The Phantom Menace is Pretty Good

[Kalmia]

Feb 11, 2023 14:19:09 GMT -5 Fade said:

Feb 10, 2023 21:13:22 GMT -5 ace said:

The prequels are better than Rise of Skywalker because they, at least (and at most) come from someone’s completed vision and not from a board room where executives stared at a white board of things fans complained about the last movie trying to piece together some unearned fan service.

They’re still total shit, mind you.

But they’re the shit Lucas intended

It boggles my mind the ST started off with “Oh Thank God - f*** those Prequels” and circled back to somehow redeeming them, with the shitstorm that was TROS.

And when the next batch of SW movies come out the sequels will get redeemed. That's just SW fans.

I like The Phantom Menace more than Attack of the Clones, at least. Revenge of the Sith had no right to be as good as it was when it followed those two movies.

[Stone Cold Eleanor Shellstrop]

I like it, and the prequel trilogy overall, but as a story: crusty old guys will make up stuff and wreck shit and use big business to subvert and overthrow democracy.

This message didn't click until 2002 with AOTC, but George planted the seeds with TPM.

It's just a shame that the prequels aren't actually good movies despite the soundness of the story.

And TCW cartoon does an even better job fleshing out the hubris and rot that had set into the Republic.

[zrowsdower]

You should tell Jake Lloyd. I bet that would brighten his day a little.

[DragonMasterP]

Episode I Racer was the best thing to come out of it.

[Fade]

Feb 12, 2023 16:56:33 GMT -5 Kalmia said:

Feb 11, 2023 14:19:09 GMT -5 Fade said:

It boggles my mind the ST started off with “Oh Thank God - f*** those Prequels” and circled back to somehow redeeming them, with the shitstorm that was TROS.

And when the next batch of SW movies come out the sequels will get redeemed. That's just SW fans.

I like The Phantom Menace more than Attack of the Clones, at least. Revenge of the Sith had no right to be as good as it was when it followed those two movies.

Yeah. Probably.

Same. Last time I watched it, I found TPM weirdly aged better than AOTC. Which is strange. Because I considered AOTC an improvement (use that word lightly) over TPM when I was younger.

Feb 12, 2023 18:46:25 GMT -5 DragonMasterP said:

Episode I Racer was the best thing to come out of it.

I was a sucker for the shitty TPM single player game and Jedi Power Battles.

[Johnny B. Decent]

Besides Watto, who....wow, George, there were also those frog aliens who dressed like Qing court officials with offensively thick Japanese accents.

[Kevin Hamilton]

It's not very good, but the hate at the time was overblown. Not as bad as Clones though.

Clone Wars did a lot to recontextualize and improve the Prequels.

[Cyno]

Feb 12, 2023 16:56:33 GMT -5 Kalmia said:

Feb 11, 2023 14:19:09 GMT -5 Fade said:

It boggles my mind the ST started off with “Oh Thank God - f*** those Prequels” and circled back to somehow redeeming them, with the shitstorm that was TROS.

And when the next batch of SW movies come out the sequels will get redeemed. That's just SW fans.

I like The Phantom Menace more than Attack of the Clones, at least. Revenge of the Sith had no right to be as good as it was when it followed those two movies.

An entire generation of fans were raised on the prequels as "their Star Wars." They came of age just as the sequels came out. Don't think it was any coincidence that the loudest sequel haters were massive prequel fans. Because the people complaining about Disney ruining George Lucas' vision sure as shit weren't the same people yelling about George Lucas sexually assaulting their childhood. Which is still one of the most idiotic things ever said about movies.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Feb 12, 2023 23:09:13 GMT -5 Cyno said:

An entire generation of fans were raised on the prequels as "their Star Wars." They came of age just as the sequels came out. Don't think it was any coincidence that the loudest sequel haters were massive prequel fans. Because the people complaining about Disney ruining George Lucas' vision sure as shit weren't the same people yelling about George Lucas sexually assaulting their childhood. Which is still one of the most idiotic things ever said about movies.

Seeing a lot of it in the discourse over Harry Potter right now. People asking "Why do you still like those movies when the woman who created them is a bigot?" often get "Because those movies were my childhood" in response.

[schma]

Attack of the clones would have been okay if not for one of the worst attempts at a love story I've ever seen and the director's refusal to allow Anakin to have any expression other than 'I just smelled a fart'. There was a serviceable action popcorn flick without that trash.

I had forgotten how bad it got with the aliens in Phantom menace. That said, I haven't watched it since it first came out so maybe I forget the things I was bothered by.

[Non Banjoble Tokens]

What if Darth Jar Jar turned out to be a real thing?

[Bones58]

I honestly didn’t think Jake Lloyd was that bad as Anakin. Poor guy has had a rough time in recent years with mental health issues.

Apart from Will Wheaton was Jake Lloyd one of the first major examples to get pre Reddit/twitter hate mob heat?

[peaches1]

Feb 13, 2023 5:06:27 GMT -5 Bones58 said:

I honestly didn’t think Jake Lloyd was that bad as Anakin. Poor guy has had a rough time in recent years with mental health issues.

Apart from Will Wheaton was Jake Lloyd one of the first major examples to get pre Reddit/twitter hate mob heat?

One of them, but there is a tradition of fandoms rejecting precocious characters added to a franchise meant to appeal directly to kids.

[Cyno]

Feb 13, 2023 5:06:27 GMT -5 Bones58 said:

I honestly didn’t think Jake Lloyd was that bad as Anakin. Poor guy has had a rough time in recent years with mental health issues.

Apart from Will Wheaton was Jake Lloyd one of the first major examples to get pre Reddit/twitter hate mob heat?

Poor kid was the target of so much misdirected hatred. Same with Ahmed Best.

[Kevin Hamilton]

Your favorite Star Wars is always gonna be what was 'your' era when you're 8.

There are kids now who'll swear by Rey & co as the years go by.

[HMARK Center]

I do think a couple things could be true at the same time: there were some interesting ideas in the prequel trilogy that would've made for a really interesting story...but man, no, they're not good movies (he said, knowing full well that's a subjective statement).

If someone has nostalgia for them, great, fine, that's their business, but attempts to say "they're good, actually!" just never click with me. It has nothing to do with them not being enough like the originals, it's that the scripts aren't good, the acting was directed to be way too stiff, and the myriad other problems brought up over the years that have been hashed out forever. @#$% the nerds who would say "this RUINS my childhood!" and who went after actors involved with them, of course, but the movies are just poorly put together...sort of the reverse issue of the sequel trilogy, where the acting and pacing and whatnot are mostly fine, but the story being told is slapdash and haphazard.

The prequels would've had something more to say if Lucas had really committed to the theme of "this is how a seemingly healthy republic falls to a dictator" - he'd have had to really show how the Republic was rotting from within, show the Jedi as a flawed institution, let Anakin be our audience-insert for a little while as he's the outsider navigating this strange, unwieldy galaxy of global warfare, celibate monks who apparently separate babies from their parents to train them, and political intrigue and eventually snapping over it as he begins his fall. Qui-Gon should've been the guy who could've kept Anakin on the right path because he was willing to call out bullshit (seemed that's what episode one wanted to say he was, but we never actually see him really do that), Obi-Wan would try to pick up where his master left off but just fall short, Mace Windu could've represented the powerful but ultimately short-sighted and overly strict modern Jedi way while Yoda could've been like a professor emeritus who represents an ancient way of living with the Force but gets ignored too often because "he's that crazy little goblin, don't mind him" or whatever...shit, so much potential, but it's just not executed on screen at all.

Meantime if the sequels were begun with no story in mind besides "we'll bring back the grungy aesthetics of the original trilogy and reset everything to Rebels vs. Empire", then they shouldn't have been made until a story was actually concocted. Real hot take, I know. I realized my moment I was basically done with Star Wars was watching the first two thirds of Last Jedi and going "ooh, I like that they got rid of all the silly Abrams 'mystery boxes', this could go someplace new and fresh!", feeling like it could've been one of the best films in the series, then watching the final third and feeling like "Oh, no, it's all just at square one", leaving me with zero desire to see episode nine. Helps that I watched it as a 30+ year old man, so yeah, I can just say I'm not the true target audience, regardless, but that sense that there was no story here, nothing to follow, and we're expected to just show up because it says "Star Wars" on the marquee was a real kick in the teeth.

[Dr. T is an alien]

I was disappointed by it when I went to see it in the theater, but I never hated it. I LIKED the notion that Palpatine rose to power by taking advantage of corruption and convoluted politics. There are things I would have changed if I were involved (Anakin would have been older and had been starting to realize that he could influence the minds of others if he REALLY tried, but obviously could not get himself free because Watto was immune to such efforts even by a trained Force user. I would have included a line about WHY young girls from the ruling families were made eligible to be elected queen as well as another highlighting that there was a prime minister that handled most daily governing. Anakin would have deliberately left to join the space battle and had some training in piloting - which he probably did anyways since someone had to test the ships he fixed for Watto.)

[Cyno]

Feb 13, 2023 9:24:12 GMT -5 HMARK Center said:

I do think a couple things could be true at the same time: there were some interesting ideas in the prequel trilogy that would've made for a really interesting story...but man, no, they're not good movies (he said, knowing full well that's a subjective statement).

If someone has nostalgia for them, great, fine, that's their business, but attempts to say "they're good, actually!" just never click with me. It has nothing to do with them not being enough like the originals, it's that the scripts aren't good, the acting was directed to be way too stiff, and the myriad other problems brought up over the years that have been hashed out forever. @#$% the nerds who would say "this RUINS my childhood!" and who went after actors involved with them, of course, but the movies are just poorly put together...sort of the reverse issue of the sequel trilogy, where the acting and pacing and whatnot are mostly fine, but the story being told is slapdash and haphazard.

The prequels would've had something more to say if Lucas had really committed to the theme of "this is how a seemingly healthy republic falls to a dictator" - he'd have had to really show how the Republic was rotting from within, show the Jedi as a flawed institution, let Anakin be our audience-insert for a little while as he's the outsider navigating this strange, unwieldy galaxy of global warfare, celibate monks who apparently separate babies from their parents to train them, and political intrigue and eventually snapping over it as he begins his fall. Qui-Gon should've been the guy who could've kept Anakin on the right path because he was willing to call out bullshit (seemed that's what episode one wanted to say he was, but we never actually see him really do that), Obi-Wan would try to pick up where his master left off but just fall short, Mace Windu could've represented the powerful but ultimately short-sighted and overly strict modern Jedi way while Yoda could've been like a professor emeritus who represents an ancient way of living with the Force but gets ignored too often because "he's that crazy little goblin, don't mind him" or whatever...shit, so much potential, but it's just not executed on screen at all.

Meantime if the sequels were begun with no story in mind besides "we'll bring back the grungy aesthetics of the original trilogy and reset everything to Rebels vs. Empire", then they shouldn't have been made until a story was actually concocted. Real hot take, I know. I realized my moment I was basically done with Star Wars was watching the first two thirds of Last Jedi and going "ooh, I like that they got rid of all the silly Abrams 'mystery boxes', this could go someplace new and fresh!", feeling like it could've been one of the best films in the series, then watching the final third and feeling like "Oh, no, it's all just at square one", leaving me with zero desire to see episode nine. Helps that I watched it as a 30+ year old man, so yeah, I can just say I'm not the true target audience, regardless, but that sense that there was no story here, nothing to follow, and we're expected to just show up because it says "Star Wars" on the marquee was a real kick in the teeth.

I think Lucas really tried to show how corrupt the Republic became (after all, this is someone who modeled the Empire not just after Nazi Germany but Cold War-Era America), but his own limitations as a storyteller contributed to that more than any intent to commit to it. And to Lucas' credit, I think he knew his own limitations. Makes me wish Lawrence Kasdan didn't turn him down when he was offered the writing job for Episode I.

Granted it's still Star Wars, so you gotta make it approachable for kids. But look at some of the messages and themes of shows like Clone Wars and Rebels. And those were intended as kids shows. But they weren't dumbed down for children either.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

It was an okay science fiction movie, ugly stereotypes aside, just not a particularly good prequel to a beloved film series and echoed the unwanted changes that Lucas had been adding to the series in the years prior. 'See all the things you hated about the special editions? Here's more, also no more mystery about what makes Jedi powerful, the force is just space herpes.'

[Nr1Humanoid]

At least Anakin was not a whiny crybaby in this one.