PT Was anger toward the prequels more intense in 1999 or 2012?

In 1999 there was the intense anger toward Jar Jar, midichlorians, etc., but Lucas didn’t seem sensitive to fan anger until 2012.

 

I wasn't around the forums in 1999, so can only comment from the people I knew personally, in my own circle.
From what I remember Jar-Jar wasn't well regarded, and after TPM a lot weren't as excited for any of the other two that were to come.

The problem is between 1999 and 2012 a little thing called the internet became global, everyone's opinion was proclaimed loud and clear, not just critics that happened to write for a publication.
With the invention of youtube, all you needed was a decent camera and microphone and everyone became a Roger Ebert or Leonard Maltin. Combine that with sites like Rottentomatoes this magnifies the issue.

In 1999: Lucas probably thought only a few snobbish critics disliked his movies
in 2012: in a world where everybody with a keyboard/keypad is a critic, it might be a bit more personal.

 

My guess is that Lucas hadn't really looked at the internet forums until about 2008 and then he saw all the anti-Lucas stuff .

Also was it around 2006 that the dvds came out and still no widescreen OT , that caused a lot of anger.

 

GL's suppression of the original OT didn't do him any favors with the fanbase either.

 

2012, as it was closer to the heyday of those RLM videos, and in addition to that the excitement for the ST was in full bloom and fans were free to dream up their perfect version of Star Wars that would "correct" everything that went wrong with the PT. 99 (and the whole PT release window for that matter) aren't a time I recall as overly negative. Maybe more mixed than many would have expected for the return of Star Wars, but plenty of fans loved what they saw, and ROTS in particular launched to the result of an overall positive landscape.

 

1999 was far worse. Far worse. The things people would say about Lucas were really over the top. Quite hateful in some instances. In 2012, people would still make fun of him, but, by that point, we had Revenge of the Sith, which was quite well received and the Clone Wars show, which was also well received. When the sequels were announced, people were happy for new voices, but most people were also happy that Lucas gave outlines.

 

Agreed. Back in 1999 you had ""fans"" sending hate mail to Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd.

I am grateful for those videos.

 

I think Lucas was able to ignore the anger while he was making the PT because he had a very clear story in mind, and was determined to make that trilogy the way he wanted. "For better or worse, I'm sticking to my story and I'm not going to listen to the fans who want more of the same".
As far as I'm concerned, that's the only way to create an interesting sequel/prequel/spin-off/whatever.

 

I am grateful for the suppression of the O-O-OT.

 

His. "It's like poerty, it rhymes" schtick shot this notion in the foot. The majority of people weren't disappointed in the PT because it wasn't the OT again; hell, in a lot of ways the PT is extremely similar to the OT. People were upset because the characters and circumstances in the PT were borderline nonsensical.

Care to delve into that a little deeper? I'm confused.

 

You listed something you’re grateful for and I did the same.

 

WAYYYYYYYYYY more intense in 2012!

I mean day 1 AOTC showing people were streaming out of the earlier THX showing with smiles, giving everyone on line thumbs up, jumping up and down, saying it's awesome. Audiences erupted into wild cheers at the end. Reviews were not bad. ROTS was really well received by critics and people I met in real life.

Even TPM had not nearly the anger that many later claimed. Sure some were not crazy about the boo-boo doo-doo talk in some lines and some not wild about everything to do with Jar-Jar, but the film in my local world seemed to be quite well taken. Audiences cheering at the end. Lots of packed houses for weeks. Reviews were a bit mixed yeah, but in the real world I didn't even run into packs of haters until I encountered a few on a big campus many months later, which took me by surprise, since in my local area and crowds it was well taken.

It's especially weird when many now post all over about how AOTC is the worst SW ever and how everyone despised from the start and was disgusted that it was even worse than TPM. Not remotely close to average reality. Just a few tiny little uber rage geek subgroups maybe felt like that, but that was not even remotely representive of the general public, not even the tiniest bit close. And even the hate for the Disney stuff, it's like 1000000000x worse online than in the real life I've known, although sadly the endless clikcbait videos do have a negative influence that does eventually feed back and start affecting more general real life.

 

The hate really started going over the top when that miserable RLM video came out. Before then, SW forums were still a relatively decent place to discuss PT. After that it wasn;t long before it was almost impossible to bother talking about PT anywhere on the net. Swarms of a few crazed anti-PT would post 24-7 365 days a year and most people just quit in disgust over the misery of it all and the discussions became totally taken over by the haters with most others giving up on even bothering to talk about stuff. And then the media went nuts and just looked in on forums and saw 100% haters and got a very biased view (plus certain elements hated Lucas for a long time) and then all the talk in media became "as everyone knows every single person on Earth hates and always hated all of the prequels, even ROTS". It was so bad that Disney even changed stuff to avoid prequels in TFA, afraid to even show the New Republic lest those crazed by the appearance of big cities in PT get crazed again or discuss politcs or give any back story entry into it. Even the Vanity Fair article was like dripping with PT hate and Lucas bashing by 2012. But look back at how wildly different the Vanity Fair articles were in the 1997-2006 era.

And the click bait youtube hate video era in general has just made a mess of things. The Disney SW stuff hate is maybe even worse than the PT hate got.

 

Personally i think the PT hate was worse than the ST. I think its just that times have changed. Social media was different with the PT from 2005 to say 2010. While its far louder and easier to express stuff today.

I always got the sense with the PT there was only one right answer and that was that the PT sucked and if the actors took **** for it... well serves them right for being in those movies. While today there is more of a acknowledgement at that toxic side. Which in a sense balances things out compared to the early days of the PT.

 

The hate was worse 23 years ago. I remember it very vividly. All Red Letter Media did was regurgitate the same bile that was ten years old. The comments section is the same from here, the official site, all of the Saga fan boards and other places like Ain't Cool News.

"Oh, it always hurts. It hurts a great deal. But part of making movies is you get attacked, and sometimes in very personal ways," says Lucas. "The point is, like if you paint your house white and somebody comes over, 'Well that should be a green house.' Well, fine, but I wanted to paint it white. I don’t think there was anything wrong with painting it white. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me for painting it white. Maybe it should be a green house, but I didn’t want it to be a green house. I wanted it to be a white house.”

--George Lucas, 60 Minutes Interview 2005.

He was very much aware of what was being said. And you can bet that the more vicious comments came to his attention.

 

Sure people were hating by late 1999. And with almost everyone last person in the U.S. and much beyond seeming to be a SW fan it doesn't take much of a percentage to create a ruckuss. And yes there was some of that back then for sure and in certain crowds it was cool to hate on TPM for not being the Matrix (probably worst among certain college and 20-somethings) but it still didn't feel like it was later on. I mean the press even, mostly, said decent things when AOTC came out and almost universally when ROTS came out. Yeah there was trouble then and bad stuff being said, but there was not this "as every single person on Earth all agrees, the TPM was useless trash" or even later "if there is one thing every last person on Earth agrees it is that all the prequels were trash and everyone hated them from day 1, even AOTC, especially AOTC and even ROTS" spouted by many routinely and being spouted by many in the media. And again look at the takes on SW in Vanity Fair from early 2000s and then in mid-2010s.... And the forums and stuff simply were not as toxic as later on. I remember still easily being able to enjoy newsgroups and such in 1999/2000/2001/2002/etc. but at some point they became almost impossible to be a part of, every post would instantly be swarmed by the same pack who seemed to live 24-7 on by far most SW forums instantly pouncing and trashing any favorable discussion or just general fun discussion of the prequels and it just seemed to get worse and worse.

Much more recently, regarding the PT it has calmed down a decent bit and it's been much better for a few years now though. But the ST stuff now seems as bad....

 

Those comments were the same kind of things that people were saying between 1999 and 2009. The media itself didn't behave poorly as fans did. And yes, it was bad to the point that people who were here went and started their own forum just to say what they wanted to say. That was about 04. AICN was the cesspool that YouTube and Twitter has become.

 

It seems like the consensus here is that the reception of TPM in '99 really depended on your personal crowd/neighborhood/circle of friends/age group. There was probably a higher chance for blind white-hot rage in spots as there is with anything new but it couldn't have been universal; nobody I knew personally (granted most were children, but even the adults) was anything but at least happy with the TPM from what I remember (not that it matters, but OP is asking for anecdotes here).

By 2012, as the internet became more and more common and more of a collective tastemaker, rage had cooled and years of vocal fans and portrayals of vocal fans (yes, RLM and other such YT'ers and bloggers, but also I'm sure mainstream media like Family Guy and Robot Chicken didn't help) increasingly dominated discussions and set the topic to the point where it just became perceived as accepted in the strange way it does on the internet that TPM (and AOTC) was always bad, that Lucas wasn't just hackish or incompetent, but probably malicious and/or [insert worst anxiety here] too, and that poor Star Wars fans were some kind of protected class that had to uniquely suffer because of how bad the prequels were and how much the OT was ruined. But--this was born out of initial impressions from the '90s.

What's really revisionist IMO is that several-year period probably in the very late 2000s or early 2010s when people roped ROTS in with the other prequels (probably influenced by RLM and the like) and decided the prequels sucked. But this always struck me as kind of a "dead unicorn trope". It never seemed like it was the case in 2005 or immediately following '05 and it doesn't really seem to be the case for ROTS in particular anymore. In fact, ROTS has probably aged better critically and popularly than any of the Disney movies besides Rogue One.

 

It wasn't just who you interacted with personally, where intense opinions were given. It was definitely the internet. RLM didn't exist until 2004. So any opinions were given on message boards and chat rooms, of which there was plenty, talked about the Saga. RLM became what it did after ROTS had came and went. Youtube hit afterwards and that opened a new avenue for reviews and opinions, all in one neat little package. I guarantee you that if you took every message board post and every chat room transcript, you'll come close to the Plinkett reviews. Plus, we've had population growth since 1999, 2005 and 2009. So a whole new group of voices are being heard.

 

Yeah but the usenet groups and so on were not taken over by hate for a while. You actually could discuss the prequels and say nice things and not get the same two dozen people swarm and bounce on every post and make it a miserable, impossible thing to discuss the prequels, like it became in seemingly most places somewhat later on. Sure you could find dislike for this or that or hate for them, but it wasn't so uniform and totally taken over and distorted and you could still discuss things without getting drive out or too disgusted to even bother participating in chat forums. And even the press was not putting out such universal statements of hate and 100.0000% agreement by all that all the prequels were the worst movies in the history of cinema and every people does and always did agree thing and that all audiences booed and laughed and jeered at the films (meanwhile MANY people report their opening day audiences having broken into wild cheers, as I said for AOTC, standing on line, people coming out of earlier shows were smiling, cheering, give thumbs up, saying you are gonna love it!, etc. etc.). Although certainly the initial press on TPM was mixed and some was bad, but some was also good too. And for AOTC it was even more positive and for ROTS it was largely glowing.

As I said though, the prequels hate has quelled some, as it seems at least a third, maybe a half of the detractors did a 180 on them and turned their anger towards the Disney stuff and now claim that the prequels actually were not so bad after all but it's the Disney stuff that is bile and has ruined their entire childhood.

And there is a lot of disconnect. Look at the official Star Wars facebook group from Disney/Lucasfilm. Every single post they were putting out ever since maybe a year after TFA would get swarmed with hate posts but look at the likes/loves v.s dislikes and almost all their posts got wayyy more like/love than dislike, but then look at the comment section and it was totally taken over and swarmed by the incessantly hate posting haters turning all the discussion and comments into miserable, useless areas. Say one fun thing about a film and get swarmed and trashed within minutes. Going by comments you'd think 95% people despised the new films (and the prequels), going by the like vs. dislikes the picture looked quite different. Although the comments and endless negative videos and pressure to be 'cool' and 'angsty' and hat eon them in comments and youtube did slowly seem to seep out more generally sadly. Especially with the youtube alogrithms living off negative controversy. But still a skewed picture.

 

This place really changed quite a bit over the years. I remember between '02 to about '06 you had to be really careful about bashing the prequels, there was even a 'basher purge' around 2007 (?)
I drifted away from here for a few years , when I came back around 2014 I was amazed at how the general stance had changed - now it was the 'prevailing wisdom' that the prequels were crap.

 

We weren't against bashing the PT. We didn't want people coming in and just spouting off randomly about hating the films, the SE's and Lucas personally. Conversations would be interrupted with trolling and spam efforts. Opinions became very heated. The bashers accused people of being shills for Lucas. Things got to be personal rather quickly. And if it wasn't that, the conversations quickly devolved into EU-Canon debates.

We didn't demand people to not be critical of the PT and the SE's. We just wanted constructive criticism.

 

I remember this web site being more pro-prequel before the move to XenForo than immediately after.

 

The few years after the Disney announcement were a pretty rough time. Giving the PT any praise in the ST forum was met with immediate trolling thrown your way. Interestingly I've noticed many of the staunchest "the ST has to redeem Star Wars!" posters disappeared not long after TFA premiered.

 

From what I can recall, there was still hatred towards the PT in 2012, but after Disney's purchase it was somewhat offset by an air of forgiveness in light of what many were assuming (lol) was going to be a new golden age of quality Star Wars content that was totally uncontroversial and adored by both fans and critics alike. So I'd say it was likely more intense in 1999, despite there being a bit of a honeymoon period in the wake of TPM and before everyone kind of soured on it.