Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 103

It's on my to read list: "Anticipation: The Real Life Story of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Meance" by Jonathan L. Bowen (book is print on demand) has a chapter about the critical reviews which can be read at books.google: (pg. 89 but gets TPM centric around 92)

http://books.google.com/books?id=W1oyiL-Je6MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=anticipation+phantom+menace&source=bl&ots=1em8F3eQlb&sig=j8Jvi2MonMH-3lSxEpk-xgPLd40&hl=en&ei=YD-_TZa-HOby0gG0hKDKBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=reviews&f=false

(the book has come up multiple times in searches, so i'm giving it a favorable rating from the small portions i've perused so far, but haven't read the full book.)

From the conclusion of the chapter:

pg. 99 Quote: "Overall, critics enjoyed The Phantom Menace, giving it average to slightly positive reviews.  Few critics gave the movie under a two star rating, but few gave it it more than three stars either."

So TPM got mixed reviews when it came out. And so did AOTC and ROTS as well. But 6-12 years later, the stature of the PT has gone down considerably as some of the most disappointing films ever made. You could feel it in the theater when they first came out that they were subpar. The hype is gone for these films, and they are still not on par with the OT as PT apologists claim them to be. Watching them today, many people cringe at the dated CGI, the wooden acting, the illogical plot, and are bored by the action scenes in the film. If you really watch the films with a critical eye, the whole PT is DOA with the opening crawl of TPM. I might go so far as to say the PT is too highly rated based on the numbers at IMDB and RT.

If you want to really go back, ROTJ "crashed" the whole franchise, so they were doomed 15 years before they were even made (don't get me wrong- I love ROTJ, but nostalgia is what makes it good). ROTJ was a template for the PT, but magnified the little flaws into the major flaws that became the unintentional foreground of the later films.

It's pretty safe to say that the OOT are significant cultural artifacts which deserve to be preserved and made available for those who want them to legally purchase or at least see.

If that happened discussing the relative merits of the deeply flawed ROTJ and the PT and SEs (my opinion) would be an entirely friendly and separate discussion.

Until that happens and while that's all that's on the menu I want to discuss this with restaurant manager before I pay for the recycled meal I threw up seven years ago again.

Alexrd said:

 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.

Well, let's put it another way, outside of star wars superfans and little kids, where have you encountered anything that isn't negative about the prequels? (I'm just curious, it's only ever been a punchline in my experience)

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.

No, it wasn't.

 

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.

^I know it's a Star Wars discussion but you can have too much of that space thing.

Anyways, what will be revealed with the may 4th hype surrounding LFL? To be honest, I am a little curious.

Akwat Kbrana said:

Probably that all hope for the future, like the OOT, is forever lost.

Dorothy McShane of Perivale said :

Cheer up Professor.

Do you know any nice people? You know, normal people. Not power-crazed nutters trying to take over the universe.

The problem in our society is that it's difficult to argue the quality of something that made a shit-ton of money. The masses, by and large, simply do not care as long as they're entertained on some level. It's the culture, whatya gonna do.

I should just start another thread about this (how did we even get this far off topic in the first place????), but most of us can agree that George shouldn't have directed the prequels, yes? Can we agree that George could've hired a better director and still made just as much money at the box office on Episode I so that (gasp) more people would've come back to see Episode II????

That's my biggest problem with the prequels. They would've made a ton of money either way, so why couldn't George have just hired three good directors?

Yes, I realize that opens up a whole new can of worms. Let's face it, even if George had done so, he still would've been a control freak about it.

I still think we would've gotten significantly better movies, though.

I'm sorry, but originator of the franchise or not, it's a conflict of interest when the guy who is paying the $100 million for the movie is also its director.

The Empire Strikes Back would not be regarded the way it is today if it hadn't been for the efforts of Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brackett, Irvin Kershner and Peter Suschitzky. Yes, it's commendable that George paid for the whole thing himself in order to avoid Hollywood looking over his shoulder, but aside from writing the story he should've left it at that for the other four movies.

It's awkward to me that the "saga" in chronological order is three movies made by a billionaire followed by a movie made by a previously low-budget director, followed by a really amazing sequel, followed by an okay but nevertheless satisfactory ending.

Hmmmm, okay, to wrap up my ramblings, I guess the question I ask is whether the prequels could've been just as profitable for LFL but still had new writers, directors and cinematographers.

Alexd wrote : Anyway, as we can see on IMDB, the negativity is the minority:

You need to specify where you negativity line begins.  Since this is popular entertainment, shouldn't everyone like it, so if that's your line of measure then.  Above 7 = 33.8% Below 7 = 44.1%  When the Arithmetic mean is below the median, your stats are tilting negative.  Of course like public opinion polls for a president you can do with anything over 50% is winning the battle.  Also note that the weighted average is below both the arithmetic mean and median.

IMDB explains Weighted Average:

Weighted Average Ratings IMDb publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. Various filters are applied to the raw data in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at 'vote stuffing' by individuals more interested in changing the current rating of a movie than giving their true opinion of it.

The exact methods we use will not be disclosed. This should ensure that the policy remains effective. The result is a more accurate vote average.

zombie84 wrote: That book is not something to throw around as though it has much merit. It's self published.

From what i've read, the book often rewrites newspaper articles.  So i'm basing it's merit on that he's read many reviews and the one conclusion posted is verifiable if we backtrack.  Sure there are passages I disagreed with before the conclusion but the final statement that most of the reviews were 3 stars seemed logical.  People wanted to like this film, and they tried to find parts which moved them. 

Throwing the self published line doesn't seem like a good move btw.

Swept the razzies?

An award given to the worst movies of the year.  And according to the link below TPM was nominated for just about every category, but Wild Wild West took many of the awards:

http://www.razzies.com/forum/1999-razzie-nominees-winners_topic349.html

TPM did tie for worst picture of the year.

Ok, I confess. I watched TPM about 10 times in the theater. And paid for it. I was young and I didn't need the money. It's my fault, that AOTC and ROTS were made. Sorry...

Darth Hade said:

Back in the very early days of prequel hype, I subscribed to the Homing Beacon that was/is sent out by the official site: starwars.com

Subscribing to the Homing Beacon seemed to always get one e-mail updates to all things Star Wars. I didn't have a Homing Beacon in my inbox today, but I did have this...

 

i got that too. smiled nostalgically for a few moments. then remembered LFL is again using iconic OOT imagery to hawk yet another boxset that won't contain the OOT. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

may the BARF! be with you. and with you, alway$.

Darth Cracker said:

may the BARF! be with you.

Maybe the bonus disc will be Spaceballs!

timdiggerm said:

Darth Hade said:

So... those of you who know what you're talking about... how do the colors look?

What colors?  No one's seen anything yet.