Oh yeah there are plenty of timeless classics and all time faves that have wide appeal. But when it comes to say The Wizard of Oz it’s the opposite for me. Like I didn’t care for it before, but today I’d say that’s a great movie. I’d like to say this was the case for the prequels, but nope.
But by that same logic a children’s film that someone loved as a kid will always be loved by them. Conversely they will never be able to really like a film made before they were born. Which is of course never really true in both cases. Nostalgia only takes me so far before all that nails-on-chalk-board writing and acting. Like I said before some people grow out of stuff but others don’t seem to. That’s just the mystery of personal tastes though I suppose, just look at how infantile most of the biggest box office hits are, in any period of history.
It depends when the “shoot everything on a green screen” era came into being. Because in a way we could thank AOTC for so many terrible looking movies, and the entire current trend of “who cares we can fix it in post”.
Well what can you say, it was great. Especially that one Dedra scene, as I remembered the trailers, and suddenly thought they might use the gas on her from part 6 during the revenge plot. This was way more interesting.
Not sold on the “oh wait we gotta bring this horrific thing along with us so it’s in RO” part, but that’s just me, could have been more natural. There’s my nitpick.
True, however, I think that quote is simply being used as a bullet point heading. In 1977 Vader was not Anakin so the problem is a post ESB one. Obi-wan isn’t shocked to see his friend on the Death Star because his old pupil was always just Darth Vader. Once he’s changed to be Luke’s father in 1980 there are more gaps to fill. Obviously there have been further retcons since and they meet in a TV series.
To me the prequel he promised in his original outline and in the OT is what I wanted.
Not the prequel as made.
But I’m not going to argue with kids who grew up on these as being valid as their Star Wars.
Yeah but everyone is two decades years older they need to mature and develop critical faculties by now. I just saw a video showcasing all the merch madness with Yoda drinking Pepsi or whatever, I mean yeah it’s funny in an excessive way, and it’s fun to look back, but that was long ago. Eventually you have a house clear-out and wonder what half this stuff was about, and it goes in a black bag. I watched ROTS today and it will be the last time, just to put a cap on the weekend, so whatever charm this held back then for me is gone, it’s mostly nonsensical noise.
Critical flaws in the script can’t be edited in post though. Like I said, I gave them a fair chance and that’s just the reality, same as it ever was. If I can get on board with the plot of a kids show when characters have stupid names like “Savage Opress” then the problem is these movies themselves, not the broad strokes of the prequel era. Or some nebulous idea that everyone is “biased” against “misunderstood” films.
There’s been a lot of talk for many years now about how the prequels are looked at more fondly thanks to nostalgia. Or how they’re better if you’ve seen things the animated shows. Now battle droids show up in the latest big video-game and characters un-ironically say ‘wizard’ or whatever.
So I’m sitting here spending several hours watching the first two prequels. I guess in my mind it wasn’t fair to trust my memory or only watch ROTS which has just been re-released. Problem is they are bad movies. Not the worst ever but not close to the mediocrity of say TFA. Which means my memory was fine and it makes no difference that I’ve watched most of the Clone Wars and other bits and pieces; them being decent isn’t retroactively changing anything.
Huge parts of the story still make zero sense (the Naboo trade dispute, the mystery of the clone army, the weird creepy romance). The one that’s still the most infuriating is that Obi-wan sees both the clones and the droid plant in the space of like a day, and doesn’t immediately see the conspiracy to create a war. Neither do the Jedi council, they’re all braindead.
A lot of the films also look bad, though AOTC in particular is really ugly. Things like the digital backdrops and characters like Zam and Jango when they become CGI were always lame but have aged badly. It’s like they had that Jurassic Park tech and barely improved on it, then stretched it by having vfx in every scene. John Williams does so much heavy lifting but at the same time outside the pod race everything is pretty tedious. Even the duel of the fates does nothing for me. I’m pretty sure I last saw ROTS in like 2008 on DVD (and maybe these others) but I’m not sure I can be bothered with it now.
Is the device Saw wants them to use purposely over-complicated or is there some reason I missed, like what are the configurations for?
Yeah they did a SW spoof I remember clearly.
You know this was a perfectly cromulent show after so many weak wasted opportunities and bizarro messes. It knew what it was, delivered on that concept, got out, no embarrassing cameos or nonsense. Production and effects were all solid too. Definitely felt like ten minutes were cut from the very end though, slightly odd.
TROS movie mistake mystery solved
I finally solved the mystery movie mistake in “Episode III”, and also talk about some of my favorite revealing movie mistakes from my favorite films.
https://fxrant.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-movie-mistake-mystery-from-revenge.html
Huh I always thought it was just manual but from inside.
Imagine the prequels but like in the same vein as other LFL projects of the time. Would it have been on the level of Willow, or more like a Battle for Endor? I feel like it could be interesting but quality is debatable.
Star Wars was always for nerds and kids. Even more so in the 1990s when the only people who care were playing TIE Fighter and reading the Thrawn books, like Vladius said. With the prequels it’s harder to say, though I know at least one person who only ever watched TPM and that’s their total knowledge of SW. They hated it and went back to watching sports and crime shows. But with the prequels as a whole it became more a toy selling machine so, again, more a thing for teenage boys.
Yeah I’m well aware of his stance but I’m still on the fence about it.
It is starting to become crass, doing this kind of story with nuance is one thing but the blunt dialogue and the treatment of Bix started to feel more like Zack Snyder than SW. Would she face the same treatment every season if it wasn’t ending with S2 like women from older sci-fi shows? They want to be brazen and look at colonial rule with unvarnished stories but at the same time it’s like veering into weird edgelord type stuff. Teenagers that want SW to be “cool and adult” would write that kind material in a fanfic, and I’m not sure it’s worth further alienating certain viewers over. The rest of it was good but could have been 2 episodes easily.
Review aggregation currently says that Andor, TFA and TLJ are all about as good as each other, and nearly as good the first two movies in the series. What ever your opinion I think we can agree that this isn’t true, so the lesson here is make your mind up and never read much into those percentages, rather than getting annoyed that critics are not always honest. I clearly remember a top publication giving AOTC a perfect 5/5 score back in the day; they’ve never been a source of info that holds much weight.
Star Wars was a film from the late 1970s.
If a bunch of fans (and recently the BFI) have copies I’m sure they’ve got their own reels. Anyway, the parts of this related to the OOT were good but the rest seems too much like fluff to me.
TV series veteran Carlton Cuse has been tapped to pen a new live-action “Star Wars” TV series over at Lucasfilm reports THR.
https://www.darkhorizons.com/carlton-cuse-pens-new-star-wars-series/
Some kinda teaser was shown for the crowds, leaked images are appearing online if you’re avoiding that kind of thing.
Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy has confirmed that “Poor Things” and “The Favourite” screenwriter Tony McNamara is penning the script for Taika Waititi’s “Star Wars” film reports Screen Rant.
https://www.darkhorizons.com/mcnamara-co-writing-waititis-star-wars/
You know there were so many people being hired and given movies that I don’t remember his name. I guess that makes more sense. Still, it’s weird to hear they’re actually starting to shoot one of them after so long with nothing. Someone told me recently that TROS is now 6 years ago, and it felt like I aged suddenly.
You can also just google “originaltrilogy.com” and Harry Potter to find various threads.