What is there to be said that hasn’t already been said? They’re good movie (TPM) and two crimes against cinema (AOTC and ROTS). This trilogy needed TCW to save it and explain things it couldn’t.
Don’t think that’s really the consensus anymore, if it ever was. Maybe around these parts there will be more people who think that way, but anecdotally most of the people I know either IRL (20 - 30 age range) or that I have seen online and in other boards (TheForce.net, for instance) tend to consider ROTS to be the best in the trilogy by a mile and to rival the best of the other two. Curiously, most people I know rank TPM at the very bottom, ST notwithstanding.
To answer the title of the thread - they’re great stories, even if told somewhat unevenly. Ultimately what I’m looking for in movies and especially Star Wars is a great story so for the most part I’m left very satisfied. The PT found its footing and focus as it went on, and got better and better with each entry. I have a good time.
I know my pro-TPM/anti-ROTS isn’t consensus at all - it’s very anti-consensus. ROTS needed at least two or three more drafts to really nail the story.
The accusations of “nostalgia bait” should also apply to the PT after Phantom Menace. That movie had such an excellent aesthetic, largely divorced from anything we’d seen in the OT.
Really? I’d say PM was the MOST like the OT. The three main setpieces are grey corridors, desert Tattooine, and forest/palace Naboo. That’s 2/3 of the aesthetic of ROTJ.
In fact, PM is like a mirror to ROTJ, right down to the climax of the silly indigenous people of the planet rising up against a technologically superior army. Lando’s army in space needs planetbound Han to kill the signal; Jar-Jar and Padme’s army on the ground needs Anakin in space to kill the signal.
I once read a long theory that Lucas deliberately made PM mirror ROTJ; that may be giving him too much credit, but who knows?
I’m more talking about the ship designs and the way in which technology was depicted by the movie. There’s nothing like the Naboo ships (all chromed out) or the podracers in the OT.
The ROTJ parallel is definitely noticable in the finale, but with the ground combat split in two (human action scenes and the Gungan battle). That’s enough of a difference for me to write off an entirely intentional mirroring of the third acts.