TPM is "winning" IMDB's Worst Star Wars Film survey. WHY?

Currently it is a landslide that The Phantom Menace is the worst of the films. I always thought that this movie would gain support over time. I don't think all the blame can be put on Jar Jar. I guess I feel that Attack of the Clones is the worst, but it is in very good company.

 

Many of those people would say the film provides enough fodder to earn that distinction.

 

Look on the bright side, at least it isn't winning a worst film survey (you know overall, not just Star Wars).

 

^ That is a bright side.

 

Many of those people would say the film provides enough fodder to earn that distinction.

And many of those people need to get some perspective.

LOTR.com -- er, I mean, IMDB.com would be Bash SW (Except For ESB) Central if not for Ain't LOTR Cool News -- er, I mean, Ain't It Cool News.

I guess it's been slow for IMDB.com lately, so the easiest way to stir up some activity is to drag out its favorite pinata, SW, and encourage people to whack at it again. AICN did the same sort of thing recently, starting up a "round table" that was plainly just another excuse to bash any SW movie that isn't ESB.

 

LOTR.com -- er, I mean, IMDB.com would be Bash SW (Except For ESB) Central if not for Ain't LOTR Cool News -- er, I mean, Ain't It Cool News.

Always the master of subtlety.

I guess it's been slow for IMDB.com lately, so the easiest way to stir up some activity is to drag out its favorite pinata, SW, and encourage people to whack at it again. AICN did the same sort of thing recently, starting up a "round table" that was plainly just another excuse to bash any SW movie that isn't ESB.

Kinda makes one wish TPM were a better movie so it wouldn't be such an easy target.

 

IMDB is a good resource, but a very bad forum. The largely undignified grunts emanating from the bowels of the various threads there seem to come from primarily whiny, disgruntled fanboys and armchair critics who have just recently exited the woodwork. When browsing IMBD, one can consider in detail the grand level of thought put into reactions such as "i hated teh movie! it was the wurst ever! lucas is such an idiet!". I happen to like both AOTC and TPM. According to a great many of the people at IMBD, that makes me "stoopid".

 

No online resource of this kind (tf.n or imdb or aicn) can pretend to have anything close to an unbiased slice of the general public. If a certified Gallup poll of this subject was conducted, THEN I would believe the results.

 

Polls are, by their very nature, flawed. How is it possible to accurately identify the "worst" or "best" in any category. A poll such as this represents the opinion of an amorphous collective, many of whom are unable to be intelligent and completely articulate in their criticism. Understand that I do not take offense to someone disliking (in this case) a film, but am generally frusterated by the seemingly uninformed opinions of a great many people who claim to understand things that they in fact do not.

 

No online resource of this kind (tf.n or imdb or aicn) can pretend to have anything close to an unbiased slice of the general public. If a certified Gallup poll of this subject was conducted, THEN I would believe the results.


your 100% correct. this poll really means nothing, and the results really shouldn't suprise anyone.

 

ESB..ANH..TPM..ROTJ....AOTC..

 

Polls like these are for the jobless. They should earn money the hard way

 

To give an objective answer to the original question: a lot of preconception existed before the release of TPM about the direction the new films would take. For a lot of people, this expectation was not borne out by TPM (young Anakin, Jar Jar, Midichlorians, too much CGI are all common complaints). Previously, RotJ suffered from similar criticism (Ewoks, muppets in Jabba's palace, Luke/Leia siblings etc.). But it now appears that TPM has taken over as the SW film which most failed to live up to expectation (in some fans' opinion of course; to others, the film is fine).

 

Well, just because you vote it as the "worst" film doesn't mean you hate it. I voted ANH, personally, but it's still one of my favorite movies. In the Community forum, people were talking about how they voted TPM simply because of the objective view of how they felt it was less put together than other movies.

*shrugs* Plus, for some reason, it's chic to hate TPM, even for people who haven't seen it.

 

IMDB is a good resource, but a very bad forum. The largely undignified grunts emanating from the bowels of the various threads there seem to come from primarily whiny, disgruntled fanboys and armchair critics who have just recently exited the woodwork. When browsing IMBD, one can consider in detail the grand level of thought put into reactions such as "i hated teh movie! it was the wurst ever! lucas is such an idiet!". I happen to like both AOTC and TPM. According to a great many of the people at IMBD, that makes me "stoopid".


Very true.

If you go through the message boards on IMDB - as well as the Talkback section on AICN - you'll find that a lot of people simply don't understand the prequels. Don't worry, I'm not going to give in to the desire of simply crying "It's the audience's fault!", but I think this is a valid point. They expected them to be just like the originals, and when George Lucas tried to do something different, they didn't get it, and they resented it. They don't like the politics - the politics are central to the story (corruption, greed, death from within - happens to Anakin and the Repuclic. It's called parallels). They don't think it has a strong enough villain - again, intention, the menace in the prequels is supposed to be "phantom" and ambiguous (in a saga when a corrupt Republic falls and a good man turns evil, it's hard to have an openly black-and-white moral structure); they don't like the childishness of TPM, Jar Jar, etc. - they don't understand that without a light-hearted first episode, the darkness in later episodes won't seem as great, and nothing would be lost in the evil that is about to arrive. They don't like the dialogue and the acting - forgetting that the dialogue and acting in the original trilogy wasn't always great, either - but within that SW-Style, the acting and dialogue in the prequels is fine.

I saw something amazing on AICN the other day, on their "Jedi Council" thing they have - they were essentially talking about how they'd have made the prequels, almost telling George how to make his movies better. This is what was there:



Kraken: This is my biggest problem with the prequels, and I am a hardcore lover of the original trilogy. My biggest problem is, if they had done Vader right I could have forgiven Jar Jar, but here?s my rant. Lucas missed a tremendous opportunity with Anakin being a slave. If he had just set it up where Anakin was going from one kind of slavery to another type of slavery as a reason that he changed into Vader. If he hadn?t have set it up where Anakin had this awesome childhood as a slave, if it really showed him having a ****** life as a child slave and him thinking that the Jedi were just sweep down and save him, then realizing that he went right into another type of slavery and saying, ?You?re all slave masters. **** all you guys. I?m gonna cleanse this world.? There are so many missed opportunities that Lucas had.

Mr. Beaks: I think that?s the best description of what this trilogy could have been. That makes sense. You go from one subjugation to another. That?s the arc that these films have been missing because this trilogy doesn?t really have an arc. It?s just been treading water to the point when we get to see Vader.


I must say, this is the biggest load of rubbish I've ever read about the prequels, and it just proves to me that people don't understand what GL has been trying to do, even those on "respected" film websites such as AICN. Anakin is a mythic character - he's intended to be a character who, through his emotions and suffering, is somebody we could relate to. I'm Anakin's age, and I can see a lot of the emotions I feel myself in Anakin (although, of course, I know where to draw the line ) - if Anakin turned to the Dark Side simply because he was a slave and was ****** off at this, I'd find that incredibly boring, since it would have no relevence at all to my life. There'd be no complexity to Anakin's turn. GL's way of doing things is infinitely better - we see Anakin turning to the Dark Side for

 

You can't just blame the people at IMDB. If this poll was conducted just about anywhere (Lucas household excluded) you would find the same results.


P.S. I think TPM is George's favorite of them all.

 

You do not know that. No unbiased professional poll type survey has ever been conducted.

 

I can't believe they're still going on about Anakin's life as a slave: "he was a slave as a boy so he grew up to be mad at the whole universe. Lucas failed at that because Anakin wasn't beaten and starved." Him being a slave was never intended to be an "explanation" for why he falls.

And that crap about how his slave life is too easy -- frankly, I find that offensive, with its air of "slavery is okay if your master doesn't beat you and starve you." Do these people not grasp the central concept of being a slave? No matter how "kind" your master may be to you, you are still considered a non-person. You're property. You can be sold at any time and separated from your family forever. (And what do you know, that's exactly what happened in this case.) Anakin was only 9 and he grasped this -- hence him angrily retorting he's a person when Padmé, meaning no offense, asks, "You're a slave?"

P.S. I think TPM is George's favorite of them all.

I don't think he has a favorite. He talks about all the movies on pretty equal terms.

 

Perhaps it's winning the poll because it's not a very good Star Wars movie? Just a thought.

 

I check out IMdb.com as a reference site. I really don't find their top 25 film list all that much disagreeable; order of the list certainly up for debate.

The list of bad films doesn't appear to be all that objectionable as well.

As for the slave element??? I understand the point of view that a slave is a slave, is a slave. However, it is agreeable to say that the depiction of slavery in Episode I isn't that of Roots.

 

As for the slave element??? I understand the point of view that a slave is a slave, is a slave. However, it is agreeable to say that the depiction of slavery in Episode I isn't that of Roots.

It wasn't supposed to be.

 

I'm not saying it was suppose to be, but rather that it isn't.

However, it's pretty agreeable to say that the depiction of Anakin's slave life was that of C3P0 and R2D2.

 

I'm not saying it was suppose to be, but rather that it isn't.

However, it's pretty agreeable to say that the depiction of Anakin's slave life was that of C3P0 and R2D2.

How do you mean?

 

The concept of slavery you described pretty much fits the plight of C3P0 and R2-D2.

 

Ah, OK. Yeah, pretty much.