Despite all its faults, I’ll always fondly remember TPM as my first SW movie.
Wasn’t the first that I saw but I guess it was the first that I saw in theaters. Saw it twice (probably the first time I saw a movie more than once in theaters). The wait for the VHS killed me.
At the end of the day, I think what’s most notable about TPM is that it is the only Star Wars film ever that is just pure, unfiltered George Lucas. With the OT there were a lot of factors that pushed the films away from the vision in his head and a lot of people refining what he wrote. With AOTC he was responding a bit to the criticism of TPM and also coming up with a lot of stuff on the fly and in post. And with ROTS he was playing catch up and providing some fan service. But TPM is really the only one where he had a lot of time to write all by himself (and a lot of freedom in the story due to its setting in the timeline), and then when it came to production there was basically nothing stopping him (technology or budget-wise) from getting exactly what he wanted. It’s definitely an interesting film to look at in that regard, but ultimately I think it’s clear to see the problems with that as well.
I never thought of it that way, but you’re completely right. Have you read “The Star Wars”, the comic adaptation of Lucas’ first draft of the original film? It’s very TPM-like in many ways. It has complicated galactic politics, a Wookiee equivalent of the Ewok/Gungan battle at the end, very stiff and formal Jedi Knights, etc. Its’ interesting to think of what SW would have been if the first film, in the literal sense, would have been more like TPM.
Yeah I’ve read it! One of the reasons why I feel like TPM is George unfiltered. You can see how there’s a lot of things he wanted to do with the series since the beginning that he wasn’t able to until Episode I. It’s fascinating to think that that might have been his conception of SW all along and that he simply wasn’t able to accomplish with the OT - but so meanwhile everyone else in the world ends up a conception of SW that is based solely on what the finished product of the OT actually was, and they’re ultimately two fairly different things.