Lucas should be lauded for not kowtowing to the fans

First, a disclaimer. Several of the charges leveled at the prequel films (well, TPM and AOTC, really) are, in fact, valid: some of the performances are stolid, the exposition leaden, and the plot holes disconcerting.

In lieu of this, I still favor any one of these prequels to ROTJ. Why? Because where Episode VI looks, and plays, like an average sequel to Star Wars, I, II and III took chances. Which leads me to think that a good deal of the animus extended to the PT is because Lucas didn't kowtow to the fans:

--We imagined that the young Anakin would have something of a mean streak; yet Lucas gave us a selfless cherub. (Now what does this say about the nature of corruption?)

--We fancied the PT Jedi to be chivalric romantics; Lucas, on the other hand, presented us with dogmatic ascetics, who were at least partially complicit in Anakin's downfall. (As it turns out, Yoda and Obi-Wan's exile serves as a kind of lesson in humility.)

--Our vision of Episode III consisted of a suited Vader playing Sith terminator to dozens of Jedi; instead, Lucas chose to emphasize Anakin's tragic underpinnings. In the end, his lust for power was but a means to noble ends: love and idealism. Admit it, your version wasn't anywhere near as poignant. Mine certainly wasn't. (Darth Vader is not "cool" anymore; he is Gollum with an iron lung. Pitiful and wretched.)

--And then there are the flights of fancy, antithetical to our cynical culture. You know: Jar Jar; the "Yippee's!"; battle droid antics. Unlike the creators of "The Matrix," George Lucas could care less what rubs us the wrong way. Wonderfully antiquated.

I find all this admirable. If the PT is a failure (not my conclusion), then it is a *noble* failure. And I'll gladly take this ambitious trilogy to the Mandalorian laden productions many here would have hatched.

 

I completely agree. I have never hated the prequels, and never will. I can't believe some of the things people around here say. Everything is fine as is, and there is little I would change.

 

I disagree about the exposition being leaden and that there are any plot holes. On the other hand I do agree that he should be lauded for not kowtowing to the fans (see my signature for my strong opinion on that) I'm so glad we didn't get some "Matrixy" cynical, very slick movies. I love that Anakin was no Han Solo when he was a teen. It would have made zero sense character wise.
I also loved the goofy, bumbling, clumsy, well meaning side kick of Jar Jar Binks in TPM. He was fun that way and Anakin as a really sweet, caring kid who was portrayed very, very well by Jake Lloyd, perfect. I love seeing the close relationship between his mother and him and the scenes with him leaving her are some of the most touching in the saga.
I am so glad we didn't get a OT volume 2 with the PT like some fans wanted.

 

Don't laud Lucas, he's too young to die!

 

One of the most intelligent things ever said on these boards drg4.

I could not agree more.

 

I still favor any one of these prequels to ROTJ. Why? Because where Episode VI looks, and plays, like an average sequel to Star Wars, I, II and III took chances. Which leads me to think that a good deal of the animus extended to the PT is because Lucas didn't kowtow to the fans:

--We imagined that the young Anakin would have something of a mean streak; yet Lucas gave us a selfless cherub. (Now what does this say about the nature of corruption?)

--We fancied the PT Jedi to be chivalric romantics; Lucas, on the other hand, presented us with dogmatic ascetics, who were at least partially complicit in Anakin's downfall. (As it turns out, Yoda and Obi-Wan's exile serves as a kind of lesson in humility.)

--Our vision of Episode III consisted of a suited Vader playing Sith terminator to dozens of Jedi; instead, Lucas chose to emphasize Anakin's tragic underpinnings. In the end, his lust for power was but a means to noble ends: love and idealism. Admit it, your version wasn't anywhere near as poignant. Mine certainly wasn't. (Darth Vader is not "cool" anymore; he is Gollum with an iron lung. Pitiful and wretched.)

--And then there are the flights of fancy, antithetical to our cynical culture. You know: Jar Jar; the "Yippee's!"; battle droid antics. Unlike the creators of "The Matrix," George Lucas could care less what rubs us the wrong way. Wonderfully antiquated.

I find all this admirable. If the PT is a failure (not my conclusion), then it is a *noble* failure. And I'll gladly take this ambitious trilogy to the Mandalorian laden productions many here would have hatched.

Amen!

I especially like the part about doing things in conflict with our cynical culture.

Lucas was an independent spirit when he started out in 1971 with THX, defying the studio
and making a most un-mainstream movie. It's all these years later, and he made the PT,
defying the audience's expectations and doing it HIS way. Good for him. That's what
being a true artist is all about.

 

all the things drg4 pointed out have made me like the prequels even less. and all it proves is that lucas is a really arrogant rich man who doesnt care about pleasing audiences, only himself, which is fine if youre making a little personal film but not when your making prequels to the biggest blockbusters of all time. you made too much sense drg4

 

That is a very arrogant comment. You had your own little PT in your mind, and just because he didn't go the way you and other fans wanted to he's a "really arrogant rich man who doesn't care about please audiences, only himself"? If that was true, we would be getting Episode 7 - Episode 42 sometime next year.

 

^ jmb, you know it!!!


These are his films ok, just because they're not what you wanted doesn't make thembad or Lucas selfish. It was his vision and he made them how he had always wanted.

If it upsets you so much.............don't watch

 

I'm not so sure if Jar Jar's great disappearance act was always planned.

 

Very good post. Too many people wanted to see thousands of Mandalorians flying around, "Braveheart"-esque battles between Jedi and Dark Jedi, 6 hours of Jedi purge, etc. Lucas found the right mixture of action and drama, didn't compromise his vision, and gave us a new trilogy just as good as the OT (in some ways better). In 1983, NOBODY I knew hated Ewoks. It wasn't until that fat bastard Silent Bob came along and started complaining about it that people took up the "ROTJ sucks" mantle. Ten years from now, I don't expect todays jaded moviegoers to still hate Jar-Jar, I think they will remember him as a part of the Star Wars Saga. And if they don't, they can move onto the next trend and remain miserable.

 

I could not agree more with the opening post. The universal horribleness of fan scripts is all the evidence you need.

 

I agree that he went another direction with the movies, and did not make another 'sequel' with the same story, but in the process, the quality of the movies are still not great.

I see where Lucas was going with this story, and I understand where he was taking Anakin. Many people didn't like it, but I thought it was refreshing, but his execution was poor.

TPM was an average movie, where he relied on effects, and worried too much about Jar Jar. Watch the documentary on the DVD, Lucas says, "The key to this whole thing is Jar Jar." (I'm paraphrasing.) He forgot that CHARACTERS are what make a movie great.

Sure I can watch any Star Wars movie, because it is Star Wars, and you give me two hours of action, lightsaber fights, space battles, and jedi's kickin ass, you cant go wrong. But it is the extra things that make a Star Wars movie GREAT. The characters, you have to love the characters. In the OT, I love Luke, Leia, and Han, you root for those guys, you invest in them. Yoda and Darth Vader were the epitome of Good and Evil. Chewbacca, Lando, R2-D2, C3PO, and The Emperor, and Ben Kenobi, Tarkin were all great secondary characters who filled the story.

To me, IMO, and it is only my IMO, so I don't get called a basher, the prequels had no lovable characters, Anakin & Padme, so-so, but miscast. Mace Windu, didn't fit into the saga, Jar Jar, I don't need to say anymore than needs to be said. Watto, The Two Headed Announcer during the pod race, Boss Nass, they were all forgettable secondary characters. Other than Kenobi & Palpatine, they were the true shining characters of the prequels.

Many people will disagree and say they love the Padme & Anakin & Mace, and I respect that, but I don't, and I think that where the prequels began to go wrong. Again, I agree with your topic, Lucas did go another way with the story, but in the end, it comes down to execution, and that to me is what I will always second guess him.

 

I agree with all but the Matrix bashing. The Wachowski's, like Lucas infused their sequels with things that deconstructed the "popular" ideas of the original. Like Lucas, their goals were philosophical and mythological. Unlike Lucas, their points and ideas remain lost on the majority of the world simply because they are shrouded in the exposition and require a great deal of preknowledge and examination to discover. Watch the philosopher commentaries on the Ultimate Matrix... It may change those films in your mind. Like Lucas, they were bashed for the sequels. Like Lucas, unlike popular opinion, the overall tone of the Matrix is one of redemption and free thought, not cynicism. Both films demonstrate a distaste for dogmatism and reduce "evil" to difference in opinion. I really wish others could see those films for the masterpieces they are, much like star wars, and not use them negatively in their evaluations.

Not to preach or criticize other's opinion, but I feel most people on the prequel boards feel the same way about negativism towards the prequels or saga as a whole.

 

He was referring to the technology needed to bring Jar Jar to life. An entirely CGI character with a large part in a movie had not been done yet.

IMO it was sweet schadenfreude that the "Matrix" sequels didn't set the world on fire; the Wachowskis and their crew got pretty big for their britches. They started to believe their own press -- the so-called common wisdom was that disgusted SW fans flocked to epitome-of-cool "Matrix" after the crushing disappointment of TPM. No matter that it made zero sense; "Matrix" came out a month before TPM and made almost all of its money (less than half of what TPM grossed, by the way) in that month. I suppose it's possible that at least some of the remainder of its gross represented disgusted SW fans jumping from the SW bandwagon to the "Matrix" one, but the mass exodus of fans from SW to "Matrix" that the media referred to doesn't square with the basic facts.

I recall some FX guy who worked on "Matrix" smirking about how they weren't going to make the same "mistakes" that Lucas had with the PT.

So it was rather nice to see them all end up with egg on their faces, and for the "Matrix" movies fail to become the SW of this generation, as was so confidently predicted.

While I don't personally like each and every decision Lucas has made with the PT (or the OT, for that matter), I too applaud Lucas for not kowtowing to the fans and making a crowd-pleasing hybrid of the aforementioned "Matrix" and "The Terminator," and put in a Han Solo character for good measure. Anyway, which fans "should" he have listened to, were he inclined to do so? Each fan has his or her own ideas of what the PT "should" have been. I've read enough fanfic versions of the PT and alternate fan scripts (some of which are decent stories in their own right, but none of which are better than the PT) to know that.

 

dude totally

 

To me, IMO, and it is only my IMO, so I don't get called a basher, the prequels had no lovable characters, Anakin & Padme, so-so, but miscast. Mace Windu, didn't fit into the saga, Jar Jar, I don't need to say anymore than needs to be said. Watto, The Two Headed Announcer during the pod race, Boss Nass, they were all forgettable secondary characters. Other than Kenobi & Palpatine, they were the true shining characters of the prequels.

You bring up Watto, the 2 headed announcer, and Boss Nass. Did they really affect you ability to like the prequels that much? It's kinda like saying Lobot, Bib Fortuna, and General Dodonna affected one's ability to like the OT. I also thought that Anakin was so perfectly cast that it's scary. I could not have envisioned Anakin Skywalker any better than Hayden and GL did. The alternate Anakins that get tossed around (James Franco, Leo DiCaprio, etc) seem like very pop-culture-centric choices. As far as NP's portrayal as Padme goes, it's not a great casting choice (like HC as Anakin), but I'm fine with it. Who would have realistically been better? Keira Knightly? Anna Paquin? Kate Beckinsale? Anna Paquin got some Oscar buzz in the last five years but the other common alternates mentioned are pretty mediocre. Finally your Mace-hate just seems like run of the mill "new-character-phobia" that many old school fans suffer from. If you eliminate him from the Saga, then what do you do? There had to be one more really important council member besides Yoda for events to play out the way that they did. Are all these PT characters loveable? No. Were all the OT characters loveable? Again, no. In fact, the only OT character I would find loveable would be Artoo and Threepio, who remain just as much so in the PT.

 

The present movie culture is hate is cool. If the movie doesn't follow what you want to it be its an insant hate and bash session. I agree with you drg4 that Lucas should be praised for following his heart with the prequels and not the inane dribble of the Fett fanboys and their peers. Granted there are moments that I hit the fastforward button in I and II but there are times I do that with IV-VI. It doesn't mean because I happen to fastforward fireplace scene in ATOC that I hate the full movie or I want to rip Lucas a new one. These fans that wanted fan-orineted prequels or that Lucas has 'raped their childhood' should first find new means to express themselves. Secondly they hyped themselves up so much about what they wanted to see that they missed out on a beautiful story. The only ones that destroyed their vision of what they wanted was themselves.

What really bothers me are the people that wanted the 'cool actors' such as DiCaprio, Franco or even the guy from Cruel Intentions. To bring on such well known or kewl actors would cheapen the experience that is Star Wars. Example, could have Haley Joel Osment pulled off Anakin better in TPM than Jake Llyod? My answer would be yes, I am not fond of Jake's performace but Lucas choose him. That has to mean something. It goes the same with the rest of the cast. It doesn't matter what we think, its what the Lucas thinks .

All in all I love I, II, and III. There is very little I would ever want to see updated or changed. The fanboys and the fanatics need to see the movies for what they are and not they wanted them to be. Here's to Lucas!

 

You bring up Watto, the 2 headed announcer, and Boss Nass. Did they really affect you ability to like the prequels that much? It's kinda like saying Lobot, Bib Fortuna, and General Dodonna affected one's ability to like the OT.

No, it didn't have that much effect, my whole point was look at the secondary characters from the OT to the PT, or the characters in general from the OT to the PT.

OT: Han, Leia, Luke, Vader, Tarkin, Emperor, Chewbacca, Lando, R2D2, Kenobi, C3PO, Yoda, Sandpeople, Jawas, Boba Fett, Stormtroopers, Jabba,and Ewoks(negative).

PT Characters related to the OT: Kenobi, Emperor(Palpatine), Suited Vader, Yoda. (all remained cool)

PT Characters not related to the OT: Anakin, Padme, JAR JAR, Darth Maul, Count Dooku, Watto, Boss Nass, Jango Fett, General Grevious, Dex from the Diner, Mace Windu.

Take out all the OT guys that were in both trilogies, and which the exception of Darth Maul, who had a good 6 minutes of time, the PT lineup is pretty lame. Come on, you have to admit the OT had better characters?

 

Hey, if you ask me, Jango Fett was also a pretty cool character in my books.

 

PT Characters not related to the OT: Anakin, Padme, JAR JAR, Darth Maul, Count Dooku, Watto, Boss Nass, Jango Fett, General Grevious, Dex from the Diner, Mace Windu.

When was Anakin Skywalker not considered related to the OT?? He is the reason there is an OT.

 

Wow, Enjoyed reading this thread alot. Something I wanted to point out.

The above poster mentioned how The Secondary Characters in the OT outshined the one's in the PT. You said the 2ndary's in the OT where those such as Yoda, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Lando, R2-D2, C3PO, and The Emperor, Ben Kenobi, and Tarkin. OK, Agreed. But then you put a huge spin on it and mention the secondaries in the PT as those such as Mace Windu, Jar Jar, Watto, The Two Headed Announcer during the pod race, and Boss Nass. Mace I agree with. He had a fairly big role in all three films. And Jar Jar aswell, even though he was cut down on alot in the 2nd two films.

Now you cannot possibly belive the Two Headed Announcer, and Boss Nass could be considered secondary characters in the whole Prequel Trilogy. For the OT you name a list of very important people, then just list some background characters for the PT. For me here is the list.

PT-

Main Characters- Anakin, Obi Wan, Padme

Secondary Characters- Qui Gon, Yoda, Mace Windu, Palpatine, Count Dooku, Nute Gunray, Bail Organa, Jar Jar, Jango, R2-D2, C3P0, and Shmi Skywalker.

See how my list of secondary characters differs from yours? I actually mentioned the true memorable characters of the PT to not put a bias view against it.

Now to answer how the first poster felt. I do applaud Lucas for the way he wrote the PT script, it is absolutly nothing I would of expected. The way Palps maniuplated everything, how Anakin was found, and by the way he was found he was proven to be dangerous. The Clone Wars were great. Seeing early versions of the Storm Troopers fight side by side with the Jedi, and seeing the Republic's ship slowly turn into the memorable Imperial Ships from the OT.

I ask all of those who didn't like the script to write a better one. And I assure you it wont have the great plot of this PT.

 

I just meant Anakin as a person, he was suited Darth Vader for 99.9% of the movies, and in the prequels he is not suited for 99.9%.

 

Certainly, Lucas shouldn't be dictated by what his fans say. He can make Star Wars into whatever he wants - so long as he does it well, that is.




As Han Solo would say, "Well...that's the real trick."

 

Secondary Characters- Qui Gon, Yoda, Mace Windu, Palpatine, Count Dooku, Nute Gunray, Bail Organa, Jar Jar, Jango, R2-D2, C3P0, and Shmi Skywalker.

See how my list of secondary characters differs from yours? I actually mentioned the true memorable characters of the PT to not put a bias view against it.

OK, thats fair, but lets take your list one by one:

Qui Gon- Liam Neeson played him good, but not as memorable as Alec Guiness in the OT, and that is what he is suppose to mirror.

Yoda- Taken from OT, already established

Mace Windu- Sam Jackson, great actor, just wrong for the part, he was a one dimensional character, that brought nothing to the saga.

Palpatine- partly taken from the Emperor from the OT for most of the prequels, but I will give you this one, he is awesome.

Count Dooku- I liked him, and Christopher Lee is another great actor, but will be forgotten many years after.

Nute Gunruy- Annoying accent, and everything that was wrong with the prequels, totally lame

Bail Organa- Totally wasted character, he one line in AOTC, and the character finally gets some work at the end of ROTS. The only reason he is there to adopt Leia, could have been so much more.

Jar Jar- at least you have the guts to put him on the list, but the worst, I repeat, the worst character in the saga, the biggest miscalculation by Lucas. Check his role getting smaller in each movie, possibly Lucas kowtowed to the fans on that one?

Jango- Pardon the pun, a clone of Boba Fett from the OT. Get original George. Lets see, everyone loved Boba Fett from the OT, so I will make the stormtroopers cloned from his father.

R2-D2 and C3PO- taken from the OT

Shmi Skywalker- she actually is another fine actress, that does a servicable job for the time she was given.

The last time I checked when they were showing commercials leading up to ROTS in May, most of the OT characters were used: Chewbacca, Vader, C3PO, R2D2, Yoda, but it is funny no NEW prequels aliens or characters were ever shown! Maybe because they weren't cool. Even in the AFI Tribute to Lucas, not one mention of Jar Jar, not one saying this is the first all CG character, which should have been groundbreaking like it was. Why, because the crowd would have laughed because he is ridiculous. Do think Peter Jackson will ever distance himself from Gollum, no, because people liked that character, and he isn't laughable everytime he is on screen.