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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Saga Why do people hate the prequels?

Discussion in 'Star Wars Saga In-Depth' started by QuiWanKenJin, Aug 5, 2010.

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  1. Heero_Yuy

    Heero_Yuy Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    "The force is strong in my family. My father has it . . . I have it . . . and my sister has it."

    Sounds like genetics to me.
     
  2. Arawn_Fenn

    Arawn_Fenn Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2004
    Wrong. Genetics are already in the picture by TESB and are explicitly the reason for Leia's potential in ROTJ. Those things aren't erased from film history just because the term "midichlorians" wasn't used. If Luke's genetics aren't important then much of the dialogue in TESB is rendered meaningless: every living being in the galaxy has equal capability to destroy the Emperor, and each one of them would have equal value as an asset to the Sith.
     
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  3. EHT

    EHT Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 13, 2007
    TESB:

    EMPEROR: He could destroy us.

    VADER: He's just a boy. Obi-Wan can no longer help him.

    EMPEROR: The Force is strong with him. The son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi.

    VADER: If he could be turned, he would become a powerful ally.

    EMPEROR: Yes. Yes. He would be a great asset. Can it be done?

    VADER: He will join us or die, my master.


    ^ Palpatine fears Luke because he knows the Force potential that Luke inherited from Anakin.

    ROTJ:

    LEIA: Luke, don't talk that way. You have a power I -- I don't understand and could never have.

    LUKE: You're wrong, Leia. You have that power too. In time you'll learn to use it as I have. The Force is strong in my family. My father has it... I have it... and... my sister has it.

     
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  4. apotampkin

    apotampkin Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Aug 15, 2010
    The argument about the PT being not innocent and pure strikes me as weird. Politics aren't innocent and pure, nor are the machinations of the Sith. I'd even go as far as say that innocent and pure is boring (but does give fuzzy feelings, I guess). It probably boils down to personal preferences, but I don't think that amongst the many thing that could be said against the three newer films one should count this 'lack of innocence'.

    This happens to be quite the common complaint. No innocence, no magic. I'll dare to say that maybe it's because you - as in you, general grown up fan of Star Wars - are past the age of being awed by a movie and feel the magic and be 'innocent'. My little twin cousins watched TPM when they were 6, and they were absolutely dazzled by it and to this day they prefer it. Same goes I think for the majority of little boys and girls who have grown up and are growing up with the PT.

    About the Force demystified. I watched the OT first, and I immediately thought that Force sensitivity must have been a genetic thing because of Luke telling Leia that the Force 'runs strong' in his family. That told me that there is some kind of hereditarity involved. To me, being a Jedi was never about being a random chosen one of the Force, or being some ascetic monk capable with self-discipline to tap into the universal energy...I think Lucas was always quite clear that the Force is something that runs in families, like hair color, twins or whatever. TPM only gave it a name.

    Nordom: Your theory of nostalgia does not work. First how about those that started with TPM and did not like it and never saw any more. Or those that did not like TPM very much but got through the rest of the PT and finally the OT and likes the OT better.

    I think you are talking about a definite minority of the SW fandom.

    From what I'm able to see, something like 66% (but it could easily be 75%) of those who grew up with the OT worship it and hate/dislike/are indifferent towards the PT.

    On the other hand, the vast majority (yes, not every single one) of kids my age and younger prefer the PT, while also liking/loving the OT. I think this is not a sign of the inherent higher worth of the OT but just a fact of timing: we, the younger generation of SW fans, have grown up with both trilogies available. We didn't have 15 years to fantasize about what the other trilogy would be, so we didn't have any expectations and of course weren't disappointed. That's a big 'advantage'.

    The fact that so many OTers find the PT a crime against humanity, while so many PTers find it awesome gives me the impression that most people, apart from their investment in the series, will generally like more what they grew up with and that's simply it.

    I'm not trying to invalidate anybody's opinion. I'm just giving my honest interpretation of this incredible vitriol spewed against the PT, most of the time (like, always) by 30+ yrs old guys who, quite probably, found their loving expectations matured in 15 yrs of love for SW crushed by Lucas' vision of his own universe. Now, I'm not saying that the PT doesn't have flaws, because it has, a lot of them: but a) the OT had them too, and that's often overlooked; b) they're not nearly as bad and tragic and goddawful as many fanboys think they are.

    This coming from someone who loves the PT, likes (a lot: my favourite film is ESB) the OT and is totally enjoying the fun ride of the CW.

    As for the ?Lucas raped my childhood? bit, in my experience the people that most often use that line are people who defend the PT, not those that critique it.


    Actually, it looks like it was always used by the kind of dude who then goes whining about Anakin being a whiny bitch and not some kinds of unbelievable badass, Hayden replacing Shaw, the Jedi not being ascetic, all-powerful superheroes, Han shot first, blah blah blah...no wonder PT defenders took it as their sarcastic one-liner against the totally crazed fanboys.
     
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  5. Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon

    Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon Jedi Knight star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 17, 2000
    The "grown-ups are biased in favor of old stuff" argument isn't a particularly good one, considering that children are biased in favor of new stuff to a much greater degree.
     
  6. StampidHD280pro

    StampidHD280pro Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2005
    And just because in Star Wars one needs lots of midichlorians to be a jedi, it doesn't mean that the jedi teachings aren't applicable to everyone.
     
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  7. TOSCHESTATION

    TOSCHESTATION Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 17, 2003
    Me?

    I thought that the OT - or really, ROTJ - was if anything 'establishing' that the 'familial' aspect of the Force was only true of the Skywalker family , and was not necessarily the case with all Jedi who ever existed in SW galactic history.


    Nice hyperbole.


    No, you're not trying to "invalidate anybody's opinion"....you're just psychologizing your rhetorical opponents.

    As for "Lucas' vision of his own universe", it's an ever-changing 'vision' which he also denies* has ever fundamentally changed (*except, maybe very recently).


    Irony, thy name is "apotampkin".
     
  8. BaronLandoCalrissian

    BaronLandoCalrissian Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 14, 2006
    The "blinded by nostalgia" thing is pretty ridiculous. Think of all the 30-somethings who prefer Dark Knight over Batman '89, or Casino Royale over 80s Bonds, or the last Star Trek over most of the earlier ones.

    The only thing more silly is "the story didn't match your expectations", since that describes Empire Strikes Back perfectly.
     
  9. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    QFT!!!
     
  10. apotampkin

    apotampkin Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Aug 15, 2010
    So you were wrong... big deal?

    Semantics.

    Well, I do have a certain liking for psychology :D

    Just kidding, just kidding. If psychologizing is what you call trying to get past the wall of unreasonable hate aimed at the PT even years later by people who complain about its every.single.aspect (hell, even Threepio's characterization), well, I'll continue psychologizing. It's interesting, and I'm not the only one who shares my opinions.

    It's funny, because if there's one thing I've always found everywhere since I'm a SW fun is OTers 'admitting' that Star Wars reminds them of being kids, going woah when the DS explodes, watching Yoda speak weird with their baby brother, cheering for the Rebels and so on. Hanging posters and buying figurines and Ewoks toys. Am I not allowed, and yes, even justified, to infer that 'maybe' part of the PT hate is just not being kids anymore, and part of the OT worship is nostalgia??

    I think I'm allowed to do that, and you're allowed to disagree. There you go.

    And no, I'm not a crazed PT fanboy. Especially because I'm a girl :D I'm just a huge fan of the whole saga, who happens to slightly prefer the PT. And yes, when I see posts by guys who complain about everything in the PT, add a sprinkling of Lucas hate and then maybe bring in the 'my childhood!' emotional argument, that's what I call a crazed fanboy.

    Actually it isn't: http://veryevolved.com/2009/02/neuroscience-and-nostalgia/ (There's even a part about the PT hate)

    I'm sure there are many. Like there are OTers who prefer the PT (whose voices get drowned in a sea of complaints).

    But how many are they? I don't know about Bond and Batman, but the backlash from the fanboys when ST09 came out was huge. 'It destroyed the Gene Roddenberry ethos!', 'It's a Star Wars movie poorly camouflaged!', 'A movie for the ADHD crowd!' and so on. Actually, it reminds me of something...So, I don't actually see fandoms who grew up with the original installments accepting en masse the newest ones against the old, EVEN WHEN the new installments are of superior technical quality (I mean, Star Trek 09 kicked ass). On a vaguely related note, my father, 57 yrs old and big Bond fan, thinks the only Bond films worth seeing are the Sixties's originals. Same for his friends. Narrow-minded? Maybe. Surprising? No.

    IMO, the PT backlash is exponentially bigger because SW is exponentially 'bigger' than Batman, Bond and even ST. Star Wars's input on pop culture is immense, while that can't be totally said of Batman, Bond and ST. Expectations, expectations, I stand by what I said.

     
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  11. Danaan

    Danaan Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 23, 2008
    I'd be prepared to accept that if a convincing case for the PT being sloppy film-making could not be made. But it can - check out the links to Redlettermedia's reviews', post in one of my previous posts. There really are many excellent points raised in there and I, for one, just cannot disregard them - they simply ruin my fun.

    And I know that I'm not the only one going into the theatre, jumping up and down, to finally get to see a new Star Wars movie. There were so many of us who really, really wanted to love these movies. For a while, the spell even held. It wasn't until after the AOTC came out and I left the theatre after my second viewing that I said to myself "wait a minute...this...this really isn't all that good". And I rewatched TPM and had to concede - these were bad movies, in spite of being Star Wars, they just weren't good.

    And that hurt. It wasn't fun at all to come to that realization. I'd just as soon still be under the spell, to be honest.:_|

    So, no, it's not as simple as just having expectations ruined, for me, it's actually a long process of reflecting hard on these movies.
     
  12. Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon

    Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon Jedi Knight star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 17, 2000
     
  13. Nordom

    Nordom Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 1, 2004
    Yes you are trying to invalidate people?s opinion. Because you are saying that the reasons people find flaws with the PT is NOT due to the actual qualities of the film itself but rather that the films failed to live up to some imaginary film in peoples heads.

    1) You never said your ?theory? only concerned SW fandom, you made a blanket statement that those that find the PT less than great are in most cases blinded by nostalgia and thus unable to judge the films fairly. I know lots of people that watched the OT and liked them and yet they are hardly a part of SW fandom.

    2) In science one only needs a few or even one example to disprove a theory.
    So since there are people that did see TPM and disliked it without any OT-nostalgia this makes your theory incorrect. Not to mention many other examples like the Bond films, the ST films where old fans still like and even love the new films.

    Interesting numbers, care to tell us what you base those on?

    Funny, I have the opposite experience; I work with kids and young people and of those that are into SW, which is far from everyone, the biggest group like the OT a lot but the PT less so. They do not hate it by any stretch.

    Crime against humanity??
    First, serious hyperbole here and second neither I nor anyone I know that have things we do not like about the PT come anywhere near this type of reaction.

    So sorry, but you have to accept that there are people that dislike certain things about the PT and they have real reasons for doing so. And you can not dismiss their opinions as simply as ?They are blinded by nostalgia? or ?they are filled with mindless hate against Lucas?.

    Well this might violate the films not the fans rule but I think it deserves an answer.

    In my experience very few of the ?PT Bashers? actually use arguments like this, ?Lucas sux!!!? is not a very common argument around here. Instead what I?ve seen is that some PT defenders label anyone that offers any criticisms against the PT as a ?Lucas hater? and thus they can ignore what they say. In fact SW is one
     
  14. Danaan

    Danaan Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 23, 2008
    Quick elaboration on expectations: I don't mind something unexpected turning up, even a retcon, if it adds interesting depth to the story. The ESB is an excellent example - some people don't like turning Vader into Anakin, I didn't mind it at all, in fact, I think it turns Star Wars from the regular white team vs black team adventure saga, to something much more interesting.

    Very few of the PT retcons do anything like that. So instead of having more depth added, we get needless redundancies that create inconsistencies between the trilogies without adding any storytelling value.

    There are in fact several plot devices and ideas that are really good and interesting contained in the PT. I mean, a Xanatos Gambit can be very compelling, indeed! And I like the idea of the Clones being on the side of the Republic, instead of the enemy in the Clone Wars, which I had expected. But the execution of these ideas leaves much to be wished for and a opportunity for wonderful storytelling was simply lost...

    In my opinon.
     
  15. apotampkin

    apotampkin Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Aug 15, 2010
    Actually, I'm serious. Star Wars's impact on pop culture is in my opinion quantitatively bigger than that of Batman, Bond and Star Trek because Star Wars's (dedicated and casual) fandom is (or has been, I don't know) much bigger than that of those other fandoms. It's simply bigger. Real estimates are hard to get, methinks.

    No, I don't want to invalidate anything. I'll repeat myself: I am suggesting, like countless others have done, that PART of the issue is nostalgia. And yes, expectations.

    As much as I love the PT, I have always been open about the fact that I know it has flaws. Yeah, in TPM I could have done without farting animals and Jar Jar being goofy all the time, in AOTC I could have done without 'I wish I could wish away my feelings', etc. What I'm saying is that they're not nearly as bad as some say; and that a comparison is often made to the OT, which gets hailed intentionally or unintentionally as the Supreme Peak of Film-making (which it is not). What I personally find unlikeable is that some people have a stance where the PT only has flaws. Not true.

    I have not formulated any omnicomprehensive theory. Mine is an observation, if anything - and I have tried to generalize as little as I could. I have not said that the cause of all the whining by every disgruntled fan is nostalgia (which would be what you call a blanket statement). I have said that part of the cause of the whining by disgruntled fans could very well be nostalgia, and I have proceeded to explain why I think so.

    From my experience. 'From what I'm able to see' =/= 'I have conducted experiments to obtain this scientifical data that'. I was only suggesting two thirds or three fourths, which are pretty generical and commonly used percentages for 'moderate to large majority'.

    We have opposite experiences, then. In my group of teens and younger, those who are into SW (not many, in Italy SW is far smaller than elsewhere I guess) prefer the PT and love the OT. I don't know what your point is, but anyway.

    I don't know what to say. A hyperbole is just a rhetorical device which is not meant to be taken literally. It was meant to be sarcastic, and not even that subtly. I don't know, I don't know. Blame it on the endemic Italian love for hyperboles.

    Er, I don't have any trouble accepting that, because - gonna repeat myself again - I have never believed that the only problem resides in nostalgia, but that quite possibly the problem has been exagerrated to hyperbolic heights by nostalgia. I know the PT has flaws, and there are things I don't like, see above. I find many complaints to be legitimate, or at least understandable in light of 'everything is relative'. But I also think that legitimate complaints can be done on every single piece of art. Mostly I guess what irritates me a
     
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  16. StampidHD280pro

    StampidHD280pro Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2005
    One of my favorite statements I frequently hear about the PT is that "They aren't good films." As if there's a definitive criteria for what makes a film good. If there is, I'm glad I don't know about it. When it comes to things like entertainment and art, I like having opinions more than facts.

    Also, since I'm fond of analogies:
    Its like the OT is a pair of jeans, and we've had em for a long time and they're comfortable and we know what they're good for. Then along comes the T-shirt and some people are still wondering why it fits funny and there's a big hole in the crotch.
     
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  17. Heero_Yuy

    Heero_Yuy Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    So, you don't actually have any proof then. Thanks for letting us know.


    Of course expectations played a good part. I expected a good series of movies when I went in to see the PT.


    Of course the PT has its good parts. No one here has said otherwise. The problem lies in the fact that the PT's flaws are so numerous that they lead to an extremely shaky whole. The OT has issues, but they don't ruin the solid foundation that makes up its whole. Get it now?


    And I think everyone who claims to love the PT are simply kidding themselves and get past the fact that their God-King Lucas could possibly make anything less than a masterpiece.

    See how well that works? :rolleyes:

    From my experience. 'From what I'm able to see' =/= 'I have conducted experiments to obtain this scientifical data that'. I was only suggesting two thirds or three fourths, which are pretty generical and commonly used percentages for 'moderate to large majority'.


    It will be really interesting to see how they feel about SW in a decade. Let's see how well Jar Jar's antics or the acting or flimsy story have aged for them, huh?
     
  18. Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon

    Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon Jedi Knight star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 17, 2000
    It's more like the OT is a pair of khaki pants and the PT is a pale pastel yellow polo shirt. Sure, technically they combine to make an outfit, but damn do they clash.;)
     
  19. StampidHD280pro

    StampidHD280pro Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2005
    It keeps me warm. :D Besides, I wouldn't be ashamed wear that outfit.
     
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  20. apotampkin

    apotampkin Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Aug 15, 2010
    Heero_Yuy,

    no, I don't have proof. These kind of things are inestimable. You cannot say with certainty 'Bond has had more of an impact on pop culture than Batman'. So, the only method is empirical evidence. Although I know the burden of proof relies on who makes a statement, I don't care enough to go looking for polls or stuff.

    And I think everyone who claims to love the PT are simply kidding themselves and get past the fact that their God-King Lucas could possibly make anything less than a masterpiece.

    See how well that works? :rolleyes:


    This is a blanket statement. I did not make one. If you said 'I think that some of those who claim to love the PT are simply kidding themselves etc' and then explain why I could agree. I'm here to give my opinion and defend it, so if that's yours...er, great?


    It will be really interesting to see how they feel about SW in a decade. Let's see how well Jar Jar's antics or the acting or flimsy story have aged for them, huh?


    Time will be the judge, I guess.

    Oh and keep up with the attitude, it's just glorious [face_peace]

     
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  21. DarthWuher

    DarthWuher Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    Aug 15, 2010
    Unfortuantely the prequel trilogy's "legacy" will forever be how it caused fans to argue how good/bad the movies really are.

    I mean in 20 years what are the majority of people going to remember MOST about Phantom Menace? Not the movie itself, of course, but how much Jar Jar was hated.

     
  22. Go-Mer-Tonic

    Go-Mer-Tonic Jedi Youngling star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 1999
    I will remember how awesome it was myself.
     
  23. DarthWuher

    DarthWuher Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    Aug 15, 2010
    Go-Mer-Tonic
    I like that quote in your signature.
     
  24. Gary_Buchenara

    Gary_Buchenara Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Apr 29, 2009

    Excellent.

    It's also pretty arbitrary and I'd say inaccurate to try and lump all SW fans into two camps.
     
  25. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    I wanna be in the Sith camp! [face_skull]
     
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