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Pax
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I have to be honest. I've never really liked Star Wars or Star Trek movies/tv(few exceptions) that much. I only support it because of my love of sci-fi.
The attempt to combine kiddie concepts with what life might be like in the future or a galaxy far far away don't appeal to me.
It's also not accurate that the Commanding Officer of a starship would always be on the away teams. NO WAY.
Nor is it realistic that humans could be the peace seeking explorers of the federation.
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Pax
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even george knows it's bad. wow!
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JohnT
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Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:15
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quote:
Originally posted by reds4ever
I sometimes think maybe I just got older inbetween the two sets of films getting made.... I really don't know, AOTC wasn't much worse than ROTJ was it? |
The problem with the prequels are manyfold, but I'm game!
For starters, I'm going to agree with your (and others) contentions, that these films are the same as Star Wars - goofy kid stuff with bad acting filmed with the best technology available and as near an unlimited budget as almost any film could have.
Assuming this, why does SW get a pass and TPM not?
1. TPM and AOTC are prequels. We already know how this story line is going to end... The Emperor gets killed by Vader, Vader is reunited with Luke and goes off to die, forgiven (I guess the millions killed and tortured because of him didn't have a say in the manner - I mean, c'mon, the man just reunited with his boy fer Chrissakes, give him a break, willya!!??!?)
Er...
The fact is, there is no suspense: you know the Empire is going to win and that there will be a rapidly declining number of planets that belong to the Old Republic (Alderaan being the last big holdout), and it has to end this way because that's the way Star Wars starts.
2. In its day, Star Wars (note: NOT "EPISODE FOUR" - THE NAME OF THE DAMNED MOVIE IS STAR WARS) was the pause that refreshes, a modern reconceptualizing of stock genre films, razzle-dazzled with the latest in film and sound technology, and fortunately released in a time and period where America and American films were more dark and moody, with movies like Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, and An Unmarried Woman being the alternative. William Friedkin's The Sorcerer was released a week after Star Wars... and was just killed, only to earn $3,000,000. This from the man who was coming off the back-to-back successes of The French Connection and The Exorcist!
Star Wars near-buried literate-American cinema for at least a decade, from 1981-1989, only to have it come back to life with the release of Heathers, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs, and Unforgiven. Even "spectacle films", the technology improving constantly, grew almost respectable with T2, Dark City, Jurassic Park and Die Hard, and even copped a B. Picture award with Titanic.
TPM and AOTC were, sad to say, released in the post-Star Wars, post-Silence world, where expectation for spectacle was at an all-time high, one that Lucas's creative spark was unable to meet the task. There is not a single person on the planet who will claim that Lucas knows how to direct actors (other than Lucas and some close relatives), there wasn't a single person there to say "no" to Har-Har (there wasn't anybody to really say "no" to anything, really), to the silly plot, to the goofy scenes with young Lord Vader recreating the speeder chase in ROTJ.
They just didn't measure up. They didn't grow up. Look, I only saw TPM once, but IIRC 9 year-old Anakin somehow makes it into space and, again somehow, flies and destroys something that's really, really important in getting the movie over with. And every adult in the audience, the ones who grew up with this stuff, just rolled their eyes.
3. Overhype. Ties in with 2, but the fact is these movies probably couldn't have lived up to 'most anybody's expectations. I think they could have, probably most detractors think so too... but they didn't. However, they didn't even try - they took the same plot twists, stunts, and effects, and dumbed everything down a generation. 
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Pax
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quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
The problem with the prequels are manyfold, but I'm game!
For starters, I'm going to agree with your (and others) contentions, that these films are the same as Star Wars - goofy kid stuff with bad acting filmed with the best technology available and as near an unlimited budget as almost any film could have.
Assuming this, why does SW get a pass and TPM not?
1. TPM and AOTC are prequels. We already know how this story line is going to end... The Emperor gets killed by Vader, Vader is reunited with Luke and goes off to die, forgiven (I guess the millions killed and tortured because of him didn't have a say in the manner - I mean, c'mon, the man just reunited with his boy fer Chrissakes, give him a break, willya!!??!?)
Er...
The fact is, there is no suspense: you know the Empire is going to win and that there will be a rapidly declining number of planets that belong to the Old Republic (Alderaan being the last big holdout), and it has to end this way because that's the way Star Wars starts.
2. In its day, Star Wars (note: NOT "EPISODE FOUR" - THE NAME OF THE DAMNED MOVIE IS STAR WARS) was the pause that refreshes, a modern reconceptualizing of stock genre films, razzle-dazzled with the latest in film and sound technology, and fortunately released in a time and period where America and American films were more dark and moody, with movies like Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, and An Unmarried Woman being the alternative. William Friedkin's The Sorcerer was released a week after Star Wars... and was just killed, only to earn $3,000,000. This from the man who was coming off the back-to-back successes of The French Connection and The Exorcist!
Star Wars near-buried literate-American cinema for at least a decade, from 1981-1989, only to have it come back to life with the release of Heathers, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs, and Unforgiven. Even "spectacle films", the technology improving constantly, grew almost respectable with T2, Dark City, Jurassic Park and Die Hard, and even copped a B. Picture award with Titanic.
TPM and AOTC were, sad to say, released in the post-Star Wars, post-Silence world, where expectation for spectacle was at an all-time high, one that Lucas's creative spark was unable to meet the task. There is not a single person on the planet who will claim that Lucas knows how to direct actors (other than Lucas and some close relatives), there wasn't a single person there to say "no" to Har-Har (there wasn't anybody to really say "no" to anything, really), to the silly plot, to the goofy scenes with young Lord Vader recreating the speeder chase in ROTJ.
They just didn't measure up. They didn't grow up. Look, I only saw TPM once, but IIRC 9 year-old Anakin somehow makes it into space and, again somehow, flies and destroys something that's really, really important in getting the movie over with. And every adult in the audience, the ones who grew up with this stuff, just rolled their eyes.
3. Overhype. Ties in with 2, but the fact is these movies probably couldn't have lived up to 'most anybody's expectations. I think they could have, probably most detractors think so too... but they didn't. However, they didn't even try - they took the same plot twists, stunts, and effects, and dumbed everything down a generation. |
You see the problem is I never liked the original movie. Did I like the spaceships. Yes. The lightsaber. Oh, Hell Yes!. The storm troopers, Darth Vader and the lot. Yes! Yes! The movies? NO!
The real test is do my children like the prequels or the originals without a negative word from me? No they do not. We do love the games. Tie Fighter 2 kicks ass! So we wanted to like the prequels and...
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shawnmmcc
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JohnT, I've mentioned this to friends after we left the theatre for episode 1. George Lucas had nobody to tell him to rewrite the script, or edit the film better, or anything else. He isn't that good, and the final result bears that out. Many have commented that the reason the original Star Wars trilogy worked was the chemistry of the three main actors. Looking at the results of the newest films, which are devoid of chemistry, lends credence to that IMHO. After having seen Natalie Portman in The Professional I had some real hopes for the films.
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Jon Miller
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quote:
Originally posted by Dissident
I'm coming out of the closet.
I'm hereby admitting I liked the Ewoks. And I liked Return of the Jedi far better than any of the prequals.
The Ewoks are so cute. How could you not like them? |
I also admite that I didn't hate them
(I don't know if I would say I liked them, or that they are cute though)
:embarrassed:
Jon Miller
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:15
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The Ewoks have nothing on Jar Jar. And Mark Hamill was one bad actor in a crowd of good ones-Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Ian MacDiarmid...even Ford and Fischer were at least believable. With the prequels, it's the reverse. Liam Neeson did a good job, but they killed him off, and Christopher Lee still has talent, and MacDiarmid's back for occasional screen time. The vast majority of the cast is wooden in the prequels.
It doesn't help that Lucas is still skating off the same ideas he was using twenty years ago. Those wheel-droids are the only genuinely cool new thing in the prequels thus far. Oh, and Boba Fett's "father." Right. It's all retrospective film. If the prequels were called "fight of the laser-gods" instead of Star Wars, nobody would give them a second glance, because they have nothing good of their own. Just a borrowed name, on films otherwise just a smidge above "Starship Troopers."
And Midi-chlorians. Two simple words that destroyed the mystical appeal of his entire universe. You have to wonder what he was thinking.
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30-12-2004 06:32
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