Alexrd said:
zombie84 said:
You can call it something else, but you'd be wrong--or at least, that the majorly held opinion and wide public census is that its "poor" to one degree or another
Poor to whom? On what basis do you claim the wide public census?
We base it on whatever the majority opinion is. The majority opinion, as exemplified by the media, reviews, the internet, and also daily interaction as far as can be reasonably expected (i.e. not just the SW fan club), says the film was poor, overall. This is a public consensus. This doesn't mean everyone dislikes the film, but that on balance there is (much) more negativity than positivity. I don't know of anyone who doubts this other than prequel fans, but based on this I don't know what would convince them otherwise. It's in books, in magazines, in newspapers, in awards (or lack thereof), in ratings, in websites, in TV shows, in the news, and in conversation. As I said, it's not that the film was deemed the worst film of all time--although there were people being this harsh--but simply that it was not particularly good.
It doesn't normally require proving except to prequel fans, because its in a category called "common knowledge", exemplified by all of the previously-mentioned sources and examples which anyone who was alive in 1999 witnessed firsthand. Maybe one could question how negative that perception is, because I will agree that is hard to precisely measure, and I would also argue that it is not as negative as some may think, but as far as most reasonable people are concerned there is little doubt that the perception is negative overall to one degree or another. It has a bad reputation. Period.
The film received mediocre reviews and was slaughtered by the major press.
Yes it was:
http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com/episodeirelease.html
The major press gave it the worst ratings of all, in the early wave of reviews. I didn't make this up. That's what happened. And overall, its critical ratings are mediocre, at best--5.2 or something by both RT and Metacritic, and confirmed by a brief perusal of major media sources. Once again, that's not me talking, that's simply the way it is. Period.
Many fans hated it,
And many loved it, and many liked it.
But with all the other bad press, bad reviews, and the majority of reviews which are mediocre (take a look yourself), the scale tips to the negative, hence this is irrelavant as far as "disproving" its negative overall reception. As far as consensus it matter little if there are numbers of fans that think the film is great when most people don't, because consensus, or overall impression, or basic public reputation, or however you want to describe it, depends on what the overall balance is. Few people would believe anyone who said the overall balance of TPM's rep is positive. The evidence backs this up.
I don't know where there is perception amongst a small group of people that believe it isn't infamous; were you guys around in 1999? The entire non-PT-fan world didn't just get amnesia and forget all the bad press it received.
I'm not saying it hadn't bad press, it just wasn't the majority of it. Just like TESB or RotJ.
ESB had little bad press. ROTJ did. But people today still hate ROTJ. Many will admit its not that good a film and even in 1997 it had some poor reviews. But this is irrelevant. And a common tactic--bring up TPM's rep by trying to bring down the OT. Strawman. I didn't realise we were trying to argue TPM was reviewed as bad as ROTJ, I thought we were arguing wheather TPM overall had a poor public image. Stick with the topic.
There are a swath of editorials on it, many of them still online for you to view yourself. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it has a moldy 39% meter from actual critics, and a 5.2 rating, which metacritic basically corroborates. Not exactly great. In fact, pretty poor. At IMDB, it rates better, but only 6.5 or something like that, still rather mediocre. It swept the razzies, routinely appears on "disappointing movies" list and the like, and just in terms of general experience gets mentioned in connection with mediocre films. Personally, I don't think it's totally terrible, but I will agree with the public concensus that it's not very good.
Again, public concensus is not made of film critics, or a couple of lists made by a couple of people. It's the audience, the general public. There was a survey about this back in '99 that I'm almost sure is still online. I'll try to find it and post it here.
The public consensus is made up of all these things--not one, and not the other. The media, the conversations, the websites, all these things. More people on the internet have negative things to say about the films than those who have positive things. In my own experience, and the experience of many others, people in real life are not particularly fond. By reviews, the film did poorly. By editorials, there are more negative than positive. By the largest survey online, IMDB, the film has a sub-par rating. By awards, it swept the razzies. And on, and on.
The overall impression then, is one of negativity. If you like the film, fine. I like tons of movies that the public consensus deems poor, or whatever. But I'm not going to deny it. Let's get real here, jesus.
I don't recall those GL claims. But even if true, I wouldn't call them entirely incorrect.
So even though you don't know what I am referring to, you still claim it's "not entirely correct." This is called putting a conclusion before the evidence, and its pretty consistent with the rest of your response.
The film received positive notices, sure, in fact quite a few, but it received a lot of awful, terrible reviews as well; most reviews were so-so, and even in the positive ones there is often a tinge of disappointment that the film wasn't as good as the others. That being said, there is this perception that critics ravaged the film, and that it is universally hated--and that's where the misperception comes in. According to reviews, it is disappointing overall, sub-par--but not the worst film in history.
While I agree about the general misperception, I have a slightly more positive view of the film's reception (still based on the info that came out at the time, and over the years). Anyway, since none of us have the universal survey, truth, whatever, I guess we have to leave it at that.
However, someone who has researched much more and has not based his conclusion on logical fallacies ad nauseum has much stronger legs to stand on than one who has not.
I've studied the critical reception of the film in two separate studies if you would like to look at the reviews at least.
Yes, I've read those before. I respect your opinion and research, even though I still disagree with some points.
You can disagree all you like, but you haven't made any coherant counterargument.
None: That book is not something to throw around as though it has much merit. It's self published. Its basically some prequel gusher decided to publish his own defense of TPM through a self-printing service. It's filled with the same logical fallacies, research holes, rhetoric, and ignorance to the larger picture, not to mention denial, that you see on the boards at TFN. It has some merit for its tracking of the TPM hype, and it clearly came from a good place, but as far as the "Defense" of the film, it's academically lacking. He did another one for ROTS which is even worse from what I can tell. I don't know of any reputable publication that has ever referenced his conclusions as far as this issue is concerned.