PT Is ROTS the Halloween 4 of the prequels?.

I hope many of you get this, or this thread will fall quick, LOL.
Many consider, Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers, one of the better sequels, but write it off, due to it being with 5-6. It seems to be the same case with ROTS, while being at the top of many fans lists, it still seems to be lumped with the prequels all together. Yes, there are prequel fans, myself included, this is nothing more than an observation than a statement.

 

People who really care about Halloween sequels tend to have time for Halloween 4 because it was a return of the Shape to the big screen after six years absence, and 5 and 6 were significantly below par whereas 4 was merely mediocre.

It's one of the turds with frosting on it. As opposed to one of the turds encrusted with broken glass.

I don't think there's any meaningful comparison with any Star Wars movie or sequel there. I doubt that the discussion about worthy sequels is going to be enhanced by engineering a comparison.

 

I'm not a fan of any of the Halloween sequels--Carpenter's masterpiece works best as a self-contained horror tale--but I do believe that ROTS was too-blithely dismissed by those fatigued with the first two prequels. By the time 2005 rolled around, the goodwill afforded Lucas had all but dissipated. A shame too, for those of us who feel it's the best SW film, period.

Had ROTS been released as the one and only Prequel, there's no doubt in my mind that its Metacritic score would be well into the 80s.

 

Halloween 4-6 > Halloween: H20, Resurrection, and Zombie's Halloween flicks. Just throwing that out there.

 

I actually think that’s a perfect description of REVENGE OF THE SITH vis-à-vis the other two prequel films.

 

I'm not sure about the analogy, but it does bug me that ROTS often gets lumped in with all 3 prequels as being "bad". Also I love all 3 prequels myself just to clarify.

 

When ROTS originally came out, it was pretty well regarded even by the internet. Reviewers like AVGN gave it good reviews. But then a couple of years later the tide turned and many started lumping ROTS with the other two PT films as the best of the turds but still a turd. I like all 3 PT films and statements like the one I quoted shows how there is a band wagon effect going on to some degree.

As for the Halloween series, 1 and 2 are the best. 4 is ok but I like H20 better. 5 is bad, 6 is worse, and those Rob Zombie remakes are really bad, especially his H 2. 3 is interesting in a B movie way, but still not a good film.

 

I like Halloween 4 though prefer 1 and 2 love the Hospital setting.

It's a shame some people changed or acted like ROTS was not loved when it came out. I remember when VH1 use to air best week ever. They talked about how ROTS was good and it was cool to like SW again.

 

Nice taste.

I find people to at least enjoy Revenge of the Sith if they didn't like the others, but then again I think the entire trilogy is written off in general, episode 3 is just less so.

 

I feel ROTS got fairly positive review, up until among certain circles it became "the cool thing" to bash the PT as a whole. That didn't really come around until about a couple years after ROTS had left theaters, and fans started realizing (at the time) that "that was it" for Star Wars. The emergence of the bashing made other purists feel comfortable speaking out at that point, and it became this whole ugly rolling ball of everything from quippy negative jabs to outright soapbox protests that survived at a low boil up until TFA finally came out. Now it seems all those haters and inarticulate article writers and "film critics" have their focus on something new, instead of the old and tired PT basher's bandwagon...

Having a 3rd trilogy to compare altogether, instead of just one to another, helps too I'd imagine....

 

It seem like the tide is changing. Every time i see youtube videos of reviews or star wars scenes people seem to defend the Prequels and bash the force awakens. Its surprises me how much people rip apart TFA now, the movie came out not to long ago and was really praised but after heading in the same direction after some time went by.

 

I don't see ROTS as being lumped in with anything. For folks left uninspired by the previous two it was a big improvement. But still felt like too little too late.

Some people felt that way nearer the time and now feel somewhat settled about ROTS connecting to two sagas. Others found their initial appreciation not as enduring as they hoped.

I've never got the impression that ROTS was just lumped in with prequel dislike except by folk already happy to do so.

Still nowhere near a useful analogy with Halloween.

Halloween is a masterpiece. II was slick cash in but soulless plus a little bit nasty. All the rest are one or one and a half stars at best.

Sad folk who place content over quality have their own weird ways of trying to enhance the stature of them. But they've clearly lost the ability to judge correctly.

 

^ I'm not quite comfortable with your last paragraph there. It sounds very much like you're looking down on people whose tastes/approaches differ from your own.

 

These kinds of trends are easily predictable, however. I always knew that the TFA would get great reviews (that would inevitably compare the film to the prequels, efectively lumping all three of them as "rubbish"), and that the tide would slowly turn. People think they want something (more of the same)... until they get exactly what they wanted... and then they realize that they prefer the original thing anyway. That's what happes when they make a sequel to a highly popular film thinking about what the audience (apparently) wants.

It's something similiar to what happened with The Hobbit films, by the way. They were heavily anticipated because fans wanted "more Middle Earth", and even though people wanted to defend the movies initially, their reputation went downhill with every new movie.

Instead, when a sequel challanges the expectations of the audience and gives us somethings new and unexpected, the initial reaction may be bad (see Empire, Temple of Doom or the prequels) but chances are that their reputation will improve. And at least, we get something new!

 

In my experience of trying to talk to Halloween franchise fans (for almost twenty years), I've found far too many of them who consider Michael killing people, either for no reason or for a very specific reason, as the be all end all of Halloween. It happens to only be the case with the sequels but that is only due to the fact that a producer was able to retain right to make sequels and wanted to cash in on the slasher craze following the success of the original. A craze that churned out dozens of shallow mask and knife films that also believed that a mask, a knife and a victim was the definition of Halloween.

So many times I've heard anti-intellectual arguments that Halloween four or six or whatever is just as good as the original since...

- Michael killed a guy with a big axe/scythe/pitchfork this time
- More people were killed in this one
- The girl who got killed was a real "slut" and I'm glad Michael killed her in this one (An alarmingly popular sentiment)
- You can see one of LA's palm trees in the background of a shot of the original Halloween so it's not perfect and hardly anyone gets killed compared to X sequel.

Even on OHMB the discussion of Halloween's cinematic merits (acknowledged by so many respected film critics) is not as popular (or even as possible) as discussing how many people we got to see killed on screen.

Imagine arguing with someone who thinks anything that has similarly designed spaceships in it is inherently as good as Star Wars and deserves recognition in the same breath. And that anything with a bigger spaceship or more spaceships than in Star Wars is at least as good as Star Wars, regardless of any other considerations.

Can you imagine arguing with someone that Jaws The Revenge is just as worthy as Jaws because the fake shark worked better in it, there was more blood and more people being eaten?

Apart from the third Halloween movie, none of the sequels were the type of film someone would want to make (The second one was made by someone who admitted to not wanting to make it before , during or after completion) . They are the kind of films that someone knows they can sell because the original was, for a long time, the most profitable film ever made. The original movie was unquestionably a labour of love, just like Star Wars was.

Halloween is possibly unique in being seminal in terms of style, certain techniques as well as its content. While its sequels, without the originator's involvement, are faithful to it only in terms of content and are almost utterly devoid of even the attempt to be stylistically sympathetic. (Or devoid of any style, in some cases).

Star Wars was fortunate enough that its author retained the right to produce sequel movies. John Carpenter got somewhat scammed in that he retained authorship of the story and its characters (meaning he does get paid if they make a movie with Myers, Laurie, Loomis in it etc) but production of sequels was the prerogative of the financer of the first movie. After taking almost no fee for writing, directing and scoring the most profitable movie of all time, Carpenter wasn't even given his cut unless he participated in making a sequel, which he wound up making under protest and under the influence.

The circumstances and nature of the continuing franchises are so different that I don't think any useful comparison ought to be made. And that includes the discussion of what makes a worthy sequel or not since the variance between the original idea and the ambition and taste of the people who sought to profit from is so great that if the same situation happened after the first Star Wars was made. we absolutely would not be on this forum talking about Star Wars in the way that we do right now.


I am all too familiar with some of the philistine attitudes that drive Halloween franchise discussions. By highlighting it here I am giving the members at least the credit that the discussion is generally driven by far more authentic, artistic reasons.

 

Look, I enjoy the hell out of the original Halloween, and it is surely a cinematic masterpiece by John Carpenter.

But I hold slasher movies to a different standard to other movies. I'm watching for a body count and to be entertained. Are the sequels as good as the original? No. Are some of them entertaining? Outside of H20 and Resurrection, I'd say...yes. Intellectualism doesn't have to come in to the equation. Films are an art form, yes. But they're also a form of entertainment.

Halloween 4 entertains the **** out of me.

Hell, to throw another wrench into things...


I enjoy the Friday the 13th franchise moreso than the Halloween franchise. And A Nightmare on Elm Street compared to both of them.

 

@JoshieHewls And the first Halloween isn't even a slasher movie. It's a horror/suspense movie that inspired a genre of copycats that mostly dispensed with the suspense.

The fact that Halloween barely qualifies for the genre it inspired and in which most of its sequels thrived is one of the reasons I don't think the analogy with Star Wars or its prequels is appropriate or helpful.

Enjoying something or being entertained by it for what it is, is fine. Of course.

 

I see it as the Alien 3 of Star Wars. Clearly the best despite that the original two will always hold the pop cultural crown.

 

I feel like I'm back on IMDB

to keep on this strange topic though:

Halloween IV is awesome

ROTS is awesome

 

You philistines are all wrong about this. Clearly Revenge of the Sith is the The Crow: City of Angels of the franchise and you're just too blind to see it!

 

That sounds alot like the old EU, the new EU, and even TFA.

One comparison I think we can make between Halloween and Star Wars is how newer installments made with little to no input of the original creator and some fans preferring later installments over the original work even if the later installments go against the original work. Also the loose continuity and retcons, semi retcons, and semi continuity. H2O retcons the events of 4,5,and 6, but not completely. In 4, Laurie died in a car crash, in H20 she is living under an assumed name and faked her death in a car crash, which maintains a thin line of continuity. This is pretty similar to how Maul is killed in TPM, but retconed to have survived in TCW, but much more poorly than H2O. Then there is the really bad retcon at the beginning of Halloween Resurrection which is still more believable and better explained than Maul's retcon in TCW.

A loose comparison I could make is that the PT are like Halloween 3, a different direction that met mixed reviews. While 4 is similar to TFA, a return to form and a cash grab after the story was completely resolved by the prior film. Story wise, there is no need of a continuation of the story after either Halloween 1, and especially Halloween 2, same for ROTJ, everything has been settled, period, no more story to tell without undoing the events in the prior story.

 

A more apt analogy would be ROTJ being the inverse of ROTS. Where ROTS is known as the lone "semi good" movie of a "bad" trilogy, ROTJ is known as the lone "semi bad" movie of a "good" trilogy. Now, I have always thought ANH and TESB were better than ROTJ, but I think it is ridiculous to think of them as being on some sort of higher stratosphere than ROTJ. Same with the prequels. I believe ROTS is better than TPM and AOTC, but I dont think it is on some higher stratosphere than those movies. I really think people just don't like the slow burn of TPM and AOTC. ROTJ does have some real flaws and I think it is the least of the 6 part saga, but I think that has mostly to do with the challenge of tying up all loose ends in one movie, after he had decided there would be no episode 7, 8, and 9.

I have actually only seen the original Halloween. I have not seen the sequels, because, quite frankly the reviews I have seen about the sequels and the history I have read in regards to the making of the sequels has scared me away from them. Now, as a Friday the 13th guy I will say that I really, really like the original Halloween. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like it. But I think Carpenter was right to not want to make sequels. For me the broken continuity and ret-con that seems to be littering the sequels sounds repulsive. I can definitely respect and understand the widely held opinion that the original Halloween is superior to the original Friday the 13th (though Im not sure I agree with that) , but I think Friday the 13th is way better as a franchise.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL68PDeoWksh0tCzDxoDYNBoxXGHA65kBA

 

It always interested me in how that turned out when talking about the rankings of fans online. On top of that TESB's promotion to the top of the food chain after initially being considered good but inferior to ANH is strangely mirrored by how AOTC was initially considered by "haters" to be pretty bad but still better than TPM but over time seems like is becoming the one they complain about the most as being the least of the bunch. TPM and ANH in those sorts of rankings going from the "worst" and "best" to being ranked in the middle most of the time. Not saying I agree with those rankings myself, I love all 6 of Lucas' movies myself, or that the majority hates the PT. But when talking about that specific sort of fan you see online, I find those patterns present and kind of fascinating.

I like some of the sequels. Might not be great cinema but if one can get into the kitsch of slasher/horror films I think 2-4 and H20 can range from at least fun watches in that Friday night creature feature sort of way to pretty solid. Though of course that's just me speaking for my own personal opinion.

 

Sorry for the confusion my friends. I ment to say it's more related in terms of both movies being lumped into their trilogies. While both are popular entries, they both also get lumped into the "it sucks because it's part of that trilogy".

 

There is a SE version of the first Halloween with extra scenes filmed for TV. I like the extra scenes which Carpenter filmed and now hates. It is a shame since the first extra scene really fills out Loomis and his relationship with Myers. 2 is a decent sequel and conclusion to Halloween as it takes place later on the same night as 1. 4 is an ok popcorn movie, 5 is bad which includes cartoon sound effects. 6 introduces a bizarre plot that undermines Myers' character. H2O is also a ok popcorn flick and a little better than 4 and it forgets the events of 4, 5, and 6, but not entirely. I am concerned Star Wars may end of as Halloween with several lower quality sequels filled with retcons of the original works.