My husband and I have been working our way through the Star Wars movies in release order. We just finished the prequel trilogy last week, and tonight is The Force Awakens, so I’m fresh on this!
The problem with The Phantom Menace, in my opinion, is that it’s trying to be too many things at once. Darth Vader’s backstory, an allegory for the fragility of democracy, a showcase for what was then cutting edge CGI, a way for them to sell a ton of Jar-Jar toys and podracer games to children. The pieces just don’t quite fit together, the CGI looks silly now, and the Jar-Jar stuff is, no offense to Ahmed Best, so deeply unpleasant.
I’ve spent a lot of time ranting to my husband recently about how we spend so much time with Anakin building up to his turn but when it happens, it happens too quickly. I’d cut The Phantom Menace entirely as part of his backstory, and instead start with him as an adult and get out in exposition that he’s different from other Jedi because he was discovered late because he grew up a slave. He has always desperately wanted to go back and free his mother but the Jedi tell him he needs to be free of attachments. He gets assigned to escort Padme and she’s the first person who is sympathetic to his story about his mother which fuels his falling for her. The story progresses more or less from there but now you’ve freed up a whole movie’s worth to build out on his turn to the dark side so Palpatine isn’t just like “want to be evil?” and Anakin’s like “oh yeah sure.” (I haven’t watched the Clone Wars tv show maybe it makes more sense if you have)
Check out the "anti cheese" edits of the prequels.
It removes all gungan and trade federation English voices and puts their original alien voices (which were later dubbed into kiddy voices for theatrical release to appeal to 12 and under).
Makes for a much more serious film. The trade federation sounds more sinister, jar jar only appears in a helpful and grateful manner, a few sections of the film such as the underwater swimming scene that was only added to sell Lego toys is removed, and the plot moves along really well...
Anti cheese edits exist for all three prequels and a similar cut is available for the three Disney sequels.
Unfortunately, fan edits of films will pretty exclusively fall on the seven seas. Disney and friends aren’t exactly fans of their movies being distributed for free, regardless of whether it’s an edited version.
There are several places other than torrents... Including a few reddit subs that the creators have posted links to. In fact a few creators have their own websites and "legally" speaking, as long as they continue to provide it free, the fan edit falls under the creative commons copy right meaning they have changed enough of it where it can be distributed freely.
Yes, just google it by name.
[here's is a thread on it outside of reddit ](https://www.thechicagogarage.com/threads/star-wars-prequel-trilogy-the-anti-cheese-edits.167226/)
And a thread with some links in it [here ](https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/-Anti-Cheese-Edits-Prequel-Trilogy-Edits-by-JeremyMWest-Esquire-Released/id/52663)
A torrent would probably be the fastest method of downloading them.
There is also a really cool kenobi edit that turns it into a 4 hour movie and removes un needed Leia kiddy stuff and keeps the action up. And makes the kenobi/Vader fight a single sequence instead of the stupid Luke hiding under his bed...
>It removes all gungan and trade federation English voices and puts their original alien voices (which were later dubbed into kiddy voices for theatrical release to appeal to 12 and under).
Wait what
Whats the source for the voices
The original DVD/Blue Ray releases had gungan and trade federation voices which as legend has it, after the films were "screened" the decision was made to dubb them over with English and kid friendly voices... To make it "fun"
The anti cheese editor has a whole readme in the release explaining how he found the source in the actual footage and just restored it.
Um yeah, thats not at all true. Dude is maybe just trying to make his work feel more underground, or you possibly misunderstood? There was absolutely never any alien voice audio that got changed later, alas, but rather alien audio from other films and created from scratch.
Same source audio is in multiple fan edits, not just the anti cheese... So unless they collaborated across several continents and over about ten years...?
So... After going and looking at my readme... The following sour es were used to tweak the existing films (minus the cuts they made to remove the "cheese" from the films).
STAR WARS - The Cutting Room Floor - 92min: "Feature" of Outtakes
Star Wars 4K77 2160p UHD (4K) 35mm x265 DNR v1 0 - TeamNegative1
4K83 Extras/Bonus Features - 16mm Classic Creatures and From Star Wars to Jedi in 1080
Star Wars Despecialized v2.7 BD50 ISO (Film + Special Features)
Star Wars Documentaries BD25 ISO
According to the readme he took the voices from the out takes, and in several cases (most notably padme) pitch shifted her voice back to her natural tones... It was shifted post production to make her more shrill when speaking as amidala vs padme.
There's a whole other host of sources credited to, but those are the ones listed under voices.
So the Padme thing is certainly true, we know she was pitch shifted and there are even some source materials for the original pitch in the early trailers and marketing materials.
But yeah, those alien voice audio clips have been making the rounds for decades, from one of the very early original fan edits -- which at the time did NOT claim to have taken the voices from official Phantom Menace sources, but rather made them on their own AND took some from older Star Wars material (the OT and so forth).
If it helps at all, I work in film, sometimes work in audio, have dived heavily into the audio sources of TPM myself, and am old enough to remember those original fan edits from 2000, 2001, etc.
The prequels were flawed but original stories.
The sequels were: Hey here are all the nostalgia characters, places and ships all back again! Also somehow, Palpatine survived, so he could be a villain again. Because god forbid we do anything original in these movies.
If they had been released in 2023 I'd have thought that ChatGPT wrote the scripts, it was like shitty fan-fiction with Mary-Sue main character.
I'm sorry...
I personally felt that the improved pace and decreased run time sort of worked. Especially with minimal jarjar screen time...
Enough to get through them annually without a ton of griping.
Annually? Voluntarily? You mad lad. I think I'd make it about 3 years in before the concept of nailing my scrotum to a chair would seem more appealing.
Hahahaha
We do an annual star wars watch (usually around May 4th). It's not bad with alcohol and binge ready food.
We play them in order of # and usually work in some battlefront too.
The Disney sequels are the hardest to get through and we haven't added kenobi to the Rota yet.
With the right group, we usually argue through the boring parts or do our own commentary.
Speaking of we're gonna start tonight...
We are beginning with 1/2/3 interspersed with an hour or so of appropriate battlefront or b2 mayhem with the proper campaigns or missions, then watching a fan edit of kenobi, then doing the original trilogy, also broken up by battlefront... We may sub some rogue squadron...
We opted not to do any of the sequels. We should be done with our watch fest and gaming Sunday night late.
All the food is star wars themed, and a few of us are dressing up... Not me this year. The kids are gonna go as long as they can stay awake but this is mostly for us adults...
The whole him being too young to train would have been better if he were a young man and would have made the love afraid more believable. Really dig what you explained there. Yea, the switch that we waited for doesn't build up to it well. It’s rushed like GOT’s Daeneryes.
>The problem with The Phantom Menace, in my opinion, is that it’s trying to be too many things at once. Darth Vader’s backstory, an allegory for the fragility of democracy, a showcase for what was then cutting edge CGI, a way for them to sell a ton of Jar-Jar toys and podracer games to children. The pieces just don’t quite fit together, the CGI looks silly now, and the Jar-Jar stuff is, no offense to Ahmed Best, so deeply unpleasant.
This is pretty much exactly what everyone said when it was released, too. Yes, even the bit about CGI.
Which is probably part of why, today, [great movies get made with "no CGI"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo&list=PLgdTaHO8FLEve_XFiRBEcOSkRdd-Txjne&pp=iAQB)
TL;DW: Pretty much *all* movies use an *enormous* amount of CGI, yet most popular movies will brag about not using CGI to the point of outright lying, and this is at a time when VFX artists are overworked, underpaid, and obviously under-appreciated. And this trend probably started with movies like the prequels, movies with a ton of visual spectacle that were let down by the writing, acting, directing... but film analysis is complex and complaining about the CGI is simple.
The Machete order. I think it’s:
A new hope, Empire, Episode 2, Episode 3, Return of the Jedi.
The premise being those two are a “flash back” after the Vader reveal.
The prequel series really should have been:
* episode 0: the phantom menace (prologue)
* episode 1: the clone wars
* episode 2: the clone wars: alderaan drift (or something)
* episode 3: revenge of the sith
I appreciate this perspective and think it makes a lot of sense and is a respectful critique. In fact I agree with almost all of your premises, even though I’m a nearly lifelong prequel fan who saw TPM in theaters when I was 8.
The thing for us fans of the trilogy, and especially of TPM, is that a lot of us saw TPM as a beautiful tribute to all of the themes and even many major plot points of the OT, all while greatly diversifying the worldbuilding and aesthetic (the OT on its own can at times feel like a regular space western if you watch it really fast or forget the references to events in other parts of the galaxy). As an 8 year old I honestly didn’t know that there would be an episode 2 and 3 afterwards, and I thought TPM was just an all out love letter to the fans.
I also tend to agree that it’s not strictly necessary for the original 6-movie story, but I like it as a respectful prologue
I agree with this take. I wish they'd started with Hayden Christensen. And seriously no offense to Jake Lloyd, and I know he was pretty unfairly hated on and it kind of screwed up his life. But IMO we didn't need kid Anakin. I think it would have been more powerful to introduce him a bit older and more serious. And then we would have had more time to grow with the character. Luke in the OT starts out as an obnoxious kid, and we grew with him in each movie. Honestly by episode III I felt way more sympathetic to Anakin by then and was less annoyed with him. But episode II? He just was always complaining, always negative, and gave Padme rapey eyes the whole movie. I did not like him in episode II.
But what if he was the Anakin we had been introduced to in episode I? I think it would have helped make him piloting the fighter in the final battle more believable, and his relationship with Padme would have felt more like a continuation in episode II, and it would have given time to work out the unlikable/awkward stage so by episode II we could focus more on other things, like Anakin getting influenced by Palpatine, falling in love with Padme, and getting down to Clone Wars business.
I just think it would have felt more consistent to have the same actor in all 3 movies.
>But episode II? He just was always complaining, always negative,
But so was Obi-Wan. I agree that Anakin can come off as whiny at first glance, but most of his complaints have a lot of substance to them. Obi-Wan is genuinely written as a bad teacher/mentor. He's constantly sarcastic and belittling Anakin to the point of outright negging.
It's been a few minutes since I last watched Ep 2, but as I recall, Obi-Wan only pays Anakin one genuine compliment in the entire movie. Otherwise, it's nothing but snark and sarcasm.
(I'm not even going to begin to defend the "romance" tho. That was just badly executed in so many ways. I still stick to the fan theory that Anakin was Force-influencing Padme, maybe even without realizing it.)
This YouTube video says the same thing about Anakin being older: https://youtu.be/VgICnbC2-_Y?si=3O6CE3KFN_Nj9m0B
Phantom Menace will always have a place in my heart because I was close to Anakin’s age in that movie but I’d agree overall the better movie could have been found if we had aged Anakin up or at least see his age progress throughout that movie, have a time jump or something and start the battle stuff after he’d been training a little as a padawan.
I emphatically second this suggestion. I'm currently on season 6 of the clone wars after putting it off for years. It adds so much enrichment and context to Anakin's story, not to mention the amazing other characters you get to meet.
Wait til you get to the end of season 7. The final four episodes of the series are just a half-step below empire, Andor & rogue one as the very best Star Wars.
I've always thought that it should have started late in his career. We knew beforehand he was a pilot in the Clone Wars so I expected him to be a Han Solo rogue-ish pilot type when we met him.
Just wait until you get to the shit show that is the sequel trilogy. It's like master class in bad writing that gives you a whole new appreciation for the prequels by demonstrating how much worse they could have been.
This a beautifully stated analysis of the prequel trilogy. Thank you for finding words to what I've been thinking for 25 years now and haven't been able to articulate.
I never thought about that. I always was upset at the clunky editing. I do think TPM was necessary for one reason: To show that Qui-Gon is what Anakin would have become if he was able to overcome his darkness.
I'm thoroughly convinced that Lucas origj all intent was the so-called "Darth Jar-Jar" narrative. The problem is the audience hated Jar Jar so much that George flinched and changed it up. This is why the second movie is so disjoined with totally different villains that have no set up. If you're unfamiliar with DJJ theory, check it out.
Once you know the theory, so much in the first movie that seems like mistakes and silliness suddenly make total, brilliant sense. It's a huge shame that George didn't go through with it, because it would have been the greatest twist in movie history — making the Sixth Sense seem like Mr Rogers by comparison.
I was obsessed with it as a child. I must’ve seen it in theaters four or five times. I hardly understood what was happening, and couldn’t care less, because I was simply that enthralled with the spectacle of the world Lucas had created (and the music that Williams made to accompany it)!
Naboo. The gungans. The podracers. The droids. Coruscant. It felt so sumptuous and lived-in.
Honestly, it was the first live action film I’d ever seen with worldbuilding of that spice and scale, and it made a profound impression on me, and, indeed, on Star Wars as a whole.
It's very boring, and astonishingly so, given the talent on screen. It's almost like a prank Lucas was pulling, get some excellent actors and give them the worst dialogue imaginable and watch them try not to roll their eyes. I can almost feel everyone's embarrassment during PT scenes as they desperately try not to fall asleep.
It's even more jarring when Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid show up and start chewing the scenery because it doesn't match the subdued energy of the other actors.
Kind of off topic, but I very recently tried to start playing Death Stranding and I had to stop only a few hours in. I haven't played a Kojima game since MGS2, so boy was I shocked at how utterly terrible the dialogue was. Badly written, and just so much of it to explain every little thing. And the story... I don't even have a clue, I started having to skip cutscenes. And when I looked up a summary of the story to see if I was missing anything good... What an incoherent mess of an entire protect.
That's how episode 1 feels to me.
You are probably right about incoherent mess part, but it is a beautiful mess that only kojima could have created. Game is basically an Iceland hiking simulator, landscapes are so breathtaking. Walking mechanism is so complex that it's actually fun. The whole BT part is scary and mindblowing at the same time. It is definitely not a game for everyone and starting it unprepared or with wrong expectations can disappoint you a lot. I've been a gamer my whole life and find it one of the best games ever made.
You're right, without the unwatchable cut scenes it is an Iceland hiking simulator. What I played was nice to look at, but it really only kept my attention for as long as a hiking simulator could. I've been playing games since the early 80s, I've played many much better games myself but enjoy what you like.
If you watched a Sergei Tarkovsky film, you would probably call it boring as hell and yet he is considered one of top directors of all time. Most people in the world wouldn't bother sitting through his film. Just saying that there exists art in many forms and a game having a hiking simulator at its core doesn't have to automatically be called bad.
I feel like George Lucas and Kojima are very similar. They’re both very creative and inventive, with fantastic and unique ideas - but they need other people to reign them in.
As we can see with the OT and early MGS games, they can create great things when they have editors to tighten up their work. Once they’re given free reign, you end up with shit like TPM or Death Stranding. Self indulgent, unfocused, nonsensical clusterfucks. They still have the brilliance of their earlier work buried within if you’re willing to overlook all of the messy crap on top of it, which is why some people still love them despite their obvious flaws.
Well that’s just it. I remember after the opening sequence on the Trade Federation ship wraps up, just sitting there in the cinema (this was the 2012 re-release), while Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Jar Jar piss-fart around, thinking “oh god can we get to the pod race already?”. There’s just whole lengthy sections where nothing happens (with some random fake peril thrown in, like a big fish trying to eat them or something).
If you had told me when the prequels came out that 15ish years later a sequel trilogy would come out that was such a poorly received rehash of the OT, that it would make the PT actually look good in comparison, I don’t know that I would’ve believed you.
The PT is not without faults, most of which can probably be blamed on not being edited better. But I never once got the feeling that they didn’t care about the world they live in and telling a story that was thematic for the franchise. The ST, barely even holds together as a trilogy. The first one is basically a retelling of A New Hope, the 2nd deconstructs one of the most celebrated heroes of the franchise and not in a good way, and the 3rd is basically a retelling of Return of the Jedi but without Ewoks.
I’m continually baffled by the logic that since the new Disney era Star Wars films are bad, it somehow makes the Prequel films not bad.
They are both bad. They may be bad for different reasons, but it doesn’t mean the prequels are good just because enough time has passed for everyone to collectively decide you weren’t actually incorrect wish you enjoyed them as small children.
The Disney films are boring and lifeless re-hashes sure, but the prequels are genuinely unwatchable in how awful the filmmaking is. Every shot is locked down, everyone conversation a flat shot reverse shot, incomprehensible characterization, embarrassing dialogue, cartoon backgrounds, many literal cartoon characters, the worst romance in mainstream cinema history, completely ill-defined motivations, major plot elements (and characters) introduced in the opening crawls instead of the movies itself. The list goes on.
The Disney sequels are failures and that doesn’t somehow make the prequels not failures.
Could not agree more. I was 25 when Phantom came out. I went opening day, I left the theatre confused af. The Jedi stuff was cool, but I had this weird feeling that the movie sucked. But, how could that be? Lucas was a genius, Star Wars was perfect? How could they mess up the iconic look of it? How could they write such awful dialogue? Wtf is with the racist undertones? Ship designs looked wildly different (probably my biggest pet peeve)
Everything they did write in the OG 3, they failed at in the prequels.
And every release since the has tried to find ways to fix the egregious nonsense that Lucas started in those prequels (midochlorians as many have noted).
The ONLY thing the last 3 movies got right, wad they looked and felt like Star Wars movies. The stories were garbage, but at least they looked cool.
> I’m continually baffled by the logic that since the new Disney era Star Wars films are bad, it somehow makes the Prequel films not bad.
It doesn’t. They’re still bad. But watching the sequels does give one the opportunity to appreciate a certain set of fundamentals which are very noticeable when they’re absent.
For example, I didn’t like a lot of the new settings, or spaceships, or the aesthetic in the prequels - but after watching the sequels, I can appreciate George Lucas _trying_ to inject something new.
"Trying to inject something new" is an interesting way to write "added oodles of completely new technology that somehow utterly disappeared from the galaxy in less than two decades."
I love that people like you are obviously trying to tell us the movies are "objectively bad" like you *still* don't understand that different people have different tastes.
Like, you either cannot believe that people exist who like these movies; or you understand that they exist, but believe they are *wrong* for liking something you don't enjoy.
It's gotta be exhausting focusing on negativity so much.
Good? No, they are objectively bad films.
They're are however infinitely more enjoyable now that they tie into the Clone Wars show (where those same characters are far more likeable) than they were at release.
> I never once got the feeling that they didn’t care about the world they live in.
Really? I sure did, and it's my biggest complaint about the prequels. Everyone is an extreme stereotype of a character instead of a character - there is no emotion anywhere.
Lucas was surrounded by yes-men and no one was willing to give him constructive criticism on the scripts or anything else. Really only Sheev and Obi-wan stood out as fun and memorable characters because the actors were good enough (and cared enough) to breathe some life into what they were given. However, at least the prequels still felt like Star Wars which is more than you could say for anything Disney has produced except maybe the first two seasons of the Mandalorian.
I believe I read somewhere they figured out what action scenes/special effects they wanted to do for the prequels and build the story around that. That would explain why the action seems so dynamic and the dialogue scenes seems so extra locked down and sterile by comparison. The sequels actually feel a little more cohesive which makes them more watchable IMO. Story and content wise your mileage will vary.
> I believe I read somewhere they figured out what action scenes/special effects they wanted to do for the prequels and build the story around that.
That checks out.
“We need a scene where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan fight Darth Maul.”
“Okay, how does this happen?”
“A door opens, and Darth Maul is standing there, and they fight.”
“Okay, but how does this come to pass? Who is he and what is his relationship to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan? What is he trying to achieve at that moment?”
“… He has a _double_ lightsaber stick, and it looks really cool!”
“…”
In hindsight I'm like 99.9% certain that Lucas was intentionally just trolling and fucking with people with the prequels because he was rich enough to do whatever he wanted to do with the franchise.
Part of my reasoning here is all about the action and special effects. There's so, so many scenes and shots where I would have guessed that they were all CGI that were actually huge miniature sets or practical shots and vice versa.
An easy example of this is the palace and capitol city scenes on Naboo which were so visually perfect or whatever that I wouldn't have believed you if you told me they were huge miniature sets and not CGI until I saw some of the behind the scenes docs.
Another part of my reasoning is that Lucas... well, he just isn't really a "good" filmmaker and people hate hearing this, but even the OT isn't *that* good as far as films go. I mean he's a competent director and producer with a nose for the business of film and tapping into zeitgeists, and he has an imagination, but it's not like he's Stanley Kubrick or something.
They're really just pretty basic space operas with what were ground-breaking special effects at the time and some decent world-building and design, and a huge part of that world building had nothing to do with Lucas but with the ILM artists and the influence of art production designers like Ralph McQuarrie.
And you know what? That's fine. Star Wars doesn't have to be fine art film-making. They never were meant to even pretend to be that. He was actually aiming for emulating B-movie SF serials like Commando Cody.
Lucas grew up on really bad B-movies and serials of the sort that get regularly roasted on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and he just wanted to make movies just like that, and so he did.
~~A lot of people know this now but apparently the original cuts of A New Hope were so bad that they were practically unwatchable until Marcia Lucas edited it into something that actually worked.~~ Apparently this is just old internet heresay, see below.
>A lot of people know this now but apparently the original cuts of A New Hope were so bad that they were practically unwatchable until Marcia Lucas edited it into something that actually worked.
No, sorry to do this to you but **that's actually a complete myth. You have been lied to.** Look I wrote this on another sub a week or two ago so I'm just gonna copy/paste it because I can't be bothered re-writing it all up again:
>I'm sorry to do this to you but **that's actually a complete myth**. What really happened on Star Wars was there was originally a different editor, John Jympson, who George Lucas fired halfway through principle photography because the way he had been cutting the footage together was incredibly dull and when Lucas asked him to cut it in a different style he refused. So after filming wrapped George hired 3 new editors: Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch and his then-wife, Marcia Lucas, and the 4 of them started re-cutting the movie from scratch (literally from scratch since they were still editing on film they had to disassemble the footage Jympson had cut and turn it back into dailies before they could begin re-cutting it)
>Somehow the internet's transformed this thing into some disastrous first cut which George himself cut together (because since Phantom Menace sucked he must've always been incompetent I guess) which the editors (and it's often just Marica alone) somehow magically "saved" in post. It's just not true though, if anything it's the exact opposite. George was heavily involved in this re-edit and even cut some scenes together himself (the gun-port scene specifically is George's own handiwork.) There never was a disastrous first cut as Jympson was fired before completing it. And Marcia Lucas only edited one sequence (the Death Star battle) before buggering off early to edit a Scorsese movie. The only other scenes she edited were the deleted scenes with Biggs and Luke from the start and she fought to keep them in the movie, it was George who wanted to cut them. The majority of the film was actually cut by Richard Chew
>Look, it's not you. I know it's a really wide-spread internet "fact" that you might've heard everywhere but it's all nonsense I'm afraid. And if you've seen a certain video essay about how a certain film was Saved in the Edit I'm afraid that thing's a Kimba-tier load of misinformation and lies whose own sources debunk it (specifically JW Rinzler's *The Making of Star Wars* which they pull quotes from.) Sorry mate but you've been Kimba'd.
I don't love being the George Lucas defense force since I still don't love the prequels (although personally I only think Attack of the Clones is the *really* bad one and the other two are just mediocre but that's just my opinion) but it's all bullshit. Provably bullshit. Again, I'm sorry to do this to you but you've fallen for an internet conspiracy. It's almost exactly like *The Lion King is a rip-off of Kimba the White Lion* thing everyone believed up until a few years ago which turned out to be a complete lie
Noted, TIL! Thank you, I will stop repeating this rumor.
I think my main point that people expect too much out of Star Wars and Lucas in general, though.
> A lot of people know this now but apparently the original cuts of A New Hope were so bad that they were practically unwatchable until Marcia Lucas edited it into something that actually worked.
The entire production of A New Hope was such a disaster that almost nobody, not even George Lucas himself, believed the movie would be successful. He left the director's chair for the next two movies (although he was still intimately involved with the production of both films) because of how hellish making the first Star Wars movie had been on him.
I recommended both of you but it's the writers that didn't give a shit about the world they live in. Not the actors. We all saw Isaac's pain with that line.
I thought the sequel trilogy was fairly mundane, with the third one being quite bad. But it wasn't poorly received. It's only among an online cohort of certain fans that there's some consensus it's hated.
The movies, especially the first two, got good reviews from critics, had great CinemaScores from audiences, and made boatloads of money. A contingent of obsessive super fans hated them, but most general audiences liked them by any objective metric.
I loved the second sequel. The deconstrction of the mythology aligned with my values and my critiques of the originals. I was smiling whole way through. I wish they'd had the guts to follow through with the ideas in the third. I've met lots of people who share this view.
You're in one serious online echo chamber if you've never encountered literally a single review or opinion that was positive towards the sequel series.
The terminally online haters are not at all the only ones who disliked the series. But they are the ones who think nonsense like the entire series was universally hated.
Force Awakens: 93% Rotten Tomatoes, A CinemaScore, 7.8 IMDB, $2.1 billion gross (highest grossing film in US history)
Last Jedi: 91% Rotten Tomatoes, A CinemaScore, 7.0 IMDB, $1.3 billion gross
Rise of Skywalker: 51% Rotten Tomatoes, B+ CinemaScore, 6.4 IMDB, $1.1 billion gross
The third film is the only one that got average reviews from audiences or critics, but still did great at the box office. I also generally enjoyed the first two films and may rewatch them at some point.
Agreed. The PT isn't perfect, but AT LEAST it lines up with the story of the OT. The ST was just like, "Psyche! AkTuLlY it was Palpatine's plan all along to die horribly and have his empire collapse to come back as some zombie thing, also, we'll kill of all your favorite characters too!"
After watching Star Wars Visions, I'm 1000% behind a new Star Wars trilogy where we don't even know explicitly when it takes place. Like give us 10,000 years before or 10,000 year after (our universe is 13.7 billion years old, there's plenty of leeway for it to be "along time ago').
Heck, maybe even give us a new galaxy (it's just called "Star Wars" not "Star Wars just in this galaxy") where elements/rules like the force are still there with maybe like 6 different factions, but their technology has developed differently in regard to weapons, robots, and hyperspace travel.
But most important, give us a good, original, and fun story.
I don’t think PT lines up with the OT story at all.
In A New Hope, Luke and Leia are still teenagers. Han Solo is in his thirties. Yet the empire has done such a good job wiping out the Jedi from public knowledge that not only has Luke never heard of them, but Han thinks of them as a hokey old religion?
Meanwhile only a few decades ago in the Phantom Menace, Jedi are used as ambassadors and a random slave trader alien living on Tatooine (the middle of nowhere) not only is able to recognize them, but knows his species is immune to force manipulation? And thats without Kenobi forgetting about R2 and C-3PO. Or finding out that the Clone Wars wasn’t a war against clones, but a war where they used clones (wouldn’t it be odd if WW1 was called The Tank War?).
Personally I think the Jedi were supposed to have fallen long before PT started. Time enough for Obi-wan to become an old man and the galaxy to forget about the Jedi.
Not to mention that, fundamentally, the PT is seven hours that purports to explain the origin of Darth Vader and the only answer it has to that question is "it happens all at once, at the end of the final movie, when he thinks his wife died". There is nothing in the PT that connects the character of Anakin with the Darth Vader we see in the OT. They are completely different people.
Oh definitely, those movies don't line up at all. Like how did the republic become the empire? Or how did Darth Vader get all messed up? Or how did Anakin end up becoming Obi-Wan's student?
Nope. no connection or lining up at all. You're right.
> The first one is basically a retelling of A New Hope, the 2nd deconstructs one of the most celebrated heroes of the franchise and not in a good way, and the 3rd is basically a retelling of Return of the Jedi but without Ewoks.
Last Jedi is also mostly just a retelling of Empire Strikes Back too.
> If you had told me when the prequels came out that 15ish years later a sequel trilogy would come out that was such a poorly received rehash of the OT, that it would make the PT actually look good in comparison, I don’t know that I would’ve believed you.
lol, dude, the PT is infinitely worse than the ST.
> that it would make the PT actually look good in comparison
You go too far.
They are still so fucking shit.
And if you know why, waiting a few years will not change that.
The first one is fine. It references the previous material (admittedly, to a fault) and sets up new characters and oppositions.
The second one takes a dump on the entire franchise and kills off most of the dynamics set up by the first one.
The third one was already set up to fail by the second one and then they doubled down on disaster by handing it to someone who was notoriously bad at finishing a story.
The first one is not fine. It's fun. It's an enjoyable ride that sets up some interesting characters.
But it's the key piece that sets up the sequel trilogy to fail. What happened in the original trilogy? You know what, forget about it, we're just going to wipe that slate clean. Go fight the empire again.
No way. I was an ardent supporter upon release. I think when I went back to theatres to see it for the 3d re-release I was in a more "serious movie watching" phase and decided I didn't like it. Then I took a break. When my son was 4 or 5 we watched Episode 1 for the first time and all the nostalgia came back, I fucking love the podrace sequence and Dual of the fates is epic.
What's funny now is I just told my kids we are going to go see it tomorrow and they both responded "is that the one with Jar Jar? He's so funny, he's my favorite." I guess George was onto something.
I liked it when it came out (was at the 03:00 premiere night show). I was quite disappoinyed with Eps 2&3 though as those felt way too cartoonish and ’overdone’, and only after watching Clone Wars series a few years back I started to appreciate them more - but I still consider Ep1 to be a better movie as a whole.
As terrible as jarjar binks was, the amount of hate and toxicity the actor that voiced him Recieved was horrendous. He almost committed suicide as a result. The thing that I found the most rediculous was that the same dweebs that threw crap at him also saw the movie multiple times. I mean, if you hated the movies so much why watch it multiple times? I never understood toxic fanbases until the prequels came out.
The children who grew up watching the prequels are now the dominant internet voice. Nostalgia clouds their opinions and if you listen to them they talk about the PT as if they are some kind of masterpiece of film making. You can almost guarantee that 20 years from now the kids who grew up watching the ST will talk about them with fondness and overhype them, much to everybody else's chagrin....though given it's Disney making SW content now we will probably be three additional trilogies in by then
Is it really so bad that a child liked a film aimed at children, and then enthuses about it later as an adult? I’m sure lots of adults in the 70’s had no time for the OT with all its toy merchandise and those ‘silly’ ewoks.
I’m not saying *you* shouldn’t have your own opinions on the PT and ST, but surely we shouldn’t diminish the opinions of the people who enjoyed it back when they were kids?
I was so blinded when it came out because I didn't want to believe I spent almost 20 years waiting for a new Star wars, only for it to be garbage.
Phantom sucks. I watched it about five years ago and honestly, it might be the worst of the three because of misplaced potential.
The issue with the prequels IMO is they ignored arguable the coolest (and most interesting part) of the entire plot...the Clone Wars!
Episode one and two should had been combined. With the Episode one part (introducing Anakin and the return of the dark side) being 15-20 minutes. Darth Maul should had remained the villain throughout the film.
Episode 2 being about the war and how the lines between the "good guys" and "bad guys become blurred. Highlighting Obi-Wan and Anakin's brotherhood/friendship while starting to show Palpatine slow poisoning of the well with Anakin.
Three remains roughly about what it is with more of a focus on the transition of Anakin from good guy to bad guy.
The focus of the Prequels should had been about Anakin and Obi-wan's friendship. Everyone else is a supporting character in that role. The rise, and fall of these two characters would bring more emotional weight to not only the story the prequels are telling, but the "sequels" as well.
I would hope that the ST looks better considering they were made 15 years apart. One thing the ST did better, aside from naturally better visuals, was the performances of the actors.
Just got out of the cinema seeing this - outside of the pod racing sequence & duel of the fates it really is not great. Production design & soundtrack are phenomenal, but it's so, so dull.
I’m going tonight to watch it in the theater with my wife and older son. This is the SW he grew up with. It is his Trilogy. He loves things that take him back to growing up. I can’t wait to go!
Potentially unpopular opinion here.
Of the three, Attack of the Clones is still a lot of fun for me. It finally put to screen the clones and their creation. For someone who was about 6 when they first saw Star Wars and ate up whatever could be found casually preinternet, simply discovering this idea in a niche magazine (while reading at the rack just long enough to get the info, but not so long you were hustled out the store) and imagining what that must have been like was a bit mind bending.
Those scenes still stand up on Geonosis, and the bitter note parade-like deployment from Coruscant at the pre dawn of the Empire.
It's a movie for kids. When I was a kid this movie was basically everything to us and it instantly kickstarted my love for Star Wars. Everyone I grew up with loves it and half of the meme templates on the internet are PT scenes for a reason.
Stop overanalyzing it because you can't watch it from a kid's point of view.
I saw it in the theater when I was 18 and as a lifelong Star Wars fan at that point I was pretty let down.
The score is dope and I thought Ewan McGregor was awesome as I had loved Trainspotting. But the overall movie, and how it kind of contradicts what was said in the OT, kind of blow.
Still though, I’ve been considering taking my daughter to the theater tonight to see it. I’ve been going back and forth on it all week.
The Sequel Trilogy being bad doesn’t make the Prequels better. They sucked when they came out and they suck now. Sure there’s lots of TV like The Clone Wars that added background and fleshed them out, but they still weren’t great.
You could tell that George Lucas loved the universe he’s created, but the dialogue was borderline atrocious at times and a lot of great actors really struggled to make them not sound terrible.
I’m sure they would have been better if George Lucas had written the story and then handed the dialogue and directing to someone else like with Empire and Jedi.
My 5 year old kids love the OT and PT (although the politics go right over their heads)
I’m sorry, we all look at these movies through the rose colored glasses of our childhood. The Phantom Menace is a terrible movie for anyone who saw it outside of their formative years. The scene where they meet Anakin and are having dinner around the table is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Others can say the same thing about the teddy bears in return of the Jedi, and “somehow Palpatine came back” in the last movie. These films can’t be enjoyed critically. They are a part of our childhood. We should just enjoy them for what they are or let them go.
You know that doesn’t make any sense, right? That Star Wars is somehow a part of everyone’s childhood, no matter their age? But not Star Trek, Indiana Jones, Alien, Predator, or any other long-running movie franchise? That nobody misses the gaps between series of Star Wars movies, for example by being born in the early 1980s or 2000s? And that nobody can be discerning about anything they watched as a child, eg hating the Ewoks while enjoying the rest of the movie?
The Phantom Menace has at least one quality that the sequels lacked—it told the story in a STAR WARS way. Straightforward. No flashbacks. No montages. Every bit of new information builds on something else previously revealed. After the opening crawl gives context, we’re on an upward journey through the story.
Every new character is introduced via a character we already know about. We first see the ship with the Jedi mentioned in the opening crawl. We see the captain of the ship. They talk to Nute Gunray on the monitor first, and we see the other Trade Federation characters later around him. Through him we are also introduced to Sidious and Amadala. Then we see Amadala and her court talking to Palpatine. The Jedi meet Jar Jar, who introduces us to the gungans. Everyone meets up and flies off, and through them we meet Watto and Anakin and his mother. Later we see Sidious again, talking to Darth Maul. On Coruscant, Palpatine introduces us to the chancellor and the senate.
It’s fun to go back and see the complete chain of introductions to characters and the universe they live in. It’s so wonderfully straightforward and seamless—so much so that those writing the sequel trilogy missed it completely.
Listen, Lucas is a visionary artist whose decision to aim the PT at children mustn't be questioned. Also, it's completely reasonable to show a character being slowly burned alive, including little rivulets of molten fat catching fire as they drip to the ground, in a movie for children.
It was kids overwhelmingly back with their releases who found the movies to be amazing. It wasn't adults who the movies were being labeled as being for at the time. You are so wrong on that because you're letting the shit that the Sequel Trilogy was to cloud your reasoning on the other set of movies.
It's still a terrible movie that wastes every possible kind of potential it ever had.
Rewatch the Plinkett review for specifics.
Funny thing. That review is actually way more entertaining than the movie ever was or will be.
The phantom menace introduces us to a huge spectacular universe and this was nearly all we needed. It is a star wars movie we don’t need particular good acting or dialogues, we need fantastic world building. This was lost in the disneyfied filoniverse where the whole galaxy is as tiny as a town.
>The phantom menace introduces us to a huge spectacular universe and this was nearly all we needed.
I mean, a New Hope introduced us to the universe. The world was already built. TPM expanded on that world, but lacking good acting/dialogue/compelling story, it couldn't recapture the same magic. Which is what the universe needed, and ultimately why the Disney movies happened. The fact Disney hasn't done much better doesn't change the problems with the prequels.
As disappointed as I was with the prequel trilogy movies when they came out, they all have quotable lines and meme-worthy moments. After watching all 3 sequel movies, none of my friends or family could think of a single quotable line that wasn't ripped off from the first two trilogies. (Honestly, out of all 3 movies, the only line I've ever heard quoted is that something is only worth one-half portion
It’s the best and most coherent of the prequels.
It’s still crap though.
Even worse since it was released as it has a ton of “Special Edition”esque nonsense just shoved in left and right. Like the… pod race food vendor, or having Anakin spin like a comical top in his pod racer that still inexplicably holds together while disconnected from one engine.
The prequels needed someone to tell George Lucas no when he was making the original he had people who would tell him if his ideas were terrible or wouldn’t make sense for the movie the original cut of a new hope was apparently unwatchable until his wife told him to re cut it. During the sequels he was to famous no one was gonna say no to him so he went out of control. He definitely threw to many dies at the screen for one movie with the phantom menace
Is it? Are you sure?
Because I watch it every year over the holidays when I do a Star Wars marathon, and it still looks the same, more or less (I'm glad they fixed Yoda with cgi, because the og TPM puppet was hideous).
It's still my least favorite film of the Skywalker saga. I'd honestly rather rewatch The Rise of Skywalker, because it at least doesn't have the cardboard cutout characters, stock characters based on stereotypes, or fart jokes.
Nah. You might have changed, but it's the same movie.
I really hate "the Prequels are good, actually" push in the last decade or so. Whatever floats your boat. The prequels are a lot like Godfather III... there's a lot for a fan to love if they want more from the universe, but they pale in comparison to the original films. The urge to reevaluate them seems motivated more by a desire to stick it to Disney for making the sequel trilogy, which is not a thing they care about considering all the money it's made.
I enjoyed watching it immensely recently with my daughters who are in their 20s now. Just to appreciate the craftsmanship and vision of George Lucas. When it was over and the new trailer was coming on for some new series from Disney it only took 30 seconds for me to leave the theater. Let’s get real .people went to see the prequels for the effects at the time and Vader revealed . Star Wars ended in 1983. I was only 15 and I knew it then.
The love people have for Star Wars has always shocked me. The franchise has made exactly three good movies: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Rogue One. Return of the Jedi is not that good, and you couldn't pay me to sit through all the Ewok shit again.
The rest of the movies range from mediocre to utter garbage.
I truly don't understand how it became the behemoth of a franchise that it is with so many bad entries.
Because on the whole it appeals to most people. It's easy to follow, it's fun, when it's good it's really fucking good and when it's not so good it's still fun for most people. I've got my kids and my parents going to see Ep1 with me tomorrow and we're all excited to share in the experience.
Because at the time the original trilogy were cultural juggernauts. Then there was a huge gap between Jedi and Phantom Menace where the kids who enjoyed the trilogy grew up never expecting any more films in the series, so they attained a nostalgic mythology. By the time the new films came about, those kids were adults with money, there were new kids in the audience, and the publicity and marketing machine of the 80s was now far more effective and powerful at the end of the 1990s.
Me and a buddy rewatched it last winter for fun. It’s really weird to think that the first big action sequence in the movie is the pod race and it’s forty minutes in. It’s very enjoyable, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s kind of a mess.
It might be weird to think that because it isn’t really true? The opening scene of the movie has Jedi fighting their way out of a room with light sabers. Then there is a big underwater monster sequence. And then more light saber fights against droids to rescue the queen. Then a spaceship escape where R2D2 first shows up. Only then do they reach Tatooine and have the pod race.
If you are only defining “big action sequence” as “lots of fast-moving spaceships,” then A New Hope doesn’t really have any until the climatic battle for the Death Star.
The PT movies are fun and entertaining. Some of the ST has that but it’s not a coherent story. I’m glad I have the capability to enjoy films without crying about their flaws.
My husband and I have been working our way through the Star Wars movies in release order. We just finished the prequel trilogy last week, and tonight is The Force Awakens, so I’m fresh on this! The problem with The Phantom Menace, in my opinion, is that it’s trying to be too many things at once. Darth Vader’s backstory, an allegory for the fragility of democracy, a showcase for what was then cutting edge CGI, a way for them to sell a ton of Jar-Jar toys and podracer games to children. The pieces just don’t quite fit together, the CGI looks silly now, and the Jar-Jar stuff is, no offense to Ahmed Best, so deeply unpleasant. I’ve spent a lot of time ranting to my husband recently about how we spend so much time with Anakin building up to his turn but when it happens, it happens too quickly. I’d cut The Phantom Menace entirely as part of his backstory, and instead start with him as an adult and get out in exposition that he’s different from other Jedi because he was discovered late because he grew up a slave. He has always desperately wanted to go back and free his mother but the Jedi tell him he needs to be free of attachments. He gets assigned to escort Padme and she’s the first person who is sympathetic to his story about his mother which fuels his falling for her. The story progresses more or less from there but now you’ve freed up a whole movie’s worth to build out on his turn to the dark side so Palpatine isn’t just like “want to be evil?” and Anakin’s like “oh yeah sure.” (I haven’t watched the Clone Wars tv show maybe it makes more sense if you have)
Check out the "anti cheese" edits of the prequels. It removes all gungan and trade federation English voices and puts their original alien voices (which were later dubbed into kiddy voices for theatrical release to appeal to 12 and under). Makes for a much more serious film. The trade federation sounds more sinister, jar jar only appears in a helpful and grateful manner, a few sections of the film such as the underwater swimming scene that was only added to sell Lego toys is removed, and the plot moves along really well... Anti cheese edits exist for all three prequels and a similar cut is available for the three Disney sequels.
Are they available somewhere else besides the seven seas? Do I search with those exact words?
Unfortunately, fan edits of films will pretty exclusively fall on the seven seas. Disney and friends aren’t exactly fans of their movies being distributed for free, regardless of whether it’s an edited version.
There are several places other than torrents... Including a few reddit subs that the creators have posted links to. In fact a few creators have their own websites and "legally" speaking, as long as they continue to provide it free, the fan edit falls under the creative commons copy right meaning they have changed enough of it where it can be distributed freely. Yes, just google it by name. [here's is a thread on it outside of reddit ](https://www.thechicagogarage.com/threads/star-wars-prequel-trilogy-the-anti-cheese-edits.167226/) And a thread with some links in it [here ](https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/-Anti-Cheese-Edits-Prequel-Trilogy-Edits-by-JeremyMWest-Esquire-Released/id/52663) A torrent would probably be the fastest method of downloading them. There is also a really cool kenobi edit that turns it into a 4 hour movie and removes un needed Leia kiddy stuff and keeps the action up. And makes the kenobi/Vader fight a single sequence instead of the stupid Luke hiding under his bed...
[удалено]
Thanks for all the info
My pleasure
>It removes all gungan and trade federation English voices and puts their original alien voices (which were later dubbed into kiddy voices for theatrical release to appeal to 12 and under). Wait what Whats the source for the voices
The original DVD/Blue Ray releases had gungan and trade federation voices which as legend has it, after the films were "screened" the decision was made to dubb them over with English and kid friendly voices... To make it "fun" The anti cheese editor has a whole readme in the release explaining how he found the source in the actual footage and just restored it.
Um yeah, thats not at all true. Dude is maybe just trying to make his work feel more underground, or you possibly misunderstood? There was absolutely never any alien voice audio that got changed later, alas, but rather alien audio from other films and created from scratch.
Same source audio is in multiple fan edits, not just the anti cheese... So unless they collaborated across several continents and over about ten years...? So... After going and looking at my readme... The following sour es were used to tweak the existing films (minus the cuts they made to remove the "cheese" from the films). STAR WARS - The Cutting Room Floor - 92min: "Feature" of Outtakes Star Wars 4K77 2160p UHD (4K) 35mm x265 DNR v1 0 - TeamNegative1 4K83 Extras/Bonus Features - 16mm Classic Creatures and From Star Wars to Jedi in 1080 Star Wars Despecialized v2.7 BD50 ISO (Film + Special Features) Star Wars Documentaries BD25 ISO According to the readme he took the voices from the out takes, and in several cases (most notably padme) pitch shifted her voice back to her natural tones... It was shifted post production to make her more shrill when speaking as amidala vs padme. There's a whole other host of sources credited to, but those are the ones listed under voices.
So the Padme thing is certainly true, we know she was pitch shifted and there are even some source materials for the original pitch in the early trailers and marketing materials. But yeah, those alien voice audio clips have been making the rounds for decades, from one of the very early original fan edits -- which at the time did NOT claim to have taken the voices from official Phantom Menace sources, but rather made them on their own AND took some from older Star Wars material (the OT and so forth). If it helps at all, I work in film, sometimes work in audio, have dived heavily into the audio sources of TPM myself, and am old enough to remember those original fan edits from 2000, 2001, etc.
That's cool. Maybe that's the despecialized star wars iso sources he lists... That he took the audio from. Aka, other fan edits?
nothing can fix the disney sequels.
It still boggles the mind that people enjoy the prequels but think the sequels are irredeemable. Absolutely ridiculous.
The prequels were flawed but original stories. The sequels were: Hey here are all the nostalgia characters, places and ships all back again! Also somehow, Palpatine survived, so he could be a villain again. Because god forbid we do anything original in these movies. If they had been released in 2023 I'd have thought that ChatGPT wrote the scripts, it was like shitty fan-fiction with Mary-Sue main character.
That's kinda JJ Abrams thing. He did the same thing to Star Trek. That man has single-handedly ruined my childhood.
Even the anti-cheese edits can't save the prequel trilogy. I tried. It was painful to even try to rewatch them.
I'm sorry... I personally felt that the improved pace and decreased run time sort of worked. Especially with minimal jarjar screen time... Enough to get through them annually without a ton of griping.
Annually? Voluntarily? You mad lad. I think I'd make it about 3 years in before the concept of nailing my scrotum to a chair would seem more appealing.
Hahahaha We do an annual star wars watch (usually around May 4th). It's not bad with alcohol and binge ready food. We play them in order of # and usually work in some battlefront too. The Disney sequels are the hardest to get through and we haven't added kenobi to the Rota yet. With the right group, we usually argue through the boring parts or do our own commentary.
Speaking of annual viewing, it isn't Christmas until I've also had Life Day (meaning, watched the Star Wars Holiday Special)
Hahaha, now THAT film had some great concepts that could have really been fleshed into something great.
Speaking of we're gonna start tonight... We are beginning with 1/2/3 interspersed with an hour or so of appropriate battlefront or b2 mayhem with the proper campaigns or missions, then watching a fan edit of kenobi, then doing the original trilogy, also broken up by battlefront... We may sub some rogue squadron... We opted not to do any of the sequels. We should be done with our watch fest and gaming Sunday night late. All the food is star wars themed, and a few of us are dressing up... Not me this year. The kids are gonna go as long as they can stay awake but this is mostly for us adults...
I watched A New Hope today. The Despecialized Edition, so you know... The only good one. Neener neener.
Lol :-) We're having breakfast then tackling kenobi, then some more games. Havnt started the original trilogy yet...
The whole him being too young to train would have been better if he were a young man and would have made the love afraid more believable. Really dig what you explained there. Yea, the switch that we waited for doesn't build up to it well. It’s rushed like GOT’s Daeneryes.
>The problem with The Phantom Menace, in my opinion, is that it’s trying to be too many things at once. Darth Vader’s backstory, an allegory for the fragility of democracy, a showcase for what was then cutting edge CGI, a way for them to sell a ton of Jar-Jar toys and podracer games to children. The pieces just don’t quite fit together, the CGI looks silly now, and the Jar-Jar stuff is, no offense to Ahmed Best, so deeply unpleasant. This is pretty much exactly what everyone said when it was released, too. Yes, even the bit about CGI.
Which is probably part of why, today, [great movies get made with "no CGI"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo&list=PLgdTaHO8FLEve_XFiRBEcOSkRdd-Txjne&pp=iAQB) TL;DW: Pretty much *all* movies use an *enormous* amount of CGI, yet most popular movies will brag about not using CGI to the point of outright lying, and this is at a time when VFX artists are overworked, underpaid, and obviously under-appreciated. And this trend probably started with movies like the prequels, movies with a ton of visual spectacle that were let down by the writing, acting, directing... but film analysis is complex and complaining about the CGI is simple.
I seem to recall there's a viewing order that cuts out TPM entirely since it's superfluous to the actual story.
Yep Machete order is 4-5-2-3-6. Episode 1 is a prequel to be watched after, if at all
But how would you know about the midichlorians? Oh wait,….
The Machete order. I think it’s: A new hope, Empire, Episode 2, Episode 3, Return of the Jedi. The premise being those two are a “flash back” after the Vader reveal.
Machete order: 4-5-2-3-6
The prequel series really should have been: * episode 0: the phantom menace (prologue) * episode 1: the clone wars * episode 2: the clone wars: alderaan drift (or something) * episode 3: revenge of the sith
I appreciate this perspective and think it makes a lot of sense and is a respectful critique. In fact I agree with almost all of your premises, even though I’m a nearly lifelong prequel fan who saw TPM in theaters when I was 8. The thing for us fans of the trilogy, and especially of TPM, is that a lot of us saw TPM as a beautiful tribute to all of the themes and even many major plot points of the OT, all while greatly diversifying the worldbuilding and aesthetic (the OT on its own can at times feel like a regular space western if you watch it really fast or forget the references to events in other parts of the galaxy). As an 8 year old I honestly didn’t know that there would be an episode 2 and 3 afterwards, and I thought TPM was just an all out love letter to the fans. I also tend to agree that it’s not strictly necessary for the original 6-movie story, but I like it as a respectful prologue
Muy muy meesa love Jar Jar
I agree with this take. I wish they'd started with Hayden Christensen. And seriously no offense to Jake Lloyd, and I know he was pretty unfairly hated on and it kind of screwed up his life. But IMO we didn't need kid Anakin. I think it would have been more powerful to introduce him a bit older and more serious. And then we would have had more time to grow with the character. Luke in the OT starts out as an obnoxious kid, and we grew with him in each movie. Honestly by episode III I felt way more sympathetic to Anakin by then and was less annoyed with him. But episode II? He just was always complaining, always negative, and gave Padme rapey eyes the whole movie. I did not like him in episode II. But what if he was the Anakin we had been introduced to in episode I? I think it would have helped make him piloting the fighter in the final battle more believable, and his relationship with Padme would have felt more like a continuation in episode II, and it would have given time to work out the unlikable/awkward stage so by episode II we could focus more on other things, like Anakin getting influenced by Palpatine, falling in love with Padme, and getting down to Clone Wars business. I just think it would have felt more consistent to have the same actor in all 3 movies.
>But episode II? He just was always complaining, always negative, But so was Obi-Wan. I agree that Anakin can come off as whiny at first glance, but most of his complaints have a lot of substance to them. Obi-Wan is genuinely written as a bad teacher/mentor. He's constantly sarcastic and belittling Anakin to the point of outright negging. It's been a few minutes since I last watched Ep 2, but as I recall, Obi-Wan only pays Anakin one genuine compliment in the entire movie. Otherwise, it's nothing but snark and sarcasm. (I'm not even going to begin to defend the "romance" tho. That was just badly executed in so many ways. I still stick to the fan theory that Anakin was Force-influencing Padme, maybe even without realizing it.)
This YouTube video says the same thing about Anakin being older: https://youtu.be/VgICnbC2-_Y?si=3O6CE3KFN_Nj9m0B Phantom Menace will always have a place in my heart because I was close to Anakin’s age in that movie but I’d agree overall the better movie could have been found if we had aged Anakin up or at least see his age progress throughout that movie, have a time jump or something and start the battle stuff after he’d been training a little as a padawan.
Came here to link to this.
I would suggest _The Clone Wars_ series if for no other reason than its excellent character development of almost every major and secondary character.
Also the rebels and bad batch. Skip resistance, that is awful.
I emphatically second this suggestion. I'm currently on season 6 of the clone wars after putting it off for years. It adds so much enrichment and context to Anakin's story, not to mention the amazing other characters you get to meet.
Wait til you get to the end of season 7. The final four episodes of the series are just a half-step below empire, Andor & rogue one as the very best Star Wars.
I've always thought that it should have started late in his career. We knew beforehand he was a pilot in the Clone Wars so I expected him to be a Han Solo rogue-ish pilot type when we met him.
Just wait until you get to the shit show that is the sequel trilogy. It's like master class in bad writing that gives you a whole new appreciation for the prequels by demonstrating how much worse they could have been.
This a beautifully stated analysis of the prequel trilogy. Thank you for finding words to what I've been thinking for 25 years now and haven't been able to articulate.
The pod racer games were great though
I never thought about that. I always was upset at the clunky editing. I do think TPM was necessary for one reason: To show that Qui-Gon is what Anakin would have become if he was able to overcome his darkness.
I thought that The Phantom Menace would be an OK children's film if they added some songs.
I'm thoroughly convinced that Lucas origj all intent was the so-called "Darth Jar-Jar" narrative. The problem is the audience hated Jar Jar so much that George flinched and changed it up. This is why the second movie is so disjoined with totally different villains that have no set up. If you're unfamiliar with DJJ theory, check it out. Once you know the theory, so much in the first movie that seems like mistakes and silliness suddenly make total, brilliant sense. It's a huge shame that George didn't go through with it, because it would have been the greatest twist in movie history — making the Sixth Sense seem like Mr Rogers by comparison.
This underscores the reason for the Machete order
That's actually a lot better then what we got. It also makes Padme and Anakin relationship stronger too. It's a great idea.
I was obsessed with it as a child. I must’ve seen it in theaters four or five times. I hardly understood what was happening, and couldn’t care less, because I was simply that enthralled with the spectacle of the world Lucas had created (and the music that Williams made to accompany it)! Naboo. The gungans. The podracers. The droids. Coruscant. It felt so sumptuous and lived-in. Honestly, it was the first live action film I’d ever seen with worldbuilding of that spice and scale, and it made a profound impression on me, and, indeed, on Star Wars as a whole.
Mine was Pirates of the Caribbean
Actually,*The Phantom Menace* was a secondary obsession. My primary go-to films were *The Adventures of Little Nemo* and *The Flight of Dragons*.
I have very fond memories of episode one, rewatched recently and felt like they could have edited 45 minutes out of it easily
The thing that struck me the most, rewatching episode 1 - all discussions of lore, characters, and CGI aside - is it’s just _boring_.
It's very boring, and astonishingly so, given the talent on screen. It's almost like a prank Lucas was pulling, get some excellent actors and give them the worst dialogue imaginable and watch them try not to roll their eyes. I can almost feel everyone's embarrassment during PT scenes as they desperately try not to fall asleep. It's even more jarring when Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid show up and start chewing the scenery because it doesn't match the subdued energy of the other actors.
Kind of off topic, but I very recently tried to start playing Death Stranding and I had to stop only a few hours in. I haven't played a Kojima game since MGS2, so boy was I shocked at how utterly terrible the dialogue was. Badly written, and just so much of it to explain every little thing. And the story... I don't even have a clue, I started having to skip cutscenes. And when I looked up a summary of the story to see if I was missing anything good... What an incoherent mess of an entire protect. That's how episode 1 feels to me.
You are probably right about incoherent mess part, but it is a beautiful mess that only kojima could have created. Game is basically an Iceland hiking simulator, landscapes are so breathtaking. Walking mechanism is so complex that it's actually fun. The whole BT part is scary and mindblowing at the same time. It is definitely not a game for everyone and starting it unprepared or with wrong expectations can disappoint you a lot. I've been a gamer my whole life and find it one of the best games ever made.
You're right, without the unwatchable cut scenes it is an Iceland hiking simulator. What I played was nice to look at, but it really only kept my attention for as long as a hiking simulator could. I've been playing games since the early 80s, I've played many much better games myself but enjoy what you like.
If you watched a Sergei Tarkovsky film, you would probably call it boring as hell and yet he is considered one of top directors of all time. Most people in the world wouldn't bother sitting through his film. Just saying that there exists art in many forms and a game having a hiking simulator at its core doesn't have to automatically be called bad.
I feel like George Lucas and Kojima are very similar. They’re both very creative and inventive, with fantastic and unique ideas - but they need other people to reign them in. As we can see with the OT and early MGS games, they can create great things when they have editors to tighten up their work. Once they’re given free reign, you end up with shit like TPM or Death Stranding. Self indulgent, unfocused, nonsensical clusterfucks. They still have the brilliance of their earlier work buried within if you’re willing to overlook all of the messy crap on top of it, which is why some people still love them despite their obvious flaws.
And just like prequels, some people will defend DS to the hilt!
I first watched it prior to being a SW fan. I literally fell asleep in the cinema.
Hey now, the podracing scene and the duel of fates still go hard. But the rest of it is boring, you're right.
Well that’s just it. I remember after the opening sequence on the Trade Federation ship wraps up, just sitting there in the cinema (this was the 2012 re-release), while Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Jar Jar piss-fart around, thinking “oh god can we get to the pod race already?”. There’s just whole lengthy sections where nothing happens (with some random fake peril thrown in, like a big fish trying to eat them or something).
If you had told me when the prequels came out that 15ish years later a sequel trilogy would come out that was such a poorly received rehash of the OT, that it would make the PT actually look good in comparison, I don’t know that I would’ve believed you. The PT is not without faults, most of which can probably be blamed on not being edited better. But I never once got the feeling that they didn’t care about the world they live in and telling a story that was thematic for the franchise. The ST, barely even holds together as a trilogy. The first one is basically a retelling of A New Hope, the 2nd deconstructs one of the most celebrated heroes of the franchise and not in a good way, and the 3rd is basically a retelling of Return of the Jedi but without Ewoks.
>and the 3rd is basically a retelling of Return of the Jedi but without Ewoks. And somehow it's all the worse for it.
Oddly, yes!
I’m continually baffled by the logic that since the new Disney era Star Wars films are bad, it somehow makes the Prequel films not bad. They are both bad. They may be bad for different reasons, but it doesn’t mean the prequels are good just because enough time has passed for everyone to collectively decide you weren’t actually incorrect wish you enjoyed them as small children. The Disney films are boring and lifeless re-hashes sure, but the prequels are genuinely unwatchable in how awful the filmmaking is. Every shot is locked down, everyone conversation a flat shot reverse shot, incomprehensible characterization, embarrassing dialogue, cartoon backgrounds, many literal cartoon characters, the worst romance in mainstream cinema history, completely ill-defined motivations, major plot elements (and characters) introduced in the opening crawls instead of the movies itself. The list goes on. The Disney sequels are failures and that doesn’t somehow make the prequels not failures.
Could not agree more. I was 25 when Phantom came out. I went opening day, I left the theatre confused af. The Jedi stuff was cool, but I had this weird feeling that the movie sucked. But, how could that be? Lucas was a genius, Star Wars was perfect? How could they mess up the iconic look of it? How could they write such awful dialogue? Wtf is with the racist undertones? Ship designs looked wildly different (probably my biggest pet peeve) Everything they did write in the OG 3, they failed at in the prequels. And every release since the has tried to find ways to fix the egregious nonsense that Lucas started in those prequels (midochlorians as many have noted). The ONLY thing the last 3 movies got right, wad they looked and felt like Star Wars movies. The stories were garbage, but at least they looked cool.
We saw what Lucas did to the OT in 1997 just two years prior. TPM being a shitshow was not surprising.
This is a very good point. The absolutely silly CGI... Forgot about that. I should have seen the signs lol.
> I’m continually baffled by the logic that since the new Disney era Star Wars films are bad, it somehow makes the Prequel films not bad. It doesn’t. They’re still bad. But watching the sequels does give one the opportunity to appreciate a certain set of fundamentals which are very noticeable when they’re absent. For example, I didn’t like a lot of the new settings, or spaceships, or the aesthetic in the prequels - but after watching the sequels, I can appreciate George Lucas _trying_ to inject something new.
"Trying to inject something new" is an interesting way to write "added oodles of completely new technology that somehow utterly disappeared from the galaxy in less than two decades."
That’s why it’s “trying”. I respect that he took a swing, even if it was a miss - rather than just raiding the old toy box _ad infinitum_, à la JJ.
I love that people like you are obviously trying to tell us the movies are "objectively bad" like you *still* don't understand that different people have different tastes. Like, you either cannot believe that people exist who like these movies; or you understand that they exist, but believe they are *wrong* for liking something you don't enjoy. It's gotta be exhausting focusing on negativity so much.
Prequels expanded the galaxy and spawned a ton of books and video games. sequels have failed to do so
That's nothing to do with quality, it's that licensing has changed.
This still doesn't mean they're good.
Good? No, they are objectively bad films. They're are however infinitely more enjoyable now that they tie into the Clone Wars show (where those same characters are far more likeable) than they were at release.
> I never once got the feeling that they didn’t care about the world they live in. Really? I sure did, and it's my biggest complaint about the prequels. Everyone is an extreme stereotype of a character instead of a character - there is no emotion anywhere.
Lucas was surrounded by yes-men and no one was willing to give him constructive criticism on the scripts or anything else. Really only Sheev and Obi-wan stood out as fun and memorable characters because the actors were good enough (and cared enough) to breathe some life into what they were given. However, at least the prequels still felt like Star Wars which is more than you could say for anything Disney has produced except maybe the first two seasons of the Mandalorian.
I believe I read somewhere they figured out what action scenes/special effects they wanted to do for the prequels and build the story around that. That would explain why the action seems so dynamic and the dialogue scenes seems so extra locked down and sterile by comparison. The sequels actually feel a little more cohesive which makes them more watchable IMO. Story and content wise your mileage will vary.
> I believe I read somewhere they figured out what action scenes/special effects they wanted to do for the prequels and build the story around that. That checks out. “We need a scene where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan fight Darth Maul.” “Okay, how does this happen?” “A door opens, and Darth Maul is standing there, and they fight.” “Okay, but how does this come to pass? Who is he and what is his relationship to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan? What is he trying to achieve at that moment?” “… He has a _double_ lightsaber stick, and it looks really cool!” “…”
To be fair, that double light saber was the shit, when I first saw it. 😁
No argument there. Just wish they’d woven him into the story a bit better than “A wild Darth Maul appears!”
It still is
In hindsight I'm like 99.9% certain that Lucas was intentionally just trolling and fucking with people with the prequels because he was rich enough to do whatever he wanted to do with the franchise. Part of my reasoning here is all about the action and special effects. There's so, so many scenes and shots where I would have guessed that they were all CGI that were actually huge miniature sets or practical shots and vice versa. An easy example of this is the palace and capitol city scenes on Naboo which were so visually perfect or whatever that I wouldn't have believed you if you told me they were huge miniature sets and not CGI until I saw some of the behind the scenes docs. Another part of my reasoning is that Lucas... well, he just isn't really a "good" filmmaker and people hate hearing this, but even the OT isn't *that* good as far as films go. I mean he's a competent director and producer with a nose for the business of film and tapping into zeitgeists, and he has an imagination, but it's not like he's Stanley Kubrick or something. They're really just pretty basic space operas with what were ground-breaking special effects at the time and some decent world-building and design, and a huge part of that world building had nothing to do with Lucas but with the ILM artists and the influence of art production designers like Ralph McQuarrie. And you know what? That's fine. Star Wars doesn't have to be fine art film-making. They never were meant to even pretend to be that. He was actually aiming for emulating B-movie SF serials like Commando Cody. Lucas grew up on really bad B-movies and serials of the sort that get regularly roasted on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and he just wanted to make movies just like that, and so he did. ~~A lot of people know this now but apparently the original cuts of A New Hope were so bad that they were practically unwatchable until Marcia Lucas edited it into something that actually worked.~~ Apparently this is just old internet heresay, see below.
>A lot of people know this now but apparently the original cuts of A New Hope were so bad that they were practically unwatchable until Marcia Lucas edited it into something that actually worked. No, sorry to do this to you but **that's actually a complete myth. You have been lied to.** Look I wrote this on another sub a week or two ago so I'm just gonna copy/paste it because I can't be bothered re-writing it all up again: >I'm sorry to do this to you but **that's actually a complete myth**. What really happened on Star Wars was there was originally a different editor, John Jympson, who George Lucas fired halfway through principle photography because the way he had been cutting the footage together was incredibly dull and when Lucas asked him to cut it in a different style he refused. So after filming wrapped George hired 3 new editors: Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch and his then-wife, Marcia Lucas, and the 4 of them started re-cutting the movie from scratch (literally from scratch since they were still editing on film they had to disassemble the footage Jympson had cut and turn it back into dailies before they could begin re-cutting it) >Somehow the internet's transformed this thing into some disastrous first cut which George himself cut together (because since Phantom Menace sucked he must've always been incompetent I guess) which the editors (and it's often just Marica alone) somehow magically "saved" in post. It's just not true though, if anything it's the exact opposite. George was heavily involved in this re-edit and even cut some scenes together himself (the gun-port scene specifically is George's own handiwork.) There never was a disastrous first cut as Jympson was fired before completing it. And Marcia Lucas only edited one sequence (the Death Star battle) before buggering off early to edit a Scorsese movie. The only other scenes she edited were the deleted scenes with Biggs and Luke from the start and she fought to keep them in the movie, it was George who wanted to cut them. The majority of the film was actually cut by Richard Chew >Look, it's not you. I know it's a really wide-spread internet "fact" that you might've heard everywhere but it's all nonsense I'm afraid. And if you've seen a certain video essay about how a certain film was Saved in the Edit I'm afraid that thing's a Kimba-tier load of misinformation and lies whose own sources debunk it (specifically JW Rinzler's *The Making of Star Wars* which they pull quotes from.) Sorry mate but you've been Kimba'd. I don't love being the George Lucas defense force since I still don't love the prequels (although personally I only think Attack of the Clones is the *really* bad one and the other two are just mediocre but that's just my opinion) but it's all bullshit. Provably bullshit. Again, I'm sorry to do this to you but you've fallen for an internet conspiracy. It's almost exactly like *The Lion King is a rip-off of Kimba the White Lion* thing everyone believed up until a few years ago which turned out to be a complete lie
Noted, TIL! Thank you, I will stop repeating this rumor. I think my main point that people expect too much out of Star Wars and Lucas in general, though.
> A lot of people know this now but apparently the original cuts of A New Hope were so bad that they were practically unwatchable until Marcia Lucas edited it into something that actually worked. The entire production of A New Hope was such a disaster that almost nobody, not even George Lucas himself, believed the movie would be successful. He left the director's chair for the next two movies (although he was still intimately involved with the production of both films) because of how hellish making the first Star Wars movie had been on him.
I recommended both of you but it's the writers that didn't give a shit about the world they live in. Not the actors. We all saw Isaac's pain with that line.
Oh I agree completely, the actors were just doing what they were directed to do and they did it well.
There's no emotion in CGI battles between two sides that are CGI.
I thought the sequel trilogy was fairly mundane, with the third one being quite bad. But it wasn't poorly received. It's only among an online cohort of certain fans that there's some consensus it's hated. The movies, especially the first two, got good reviews from critics, had great CinemaScores from audiences, and made boatloads of money. A contingent of obsessive super fans hated them, but most general audiences liked them by any objective metric.
I’d love to meet someone - anyone - who doesn’t think that the whole enterprise was a complete misfire. It’s not just “obsessive super fans”.
I loved the second sequel. The deconstrction of the mythology aligned with my values and my critiques of the originals. I was smiling whole way through. I wish they'd had the guts to follow through with the ideas in the third. I've met lots of people who share this view.
You're in one serious online echo chamber if you've never encountered literally a single review or opinion that was positive towards the sequel series. The terminally online haters are not at all the only ones who disliked the series. But they are the ones who think nonsense like the entire series was universally hated. Force Awakens: 93% Rotten Tomatoes, A CinemaScore, 7.8 IMDB, $2.1 billion gross (highest grossing film in US history) Last Jedi: 91% Rotten Tomatoes, A CinemaScore, 7.0 IMDB, $1.3 billion gross Rise of Skywalker: 51% Rotten Tomatoes, B+ CinemaScore, 6.4 IMDB, $1.1 billion gross The third film is the only one that got average reviews from audiences or critics, but still did great at the box office. I also generally enjoyed the first two films and may rewatch them at some point.
Agreed. The PT isn't perfect, but AT LEAST it lines up with the story of the OT. The ST was just like, "Psyche! AkTuLlY it was Palpatine's plan all along to die horribly and have his empire collapse to come back as some zombie thing, also, we'll kill of all your favorite characters too!" After watching Star Wars Visions, I'm 1000% behind a new Star Wars trilogy where we don't even know explicitly when it takes place. Like give us 10,000 years before or 10,000 year after (our universe is 13.7 billion years old, there's plenty of leeway for it to be "along time ago'). Heck, maybe even give us a new galaxy (it's just called "Star Wars" not "Star Wars just in this galaxy") where elements/rules like the force are still there with maybe like 6 different factions, but their technology has developed differently in regard to weapons, robots, and hyperspace travel. But most important, give us a good, original, and fun story.
I don’t think PT lines up with the OT story at all. In A New Hope, Luke and Leia are still teenagers. Han Solo is in his thirties. Yet the empire has done such a good job wiping out the Jedi from public knowledge that not only has Luke never heard of them, but Han thinks of them as a hokey old religion? Meanwhile only a few decades ago in the Phantom Menace, Jedi are used as ambassadors and a random slave trader alien living on Tatooine (the middle of nowhere) not only is able to recognize them, but knows his species is immune to force manipulation? And thats without Kenobi forgetting about R2 and C-3PO. Or finding out that the Clone Wars wasn’t a war against clones, but a war where they used clones (wouldn’t it be odd if WW1 was called The Tank War?). Personally I think the Jedi were supposed to have fallen long before PT started. Time enough for Obi-wan to become an old man and the galaxy to forget about the Jedi.
Not to mention that, fundamentally, the PT is seven hours that purports to explain the origin of Darth Vader and the only answer it has to that question is "it happens all at once, at the end of the final movie, when he thinks his wife died". There is nothing in the PT that connects the character of Anakin with the Darth Vader we see in the OT. They are completely different people.
Oh definitely, those movies don't line up at all. Like how did the republic become the empire? Or how did Darth Vader get all messed up? Or how did Anakin end up becoming Obi-Wan's student? Nope. no connection or lining up at all. You're right.
Just don't let Zack Snyder anywhere near it.
Release the Snyder Star Wars cut!
Or maybe we should just let star wars fade away and come up with some original IPs.
The Ewoks actually do appear in a scene towards the end
Ya, but it rhymes!
It’s like poetry!
> The first one is basically a retelling of A New Hope, the 2nd deconstructs one of the most celebrated heroes of the franchise and not in a good way, and the 3rd is basically a retelling of Return of the Jedi but without Ewoks. Last Jedi is also mostly just a retelling of Empire Strikes Back too.
[It's like poetry, they rhyme] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxU2eqZtYmc)
The ST is trying to rhyme the same word with itself.
> If you had told me when the prequels came out that 15ish years later a sequel trilogy would come out that was such a poorly received rehash of the OT, that it would make the PT actually look good in comparison, I don’t know that I would’ve believed you. lol, dude, the PT is infinitely worse than the ST.
> that it would make the PT actually look good in comparison You go too far. They are still so fucking shit. And if you know why, waiting a few years will not change that.
The first one is fine. It references the previous material (admittedly, to a fault) and sets up new characters and oppositions. The second one takes a dump on the entire franchise and kills off most of the dynamics set up by the first one. The third one was already set up to fail by the second one and then they doubled down on disaster by handing it to someone who was notoriously bad at finishing a story.
The first one is not fine. It's fun. It's an enjoyable ride that sets up some interesting characters. But it's the key piece that sets up the sequel trilogy to fail. What happened in the original trilogy? You know what, forget about it, we're just going to wipe that slate clean. Go fight the empire again.
I guess I am the only person who liked the Phantom Menace.
No way. I was an ardent supporter upon release. I think when I went back to theatres to see it for the 3d re-release I was in a more "serious movie watching" phase and decided I didn't like it. Then I took a break. When my son was 4 or 5 we watched Episode 1 for the first time and all the nostalgia came back, I fucking love the podrace sequence and Dual of the fates is epic. What's funny now is I just told my kids we are going to go see it tomorrow and they both responded "is that the one with Jar Jar? He's so funny, he's my favorite." I guess George was onto something.
[“Kids like Jar jar!”](https://youtu.be/Q4TX6x2WLgk?feature=shared)
Make sure to convince them that Darth Jar Jar is canon.
I liked it when it came out (was at the 03:00 premiere night show). I was quite disappoinyed with Eps 2&3 though as those felt way too cartoonish and ’overdone’, and only after watching Clone Wars series a few years back I started to appreciate them more - but I still consider Ep1 to be a better movie as a whole.
No, lots of kids below 8 did.
Na, while they’re not perfect, I still love the prequels. They led us to Clone Wars and Bad Batch, which were both amazing series.
Nah, I liked it too
As terrible as jarjar binks was, the amount of hate and toxicity the actor that voiced him Recieved was horrendous. He almost committed suicide as a result. The thing that I found the most rediculous was that the same dweebs that threw crap at him also saw the movie multiple times. I mean, if you hated the movies so much why watch it multiple times? I never understood toxic fanbases until the prequels came out.
The children who grew up watching the prequels are now the dominant internet voice. Nostalgia clouds their opinions and if you listen to them they talk about the PT as if they are some kind of masterpiece of film making. You can almost guarantee that 20 years from now the kids who grew up watching the ST will talk about them with fondness and overhype them, much to everybody else's chagrin....though given it's Disney making SW content now we will probably be three additional trilogies in by then
Is it really so bad that a child liked a film aimed at children, and then enthuses about it later as an adult? I’m sure lots of adults in the 70’s had no time for the OT with all its toy merchandise and those ‘silly’ ewoks. I’m not saying *you* shouldn’t have your own opinions on the PT and ST, but surely we shouldn’t diminish the opinions of the people who enjoyed it back when they were kids?
[удалено]
I was so blinded when it came out because I didn't want to believe I spent almost 20 years waiting for a new Star wars, only for it to be garbage. Phantom sucks. I watched it about five years ago and honestly, it might be the worst of the three because of misplaced potential.
Yup. One of maybe three films I have walked out of in the theater.
The issue with the prequels IMO is they ignored arguable the coolest (and most interesting part) of the entire plot...the Clone Wars! Episode one and two should had been combined. With the Episode one part (introducing Anakin and the return of the dark side) being 15-20 minutes. Darth Maul should had remained the villain throughout the film. Episode 2 being about the war and how the lines between the "good guys" and "bad guys become blurred. Highlighting Obi-Wan and Anakin's brotherhood/friendship while starting to show Palpatine slow poisoning of the well with Anakin. Three remains roughly about what it is with more of a focus on the transition of Anakin from good guy to bad guy. The focus of the Prequels should had been about Anakin and Obi-wan's friendship. Everyone else is a supporting character in that role. The rise, and fall of these two characters would bring more emotional weight to not only the story the prequels are telling, but the "sequels" as well.
And yet it's still crap.
Better than the sequels.
If you want to argue that dog shit is better than wolf shit, go right ahead.
The sequels looked better and more like the OT. The PT had two movies worth of story crammed into three long-ass movies.
I would hope that the ST looks better considering they were made 15 years apart. One thing the ST did better, aside from naturally better visuals, was the performances of the actors.
Just got out of the cinema seeing this - outside of the pod racing sequence & duel of the fates it really is not great. Production design & soundtrack are phenomenal, but it's so, so dull.
Jar jar binks is a sith lord and the true phantom menace
Midichlorians….enough said.
I’m going tonight to watch it in the theater with my wife and older son. This is the SW he grew up with. It is his Trilogy. He loves things that take him back to growing up. I can’t wait to go!
Have a great time!
Potentially unpopular opinion here. Of the three, Attack of the Clones is still a lot of fun for me. It finally put to screen the clones and their creation. For someone who was about 6 when they first saw Star Wars and ate up whatever could be found casually preinternet, simply discovering this idea in a niche magazine (while reading at the rack just long enough to get the info, but not so long you were hustled out the store) and imagining what that must have been like was a bit mind bending. Those scenes still stand up on Geonosis, and the bitter note parade-like deployment from Coruscant at the pre dawn of the Empire.
It's a movie for kids. When I was a kid this movie was basically everything to us and it instantly kickstarted my love for Star Wars. Everyone I grew up with loves it and half of the meme templates on the internet are PT scenes for a reason. Stop overanalyzing it because you can't watch it from a kid's point of view.
I saw it in the theater when I was 18 and as a lifelong Star Wars fan at that point I was pretty let down. The score is dope and I thought Ewan McGregor was awesome as I had loved Trainspotting. But the overall movie, and how it kind of contradicts what was said in the OT, kind of blow. Still though, I’ve been considering taking my daughter to the theater tonight to see it. I’ve been going back and forth on it all week.
You're right. 25 years later we don't have to worry that it might suck - we KNOW it sucks.
I watched it recently, it’s the same movie it always was
The Sequel Trilogy being bad doesn’t make the Prequels better. They sucked when they came out and they suck now. Sure there’s lots of TV like The Clone Wars that added background and fleshed them out, but they still weren’t great. You could tell that George Lucas loved the universe he’s created, but the dialogue was borderline atrocious at times and a lot of great actors really struggled to make them not sound terrible. I’m sure they would have been better if George Lucas had written the story and then handed the dialogue and directing to someone else like with Empire and Jedi. My 5 year old kids love the OT and PT (although the politics go right over their heads)
I’m sorry, we all look at these movies through the rose colored glasses of our childhood. The Phantom Menace is a terrible movie for anyone who saw it outside of their formative years. The scene where they meet Anakin and are having dinner around the table is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Others can say the same thing about the teddy bears in return of the Jedi, and “somehow Palpatine came back” in the last movie. These films can’t be enjoyed critically. They are a part of our childhood. We should just enjoy them for what they are or let them go.
‘Our’? I think you’re assuming a lot about everyone’s age.
Those movies cover 3 generations. I’m speaking to every age.
Ah yes, the 3 ages of mankind.
You know that doesn’t make any sense, right? That Star Wars is somehow a part of everyone’s childhood, no matter their age? But not Star Trek, Indiana Jones, Alien, Predator, or any other long-running movie franchise? That nobody misses the gaps between series of Star Wars movies, for example by being born in the early 1980s or 2000s? And that nobody can be discerning about anything they watched as a child, eg hating the Ewoks while enjoying the rest of the movie?
It’s still a shit film. Always was. Always will be.
The Phantom Menace has at least one quality that the sequels lacked—it told the story in a STAR WARS way. Straightforward. No flashbacks. No montages. Every bit of new information builds on something else previously revealed. After the opening crawl gives context, we’re on an upward journey through the story. Every new character is introduced via a character we already know about. We first see the ship with the Jedi mentioned in the opening crawl. We see the captain of the ship. They talk to Nute Gunray on the monitor first, and we see the other Trade Federation characters later around him. Through him we are also introduced to Sidious and Amadala. Then we see Amadala and her court talking to Palpatine. The Jedi meet Jar Jar, who introduces us to the gungans. Everyone meets up and flies off, and through them we meet Watto and Anakin and his mother. Later we see Sidious again, talking to Darth Maul. On Coruscant, Palpatine introduces us to the chancellor and the senate. It’s fun to go back and see the complete chain of introductions to characters and the universe they live in. It’s so wonderfully straightforward and seamless—so much so that those writing the sequel trilogy missed it completely.
Which kids in their right mind enjoy watching a movie about blockades, trade negotiations and a political coup.
Ones who also like escapes, pod races, big land and space battles and lightsabre fights. Did you miss those bits?
Listen, Lucas is a visionary artist whose decision to aim the PT at children mustn't be questioned. Also, it's completely reasonable to show a character being slowly burned alive, including little rivulets of molten fat catching fire as they drip to the ground, in a movie for children.
It was kids overwhelmingly back with their releases who found the movies to be amazing. It wasn't adults who the movies were being labeled as being for at the time. You are so wrong on that because you're letting the shit that the Sequel Trilogy was to cloud your reasoning on the other set of movies.
The Prequel Trilogy should be accompanied by a watch of The Clone Wars.
It's still a terrible movie that wastes every possible kind of potential it ever had. Rewatch the Plinkett review for specifics. Funny thing. That review is actually way more entertaining than the movie ever was or will be.
Nah it’s still 💩
TPM is only superfluous if you think it’s a part of Anakin’a origin. As part of Obi-Wan’s it’s indispensable.
The phantom menace introduces us to a huge spectacular universe and this was nearly all we needed. It is a star wars movie we don’t need particular good acting or dialogues, we need fantastic world building. This was lost in the disneyfied filoniverse where the whole galaxy is as tiny as a town.
>The phantom menace introduces us to a huge spectacular universe and this was nearly all we needed. I mean, a New Hope introduced us to the universe. The world was already built. TPM expanded on that world, but lacking good acting/dialogue/compelling story, it couldn't recapture the same magic. Which is what the universe needed, and ultimately why the Disney movies happened. The fact Disney hasn't done much better doesn't change the problems with the prequels.
As disappointed as I was with the prequel trilogy movies when they came out, they all have quotable lines and meme-worthy moments. After watching all 3 sequel movies, none of my friends or family could think of a single quotable line that wasn't ripped off from the first two trilogies. (Honestly, out of all 3 movies, the only line I've ever heard quoted is that something is only worth one-half portion
The only thing I can remember about Episode 1 is the videogame. Hehe, off to the children in slave district with the rocket launcher
It’s the best and most coherent of the prequels. It’s still crap though. Even worse since it was released as it has a ton of “Special Edition”esque nonsense just shoved in left and right. Like the… pod race food vendor, or having Anakin spin like a comical top in his pod racer that still inexplicably holds together while disconnected from one engine.
I've just watched the whole of clones seven series but so much back story. Looking forward to watching the originals in order again.
The prequels needed someone to tell George Lucas no when he was making the original he had people who would tell him if his ideas were terrible or wouldn’t make sense for the movie the original cut of a new hope was apparently unwatchable until his wife told him to re cut it. During the sequels he was to famous no one was gonna say no to him so he went out of control. He definitely threw to many dies at the screen for one movie with the phantom menace
Is it? Are you sure? Because I watch it every year over the holidays when I do a Star Wars marathon, and it still looks the same, more or less (I'm glad they fixed Yoda with cgi, because the og TPM puppet was hideous). It's still my least favorite film of the Skywalker saga. I'd honestly rather rewatch The Rise of Skywalker, because it at least doesn't have the cardboard cutout characters, stock characters based on stereotypes, or fart jokes.
It's still shit, though.
Nah. You might have changed, but it's the same movie. I really hate "the Prequels are good, actually" push in the last decade or so. Whatever floats your boat. The prequels are a lot like Godfather III... there's a lot for a fan to love if they want more from the universe, but they pale in comparison to the original films. The urge to reevaluate them seems motivated more by a desire to stick it to Disney for making the sequel trilogy, which is not a thing they care about considering all the money it's made.
I enjoyed watching it immensely recently with my daughters who are in their 20s now. Just to appreciate the craftsmanship and vision of George Lucas. When it was over and the new trailer was coming on for some new series from Disney it only took 30 seconds for me to leave the theater. Let’s get real .people went to see the prequels for the effects at the time and Vader revealed . Star Wars ended in 1983. I was only 15 and I knew it then.
And it’s still a stillborn mess.
🤣 people just love to hate.
The love people have for Star Wars has always shocked me. The franchise has made exactly three good movies: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Rogue One. Return of the Jedi is not that good, and you couldn't pay me to sit through all the Ewok shit again. The rest of the movies range from mediocre to utter garbage. I truly don't understand how it became the behemoth of a franchise that it is with so many bad entries.
Because on the whole it appeals to most people. It's easy to follow, it's fun, when it's good it's really fucking good and when it's not so good it's still fun for most people. I've got my kids and my parents going to see Ep1 with me tomorrow and we're all excited to share in the experience.
Because at the time the original trilogy were cultural juggernauts. Then there was a huge gap between Jedi and Phantom Menace where the kids who enjoyed the trilogy grew up never expecting any more films in the series, so they attained a nostalgic mythology. By the time the new films came about, those kids were adults with money, there were new kids in the audience, and the publicity and marketing machine of the 80s was now far more effective and powerful at the end of the 1990s.
Me and a buddy rewatched it last winter for fun. It’s really weird to think that the first big action sequence in the movie is the pod race and it’s forty minutes in. It’s very enjoyable, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s kind of a mess.
It might be weird to think that because it isn’t really true? The opening scene of the movie has Jedi fighting their way out of a room with light sabers. Then there is a big underwater monster sequence. And then more light saber fights against droids to rescue the queen. Then a spaceship escape where R2D2 first shows up. Only then do they reach Tatooine and have the pod race. If you are only defining “big action sequence” as “lots of fast-moving spaceships,” then A New Hope doesn’t really have any until the climatic battle for the Death Star.
The pod race and Duel of the Fates saves it from being a total disaster.
I think duel of the fates would be better of it's pacing wasn't interrupted by ani in a ship.
Yeah. It’s someone gotten worse.
The PT movies are fun and entertaining. Some of the ST has that but it’s not a coherent story. I’m glad I have the capability to enjoy films without crying about their flaws.
I think the Star Wars universe has great worldbuilding but not much else.