Something I brought up in an earlier post is that it's hard to compare the trilogies objectively. Some people argue that the originals weren't all that good in the first place, so this hubbub about the PT being a collossal dissapointment really isn't a big deal. "Excalibur in outer space" is how one of my friend's friends described it, and that's an interesting description considering this talk about watching it 1-6. Anyway, the other argument is that Star Wars was just fine and dandy until the SE came along. The thing I find interesting is that some people look at the OOT as something you'd only want to enjoy for nostalgiac purposes, which throws this very interesting paradox out there I think. Not only do some people prefer the prequels over the originals (SE or not), they literally believe all this bullshit about the OOT being a "work in progress, half finished movie." It's almost as if they feel that insecure about stepping outside the 1-6 bubble and accepting the OOT as the way 4-6 should be, simply because the SE and the prequels exist.

Another problem is that some people actually grew up when the originals were first being released, and so 16 years go by before they see the prequels. For me, it was only 8 or 9 years at the most between seeing the originals for the first time and seeing TPM. I guess the only way to truly objectively compare everything is to do something like what this guy did, except instead of the SE and the PT it's the OOT and the PT, in either narrative order or original order, just as long as the viewer knows which was actually made first. This is what I mean when I say it's hard to compare everything objectively.

Whereas the originals felt like a mythological time period, the prequels just felt like 3 average movies. And, as we've emphasized already, each of the originals stand on their own whereas each of the prequels all feel the same as one another. Now, with the SE, Lucas has done his best to homogenize the entire thing and make it "Excalibur in outer space" indeed. An interesting irony I'd like to point out is that while Lucas back in the day wanted to evoke the theatrical serials in his episodic structuring of the "saga," today he's saying stuff like "we're moving into television and that's all we're going to focus on." In a hundred years, I wonder if anyone will even remember that these movies were made for the cinema and not for television. Ugh, the more I contribute to this "what might've been" discussion, the more I seriously wish it'd actually been that way.

Something I've thought ever since seeing ROTS is that the Vader suit seemed very tacked onto the end of the movie. It really is the case for them having just foregone it completely and left anakin as he's fallen into the pit, not seeing him again until ANH.

I don't really understand the case for people like Coppola or Spielberg having done the prequels. I by all means agree Lucas should not have directed them, I just think it should've been a modern day equivalent of people like Kershner and Marquand. And writers, that also would've helped.