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Star wars...which befouls the OT legacy more...PT


Ser Uncle P

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Now that the sequel Trilogy is out its time to examine the question of legacy...

Which trilogy does a better job of defecating all over the legacy of the original trilogy? 

I'd be inclined to give Disney a pass because of the Force awakens and Rogue One, but in many ways TLJ and TROS are worse than the prequels..at least they had foreshadowing and other basic devices of storytelling. 

So who takes a bigger dump on the originals, Mickey Mouse or Lucas??

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Disney, by far. If you took the PT and cleaned up the horrid dialogue and the over use of CGI (including fucking Jar Jar) you have a pretty epic story. One that actually makes some degree of sense.  

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In the context of the Star Wars universe the OT is absolutely the cornerstone of the entire franchise. Especially for people like me, who grew up binging these movies, playing in the imaginary world it created with my 7 year old friends, and dreaming of seeing more of the magic those movies presented to my developing brain. So yeah, they are flawed but also flawless. Call it silly if you want, but you can also ... you know...say whatever else you want to throw around as an insult and it will be just as meaningless to people who have a relationship with these movies much the same as mine. 

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PT, because all of the PT films are terrible despite some good moments and ideas behind them whereas TFA isn't bad despite being a rehash and TLJ is actually good, so it's only TROS that shits all over everything.

Also: midichlorians. Trying to make the Force in any way pseudoscientific was just an insult to his own original lore.

I'd have more respect for the PT if I thought how awful and manipulative the Jedi are was a deliberate choice rather than basically an accident.

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Expectations are the root of disappointment. And yet, when it comes to something as ultimately trite as entertainment I see nothing wrong with having high expectations, as long as you are willing to deal with the consequences of having those expectations shattered to a million pieces. Instead of filling me with joy these movies (apart from the first one, in some ways) have left me feeling depressed, drained, and more cynical than i was before i saw them. 

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Just now, polishgenius said:

PT, because all of the PT films are terrible despite some good moments and ideas behind them whereas TFA isn't bad despite being a rehash and TLJ is actually good, so it's only TROS that shits all over everything.

Also: midichlorians. Trying to make the Force in any way pseudoscientific was just an insult to his own original lore.

I'd have more respect for the PT if I thought how awful and manipulative the Jedi are was a deliberate choice rather than basically an accident.

Which trilogy has more "moments"? I'm going with the PT. There are like 4 awesome bits in this new trilogy that i can think of. 

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This hyperbolic language is part of the problem to the reactions. Everyone here "owns" Star Wars as much as everyone else, but we all respond individually to how these films come out.

FWIW, though, I will say the biggest disappointment by far was the prequel trilogy, because Lucas was in no way up to the task he set out to do. The bad reviews led me to never bother seeing any of those three films in the theater, and to this day I can only say for certain that I've seen TPM in full.

And to think, fans were so angry at him for making them that he basically became dispirited and sold off his baby to Disney. And now Disney has them for good. 

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3 minutes ago, Ran said:

This hyperbolic language is part of the problem to the reactions.

There is no problem here. Some people like the new movies, some people dont. It's all good. The internet has seemingly made it seem t we really dont want to read/listen to anyone who disagrees with us anymore, everything turns into an argument. I'm glad YOU enjoyed the movie. Someone should. Would be nice to get a bit of understanding in return, but im not too fussed. 

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Just now, Ran said:

I was referring to the opening frame of "befoul" and "shitting on". If that's not hyperbolic language, I don't know what is. Absolutism is the way of the Sith, man!

I mean, the OP probably feels that way. And its his right. Can we really have hyperbolic opinions when it comes to the personal choice of what entertains and resonates with us? I dunno. 

 

I feel like HBO's GoT took a gigantic shit all over GRRM's work, and ive expressed that a billion times. Is it hyperbolic of me to express the revulsion i feel? Should i tone down my emotional reactions in fear that they wont be accepted? I guess if we were all discussing these things in a fully rational and non-emotional manner the word "hyperbolic" could be used in the context you are using it in.  Interesting debate over beers, i'd say. 

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21 minutes ago, Relic said:

Which trilogy has more "moments"? I'm going with the PT. There are like 4 awesome bits in this new trilogy that i can think of.  

Probably the PT yeah, coz TFA doesn't really have any for me. Despite being a considerably worse film overall TROS had a couple, and TLJ had a few.

The PT also had pretty definitely better music.

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Disney cause they just did a bigger job of messing it up.

I loved The Force Awakens but it's one of the movies like Matrix: Reloaded that was entertaining in and of itself but it also established that a big payoff was coming in the next movie and it didn't.

I was ok with TFA being a rehash of ANH as a restarting and realignment point for the franchise as long as what follows didn't rehash but built on going forward with where we were now. It still introduced new characters that had potential to continue the story in a meaningful way. Also, subverting expectations would also be fine if done right. In a "good" story the subversion adds to the uniqueness of the story becoming an additional attribute, another reason that can be pointed to that makes it so good. If the story is bad the subversion makes it all more glaring the disharmony that things don't fit like they should, becoming an overall detraction. It's a live by the blade, die by the blade thing.

And sadly, the Disney SW movies was the last chance to do something with the characters of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and the rest, having them together one last time and giving them heroes' exits and passing the torch on in the right ways. That (to me) Disney messed that up is the most gut wrenching thing about the whole debacle and tips the scales far into making it by far that worst offender to the OT. 

Disney was given the keys to Star Wars. The got to make the follow-up to the OT, there can never be another Episode 7, 8, and 9, not like that. They had one shot and now it's something that's gone forever.

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I haven’t seen ROS yet, nor do I particularly intend to. I mean, I probably will at some point out of social obligation, but I’m not gonna seek it out myself.

The prequels are an absolute mess, but at least there’s a story there. They were an act of creative hubris by an out-of-touch auteur unable to receive pushback. This was their downfall, but at least they have a reason to exist. Lucas had a story he wanted to tell, and he told it. He told it badly, but he told it.

On top of that, the basic skeleton of the prequel trilogy is solid. There’s a logical narrative flow, and coherent themes. The dialogue is terrible, the acting is wooden, and the effects are badly dated. But the core story beats mostly make a certain sense. And, as already mentioned, John Williams absolutely knocked the score out of the park.

Of the sequels, I have far more respect for TLJ than TFA, for similar reasons. Johnson was trying to tell an interesting story, and bungled the execution. Contrast TFA which I’m pretty sure was assembled by committee. I don’t even hate TFA, it’s not interesting enough to hate.

Maybe I’m being naïve, but I think that Lucas made the prequels for reasons other than pure profit. Obviously, profit was a part of it, and he did profit massively. But I don’t think he would have undertaken it in the way he did if money was the only motivation. The sequels seem like an exercise in cynical pandering, made for no other reason than to make money, and it shows.

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The sequel trilogy never should have set it in the lifetime of the OT characters. From the first minute, the galaxy wide triumph at the end of RotJ is negated, which is far more 'damaging' to the OT than anything they did with Han or Luke. I find the whole concept of movie X ruined movie Y bizarre really. 


Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the most entertaining movies of my lifetime. Temple of Doom is unwatchable due to Capshaw and Short Round. Last Crusade is very enjoyable to watch when on cable. The terribleness of ToD has no impact on my enjoyment of the other two. The only reasons SW is different is because the creators and fans have insisted from day two that everything has to matter holistically and can't be enjoyed on its own merits. To view the Last Crusade through the lens of a angry SW 'fan' would be to spend two hours enraged that they discovered the Ark of the Covenant, had it taken by the government and just, just... went on with their lives. As if. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Relic said:

If you took the PT and cleaned up the horrid dialogue and the over use of CGI (including fucking Jar Jar) you have a pretty epic story. One that actually makes some degree of sense.  

Totally agree.  The PT were on endless repeat this weekend on tv and I ended up rewatching each movie twice.  After the OT, the transformation of Anakin into Darth Vader was a story I wanted to know and it is still a story that interests me.  Yes, there are moments of awkward dialogue but in the end the visuals and the story and the music pull me in every time.  And all the filler with the books and the Clone Wars tv show just bolstered my interest in that story.

Of course I think it helps that everyone knew the story going into it - you knew the Emperor would succeed, you knew Anakin would turn to the dark side, you knew Padme was going to die, and you knew Yoda and Obi Wan were going to end up in isolation.  There were no disappointed expectations of anyone who expected Anakin to do otherwise.

I was a huge fan of the movie critic Roger Ebert.  His passing has been a huge loss for so many reasons but I so wish he was around to review this new trilogy.  I went back and read his reviews of the PT and it was interesting to revisit his perspective on them.  He highly rated the TPM and ROS only taking a pass on AOTC.

 

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The prequels are far worse than the new ones. Except for as mentioned above the music.

I think there are two major problem with the new ones. First they didn't have a firm outline or someone overseeing them all. Secondly they waited too long or not long enough and thus had to set them when Han Luke and Leia were like 40 years older. I think we really needed either a CGI de-aged movie/trilogy or Clone Wars type TV show showing us what happened between Jedi and The Force Awakens. Instead they did a passing of the torch thing with small roles for the cast of the OT and where very little had changed since Jedi. That's just not what I wanted to see. 

But they are at least competently made movies where the writing acting and dialogue isn't consistently terrible. 

Edit: also, not defending the prequels but what's the big deal with midichlorians anyway? People often complain about that but aren't they basically just a plot device so Qui-Gon has a reason to think Anakin might be the chosen one? I don't recall them ever being mentioned after the "higher than yoda's" / "what are midichlorians?" scenes in episode one. I honestly could care less if the force comes from organelles. 

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