Star Wars is a very good film, The Empire Strikes Back was even better.

I put on Return of the Jedi a few days ago. It is rotten. I actually preferred The Phantom Menace, and given the choice of running over a bunch of Ewoks with a sandcrawler, or bisecting Jar Jar Binks with a lightsabre...both are mouth-watering prospects, but erasing the teddy bears would be my choice.

The Snowspeeder is/was about the coolest looking (space)ship that i've seen.

Of course it was George Bush's fault; there was no othe choice since blaming Global Warming would be just silly.

There isn't anything that can't be blamed on one or both of those things.

The Jump the Wampa moment in the series is when Obi says the Jedi don't deal in absolutes in the third one.

Jedi Knights are all about absolutes - they don't talk about the Grey Side of the Force.

Everyone fears them entering "negotiations" because they don't negotiate, they dictate (that's why in EP1 they try to gas the Jedi). It's the unbending adherence to absolutes of the Jedi order that causes Anakin to break his covenants and wind up on the Dark Side to being with.

Here's my take on why the pre-quels were not so good. I love analyzing Star Wars and this is only my opinion.

Lucas realized that the kind of serious violence and darker good versus evil subtext that was acceptable in the 1970's and 80's to younger audiences had changed by the mid 1990's and he tried to design the prequels to gain a bigger audience of so called "new" Star Wars fans without being so dark. Seems to make good business sense, but... and this is where he failed in my opinion. Just about everyone for 2 or 3 generations had seen the original in places other than the theatre, where parents were the filter, not the MPAA, meaning kids of all ages were able to see it regrdless of its rating. Lucas didn't realize that everyone young or old who had seen the orignal trilogy was already comfortable with and accepted the darker elements of the Star Wars saga and over time the darker elements were what made Star Wars so interesting. The violence escalated with every movie and the dark side was almost always on the verge of winning. That made for great drama.

The public did not want to see a campy kid friendly story in the Phantom Menace, they were used to the darker more adult tone of the originals. So, Lucas simply misunderstood what his audience, both young and old, really wanted. A serious adult story showing the rise of the evil emperor with the fate of galaxy on the line with violence to match. He simply misjudged what his audience wanted and the changing "norms" of the 90's influenced him too much. Although, you can see by the inclusion of the damn Ewoks in Ep. VI that he was already leaning to a more "kid" friendly audience by 1983.

What's funny is that Lucas says he designed all his movies for kids. Maybe true, but the kinds of stuff that kids of Lucas's generation watched on TV and in the movies were much more mature in content. Compare TV serials like The Lone Ranger to the Spongebob nonsense you see today and the difference becomes clear.

Lucas realized his mistake after Phantom and tried to adjust with Ep. II and by the end of Ep. III the old school Star Wars was poking through the facade somewhat, but it was still quite campy.

Anwyays, what I hope for someday, is a remake by someone else. Maybe after Lucas passes away or he agrees to it, but that could be really cool. Just take the basic story of Star Wars and all the great base elements and write a strong, serious script and treat the subject matter seriously and it could be even better than the originals.

By the way, my cousin worked at 20th Century Fox during Phantom's release and all employees got to see it a week early at a Hollywood theatre. Everyone could bring 1 guest so my cousin picked me. We went and afterward everyone walked out of the theatre shaking their heads in disbelief. Right then I knew the prequels were in trouble.

The one weird thing is that if you watch Ep. 1-6 in sequence they basically get better and more adult with each one so that makes it a little better experience to watch them in order. As far as all the tweaking of the movies over time, that is a bit ridiculous. Solo always shoots first in my book.

Jason

Wasn't giving you a hard time there Biggles, I was just commenting.
I agree completely with most of what was in your first post, there's just a few places where we have a slightly differing opinion.

WOLF

Phantom Menace Global box office: 967 million

source: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=starwars.htm


So how exactly did Lucas misunderstand what his audience wanted?

And just to prove that people kept coming back for more even after seeing Phantom Menace,


Attack of the Clones Global box office: 649 million

Revenge of the Sith Global box office: 848 million

Because everyone went in hope it was going to get better ?

I remember watching the first one and me and the missus at the time just going mmmm oooooookay, that was pretty boring.But we still went and saw the next one...and the next one Most overhyped movie set i think i have ever seen , but i too became one of the sheep and watched the lot. DAMN YOU LUCAS..YOU RUINED MY CHILDHOOD

Man if Razorback was here he would be all over this thread , so consider yourselves lucky girls and boys

I like the prequels.

There I said it!

Yes they are different, and they have ginormous shoes to fill. But at face value, I enjoy watching them. Of course there are problems, and Phantom Menace has a few questionable moments. However, not all the Star Wards movies can be ESB. Which has a massive Spaceship eating sock puppet in the middle of it.

I regularly watch the movies, and for me I can stomach most of them, but the scene where Han 'ambushes' a bunch of storm troopers with a pistol and some Ewoks... THAT is the nadir of Star Wars. In the first few movies the troopers were death dealing machines.

I know according to canon the Emperor was a big part of the cohesiveness of the Empire... But still the end of ROTJ is miserable.

I still say that it's mostly due to a generational issue. My impression is that the vast majority of people under the age of 20 now who saw the SW prequels as kids enjoyed them quite a lot while many if not most people over the age of 35 didn't care for them.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace came out in 1999 GWB was not presidnet then, so there.