity and harmony with the novels, that’s their prerogative but they do care about the series, enough so that they are willing to buy and read novels about it. I’d say they care about it much more than I do.
I cared about being at the first screening for a lot of movies; Spider-Man 2, the entire LOTR series, and pretty much any “blockbuster” movie that has had a midnight screening. It’s kind of a tradition and it’s fun. I know that only the diehard fans tend to go to those things, so you know that they’re going to be respectful and not disruptive.
You care about finding the broadest possible brush to paint fans of Star Wars with, apparently. Someone mentioned that the CG people did a great job on Yoda, even getting the light filtering through the skin of his ears. That was a positive note and had nothing to do with any kind of Star Wars nerdiness from what I read. Some people thought it seemed bizarre to think that the evil Darth Vader would be the kind of kid that would yell “yippee”; I suppose they assumed that he would have been more of a “Damien” type of kid. Whatever. It didn’t bother me that much, and it probably didn’t bother most of the Star Wars fans. Some people care about the midichlorian aspect because it’s the given explanation for the Force and the people who can use the Force to varying degrees, and the Force one of the central elements of the entire series. How can you expect Star Wars fans to NOT care about that? Droid amnesia? Well, some people just want to figure out why the droids and the people who knew the droids acted the way that they did in the OT; they’re hoping to find an explanation that preserves the integrity of all of the movies, for the most part.
You may have a point about the impossible standard, a standard that the OT movies themselves don’t really reach. In my opinion, TESB was by far the most enjoyable of the series; it doesn’t have the great SFX of 1-3, but it was a lot of fun to watch, and it made me want more.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say that “the series, you don’t care about.” I’m guessing that you mean that the people that you’re lumping together only care about a mythical standard born of nostalgia and not about the actual series of movies; if so, you’re making a pretty big assumption about a lot of people and what they care about.
Everything was better in TPM? Well, the SFX was better, the fight choreography was better, the dialogue was probably equal, but in my opinion the story was not better, and the intangible sense of chemistry between the lead actors was absent. You probably have noticed that I and many others have been lamenting the lack of that chemistry. Some of us are trying to figure out why it’s not there. Is it the dialogue writing? I don’t think so, not so much because the dialogue wasn’t all that much better or worse than the OT. Was it the direction? Maybe. TESB wasn’t directed by Lucas. Was it the overall story? I think it was, partly. Was it the actors? Again, perhaps so. I think Han and Leia’s love story was much more believable and compelling than anything that happened between Anakin and Padme, and part of that has to do with Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher just clicking, especially in TESB. That’s what I miss about the OT, what I think is really lacking in episodes 1-3. The rest is, admittedly, nitpicky stuff but none of the nitpicky stuff made me think that episodes 1-3 were bad movies. In fact, I think I said earlier that they were good movies, just not great ones.
Get off your high horse already. If you just think that Star Wars fans tend to be nerdy, just say so and get over it. I think Star Trek fans are the biggest nerds in the world, but I don’t feel compelled to go into Star Trek threads and tell them all that they’re idiots for liking a series where all of the aliens pretty much look the same except they have different forehead wrinkles.
