Star Wars Prequel Hate Taken To Absurd Levels?

I think the backstory side of it had lots of potential to be interesting, but I firmly agree with your second comment - there was absolutely no way the movies could match up to all the hype/expectations. Even if the PT had been as good as the OT, people still would've lambasted it...

 

Bad bad story telling. No matter how much CGI you use, you can't polish a turd. Lucas should have done basic plotting and left the scripts to real writers.

 

Oh, I know you didn't, it's just not something I enjoy being called and I wanted to joke about it. It all stems from the fourth grade, I had a teacher who heard me called Lonnie, and even though every day and on any piece of paper from me she saw my name was "Lonson" she called me "Alonzo" because she had a friend whose name was Alonzo and was called "Lonnie." I learned this only at the end of the year. . . it was very disconcerting and sometimes difficult to respond to "Alonzo" . . . that was not my name! Anyway, the smiley should have let you know that I did not take any offense.

Thanks, my Mom was a great woman but she has been suffering the last few years and we're glad she is at peace, though this has been hard for my Dad, they were married 61 years and knew each other three years longer than that. Time will make it better for him as well.

 

Agreed, which is why we should focus it on a Gungan from the planet Naboo.

 

Call me crazy, but one can't complain about the pod race scene can one? That was awesome ??? Wasn't it?? Please tell me I'm right.

 

Erm so awesome I can't really remember anything about it. Maybe has to do with the fact I haven't cared to watch that movie since I saw it at a midnight screening back in 1999.

Whilst I'm no great fan of Abrams, one thing that has impressed me is the fact he actually appears to have built some proper sets and props for the actors to use and work with. Watching those 'making of' shots with Ewan and Samuel L jumping around on green boxes looked soul destroying.

 

There are certainly people that bash the Prequels. No, they are not the worst stories of all time, nor the worst movies. I'm sure that most of the holes in the plot can be resolved.

...but they are not anywhere near the level of the original Trilogy in any way shape or form. Yes, the Original series was aimed at non adults, but in the 15-17 age and above. The Prequels seemed to be aimed at age 8 and up. Completely different IMHO.

 

You wish.

 

The prequels are lacking in likeable characters. Luke, Han Leia and even Chewbacca were a hard act to follow. I had no sympathy at all for Mannequin Skywalker or Princess Abracadabra.

 

It was poodoo. The whole trilogy was poodoo.

 

There's a lot of poodoo in Return Of The Jedi as well. I watched the original theatrical versions of the trilogy recently (for the first time in a decade) and my opinion is still the same, both Star Wars and Empire are great, Return was a bit of a mess with some redeeming sequences and some others (anything with Jabba or the Ewoks) that should have gone into the trash compactor.

 

I nearly agree with this statement on the prequals but I would phrase it slightly differently. "Yes, they are the worst stories of all time and yes they are the worst movies"!

 

Agree. I was 10 when "Star Wars" came out, and I was in that film's perfect "wheelhouse". Kids in/around my age were the ones who most flocked to the movie.

Granted, pretty much everyone saw it, but pre-teens were the biggest crowd. The notion it was aimed at mid-late teens is revisionist history - Lucas wanted to make a movie like the ones he'd seen as a kid...

 

Let me re-phrase it a bit....

Jar Jar is pretty much despised by anybody over the age of 14-15, whereas R2D2 appealed to almost all teens and many adults

 

+1.

Soap opera dialog
Wooden acting
No humor

 

What prequels? I don't recall any prequels?

Signed,
Spotless Mind.

 

Understated, yet devastating.

 

Exactly. Lucas went from being a wide-eyed kid in love with rollicking action movies to being a jaded studio chief with negotiation contracts on the brain. When you see him talk he looks so damn stuffy...

 

I honestly think that Lucas became so preoccupied with trying to figure out how his chin disappeared that he didn't have time to devote to the plots of his movies.

 

That's right, they just don't exist.

 

I hadn't heard that one before. Bwahahahhah!

 

Lucas turned the greatest villain in the history of motion pictures into a whiny brat with the prequels. He also ruined the mystic of the Jedi by making them incompetent morons. And that is just the problems with the story. The CGI looks worse now than most video games from that time.

 

In most cases it was quite good. Comedic timing is about one of the hardest things to do in cinema (take a look at how easy drama comes to comedic actors, and how many dramatic actors completely fail at comedy) and nearly all of the characters excel at it, even characters that speak only in howls, squeeks and beeps. Which brings to mind the biggest difference between the films; memorable and likable characters.

Furthermore, the entire prequels concept is completely misguided in regards to basic filmmaking and storytelling. It completely removes any risk or danger to virtually all of the main characters. No matter what happens, you know nothing mortal is going to happen to Portman's character, Obi Wan, Anakin, etc.

They really are about as bad as blockbuster filmmaking gets. Like others, I just pretend they don't exist, in the same way that I pretend that any Batman film before Begins doesn't exist, and the Burton Planet of the Apes doesn't exist.

 

It is easy to pretend the prequels never happened until you get to the end of Jedi and the Gungan yells "weesa free" and then young Anakin with his creepy smirk appears. That is why I only watch the non-anamorphic DVDs when I need a Star Wars fix.

In a perfect world Disney will release the Non-ruined Star Wars Original Trilogy on BD and the new films won't mention the prequels directly.

 

I agree. Return was the start of the cashing-in mentality - take all the elements that made the first two films great and superficially double or triple them. More ships for dogfights, more laser fights, more death-stars, more quirky aliens (including teddy bears!), bigger bad, etc. Cram in hamfisted humor and you get a plot which often lacks logic and heart.

As far as I'm concerned, there have only ever been two Star Wars films made. The rest are something akin to what Klingons say about their TOS physical appearance - that's something we do not talk about!