Lit Meesa Jar Jar Binks (New Chuck Wendig novel)

I love the characters in TFA. There's some weird story logic, but it's characters are so enjoyable to be with, it keeps you from noticing.
It actually has the opposite problem as TPM. It was very well structured with an intelligent story, but some of its characters were so off-putting to people, it kept you from noticing the story.

 

I really can't get aboard the "prequels were secretly masterpieces" train. The Phantom Menace is certainly a good-looking movie with a great soundtrack and a great trailer, but the plot is just so awkward and full of holes and gaps in logic, the acting is stilted, the dialogue is poorly-written, and the more time and consideration I'm given the worse my estimation of it is. It will always hold a place in my SW-heart in a way that the other two prequels don't, since I watched it in theaters thrice and then about a billion times when it was released on VHS (remember those?), but it just falls apart so easily under the most basic of critical analysis. As an EU fan I can appreciate the era and the lore that it created, but as a movie fan with my SW-tinted goggles turned off I just can't appreciate it. Had Lucas let others (Carrie ... ?) polish the script and had he let someone else direct it, it would have been better --- there are a lot of good ideas lurking beneath its surface.

 

The best thing about this thread is how multiple quotations of one of Lelal's posts have preserved the nonsense of April Fool's for all time.

 

Agreed. I've rewatched to PT recently and the only one that's even semi-intelligent plot-wise imo is ROTS (and even that has issues). Now are there good elements in the other two, sure. And there was potential with some of the ideas, but it wasn't executed well at all.

They actually fall into the category of films that I REALLY cannot stand. Namely movies that are poorly-written, but THINK that they're fare more intelligent and "deep" than they actually are. And I think that some fans are essentially filling in the blanks in their heads, and that's what's convincing them that the film's are well-written. It's not in the movie, you've just convinced yourself that this HAS to be what they were going for.

TFA has a more simple story, but it's a better-executed story, it's paced better, there are FAR fewer plot-holes/logical gaps, the characters are better, the dialogue is better, the effects are better, and the unanswered questions are at least INTENTIONALLY so (unlike the PT).

 

I would actually like to see that book, I like Jar-Jar (even if he is a fool) and the gungans

 

Very well-said. When you're familiar with the accompanying lore, it can be easy to overlook or even completely miss a movie's flaws. And that's not only true for something like SW that has a vast Expanded Universe --- a lot of film adaptations of books end up clunkily moving the story along because of what they've left out, but if you've read the novel you tend to not even notice because in your head you already know how and why B follows from A. That's why I often like seeing a movie before I read the book. So I can judge the movie independently of its source material.

For sure it's a pretty recurring theme in SW, though. With the final issue of Legacy Volume 2, I was criticizing it because of everything it left out, and people were defending it because of its untold story that they had put together in their heads. They were filling in blanks and convincing themselves that the comic was well-written and that HAD to be what the authors were going for. If I can shamelessly quote myself (thread linked to here):

'Saying that an ending is good because you can imagine that a better ending happened offscreen is just code for "the ending sucked, so I like to think that this happened instead." It means that you're able to write a better ending than the authors did. ......... If a good ending happened off-page, it was because Bechko and Hardman were unable to write it. The ending they did write was awful, and undue credit shouldn't be given where it isn't due. ............. The ending was bad, guys. Why are people coming up with these far-out theories in desperate attempts to redeem it? Why the illogical assertions that it was well-done because the good parts happened in our imagination? I can imagine redemptive deleted scenes for every bad SW book. It doesn't make them any less bad. We need to judge this issue based on its story, not on the accompanying fanfics we've written in our heads. ............ What you call using logic in this case is actually giving too much credit to authors who wrote a bad story. They wrote something illogical, and you're trying to see things that aren't there in order to make sense of it. If an experienced Imperial Knight forgot about the main war criminals, it's because of bad writing. It doesn't logically point to your fan-fiction having happened off-page. Seriously, that's like saying "Well, Daala was elected Chief of State, so logically, she must have saved a bunch of babies from a burning building off-page and got the entire galaxy to love her. Just use logic, guys." If it's your theory, cool. But don't try to present it as being any sort of "logical conclusion." Don't give Bechko and Hardman more credit than they deserve. ......... I think that all of these theories only emphasizes the low quality of this issue, anyway. It made so little sense that we need to bend over backwards with fan theories in order to give it coherence. .......... If people disagree with my criticisms and enjoyed this issue, that's obviously their prerogative. I haven't tried to take that away from anyone. What I do reject, however, is the idea that the issue is a high-quality one because you can write a better ending than its authors did. That doesn't improve the comic; it only highlights and emphasizes its awfulness. The SW Universe is vast, and we can imagine myriad events taking place in it, but bad writing is still bad writing.'

 

Never said TPM was a masterpiece, and you will def never see me arguing that about AotC or RotS, even though, yeah, I enjoy watching them. My point is that TPM as a crafted story, for me, tends to hold up better than most memories from a 15 years ago disappointing viewing tend to ascribe to it, and it's technically much better and far more consistent and logical than the final form of its two direct sequels. Not a high bar, granted, but those were the parameters given in my original post.

 

I can agree that it's probably the best of the prequels. But yeah, not a high bar. I veer in the opposite direction as you, though, in that it holds up much worse now than it did when I was a twelve-year-old seeing it in theaters. Hey, TPM began filming twenty years ago. Crazy, eh?

 

At least TPM left behind a legacy of some really messed up kids.

 

TPM reminds me of Godfather Part III, a movie that follows up two of the greatest films of all time but has a reputation of being absolutely unwatchable, but even if it can't match them, is actually at least decent if considered outside of the blinding brilliance of its predecessors, and part of its denigration is because it takes the story in a different direction with a focus on a new, younger cast. (Though to be fair, I think I'd probably place Godfather III above TPM, although it's been almost a decade since I last saw TPM and even longer for Godfather III, so that probably doesn't hold a lot of weight.)

I was actually thinking a few months ago about what TPM's reception would have been if it was released in 1999 as the actual first entry in the Star Wars saga, rather than the fourth movie to a cultural tentpole, and didn't have to live up to those expectations. Probably wouldn't be great, but would at least be better than it is now. I thought that Jupiter Ascending was probably a good comparison: sweeping galactic scope, great designs and setpieces (and female costumes); clunky dialogue, unbelievable and kind of weird romance, and a universe that was a bit hard to digest; widely panned but with a strong cult following and passionate defenders.

 

I don't think that it would have worked as the first movie, for similar reasons why Jupiter Ascending didn't work. The simplicity of ANH, is a big part of the reason why it worked (at least as the first film anyway).

You start off simple, and then expand and deepen things as you move forward. A basic, yet effective strategy.

And having rewatched both recently, Godfather Part III holds up much better as an overall film.

 

I was wondering how this joke thread got to page 2 lol. I never thought the prequels were bad, not when I saw them in theaters at 11, 14, and 17 respectively, and not now at age 29. Would I feel the same way if they weren't Star Wars films? I don't know, because they are Star Wars films. ESB doesn't make any sense as a piece of standalone cinema, either. It doesn't have to.

 

I love that the generation of kids who fell in love with TPM when they were 5-10 years old are now the adults who control the narrative, while the opinions of jaded 40 year olds have become out-dated and irrelevant.

 

It's funny, while I was watching Jupiter Ascending one of my main reactions was "Oh, this is what people who are confused by Star Wars(/other space operas) feel like when they try to watch the movies." Not knocking Jupiter Ascending; the perspective was actually valuable. I think the main difference is that (in the films) Star Wars gives the impression of a vast universe on the surface but the archetypes are broad enough that it really requires very little buy-in.

I don't know that I'd argue that the prequels are secret masterpieces, but I'm always disappointed to see their appeal dismissed, or the notion that they are fatally flawed in some way propogated. A movie is a visual and aural experience. If you've got decent editing and pacing, great visual effects, great sound effects, great production design, and great music (as pretty much very Star Wars film to date has), that's a heck of a lot of well executed film making right there. No movie has to hit all of the marks all of the time, surely. I'll be the first to admit that there are some remarkably terrible parts of Phantom Menace, but I've rewatched it hundreds of times, and not simply out of the same sense of franchise loyalty that I have with, say, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

TC

 

People who were ten years old in 1999 are 28 now. I don't think there's a whole lot they're in control of, especially when it comes to multi-billion dollar franchises.

 

Too bad, they deserve each other.

 

Exactly. That's why we get New Hope inspired films, A New Hope prequels and tie-ins, cartoons that lead into A New Hope and comics that take place right after A New Hope. Because they are giving jaded 40 year olds what they want. But within the forums, Twitter and blogs, etc compared to 15 years ago? So much prequel love.

 

Except I don't think it's anywhere near that clear-cut.

Yeah, the sequels are starting to look like they're going to be too slavish to the OT films, but away from that? Away from that, across the books and comics, there's been arguably the biggest attempt to fuse the PT and OT together, to consider how following ideas from the PT through to their logical conclusion would affect the OT e.g. Rogue One's Cassian was a separatist.

That hasn't been done before.

 

Really? That's cool, where has that been revealed?

 

My opinion on the matter: TPM is fine, if not great. It's writing is pretty awful, but it is an entertaining movie, with a great cast (Liam Neeson defies the apparent bad direction of George Lucas), one of the best soundtracks of the series, and in most places is thoroughly entertaining.

No, the part that everyone seems to miss is that Attack of the Clones is, without contest, the worst of the prequels, and is far closer to "unwatchable" than The Phantom Menace can ever be. Don't pick on TPM. That's beating a dead horse. Pick on AoTC.

 

I was a kid when TPM came out and a teen during AOTC and ROTS. I remember hating TPM because it wasn't like the OT and loving ROTS because it was dark and I thought it was more "mature" or something. Now I watch them and it's the reverse -- I hate ROTS. It's a beautiful film in some regards but the plot is a thousand good ideas going nowhere, and its horrendously sexist. McDiamid and Jackson save it in some places but for the most part it's a wreck.

TPM, I hate to admit it, was clever and it was creative in many ways. Jar Jar and the Gungans were its major fault, along with poor Jake Lloyd playing offkey (I hate blaming a kid though), but the whole political plot and set up for Anakin as a slave was pretty cool. Also it's the only one of the three films where I really like Padme. I wish the Padme/Panaka/Sabe team had continued into the other films.

AOTC.... oh what could have been. Jango and Zam were amazing. Geonosis and Kamino were fantastic. Dooku and the colorful Separatist villains had so much storytelling potential. But the core cast sounded bored as **** and damn Hayden can play the ultimate creepster.

I will always admire Lucas for trying things with the prequels no other film creator would dare attempt. But I feel the issues of the PT are unresolved, and I hate how defensive/bitter Lucas has been of it. It's what's driven him into this self-imposed exile and mindfunk he's got going on right now. I don't want to remember him as that "bitter old man" because my main gripe with the PT was that it had so many great ideas but unfulfilled potential.

Edit: There's some parallel here with Jar Jar's role in Chuck's last novel....

 

It's what people concluded from one of his lines in R1:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cassian_Andor's_insurrectionist_cell

 

AOTC's biggest problem is the infamous Sand Monologue, it eclipses all else in the film and obliterates its good sequences from memory.

 

Yeah, AoTC for me is brought down by the romance plotline that makes me feel all sorts of emotions, but not the right kinds. Closer to "nauseous" and "murderous" than the filmmakers were going for. And, while I appreciate the effort in building a bond between Anakin and Obi-Wan, it just came off strange for me in the movie itself, but was massively improved in The Clone Wars show (for all the weirdness of that show, it did work well in making Anakin the kind of character he always should have been). Finally, the action and acventure scenes, the things you come to a Star Wars movie for, were the least entertaining for me (though I liked Jango vs Obi-Wan and the short Tyranus lightsaber fight).