Do you think the 3 year wait between Prequels was too much time?

I don't want this to be another prequel basher thread, or a LOTR vs Star Wars thread.

My question is did you think it hurt the prequels because of a three year wait between movies? Here are some theories:

Many people, now that they have seen all three, have said TPM & AOTC make more sense after ROTS.

Many people, walking out of TPM, were like, what was that all about? I waited 16 years for a 10 year old Anakin. He is just a nice kid. I have to wait 3 more years for another movie, and 6 more years to see Darth Vader?

Many people, after AOTC, didn't like the love story, was wondering why Lucas didn't do more of the clone wars. They kept asking themselves where is Lucas going with this story?

My whole point is: I loved the prequels, but many people I know had problems with it. If the prequels were released every year in a 3 year span, do you think it wouldn't have given so much time for people to complain about the story. With each movie coming out every 3 years, it built expectations, for me that was good because I like the build up, but for others the build up led to the expectations that this better be the best damn Star Wars movie now!

After TPM, many people had to wait 3 years for just a setup to the whole saga, but people wanted the red-meat, then AOTC in 2002, was a transition story with a love story to establish Anakin mind & emotions, but people wanted the red-meat. Finally, in 2005, they got their red-meat with ROTS, but after 6 years of waiting, it may have been too long for many.

Overall, if people knew they would get the red meat 2 years after TPM, with consecutive movies in consecutive years, would they have been more patient than 2 more movies in 6 years?

Just Wondering.

 

The OT was also 3 years between episodes.

Worked then.

Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

 

I agree, and that is a good point, but when ANH came out, no one was expecting a trilogy. It was a movie with an ending, when the death star blows up, and if no more movies would have been made, it would still be a classic. Star Wars began to grow through the OT to legendary status.

By the PT, everyone knew there was a trilogy of 3 movies, so their expectations were totally different. The hype, fairly or unfairly, for the PT was much bigger compared to the OT.

 

the three years between films drives anticipation. I loved that LOTR was so quick between each film at the time. but then it was over so quickly. just as the excitment really builds for the trilogy it was over. with star was we had time to prepare ourselvs.
perhaps it hurt them because we were able to get expectations up too high and then people were disapointed. but I think the time between allowed for more people to get excited about star wars. made it feel more rare, rather then just next year. just the next chapter.

 

It's not like these kinds of films can take any fewer manhours. I don't think Lucas felt any pressure to take the Peter Jackson approach. After experiencing the insane reality of shooting, editing, and working on extended-cut DVD releases simultaneously, I don't think Peter Jackson himself would have recommended taking that approach. The all-at-once approach doesn't achieve a lot of the things you'd think it would achieve. Guaranteeing the actors don't look like they've aged years or otherwise changed more than their characters? Doesn't matter if you're still shooting additional scenes years later (Sean Austin's weight changes). Better flow between films? Maybe, maybe not. With too much going on bad decisions get made, like deciding mid-stream to put Saruman's death in film 3 only to get there and realize it was part of film 2 after all, and ending up with no good place to put it.

Continuous production sure didn't help the Matrix sequels either. If anything more time between films would have given people more time to absorb film 2 and given the filmmakers a chance to absorb audience reaction as well as their own reactions to the completed film, before diving into film 3.

Lucasfilm's production seemed like a well-oiled machine that generally avoided crisis and burn-out among the creative team. They knew what worked for them from the Young Indy and SE experiences and went ahead pretty confident in their working methods.

 

No. There was a three-year wait between the OT movies as well.

 

It would have been nice if Lucas released the PT in the LOTR fashion. The saga would have ended in 2001, and we would already be in season 2 of the TV show.

 

For people that liked the movies (like myself), the anticipation is part of the enjoyment. For people that didn't like the movies, I doubt altering the release dates would have changed their attitude.

 

Nope it was sort of like the OT.
It would have made more $$$ if it had been done like LotR though.
But I liked them being spread out.

 

I think it was fine the way it was done; I enjoyed the anticipation.

 

What would you rather have? Having to wait 3 years and get a great movie; or only wait 1 or 2 years and get a sucky movie. I realize most of you guys hate these movies but this is my opinion.

Good Stuff

 

I take it you are not old enought to remember 1977/78. Every Star Wars fan wanted more. There were a lot of people wearing "Darth Vader lives" t-shirts then. Then when "star Wars" was retitled Episode 4, there were plenty of rumors of what was going on.

But of the three year wait between movies, the PT doesn't come close to the wait from 1980-1983 to know what happened to Han Solo. Fans today don't know of that three year anticipation.

 

Not at all, the prequels weren't LOTR or HP, which takes place over a shorter span of time compared to the PT.

LOTR - (the journey) 13 months (filmed simultaneously) 3 consecutive years release
HP - (SS to Book 7) 7 years (filmed seperately) 9 years from SS to Book 7 films
SW-PT - (TPM to ROTS) 13 years (filmed seperately) 6 years from TPM to ROTS

 

The actors had to age in between the movies too.

 

I'm sure that if they were released closer together that many people would blame the films' "downfalls" on such quick production, lol.

 

Not necessarily, if they were all to have been released simultaneously, or rather, year after year, that would mean Lucas would have had all of the preproduction work done before actual filming instead of starting over from scratch every time. With three movies, you have, say, a year and a half for preproduction per film and another year and a half for post, making it making it nine years; compare that to Lord of the Rings, which had two solid years of preproduction and four of post, and less than a year of photography. The difference in production meant that Jackson and crew needed a clearly defined road to take for the entire saga, working things out as greatly as possible before starting on the production. It worked well enough twenty years ago, but those were different times; it was a different production. Here, we had a definite ending point for the third part: the beginning of the fourth, more care should have been taken in getting from Point A to Point B. There wasn't a definite mapping stage, the most "definitive vision" for the Prequels was Vader, everything else was an arbitrary point. It's the same as getting in your car without a map or prior planning and driving from Texas to Los Angeles. The best route wasn't decided; the right exits weren't written down, it was just driving around and getting off at any exit that looks good enough to take and hope it gets you to LA in a week.

 

I say who cares how long you had to wait, as long as you got 'em.

 

It was just a question, and that is what forums are for. I didn't start this thread to bash the prequels, I was just wondering if releasing the films in a different time-frame would have made a difference on peoples reactions. It is a simple question.

 

hey cool your jets and don't attack me. If you noticed I put a smiley cause I was saying it in a friendly way. Just a little joking around jeezzzz. I wasn't bashing your thread...just trying to lighten it up

Strilo edit: No one is attacking you.

 

This isn't Aint-It-Cool_News...we are all friendly here (well mostly).

 

It didn't impact my enjoyment of these films in a negative way.

I do envy first time viewers who will be able to see these films in their proper order for their first time, but I still enjoy these movies having seen them in the order made.

 

Being that I'm one of those who remember seeing Star Wars in 1977, I loved the fact that Lucas waited for each PT movie.

I mean, come on. We're lucky that he made them. This is why I defend these movies. People who bash TPM and AoTC should reflect on the fact that Lucas decided to do them.

When Tim Zahn wrote Heir to the Empire, it was the very first real new Star Wars story since RoTJ. I remember hearing that that book was a litmus test to see if interest was still out there for Star Wars. That book flew off the shelf. Man, I hated waiting a YEAR for the next book. Of the EU (save Vector Prime, the Thrawn duology), those are my favorite books of the EU. They set the bar, IMHO.

Then, when we found out that Lucas was going ahead with the prequels, expectations were high. We had some taste of post-Jedi stories, but we all wanted to see how it all began.

I myself went into TPM thinking that I need to view it as though I didn't see 4-6 before, or read any of the books. I saw it five times in the theater.

AoTC I only saw once, because I was living in a larger city, and can't drive.

I saw RoTS twice, but due to my work schedule, I could only see it two times. It's obviously the best of the PT.

I think fans who bash the prequels need to be thankful that they were even made.

Just my opinion.

 

Not really. I know many who found ESB's cliffhanger ending to be disappointing and who found ROTJ to be less than satisfactory. But ESB's cliffhanger ending could not hurt it anymore after ROTJ came out, while ROTJ, for me at least, is redeemed by ROTS (so is TPM, I think, while I always liked AOTC).

 

I don't think so. For something like LotR or the Matrix sequels it's a little different. Stories like that are so continuous that having their releases close together makes sense; there's a sense of urgency, as the ending scene of one movie is practically the start of the next. But Star Wars has never been like that. It's not a continuous, driving story; it's snippets of a much larger story, snippets that are self-contained and largely disconnected from each other.

There were ten years in-universe between TPM and AotC; a three-year gap in real life should surely not make that much difference. Even AotC-RotS, only two years, is still substantially longer than anything one would expect in something more connected.

In the other series I mentioned, the films could practically be edited together into one with no confusion or disconnect. Do that with Star Wars and you have weirdness and confusion, because the individual episodes are removed from each other. With this kind of separation, I don't think any amount of out-of-universe time is the problem.

Rather than the release timing, I would say your observations reflect more upon a problem in the construction fo the first two prequels. Since the rules of the game are disconnected episodes, each movie has to be able to play as both good and relevant on its own. If it takes RotS to focus the other two prequels, it sugests a problem in the construction of the individual films to stand alone rather than anything to do with the timing.

-Paul

 

i thought the wait added some extra depth to the movies that werent really there if you saw them more than a couple of times. i think film critic pauline kael said something like that in regards to the 3 year wait for rotj, a film she thought disappointing but waiting made it seem better than it was