Asteroid-Man said:
Because there are a lot of individuals who will say IV-VI are incredible, masterful and flawless and then talk about how cheesy, terribly acted and inconsistent the PT is, but in all honesty, the acting in ANY of the SW films was never it's strong point, cannon is just always being retconned, and they're incredibly cheesy - people take their love of the original universe created and blow it out of proportion. Star Wars is in original and very rich story - one like never seen before - but some people (it's a small group, but it exists) will call the OT flawless and the PT nothing BUT flawed, simply because the "OT" is the "original" trilogy.
Ah, sorry, I thought you were referring to the "refuting" of ANY discontinuity in the Star Wars series, not just the new ones... so yea, my question was obviously how someone criticizing the retcons in ESB and ROTJ is an "elitist" if he just points out what is there... guess I was wrong :DDD
As for "cheesy", well, very obviously those movies are "cheesy" to some extent, but certainly nowhere near the extent of, say, the Flash Gordon movie with Brian Blessed. Now THAT one is "incredibly cheesy".
With Star Wars, you see the intent, overall tone and where it came from, but it manages to build a considerably believable and serious tone on its cheesy premise and elements - pretty much like the LOTR movies, which obviously have a rather cheesy fantasy premise (and above that, were considerable simplified in relation to the books), but manage to come off as dramatic and epic for the most part due to their execution - not to say they didn't have their amount of narm, as well.
Ash Nazg, turrrrrrrrimbattturrrrrr!!!!! I'm no man.. aahahhhhh!!!! :DD
Obviously, Star Wars retains some silliness despite of that, but I'd say the prequels are at their best when they manage to reach the cheese quality of their predecessors somewhat - and even Grievous comes off as more comical than Jabba. When they don't (Jar Jar), it's just stupid and obnoxious. No comparison there.
As for the acting not being their strong point - you must be completely crazy to claim that those movies didn't owe at least as much of their popularity and charm to Harrison Ford as they did to their special effects. Heck, ever last "admiral" type on any of the imperial ships is more interesting to watch than Obi-Wan throughout the entire PT.