theprequelsrule

Star Wars (1977) possessed an energy that none of the sequels/prequels have been able to match. It has a certain freshness and innocence to it. The terrible shooting conditions, time constraints, and limited $ and technology forced talented people to great heights of innovation and creativity. It also has the best pacing of any movie I have ever seen; a lot of the credit goes to the editing skills of the two Lucases (Luci?).

Empire, for all it's merits, is a Hollywood film. Quite frankly, I do find Empire a little boring at times and I sometimes think the "darkness" of the material actually did more harm than good to the series.

Return, for all it's faults, is Hamill's best performance. Since he is what the series is all about I always thought Return was underrated. I can see the critics point of view of course; the totally mailed in/coked out performances by Ford and Fisher, teddy bears etc.

I've become more and more like Anchorhead - the original film is kind of in a separate category of it's own and is almost always the film I choose to watch when I watch a Star Wars movie. It is, in a way, the only Star Wars movie. The truest to George's vision from 1975/76 (no matter what he now claims).

The prequels just suck, although TPM was at least an attempt to make a film with an original vision. I think. It still sucked.

C'mon man, The Force Unleashed 2 was the height of awesomeness!

Noob here.

The reason that, at least for me, the Zahn novels are so superior to the novels that followed is that Zahn actually wrote them as novels. Other authors seemed to think they were writing movies. Even Zahn has not been able to escape the taint of the prequels, and his recent stuff is medicore at best. Plus, as others mentioned, he fell in love with his own characters (Jade, Thrawn, Karrde)

I actually thought the Black Fleet Crisis was good, although it lacked the feel of Star Wars almost completely. Weird.

I loved KOTOR 2. Maybe my second favourite Star Wars experience after the original film! It built upon the more serious tone of the films that started in Empire and explored the Jedi and Sith philosophies in a mature manner. Great characters as well. Buggy as hell though, and essentially unfinished (the last 10% of the game is a complete mess).