Alexrd

I guess ken works for Lucasfilm after all...

none said:

 

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

You need to specify where you negativity line begins.

Below 5, I suppose.

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

I know what the razzies are. However, as you noticed, it only won one of them. If it's about nominations, then one should count the Oscars, Baftas, Saturns, Grammy, etc...

none said:

 

You need to specify where you negativity line begins.

Answered on TPM thread.

zombie84 said:

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 see it the other way around. Specially in reviews.

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.

Look, as in everything there is also the other side of the coin. Saying it's in books, magazines, awards, whatever is irrelevant, because I can raise the same argument in favor of it. Once again, I don't deny the vocal criticism that exists, but this should not indicate lack of praise or audience that liked it. And yes, it has received many "good" awards.

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.

Yes, that's the word. Bad reputation. I don't deny it. However, and as I said before, if the negative press was the majority, it wouldn't pass the 50% average rating. On any website.

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.

And how many were those who saw the pre-release? An handful if that much. I wouldn't call it the major press, only part of it.

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.

That's the average rating. Negative reviews are in both cases the very minority, with mixed and positive reviews tied.

Once again, that's not me talking, that's simply the way it is. Period.

Same here.

But with all the other bad press, bad reviews, and the majority of reviews which are mediocre (take a look yourself),

Once again, the majority are mixed and positive.

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.

From your site:

The best legitimate example (as opposed to web ranting) of this camp comes from Jonathan Bowen, who self-published Anticipation: The Real Life Story of Episode I  (and later Revenge: The Real Life Story of Episode III ). The book tracked the hype, release and reaction of Episode I, offering a sympathetic view that the film was initially liked but then began to cultivate a snow-balling negative reaction that encouraged a negative slant.

That is my opinion. Nobody should confuse overall reception with vocal negative slant.

And a common tactic--bring up TPM's rep by trying to bring down the OT. Strawman.

What? I don't use strawmen, and it was never my intention to bring down the OT in favor of TPM. They were merely an example.

I didn't realise we were trying to argue TPM was reviewed as bad as ROTJ,

We aren't.

I thought we were arguing wheather TPM overall had a poor public image.

No. We were arguing TPM overall reception. Not public image, because I don't deny it has a bad one today due to misconception.

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.

Once again, nobody should confuse overall reception with vocal negative slant.

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.

Swept the razzies?

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

The overall impression then, is one of negativity.

See above.

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.

Indeed, let's. I'm not arguing because I liked the film.

So even though you don't know what I am referring to, you still claim it's "not entirely correct."

I do know what you were referring to, because you quoted him.

This is called putting a conclusion before the evidence, and its pretty consistent with the rest of your response.

Oh, really... You showed me the evidence, and I wrote my conclusion based on the evidence you've shown. What I said was that I don't recall it. It's different. Who is using strawman now?

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.

Sorry if I didn't make a website with all my research, but I don't think you can claim you made more reserach than I did, or that I use logical fallacies ad nauseum without even pointing one.

You can disagree all you like, but you haven't made any coherant counterargument.

Right...

EDIT: Since this is getting "a bit" off-topic, I suggest (if you want to reply), to do it on a new topic, or through PMs.

none said:

From the conclusion of the chapter:

I would agree with that.

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? Of course, nobody can claim the entire public says this or that, but to the questioned audience, they said otherwise.

The film received mediocre reviews and was slaughtered by the major press.

No, it wasn't.

Many fans hated it,

And many loved it, and many liked it.

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.

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.

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.

I don't recall those GL claims. But even if true, I wouldn't call them entirely 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.

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.

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.

corellian77 said:

but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that Ep. 1 represents anything approaching cinematic excellence.

Nobody said or thought that (even 'cinematic excellence' is subjective). The point was that the commonly held opinion was that it was not a bad movie, much less an awful one.

corellian77 said:

The guy who wrote it has 65% of the population backing him up.

No, it has 35%, as Frink pointed out.

Harmy said:

danny_boy said:

@Harmy

It implies that there should be room for improvement.

But you might want to underline where in the general conscensus it says it "is a piece of a shit film".

Well, ok, maybe piece of shit is a bit too strong but if the film is said to lack in the plot and character development, which are generally regarded as the most important parts of a good story, it basically means that it isn't very good, doesn't it?

For the guy who wrote that, yes.

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. 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).

as far as most people are concerned, TPM showed that a movie can be a major success while also being widely disliked.

Yes, as it was widely liked. But that happens with almost every "love it or hate it" movie.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Harmy said:

1. this is not the place.

2. Alex, with all due respect, we already know that you like the prequels and you already know most of us don't. It seems like you set out to retort to every single post that says something bad about the prequels and frankly, it's getting old.

1. I agree.

2. I don't set out to retort every single post about the prequels. I don't mind people not liking the prequels. What I mind is when some present their distaste/hate as facts.

Besides, I've only expressed my opinion about RLM. This is not even about the prequels themselves. It's about his modus operandi.

TK-949 said:

The journalistic quality. It's very well researched.

Journalistic? How?

Well researched? About what?

TK-949 said:

RLM is one of the greatest reviews I've ever seen.

I would hardly call it a review, much less a great one. To me, it's just big rant full of fallacies and double standards.

timdiggerm said:

I think you underestimate the quality of RedLetterMedia's work.

What quality?

generalfrevious said:

They still would not have existed had it not been for the fans of the OT.

True. But that's irrelevant when we are talking about a second run of the prequels.

And the PT made so much money solely because of the nostalgia for the OT, fueled by cognitive dissonance.

Not true. You are still ignoring a great part of the fanbase.

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.

Monolithium said:

I've tried.  But they look at the excellent work you've done along the same lines as RedLetterMedia.

Comparing the honorable effort of savestarwars.com to RedLetterMedia "reviews", and calling the latter an "excellent work" is an offense to the former.

generalfrevious said:

Maybe. But the truth of the matter is, LFL manipulates our nostalgia for these films to make us waste our time with utter shit. I know that is basically what all ad men basically do psychologically, but the quality of the PT and with them showing up in 3D next year, you know they are going to make a lot of money based on momentum. People still have warm, fuzzy memories about the OT, and anything associated with that nostalgia is going to be a hit.

What about people who actually like the PT, and/or never saw Star Wars in theaters? The fanbase is not made only of nostalgic folks.

Fang Zei said:

Nah, I remember reading several months ago that the OT and PT blu-ray sets would be 4 discs each, with a bonus ninth disc in the "saga" set.

That's actually something I'm curious about. Despite some news saying that the individual sets are going to have a bonus disc each, StarWars.com keeps saying they will only have 3 discs total.

greenpenguino said:

That got a HD master (or whatever you call it) from the original prints a few years ago and they look pretty darn good. And the film stock for that were probably in worse shape, maybe.

Or maybe not. The original print of Star Wars was not expected to be in the bad state that they found.

Anchorhead said:

You not having an issue with it doesn't mean there isn't an issue within the fan base.

I'm not saying there isn't one. However, spliting the fan base between "TFNers" and "original fans" is not very accurate.

greenpenguino said:

Shut up Luke! That's not even the right picture!!

You're right, that's the space slug. My bad...

none said: Oh who phuckin cares.

I phuckin care.

I'm an "original" fan, and I have no problem with the whole CGI vs puppets (even though the prequels did use some real sets and miniatures), because both have their realism and fakeness. They are merely tools to show the world of the saga, and one is not better than the other.

However, in my opinion, the films should be introduced to newbies by the order they were released. Because whether some people like it or not, the prequels were made with those who had already seen the OT in mind.

TV's Frink said:

Oh, and look over there Darth Bizarro, you can read more of the same skyjedi posts from 2009.

Don't you mean 'rant'?

That won't work.

TV's Frink said:

Oops, I'm sorry, for a second I thought your post was something new.

We must keep our faith.

Tell us something we don't know...