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do you think lucas kind of proved that we were wrong?

Discussion in 'Prequel Trilogy' started by obi-rob-kenobi4, Jun 14, 2008.

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  1. obi-rob-kenobi4

    obi-rob-kenobi4 Jedi Master star 4

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    Apr 17, 2007
    Do you think lucas kind of proved that we,the fans, were wrong for like 6 years?

    Ever since 1999 the fans were mad at lucas for making TPM the way he did and making AOTC the way he did and then when ROTS came out he got some of the best reviews of his career and fans were generally happy.But wasn't that what he was telling us all along?In an interview in 1999 when asked about why he thought people hated TPM so much he sed that it was becouse all people wanted was a 3 hour movie of anakin turning to the dark side and the next movies to just be darth vader killing people and looking scary and that people should not have built it up so much and had patience.That is not the exact quote but thats basically what he has sed time and again.So in a way do you think that he really proved us wrong becouse that is exzactly what happened,the only movie that the fans liked WAS the one that darth vader killed people and looked scary all the way through.so does anyone here think that if they could go back in time and live through the prequels again they would enjoy it better or do things differently? do you think he proved himself right and the fans wrong?

    Strilo edit: See my post at the end of the thread for the locking reason.
     
  2. bibfortuitous

    bibfortuitous Jedi Grand Master star 3

    Registered:
    Oct 7, 2000
    I don't think Lucas was quite as prepared for the amount of venom and hatred that TPM was greeted with but he did seem to know that there would be a certain amount of disappointment in whatever he did. I remember back in '97 when TPM was filming. The general feeling was that it was going to be pretty much the best film ever made. Lucas returning to directing after 20 years was a big deal at the time. Kind of like Terrence Malick with The Thin Red Line. A decade later and Lucas' reputation as a director is in tatters...
     
  3. Jedi Gunny

    Jedi Gunny Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    May 20, 2008
    There was geniuine excitement and tension in the air before both movies; I remember that I was stoked to hear that more movies were coming out. Then, people saw them and thought that they were terrible. ROTS comes out, and it garners rave reviews. Just goes to show you how people think about movies and the SW saga as a whole.
     
  4. bibfortuitous

    bibfortuitous Jedi Grand Master star 3

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    Oct 7, 2000
    The thing with reviews was weird though. Magazines I bought and respected at the time gave TPM pretty good reviews. Empire: 4 stars. Starburst: 8/10 and I seem to remember Uncut magazine giving TPM 5 stars! I still have the issue somewhere but I'm pretty sure it was 5. AOTC got 4 in Empire too.
     
  5. SithStarSlayer

    SithStarSlayer Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2003
    Lucas actually proved that all of the critics were right...
    the instant he sat down to write the Clones Wars 3D movie.

     
  6. MOC Vober Dand

    MOC Vober Dand Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jan 6, 2004
    He was right that it was going to be almost impossible to deliver a movie which met expectations and he was right that a lot of fans would be impatient for what ROTS eventually offered and be impatient sitting through all the set up of the first two movies. He's wrong when he attributes all of the negativity which those films received to those factors though. Much of the ill-feeling has nothing to do with that.
     
  7. zombie

    zombie Jedi Master star 4

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    Aug 4, 1999
    ROTS didn't succeed because of TPM and AOTC, it succeeded in spite of them, critically speaking. Most reviews took the POV of "the first two films sucked but finally Lucas got things halfway right here." It didn't have anything to do with the other films, critics still thought they sucked. So no, in this respect Lucas didn't prove critics wrong. Besides which, films should entertain as you watch them and not in retrospect, and critics' problems with the first two films had little to do with the way Lucas staged the overall story (ie, bad dialog, bad acting, bad pacing, bad characters, too much CGI, no emotion, weak drama etc)
     
  8. drg4

    drg4 Jedi Master star 4

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    Jul 30, 2005
    The enthusiastic response to ROTS had little to do with story expectations. Lucas just got his act together. He whipped up a fairly good script, reestablished himself as one of the preeminent visual storytellers, and hired a capable editor and dialogue coach. The result speaks for itself.


     
  9. _Sublime_Skywalker_

    _Sublime_Skywalker_ Jedi Master star 4

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    May 8, 2004
    I think was Lucas was wrong. I didn't want a 3 hour movie of Anakin turning darth vader and the other two to just be vader killing people. I wanted the slow transition, the life story, just as he did. However, I just think he should've entrusted the writing to someone else.

    Lucas I think expected TPM to be a big hit. It was the first new SW movie in almost 20 years, it was the start of a new trilogy, new characters, etc etc. But he did it in a wiggidy manner, and was too focused on appealing to the younger audience. I never really bashed TPM or AOTC, but they def could've been handled better and achieved what ROTS did with just better writing. Also, TPM lost credibility because of the "yipee!" and the childest moments that made us older SW fans roll our eyes.
     
  10. SithStarSlayer

    SithStarSlayer Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Oct 23, 2003
    Perfect example of my POV.

    Certainly the best of the three and without the first two; as a four part saga, ROTS works even better. TPM as a stand alone space movie, was awesome to me. TPM, as a reintroduction to the saga was a colosal failure, maybe 45 mins to an hour's worth of the film is worthy of being called Star Wars. AOTC had soo much potential given the time period it covered, but it was bogged down quite early and the last 1/2 hour wasn't enough to save the film. I enjoyed the fact that I saw characters I knew, but the plot and dialogue that carried them from start to finish were both woefully inadequate.

    For me, ROTS is the gem inside the PT's lump of coal.
    Had Lucas kept the original turn, instead of the watered down, wimpy, tear-filled version, I would have given it a ten. As it is, ROTS scores an 8.5 and it ranks behind ESB and Star Wars as my third favorite.

    I'm disappointed that we have to watch a cartoon to get the character development and story progression that THREE films had plenty of time to deliver. To further understand Anakin's fall, Palpatine's rise, the Jedi's blindness, and the CIS' role in it all, we have to watch...


    and that means Lucas failed.


    EDIT:
    With the PT, Lucas set out to tell Vader's fall, and when he finished he said there were "no more Star Wars stories (movies) left to tell." After staring at the films in his rear view, he's come back to clarify things. Lucas hopes this project HELPS Anakin's story, and the 1st shame of it all is that THREE movies were already supposed to be dedicated to just that. The second shame is that he declined to show the Clone Wars in the PT because 'they weren't the main focus' even though Anakin was already in the middle of it all... now, we get to Anakin in the middle of the Clone Wars, with a new Padawan no less. Mark my word, this 3D cartoon movie will serve as a better prequel to ROTS than the first two PT films actually did. Any wonder why I think Lucas failed?
     
  11. obi-rob-kenobi4

    obi-rob-kenobi4 Jedi Master star 4

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    Apr 17, 2007
    something has recently been brought to my attention, has anyone ever thought that GL made TPM that way becouse he wanted the first movie in the "new" trilogy to be kid friendly to hook the new generation on star wars like ANH did to the original star wars fans? It would have been hard to work any other way with children under 12 so maybe it was a good thing (for the kids sake) that he did it that way.if he did it any other way than star wars would all of a sudden be a thing for adults not for 9 years old kids to fall in love with and grow up with like we did.we have to remember that star wars is spoused to make kids laugh and fall in love with the silly characters what still enjoying the action witch is what GL had in mind for TPM.it seems to me more and more that all older people want is for star wars to be hard core violence with not so much as there being a classic romeo & juliet type of love story in it without people getting mad.its about more than just action and sith.and i know plenty of kids tenagers that only like star wars today becouse they saw it when they were 8 & 9 years old.so in that respect GL succeeded. has anyone thought of that?
     
  12. sith_rising

    sith_rising Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 7, 2004
    Of course, there was a very vocal and highly persecuted minority after TPM, myself included, that preached, "just be patient, Lucas knows what he's doing". And we were right!
     
  13. drg4

    drg4 Jedi Master star 4

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    Jul 30, 2005
    I prefer the ?wimpy, tear-filled? version, myself. Lucas was right to make attachment as elemental an impetus as powerlust and political idealism. The problem is that the post-seduction office and Temple scenes don't accommodate this change. Anakin is too easily induced into betrayal. Better that he came across as a moral coward?-handing the younglings over to the clonetroopers?-than tramp through as an abject monster. Really, his transgressions should have gradually escalated, peaking with Padme's strangulation.

    Despite this, I still consider ROTS the second best of the series, and Lucas's second best film overall. (Sandwiched between the superlative THX and American Graffiti.)

    Well, I'd argue that just as all the problems of the OT reside solely with ROTJ, three-quarters of the PT flaws can be traced to AOTC. You make Anakin and Padme more sympathetic, wounded, lonely characters, you set the Jedi up as credible dupes and lay out Dooku's plan for the galaxy, and the trilogy's fixed. (I sincerely doubt that the Stinky the Hutt movie will serve as a proper substitute.)

    Yes, and he had every right to. Star Wars and Return of the Jedi are as corny as a Kansas Christmas. Why deviate with what would logically be the most light-hearted installment? (Bottom line: If you're cool with Chewbacca's incessant barking?-ROWR! RAWL!--it's unbecoming to complain about one little ?Yippee!?)
     
  14. rich-narco

    rich-narco Jedi Youngling star 1

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    May 5, 2004
    ah well - i guess that's just personal opinion. I think TPM is totally cool - for me it redressed the dross that was Return of the Jedi - a dross that I had to wait 16 years for! ouch.

    AOTC is a bit rough - sort of doesnt say anything. The only problem I have with Lucas' Star Wars continuation - why couldn't he just stick to his original plot? Apart from that - i have NO issues with PT stuff.
     
  15. HL&S

    HL&S Magistrate Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Oct 30, 2001
    As has been covered, if (in this theoretical question) he felt that we were proven wrong now, then he'd be wrong.

    My personal view is that TPM was way too far removed from the OT and wasted too much time on things that ultimately didn't matter or could have been re-written to better fit existing characters. Also the catering to the kids thing didn't help since the majority of the current star wars fanbase in 1999 were teens to adults. I understand he was trying to hook a younger audience, but they would have loved it anyway had the dialogue and storyline been more catered to an older crowd but set in a time and place with starships and lightsabers! The OT Re-release should have told Lucas everything he needed to know in that he still had a massive audience.

    I feel that the character of Jar Jar Binks was a complete failure and really the only one I saw coming before the movie came out. Alot of the OT humor relied on witty remarks and Jar Jar relied heavily on just being utterly goofy. But he wasn't goofy like insane, he was just goofy as an idiot. It's strange that in the documentaries, Lucas catches this but doesn't stop himself. The animation, while good, still didn't make us believe he was a real character because it felt like a cartoon character had wandered it's way into a live action film. With the amount of time this character took up, it only made things worse.

    What I didn't see coming was the horribly stiff dialogue Lucas had wrote. I guess the rust had really set in and we weren't suspecting it. He could easily direct space battles visual shots, but he couldn't direct those actors to work their way through that dialogue. At least not 20 years later. It may have had to do with two of the main actors being kids and the others being emotionless Jedi, but who knows.

    Jake Lloyd and the character of Anakin (which was the point of the PT) didn't do much for me either. Lloyd was just not a good actor at age 9. The kid who came in second for the role seemed to be handling it better according to the doc. But even if the actor was better, the story of Anakin just wasn't working. It was hard for most fans to relate to a 9 year old Vader. I realize the point was to make us acknowledge the fact that Vader was once an innocent kid, but that could have been summed up in a picture or a flashback for that matter. We didn't need a film devoted to him hanging out with his kiddie friends and saying really bizarre and cringe worthy phrases.

    TPM established that Anakin was a pilot of some sorts in Pods at least, but a teenage Anakin could have done just the same. TPM set up that Anakin had to leave his mother, but an older Anakin just venturing out into the universe could have done just the same. The only other thing that TPM established for Anakin was his relationships with Padme and Obi-Wan. Unfortunately the age gap between him and the other characters was just too large in that Padme was more like a babysitter for him and Obi-Wan reluctantly and awkwardly met and took him as a padawan. It did nothing to help the character of Anakin. It didn't advance anything. The only character that kid had a chance of relating to was Qui-Gon Jinn in that Anakin never had a father, but Jinn's death or even Jinn himself was never again mentioned by Anakin in later films because essentially Jinn barely mattered to the character of Anakin. Qui-Gon Jinn himself was a waste of a character.

    Yeah I said it, Qui-Gon Jinn did very little to advance the story. He played the father figure role to Obi-Wan and Anakin. But Obi-Wan played the father figure to Luke in ANH and took up much less screen time doing so. Qui-Gon took up the majority of screen time only to essentially do what Obi-Wan did in ANH with much less time. Not only this, but he had nothing to do with the OT and he barely had relevance in the later PT films. He essentially wasted our time. He stole Obi-Wans thunder as a character. He was the reckless one and not Obi-Wan which made no sense to Star Wars fans at the time. Had Qui-Gon been injured in the escape from Naboo and
     
  16. drg4

    drg4 Jedi Master star 4

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    Jul 30, 2005
    Amen.
     
  17. Go-Mer-Tonic

    Go-Mer-Tonic Jedi Youngling star 6

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    Aug 22, 1999
    I think part of the point of the prequels was to justify ROTJ. Without the prequels, Vader's turn back to the good side and Leia being Luke's sister seems more convenient than anything else. With the prequels, it's all set up perfectly.

    When Lucas was filming TPM, he wore a shirt with a quote from the NY times review of ANH.

    STAR WARS: "...a film with comic-book characters, an unbelievable story, no political or social commentary, lousy acting, preposterous dialogue, and a ridiculously simplistic morality. In other words, a BAD MOVIE."

    Lucas hasn't proven anyone else wrong. The people who didn't like the prequels really didn't like the prequels.

    Not everyone will.

    Just like not everyone loved the original 3.

    They all still went down in history as some of the most financially successful films ever, and they are all adored by huge sections of the fan base.

    Sure not everyone likes every little bit of these movies, but -together- we love every minute of it.
     
  18. ezekiel22x

    ezekiel22x Chosen One star 5

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    Aug 9, 2002
    I'm always wary of ascribing a consensus attitude to any non-specified group, especially when that result is used to "prove" the value of a piece of art. Even though that quote about the "fans just wanting monster Vader" most likely wasn't trying to be passed of as a certainty, I don't think Lucas should have lumped so much of his audience into a single group like that. I'm quite sure plenty of people were dissatisfied with the prequels even though they didn't expect to see a trilogy primarily dealing with Evil Vader kicking loads of good guy butt. Similarly, "the best reviews of his career" doesn't really mean anything to me. In terms of individual, professional reviews, I recall some negative and some positive for each of the prequel films. I agree that the general buzz of Revenge of the Sith seemed to be more of a positive one, but even if we're talking about a scientific sampling of a group of fans or professional critics, I don't think that the consensus thought in turn reverses earlier, negative appraisals in a sense that validates the entire trilogy. Communal reaction to a piece of art is a fluid entity, not a ballot box. I can only speak of my own reaction, and frankly, I'm surprised Revenge of the Sith was and is so revered when pitted up against its two immediate precursors. I can perceive the shift in overall tone and acknowledge the manner in which long-known plot points link up with the OT, but terms of the screenplay and the overall visual and dramatic aesthetics, I think Revenge of the Sith is very much in line with the cinematic style established in TPM and AotC.
     
  19. Darthbane2007

    Darthbane2007 Jedi Master star 4

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    Oct 31, 2007
    Yes, he did.

    from 1983 until 1997, fans had 14 years to fill in the blanks as to how Anakin came to be and how everything else did as well. Lucas certainly can not please everybody, but he made the movie with the best intentions..
     
  20. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jun 29, 2000
    I'm sure Lucas feels like he failed after these three movies all made close to a billion dollars in international gross..on each film.

    Yeah, how about that! People still went to AOTC after seeing the horrible movie TPM was. How about that...;)
     
  21. MOC Vober Dand

    MOC Vober Dand Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jan 6, 2004
    I'm sure GL had good intentions, and he definitely made lots of money out of the films, but I don't see that either of these things proves or disproves anything in terms of the quality of any of the films. I saw all three many times and enjoyed all three overall, but I stand by the criticisms I have of them and those criticisms have nothing to do with not having Vader running about in his suit slaying people for 6 hours.
     
  22. xx_Anakin_xx

    xx_Anakin_xx Jedi Master star 4

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    Jan 9, 2008
    As if...

    I loved TPM and AOTC (and ROTS). I couldn't care less what some stuffy critic thinks, or even what hip wonderful fans think. Either you wanted to know the whole story like he told it, or you didn't. And everyone's idea of a good movie is going to differ greatly. I generally hate all of those supposed classics that get raving critical praise, can't even think of the names of the films, but they usually have Emma Thompson in them. Anyway, for a fantasy/adventure flick, I thought all three prequels were awesome because I finally got to hear the story I was dying to know about. I already know what Vader did to the Empire, what I wanted to know about was his Jedi youth and how he came to be one - and my request was granted.

    For those who had other expectations or simply found the movies bad for some other reason, I sympathise, but I kinda feel like 'tough', cuz I loved um, lol.
     
  23. MOC Vober Dand

    MOC Vober Dand Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jan 6, 2004
    As if what?

    So what you're saying is that despite the fact that everyone has different ideas of what makes a good movie, in this case you had to either love the whole story as it was told by Lucas, or not?
     
  24. Go-Mer-Tonic

    Go-Mer-Tonic Jedi Youngling star 6

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    Aug 22, 1999
    Only if you wanted to love the movie Lucas made.
     
  25. MOC Vober Dand

    MOC Vober Dand Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jan 6, 2004
    Or not love it. If you wanted to take it as you found it, like some parts but not necessarily all, apparently you were out of luck!
     
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