wwsd

It's hard to make comparisons because of the completely different circumstances in which SW and ESB were made. I guess you could say that the heart says SW, while the brain says ESB. Just consider that ESB was not immediately universally recognised as being great. But it's hard to maintain that when you consider the emotionally resonant moments in ESB. It's clearly not some incredibly cerebral film that you really need to think about. It's more likely that reviewers at the time were just idiots.

What might be interesting is to discard the traditional comparisons ("SW vs ESB", "ROTJ vs the previous two", "the OT films vs their prequel counterparts", etc.) and try to draw lines between the different films that are less evident.

For instance, both SW and ROTJ have endings that involve both a space battle, a lightsaber fight, and, in ROTJ, a big pitched battle on the ground. The prequels have this too, except for ROTS, which instead offers a battle at Coruscant at the beginning, and an overdrawn lightsaber battle and flashes of different Clone Wars battles and the Jedi being wiped out by Order 66 at the end. ESB similarly has the Battle of Hoth at the beginning (which is just to cover the Rebel escape anyway; at no point do they have any hopes of gaining any kind of victory against the enemy), and after that, it's much more character-focused. The confrontations of Luke vs Vader in ESB and Obi-Wan vs Anakin in ROTS take centre stage, while the war only rages on in the background.

Think about it. Throughout ESB after Hoth, the Empire is everywhere, and the rebellion is nowhere. Luke is at Dagobah, and the other main characters are on the run. Only at the end do they rejoin the Rebel fleet, and the wider story is resumed. It's remarkable how, in this sense, arguably the greatest film most closely resembles ROTS, which is just a giant turd. It strikes me how the last of the prequels, the "darkest" one, seems to take on the characteristics of the middle of the original films, also the "darkest" one, instead of resembling the last original film. Of course ROTS fucked everything up that ESB did right. So much for rhyming stanzas, Jorge!

The major difference is that the prequels were conceived of as a trilogy from the start, with the separation between them well-defined. With the originals, it's less clear because of the constant historical revisionism, but the least we can say is that SW can stand alone, and that revelations later in the series like "Leia is Luke's sister" were not immediately evident in 1977. No amount of insertion of Hayden Christensen and "NOOOOO!!!" can change the fact that the OT is much more disjointed and the three films differ from each other so strongly.

So picking favourites out of them is very much a matter of personal tastes and emotions, and it's hard to say anything definitive except that ROTJ was remarkably weaker, and that it already held some of the worst elements of the prequels. But by now the pendulum has swung so far to the other side that in these review aggregators, ROTS is now rated higher than ROTJ, which is extremely wrong-headed in my view, and ROTJ can now almost be considered underappreciated, considering that it still does a satisfying job for all its flaws.

I don't know why they changed it, but I can tell you why this wasn't the case in the OT: because it's self-defeating and pointless. Pointless, pointless, pointless. It would be like giving Dumbledore a large staff instead of a wand. Or having the film adaptation of "Return of the King" decided by a swordfight between Aragorn and some physical form of Sauron. I believe they actually considered doing that. Luckily, they didn't, and the LotR films are still a good example of a respectable film adaptation for a book that's difficult to transfer to the big screen without angering lots of fans.

I'm not sure how I found this place. I mostly just lurk anyway. I was reminded just now after someone posted about TPM in 3D on Facebook. Weird. Anyway, I probably found this place through someone disapprovingly calling it "a forum of Lucas haters" or some such. Of course, in fact it turned out to be much better than something so simple.

In any case, I always naturally sympathise with underdogs, critics, etc. I'm not a fan of radical purism or dumb bashing (which this place doesn't do much anyway), but I feel more at home with bashers-who-are-not-really-bashers than with sycophants who really are sycophants.

Sure you'll always be able to find someone saying dumb things somewhere, but A) Nobody cares and B) Even the dumbest Lucas-bashing is better than this:

TV's Frink said:

none said:

The official Star Wars site got a redesign (...tons of shit is Possibly gone...) but they have a section for Fan Sites, this place didn't make it.

<a href="http://www.starwars.com/connect/fan-sites/" target="_blank" title="www.starwars.com/connect/fan-sites/">http://www.starwars.com/connect/fan-sites/</a>

http://starwarsprequelappreciationsociety.wordpress.com/

http://starwarsprequelappreciationsociety.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/guest-post-jorge-lacayo/

Buckle up...

And WE have the bad reputation.

Tobar said:

<a href="http://www.forcecast.net/story/home/Weekly_ForceCast_January_20_2012_143166.asp">I think the beginning of this show pretty much sums it up.</a> =/

Mike O said:

I just think the GOUT was half-assed. If Lucas did believe that he would never release the OOT again, then he should've stuck to his guns. If he did, then it should've been done properly or not at all. I just think the OOT is too big a stumbling block for most people to get over, good bad or indifferent. On the other hand, I also think its entirely true that many fans have been whiney and immature. I don't personally feel like I should be grateful for anything that I don't like, but the sheer amount of crap Lucas has faced from his fans is pretty staggering and many have been immature, disrespectful, downright rude, and even threatening. I can hardly blame Lucas for not liking this kind of childish bashing. I think there's a place for real constructive criticism here, but unfortunately George's attitude towards the OOT and the fans' attitude in turn has created a whirlpool that caused problem on both ends.  It's now an impossible impasse. I don't see the GOUT as something sort being grateful for and I do see Lucas as the big figurehead of why the OOT isn't out. I also see lots of fans behaving like assholes and I understand why Lucas doesn't take to it. He has quite the right to be upset. 

nightstalkerpoet said:

I'd really encourage faneditors not to remove George's name from edits... despite being able to read his comments that way, it is better to assume that is not what he meant. Lucasfilm has (in their own way) been very supportive of the fanediting community, and I think any direct attempts to slight them or George is unnecessary and liable to cause issues.

... As fans of the OUT, there needs to be a change. Even if we feel that George shouldn't take offense to internet complaints, he obviously does. For once, why not acknowledge what George is looking for from the fanbase, and make an effort on our end, to give him what he wants, and to get what we want. Stop all of the George bashing, and switch to a constructively critical tone.

- We asked for a release of the OUT, and got one. It was non-anamorphic, but it was an attempt to do something for the fans that George didn't want to do anyways - a small sacrifice, but one none the less. (also, keep in mind that in 2006, your average person had not converted to HDTV or widescreen, and didn't suffer the same issues with that format that videophiles did)

How many people thanked him for doing that? vs How many people complained about it? Had people even attempted to be content with it, I think we might have seen a Bluray release of the OUT... but obviously that's not how things went. George proved he doesn't react well to negative fan pressure. He expected it on the PT, but not on this.

Years later, after people continued to push and say "The non-anamorphic version isn't good enough", it's time for the Bluray release.... but rather than say "Cool, Star Wars on Bluray" or "I'd prefer not to get this, because I prefer the original releases I got in 2006"... there is an organized boycott generating bad publicity... Not an organized, polite request that the films be included, but a hatred filled boycott.

This left us (not surprisingly) without the OUT on Bluray...

Has anyone realized it's time for a new approach. Maybe an apology for the boycott and negative press? Maybe some attempt to stop the constant attacks on George? He is the mastermind behind Star Wars and Indiana Jones people... You may disagree with his decisions now, but at the very least the respect we owe him for giving us the OT and Indy 1-3 should keep us civil towards him.

With as many times as George has stated that he doesn't want to release the OUT, to do so would make him look bad, going back on his word, unsure of what he wants... the press jumps all over you for that. Why would he do that for "fans" that are ungrateful for what they're given, and attack him any chance they get.

I read that interview and see one thing - that he is perfectly happy to allow his films to be fanedited, and for those edits to be shared. It's a pretty rare person in any corporation that will allow those kind of freedoms to be taken without persuing legal action. But rather than revel in that... everyone would rather tear him limb from limb.

Just my two cents...

It's not really a fatal flaw, but the worst thing about the prequels is their effect on the original trilogy, as seen in the post-1997 new editions. The 1997 SE already made a lot of unnecessary "additions", but in the releases afterwards, the original films were mercilessly slaughtered on the altar of the prequels. The true problem with those editions is not that they changed stuff, but that they did so to serve the prequels.

Just consider: Anakin's eyebrows get burned in Episode III, so they have to be airbrushed out of VI. Hayden Christensen plays Anakin in the prequels, so Sebastian Shaw has to be erased from the very ending of the film in which he was the redeemed Anakin, to be replaced by Hayden looking goofy. The prequels added Gungans, so the ending of VI needs Gungans. And of course Boba Fett and the Emperor both get replaced in ESB; and let's not get started on "No... NOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Apart from the general problems of all kinds of "special editions", all these prequel insertions into the OT add one thing that is even worse: the great films of the OT actually get degraded down to the level of the prequels. The OT thus gets turned into a vehicle for the prequels, a useless piece of crap to be preceded by the prequels with their *~amazing~* CGI.

In George's great artistic vision, new fans will not watch first the OT and then the prequels, but they will watch the films in Episode order, with one (voice) actor playing one character as much as possible, and they'll be like: "Hey, you can tell Boba Fett is a clone because he has the same voice!" He'll probably never have the guts to airbrush Alec Guinness out of history, so that's one thing, but it is these smaller things (Boba Fett's few lines, the Emperor's one dialogue in ESB, etc.) that slowly chip away at the edifice of the OT.

It's one of the best examples of the pig-headed megalomania that defines the prequels, along with the assumption that the potential viewers of the series are all drooling retards: we can't have the Emperor portrayed by two different actors, that would just be confusing! When of course, in reality, that's just how it sometimes goes with film series stretching over decades. Nobody necessarily likes it, but, for instance, the plot of Episode VI required an expansion of the Emperor's role, so they had to get McDiarmid instead of a woman with chimp eyes and a voice actor. That's just how things develop naturally. Trying to pretend that never happened is just clumsy.

The stubbornness about the prequels is the most peculiar, though. Instead of self-critically analysing the prequels and understanding its problems, they said: the prequels are not crap, but to make things more coherent, we must downgrade the original films to better reflect the prequels!

In itself, this wouldn't even be an incredible disaster. If Lucas or anyone else wants to mold all the films into a coherent "saga", then whatever. Maybe he could remake the OT into true "sequels to the prequels", with Hayden and Boba Fett with Jango's voice and all the other prequel goodness, naming it "Star Wars Reloaded", "Star Wars Advanced Generation". "Star Wars X-treme", "Star Wars - the TOTALLY RAD AWESOME Trilogy (TRAT)" or something. Just don't bother the rest of us with the suggestion that it is the original trilogy!

As it is, the prequels and their role in the degradation of the OT do pose a problem, because of the very openly stated desire to erase the OT from public memory instead of marketing it alongside the "Badass CGI Saga" and letting the viewers decide which one they like best (if the prequels and SEs are so good, what are they afraid of?). If you want to modify your own films like that, sure, that's up to you; but when you also want to control the perception of the audience as a whole, when you want to determine what they should see and how they should feel about that, then yes, you're being a bit megalomaniacal.

So what does any of this have to do with the prequels, apart from their unnecessary insertion into the OT? Well, for one thing, without them, there wouldn't be any need to insert prequel stuff into the OT if there weren't any prequels. Some of the worse features of the prequels could already be seen in the 1997 SE (or even in the original RotJ!), but they are all quite explicable and do not ruin the entire experience, even though they deserve criticism. Whereas the prequels mark a very clear and explicit break with everything that made the OT good.

And of course, considering that the prequels do exist, then it is the inexplicable and completely illogical confidence in their qualities that push Lucas to try to jam them into the OT. Without that, subsequent re-releases of the OT would simply feature further tinkering of the 1997 SE variety, but without necessarily eliminating all the good things about the OT.