When did you realize the Prequels sucked? — Page 6

^I don't really think the novelizations are considered EU, though.

Unlike most on here I'd imagine, I was very much a child of the prequels. Born in 1993 I would have been, what, 6 or 7 when TPM came out? That said, I distinctly remember watching the OT first. I remember sitting on the sofa (of a house we moved into in '97) and my parents saying I should watch the Star Wars films. I had to have only been 5 or 6, which in hindsight is extremely young for films that contain a lot of dark elements. It has to be true because I distinctly remember watching them before TPM came out. It was definitely my first exposure to Star Wars. They were VHS tapes, don't know which year, but older copies and untouched by special effects and I sat with my dad and watched them.

I loved them and absolutely fell in love with Star Wars; far too young to properly engage with the story or the concepts perfectly but I knew I loved it. I guess at this point I was perfect target for the PT, because TPM came out the next year and I loved that too. I had all kinds of toys from both TPM and from the original trilogy and I loved the video games too; particularly a game called 'Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds' that was basically a Age of Empires clone with Star Wars factions taken from the OT and the new film. In many ways I followed the perfect arc for taking in the new Star Wars films, right after I got bored of dinosaurs and right up until I discovered girls. I remember seeing AotC in cinemas when it first came out and the same with RotS on launch night. I liked them too, again at 13 I was perfect age for probably the darkest of the 3 prequels films.

In the end, I largely grew out of all the toys and games etc (unlike many others!) and it wasn't until about 4 years ago I went back to watch them all. First I remember watching the OT, this time they were updated versions. I fell in love with them all over again, this time older and with far greater appreciation of them as films. I was however furious at the changes and had no idea before I stuck the films on. There's the obvious ones but it was particularly when I got to ROTJ where it infuriated me. The Lapti Nek song really stuck in my young mind, the oddness of it felt totally alien - and they removed it for that rubbish! Then the stupid beak over the sarlacc pit, argh! The open mouth in the ground was so disgusting and real, I was utterly grossed out by it as a child and now it was ruined. Then, of course, topped off by the oddity of Hayden turning up at the end instead of the old guy I remembered from my childhood. I guess in many ways this didn't annoy me as much though because I was yet to realise how bad the prequels actually were.

I watched them next, and couldn't believe how bad they were seeing them with adult eyes. Boring plot, terrible script and acting, and I didn't find the eye candy cool like I did when I was younger. I distinctly remember watching the Gungan battle scene on repeat when I had it on VHS! Now though, watching it back, they are just terrible films. Not only that though, but, the CGI has dated HORRENDOUSLY. There's a particular scene in the droid factory in AotC that looks terrible now, truly terrible.

So it was at roughly this point, I realised the PT sucked. When I watched them as an adult. Straight away, they fell apart. This is what I don't understand about prequel fans who aren't children; they really are just terrible when you watch them as an adult. There's nothing there to admire or hook you in, they're just bad kids films. Then I watched the Red Letter Media reviews and I saw truly in just how many ways they suck. I wouldn't dare watch the prequel films now, but I love the OT and will always cite them as some of my all time favourite movies.

aethelfrith said:

This is what I don't understand about prequel fans who aren't children; they really are just terrible when you watch them as an adult. There's nothing there to admire or hook you in, they're just bad kids films.

I think most of said fans can be filed under three main categories:

1. Those who are aware the PT is bad, but -- out of denial and/or some misplaced sense of obligation to Lucas -- claim that they're great pieces of filmmaking.

2. Those who have a generally bad taste in film and are mentally incapable of distinguishing bad movies from good ones.

3. Those who realize the PT is subpar but enjoy it regardless because they either like the mindless action or because they view the movies from a "so-bad-its-good" frame of reference.

imperialscum said:

Anchorhead said:

I'm an EU guy, so I know there is more and much better Star Wars to be told.  Lucas is just not the one capable of handling it.

Well... so far SW & TESB is the best we have.

FTFY  

By the time I went to see TPM in '99, I was 17 and super excited to see a new SW film on the big screen! Looking back, I was the same age as the target demographic for the OT. I expected the TPM to be good, and to look and feel like the originals, only it would tell a different part of the story. There would be new fight scenes that I could watch over and over again, new characters, new dialogue ... but still be a part of the OT family. That was the expectation I had walking into the theater in May 1999.

Unfortunately, TPM did not meet that expectation. I was not old enough, and could not accurately describe most of the film's problems like I can now, but needless to say everything felt wrong. The CGI ... why did everything look so much more advanced 30 or 40 years in the past? And why did the CGI look so fake? Thirty years later I can watch the OT and the practical effects look real, they never take me out of the movie, they only draw me in. But in TPM and the rest of prequels, the CGI immediately made me self-conscious that I was watching a video game film.

Later, Jar Jar popped up on screen and I suddenly felt embarrassed and uncomfortable to be sitting in the theater. Not only Jar Jar, but the Gungan boss, some of the other characters like the Trade Federation guys, they were so offensive and childishly depicted that I would have walked out of the theater if I could have. It no longer felt like I was watching Star Wars. And yet, there were still some things that carried over from the OT and appealed to me as a fan, so that by the end of the film, I talked myself into tempering my initial revulsion ... if only they had edited out Jar-Jar, the film would have been ok. Not nearly as good as the originals, but OK.

When I saw widespread criticism of Jar-Jar, I even convinced myself that Lucas would cut him from the VHS/DVD release!

----------

AOTC next came out in 2002, and I still hoped the rest of the PT would be good. Maybe TPM would just be the red-headed stepchild of the saga. Obviously, that didn't turn out to be the case, and AOTC was just as bad if not worse. By the time Yoda was spinning around like a flying monkey, I averted my eyes and no longer had any desire to finish watching what was on screen.

For me, that was the moment Star Wars died, when the wisest and most reserved character of the OT was turned into a cartoon.

I was unfortunate enough to see the prequels first (when I was eight, which would have been about 2007), so some of the magic of the OT was lost automatically. Thus, I enjoyed the prequels more, with ROTS being my favourite, followed by AotC, then TPM. As I got older, my preferences shifted a bit, and I ranked RotJ as number one, with RotS following, then TPM, then AotC.

It was only when I started spending a lot of time on the internet, immersing myself in Star Wars, that I came across people who hated the prequels. I argued with them, trying to show them that it all fit together, and in the EU, such and such is explained so that it makes perfect sense. Finally, I began to see the flaws in the prequels, and then found this site. I lost most of my interest in the prequels, and my love for the OT grew--though not really that much. There are still plenty of films I'd rather watch than the OT, but I still think of it as a classic. Now I like ESB the best, followed by ANH, then RotJ. AotC is now my least favourite of the prequels, though RotS remains my favourite out of those three.

I realized that the prequels suck when Darth was revealed to be a title.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I can't say that I knew right off the bat that there was anything was wrong with the PT. I was a kid when I saw the first two prequels, so I wasn't quite able to see the faults of the films at that time. From the beginning I felt that the PT was inferior to the OT, though I didn't see them as bad until much later.

 

I first saw TPM about a year after I watched the OOT for the first time on video. I never saw it in theatres, but I had read a few novelizations (both junior and adult). I frankly found the novelizations dull when I read them, so when I did see the film I wasn't expecting anything groundbreaking.

In the end I did end up liking TPM once I saw it - much more than its novelizations. It wasn't as good as the OT, I thought, but still decent.

 

AOTC didn't impress me nearly as much. I didn't like the overuse of CGI, and thought the acting wasn't so great (I had seen Hayden before in over work, so I kinda knew what to expect from him). At the end I was like "So that's how Anakin lost his hand ... so Boba Fett's a clone ... so the Clone War clones were all cloned from some lame bounty hunter ... uh ... okay".

My distaste for AOTC only grew with subsequent viewings, but I didn't hate the film at that point. It was a Star Wars film, and even the least impressive entry in the series had to be okay, right?

 

I then later read the ROTS novelization ... and I thought "So that's how Anakin turned? That's how the Jedi were wiped out? What, Padmé died? So Obi-Wan didn't believe there was any good in Anakin after he fell after all? Obviously this isn't how things were originally supposed to unfold, and not how I would have done it, but overall a satisfactory conclusion to the saga".

Then I saw the film itself ... and I knew right away that it was worse than the book that was based on it. Worse acting and dialogue than ever before, and even more overuse of CGI. All the faults I found and accepted in the novelization were amplified in the film, and made utterly unbearable.

It was then that I knew something was wrong, but I still managed to convince myself it was a good movie. "Beyond the CGI and bad dialogue it is still a Star Wars film", I thought, "I still feels like a Star Wars film". 

 

It wasn't until I finally got a computer and Internet access that I came to hate the PT, all of it. Prior to that point I had never had regular access to the Internet, and had been sheltered from most of the diverse views the fans held (frankly, up til then I had assumed that pretty much every fan accepted anything SW).

After learning that many fans were distressed by the changes made to the OT and the discrepancies created by the PT I was able to put two-and-two together, and my own dissatisfactions boiled over into outright hatred.

 

This is my first post, BTW. Sorry if I rambled on there a bit ... =)

Ah, my first post ... with unnecessary double spacing as far as the eye can see ...

darklordoftech said:

I realized that the prequels suck when Darth was revealed to be a title.

 Wow, it took you that long, huh?

TV's Frink said:

darklordoftech said:

I realized that the prequels suck when Darth was revealed to be a title.

 Wow, it took you that long, huh?

considering that it was revealed in the promotional material (meaning before the opening crawl), I wouldn't call it long.

Now I might have said I liked TPM for three years before I realized it sucked; now that I think about it, what I really meant to say was that it took me three years to realize that Padme was Queen Amidala all along. 

Otherwise I believe I was in denial about the badness of Episode I for a while; even when I first saw it I found Anakin to be annoying, Jar Jar Binks to be out of place, and the whole film did not feel like Star Wars. What really disappointed me about the PT was that once Qui-Gon died he was almost never mentioned again. I was hoping he would be the Obi-Wan of the new trilogy and that he would come back as a force ghost in Episodes II & III. The good news is that it took me a lot less time to shake off the next two movies.

generalfrevious said:

Now I might have said I liked TPM for three years before I realized it sucked; now that I think about it, what I really meant to say was that it took me three years to realize that Padme was Queen Amidala all along. 

Otherwise I believe I was in denial about the badness of Episode I for a while; even when I first saw it I found Anakin to be annoying, Jar Jar Binks to be out of place, and the whole film did not feel like Star Wars. What really disappointed me about the PT was that once Qui-Gon died he was almost never mentioned again. I was hoping he would be the Obi-Wan of the new trilogy and that he would come back as a force ghost in Episodes II & III. The good news is that it took me a lot less time to shake off the next two movies.

I'm surprised Lucas didn't do that considering he was trying to "rhyme" certain PT aspects with OT.

unamochilla2 said:

generalfrevious said:

Now I might have said I liked TPM for three years before I realized it sucked; now that I think about it, what I really meant to say was that it took me three years to realize that Padme was Queen Amidala all along. 

Otherwise I believe I was in denial about the badness of Episode I for a while; even when I first saw it I found Anakin to be annoying, Jar Jar Binks to be out of place, and the whole film did not feel like Star Wars. What really disappointed me about the PT was that once Qui-Gon died he was almost never mentioned again. I was hoping he would be the Obi-Wan of the new trilogy and that he would come back as a force ghost in Episodes II & III. The good news is that it took me a lot less time to shake off the next two movies.

I'm surprised Lucas didn't do that considering he was trying to "rhyme" certain PT aspects with OT.

 I don't think Liam Neeson wanted to come back. Otherwise, that would've happened.

Handman said:

unamochilla2 said:

generalfrevious said:

Now I might have said I liked TPM for three years before I realized it sucked; now that I think about it, what I really meant to say was that it took me three years to realize that Padme was Queen Amidala all along. 

Otherwise I believe I was in denial about the badness of Episode I for a while; even when I first saw it I found Anakin to be annoying, Jar Jar Binks to be out of place, and the whole film did not feel like Star Wars. What really disappointed me about the PT was that once Qui-Gon died he was almost never mentioned again. I was hoping he would be the Obi-Wan of the new trilogy and that he would come back as a force ghost in Episodes II & III. The good news is that it took me a lot less time to shake off the next two movies.

I'm surprised Lucas didn't do that considering he was trying to "rhyme" certain PT aspects with OT.

 I don't think Liam Neeson wanted to come back. Otherwise, that would've happened.

 That's interesting because Lucas got Alec Guiness to return as a ghost in Empire and Jedi despite him hating his role as Obi-wan. At least Nesson managed to get out in time.

Anchorhead said: They wanted either more "Adventures Of Luke Skywalker, or something with a hell of a lot more substance than the children's bed time story he belched out.

 "Children's bed time story" would have been preferable to what we ended up getting. 

What we got was:

"Children's bed time story" that also wanted to be "War and Peace"  + unsubtle/obvious commentary on late 90's/early OO's politics + bad soap opera (redundant) + pseudo-Godfather drama.