PT Was the "reputation "of the Prequels doomed from the start ?

I was looking on the internet for the official title announcement of Episode 1 : The Beginning.

And to my surprise I actually found something
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/2191
(Published at: Sept. 25, 1998)

And again to my surprise I found comments were people already trash talking the movie and making fun of the title.

Thoughts ? Was this already some sort of backlash (for the SE?)? Did people already hate George Lucas before the PT even came out ?

As a Kid born in 95 I find this really interesting.

 

I remember folks not caring for the title when it was first announced. It was my first exposure to nerd-dom complaining about anything they could possibly complain about.

 

That's interesting, I was also under the impression that the bashing came later. Makes you think that TPM would be doomed to complaints no matter what it was.

 

Firstly, you seem to be new here, so welcome to TFN. And...


Ah! AICN -- a place that turned into a hub of prequel hate.

Nevertheless, some good work on your part at peeking into the past.

And, indeed, not all of the comments there are negative; even if, per your contentions, perhaps "The Phantom Menace" (the title and everything else) created an epic disturbance in the Force.


Pleasingly, the last two paragraphs of the main entry read as follows:


First off you have to think about Lucas' primary inspiration for STAR WARS. The old Buster Crabbe FLASH GORDON and BUCK ROGERS serials. Hell, Gene Autrey was in one called THE PHANTOM EMPIRE, that serial rocked by the way. The Star Wars saga is very much the greatest SERIAL the world has ever seen. And as a rule, all serials began with titles like this one. You see THE PHANTOM MENACE is the perfect title for Chapter One of a serial.

(My interjection here: "The Star Wars saga is very much the greatest SERIAL the world has ever seen." HELL YES!!!!!!!)

Anyway, carrying on...


It sets up a forboding (sic) tone. Making references to the secret enemy from within. There is the enemy that has been there all along. It creates an aura of mystery and yet is every bit as popcorny as the EMPIRE STRIKES BACK or A NEW HOPE. THE PHANTOM MENACE is wonderful, and it plays into the story that will unfurl after the title crawls into the vastness of space. Of course not all of us fans grew up on the classic serials. I recommend spending a few hours with SPY SMASHER, MYSTERIOUS DR SATAN, THE PHANTOM EMPIRE, FLASH GORDON, BUCK ROGERS, ZORRO'S FIGHTING LEGION, THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL, PERILS OF NYOKA, etc... Check them out at your video store. The whole rolling crawl comes straight from this. The cliffhanger endings. The melodramatic thrill chase... remember the serial's title is still STAR WARS, this is merely the chapter name. So there you have my opinion on the title...

I think that that is really well-put; and maybe a bit more erudite and open-minded than a lot of commentary seen since that was written (almost twenty years ago now).



Farther down in the comments section itself (the 1998/contemporary comments section), I also enjoyed this addition:



Sept. 25, 1998, 7:41 p.m. CST
Think Big Picture Folks
by karl

Seems to me that everyone who's bitching about "The Phantom Menace" being the title of "Episode One" is forgetting one important fact. It is supposed to be EPISODE ONE! Forget for a moment that you're a rabid Star Wars fan and look at the issue from the perspective of our children and grandchildren who will one day be fortunate enough to experience watching the Star Wars saga for the first time. It's logical to assume that they will see it not in the order they were originally released, but in order of the COMPLETE story arc. As dramatic as "Balance of the Force" may sound to fans, it presumes a prior knowledge of the Star Wars universe that will not exist for many first time viewers. Think about it, if you hadn't seen the original Star Wars, would "The Empire Strikes Back" or "Return of the Jedi" have meant anything at all to you? And there's a reason why "A New Beginning" was added to the first film later. Moviegoers in 1977 would have been asking "Beginning of what?" The beauty of using "The Phantom Menace" as a title is that it's descriptive and creates suspense without really giving anything away or making references to future events. I have a feeling that when we step out of the theaters next summer, the title will make perfect sense. Rather than put down George Lucas (who probably has more imagination that all of us put together), we should commend him for looking at the big picture and having enough vision to consider how Star Wars will be enjoyed by future generations. It has been, is and always will be his baby, and it's pretty damned presumptuous of us to tell him what he should name it. By the way, regarding an earlier post asking what Lucas has done in the past 10 years, do the terms Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, or THX ring a bell? Under Lucas' leadership, these groups (under the umbrella of Lucas Digital Services) have had a huge impact on what we see and hear at the movies as well as HOW we see it. When I see a movie at a THX certified theater or go home after a hard day's work and fire up the THX home audio system and pop in a DVD or laserdisc, I know exactly what he's been up to for the past decade...pushing the moviegoing experience to the limit.


And I couldn't help but chuckle at this one and several others like it:



Sept. 25, 1998, 7:37 p.m. CST
Phantom Menace=Phantom Title
by Armbar

Hold your horses. Before you start clamouring about how horrible this title is or get caught into Harry's charade about how wonderful it is, realize that this title is nothing more than a hoax. Remember REVENGE of the Jedi? This is not the title for Episode One. Seriously, the film will not be released for another 8 months, the special FX aren't finished, the posters aren't made yet and we haven't even seen a trailer. Do you really think that George is giving us the REAL title, or is it more likely that its either 1.) a joke on the part of starwars.com or 2.) a temporary title that they're using to quench the thirst for knowledge of most fans(like Harry) Come on, this is not just Star Wars, it is the FIRST Star Wars of the saga, how swashbuckling and excited does Phantom Menace make you feel? Me: very little. This is supposed to launch us into the saga. This title may be a throw back to serials that George Lucas grew up on, but it does not aspire to the mythology that he has always seeked to create with the Star Wars saga. Have no fear Star Wars fans this title will change, and we will have the film that we have been waiting for so long.

I imagine that person, and several others, had kittens when they read the first words of the opening crawl:

"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute."

Childhood ruined.




While, this other comment, for balance, reminds me of some prequel fans' misgivings toward "The Last Jedi", including my own:



Sept. 25, 1998, 9:32 p.m. CST
Just Plain Wrong
by Halfscan

If you'll notice, they list the title not as "The Phantom Menace"... but as "Star Wars: Episode I-- The Phantom Menace." Seems to me that they aren't even hot on the title by leaving the "SW:Ep1" in there.. after all did we line up for "SW:Ep5--The Empire Strikes Back" or "SW:Ep6-- The Return of the Jedi"? Hell no! We didn't need the "SW:Ep#" to "remind" us! Phantom Menace just doesn't stand very well on it's own as a title like the previous films. It certainly doesn't evoke the images that the other titles did when we first heard them. Sure it sounds like a serial.. but it sounds more "terestrial" than "space opera" if you know what I mean. The name hints at a hidden threat, but be honest... not alot will be hidden from the fans before they enter the theater. Whatever the "Phantom Menace" is, most of us will know what it is before the lights go down on opening night... the title just won't work. I know that I prefer the more epic sounding "of the" titles.. stuff like "Fall of the Republic", "Rise of the Empire" (or "Dawn of"/"Birth of"). They refer to elements of the trilogy we know and so the series still seems connected... even WITHOUT leaving in the "SW:Ep1". -Half


So, I guess, in some senses, the more things change, the more they stay the same.


Fascinating link. Thanks for sharing.

 

no problem ^^

do you know more old sides that are still up that have news about TPM before release ?
I really want to read more about the pre TPM phase.

 

No, actually. It is not something I have really looked too much into.

However, this very website, or its parent, "TheForce.net", has a pretty neat archive of TPM news material dating all the way back to February 1998.

Go to to the following page for a few news stubs from Feb 1998, and click the smaller drop-down box to select different dates:

http://www.theforce.net/episode1/history/history199802.asp

You can bring up a lot of news items that way.




There's also this "Virtual Edition" of TPM intrepidly put together ahead of the movie's release. It's essentially the shooting script with a few crude frames accompanying it, giving an idea of how the finished film might look (although it also seems they gave up on the images, or they weren't preserved after all this time, after the opening sequence on Naboo):

http://www.theforce.net/virtualedition/episode-i/chapters/ep-i-opening.htm




And if you still want more good stuff, explore archived versions of the official site, courtesy of The Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/starwars.com

 

The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have played it pretty safe with the titles. The Force and Jedi are very familiar to the Star Wars audience. Phantom Menaces were not. It sounded like a ghost story.

 

Well, now, THAT, to be fair... is a bloody good point.

I. tried. not. to. go. there.

But daaaaaaaaaarn it...

When a good point is made, it should be acknowledged. Yes!

 

I wasn't on the internet much at all in 1999, and back then the internet wasn't really interconnected with general media as it is today. I can tell you that I did not see any PT hate in the general media in the build up to TPM. All I really heard around me was excitement for the film. But I did read from The Lard Biscuit's Phantom Menace essay that there was some internet buzz around the time of January that inside sources were saying that the "movie didn't look very good".

To answer the question of the thread, yes, at least in some ways the film was doomed from the start. Lucas clearly was not interested in making the movie fans wanted. He clearly did not want to remake the OT. It seems to me that at least some fans wanted an updated, modern version of the OT - which seems strange to me. Instead Lucas created a whole new trilogy that had its own identity - but like the OT it harkened back to more traditional methods of filmmaking.

 

I think it is fair to say that TPM/PT had huge anticipation and expectations. And not always in a good way.

Few if any other film had to deal with that level of anticipation and hype.
I lived through it and it was unreal some of the time.

So TPM did not have an easy time, there was hype to be sure but if there was even a slight disappointment after that much hype, the backlash could be severe.
Living up to that much expectation, it is not easy.

Even more so when it is a story that people sort of know, so people already have expectations.

I remember the rumors, the talk, downloading the first teaser, which took ages on a dial up.
In my country they even made a special TV program just to show the teaser and then some people in the studio talked about how awesome it was and how SW had influenced them.
It was a bit crazy.

But the PT isn't the only film series that had been pulled apart on the Net by anxious fans.
I remember the first X-Men film and when the first images of the costumes got out and some fans were pissed.
"It isn't yellow spandex, this film will SUCK!!"

I also remember the LotR films and how every scrap of news, rumors or total BS was poured over and emotions were high.
People were pissed that Sean Connery wasn't cast as Gandalf.

Or the Harry Potter films, there was an early rumor that the films would be placed in America, with American actors.
That got people upset.

With both the PT and with some adaptations of well known and beloved books or comics, there is always the issue of people having ideas about what will happen or how it should look or how the characters should be like.
And diverting from that isn't always easy. And can give rise to very vocal opposition.

Remember when the Turtles were going to be aliens?

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Doomed reputation? No.
Impossible to match hype? Yes.

 

I think there was always going to be at least a bit of an up hill battle for Menace. It was the first "event" film to follow Titanic, which was absolutely huge regardless of the grudge geek culture held against it. Then Matrix hit and offered a similar experience to Star Wars in some respects, while at the same time feeling really novel as far as mainstream action movies. Even if Episode I had turned out to be a 90s version of Rogue One, I think Star Wars would've suddenly looked a bit silly compared to Keanu's coolness, bullet time, the apocalyptic cyberpunk aesthetic, etc.

So yeah, not doomed, but given that the movie was such an event even before anyone saw the actual movie, hard to maintain that hype. Especially with the multitude of big franchise alternatives springing up around the PT timeframe.

 

the title isn't the problem for TPM haters. it's the fact that George Lucas took a different path in the film. GL added more aspects to the SW universe and it was not familiar to many OT fans

 

I don't get the hate for the title. Not one bit. It is a perfect inverted counterpart to A New Hope, while simultaneously paying homage to a classic film with a similar titular "phantom".

 

And it's a sinister title that can spark imagination. "Balance of the Force" or "The Force Awakens" is so bland and vague.

 

A lot of the fans, and the titles they come up with lack creativity. That's what separates the creators from the consumers.

 

There were some fans mad at Lucas for making a PT rather than a ST with Luke and the gang. I remember one old Scifi channel show about nerd news. It had one segment where they would discuss topics and debate. One episode they were debating about the Star Wars prequels. One guy was very mad about it as he did not want movies he already knew how it was going to end. He stated he rather see the continuing adventures of the OT characters. The same guy also thought that in the SE AHN, Lucas should have left the human Jabba in, as well as having disdain toward MST3K.

There were also fans already mad at Lucas for ruining the OT with the SE in their view, and already predisposed against the PT. Heck some were mad about ROTJ even.

 

To this day I always wondered what a sequel trilogy in the late 90s would have been like and pushed for it to happen sooner rather than later. Either way I'm happy he decided to do the prequels.

 

It was only doomed as much as anything that attracts hype on the internet is.

 

I got into Star Wars right after TPM and I never seen the old unclean versions of the OT outside of clips of ROTJ. The I remember most was the Ewok song at the end. GL did a good job of cleaning up ROTJ especially the Rancor and speeder bike scenes.

 

I do remember a lot of people complaining about the title, it just seemed so far from the normal SW titles (and still does). I also remember a lot of people complaining about Anakin being a 9 year old kid when that was announced. It wasn't until after the movie though that the real complaints rolled in.

 

That's interesting that there was already some disdain by some toward the prequels beforr they even came out. I think though that if they had been more like the Matrix (ie appealing first and foremost to 15-35 year old males) that they would've dodged most of the backlash.

 

That is really weird to see. I went into TPM not knowing what to expect and I really enjoyed it.

 

I remember there being a lot of naw sayers on the internet in the lead up to TPM. But there was also this huge deal of hope that pushed back. They don't know what they're talking about. If anyone can pull this off it's George Lucas. And the internet was still new and Star Wars news was a big part of the early internet. It brought out a lot in people good and bad, and in a way TPM was a rallying point for the early internet and modern nerd culture.

I liked the Phantom Menace - so the disappointment wasn't so bad for me. But I remember reading an early review on Aintitcool that compared Episode 1 to a really well done version of Willow. Not sure if I agree with that, but it somehow put my expectations in place for seeing the movie.

 

The vision of a former skeptic fan of SW:

1. thereare people who hate SW in general, who have a more or less strong prejudice against it (e.g. critic John Ivan Simon);
2. other people (me among them) who thought then it to be hard to equal the OT (given the general decadence of our contemporary culutre);
3. and others who had anyway strong expectations from the new ones –then, the PT– (and for various reasons they might have been right).

When TPM had been released I was 11. However, the fact of its release didn't hit me very much, at the time. I was so little interested in this movie that at the time I even ignored that it was part of a trilogy. Anyway, I must say that years later I did deliberately went to the cinema for TAOC and for ROTS (and I loved them a lot, especially the latter).

Since I was a little child I've always been a great fan of SW (with my best friend I watched S-VHS of the OT over and over, I remember well), and I'd dare even to say that SW perhaps formed (or helped to shape) my embryonal religious sensibility: as the Force was such an incredible thing to a child, indeed; but at the time of 1999 I was very doubtful.

I despised the excitment of my little class-mates for what I believed to be a movie ment to sell more videogames (my firends talked of them a lot), more figurines, costumes etc., than to produce real art.

As the SW subcolture had since the 80s spread very widely, having been for many years since a literal bombardment with commercials and so forth, I think that many (not me) had developed an hostile feeling towards the Saga in itself: including OT as well.

Therefore, mixed views must have existed among very different audiences.

I wish you all the best.​