PT Should Lucas Have Done More to Ensure TPM Didn't Disappoint Some Fans?

ROTS had everything that the average viewer, who wasn't invested in the full story Lucas had to tell, wanted to see. That's why a lot of people perceive it as being obviously better.

I don't see a significant difference in quality between any of the PT films. They're all, unsurprisingly, have very similar strengths and very similar flaws (as all movies do, though in this case they are not things that bother me).

I don't think Lucas ever needed to "warm up", because contrary to the popular perception Lucas never really stopped making movies during the gap between trilogies. In fact he'd been doing it nonstop. The only thing he hadn't been doing is directing, which as Lucas himself will tell you is mostly a matter of collecting the needed footage. The real creative work, at least for Lucas, comes in the pre- and post-production phases.

If anything TPM is the movie that stands out creatively, because this was where Lucas was really stretching his visual imagination and creating innovative new filmmaking techniques that had never been attempted before. The other two PT films, innovative though they were (especially in terms of digital cinema), were essentially iterations on that initial explosion of creativity.

 

Yes, Lucas used all of the flubbed and stammered line deliveries in American Grafitti because he wanted it to feel less like a typical dramatic film and more realistic like a documentary. Capturing the way people really talk.

 

The original TPM script would’ve been a lot better received I think.

 

I think a member of the crew or cast should have pulled a Mark Hamill ala TLJ and warned fans about the subverting of expectations and the fact that it wasnt going to be what they were expecting. He could have drawn an analogy to EMPIRE regarding how that movie was very different from the original Star Wars and was not what people were expecting back then.

 

Absolutely not, he made the movie HE wanted to make.

 

What kind of question is this? Fans would have whined no matter what

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I get what you mean but that would have been impossible because the point there was they weren't using Lucas' stories and Hamill was telling people that he disagreed with what Johnson was doing. Johnson deliberately, and I'd say maliciously, was subverting the story from TFA which in itself was playing exactly into expectations of what you'd think that a Hollywood led Star Wars movie would do which is be a remake/sequel with no actual new ideas or direction but just a very basic replay of the hits.

With what Lucas previously did with TESB then ROTJ the expectations should have been that Lucas was going to do the same thing i.e. something that was unexpected in terms of direction but also very familiar while also new and within the same universe. That isn't really subversion which is the values and principles of a system that are in place getting contradicted in an attempt to transform the established order. TFA's aim was to play within that order while TLJ's aim was to subvert that order.

The difference in all of that is very simple because Lucas created Star Wars so whatever he wants is what Star Wars is:

Which as he says is the way it should be and he's right.

"I'm making the movies, so I should have it my way."

 

Duel fight with Palpatine against Plagueis

 

Fans were gonna be disappointed, no matter what George Lucas did...

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I had came across a review of "The Empire Strikes Back" when it was first released in 1980. The reviewer was not kind and thought "A New Hope" was a lot better. So yeah . . . fans and reviewers were going to be kind, regardless of what Lucas did for any of his films. I can probably say the same for a vast number of movies made.

 

Well I was totally elated so happy times for me!

 

Who has come up with this idiocy? Thomas Brittendahl?

 

People just want cool fights.

also the answer to OP is still no

 

They don't just want cool fights. They want decent music too.

 

Again, no. Fans would have not liked it wither way...

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I think fans just had to high expectations for it to ever work out

 

Seeing as TPM was the best of the prequels, Lucas didn't really need to do anything different

 

He could have hired a competent screenwriter.

 

Here's my answer to the OP: While it is good to please fans with Star Wars, sometimes you shouldn't compromise telling the story you as a creative artist want to tell just so all the fans will be happy. Personally I like all of The Phantom Menace and see no real flaws in it. I see flaws in Revenge of the Sith but TPM was almost 100% flawless in my view. George knew going in that adults would see Jar Jar as too kiddie, but even Dave Filoni used him (quite a bit actually) in the Clone Wars series. The two flaws I find with the two movie Anakin's fall to the Dark side arc is the fall was too much, too quick, but I wouldn't change the movies in that regard for the world. Matthew Stover explained his fall very well in his novelization of Revenge of the Sith. The only retcons I would make to Revenge of the Sith is not having Grievous say the line 'I have been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku" or having Anakin say "My powers have doubled since we last met, Count" because we now know the Clone wars series makes those lines pure nonsense.

 

Best thing to happen to the prequels and especially the Phantom Menace was the sequels lol, but phantom menace is a masterpiece overall , it set up new worlds, introduced new characters and john williams great music, here we are in 2021 and Darth Maul is iconic so id say George Lucas knew what he was doing .

 

No, he knew the story he wanted to tell. Everyone had ideas for what they imagined or wanted to see, but no artist should be beholden to other peoples' expectations.

 

So you mean make a generic carbon copy made by a conglomerate devoid of originality or a heart and soul?

 

No, I mean make a movie that would appeal to someone who's not in the 2nd grade.

 

I'm more than glad with the approach Lucas took. Quite frankly if TPM was a "safer" Star Wars experience more in line with Disney's creative approach, I probably would've still liked it, but also have been more likely to move on from Star Wars not that long afterwards. TPM reset my expectations as far as what a Star Wars experience can encompass, and set the path for my two favorite films in the franchise, AOTC and ROTS.