When did you realize the Prequels sucked? — Page 11

I hope you're quoting Ghostbusters.

Anchorhead said:

What's that got to do with anything?

 The same could be asked of the last couple of pages of this conversation.

 Thank you

What?

^someone definitely did

I'll admit it... too late.

Phantom Menace: I tried convincing myself that it was a good movie when I was walking home after seeing it. Then when it came out on VHS and everyone wanted to skip to the Darth Maul lightsaber battle.

Clone Wars: When I had no desire to see it after it was out on DVD.

Revenge of The Sith: During seeing it in the theater, at the end when I heard Darth Vader scream "NOOOOOOO!"

mumbles_ said:

Phantom Menace: I tried convincing myself that it was a good movie when I was walking home after seeing it. Then when it came out on VHS and everyone wanted to skip to the Darth Maul lightsaber battle.

Clone Wars: When I had no desire to see it after it was out on DVD.

Revenge of The Sith: During seeing it in the theater, at the end when I heard Darth Vader scream "NOOOOOOO!"

 It's sad that the last of your points now has to be specified as belonging to ROTS.

A while back I watched the entire saga with my youngest sister once the blu rays had first come out, she was about ten at the time, and she HATED the dialogue of AOTC. She made hilarious remarks about how most of the lines made absolutely no sense and how Anakin was such a whiny baby. She also made fun of the green screen effects in some truly awful looking sequences by saying "oh yeah, no CGI here!"

During the speeder chase scene, Anakin jumps out of a speeder while Obi Wan was in mid-sentence, and Obi Wan says "I hate it when he does that!" and my sister just says "HE'S DONE THAT BEFORE?!"

This, my friends is very strong proof that the prequels suck big time, if a ten year old girl can't enjoy it, I'm not sure who can

I'll never forget the indescribable thrill of sitting in the theater in 1999 as a 21 year old man, watching a brand new Star Wars film for the first time since I was 5 years old. Hearing the familiar fanfare, seeing the familiar logo recede into the starfield, and then seeing the crawl open with the wonderfully unfamiliar "EPISODE I" was an ecstatic, visceral experience unlike anything I've ever felt before or since.

But then the remaining 2 hours and 15.5 minutes happened, and it was all downhill from there.

I know it's beyond cliche to disparage Jar-Jar and to blame all the faults of the PT on him when he was, in fact, merely one relatively minor brick in the edifice of mediocrity and half-assery that was the Prequel Trilogy, but, having said that, I must admit that the first moment that my heart truly sank in reaction to the PT was when I found myself having to accept the utterly unacceptable fact that a major new character in the first new Star Wars film in 16 years had, in the span of just a few minutes, quoted Wayne from Wayne's World and Stephanie Tanner from Full House.

I felt like a man who'd been stabbed in the heart... and, just minutes later, when Jar-Jar says the line "Any hep (sic) here would be hot," I knew the bearded, flannel-shirted assailant was now gleefully twisting the knife.

But the true insight to just what a monumental failure the PT was came when I realized - and I think this dawned on me very slowly and painfully, with me kicking and screaming and refusing to accept it all the way - that Lucas had fundamentally failed to deliver - or to even understand, it seemed - the Prequel Trilogy that needed to be made in order to be a comprehensible prelude to the OT - namely, a PT with Obi-Wan as its clear protagonist, with the Clone Wars as the backdrop and central confilct for all three films, and with a sensible flow of theme, character and plot into the OT, respecting what the OT had already established. 

I was about 8 at the time Phantom Menace was released and the majority of the cinema experience was spent running back and forth from the toilets to be sick (not from the movie, hehe. I had eaten too many sweets and had worked myself up with excitement. For a long time afterward I had a fear of going to the cinema because I was afraid I would be sick, which is odd now that I have a career in the film-making.) The odd thing is that I would only come in during the action scenes, so I missed the majority of the plot and the dreadful dialogue scenes. It was when Episode 2 came out that I realised how bad the Prequels were. I went to see it with my Dad and a friend and a palpable feeling of embarrassment came over me as I watched it.

Extra note: There was an exhibition at the Barbican (a sort of arts venue in London) a year or so prior to Episode II, which displayed several of the props and concept art for the STAR WARS films. There was far more stuff from the original films, which I was totally fine with (Han Solo and Luke being my favourite characters as a kid). We got a chance to meet with a Iain McCaig, one of the concept artists of the prequels, for a group discussion and a crash course in concept artwork. He was really gracious, patient and was an all round joy to meet. Goes to show that although the prequels are irredeemably terrible, the people who worked on them weren't.