Vaderisnothayden said:
You said how each new prequel (AOTC and ROTS) was worse than your expectations and each one was worse than the last, or something like that. That's how it was for me. I like TPM in some ways, even though it has horrible faults and is not anything up to the standard of the real Star Wars films, but I expected something on that level for AOTC and I was disappointed because AOTC sucked bigtime and then when I expected something on AOTC's level for ROTS what I got was distinctly worse than that.
I actually have a great deal of fondness toward TPM, of course it didn't live up to expectations, and it was a pretty weak film in all, but I still felt it was a more enjoyable and fuller experience than the other two. As convoluted as the plot is, it at least makes some sense on some level, the Queen's city is being occupied by an evil enemy and killing people, the Gungan's hate the Naboo, because the Naboo are racist and treat them poorly, and slaves lives suck and they blow you up if you try to escape. We can at least sympathize with the plights of these people in some general way. Also, the settings feel enough that you could imagine yourself there. Naboo looks like an amazing place to visit, and Corescant looked pretty good considering we only see it from the rooftops. Even the pure CG Gungan-droid battle at the end felt far more realistic to me than the fast paced blur of the Wookie's battle. It also has a distinct Star Wars feel to it, that I feel is absent from the two sequels (great score, good old fashioned space battles). Also part of my love (dare I use such a strong word) for TPM is due to the nostalgia. I still feel the ninties were probably the best time in history for SW of the originals like myself. We were bombarded with tons of SW stuff ranging from awesome to beyond lame, but you could pick and choose, it was just books, comics, and video games. When the SE came out, it was not a replacement yet, it was an alternative. The pre-SE VHS set was getting scarcer, but it was far from hard to find. A couple of phone calls could find a retailer who had a few copies left in stock, or a quick visit to a used VHS store would put you in the midst of a zillion copies of it. The Phantom Menace came out in this period, so it was really exciting. I remember excitingly going to see it with a bunch of my friends, and though I felt really disappointed in it, it had more than enough redeeming factors to it to make it worth going to see a few more times. We walked out of The Phantom Menace feeling, "well, that was kind of a bummer, but the next one ought to be great!" We all said if Jar Jar had not been in TPM, then it would have been far better. He was only in AOTC for a few moments, and it still managed to be SOO much worse.
Though I say each one got progressively worse than the last, I think AOTC is by far a much more awful film than ROTS, weighing them on equal grounds. However, ROTS held the most pivitol moments in all of SW history, and it managed to do them beyond poorly, which to me, knocks it a rank below AOTC. Both films include scenes where our hero/future villian decides to murder a bunch of kids on a whim, which to me was more than a little disturbing in both films, especially considering most of the content is obviously aimed at pre-teens and small kids. Darth Vader was a cool dictator, and I guess blowing up whole planets is, as far as death toll is concerned, is a lot worse. But it still felt we were taking him out of the classic evil villain realm, and making him out to be a mentally disturbed psycho killer (no other words for it really, it was an unforgivably sick idea).
Also, I'd like to add, that in all seriousness, I feel the "official point of inevitable suckabilty" was reached when George decided to write and direct all three himself, instead of hiring a different director for each film as he had originally planed. This doesn't even have to be a bash against George's directing abilities, as that is a lot of the exact same thing to work on for over eleven years! No matter how good of a director you are, I think over ten years of working on essentially the same film is going to cause anyones work to suffer. Even the Lord of the Rings trilogy took a little less than seven years if I am not mistaken, and Jackson seemed extremely relieved to be done and move on. Like they always say, two heads are better than one. Throughout University, my room mate and I were always proof reading each others papers. I'd get a paper ready and polished to the point where I thought I was ready to turn it in, but my room mate would read it and find all sorts of things I missed, and I'd find all sorts of mistakes in his. A fresh pair of eyes and brain makes a world of difference. As we see from the DVDs, Lucas seems to have surrounded himself with yes men. He deludes himself into thinking he respects their creative input by saying things like, "Wow, holy crap you guys, that is an amazing idea! Oh wow, I cannot believe I didn't think about something similar myself. Whoaho, you guys are geniuses! Such a good idea, it would be a really great thing for you to do someday. But not in my movie." (okay, that was a bit hyperbolic, but you get the idea. The "but not in my movie" is an actual quote from him addressing one of his guy's creative suggestions.) I think a second head with some creative push would have improved the PT in a very serious way, and I think a new director for at least the second two prequels would have accomplished that.
