I rewatched the Star Wars prequels for the first time in years ..

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Despite the cringe worthy kiddie stuff, actually kinda enjoy TPM and think it was the most decent of all the prequels and that it felt like a stand alone film really. AOTC was a huge mess, worst of all SW films, it's painful to try and watch through it and with time it just gets worse looking due to all the CG backgrounds that didn't even look great when it came out. ROTS had a great concept and some actually great scenes, but it also feels sloppy and the awesome moments get brought down by some awful acting and script.
 
BattleMonkey said:
Despite the cringe worthy kiddie stuff, actually kinda enjoy TPM and think it was the most decent of all the prequels and that it felt like a stand alone film really. AOTC was a huge mess, worst of all SW films, it's painful to try and watch through it and with time it just gets worse looking due to all the CG backgrounds that didn't even look great when it came out. ROTS had a great concept and some actually great scenes, but it also feels sloppy and the awesome moments get brought down by some awful acting and script.
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I agree with this. TPM is probably the "best" of the three, even with its flaws. It feels more like a SW movie than the other two films (at least to me) and works well as a stand-alone film. ROTS has more action and some "cool" moments, but the core of the film with Anakin's downfall is too rushed and sloppy.
 
I still think the most offensive part of the prequels was how the music was treated. Between the miserable editing due to last minute scene editing, and in AOTC and ROTS the reusing of previous movies' recordings making it feel like a fan film. That was the thing that bothered me most even as a kid and teen.
 
Edag Plata said:
I still think the most offensive part of the prequels was how the music was treated. Between the miserable editing due to last minute scene editing, and in AOTC and ROTS the reusing of previous movies' recordings making it feel like a fan film. That was the thing that bothered me most even as a kid and teen.
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That actually started (as w/ most bad Star Wars habits) on Return of the Jedi. In fact, there's more tracking in of previous cues in Jedi than there is Sith. Honestly, I don't even know if Sith does it outside of Yoda's fight w/ Sidious.

But Attack of the Clones is definitely the worst offender on that front.
 
richiek said:
Agreed. ROTS is a good film and doesn't deserve to be shat on like the other prequels. IMO, it's a better film that Return of the Jedi.
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I'd say both have some great moments and some not so great moments, but I think the final fight between Luke and Vader/The Emperor is the single best moment in Star Wars. And Revenge of the Sith didn't need post-release meddling from George Lucas to ruin an emotional moment by having Darth Vader scream "NOOOOOOO"
 
I have equal parts hate and love for the prequels. Each episode has some really cool stuff in it as well as some of the greatest atrocities ever filmed.
 
I remember how hyped people were for Phantom Menace when it came out. Hell, I went and saw it in theaters and I'm not even a big Star Wars fan. Don't think I've seen that sort of excitement for a movie ever since.

But what a pile of shit. As was the Clone Wars. Third prequel wasn't as bad, but it's still a bad movie. The scene where Vader gets put in the suit is so fucking dumb. I'll never understand why we needed three movies so intensely focused on telling a Vader origins story.

Oh well. To be honest, I don't really enjoy episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, but I still think Empire is a truly classic movie. No amount of bad prequels can ruin that film.
 
Raiden said:
You could pretty much make the same video of them having good moments. We're supposed to see where and why Anakin started turning. There is also a huge timegap between Episode 1 and 2 where they were pretty good friends.
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The video is selectively edited for humorous effect, but it's not like the editor had to go out of their way to find contradictory pieces of information. What apologists don't seem to grasp is that it is entirely on a "prequel" to reconcile itself with the already established work, not the other way around. You can't afford to be loose with the storytelling; you have very limited real estate to get it right. This is partly why Prometheus also failed on so many levels- it didn't fit with what we learned in Alien in 1979. Why is it so hard for filmmakers to maintain basic continuity?

As for Obi Wan and Anakin being pretty good friends between Episode 1 and 2...where's your evidence? Why is the onus on me, the viewer, to speculate? I shouldn't have to rely on EU stories and conjecture to make a solid case for their friendship- that shit should be self-evident in the films themselves, in the script and general tone. Any "banter" they do have in Episodes II and III amounts to the occasional forced line or stilted scene where they nostalgically reminisce about events we don't even see on screen.
 
The Phantom Menace does have a big problem, but it has nothing to do with Jar Jar, pod racing, or even the kid playing Anakin. The problem is that the titular "Star War" of the movie revolves around wacky fictional trade disputes. The prequels just have a bunch of weird political stuff in general.
 
Neko Godot said:
The Phantom Menace does have a big problem, but it has nothing to do with Jar Jar, pod racing, or even the kid playing Anakin. The problem is that the titular "Star War" of the movie revolves around wacky fictional trade disputes. The prequels just have a bunch of weird political stuff in general.
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They're kids movies written by an old man who spent the last two decades of his life being a CEO first and foremost.

You write what you know.
 
The prequels prove that GL needs someone by his side to tell him when an idea of his is daft.
He didn't have this and this is why we have the prequels. In my mind they don't exist.
 
BobbyRoberts said:
They're kids movies written by an old man who spent the last two decades of his life being a CEO first and foremost.

You write what you know.
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Haha, I remember that from that Making of Episode 1 documentary someone posted here a few weeks back or so! That was really fascinating for all the wrong reasons.
 
Had a similar experience of realizing how absolutely terrible the prequels were when I watched them with my first born (who was seeing them for the first time) again a few years back.
I never thought i would become one of those guys as I was pretty tolerate to them growing up. But yeah, eventually something just snapped and I saw these films for what they really are. They're just completely sad with almost no redeemable qualities outside a few moments.

I mean, I don't even let my 10 year old watch them anymore because they make me that uncomfortable (closest thing is the solid Clone Wars cartoon series). He also only watches the original unaltered trilogy, which I had to obviously get off the internet :/

I tell you one thing though, at the end of the day I still get SUPER FUCKING PASSIONATE about Star Wars :)
 
I remember seeing Phantom Menace I think nine times in the theater as a kid. I kept falling asleep during it so I wanted to see it all.

While I still am nostalgic, I fully recognize how truly bad they are.
 
BobbyRoberts said:
That actually started (as w/ most bad Star Wars habits) on Return of the Jedi. In fact, there's more tracking in of previous cues in Jedi than there is Sith. Honestly, I don't even know if Sith does it outside of Yoda's fight w/ Sidious.

But Attack of the Clones is definitely the worst offender on that front.
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There were major moments where they just took old recordings and used them again in Sith. One key moment is using the recording of the Trade Federation theme during Anakin/Vader's march on the Jedi Temple. There was also the Anakin escaping the Trade Federation ship from TPM in the starfighter music used for the entire ship landing at the beginning of the movie.

I'll say Clones was much, much worse, yes, but ROTS would have been such a better movie with original music.

Oh, and just to be clear, I'm not talking about re-recording old cues used for the movies in unique ways, altered arrangements, etc. I'm talking about doing like Star Wars fan films do and just take the exact recording from previous movies and sticking them into new ones. That didn't happen until AOTC and ROTS.
 
Edag Plata said:
Oh, and just to be clear, I'm not talking about re-recording old cues used for the movies in unique ways, altered arrangements, etc. I'm talking about doing like Star Wars fan films do and just take the exact recording from previous movies and sticking them into new ones. That didn't happen until AOTC and ROTS.
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No, that happened in Jedi too. Part of Death Star II's space battle is just tracked Trench Run music, for example.

But yeah, I'd totally forgotten about the droid music being used for Anakin's march on the temple. Always thought that was a weird call.

Found out after Clones came out that Williams didn't even RECORD music for the Geonosis battle. I guess he was told at some point in post that they weren't going to have that locked down, so just don't bother scoring it, they'll just use music from Episode I.

Williams was reportedly not all that happy about how the last reel of Phantom Menace took a scissors to his score, either.
 
Megasoum said:
I'm rewatching the Making of for Episode 1 right now... The whole "Padawan have a braid on the side" is so fucking stupid.
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I remember a contemporary review likening the looks/style of Obi-wan and Qui-gon in Ep1 to euro-trash.

With that said, I think Ep1 still has the best production design of the prequels. Everything looks pretty nice save for some odd hairstyles. Ep2 was the low point, but Ep3 brought the looks back up a little. I really remember liking the fighters Anakin and OW used, as well as the hybrid looking pre-empire ship designs. Pretty neat stuff. Too bad the film didn't come together in the end.

Man, there is so much to like about these movies, but, they are just so...blah!
 
Blues1990 said:
Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars mini-series was probably one of the few good things to have come out of the prequel trilogy. Which makes me all the more annoyed that one of the cooler villains of the show, General Grievous, was a towering cybernetic Sith Lord that had no problem slaughtering the best the Jedi Order had to offer, being tactically aggressive & having impressive acrobatic abilities.

In Revenge of the Sith, however, he became a wheezing coward that repeatedly flees until he is cornered.
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My thoughts exactly, and something I've posted before. Watching the mini-series I was so excited for GG, loved his voice, and just how overall badass he seemed, a truly terrifying villain. Then in RotS he's a bumbling fool.
 
ShaneB said:
My thoughts exactly, and something I've posted before. Watching the mini-series I was so excited for GG, loved his voice, and just how overall badass he seemed, a truly terrifying villain. Then in RotS he's a bumbling fool.
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He's not really redeemed in the cg Clone Wars series, either. Any sense of menace he starts to earn is kneecapped by his return to being the robot version of Snidely Whiplash.
 
ShaneB said:
My thoughts exactly, and something I've posted before. Watching the mini-series I was so excited for GG, loved his voice, and just how overall badass he seemed, a truly terrifying villain. Then in RotS he's a bumbling fool.
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Oh man, I completely forgot about grievous! Shows how useless the character was, but what an incredible idea and design!

So much hard work gone to waste.
 
BobbyRoberts said:
He's not really redeemed in the cg Clone Wars series, either. Any sense of menace he starts to earn is kneecapped by his return to being the robot version of Snidely Whiplash.
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Sapiens said:
Oh man, I completely forgot about grievous! Shows how useless the character was, but what an incredible idea and design!

So much hard work gone to waste.
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I could have picked a whole bunch of scenes to gif, but yeah, THIS is the Grevious I was expecting =( I mean, I know the miniseries took everything to the extreme in terms of what characters could do in terms of abilities, but I wanted Grevious to be a incredible character based on this.

i8UAyTWvKasBZ.gif
 
ShaneB said:
I could have picked a whole bunch of scenes to gif, but yeah, THIS is the Grevious I was expecting =( I mean, I know the miniseries took everything to the extreme in terms of what characters could do in terms of abilities, but I wanted Grevious to be a incredible character based on this.

i8UAyTWvKasBZ.gif
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Ok so this is getting confusing...

Right now I'm watching the clone wars show on netflix which is in 3D... I remember watching a DVD a loooong time ago which had 2D cartoon clone war stuff like that...

So which is which?
 
You really appreciate the balancing act Tartakovsky had to pull off with that character. There's a scene where he's balancing on one leg with three lightsabers all on - and it shouldn't work. It should be goofy as shit, watching this robot-stork thing bobbing like a flamingo with a bunch of glowsticks hanging off him.

But it fucking WORKS. It's weird and unnerving and you can see how the character can be intimidating.

And then they didn't even really try in the movies/CG Clone Wars.

Megasoum said:
Ok so this is getting confusing...

Right now I'm watching the clone wars show on netflix which is in 3D... I remember watching a DVD a loooong time ago which had 2D cartoon clone war stuff like that...

So which is which?
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This comes up every so often:

Originally, "Clone Wars" (no "the" in the title) was a micro-series for Cartoon Network, animated by Genndy Tartakovsky. Micro-Series was essentially a bullshit word for "hour-long episode broken down into 1-2 minute chunks" which Cartoon Network scattered throughout its programming day. There were two "seasons" of this micro-series, which were then released on DVD.

After Episode III came out, Lucas decided that Tartakovsky's work wasn't really what he wanted, and decided to push forward with "The Clone Wars," with Dave Filoni as the showrunner, using Lucasfilm's in-house animation studio. Once that happened, Tartakovsky's "Clone Wars" went out of print, and there are no plans to ever release it again, so far as anyone knows.

It's why the entire series is still up in HD on YouTube.
 
BobbyRoberts said:
This comes up every so often:

Originally, "Clone Wars" (no "the" in the title) was a micro-series for Cartoon Network, animated by Genndy Tartakovsky. Micro-Series was essentially a bullshit word for "hour-long episode broken down into 1-2 minute chunks" which Cartoon Network scattered throughout its programming day. There were two "seasons" of this micro-series, which were then released on DVD.

After Episode III came out, Lucas decided that Tartakovsky's work wasn't really what he wanted, and decided to push forward with "The Clone Wars," with Dave Filoni as the showrunner, using Lucasfilm's in-house animation studio. Once that happened, Tartakovsky's "Clone Wars" went out of print, and there are no plans to ever release it again, so far as anyone knows.

It's why the entire series is still up in HD on YouTube.
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Ahhh right, I recognized what I have on DVD at home in that youtube clip.... Thanks for the info!

I should rewatch that at some point.
 
Megasoum said:
Ok so this is getting confusing...

Right now I'm watching the clone wars show on netflix which is in 3D... I remember watching a DVD a loooong time ago which had 2D cartoon clone war stuff like that...

So which is which?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Clone_Wars_(2003_TV_series) This came out before Episode 3, and directly lead into the movie. You can watch it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTmIwOLfUlM It was delivered as basically 2 parts. The first part is really short episodes, and the second part had longer episodes and really fleshed things out.

What you're watching came out after Episode 3 after someone decided to do more Clone War stuff and basically retcon all of the stuff that happened in that animated one before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Clone_Wars_(2008_TV_series)

edit: and im too slow. :)
 
ShaneB said:
I could have picked a whole bunch of scenes to gif, but yeah, THIS is the Grevious I was expecting =( I mean, I know the miniseries took everything to the extreme in terms of what characters could do in terms of abilities, but I wanted Grevious to be a incredible character based on this.

i8UAyTWvKasBZ.gif
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But why's he being so flexible and moving around and doing acrobatic stunts?

Why isn't he just spinning two of his blades like helicopters over his head while holding the other two forward while walking slowly? Surely that'd be the best possible course of action for fighting a Jedi...
 
Cragvis said:
Am I the only one that never liked any star wars movie or anything about it?

Boring, bad effects, bad comical looking aliens, dumb cliche stories. To me ep 4,5,6 are just as bad as 1,2,3.
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Same. It's always surreal to me watching people argue that this trio of bad movies is better or worse than the other trio of bad movies. Whatever, people like what they like. I like more than my fair share of bad movies.
 
I still think it would have been better if the pt followed the ot, have anakin the same age as luke in the first film who meets a young, top of his game, cocky Jedi called obi-wan. Anakin is already a great pilot and obi-wan convinces him to leave home to become a Jedi. In the second film anakin gets tempted at the end in a similar fashion to Luke in empire but accepts. Is Darth Vader for whole of third film but is struggling with his decision, obi-wan tries to turn him back at the end, he has the lava bath and no turning back.

As it is, the pt I shit. I actuality cannot watch them anymore, they are so bad.
 
Sorcerer said:
There is a book about that old Sith Master. Its called Darth Plagueis.

The book is an awesome read.

Although the title is a bit misleading as its really about the rise of Palpetine and Plagueis figures into it.

It actually made me appreciate Phantom Menace a bit more after reading it.
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Sounds interesting actually, might just check it out thanks!
 
Bauer91 said:
I was eight when The Phantom Menace came out. If you were eight when A New Hope came out you were thirty when The Phantom Menace was released and had different expectations from it then a preteen. At the time I thought the prequels were the greatest thing ever.
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This is a bullshit argument. I was born in 1978, so I only saw ROTJ in theaters and the other two at home. My parents saw them all in theaters, and they were older than I was when I saw the prequels. They LOVED the Star Wars trilogy. Pretty much everyone LOVED Star Wars. My parents used to collect the cards and other crap. We would watch the whole trilogy every year on New Year's and Christmas. It was a cultural phenomenon, not just because of nostalgia or because kids loved it. It genuinely appealed to people of all ages, which is something that the prequels don't even come close to doing.
 
Nicktendo86 said:
I still think it would have been better if the pt followed the ot, have anakin the same age as luke in the first film who meets a young, top of his game, cocky Jedi called obi-wan. Anakin is already a great pilot and obi-wan convinces him to leave home to become a Jedi. In the second film anakin gets tempted at the end in a similar fashion to Luke in empire but accepts. Is Darth Vader for whole of third film but is struggling with his decision, obi-wan tries to turn him back at the end, he has the lava bath and no turning back.
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This would have been much, much better. As it is, Anakin's last minute transformation to Vader ruins the entire trilogy in a few ways:

-Episode 2 has essentially nothing really happen. The biggest thing that happens is that Anakin loses a hand, Yoda flips around, and the Clone Wars begin (barely).

-By the time we get to his transformation in Episode 3, the movie's more than half over, and the entire premise of the prequel trilogy (that everyone was really looking forward to seeing) is crammed into the last hour or less.

-Anakin's transformation feels forced and rushed. He is a suitless Vader for one battle. The Republic crumbles in the hour that Anakin turns evil. It should have been a gradual process.

-The crux of Anakin's story is his role as a jedi. By making him a child in the first movie, we don't see any of this at all, and his role as "main" character is deferred to the other two movies. The pod-racing scene, Qui-Gon and Obi-wan's importance, and even the battle with Darth Maul could have all still stood as they are even if Anakin was at least a teenager by this point.

I actually love the prequel movies, in their own way, but to me their greatest sin is not giving us what we came to see until the very, very end, and even then, not pulling it off very well. I hate how Anakin's greatest Jedi moments have been relegated to Clone Wars spin-offs, too.
 
ShaneB said:
I could have picked a whole bunch of scenes to gif, but yeah, THIS is the Grevious I was expecting =( I mean, I know the miniseries took everything to the extreme in terms of what characters could do in terms of abilities, but I wanted Grevious to be a incredible character based on this.

i8UAyTWvKasBZ.gif
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Did Grievous have a shockingly unprotected weak heart in the cartoon, too?
 
Anton Sugar said:
Did Grievous have a shockingly unprotected weak heart in the cartoon, too?
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No. Windu smashes it with the force while he's trying to make an escape, right through his armor.
 
Anton Sugar said:
Holy shit. That sequence alone had more creative use of Force powers than anything in the PT.
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Yeah, it is great. The whole series is full of creative ideas, like clone troopers on a military infiltration mission and Jedi acting like the generals they're supposed to be. They're almost like the Shardbearers in The Way of Kings, if you've read that. Could be killed, but basically more powerful than anything else on the battlefield. Then there's that amazing Grievous scene.
 
Meh. I would take them anyyday, over, say...Green Lantern or Pearl Harbour.

Now why can't people ever talk about actual craptacular movies like the two I mentioned?
 
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