PT Why Are The PT Films criticized? (catch-all thread)

No, simply examples of the term apologists used in a negative way. Still doesn't change the reality, that the word apologist is used by many without negative connotations. It was explained to you and others that it was not meant in a derogatory way, so what's the point of all this, other than to make a new member feel unwelcome in this forum?

 

I was being non-subtle; I already tried things the other way. Broadly regarded, Mike did bring facts, since the cumulative effect of all those examples he gathered is good evidence for what he said: that, in the online/prequel world, the term "apologist" has snide, shrill, and dismissive connotations.

That a person, when confronted on it, would continue to insist otherwise, and even accuse people of twisting things, even after presenting dictionary definitions, is quite something, IMO. Prequel fans learned long ago that some people, despite saying they prefer civility and respect, have a hard time manifesting any; especially when they like to lay claim to particular words with particular meanings and implications. They're told flat-out that prequel fans dislike a word and shown good evidence as to why; and they still insist on using it. Remarkable.

 

Every movie? Really?

 

Perhaps, but like I said before the terms hater and basher are widely used by many members in this forum, and not just to describe extreme views. It seems odd to object to one term, whilst embracing other terms, that are equally sniding and dismissive, and have only negative connotations.

 

Well, maybe. But I'm reflecting the words straight back at a person who says they value civility; yet gives their tacit support to a post which starts off by implying prequel fans are dense/blind, and who sees no problem, even after confronted on it, in using the term "apologist" on a PT forum. I've used hater, basher, detractor before; and I don't especially mind being called a gusher or defender under certain circumstances. But "apologist" has a particularly negative, unseemly slant, in my opinion, and is best not used. In any case, a humble person would surely think twice, in my opinion, after being called on it. But whatever. This was never a riveting sidebar to begin with.

 

well maybe except for Keith David and Roddy Piper in They Live.....that looked like a legit fight.

 

I suppose any of us should refrain from using derogatory generalisations against any group.

On a more positive note, I've found that I'm appreciating TPM more and more, and it's actually my favourite prequel. I actually prefer it to RO. I consider it the most beautiful of all the Star Wars films.

 

Ugh, stuff like this is why I hate the Internet. Especially like the former (I'll be honest, I couldn't be bothered to read through the latter, and neither do I feel I should).

 

Fair enough, fair enough! Yeah, I think TPM, like all the prequels, and all the Lucas/Saga films, just grows on you in time; or it has me. I think some people -- maybe a lot of people -- found it a bit cold and weird at the time (maybe not unlike Queen Amidala herself), but they see more of its charms, or are willing to look at it a bit more fondly, as time passes. Compared to the sort of films being made today, it looks, feels, and, in a way, sounds, very colourful, fantastical, and romantic, in my opinion. I'd say it definitely has a mad whimsy and innocence that R1 terribly lacks. I'm not a huge fan of that film, one viewing in, and prefer all the other SW movies to it; including TFA. Arguably, one of the key ingredients to the "saga" films (not that R1 had to follow the same path; but it maybe speaks to the beauty of the underlying formula and the problems with deviating from it) is that they're all about (and I changed my signature to reflect this the other day) "a boy, a girl, and a universe". Each trilogy runs with the concept a different way; but, in all cases, there is a certain charm there, and a joy to watching the template unfold. R1, in comparison, felt very mechanical and ersatz to me.

 

No, thank you.

 

Liker, disliker.
Lover, hater.

...............

Apologist.


It's not a term that really fits anywhere. It's shrill, seedy, and needless, in my opinion.

Oh, and I'd prefer not take etiquette lessons from a person of questionable origin, freely throwing out insults, either.

 

Well, I feel a bit better, today.

 

Only partially surely?

I presume that like me you think the OT is great?

I also think the PT is great. R1 is very good and TFA is good entertainment (though I wish it was more than just a retro reminder of the saga)

So unlike many I have talked to both on-line and in person (some of which are not sold on anything past the OT or even ANH and TESB) I fortunately can watch all 8 of the movies.

Impossible? Yes but I really think that as we have seen with both TFA and R1 that there is some Star Wars based knock-off effect that they went that much further to make the lead characters "likeable" in a way that is a bit more than just the usual Hollywood way and even Hollywood based on Star Wars.

The particular attention that Rey and Finn got to be "likeable" is really pretty amazing considering what passed for Star Wars likeability with the OT crew of Luke, Leia and Han which is apparently not likeable enough.

Luke is too annoying, Leia too bossy and Han too cocky. So in regards to different times and tastes re HC and JD the same applies also to those actors.

When they thought that there was too much they had to go the "Care Bears" route. This really is amazing to me:

https://www.inverse.com/article/23439-the-force-awakens-rey-finn-friendship

Abrams reshot almost all of Finn and Rey’s first encounter, as well as their banter on the Millennium Falcon, to make the two characters friendlier toward each other.

In the earlier version, Rey was going to act cold and distant to Finn. However, Abrams said they soon realized that the two actors had a strong chemistry that was better served by more playful banter. Plus, it made more sense to give Rey’s character hope early on, despite all the horrible things she had been through. That way, when Finn lied to her about being a fighter in the rebellion, she immediately trusted him and wanted to help.

Personally the original version sounds far better to me because it fits the character's background. In the end product having someone who is so super-friendly have no friends doesn't make any much sense. Let's not even go there with Finn who really makes little to no sense at all as a character or person who could possibly spend his entire life in the First Order machine.

Which they did hence their great and ongoing success with the larger audience. These obviously are not the fraction of the audience that we here are representative of.

This goes back to the basic idea that Anakin should be Luke but then only make one major wrong decision that leads to him becoming Vader as opposed to a character arc in all 3 PT movies (and six movies overall).

Anakin clearly is not fashioned to be "likeable" in that sense and the "likeable" hero Anakin is not the focus of the movies.

 

I disagree and I think you oversimplify and generalize too much.
First, Anakin's character arc. My problem with that is much of that character growth happened off-screen. Between Ep I and II, Anakin changes so much that he seems like a totally different character.

Second, there are way more options that just make Anakin like Luke.
A person can be likable and still have flaws.
Take Tony Stark at the start of Iron Man. He is likable, charming and yet he has flaws a plenty.

Take Loki in Thor 1 and 2. He is likable despite being a sort of villain and that do bad things.
In the first film we see that he is jealous of Thor and when he finds out he is a Frost Giant, things crash down for him.
In the second film we see that he does love his mother and that her death had an effect on him.
Much of this comes from the actor, he is able to play this villainous character and yet give him charm and humor so that audience likes him.
Personally I think Loki works better in the Thor films than in the first Avengers where he is just more a bad guy.

Other examples, Londo Mollari in Babylon 5. First season he is very likable, funny, charming.
Yet in season two he does more and more dark things. Some very terrible and he has a turn to the dark side of sorts. And yet he remained likable.
Take the opposite, G'Kar. He started out as the villain, the bad guy and yet turned to a very spiritual person.

Or take Garak in DS9, he had a past as spy, assassin and torturer and had done a lot of bad stuff and did bad stuff. He tortured Odo for one.
Yet the character was still likable.

Last example, Lex in Smallville. I liked him and yet the character had flaws and dark sides to him and he became darker and darker.
I knew how it would end since I knew Superman. But it worked in that I wanted the two to get along, that Lex didn't have to become a villain.
The series lost focus after a while but the first couple of season were quite nice.

The fall of Anakin is supposed to be tragic but for a tragedy to work, the audience has to care and be invested in the person in the tragedy. If the audience don't care about Anakin and dislike him or find a jerk then his fate isn't tragic. It is met with a shrug, "oh well that happened, wondered why it took so long."

In closing, making a character "likable" doesn't mean, make him a 100% good guy with no flaws at all. It just means that the character has sides that is appealing to the audience, that they want to keep watching. That they are invested and care about the character.
If the character is instead grating and annoying to the point that the audience wants him to go away and not be onscreen, then this is a problem.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Sorry -- where is your humility when you make statements like those above? You start your critical monograph off by saying "my problem"; but the "i/my" factor quickly disappears after that. In fact, "i/my" seems to have mutated by the end of your post into "the audience". There's barely any first-person perspective; it's almost all written as if you were writing from a third-person/objective viewpoint and giving stubborn, sheltered prequels fans a lesson in filmmaking mechanics while you're at it.

But, see, if you're constantly going to go that route, then someone can throw back box-office takings, plus cable television viewing figures, plus DVD and Blu-ray sales figures; and the fact that these films are always being talked about and obsessed over; which at least suggests they hold a decent appeal. So please don't make prequel fans swallow this theoretical "audience" poodoo like it is iron fact; especially when you seem to be using it as a wedge to drive your opinions home and surreptitiously inflate what you're saying into some kind of unbreakable standard.

You may not care for the characters.
You may not have gotten into the story.
You might not believe in the filmmaking.

But that doesn't mean everyone shares your tastes and views.

 

This is simply not true and is just a gross over-generalization by yourself because that's what you want to see in a character, and IMHO, a way for you to find fault with the character of Anakin.

A character doesn't have to be liked by the audience for them to be a tragic character or for their tragedy to be heartfelt by the audience...

Best example that comes to my mind from recent movies is Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He was the bad guy for most of his time in the movies. He was un-liked by the audience because he was an angry, mean and murderous individual. However, his story turns and we find his story is more of a tragic one. He was at one time a decent person, but, had his heart broken by a woman, and thus he allows his own pain and hatred to turn him into the monster we see him as. That is tragic and that is a tragedy, and in my opinion it worked. The audience didn't need to like Davy Jones from the start for us to understand the tragedy that befell a one time good man that allows himself to be consumed by anger and hate and pain.

The bottom line is that there are a litany of characteristics that make a tragedy, or make a character tragic, and it is not written in stone that one of those characteristics has to be that the audience has to like the character in order for the tragedy to work.

Edit: The character can certainly have qualities that are not likable, and still be a tragic character or the story of the character be a tragedy.

 

Luke also goes through transformation offscreen between films, just like Anakin, between ESB and ROTJ.

In ESB, Luke is still young and impulsive, while when he appears in ROTJ he's completely different, calm, sophisticated, in full control of the force. Yoda even says that his training is complete, despite saying that Luke "must complete the training" before leaving for Bespin. All this offscreen.

Anakin's changes are easier to explain. He's gone from being a child slave, to becoming part of a monastic order, with mutual resent with Obi-Wan after the death of Qui-Gon, the suppression of Anakin's attachments, and his fears for his mother.

 

To me, that's the whole point. We don't need to see that transition between TPM and AOTC because we all, every single one of us have lived that transition! The transition from oblivious and idealistic child to an adult that now has to operate in the real world. If anyone can't understand that character transition without their own life experiences as the basis, than there is nothing Lucas could have done to show people.

One of the fundamental parts of Anakin's character is that he is us. We are capable of the same things that Anakin shows. The anger, the jealousy, the greed, the lust for power etc etc etc...

 

This really doesn't change the reality, that many people were turned of by the way the character of Anakin was presented in AOTC, and failed to connect with the character. I would interpret Samuel Vimes broader point as saying an audience has to form a connection with the character in order for a character to be tragic to someone. Liking doesn't mean you need to get all warm and fuzzy about a character. Darth Vader isn't likeable in the sense that he's sympathetic, but audiences were invested in the character, and therefore liked the character of Darth Vader. Many people simply weren't invested in the character of Anakin for a litany of reasons. Whatever the reason the fact that they weren't invested in the character made his fall to the dark side less than tragic to them. It's not enough that a character is tragic on paper. You have to feel something about the character's fate. If the character turns you off, that's going to be very hard.

 

Outstanding posts -- the two of you.

To add to, or sum up, what mikeximus said:

Likeability and a character being compelling (or not) are not necessarily synonymous concepts. There may be a vague accord between the two (one perhaps has to feel something for a character to like them; and one also perhaps has to like a character on some level in order to find them compelling), but they share more of a fuzzy border than their being two entities joined at the hip. And, as Mike illustrated by way of example, a character might actually be mean and fairly repugnant in some regards, yet one is still able to feel a measure of sympathy or pity for them. Well, relatively/subjectively speaking, of course.

Furthermore, for all of Anakin's foibles and failings, I don't especially see him as mean or repugnant; though he commits a set of foul, murderous deeds, and isn't exactly -- so to speak -- the life and soul of the party. Rather, to me, he is a fairly isolated and lonely character; and, in a way, uniquely afflicted, in my opinion, with deepening doubt, confusion, anguish, and the proper makings of a conscience. I've always found the "Sidious Revealed" scene rather perverse just for that line of Palpatine's: "Ever since I've known you, you've been searching for a life greater than that of an ordinary Jedi. A life of significance, of conscience." There is the devil showing some sympathy for his prey; albeit in something of a twisted fashion. But I also think that, yes, it describes Anakin quite well. Even with all of Anakin's character flaws, there are much less palatable movie characters out there, in my opinion. I believe in his struggle. I believe in his taints. I believe in Anakin.

And darkspine10, to also add on, a little, to what you said:

I find the "gap-driven", elliptical nature of the prequel storyline, and Star Wars as a whole, one of the more fascinating things about it. There are these sudden jolts and jumps in time and mood and meaning. I feel that the discrete, segmented, broken-up construction of the saga -- no matter the order one watches it in -- is something that adds a lot of depth to the whole experience; and forces the viewer, a little bit, to stay on their toes. It's also a very filmic thing in general, in my opinion. Film is a very strange medium because it works a bit more like the human brain than any other artform ever devised or found; film being highly visual, abstract, full of temporal spikes and shifts, and seemingly very structured and capacious, but only ever conveying a snapshot of the world, or an impression of something, at any given moment; in part or in whole. And Star Wars/Lucas gets that, in my opinion.

 

But now, The Last Jedi is going to pick up right where TFA left off! Good, now we won't have to think about what happened between the two films, god forbid.

Often times, the most powerful moments in music are the moments of rest, the silences.

Some of the most interesting and fun conversations I've had with other SW fans have been in regards to what must've happened between the films.

 

Yes. Of course, John Cage took this to a bit of an extreme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4′33″

And yet also, as Robert Fripp once said:

"Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence."

Or to quote John Keats:

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."

Silence is a haunting quality in itself. In religious terms, it is sometimes the highest expression of the divine presence; or a kind an encounter one has when surrendering/losing oneself before The Great Mystery.

"2001" really gets at that in places. You can almost feel the great churning nothing, the frozen chastity of the universal, as you let it play out; let its ponderous dynamic pour in and overtake you.

Star Wars' treatment of silence, and of interlude, and intermission, is also really something quite special, in my opinion. There may be a lot of physics-violating sound in its space scenes, but there are plenty of angelic, meditative "spaces" elsewhere in the saga, too.

Oh, yes. Of course, that also goes to the fact that the story occurs in condensed expanses; concentrated clumps and corpuscles. Little factories and cells. Each movie is a fenced-in thing. Each a microcosm of invention unto itself. The gaps allow each film to breathe a little -- to vent their excesses and to play as climactic overture to the next. One might want to picture the episodes and their narratives as a set of punctuation marks; or broken-up sentence fragments in a larger paragraph of meaning.

And Lucasfilm exploited some of those gaps between the fragments quite well. Such as the big push behind "Shadows Of The Empire", which tells a story that occurs in the interesting story space between TESB and ROTJ. And oddly sounds more appropriate as an episode subtitle than, well... let's leave it there. Wookiepedia calls it an "interquel" and notes (or suggests) that it "paved the way" for both the Special Editions and the prequel trilogy: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Shadows_of_the_Empire

But mostly, I think, you're getting snatches, or swatches, of a much larger story in each episode; made up of those spare parts. Think of Grievous' arms splitting. He only really "comes alive" when he pulls his arms apart and creates gaps between them. That is him at his finest, his most dramatic, his most sensational.

 

If there is something that I remember clearly from my first viewing of ROTS to the cinema is that I was totally invested in the character of Anakin, at the point that during the vision more than one time I wished to see the character make the right choice and see through the lies of Sidious or the care of Obi-Wan and Padmé, even if I knew that this was impossible because the story had to end in a such tragic way for connecting with the OT (this feeling was increased even more considering how Lucas made Anakin not at all oblivious of his "bad" thoughts or actions pre and after conversion to the dark side of the Force, a choice that I truly appreciated).

Of course this is just my case, I want only say that generalizations are always wrong. It's perfectly possibile - or less - to care for the character of Anakin as showned in Lucas' prequel trilogy.