Alexrd said:
zombie84 said:
Alexrd said:
TPM set the precedent in blockbusters that you can make a profit despite a film's awfulness.
The film's awfulness is not a fact, though.
It's awfulness is not a fact, true, because this is all subjective. However, it is a commonly held opinion and a wide public census, thus making the point salient:
I wouldn't call it a majorly held opinion, nor a wide public census.
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 ("awful" might be a tad harsh, but it communicates the general negative impression). The film received mediocre reviews and was slaughtered by the major press. Many fans hated it, there was the first fan edit in history to try to lesson its badness, and to this day it is regarded with infamy. 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. 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.
I recall seeing an article about public opinion on TPM, and it was regarded as positively recieved. Even critical reception was mixed to positive reviews. Many people saw it many times in theater (I even remember some groups going back to ticket line after watching the film, in my country).
This may have come from George Lucas, who claimed it had positive reviews, or they may also be remembering a RT article from 2005 that is fundamentally flawed, or perhaps simply repeating statements heard from other prequel fans, who I have noticed try to convince people of a theoretical positive reception. The simply truth is that they are incorrect. 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.
But, of course, a film's reception goes beyond just counting up the stars on reviews. That's just one aspect. And that's where the more exaggerated perception gains a bit more merit, but its hard to exactly measure or quantify this--it's just an impression from the sum of its public image.
I've studied the critical reception of the film in two separate studies if you would like to look at the reviews at least.
One is just the initial reaction to TPM:
http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com/episodeirelease.html
The other takes a look at the reviews of the saga as a whole, at the time they were released:
http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/originaltrilogyreception2.html
Again, these are just reviews, and a films rep goes well beyond mere reviews, but this is at least something that can be studied in a more analytical way than just "general impression of its public image."
