PT Why does there seem to be a near-consensus that AOTC is worse than TPM?

Story wise, ATOC is great and there are some fantastic scenes. However, the things that make it not great are that the love story is done terribly and that awful C3P-0 crap in the droid factory / arena is absolutely cringeworthy. Some of the dialogue is probably the worst of the saga as well.

In TPM, Jar Jar is pretty awful, but I think most the rest of the film makes up for it so I do rank it higher than ATOC.

I think most people base their ranking of the films on the negative aspects even more so than the good ones. If you've got a great film with some awful parts, those awful parts stick out like a sore thumb.

 

No kidding.

The whole thing that gets me with the "AOTC looks like a video game" thing is that, apart from not really being true, it makes me feel like these people have never watched a science fiction or fantasy movie made before the original Star Wars in 1977. Star Wars revolutionized special effects in movies and set the new standard going forward. But before that, practical effects weren't nearly as convincing. Try watching the original King Kong or Forbidden Planet. Great movies, but the effects are not very convincing. Does that make them bad movies? Not at all. You have to suspend your disbelief. And if you can do it for those movies, you can certainly do it for the prequels, whose digital effects are actually very good, even if not totally photorealistic at all times.

 

Perhaps many had expected Anakin to become Darth Vader by the end of the movie. Is that it? I hope not, because that would seem rushing the story to me.

 

Both films have their own separate merits.

AOTC’s darkness is understated in my opinion, while TPM swings the opposite way. I like both tones and can prefer either depending on my mood, and my ordering of the two in my rankings can change.

AOTC is more emotionally charged in my opinion, and politically oriented. I like both of those things in the film, more so as I’ve watched it more.


I would say that AOTC’s extra advanced CGI showcases the capabilities of the technology in full effect. I don’t think it’s possible to objectively say whether this is good or bad, even if you say it looks like a video game.
And I can easily tell the difference between movie CGI and animation in video games.
AOTC looks nothing like The Force Unleashed.

 

They are both pretty bad. Revenge of the Sith is marginally better but episodes I and II are almost unwatchable for me.

 

I don't share your views Bob. I think both movies are great, like "ROTS". I especially feel this way for "AOTC". My feelings for the OT are the same. All three of those movies are great as well. I realize a lot of people dislike the Prequel films. But I have yet to come across any criticisms that strike me as convincing or have any real depth. I have made some criticisms of the PT films in my reviews. But I hope that I have provided criticisms with a little more depth. The same goes for my criticisms of both the Original and Sequel Trilogies.

 

I just re-watched the whole PT. AOTC is still weak, but nowhere near as bad as TPM. It's funnier, most mysterious and I find the Geonosis stuff quite good. Also, Dooku and Jango = win. But pacing and bad dialogue place it on the lower ranks of the saga for me

TPM is very difficult to watch, simply because of Jar Jar. I also find the whole Naboo Gungan battle almost entirely skippable.

ROTS is many, many notches above both TPM and AOTC and one of the best SW films for me.

 

That seems to be the case for me, too. Most criticism seems to be entirely unfounded and based on nothing more than wanting SW movies to be less StarWarsy.
When I watched the 9-movie marathon at the AMC, with ROS being shown for the first time, I can say without a doubt that the PT was the highlight of the 2-day marathon.
The prequels are imho the most awesome and immersive experience a SW fan could ever hope to have. Everything about them is enthralling to me - the detailed look at the Old Republic, the new themes, the wonderfully nuanced performance by Ian McDiarmid and several others, having Christopher Lee and all the other charismatic actors, it's all so amazing.
Watching the PT on the big screen, where you can't pause or rewind, is really an amazing treat for me... Wish they has more marathons like this!

 

Lucas was wise to use all three films to get to that moment.

 

There's a lot of good food for thought here, and it's made me more interested in revisiting the two films.

While I feel like TPM is 'safer', I also rarely feel inclined to rewatch it and haven't been entirely sure why, but this may be it. I don't get the criticism of Jake Lloyd, though; considering he was a kid, I think he did fine.

 

I never had any issue with Jake Lloyd. He was an average kid acting like an innocent kid. All the more tragic knowing that said innocence would be lost in a big way.

It could partly be because I’ve felt his absence, but I’ve warmed up to Hayden’s performance as well. He’s great in ROTS and the last time I saw AOTC, I thought he was good as well. The only part I thought seemed significantly off was “Sorry mi’lady.” Otherwise, he brings a lot of good to the role of Anakin and does as well as a lot of actors would have, and better than many probably.

 

I still say, after all these years, that AOTC is one of the top two films in the series. And this from someone old enough to have seen SW on rerelease right before ESB came out initially.

Man, Hayden does a good job of portraying Anakin as an emotionally crippled and damaged youngster. All this power and he doesn't get why the Jedi encourage restraint. Wanting to save his mother while reconciling that with the Jedi Council's seeming inaction in matters. All while feeling like everything he does is wrong, when he selfishly thinks he deserves better.

We're not going for great cinema here, folks. But it's a layered performance he doesn't get credit for.

The *only* thing that would have clinched the deal for me is if it were more explicit that Palps was feeding him lies and toying with his mind this entire time.

 

I like him in both movies but I've always maintained that he's better in AOTC. I feel like AOTC is the role he was cast for. Hayden just is that Anakin.

ROTS is more of a stretch for him and I don't know if he pulls it off quite as well. For ROTS, I feel like Lucas wanted someone who was more like Matt Lanter ultimately ended up being. It's kind of like the difference in Mark Hamill's performance in ANH versus his performance in ROTJ. He's good in ROTJ, but ANH Luke is exactly who Mark Hamill is in real life, so he comes across as more natural in the role.

I don't think Hayden's performance in ROTS is bad at all--in fact overall I find him perfectly charismatic--but I've always been slightly baffled by the consensus that he's significantly better in that film than in AOTC. It's one of those cases where I just cant understand what everyone else is talking about.

 

I honestly prefer Mark in ROTJ, but he’s competent enough in all three.


I don’t honestly see a huge difference between Lanter’s voice role and Hayden’s live action role.

Matt portrayed Anakin in a wider time span than Hayden ever had the chance to (three years versus about two weeks). I don’t know what Hayden’s like in real life, but I think he could have done as well as Matt.

And I don’t feel his ROTS performance is that wide of a margin better, but there weren’t any scenes in ROTS that seemed off the way the “sorry milady” did in my opinion. In both films, I feel he does a good enough job.

It’s true that Anakin’s somewhat different at the start of ROTS and maybe that’s what you mean. Maybe Hayden wasn’t there IRL. I’m not sure.

But there isn’t a huge difference to me.

 

I think after the Coruscant opening, up to him reuniting with Padme and having his nightmares, Hayden does resort back to the angsty, moody Anakin from AOTC, just obviously more mature and taking more to fly off the handle. While I appreciate how Season 4 and 5 of TCW gives us a moodier version of Anakin that is more reminiscent of Hayden's/Dark Horse comics Anakin, I think Lanter can get a bit hammy with "angry Anakin" while Hayden is more natural as the conflicted, troubled young man.

 

Speaking of Hayden and Matt:

 

My thoughts exactly when I saw AOTC in the theaters the first couple of times: Hayden IS young Vader, precisely the way he should have been. Not that I had imagined him in any way, on the contrary, I had no preconceptions whatsoever. I just saw him in the role and thought "that's IT, this is Vader".

 

For me, I prefer AOTC more than TPM I think because I was interested to see how Anakin and Padme's relationship evolved from what it was when they were young. In TPM it was a nice little friendship and then in AOTC it became romance as I knew it would. I really like TPM (even Jar Jar, which I never had a problem with and think he really gets a bad rap).

 

What is interesting to me, is how despite the mixed reactions towards the PT, these films have really become an intergral part of the Star Wars fabric, and how we look at future films in the franchise. No matter how much some of us have criticized several elements of these films, there's no denying they told a great, and ambitious story, and greatly expanded the lore, and the universe. While I would say the OT had more world building than the ST, I think this particular criticism is mostly part of the legacy of the PT, since that trilogy had so much world building, we now expect this from a Star Wars film, and both TPM, and AOTC had plenty of that.

 

The PT also cemented the expectation, at least in the minds of fans, that each era of Star Wars should feature new conflicts, distinct designs, and a defining aesthetic. Before the PT, people might have just take it as a given that Star Wars was Rebels vs. Empire, X-wings vs. TIE fighters, clunky gray starships, and sparsely populated frontier worlds. I think it's fairly clear by now that if the PT had been made by a major studio, that's probably exactly what it would have been, just like the ST has been.

It's more clear, now than ever, exactly how much of a limb Lucas was going out on. He didn't have to do what he did. He got a lot of criticism for it. He probably knew he would. But now, what Lucas did in the PT--at least in terms of visual innovation--is the yardstick any new Star Wars content is measured by.

 

Agreed. Visually, AOTC is quite good. I like the fight Obi-Wan Kenobi has on that water planet with Jake the Muss, and the lightsaber battle at the end is good. I'll also watch anything with the great Sir Christopher Lee in it, who acts everybody else off the screen, even if he does look a tad embarrassed to be in the movie.

But yeah, the whole romance...jeez, some of the worst dialogue and acting put to film. The worst thing about it is that Anakin is genuinely creepy in it. Fans are beefing about Kylo Ren's turn in the sequels, but by crikey, Anakin really is like an angry stalker. When he does his "Sorry milady" (invoking Parker from Thunderbirds at the same time) he looks as if he is about to murder Padme. Hayden plays him really sinister.

So the whole romance is rubbish. Utterly awful. George Lucas can't write romance dialogue or do romance scenes to save his life in my opinion. It's not even as if you could argue that Anakin is supposed to be sinister and awkward, because it isn't any better in Revenge of the Sith either, and he's supposedly married to the girl.

 

I agree with most of this. Lucas defends this dialog/romance as "old fashioned", but it's just clunky and awkward. I can feel Natalie and Hayden acting through these lines and it's pretty bad. The odd thing is....in film you can communicate the things characters are feeling/thinking without words.

In ESB, when Leia told Han she loved him, his response landed perfectly for a few reasons. Besides being funny, it's because we "the audience" knew this too. The characters didn't talk about their deep emotions, they showed them while outrunning the Empire. It was all built up in their interactions. You could tell Han and Leia were in love without long stuffy monologues about it. Contrast that to Padme's true feelings reveal in the arena. Fairly eye rolling.

 

Agreed. Is it in this one when Anakin and Padme say something like

"Oh Padme you're so beautiful"
"That's because I'm so in love"
"No, no it's because I'm so in love with you"

What the heck is all that about?

 

Don't get me wrong. Those two are cute, they do have good chemistry. The actual words they say to each other....yeesh. Corny.

 

Maybe Lucas had more artistic sense than the average nerd who wanted as much "bad-ass" Vader killing as many enemies as possible? Well, they (you?) got Kylo in the end, hope they were satisfied. They never got the prequels and apparently were not smart enough to appreciate Lucas' vision. Too bad for them. I personally couldn't care less, as I enjoyed the prequels in China where there were absolutely no haters trying to tell me how bad the prequels were! Luckily I was FAR away from the Western "fans".