PT Would Star Wars be a "Dead Franchise" Had Lucas not made the PT?

The problem with internet culture is, that it's polarizing. You either have to love a film or hate it. There's no middle ground, and no nuance. You either say Lucas is the greatest genius ever, or you say he's the greatest hack in the universe. It's really sad....

 

Well, once again just a parenthesis here, what I find the most frightening is that this culture within the internet has also catched up our real world and how people behave. I don't want to open a flame war here and it's also out of topic, but the recent US presidential is a great example of that...

 

Really good point. Yes, you can say the reviews were mixed, BUT ... the negative views went over the top and were exponentially louder than any positive reviews. And the positive reviews started out as more of an apology, whereas the negative reviews were dripping with self-righteousness.

And, getting to your point, they weren't reviewing a movie. They were reviewing a person. Much of it is we build people up and the moment they achieve universally accepted greatness, there has to be some contrarian that starts out with "Well. They aren't *that* great." A defense mechanism of sorts. First, they take the praise too literally. That this person or thing is flawless. Great ≠ Flawless. But people associate it with flawless, and it makes some feel less than.

Then that initial insecure hole poked builds into the offing of Caesar. We move into the "they were great, but not anymore" phase. Then into the "they were great, but it was literally one thing. One moment in time." Until we finally achieve "they were actually never great. In fact, they were a hack that was carried by others."

Because I clicked on the Red Letter Media video here, now YouTube keeps putting up other RLM videos in my recommended queue. So I clicked on one where they discuss The People v. George Lucas. The maker of that is a guest and he is more in the Lucas was great, but he's lost in category. The main RLM guy (Plinkett?) says something like "Lucas was the luckiest hack in Hollywood. He's the Ringo Starr." And that summed up why I despise RLM so much. He's not an insightful movie critic. He's a jealous, insecure a-hole. And we essentially have him to thank for the overreaction to Lucas as a lucky hack.

For reference, my view has been for quite some time that Lucas is a great visionary, big picture type of guy. But, like C-3PO claimed, not a great storyteller. The actual story narration that is. I'm really bummed that Disney could not capitalize on Lucas as the inspiration source with others carrying out his broad vision. Screenwriters, Directors, down the line taking his raw gem and cutting, refining and polishing it to give the fans the best Star Wars possible. I don't want an overreaction to the overreaction where Disney turns a movie back to Lucas as the writer/director.

In some ways, I see this thread as one of those polarizing moments where we have a division of OT v. PT with obvious overreactions such as SW would just be another Adventures in Babysitting movie lost in the $0.99 bin of Wal-Mart had the PT not saved it. There is no reason to put one era over the other beyond your own enjoyment level.

</end preachy rant>

 

Plinkett is also a fictional character and a parody, but the actual person who plays him an't much fun ether...

 

Yeah. I know that. I just don't know the real dude's name. I only know Rich Evans' name because he's practically a meme. And his constant cackling is annoying and forced. If it isn't forced, then he's (as the Plinkett dude says of Lucas) a simpleton.

Honestly, I don't really think about RLM that often. The only reason they stand out and enter my mind is because of the lazy PT haters goto when asked why they don't like the PT is "go watch the RLM videos", instead of proving they have their own thoughts. I watched them. I found them more flawed than the flaws they are pointing out. And it is really easy if somebody doesn't just repeat what they say. I gave an example in the Rogue One thread on Plinkett's first R1 review. It was easy to prove he was cherry picking to support a review he had clearly made in his head prior to even watching the film.

Seeing him not only claim that Lucas didn't just "lose it" but never had it essentially made him the Emperor Palpatine of the SW hate fanatic club. He exposed his bias upfront. His mission is clearly to lower the public's opinion of Lucas so much as to destroy his legacy at all levels.

 

Pre Special edition i was a huge Trekkie. Loved Star Wars, and anything epic, scifi, fantasy , but Trek was my Love.

When the Special Edition came out i switched pretty quick and star wars became my main jam. I still love Trek, but the thing i obsessed over was Star Wars. It was cemented when The Prequels came out. Suddenly the universe was huge, new, and the Jedi were back. With out prequels for me personally it'd be a thing i liked in the 90's, and i think for the franchise in general it would be something akin to Back to the future, Terminator. We only had 3 movies before 1999. Now we have 8 movies, and two great cartoon series. Star Wars is what it is today because the prequels breathed life back into it. and in a similar vain because TFA and R1 are doing it again today.

 

Unfortunately the PT will carry the criticism so long as the current generations keep beating the dead horse.

I find that when viewed with fresh eyes people are favorable towards the PT. I've seen two "blind" star wars watchers praise the PT. It's not about liking the PT or the OT over one another. It's about enjoying the films for what they are, together they are a beautiful puzzle.

I think newer generations will be more favorable about the PT, but the jokes and snide remarks will be there possible forever. Sad and morbid but I expect people to "praise" GL when he passes.....

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The biggest thing is that without the PT, I wouldn't have found this wonderful forum to be with my fellow star wars fans!

 

Newer viewers who had seen the PT before the OT, as myself, and future ones don't, or won't have a biased view regarding the franchise and a definition about "what it should be". Same thing with future Star Wars movies. But that depends on each viewer since none form a monolithic bloc...

For example, regarding both The Force Awakens and Rogue One I generally had favorable views towards both movies even if I was introduced to Star Wars with both the PT and the OT, and even if I judge that Rogue One is superior, more imaginative and ambitious than The Force Awakens. Some who grew up with both the OT and the PT had less favorable views towards those two recent entries...

But as I said, what really bothered and saddened me is the aggressiveness and the meanness with which people have attacked the movies and the man who simply made movies he wanted to make...

 

It pretty much would be, yeah...

 

I think SW wouldn't be a franchise today without the PT. For all its faults, the PT kept SW storytelling in the public consciousness for a decade after the Star Wars Special Editions.

It also led directly to the Clone Wars cartoon.

We wouldn't be where we are today without it.

I'm glad they were made.

 

^ That is the complete truth.

 

I think it would still be strong for fans. Look at all the book/video games/toys they did in the 90's before the prequels came out. Part of that was due to the special editions but those were not till '97, so it had already been started.

However for casual fans it would still be cool movies you watch now and then, and maybe you do the occasional video game or book, but that's it. Probably would still be seen as super geeky and uncool to be so in love with a film series from the late 70's/early 80's.

So to answer the main question. Not quite dead, but definitely way less life then it got because of the PT.

 

It would still have come back at some point, but there would've been a far longer gap like with Indiana Jones. As mixed of a response as the PT got, it accomplished the goal of keeping SW in the public consciousness and talking about it, as well as reaching a new generation of fans that might not have been otherwise.

 

We still had to get the PT 'out of the way' before the franchise could expand beyond ROTJ.

 

I was in the demographic hit hardest by the prequel-mania (school kid), so it's tough to say, since that's all I've known. The home videos were still hot from the Special Edition re-releases.

The Force Awakens as huge, but I don't see it being as big had the void not been filled by the prequels. The wait time in between trilogies has a lot to do with the hype and demand. The way I see it, the Phantom Menace was at the absolute peak after not seeing a Star Wars film for roughly 16 years. Had it gone further beyond two decades, it may have missed some of the appeal for a newer audience and be seen more as a nostalgia trip. Though we also shouldn't underestimate the power Star Wars has to rope in new fans.

 

Hard to say, but the PT certainly made SW more relevant.

 

In some instances it is very bizarre and why this hatred burns bright for them after so many years is a whole other thing.

Obviously there are quite a few critics who are huge fans and when they didn't get what they wanted (whatever that was exactly) they didn't so much review the movies as how Lucas "failed" them.

Part of it has to be from the SE's when Lucas "deprived" them of the original movies. They can't see to understand that Lucas can't have the same view of them as they do. Being the creator he knows all the tricks and shortcuts he used especially on ANH. He can't view it in the way those people do. They think it's some kind of cinematic perfection while he knows the reality.

I find it hard to fathom that being a fan of the OT and everything that SW represents in terms of creativity and pushing forward in visual story, characters, technology etc that they would find TFA to be what they really want but for many it is.

Entertaining movie? Sure but to place it on the same scale of creativity as I-VI?

Here is a typical sentiment:

http://thesocialman.com/the-force-awakens/


Between 1999 and 2005, however, a now infamous prequel trilogy set the genre back. Subpar acting performances and absurd characters (e.g. Jar Jar Binks) were thoroughly disappointing and forgettable by virtually any metric. Needless to say, Abrams is unlikely to repeat such mistakes with the darker, grittier The Force Awakens.

The next three films promise to be what fans have long been waiting for—a serious, modern set of films that were principally made for an adult viewing audience. That doesn’t mean the next three movies will be filled with raunch and F-bombs, but it almost certainly does mean we’ve moved passed the prequel trilogy’s fascination with CGI cartoon characters and embarrassingly poor dialogue.

An epic of this scale deserves nothing less. Star Wars isn’t just about entertainment. It’s about philosophy, good and evil and a whole range of archetypal themes that play out in galactic terms. Taking on that kind of film making is a responsibility, and Abrams has yet to let us down just yet. His decision to embark upon the newest trilogy may not be as heroic as Luke Skywalker’s famed antics. It may not save the universe. But it certainly seems to have saved the Star Wars universe, and not a moment too late.
Something had to get the prequels’ taste out of our mouths. The internet has been replete with criticism and outrage. As IGN’s Robbie Boland put it in 2013, “Star Wars Episodes I-III are a veritable treasure trove of poor decision-making.”

Reading articles like this one and others are as I said simply bizarre. They just hate the movies and everything in them. They could just as easily say the same things about the OT or TFA but they decide not to.

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/04/15/the-9-dumbest-decisions-in-the-star-wars-prequels

The reason this is the worst decision in all three prequels? Anakin could have easily just stepped off the lavabot onto the bottom of the hill and kept fighting.
(To be fair though, that fight scene had gone on for about half an hour too long by that point, so maybe he just wanted it to be over already. Y'know, like the rest of us.)

It's just unreasoning disgust that has them warp even the most basic realities of what actually happens in the movies never mind the ridiculous stories about the easy to find out production of the movie itself.

This personal hatred for someone they don't even know and who they have decided they want to take every scrap of credit away from for creating their all-time favorite entertainment because of whatever it actually is they think he did to them is mystifying to me.

For many though I think that the SE's has to be the root start:

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a34776/star-wars-in-defense-of-george-lucas-prequels/

Praise Star Wars '77, sure, but acknowledge that adding stones in front of R2-D2 in that one Tatooine scene was on par with smearing red paint across the Mona Lisa.

 

Out of topic here, but I have to say that it's with this kind of "misinformation", if I could call it this way, or negative message on the internet, or in the media in general, that you get a populist and demagogue running one of the most powerful nations on earth these days, and a rise of extremism and self-confinement in other western countries as in Europe...

Sorry for being cynical, but I can't help but to link this kind of behavior to what we are currently seeing in our political world...

 

We'll never know what would have happened if there was no PT. But in light of Hollywoods trend over the last few years to remake, reboot, make sequels etc then it wouldn't have surprised me if they had resurrected Star Wars again at some point. The universe and characters established in the originals are too good to leave on a shelf.

 

To add to that,

Even if Lucas didn't want to do the PT, the 1997 re-release might still have happened.
It was the 20th anniversary of the first film so if Fox wanted to do a re-release to celebrate that, why would Lucas stop them?
I've read somewhere that Fox did suggest this and this was part of the reason why the SE came about but I am not sure.

Here, there would not be any SE but just the OOT in cinemas again.
How well would it do?
Star Wars (ANH) made almost 140 M$ and was in the top ten for that year.
Even if no SE, I think it would have done very well.
Perhaps not that much but enough to make people interested in SW again.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Pretty sure I remember someone, maybe Lucas, saying in an interview fox wanted to do the 20th anniversary release and so he took the chance to add to it at the same time.

 

Maybe the real answer is the SE upped the longevity of Star Wars.

 

The

TFA was darker and more mature and gritty? I think I just vomited from laughter.

 

I honestly think Star Wars would've been a respected trilogy with a cult following, like Indiana Jones, and with video games and the like keeping the brand alive. But the prequels and TV shows really sent things into the stratosphere.

 

It had emo. And as everybody knows, emo is associated with maturity.

On a serious note, I was actually expecting just this from TFA. And the opening scene with the stormtrooper dying with actual red blood, I recall vividly getting excited watching it. I thought it was the opening move in that exact direction. Then it didn't go anywhere from there. Scratch that, Finn was killed with a severing of the spine. Back on track. Then we found out it was just a flesh wound.

Will Han come back, saved by cybernetic tech?