PT A question for the oldtimers - did anyone actually enjoy the prequel trilogy?

This thread is a question asking "did anyone actually enjoy the PT? With a Poll indicating that we are allowed to vote "Awful". Typically, what I have observed is that people answer the poll, then leave a comment/debate why they answered that way they did. Is there something basic about the format I am not understanding? Was there a rule somewhere that indicated that people who think they are "awful" (or people that feel the PT is "OK" if, for instance, they enjoy a particular edit of the trilogy ) aren't allowed to talk about their answers?

 

They're allowed to do that if they're able to express their opinion without sounding condescending and being unaware of the subjectivity of art.
Attitudes like "XY is bad and I have to enlighten you now" is kind of the opposite of "talk" and "discussion".

 

I think for the purposes of this threat "old timer" should be defined as being old enough to have seen AND remembered the OT in their first theatrical releases. So, really, no one younger than 33 (making you 3 when ROTJ came out in 1983) should chime in.

 

Allowed.

 

I grew up with and liked the OT, but would have lost interest in Star Wars quite a long time ago if the PT hadn't come along. The original films are fun, but in terms of theme and characterization they tend to strike me in a bit of an empty calorie manner. Fortunately the PT came along and gave me a lot more to chew with its eschewing of light switch, fairy tale morality and willingness to explore human frailty and societal decline in space opera form. And that's not even getting into the films as visual creations. Sure, I appreciated the used future look of the OT, but other films from their era delivered that style equally well. In the more recent era I've yet to see anything that matches the visual appeal of Episodes I-III. Avatar was nice, but with that film designed more as pure sword and planet adventure it couldn't quite match Episodes I-III and their ability to channel the beauty and mystery of alien worlds as well the urban landscapes that were so crucial in helping to portray Anakin's life as the ultimate labyrinth of man made isolation.

Or more succinctly, put me down for a yes.

 

Great, I'm an 'old timer' - that's a cheery thought!

And since I haven't commented on my own vote (I wasn't going to but, hey, why not join the crowd?) - I have loved the OT from way back when, but I prefer the PT. I'm not sure that age is much of a factor in this. I'd be interested to know if there is any kind of gender split on OT/PT preference. I suspect, though, that it is mainly to do with personal taste and perhaps personality.

 

Having this same discussion in another part of the forum, but I think the PT was a massive letdown. I first started liking Star Wars around 1995, so the Special Edition OT was what I "grew up" with. I was excited as hell when '99 rolled around, and even quite liked TPM when it was released (save for Jar-Jar). As time goes on, and the more times I watch the PT, the more letdown I am. The paper thin love plots, the petulant child Anakin (seriously, The Clone Wars cartoon is a better characterization of Anakin that the PT) and the over the top visual effects led to a very hollow feeling set of movies.

This isn't to say I hate them (although I do troll a bit when I say I do hate them from time to time.) But without a doubt in my mind, it was a colossal step back from the OT.

 

I suspected this Thread would become another place where those with differing feelings about the Prequels battled it out, and in some ways I guess that is inevitable. IF we didn't enjoy expressing our opinions about Star Wars, why would be belong to a Star Wars fan forum, after all? And so, for those who have major issues with the Prequels, a Thread dedicated (sort of) to praising them must seem a bit like a red cape being waved in their direction.

Respectfully, I think at least one problem here is the all or nothing nature of many of these discussions - especially the suggestion by some that the Prequels "stink". As I noted above, I have my misgivings with some elements of the Prequels. I have written about them in other Threads - and tried to resist doing so here only because I think that ground has been well covered elsewhere. I can only say that, for me, a SW "old timer", the Prequels were, on the whole, enjoyable. And I can't quite see the "all or nothing" perspective that is sometimes pushed.

I think another problem was that SW fans had many, many years to come up with their own visions of the SW backstories. Not carefully crafted fan fiction - I don't mean that. But I don't know of ANY SW fan, certainly any old-timer, who hadn't given some thoughts to what the Jedi order must have been like, what Vader's past was like, based on the hints in the Classic trilogy, and our own preferences and attitudes. The Prequels, inevitably, had to deal with all that. No easy task.

I also understand the question of being measured against expectation comes into play here, in another way. This has an impact on any movie, really - what are your expectations going in? When expectations are low, a movie can please you or be considered a net success in ways that the SAME movie would not, if seen by someone with high expectations. And the bar was set very high indeed, for the "Prequels". I can still recall the audience reaction to the TPM preview, as it rolled towards that shot of Maul igniting his double-bladed lightsaber. One can argue that the novelty was lessened after TPM, that expectations were moderated, but I am not sure they were moderated much. I realize this may sound like I am damning with faint praise - that I am saying the movies 'were okay", and were judged harshly because they were expected to be amazing. I am not going that far - I think the movies OVERALL were very good. But I do think that for many fans, the expectation was for much more than very good. MUCH more. And when they failed to deliver at that level, for many, they were deemed "failures".

At the risk of being repetitious, and returning to the original question, answering with an honest NON-Trolling spirit, as a SW old timer, I did indeed enjoy the Prequels...overall.

Shadow

PS - Lets not also overlook that this story is essentially a big downer. It just is. It is about the acendancy of evil, about a fall from grace, about most of the innings going the bad guys' way. While the ESB was dark, the overall arc of the Classic Trilogy was upward; the overall arc of the Prequel Trilogy is downward. I think that, too, impacts fondness for the movies.

 

Liked em fine, and I grew up pretending my fake bear rug was a tauntaun.

 

SHAD0W-JEDI I think you are right about expectations and that is a major difficulty of making new movies after such a big gap. My own experience is that I had read EU books set after the OT but I had no real ideas about the PT era - that could explain why I was able to enjoy the new movies without a sense of disappointment or dissonance. Preconceptions are bound to influence people's opinions.

 

Vader was made to be a weak, self centered whiny childman. This I did not like. I think Lucas could have done TPM and AOTC in one film, then skip out on Haden all together in favor of the second two films staring an older actor playing an older Anakin who's turn to the dark side wasn't so cheesy. Jar Jar and the three stooges battle droids need not be included either. Killing off Darth Maul in the first film was a wrong move. The entire story should have been a more realistic look into human nature, as in, what really drives people to "turn to the dark side". Lucas' should have brought people to help write, direct and produce who weren't butt kissers or YES men/women. I'd actually like to see the Vader back story be redone.

 

Ya that word. I think what happens is the people who liked the prequels get offended and take our criticisms of the film as being personal insults to all who loved them,as in saying, "you're stupid and we're smart". Personally, I'll say whatever I want to say about the films. It's not in any way a personal attack on those who enjoyed them, I enjoyed them, to a certain extent, Lucas simply pandered to children (in the most crude way) and had too much control over the prequels. The saviors of the prequels were Darth Maul's brief appearance, Ian McDiarmid and Ewan McGregor's portrayals of Palpatine/OB1 but Vader, the entire "becoming" of Vader was like a bad joke being played....the love story especially. They were way better films than most Sci-Fi films but when telling teh story of the most epic villian to ever be on the big screen you gotta do it right and I don't think it was done right but hey, that was Lucas vision.

 

Lucas has commented once or twice about all the criticism sent his way- but I wonder how the other contributors to the prequels feel about being described like this.

 

Saw it in footage, they way they would kiss ass every time he entered the room. This expanded into people not questioning certain aspects of writing/directing/producing (this isnt some secret ya know). How do they feel about being criticized for kissing the bosses ass? Well, everyone who's had a boss who controls every aspect of the job knows it's necessary if you want to keep your job. This is capitalism, in a way, but Lucas didn't have to set that stage for those dynamics to play out. They couldn't be "NO" men/women because they all worked for LucasFilm and Lucas decided to act like Palpatine in making the prequels. Lucas should have brought in, as he did with the OT, people independent of Lucas control. It was easier then, with the OT, because he wasn't as well known but he still could have made the process more democratic- it would have helped the quality of the films. I think this will happen with the ST - a process that doesnt have one person controlling every aspect of the films and they'll be better for it.

 

I was thinking more that some might be offended, feeling that it wasn't like that at all- they were listened to as much as could be expected.

 

Then they're free to be offended and I was free not to buy the prequels on DVD/Blue Ray or Holocron It's not like the prequels were anywhere near as bad as "Battlefield Earth", I still watch them on TV when they come on. There's very entertaining aspects in the series, it's just, the pandering to kids, the love story and Anakins turn to the dark side didn't sit well with me but then again maybe I'm just some self righteous blowhard with a B.A. in English and a unhealthy obsession with philosophy. Things in real life are more complicated than one day rolling in a filed of flowers and the next killing children in the Jedi temple.

 

This again? Didn't we just leave this party?

 

Almost 'snap' here - BA in French & Spanish, Masters in Information Services Management (library science by another name)

Anyway, I don't think this discussion is going anywhere at this rate. X has this opinion, Y has a different opinion, they both have their reasons and neither is going to change their minds. Is it possible to agree to disagree and move on?

 

Would hate to have to 'snap' on my first day back.

 

Full disclosure:

I'm a 29-year-old British male -- born the year of ROTJ's release, grew up with the Special Editions, saw TPM at 16, AOTC at 19 (mirroring Anakin's age -- and being even more arrested in development), and ROTS, twice (I don't normally see a film a second time, but for this movie, I had to make an exception), at the still-precious age of 22, then joined this forum shortly thereafter. I did used to have some mixed feelings on the prequels, but had quite the shine for TPM back in the day, and then became obsessed, in retrospect, with the towering symbolism in Clones. This obsession began when I discovered the Lard Biscuit website late in 2004 or early 2005. With the flame flickering bright but with room for it to glow brighter, Sith took it over the edge for me: I was hooked. Over the course of numerous discussions, and careful re-watches, I came not only to love all three prequel installments, but found myself admiring TPM and AOTC (the build-up to an epic tragedy) more than the one that swept me away from Day One! Strange journey.

If I were to break my fourteen-year escapade down, it would seem to follow the basic "Hero's Journey" motif of both trilogies: I started out naive and in tentative admiration, went through a bit of a thorny ol' time of it and started to question while wanting to love (the conflict of Anakin/Vader in II and V), and then emerged out of the other side, re-born into full-blown prequel love. Today, I feel they should be embraced on all levels: when joined with the OT, in a symbiotic circle which the first episode puts a bloody great big bow on, they seem to approach the look, feel, and sweeping complexity of a "gesamtkunstwerk", or "total art-work": 10,000 years of human consciousness distilled into 12 hours of serial mania; a work like no other. And to think that it basically all the vision of one man -- whatever refinements you wish to make to this statement, the fact that Star Wars would not exist without George Lucas is undeniable -- is a quite-mindblowing gesture to attempt on one's beleaguered brainbox. Go on, sit down, pour yourself a steaming cup of cocoa, and try to fathom it.

To unpack that "obsession" of TPM a little bit (my first portal into prequel-love), I will say that I was as stoked as anyone to see the TPM theatrical trailer for the first time -- recorded fresh off the TV, from a British kids programme called "Electric Circus" on the BBC -- and later made a slideshow on my computer, set to music, featuring images from several movies, including pre-release photos from TPM (I remember being particularly charmed and fascinated by shots from Tatooine of a young Anakin, his simple rags, and his dustbowl haircut). Hey, it was the 1990s: a slideshow set to music on a Pentium computer with 16 MB of RAM was a neat trick at the time! In fact, it was soooooo wizard. Jar Jar always mega-entertained me, too (though I did used to find his final battle antics a bit much). And that planet core sequence that would be strangely derided in future years? Fabulous. Midi-chlorians were also an arresting concept from the first time I saw the "I've been wondering" scene -- cheesy, movie-stopping delivery from Jake Lloyd 'n' all. So, I was always a little distanced from some of the -- excuse me on this one -- ridiculously harsh sentiments that quickly prevailed (and are with us still).

As I got more into cinema as an artform of latent aural-visual weirdness rather than as rote recording device for trite narrative/melodrama, the prequels completely opened up to me. I have the nasty habit, these days, of comparing a lot of contemporary entertainment to them and going, "FAIL!" All the other big entertainments people have raved about, well, my brain meets them all with stone-cold contempt. These prequel films, in my view, just do things that no other movies do for me. I have to look to smaller, lower-budget films for equivalent satisfaction. Perhaps it's just the current state of American cinema, but every trailer I see these days seems to be advertising a movie that is loud, violent, harsh, cruel, stupidly OTT, mega intelligence-insulting, and plain ugly. ("Avatar" is sort of a half-exception -- half). Maybe it's a chicken-and-egg thing, but I seem to appreciate the prequels more and more as a result. I dunno. It feels -- to me -- like modern culture has become hyper-masculinized; cinema, as an arm of the military-industrial complex, is brutalizing society, particularly young men. Yet the prequels feel like an antidote to that, seeming to have a story that powerfully lampoons the homogenized crudity that has worked its way into the current blockbuster, with Anakin becoming a parody of a butch man (literally: a pitiless cyborg), and Padme, who might as well be his feminine potential, floating away -- his first victim of the iconic "Force" choke -- in cold rest as she clings to a delicate carving this entombed philistinic ubermensch once tenderly bequeathed her. (How poignant, too, that in an early draft, Anakin had a vision of Padme falling into a pit of fire -- essentially, his own fate; subtly hidden in the film film and its "pilot"-like black-out artificating/recession conception of a white, frantic Padme who literally ebbs away).

Now, as for some other nonsense I've read in this thread...

What you call "lovingly rendered", some call butchered. The only fan edit worth a damn, in my opinion, would be one that maybe took a page from the "Musical Journey" DVD (that came with the original ROTS soundtrack release) and attempted to portray all the films through music and montage. Something like that -- again, in my opinion -- would be more apt at accentuating and celebrating the beautiful stylings of the movies and the operatic quality of the story. But taking a chainsaw to a man's life work with the deluded belief that you can improve it and/or show the man the error of his ways? No, thanks.

Apparently, it's you who isn't in the mood to take Star Wars seriously, since "poop and fart" and "emo"-whatever barely describe anything about the prequels in a valid, adult way to begin with. If *I* want to take Star Wars seriously, I will stick with the versions the creator of these films -- George Lucas -- has put out and clearly deems best. I will also study the creator's words and deeds (and his other films), and the whole journey he and thousands of others undertook to make the prequels a reality, if I wish to REALLY understand these films on a deeper level. Cutting out what's childish or whimsical or awkward, or what the peanut gallery tells me I should be ignoring and disowning, or disgusted with myself for having any sliver of affection for whatsoever, is the ABSOLUTE LAST way to take Star Wars seriously. Besides, these films are meant to be fun, at their core: a bright, spirited, weird, wacky, colourful look at 1,000s of ideas, per frame, per second, in the form of epic mythology, in the robes of science-fiction, with the ebb and flow of a comic book.

BTW, do you overlook goofy moments in the OT -- like Yoda, venerable Jedi Master, squabbling with Artoo, a trashcan robot, over a lamp and beating him with his stick -- or are they all just magisterial for you?

Finally, 'zeke...

Nice post, my lad. Very nice post.

 

I admit - though I prefer to see Star Wars as one big saga rather than six movies or even two trilogies, I do have a very slight preference for the prequels.

They're a time of uncertainty in the galaxy, and the films show it. The OT was so (literally) black and white, there were obvious heroes and obvious villains. The PT is not so obvious about it, at least form an in uinverse perspective.

I think the subleties and undertones of the PT are just better in general, too.

Don't get me wrong, I love the OT to death, not bashing it at all.

 

I love both trilogies the same, because they’re not the same, even when-and-where they are the same. I was already an adult when The Phantom Menace came along. In years since I’ve been told that only little kids like that movie. Interesting. Here’s my theory: George Lucas made the Prequels – Star Wars – for children or the childlike, with open minds, and for mature grownups. Everyone else gets lost in the fog. That might sound a bit harsh and condescending. So be it.

Personally, they’re my absolute favorite films, right alongside the four separate adventures of a certain globetrotting archeologist.