I think it is mandatory I spread the word on the Red Letter Media Mr. Plinkett Reviews.
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I saw Star Wars when I was 11?, 12? A perfect movie for a nerdy kid like me. My mother learned that she could go shop in the mall in peace and dump me at the cinema for a couple of hours.
Then Phantom Menace, I was 36, I think. Stepping from young adult into middleagedom. Watched with cynical eyes. With a brain that thought The Matrix was the greatest sci-fi movie of all time.
Now, stepping into oldmanhood, in my 50’s, another trilogy is about to begin. I fully expect the audience to be full of older dads who have teenager/twentysomething kids. All on this strange life long journey with these silly movies about spaceships, space wizards and robots.
And then, when I have retired, the first symptoms of dementia starting to show, I will get a grandchild to take me to see the first movie of the next trilogy.
And then, my last words as I fade away on the hospital bed… “Kids, go see the new Star Wars for me. Do me that honour.”
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Yeah, little things started to accumulate: “A tax dispute?” uh, ok… “Why do these aliens talk like an Asian caricature?” uh… “Why is Jar-Jar speaking pidgin English?” “Why was such a terrible actor as Jake Lloyd cast in a leading role?” “Why, if Annakin’s mother is a ‘slave’ is she so seemingly unbothered by her servitude? nice accommodations for a ‘slave’, btw.” “The age difference between Annakin and Padme? wtf?” “So 3P0 was built by Annakin? wtf?” “When will this pod race be over? I already know how its going to end.” “Why does Lucas need to tie up ALL the origin stories together? What’s his problem?” And again: “Why was such a terrible actor as Jake Lloyd cast in a leading role?”
When the spittle-throwing King Gungan lifted up his “peace ball” at the end of the film, I was pretty sure I’d just seen a terrible movie, but I didn’t feel visceral nausea at that time. I hadn’t yet reached the conclusion that George Lucas is a self-indulgent, untalented, deluded asshole/hack. I just had a feeling of confusion. It couldn’t be that bad, could it? I was so confused, I took a friend to see it a couple weeks later.
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The main thing I remember from the first movie was a sinking feeling of disbelief. Like this cannot possibly be the thing we were so hyped up for. Literally sliding downward in my seat and trying not to cringe. A handful of moments of cool, but mostly, the kind of embarrassment and horrified disbelief one feels in the presence of relatives who reveal themselves to be terrible xenophobic bigots during a holiday dinner.
My roommates convinced me to go back and watch it in the theater again the next day for those few moments of cool. It didn’t really improve.
I barely remember the second movie at all. A tangled mess. I also barely remember the third except for the bit at the volcano, or that might have been Scientology.
I have not seen episodes 1-3 again since their initial release and don’t want to.
I am hopeful that Episode 7 is better than that, because it’s difficult to imagine it geting worse. I am not super thrilled in advance though.
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As Lucas liked to say during production of PM: “It’s a story about fathers and sons… Or something. I don’t know.”
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I’m looking forward to the re-re-makes in a decade where they take the basic plot structure and story of the prequels, and basically burn them to the ground and re-build them as an awesome tale of a man falling to darkness while trying to do good.
Maye that’s the flavor of red vines speaking, but it’s possible the plot of the prequels, in the right hands, could be quite good!
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My breasts… Megassa squeeze them!
The whole idea of the prequels was misconcieved. You’re just filling in the mythology from the original series - but it’s not really mythology, it’s waaay back 20-40 years. ‘The Clone Wars’ sounds good as a throwaway line, but trying to fill it in doesn’t work. The gaps give the story space to breathe. All the interrelations get even more messed up than Empire and Jedi already did to them with their own retcons. All the presence sensing stuff stops working when everyone is related to everyone else, and they keep going back to the same bloody planets. The films invited being analysed to death and there’s no way they could stand up to it.
I wanted the prequels to be about Obi-Wan, but he has no character arc at all and McGregor’s impression of Guinness was lousy. Nobody ever wanted to see Anakin as a little kid, and Anakin as a whiny teenager was hardly any better. I didn’t want R2-D2 and C-3PO shoehorned in everywhere, I didn’t want Yoda as a ‘great warrior’. Where’s the people we can root for? Above all else, the films just fail at being fun.
And no surprises, because you all know how it has to end, since it’s a prequel. I read stuff that suggests that it was meant to be a big reveal that Palpatine was Sidious, but how could it be? It’s the same actor, for chrissakes, even if you hadn’t read anything anywhere about Emperor Palpatine. It’s telegraphed a million miles off.
Sometimes it’s just better to leave people wanting more.
At least perhaps the new ones can forge their own story, not just be expanded footnotes.
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The frustrating thing is that the idea of the prequels was awesome! I’ll never forget Lucas, back in the early '80s, proclaiming in some magazine or TV show that since “Star Wars” was Episode IV, he was planning on making nine movies: the middle three, then the story of what came before, and then the story of what came after. That statement fueled my elementary-school playground imagination for years to come. What would we see? Who were these clones that were in a war? Did Obi-Wan and Anakin have cool space adventures? Would we see the universe before the ‘dark times’ when the Empire rose?
The prequels answered all this with: well, sort of. And it spent most of its time laboriously explaining things that I really didn’t need explained to me in the most dull, blasé way possible.
What Lucas should’ve done is to hire some Star Wars fans who were about 9-11 when the movies came out and channel their geekdom into the prequels.
That’s what has me excited about the new movies: JJ Abrams is that geeky kid.
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We are not amused.
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The funny thing about the video, besides the 90s fashion, was all of the head shaking going along with positive comments in the “after” reactions. The “so worth it” dude at 1:30 sums it up in under 2 seconds.
My guess is that people were afraid of being the one kid on the news that night that hated it and taking shit at school the next day.
I recall a scene in the DVD extras where Lucas himself puts his stamp on Jake and everyone else falls in line.
I think that was the problem really, no one to tell Lucas “No”, or “F- no!”.
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Don’t just spread the word. Send the pizza rolls.
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Whoah there. The prequels were bad enough without dragging 9/11 into them.
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[quote=“Trent_Boyett, post:28, topic:70396, full:true”]
I’m excited about the next one… From the guy who gave us arguably the best episode of television of all time.
[/quote]Wait, Joss Whedon is involved?
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Wait, the writers from Newhart are still working?
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What? Nobody bothers to link to Triumph’s masterful man on the street interviews?
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Also don’t forget that a lot of the “magical” impact of the first Star Wars was its special effects, which simply blew away any other movie except for 2001. Obviously there was a big deal about the digital effects in Phantom Menace and all that, but it wasn’t the exponential leap that Star Wars was, its advancement was just incremental.
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Be sure to email them to his webzone. Otherwise they’ll be cold by the time they get there.
Also, anyone got about 6 cans of fast-kill low-odor Raid? I have a project.
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Lucas seems to be blissfully unaware that the movies with which he had to labor under the thrall of someone else (like THX-1138 and Star Wars: IV) were unadulterated masterpieces-- for exactly that reason. It was because of these early, “terrible,” formative experiences that he craved, demanded (and got) full creative control for Ep I/II/III. Which were adulterated pablum. But still he wasn’t satisfied. He had to revisit his earlier works. He had to reedit and add deleted scenes and CGI to THX-1138 and A New Hope, which are lesser works because of these tinkerings. If Disney is smart they’ll know there is a revenue stream for the De-Lucased versions of Star Wars IV/V/VI.
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