PT Kevin Smith no longer likes the prequels?

I've never seen it taken out of context. We all know she didn't comment directly about her thoughts on the movies. However her performance is an important element within them.

Sort of. She's saying something bad about her performance, or at least about people's perception of it within the film industry. She goes as far to say TPM temporarily damaged her career. "I was in the biggest movie of the decade & no director wanted to work with me". So it's true her comments aren't about the quality of the movie, but it doesn't exactly paint a flattering picture. Anyway I don't get why she copped criticism from fans at the time for this. She's just telling us what happened in terms of her career. Not her fault that some directors didn't think much of her PT acting.

 

Oh please. You took one sentence out of context and ran with it. The source link is right there. She didn't say anything about the movies, her performance or anything else.

It's just disgusting the mudflinging that goes on in this fandom to fanwank any stray comment to mean something they don't.

 

Hey?? She said what she said. That other people, particularly directors thought she was "horrible" in TPM & that for a time no one would hire her. It's there in the interview. But okay, give us your non fanwank version. If she didn't mean that then what did she mean?

 

Don't know much about him but Kevin Smith seems to always be in a highly emotional state about this and that - Don't think he's quite as bad as ***** P*** who apparently breaks down and cries at a film trailer and then spends over a decade and a half ranting and raving about the actual movie - But yeah.... For a middle aged man Kevin seems a little "erratic" with his emotions and opinions!

Still he's got himself some attention from "geekdom" so job done I guess.

 

She said, exactly, "Star Wars had come out around the time of Seagull, and everyone thought I was a horrible actress. I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me." Then she goes on to say that actually, someone did believe in her and put her in contact with people that then cast her.

She didn't say "Star Wars sucked so much no one would work with me."

I mean, this taking small bits, wildly extrapolating them and using them against a film series that happened 10-15 years ago is just so tired.

 

You just found a different way of saying the exact same thing that I said. That industry opinion of her performance in TPM temporarily prevented her from finding work. No one suggested she said "Star Wars sucked so much no one would work for me." - which wouldn't make sense anyway. Why invent something that no one even suggested?

 

No, there is no indication that there was "industry opinion" or anything else. It's one person's opinion of a very brief period of time that you are wildly taking out of context to bash a 15 year old movie series. Maybe she felt she didn't do her best? Maybe she didn't get a couple of roles she wanted and took some bad reviews to heart? Who the hell knows, because you are basing the idea that Natalie Portman bashed the sequels based on one cherrypicked sentence.

Also, I made a typo that I corrected above.

 

She said "everyone" thought she was a terrible actress after TPM. That "no director" wanted to work with her after the movie until Nichols. That's not cherrypicking, those are her words. What's the difference between cherrypicking & simply posting someone's comments?
Her explanation of the situation back then is clear. It's also not a big deal. Not sure why you're so determined to spin them into something else or downplay them. All she said was that directors & industry folk thought she was bad in TPM. No one's saying she "bashed the prequels". It was however one in a long list of comments from actors that cast the movies in a bad light. In this case though I agree that she's not offering a negative personal opinion about them. So this is different to all of the others.

 

*bites fist*

I said my last post was my final post on the matter of Kevin Smith's remarks.

And I hope it was. But this Natalie thing...

Sepra, Darth Downunder...

I think you're both right and you're both wrong.

Let's look at the remarks as presented in the article. There are two sentences that pertain to the matter and they're both important:


Sentence #1:

Star Wars had come out around the time of Seagull, and everyone thought I was a horrible actress.

Sentence #2:

I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me.


Sen. 1 ("horrible actress") is a) a specific remark about a component of the movie (her acting or her perception of other people's perception of it), and b) possibly a pop at the movie itself (or at least her performance).

Sen. 2, however, takes on a more ironic quality, and arguably clarifies (or simply confounds) the negativity of Sen. 1. In Sen. 2, Natalie seems to be recoiling indignantly at the queer situation of being in a fantastically popular movie, yet unable to get a fresh acting gig.

These notions are somewhat at odds with each other: Sentence Wars. But that's okay. There is a way out of the murk. We've only got two parts of a "trilogy".

Sentence #1 is the thesis. Sentence #2 is the antithesis. And now we need the third and crucial component that resolves the discrepant notions: the synthesis.

The synthesis, in this case, I propose, is Natalie reflecting on what Star Wars tends to do generally: make people look like bad actors (or gives others that impression). In addition to possibly lamenting her performance or the direction, or even the film itself, she could be talking about a bias in the media and the industry toward the series as a whole.

Which, admittedly, doesn't seem to be her entire focus, with a comment as stabbing as "and everyone thought I was a horrible actress". That's pretty strong and hard to ignore. Nonetheless, there is her lamentation in Sen. 2. Reformulated to something more affirming, it could read: "I was a key character in a hugely successful movie. I must have done something right."

So there's some defensiveness and defiance to her remarks, in theory. And that is very in-keeping with her Star Wars character, I might add. But there's enough ambiguity for people to latch onto them a certain way and even -- if I may be so bold -- easily grab hold of the wrong end of the stick.



* * *



And when, Darth Downunder, you quote or paraphrase someone like Liam Neeson, who, yes, did say that they all look a bit "wooden" in TPM, well, that wasn't really a scathing attack on the movie, and was even said in a somewhat mirthful fashion. In the same interview, Liam went onto say that he was very happy to work with George Lucas and loved working on the one he did. Which speaks more loudly to me than any alleged detraction or regret. Here are the remarks in full (enthusiastically reported on various websites at the time):


http://boards.theforce.net/threads/liam-neeson-agrees-the-acting-is-wooden.13521166/


Furthermore, people who worked on those earlier films have taken shots at the acting and other aspects of the original trilogy for years. You just hear less of it, today, because it has become more fashionable to bash the prequels in their stead, and the originals have turned into the equivalent of a national monument. But criticisms are certainly out there.

Indeed, I was just leafing through J.W. Rinzler's "The Making Of Star Wars" the other night (an outstanding book, through and through), and I happened upon two remarks, in close succession, from Francis Ford Coppola and John Barry. Coppola, after seeing an early cut of the movie, is captured feeling that it was "a tad repetitive" (p. 258) (and "The Final Chapter" of Rinzler's "Making Of" book for ROTS captures Lucas saying that his old mentor had a positive reaction to a rough cut of ROTS; and that it's the first Star Wars film he actually likes). John Barry, to my surprise, airs a negative opinion of the actors in the book, calling them "very dull" (p. 185), also before the film had come out. And various doleful and snide comments abound, in that book and elsewhere, about the acting, the writing, the direction, the storytelling, the emphasis on special effects, merchandising -- you name it.

Perhaps the most notorious batch of negative remarks come from Alec Guinness, who said he had been offered "fairy-tale rubbish" when he was first courted for the role of Obi-Wan and hadn't yet signed (though he also cautiously contended that it "could be interesting"), thought the dialogue of the original film (which was nominated for an Oscar for its screenplay) was "dull" at the time he was working on it (an epithet he repeated when commenting on Star Wars for a second time after being roped into "Star Wars II"/TESB: "it's dull rubbishy stuff"), and who later seemed to turn against the movie(s) wholesale, saying how he "shrivel[ed] inside every time it is mentioned", even going as far as telling a twelve-year-old boy he met in San Francisco (the wider Bay Area being the spiritual home of the series) to never watch Star Wars again, hoping that he'd be spared becoming stuck "in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities". This page has the relevant quotes:


http://dangerousminds.net/comments/alec_guinness_a.k.a._obi_wan_kenobi_kind_of_hated_star_wars

The "Star Wars II" ("dull rubbishy stuff") quote is here:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hyp2RoHMam0C&pg=PA508&lpg=PA508&dq=dull rubbishy guinness&source=bl&ots=P6CFYfzQ3D&sig=0FF20TCiEKFb7od6uXYof4Ut7ws&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw9Ka9lO_KAhXFthQKHTBHCLgQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=dull rubbishy guinness&f=false


But strange how Alec Guinness is rarely mentioned, despite being a key element of the first film, and despite being pretty outspoken in his general contempt for the artistic quality of the entire Star Wars project. Certainly, he said more positive things about the first movie, back at the time, but even then, he was no real fan of the dialogue and was obviously in two minds about the whole thing (the first link, as above, also captures him saying, "I regret having embarked on the film", less than a full month into shooting, on April 16th 1976).

And yet there's an easy defence for all these remarks. Alec Guinness may have been a formidable actor and a very decent human being, but he was also a bit of a miser. Reading back his irritable musings or listening to him in interviews is funny. But this defence is rarely taken. Instead, the comments are normally omitted from discussion, as if derision from actors and crew members is a relatively recent phenomenon, and any earlier rantings, for some ineluctable reason, don't count. It's disingenuous to pretend that this form of negativity started with the prequels. It plainly did not.

Star Wars is clearly not a series for actors to show their stuff in the conventional sense. Nor is it a series that inspires awe in people by default. Somehow, though, it's done alright for itself, hasn't it?

 

I'm really bored by people trying to convince the world about how much the prequel cast and crew allegedly "hated" working on those movies and the movies themselves.

Yes, Liam Neeson said they all were a bit "wooden" (what a new opinion!), but he also said he loved working on the one he did (TPM) and working with George Lucas (http://nightly.net/topic/2893-liam-neeson-says-star-wars-is-silly-now/) and returned to SW with TCW. Christiopher Lee said "the only time recently I’ve had fun working in films was with directors like George Lucas and Tim Burton." (http://www.gamesradar.com/the-total-film-interview-christopher-lee/). Ewan has more than once said how hard it was for him to work in front of blue screen, but he has also repeatedly emphasized on the value of the films he was in ("It is the wonder in the children's eyes that I felt when I felt as a kid watching the original films, when they come up to you ask you what it was like to cut Darth Maul in half or turning your light sabre on. It reminds me of how I felt when I was six years old so to be a part of that is a real treat." - http://www.darkhorizons.com/features/359/ewan-mcgregor-for-big-fish). Hayden has been very positive on his experience and even attented Lucas' wedding, despite him being the primary target of so many attacks by "fans". Natalie also stressed the point that the innovative technoloy was challenging and might even think this has hurt her performance, but she also said how much she enjoyed the people she worked with ("I really liked all the people I worked with. You know, between George [Lucas] and Ewan [McGregor] and Hayden [Christensen] and Jake [Lloyd] on the first one and Ahmed [Best], who played Jar Jar, they were all wonderful. The experience was really hard for me, because I didn’t really, didn’t really understand what was going on with the blue screens and everything. I just was, you know, I was like 16 and had never done that before and I was kind of confused." - http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-793210).

Working on the prequels was challenging, yes, because they were technologically innovative and experimental. There was even a Lucasfilm Webdoc about that point! It was new to work in that way and that was the first time for many of the actors to work with blue screen. But I'm sure most of them are thankful for the experience nowadays, especially after having worked on other films with the same technique in later years.

I also don't see much of a difference to ... say Alec Guinness, who always was not always nice with his words in regard to his role and Star Wars. Harrison Ford was malighning Han Solo for years, saying he would never want to play him again, until he was finally at a point in his career where doing Star Wars felt lucrative again. Mark Hamill said he's only once seen the Star Wars movies he was in. David Browse is all but happy.

 

Re. Sir Alec. I may be wrong, but I always had a feeling he became bitter about the whole thing when Obi-Wan was killed off during production of Star Wars?

But then again I guess for someone with such a long and gilded career in movies he probably did resent Star Wars for over-shadowing all his earlier films (Kind Hearts and Coronets, Lavender Hill Mob, Bridge Over The River Kwai , Lawrence Of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, etc.)

 

Well, it sounds, to me, like he never really wanted to climb on-board the Star Wars boat, but would do it for a bit of green, and rationalized that the story had a compelling edge (despite slagging off the dialogue, he also said the screenplay was a page-turner -- though maybe he turned all of them at once). That, and the project had some good wholesome innocence to it, so why not?

But I really think, perhaps above all else, the age gap was the thing that got to him. He was, of course, by some measure, the oldest of the principals, and wrote how he felt disconnected from the young generation and unable to really gel with them (twice over: after first meeting Lucas -- "the conversation was divided culturally by eight thousand miles and thirty years" -- and when filming in Tunisia).

And Star Wars, as a whole, is really a young person's thing, both in tone and spirit. As characters, the older people are there to lend the series some weight. Perhaps Sir Alec even felt a bit used on that front (despite liking George Lucas, or feeling that he owed him cameos in the sequel installments, at any rate). I don't think he really wanted to understand the series or relate to it very much.

Maybe he even had a point when he began worrying about its corruptive effects. Perhaps he felt he had helped create a monster.

And, of course, Alec Guinness had a very diverse career before Star Wars, and was esteemed for his chameleonic approach to acting. Yet the world increasingly saw him as "Obi-Wan".

The statesman of Star Wars: a jaunty little acting project he began to resent and despise.

But good ol' Alec. I'm going to make it a commitment to watch a few more of his films this year.

 

Cryogenic I think the gist of your post is along the lines of "well Guinness criticised the OT so therefore the criticism the PT received from cast members is along the same lines so it's just a Star Wars thing". Now I don't want to turn this into a huge deal but I don't subscribe to that at all. I really don't see any comparison. Firstly most of AG's complaining was not about the movie. That's bcs when he was making those comments you referenced there was no movie. He's complaining about the film making process. A very different topic than the quality of the final film. He's mentioned the early script quite often but if you watch this interview he notes that while the ANH script was "a bit ropey" when he first read it, he "fixed" his lines in consultation with GL. His only criticism after he saw the movie was about the over-saturation of SW & the obsessive fandom. Again, not a commentary in any way about the quality of the film itself. Actually his pessimistic remarks in '75 & '76 echo what most people involved thought including Lucas. That the film was going to be poor. Yet somehow it all came together & was incredible. After he saw the movie is there any negative commentary from Guinness about OT film content? I think you'd be hard pressed to find any meaningful criticism of the OT movies at all from the cast. Even the famous Ford comment about the dialogue has often been misunderstood to suggest that he thought the dialogue was bad. What he complained about was the technobabble, not poor quality of dialogue. That no normal person can say "It'll take a few moments to get the coordinates from the navi-computer" - which was the line Ford was talking about in his comments to George. Funnily enough, following the movie Lucas was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay & Guinness for Best Supporting Actor. I'm tipping old Alec didn't think poorly of the movie when he received that letter.

Getting back to cast comments, the contrast is there's a long line of PT actors, as we know who've had genuine negative observations about the actual content of the movies. Either about their own performances, the tone of the movies, or the effects. A completely different scenario to the OT & its cast, who like I said haven't (or very rarely) made genuine cracks about OT movie content.

That said, for every bad thing PT cast members have said about the prequels there are probably 20 good things they've said. I've never claimed this is a huge deal & it certainly can't be spun into a "PT cast hates the movies" headline. What's slightly disheartening though is that I've never read the main PT cast gushing about the movies themselves. The positive comments that Samnz posted are all about the filming process. How much they enjoyed working on them, or working with the cast or with Lucas. That's nice but when have the likes of Portman or McGregor said (after they've seen the final films) things like "the prequels were fantastic movies" or "AotC is a great film" etc. That's another contrast, there are dozens of occasions where the OT cast have gone into detail about what they think is great about the OT movies & about what's on the screen. Maybe I've missed it but I've seen very little exuberant praise from the main PT cast about the films themselves.

 

More or less.

Though not just Alec Guinness. Many people involved made critical remarks.

I cited a couple of others: Francis Ford Coppola, who was arguably being diplomatic in saying the cut of the original film he watched was "a tad repetitive", and John Barry, who slammed the actors and said they were "very dull". I will repeat, in Coppola's case, Lucas reports (to Natalie Portman, ironically) in Rinzler's appended piece for "The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith" ("The Final Chapter") that his old mentor approved of a rough cut of ROTS, and that -- again, according to Lucas -- it was the first Star Wars movie he actually liked.

So consider these examples again and ruminate on them for just a second. I'm sure you're aware that others exist. If anything, the number of people who worked on the movies but somewhat, or perhaps quite strongly, dislike them, or find them ineffective or poor in some fashion, is probably higher, as human beings tend to conceal their true feelings and aren't too forthcoming too often. But whatever comfortable fantasy you'd like to believe in.

What? While he reluctantly assented to do "Star Wars II" (TESB), he called the material "dull rubbishy stuff". The now-sainted TESB. Dull rubbishy stuff.

Years later, he began to despair about the whole thing, rather derisively suggesting that Star Wars as a whole stultifies the mind and offers only "secondhand, childish banalities".

Hardly ringing endorsements for the films, DD.

But in any case, I already said that AG was a bit of a miser, so his comments -- just like anyone else's -- have to be put into context. I offered even more of an explanation for his general attitude to the films in my last post.

But what I really wanted to point out, rather, and did, was how interesting it is that Guinness' comments are normally not even brought up by people who have no problem adducing the negative remarks of prequel cast members. It's a glaring double standard.

Ha! I was just watching that interview not more than two days ago. That's partially why I brought Alec Guinness up in here. I thought of adding that link myself, but judged that I'd already added sufficient quotes. Parky: "A thing called Star Wars." LOL! And Sir Alec's wonderful voice. Two British legends. And I love how quick AG is to answer Parky's question about the appeal of the film: "I think a marvelous, healthy innocence." And when he says "no sleazy sex", his expression in that part is a bit like Obi-Wan talking about Anakin/Luke's father in his hut. Delightful interview. Anyway...

Yes, he is a bit nicer to the film in that clip, but it's to be expected, since the film hadn't been out long, and AG did say some nice things after he saw it, just as he does there. On the other hand, he never says he actually fixed his lines in consultation with Lucas there. Not a jot of it. He only goes as far as saying, in reference to the script that was delivered to him, "I like this, if only we can get some of the dialogue altered." Clearly, it wasn't really altered to his satisfaction, since he wrote on March 18th 1976, days before filming commenced in Tunisia, "new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper -- and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable."

Sir Alec's diary entry from April 16th 1976 is probably the most telling and human insight into the man and his real feelings. Again, he remarks on the dialogue, and again, it's negative. It's beautifully candid and compendious.

These things were in my first link, which I'll provide again, since you seem to have passed straight over it (and it's really worth reading):

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/alec_guinness_a.k.a._obi_wan_kenobi_kind_of_hated_star_wars

Please stop trying to rewrite history. Take a step back and you'll see that Alec Guinness never had a rosy attitude to the film, but likely did the British stiff-upper-lip thing of muddling through and being perfectly gracious to all and sundry (such, indeed, was his way).

For a time, after finally seeing it, I think he was impressed, but that joyful, contented glow didn't last. Indeed, one might say, without being too maudlin, it was never meant to be. In the clip you provided, he even says his response to the project, because it was "science fiction" (or fantasy), was a rather exasperated, "Oh, crumbs!" He would fight himself, overcome his misgivings for a while, but ultimately give into them, times ten, in his remaining years.

So there's a grain of truth in what you say, sure. But AG never unreservedly loved the movie or his part in it. I'll say again: take a look at his April 16th diary entry. I think it probably gives the most unblemished accounting of his real feelings. Fascinating man, to be sure. I used to have a used copy of "Blessings In Disguise", which I picked up mega-cheaply in some used bookstore. Really cheered me up at the time. Again, I really must brush up on my Alec Guinness this year.

See, here, you're doing what you accuse other people of doing when it comes to Natalie Portman's comments, and especially Lucas' comments concerning TFA. You're putting your own slant on things and passing it straight off as fact. A bash at technobabble is still a bash at the dialogue and Lucas' writing skills. And how do you really know what Alec Guinness thought about being nominated? Given his weary stance on his involvement with the film in private correspondence at the time, and his attitude to the film in later years, any happiness or surprise might have been tempered by rueful disdain. "Oh, they're giving me the gold, for that?"

And what's that guff about "meaningful criticism" from the OT cast? Are you trying to tell me you think PT cast members have provided meaningful criticism? I only really see a few offhand digs and quips at the films' expense. Natalie's use of the word "horrible" is probably the staunchest example and the only one that lapses into the melodramatic. The rest is as insubstantial and unedifying as one might expect from actors who generally seem glad to have done the films (Liam Neeson's remarks being a case in point).

No, not really. I think there might be a few steeper comments out there, but there are positive ones, too. Ewan, for example, has said he felt the special effects were more the "star" of the ones he did, but there was also more bluescreen than he expected, which he's commented on before, so that might inform his sentiment. And like Liam, he's said more positive and laudatory things, and also clearly loved being a part of them, particularly for their effect on kids (the opposite of Alec Guinness' later position -- Ewan's spiritual forebear!).

I'm glad you acknowledge that somewhere in your response. Though you seem keen to salt your remarks this way only after being drawn on them a bit.

No, I'm sorry, but when has any of the OT cast ever been that ecstatic about any of the movies they did -- barring, perhaps, the first one? I'm not going to say the PT cast have been especially complimentary toward the movies as a whole. I don't think they have. But they haven't seriously trashed them, either. And each seems to enjoy their connection to the franchise (markedly unlike the Alec Guinness that emerged some years after the original film).

And in parity with the OT cast, Ewan I remember being pretty positive about ROTS, when he said how beautifully he thought Lucas had tied all the plot threads together. Ian McDiarmid also gave similar praise when he talked one time in an interview about how cleverly Lucas set up the end-game scenario of ROTS and Palpatine manipulating the Separatists so that they would die on a lava planet by Anakin's hand. Natalie has also spoken of Padme/Amidala as being a sort of feminist icon, due to the inner strength and poise she possesses, combined with essential feminine qualities (being a wife, an expectant mother, a compassionate leader, and so on), and how she sticks to her values even after Anakin betrays his.

So, the PT cast actually has come out and given these films their general seal of approval, even if I grant you that they've been a bit quiet about it; or the media has naturally latched onto their negative remarks and emphasized them over positive ones (after all, negativity sells, especially when it comes to the prequels).

I'll give you one exception in all this: Anthony Daniels. He was rather unkind to the movies in 2014 and 2015. But he backtracked a bit just after his second set of negative remarks. Maybe he has always been miffed at Threepio's reduced role in the PT. Just some speculation on my part.

Exuberance is not a trait you find in actors too often. They can be proud of their work, and proud of certain films they worked on, but I've generally found them to be a bit icy and remote about such things.

But whatever you wanna believe.

 

i always found Guinness' attitude very disheartening, not just as a huge Star Wars geek or Obi Wan fan, but as a general admirer of the actor's work. like, if someone of his prestige who played a part in the thing's creation hated it, i should feel dumb for liking it so much.

 

Or smarter than they are.

 

I'm gonna be a devils advocate here. As much as I love the PT, didn't that article also state that Liam said that Ep 2 was all "pyrotechnics?" It's clear that he didn't like Ep 2 very much and only like TPM.

 

The late John Simon thought of original Star Wars in similar ways as Sir Alec, that the acting and dialogue are wooden, and that the OT Star Wars films are meant to keep "children, stupid children forever." With the current day toxic nerd culture and fandom surronding Star Wars, I sadly think both Alec and John are entirely justified in their concerns about Star Wars creating manchildren who are stuck "in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities" and "making the children dumber than they need to be." Though I don't think Star Wars has turned any children into angry and childish adult nerds, I think it simply just attracts them. That if Star Wars never existed, these misadjusted people who still be that way and just latch onto something else.

 

Yeah he did. Bit harsh to have a stab at a film you're not even involved in.

Cryogenic some good points you make. A couple of things though. I thought the subject was cast members thoughts & comments about the respective trilogies. Let's leave out the opinions of other directors like Coppola shall we. We could point out dozens of directors & film industry folk who love the OT, but that would be going off track.
Back to the cast. My point was I'm not seeing any Guinness criticism of the final movies. All of the comments you've referenced were made before or during the making of the films. So we can certainly agree that he was skeptical (as many people were) of them before he saw how they turned out. He's also not a fan of fantasy movie dialogue. Ford also thought ANH was ridiculous while making it. The crew thought it would be a disaster. Lucas did too. He fled to Hawaii at the time of the premiere to prepare himself for the disastrous news. I don't see the relevance though about any of this stuff. I'm talking about cast opinions of the completed movies. After they saw them in finality. I've never seen Guinness bash any of the movie content after the fact. He didn't say anything about ESB as a movie, bcs there was no movie then. He was talking about having a look at his script before he filmed his scenes. That's not an evaluation of the film. In contrast that list of PT digs from its own cast are about the completed films. Saying the movie & the cast was flat &/or wooden, that one of the movies is just pyrotechnics, or they were all cold & pointless is damning stuff. Nothing more so than this scathing take from Serafinowicz.

As for cast praise of the respective trilogies, I maintain that the PT cast just don't seem to have alot of affection for the prequels. The movies I mean, not the experience in making them or the people they worked with, or even their characters. The movies - as movies. Like with any film they had nice things to say during the production for the dvd features. But where's the positivity & affection after the premieres, or in the years following the release? Check out any one of the 20+ OT documentaries since the 80's & you'll find the OT cast going into great detail about why those movies are so good. Or listen to their thoughts on them in interviews. The EpVII actors also seemed to genuinely love that movie. In the case of the PT cast, for 10+ years all we've heard are crickets. Take this interview with McGregor just last year. He's asked what he thinks of TPM after all these years & whether the criticism is warranted. Here he had a perfect opportunity to go into bat for the movie & the PT. To give it support & tell everyone the prequels are good movies in his opinion. Instead he says "I watched it once, at the premiere, so I'm not in a good position to judge". Certainly he didn't bash the movies in any way & he even had a comment about fan expectations but where's the affection? It just never seems to come through from the cast. Post release there's a long list of digs from the PT cast but few if any positive observations about the actual movies.

 

Semi-topic related, Kevin Smith is going to have a talk show on AMC "Geeking Out" with "Force Awakens" actor Greg Grunberg (he plays "Snap" Wexley in TFA, one of the X-Wing pilots). Technically Grunberg and Smith are both TFA actors, Smith voices a stormtrooper.

http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/gee...grunberg-amc-late-night-talk-show-1201703953/

See, Smith is kickstarting his opinions into profitability and gigs, it would not surprise me if his changing temperament about the PT is more of him leaning towards "Must cultivate geek audience for image". Heck, before the Force Awakens was even a thing (well, a thing that was known to the public) Smith was the guest at Star Wars celebration in the Summer of 2012.

 

Don't know. He could easily gush about TFA & not mention the PT at all. Seems far fetched to me that he'd dis the prequels while secretly loving them.

 

Not saying he's secretly loving them, I think he changes his opinion because he's crafted a niche for himself as the Geek Mouthpiece and to cultivate more geekdom, which turns into gigs and money, he plays to the audience. One thing he says over and over in his podcasts is that he only does stuff for his audience and nobody else. The audience that has money for Kevin Smith doesn't like the Prequels? Well, by God and despite his multiple previous statements to the contrary, neither does he! (PS - watch Geeking Out with Kevin Smith).

I'm not saying he had this great epiphany about the PT. I'm saying he's a shill. Which Smith himself has happily admitted to and that he loves to "vend" and self-promote. (he says it's a hold over from his days working at the Quick Stop)

As PodracingSkywalker mentioned, Smith was singing the praises of the Affleck Daredevil when it came out back on his View Askew message board. And now he doesn't. But he loves the Netflix Daredevil. Dude seems to have a rather shifting opinion which, not surprisingly, often coincides with his geek audience that pays him. After he knows which way the wind is blowing.

 

Fair enough. Sounds like you're more familiar with him than me. I kind of think he's more like a Harry Knowles. They both get super excited about things when they're first out & often declare them masterpieces. Then their opinion cools over time. If that's genuine then there's nothing wrong with that. If they're just crafting their views to suit the crowd, different story.

 

Oh, well. I don't like "Batman Begins", either.

Actually, what kicked this whole sidebar off was the following remark, from you:

I think mentioning people like Francis Ford Coppola (Lucas' mentor) and John Barry (a key player who helped execute the sets and perfect the look of the original movie) is perfectly valid.

And even if you did just want to stick to cast members, I cited and spoke about Alec Guinness' comments and attitude to the films at some length.

All of the comments? No. Not all. There was his anecdote about meeting that boy in San Francisco that I cited. That's from his memoir "A Positively Final Appearance", written years later. From there comes the forthright statement, "I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned", and a sweeping aspersion against the entire series with his pungent descriptor, "a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities".* You've ignored that link twice in a row now. Not sure what good there is in presenting it a third time. Not going to bother. Believe what you want.

I also qualified that AG was not a science fiction or fantasy buff. And that he felt a tremendous age gap between himself and George Lucas and the main cast. Nothing complicated or upsetting about any of that. I've been totally transparent toward AG's remarks. I even said they are relatively easy to put into context and that everyone's remarks need putting into context. Indeed, citing actors or anyone else to affirm one's own opinion, or to try to imply some objective "fault" with the movies, is really just an argument from authority.

Star Wars fans are apparently very childish on the whole. They seemingly need to have their opinions validated by others. And that need sharply abuts against reality quite quickly. It's like Jim Carrey in his sailboat in "The Truman Show"; the wall is soon breached. Even in his positive mindset, Alec Guinness never hailed the original as anything other than light-hearted, wholesome fun. It's hard to imagine him thinking much of the more mythic aspirations introduced in TESB, let alone the lofty pretensions of the prequel trilogy.

*I'd love to have seen that remark in one of the trailers. "Every fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities has a beginning..."

Don't even get me started on Peter Serafinowicz. The most racist film of the 20th Century? Some of those remarks are just beyond the pale. And that slimy, sycophantic host. Yuck. Alec Guinness didn't bash TESB in particular; rather, he bashed the series entire, caustically reducing it to the rubble of "secondhand, childish banalities". There's just no getting around that remark. He had no time for evaluating the films on their own terms. You think that's a point in your favour, but I disagree. He didn't see anything in the films worth praising, beyond some initial excitement/admiration for the first one, which he admired on a technical level and as fun, wholesome spectacle.

Guinness' derision actually goes to the core of the matter, in my opinion. Mostly, from all that I've been able to gather, people don't believe in the Star Wars movies as art. They're either a fun time at the cinema or they're just a rote assortment of henchman and whizzing spaceships inside a hollow storyline with a crude worldview. It's rare that people credit the series with something more, except sparingly and rather grudgingly, in my view. Younger people, perhaps. But not usually the grown-ups. And actors like to think of themselves as grown-ups; or aspiring to be grown-ups (while their occupation is, if you think about it, pretty childish). Alec Guinness' broadsides against the films have a sort of "John Wayne" grit and purity to them. They're emblematic of a wider discourse. But no-one has to buy into them (the fallacy of authority again) anymore than anyone has to look to John Wayne for their political opinions.

The crucible-like conditions in which Star Wars grew to life, which you allude to, are quite scene-setting, in my opinion. As you say, Harrison Ford didn't have the warmest appraisal of the film while making it, and most of the crew either thought it was going to be a disaster or doubted whether it would be more than a niche movie. Really, few soi-disant "professionals" seem to have had much confidence in the series, or really ever been able to delve into Lucas' mind and see what he was going for. Look again at AG's comments. He admired the first one (at least initially) for its freshness and its spunky character. Not too surprising, in my view, that the prequels endured quite a whipping in the media. Many seem to perceive the series through the feel-good lens of the first movie. Anything further from the pen or mind of Lucas is derided as clunky at best, preposterous at worst. People hanker for that simple escapist vibe of the first movie; but they are rarely honest enough to admit it. Star Wars is held to a peculiarly Procrustean standard.

I don't know if the prequel actors have much affection for the movies or not. Maybe not. But that they liked working on them and are proud of their characters is good enough for me. I won't despair or take them to task for negative opinions or diplomatic responses that skirt around their actual opinions. It is a bit unfortunate if they don't like any of them, but it doesn't really matter a whole lot. I'm not sure the OT actors -- maybe Mark Hamill -- have been as positive toward the originals as you imply. Harrison Ford seemed to want to desperately get away and not talk about them for a good decade or more. He may only have been enticed back because Disney made him an offer he couldn't refuse. And Carrie Fisher has made her share of sardonic quips about Leia, the dialogue, Lucas' direction, and her general appearance over the years; enough to make me think she has a bit of a love-hate relationship with the films, loosely echoing Harrison Ford and more distantly echoing Alec Guinness. It's hard because, as I said before, I don't recall them generally making markedly positive comments (though they might have). They've tended, I feel, to be a bit cagey. Such is the wont of human beings in general (alas).

At the end of the day, what matters is, what do we, as individuals, think about them? More than enough room for one opinion in this world.

Hopefully, that can stand as my closing statement.

 

I didn't ignore it. I just don't interpret it in the same way as you. The passage from the book reads:

"He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. “What a dreadful thing to say to a child!” she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities."

That's (IMO) his commentary on over the top obsessive fandom, not about the actual movies themselves. The "fantasies" are secondhand bcs they've been told by someone else in a movie & this kid is taking them way too seriously in AG's opinion. He's saying, these things are good & fine as a piece of entertainment for 2 hours, but it's dull & childish to obsess about it in the real world. To me his point is quite obvious. It's also understandable. The kid was only 12 & he'd seen SW over 100 times! That's unhealthy. In the same passage of the book Guinness makes it clear that it's not the on screen content he's having a dig at:
"Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having."

So I maintain that AG's negative remarks were about either the production process including the early drafts of the scripts, or the obsessive fandom which he partially "blamed" SW for. Which is what I said from the start. It remains that I've never heard him say anything to the effect that they were bad movies, the acting was wooden, they were pointless, boring, flat etc etc. Not a single dig from him about on screen content. He did seemingly grow to dislike SW as a phenomenon (not as a movie), due to the hype & the fans. To the point where he was sick of hearing about it & doing so made him "shrivel". So I'll certainly concede that out of the OT actors AG comes the closest to a disgruntled cast member based on his other concerns. But there's just no comparison with the role call of the PT gang that lined up to have a dig about issues within the films.

& yes personally I would've liked to see the PT actors stick up for the movies over the past decade. Like I said, there's no outward affection for them from the leads. Guinness didn't show that either as you're right to point out, but at least it was balanced out by the others. Even Ford has had alot of nice things to say over the years, in his trademark stoic fashion. McGregor on the other hand just shrugs his shoulders & essentially says "I've only ever seen it once, don't ask me".