this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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The Starwars Prequels.
I was old enough to see the original trilogy re-released with all the bad dumb filler George Lucas thought was necessary to complete his vision.
All the poopy squelchy gross-out CGI was obviously a crass moneygrab, but it seemed like such a reflection of the man himself that I boycotted the prequels when they came out. Then I found Red Letter Media. Fuck the prequels. Fuck that creepy bastard. Han shot only.
The prequels had the best light saber fights in the franchise though.
I guess they look prettier. But they are boring AF. There is no tension or stakes between the characters because they're all boring or unlikable and it's so highly choreographed it looks like dance number from a musical.
Yeah, OT lightsaber fights lacked action. But at least they had weight and meaning behind them. That makes them much, much better in my opinion.
OT lightsaber fights looked like people who practiced the idea of "less is more" combat and knew pointless flailing and twirling around was useless against a similarly skilled opponent. This MADE SENSE. Everyone in the prequels flipping around and going nuts with the lightsabers and all that -- it was laughable. Even Luke in the OT who wasn't as skilled as some of the so-called "masters" from the prequels used at least some restraint and thought when fighting.
The prequels are garbage and I'm sick of people who think they're good just because we made memes out of them.
Spot on. And don't even get me started on Yoda. Not even did they make him stupid as fuck ... no, he also had to get a little lightsaber and flip around like a character on super smash brothers. So ridiculous and basically a total character assasination.
They're lightsabers wtf would they need weight lmao
Look, George Lucas wanted Wu xia style movies with space samurais and the choreography did that PERFECTLY. Is supposed to look like a dance, have you seen HERO or crouching tiger hidden dragon?
The Disney sequels tried to do a more "realistic" style, I bet inspired by John Wick or the bourne movies but with "swords" but failed, the mistakes can be seen during the choreography. I can't remember a single mistake being noticeable during the prequel fights.
Ok, so you clearly only care about the action scenes and don't care about the story at all. Guess that's a view point that exists.
Anakin vs Obi wan was a visual spectacle and still one of most emotional fights in the series... And it's in the prequel. I rest in my case.
I guess having 15 mins dance number against overloaded CGI background is technically a "visual spectacle", I so give you that.
I don't even know how to respond to that. I guess feeling relief that the movie is finally over is an emotion.
Dude is not just my opinion, I hate majority of star wars lmao. Is overrated as fuck. But is definitely the most emotional fight, especially since we can see that tension build up since episode 2, awful lines or not.
And definitely feels way more sincere than whatever the fuck is Disney doing now with the sequels and those viral trend fabricated shows.
Oh it very much is just that. And I respect your right to have a terrible one
Sure ok. But that's comparing a turd to diarrhea. Sure one is worse then the other, but in the end both are just shit.
No
Honestly, now that I've watched them more recently I enjoyed them a ton. At least Lucas had an idea of where he wanted to go with it, unlike the shit Disney trilogy.
Aeons ago, I came across a picture of a young woman in a "steampunk Elsa" cosplay. It was "steam punk" because she had brown leather straps with brass buckles everywhere and she was wearing a pair of goggles like a hat. It was "Elsa" because the cloth parts of her bustier was cyan.
Feels reductive, right? That a genre of fiction with themes and ideas to explore, and a main character from a major motion picture, both get boiled down to some leather straps and colored cloth.
That's what Disney did to Star Wars. It's not a story anymore, it's a cosplay aesthetic.
Oh, yes the special edition re-release ... where all the guns have been replaced by walkie-talkies and the word Wookie has been change to "hair challenged animal".
The Plinkett reviews are probably the best thing that came from the prequels! I must have watched them more often then the actual movies by now.
They were so bad, but not nearly as bad as the sequels.
I think I would agree, though I only watched the sequels once and was so bored I didn't really pay attention. But when the sequels released Starwars was already ruined and I very much expected them to be shit. So I guess they don't feel as bad because they were close to what I expected.
Also I've seen very little praise for them compared to the prequels.
Hard disagree, the sequels were much better than the prequels IMO. Well, 2 of them were.
I kind of like them, actually. I know this is a fairly unpopular opinion, so allow me to elaborate:
I grew up with ep IV through VI, as my brother had them on VHS. I was instantly a fan, and I've lost count of how many times I've seen them.
Once I was old enough to be aware of the concept of a story not existing in a vacuum, I started wondering about how ep III ended, and other things, long before I knew they would turn the prequels into movies as well. I was curious about the world building and the star wars universe in general.
And that's what the prequels did for me: They finally answered so many of the questions I had after watching the originals. So it was pretty cool for me to finally see that aspect on the big screen as well.
However, they should've skipped JarJar Binks. And a lot of the world building seemed tacked on as a result of George Lucas realizing he could include anything he wanted thanks to CGI.
And speaking of CGI: Han shot first. I liked the remasters, but they truly fucked ip Han Solo, trying to make him a loveable loner instead of some outlaw who was after a quick buck
But it was terrible worldbuilding that often contradicts the original movies or just doesn't make any sense.
I liked the prequels when they first came out. But I was around 11. And I thought they were great because of the much better lightsaber and spaceship action. I got so many Starwars LEGO sets.
When I rewatched them in my early twenties I was baffled about how bad they were, now having learned to care about storytelling and characters from other shows and movies, the fight- and action scenes weren't really that important and when you don't focus on them, the movies are just so boring and awkward. That wasn't the case when rewatching the OT.
I want two things from star wars, lightsaber fights and mandalorians. The pre-quals are the best source of both.
I've recently come to terms with the fact that I guess I've just grown out of Star Wars. When you strip away all of the nostalgia, I don't think any of the originals (or prequels) hold up at all. And the newer ones have just been trash.
Very true. Rewatching stuff later with a new perspective certainly changes things.
That is where I disagree. THe orginals do hold up, because Starwars was about classic adventure story. The character of Luke Skywalker. The original trilogoy (and there are quality differences between the eopisodes) overall get this right. It's the sort of timless story, just with a spin on it beeing a sci-fi world.
The prequels and sequels completley missed that aspect of basic stoytelling. The OT stands out as a piece of revolutionary cinema, where the prequels are an elaborate ad to sell more Starwars toys.
This is clearly not true, Lucas cared a lot about his story and universe. I say this hoping it helps effectively communicate points later: statements like that detract from your premise because they’re obviously false to an audience that knows and cares. It would be better (from a rhetorical standing) to double down on the poor storytelling allegations by acknowledging it as true instead, then going on to say that they were cinematic incoherence regardless.
I haven’t seen a single one of the prequels in over a decade except RotS (which I thought was an interesting story but a poorly made film), but my dislike of the prequels is because they’re not good movies. My dislike of the sequels is that they were not good and were made to maximize profits.
This is where I completely disagree. Movies should not be aiming to do only the classic adventure story over and over again, and the prequels weren’t bad because of the story. They actually had a pretty classic story too: an evil being corrupts a well-meaning but slow-to-react institution filled with self serving or incompetent representatives by manufacturing conflict to seize power. All the while the forces of good are distracted and unfocused by the chaos— and too sure that their institutions will not bend to tyranny— until it is too late. With a solid director, the prequels could have been excellent, and also perhaps a prophetic warning about complacent democracies.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAH. Oh wait, your're serious. Let me laugh even harder.
Right. Movies shouldn't. But Starwars should. But that's not even the main issue. The prequels are just terribly written, no matter what genre they were supossed to be. Bad story, terrible characters with no development, inchorent and self condtradictory and padded with stupidly long and boring action scences. They are just bad movies. A director couldn't have fixed that, they would need a complete rewrite.
Does that mean that from your point of view all the movies are evil?
Not sure what you mean by that.
I can offer you bad, terrible, aweful, dreadful, horrendous, vile, digusting .... but I wouldn't say evil.
I was joking using the meme by Anakin
I liked grievous