There are so many great ideas on the new trilogy that are just thew there on the movies and never expanded into a coherent story…
It seriously implies it would spark joy.
I member when this meme would’ve been OT vs prequels… Now I’m not bold enough to say we’ll ever see the sequels redeemed and considered at least passable/sparks joy, but I’m also old and realize they weren’t really made for me. Then again the prequels kinda were and I kinda hated them as a kid (aside from 3)…
I watched them recently, they’re worse than I remember for sure. There are still fun things about them. But they’re not particularly good movies. I think the same thing can be said about the sequels
This is 100% spot on. They are all a lot of fun and I’ll watch them again at some point, but they’re not good movies. My bar for Star Wars properties, like for other media, comes in two layers:
- Would this be a good movie/show/game/book if it wasn’t set in the X universe? and
- Is this a good movie/show/game/book when compared to the better properties in the X universe?
IMHO, the first one is the more important question and the thing that Star Wars media constantly fails at. Andor was a fucking masterpiece and would have been an amazing piece of prestige television even absent any Star Wars connection. That’s the case with Rogue One and The Clone Wars, as well. The Prequels and Sequels don’t pass muster on criteria 1 and even a few don’t succeed meeting criteria 2.
with the prequels its mostly just the first one. Darth maul is the only good thing it had and they killed him like right off the bat. make 2 one, the clone wars cartoon as 2 and 3 stays three and it would not be to bad a trilogy.
In my opinion the bad movie is really the second one. You can cut that movie almost completely. There’s like 2-3 scenes of actually trilogi plot relevant stuff in there and so much crap. Even as a kid I absolutely hated ping-pong ball Yoda.
The majority sets up the Clone wars tv-series which is great and where you actually see Anakin develop as a character and towards the dark side, the stuff in AotC is just not it.
The dialogue is worse than any other Star Wars movie without any contest. Pretty much every line that gets memed on is from AotC.
It’s an action movie with some cool fighting for sure, but that has never been the appeal of Star Wars to me. As such it’s to this date the second worst Star Wars movie in my book.
Strongly disagree. Episode One was definitely the worst, but the whole trilogy was basically 6 hours worth of a creator having no idea what made his IP successful in the first place while desperately trying to out merchandise Return of the Jedi. They were toy commercials more than they were movies.
Also hot take: Darth Maul was a worthless character and we need to stop perpetuating the idea that he was somehow badass. He showed up for like 3 scenes, killed one equally useless Jedi, then died with a dumb look on his face because he couldn’t hit a guy jumping directly over his head. Except he didn’t die because Dave Filoni thinks he loves Star Wars while feeling the need to retcon everything about it. Boba Fett had more effective screen time and impact on the story than Maul, and we all know how useless Fett is.
Nostalgia is the only reason anyone looks back fondly on the prequels, and I dread the day nostalgia overtakes the sequels and I have to start biting my tongue on those too for fear of backlash.
You want to get back to what Star Wars originally was? Cut 90% of the budget, heavily criticize every creative decision, and treat the entire production like a goddamned venereal disease. Star Wars was a textbook example of art through adversity and benefited hugely from it. That’s what been lost and no one is talking about it.
see that is the the thing about darth maul. his look and lightsaber were so cool. he had massive potential but then as you say he was in for all of 3 scenes and killed.
People love Maul and Fett for the same reason that Alien didn’t show the xenomorph until like the second half of the movie: people’s imaginations will come up with something better than you can make almost 100% of the time. They pop on screen just long enough to look cool and maybe say one or two lines of dialogue to get the fans going, and then disappear. They’re the character equivalents of those lore-bait games that don’t have an actual story, just hints of stuff for fans to make YouTube videos about.
Were you around in the late 90s-early 2000s? Because let me tell you that the prequels did not spark joy for people then. It was insane the amount of hate leveled at Ep 1-3. Hell kids at Jake Lloyd’s school bullied him so hard he quit acting.
So you never know, 7-9 might spark joy for people in 20 years.
It did for me. Darth Jar Jar being the true Sith Lord is head cannon to me.
Cool concept. But george lucas wasnt creative enough for that theory. He almost had an nsync segment in episode one because his daughter liked nsync.
Have people actually re-evaluated the prequels now? I genuinely thought everyone was just being sarcastic.
At least 1-3 make sense. Anything after the grand finally doesn’t make sense.
Speaking as someone who actively despised the prequels when they came out, and has only learned to unclench my teeth in anger at their existence after a long process of maturation and philosophical introspection, I can’t wait to see the next generation of people getting furious when the sequels have been out long enough for new young fans to grow up and embrace them the same way the prequels were. It was horrible and difficult for me to go through, so it’s only fair that others should have to witness that process as well.
I know, right? As a huge Star Wars nerd who was in middle school when 1 came out, I didn’t even bother to go see 2 in theaters, and to this day I still haven’t seen 3 all the way through because I have such a bad taste in my mouth.
In fact, the way Lucas shit all over the established lore and canon to produce such a flaming turd turned me off to the entire IP and I didn’t read a Star Wars book or watch a show/movie until I gave Ep 7 a try because my FiL wanted to see it in the theater. That one I actually enjoyed (contrary to popular opinion), and I’ll say that the first season of Mandalorian and Bad Batch was decent, too. I haven’t seen Andor, but I probably will based on everyone’s reviews.
But the last Star Wars work that I still actually like and that I still think stands on its own two feet was Empire Strikes Back.
It’s wild how people pretend that the prequels weren’t hated by a bunch of people. Like, the Plinkett Reviews of the prequels were legendary YouTube videos for years before people started ironically memeing the prequels in, like, 2016.
Back then we didn’t know how bad it could get. The Prequels were bad, but you know what? The Sequels retroactively made the Prequels look like masterpieces.
No, they were still bad. I thought the same as you and watched them again. It all just felt awkward.
Episode 7 is no masterpiece, but it is infinitely more watchable for me than Episode 1. The initial conflict is just confusing as far as motivation, young Anakin and Jar Jar are both obnoxious as hell, and the acting is not great. The Darth Maul fight and the pod race are about the only parts of the movie that I remember fondly.
I was a kid when the prequels came out. I remember the hate for them, but most of my friends that were my age all loved them, as did I.
I think people tend to like what they grew up with and dislike what comes out when they are older.
You can see this pattern in Pokemon games as well. I grew up with gen 2 and gen 3. When gen 4 came out, it seemed like everyone hated it. Same with gen 5. But now most people act like gen 5 was the last good one.
Serious question, how often have you rewatched the prequel trilogy? Say what you want about the sequel trilogy, but at least it can be entertaining. The prequels can be so boring.
Let’s stop the collective gaslighting of pretending the prequels were good just because the new trilogy was garbage.
Let’s stop the collective gaslighting of pretending the prequels were good just because the new trilogy was also garbage.
FTFY
Guys, calm down, it’s been garbage the whole time, it’s your attachment to the movie you had when you watched them at an impressionable age that makes them feel better to you.
I hear what you’re saying, but as a fairly big literary and film snob, I’ll argue that A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back were bubblegum pop approaching art like a well-realized pop music album that transcends being “just entertainment.” I’ll use some music analogies, since that’s where I have the most background:
Francis Ford Coppola : Steven Spielberg : George Lucas :: Bob Dylan : Neil Young : Paul Simon.
You’ve got the auteurs that are out make artistic pieces that may or may not be appreciated in their time, you’ve got the prolific hit machines that churn out album after album (movie after movie) of insightful, well-made work, and then you’ve got the pop, “lowest common denominator” creators that can be game changers (esp. with the right collaborators and editing), but also have a lot of dreck in their back catalogs.
I would argue that despite the OT being pop-friendly action sci-fi, there was artistry present, especially in the special effects, the story telling, and the world-building. I mean, shit, the diegesis alone is pretty much a masterclass in how to build a living, breathing fiction universe, in a way that I’m not sure has ever been surpassed.
Bottom line: are they kids’ movies? yes. Are they strong enough to stand on their own as significant artistic works in the same echelon as The Godfather? I would argue that Ep. 4-5 are, yes. Am I still answering my own rhetorical questions? Also yes.
