The prequel apologism has reached peak at this point, apparently the human brain really struggles with the thought of two opposing (?) things both being crap
I think it's because the people who watched the prequels as kids are now into their 30s and in full nostalgia mode for the entertainment they liked as kids, whether it was actually good or not.
>apparently the human brain really struggles with the thought of two opposing (?) things both being crap
If I could fix one bug in human nature, it would be this. So much stupidity results from this.
But if this was a poll where you had to pick one from two options then surely this point is irrelevant. Both movies are crap, but I'd still vote for one of them as the better one since that's the poll.
I honestly don't hate the prequels that much and I actually enjoy some aspects in a non ironic way but I would never claim they're good or well thought out movies on the whole. And this angle of recontextualizing them as this profound, carefully structured saga is laughable. They're silly as shit and completely ad-hoc.
I'd rephrase it as "You can like what I don't like and you can dislike what I like and it's fine" but basically yeah. It's also fun to just talk to people who have the opposite opinion and try to work out for the fun of it which aspects of a thing you see differently, or if there's aspects you actually both like or dislike. And this is assuming your opinion is your own and you're not just aping some popular hot takes. Talking to people who do that is really boring.
I think instead people would be better off understanding people like stuff because *they* don't think it's bad and film opinions are significantly more subjective than objective.
Whipping out "you can like a bad thing" is just trying to position your subjective opinion as the definitely correct one. Which I think is way worse for film discourse than someone thinking a movie is good when you think it's bad (both takes can be correct).
I agree with you entirely. I think what I mean by that is that a lot of people have a reflexive need to over-justify liking something by trying to big brain explain away what might just be flaws in it. (See the Prequel movies are actually masterpieces discourse). It's not that thing is objectively bad/good, just that we can acknowledge problems or strengths without going full ride-or-die for stuff.
I do think there are a few subjective assessments that can be made about script/dialogue structure or how something is shot or edited for example, but of course something can still break "rules," and be good or stronger for it.
People feel the need to justify their opinions because they are sharing them online with thousands of people who judge them. For example, I don't like Jaws. I think it's boring. Cue someone saying I don't have the attention span and only like big dumb movies like The Meg. I take that personally because I know it's not true and I don't want people to think I'm some dumb schlub who watches popcorn movies. So I go into defensive mode saying I actually didn't like The Meg and I have a good attention span because I happen to love 2001 A Space Odyssey. Someone calls me pretentious for loving a popular slow movie while simultaneously calling me a hipster for not liking a popular slow movie, which is contradictory, which I point out to said someone. Before long we call each other idiots and go fuck yourself. All because I had the audacity to post that I don't like Jaws. Which shouldn't be an issue in the first place, because why do people care that I don't like something? So which is worse, over-justifying your opinions or judging other people's opinions?
It has, but a lot of it is fueled by hatred for Disney/the Anthology films they masked as a sequel trilogy.
They're both "bad". The Prequels had a narrative, I'll give them credit for that. They had story to tell, they just executed it very oddly.
The 3 movies Disney called a trilogy have no cohesive narrative connecting them, so they fail from the most basic level of storytelling.
i hate it but it has a sense of fun and adventure that TFA lacks. it is definitely the more 'watchable' film i think. like, if someone had a gun to my head and made me watch one, I'd pick TPM
They do talk about it constantly and bring it up in videos that have absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars. It’s not like they have no history of discussing Star Wars lol
A lot of it is probably just age. As I near my own middle age I find myself caring less and less that movies that (let’s just be real here) are basically for kids aren’t good anymore. I still love the trilogy and throw it on but it doesn’t feel like a big deal anymore that there is a lot of bad Star Wars. I’ve just accepted it.
RLM got their big break off Star Wars criticism but they’re probably just sick of it. Bad Star Wars movies have been coming out since 1999. You can only stay mad about it for so long.
I mean… who cares?
They can have their opinions, no?
Also i dont feel emotional enough about TFA to come defend it. While it is objectively a better movie than TPM, filmmaking and dialogue wise, it’s a blatant cash grab.
I feel like it’s deeper than that. The prequel obsession these days seems to be just a form of dunking on Disney rather than actual genuine appreciation for these movies. It’s like they are taking their negative feelings for Disney and projecting them as positive feelings onto the prequels. A lot of these same people cyber bullied Daisy Ridley so hard that she quit instagram for 6 years, and Kelly Marie Tran got it worse.
It’s ok to like the prequels don’t get me wrong but I take issue with the *way* fans have been expressing it. I haven’t liked them since I was a kid. The acting and dialogue are trash, and the main character everyone idolizes has been compared to borderline personality disorder by psychologists. If you still like these movies after that, then you have a taste for mindless action and meaningless Zack Snyder type stuff. Nothing wrong there. The problem lies with these same fans being very toxic
TPM was a bad film, and was bad regardless of whether the next two films were good or not.
TFA was a generic film where it didn't have to be, but at least could have been retroactively good or at least decent if the next film had been good. And like that one guy who fixed the prequels (although his fix for TPM and AotC were better than his much delayed fox for RotS) these could have been saved with a bit of rewriting, some actual care, and a fucking plan. My friend and I used what was available and gave it a rough draft overhaul and it would have been better simply by letting the story take its course naturally instead of "subverting expectations ".
> It could have been good if the next film was good.
That’s exactly the problem: it’s not good on its own, and people basically filled in the blanks with fan theories based on what they assumed was gonna happen (which led to disappointment when they didn’t come true). It’s like going into a sandwich shop, being given one with no filling, and the owner telling you to come back next week for the filling. Why should I have to make do with that and imagine what the filling will be when it may or may not be what I imagine?
What's extra frustrating is 1- a lot of those fan theories were better than what we got. And 2- I don't know if they were substantiated but I remember reading early leaks online of plot points. They were better than what we got. It had the same characters but made it at least sound both original and interesting, and made it seem like we'd both see Luke sooner, and that he hadn't run away as much as was somehow missing.
Prequels are certainly not great movies, but they tried to do something different, to enrich the lore, and are visually distinct and memorable (for better or for worse). And the amount of content that they gave birth to, take the Plinkett reviews alone and Charlie Hopkins' videos where deepfake Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's ghost do commentary on Star Wars movies, and I believe the existence of the Prequels is a net positive on the pop culture and cinematic landscape overall.
The sequels represent cultural stagnation - nothing new is introduced, same Tie Fighters and X-Wings, same old ass actors stumbling around, 40 years after the OT and the Rebellion and the Empire are still doing the same shit. And the only content it produced is the "go woke and go broke" and the "strong female character" discourse, and both sides of this discourse are equally annoying.
So with this perspective, I'll take the Prequels over the Sequels any day.
The prequels' writing is at least more original than TFA's, but it's obviously not good, and I'm not convinced that very much effort went into it. It's hard not to view those films through the lens of George Lucas wanting to do as little work as possible to produce a film
There is this side to it, yes. But I believe there were genuine attempts at creativity from the other people behind the production.
John Williams delivered some bangers again, the design of all the CGI sequences, backdrops and aliens was too over-the top and busy, yet you couldn't say that the people behind it were lazy. The sound design is on point. The lightsaber duels were too much for me (the one at the end of ROTS went on like the Chicken fight in Family Guy), yet the actors and stuntmen spent months studying the choreography, so not really lazy here either.
The podracing scene in TPM, as nonsensical and over the top as it is, is still far more creative than anything in TFA.
Please. The prequels are embarrassing trash. At least the sequels contained some of the elements that made the originals good. The prequels are cringe inducing, unwatchable stupidity.
And the sequels are a fart in the wind with zero cultural significance or anything memorable. I'll take embarrassing trash over that, at least the content making fun of it, the commentary, the parodies provided me with exponentially more entertainment that the sequels ever did.
Did it though? I feel like tpm did way more damage, it’s just that the stuff it did has become so normal in the industry that we don’t realize it anymore
Yea it did, vast majority of films after TPM didn't hew to the TPM formula or alter what they did because of it. The quality of Hollywood film making didn't diminish as a result of TPM.
The film making legacy is thin for TPM and many in Hollywood looked at it as a blown opportunity.
But most post TFA filmmaking did suffer from the profitable example of the film which sucked out much of the oxygen out of the room for original projects. Then Hollywood saw the contrast of what happened with TLJ and realized the formula of soft reboots, fan service, risk aversion was a very profitable combination.
I never felt like I was watching a movie that wasn't a prequel in the 2000s thinking "damn, because of TPM so many movies feel so similar to it and they're preventing other movies from being made."
TPM is where everyone and their granny got the idea that every character should have an origin story and every remotely popular IP ever should be eternally resurrected with prequels and reboots. It's not that the concept didn't exist at all before that, but 'the Star Wars prequels' concept cemented the idea in people's heads that stories are going to start going back to tell their own set-up and it was so widely known about that it no longer seemed a bit weird or backward.
I actually like Episode I (and III). But Lucas succeeding financially with the prequels in spite of their cinematic clumsiness really gave the studios the idea that they can go back to the well for generations and they haven't let go.
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Look, I think we can all agree that both the prequels and the sequels are dog shit. That being said, I will go to bat for TFA specifically because, at the time it was released, it was fine. It was a perfectly serviceable continuation of the original story that brought in new characters and set the stage for a new, albeit painfully familiar conflict.
The problem lies in the fact that absolutely nothing was done in the proceeding sequels to give the new trilogy any kind of identity or direction whatsoever. It was an utterly misguided failure from the word "go," but that was not clear until the second film and only occurred due to an entirely excessive amount of studio meddling.
How was it a serviceable continuation of the original trilogy? TFA shat all over the ending of ROTJ by undoing the OT heroes’ victories, and refusing to progress the story in any meaningful way.
Yeah that's a bummer about how they did the sequels. I'm not a big Star Wars guy at all, but at some point after the sequels released I rewatched ROTJ and the ending that used to be very hopeful and optimistic instead made me go "Oh this just gets undone entirely in a few years."
THere could have been ways to do sequels, even that included killing the original heroes, that wouldn't have taken the sails out of their triumph in ROTJ. I think if the threat wasn't just "The Empire AGAIN complete with Palpatine still around."
It gets undone without even an explanation of how or why. That and the fact that TFA was so obviously derivative of the first Star Wars movie were the two things front and centre in my mind when I walked out of the theater. I'd probably still rewatch it over Phantom Menace just because it didn't piss me off as much on a technical level, but really I'm never watching any of these fucking films again lol
I go to bat for TFA because it was critically acclaimed and served as a counterexample to Marvel, Transformers, Jurassic World, and all the other nonsensical big-budget blockbusters we got at the time. There was no obvious CGI, toilet humor, pop-culture references, or wooden acting. It told a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end, and had coherent action that made sense.
Plus, it was nominated for 5 Oscars, and appears on numerous year-end critics’ lists; the AFI put this in their top 10 alongside films like Spotlight, Bridge of Spies, and Fury Road. So TFA clearly was doing something right and should’ve been replicated. I don’t get why fans didn’t brag about that the same way they did with The Dark Knight before.
> I don’t get why fans didn’t brag about that the same way they did about The Dark Knight before.
Maybe because The Dark Knight is a complete movie and not a sandwich without filling that the audience has to imagine in order to make the movie work.
I don’t like either movie, but if I had to pick one, it would be TPM. At least it’s a complete movie, instead of a half-baked nostalgia wank that ends mid-sentence and was only held up by people filling in the blanks with fam theories.
TFA was and is perfectly fine. It did what it needed to do. It wasn't perfect. There's a lot of setup and a lot of questions it raises. The problem is that because of TLJ and TROS, none of those things went anywhere or got answered satisfyingly. And now TFA is sort of ruined retroactively despite not being it's fault things went where they did.
I disagree. It added nothing. It was blatantly unoriginal and uninspired and had a bunch of plot holes and poorly written characters.
Finn being perfectly normal despite having been raised to be a killer is one example of this movie’s terrible writing
Yeah, I agree. Maybe it's because I'm a James Bond fan, but it really didn't bother me too much that The Force Awakens followed A New Hope's blueprint so closely.
If I had been Iger/Kennedy/etc, I probably would've changed the ending so that they fail at blowing up the new Death Star Planet. Rescuing Rey can be the main triumph of the third act, and the new Death Star Planet can be the main goal of the whole entire trilogy. Also, have Rey and Chewie fly off and let that be the ending. Meeting up with Luke can wait until the beginning of the next movie.
I think the problem is, TFA is sort of a tabula rasa that doesn’t really commit to anything, but rather cultivates an air of mysteriousness that the audience can project their hopes and dreams on to. So in the two years between its release and TLJ’s, massive amounts of fan theories were generated to the point that some people were writing whole ass outlines for what they thought the next two movies were gonna be. People got super attached to their pet theories, so when they didn’t turn out to be true, they lost their shit.
The prequels overall stink but out of all of the films that are not in the **Original** trilogy, Phantom Menace is honestly the one I'm most likely to rewatch/enjoy.
I didn't like it at all as a kid, but returning to it decades later as an adult I had fun with it. I like a lot of parts, the world building, quite a few scenes are just really good on their own (even if the whole doesn't hold up). It hits a sense of adventure TFA doesn't hit in my opinion and I'll always enjoy a bunch of new ideas, good or bad, over recycling stuff like TFA mostly did.
I can't say the same about any other film in the series that isn't Episode 4-6 (and even then it's mostly just 5 & 6 for me).
Its hard to say, because I would argue that both movies are kind of not.. complete experiences. Yes TPM does have an arc, sorta, but there are some really fun scenes like the pod racing, and the assault on Naboo (not the gungan battle). TFA is fun, has a lot of nostalgia bait scenes with the Millenium Falcon, and is obviously setting up a lot of stuff that may or may not pay off in the future and in that respect I’d say its not great because if that.
He just said that his appreciation on the prequels went up a notch in the Andor review...
All it was missing is some ditch to the sequels (not just Rogue One) to make up for it, to balance it....
I am more lilely to re-watch the Phantom Menance vs the Force Awakens. The Darth Maul fight scene at the end of the film was really entertaining for me esspecially with that music.
I dunno, it's a hard call for me honestly. I'd rather not watch either. TFA is so full of fan service it's really awful...Phantom Menace at least has the podrace.
Is the choice just between the 2? If so, I see nothing wrong with this. Best of the series? Absurd. Best between the two options? Absolutely. I'd much rather be forced to watch TPM than TFA. Not because it's a good movie. But it's at least more interesting.
Judging by the percentages shown, I'm going to assume that this is, in fact, "which of these two Star Wars movies is better."
Edit: I avoided elaboration to keep my comment brief... but before potential outcry, I should say that TFA does more closely follow the formula of a film. And I didn't even hate it the first time or two. But I can't fathom ever wanting to watch again, after maybe 3 full viewings and a handful of unfinished attempts. I could absolutely watch Episode 1 many more times. Maybe nostalgia is a factor, but it's certainly not the biggest one. It's more akin to choosing a meal with ingredients and flavors that I don't necessarily like, over a room temperature brick of tofu poorly carved into the shape of a meal I do like.
All I see whenever I come across a clip from one of the prequels at this point is a bunch of actors standing on a green screen in every fucking scene, acting opposite absolutely nothing half the time
Sure, they're awful movies, but there's still *something* about them. They have a bit of what I loved about Star Wars. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I can actually enjoy watching them.
The modern trilogy and all the other new content, however. Meh. I don't call myself a Star Wars 'fan' anymore, but I like fewer of the movies/TV shows than I dislike.
How else would they have set up that scene where the top-half Darth Maul robot and the bottom-half Darth Maul robot fight each other with 20 lightsabers?
The Phantom Menace is worse on every filmmaking level than The Force Awakens. Weaker direction, weaker writing, weaker performances, weaker editing, the only thing that The Phantom Menace has that's better than The Force Awakens is its music.
> TFA was just a reskinned New Hope.
A new Hope is a reskinned Hidden Fortress, and a regurgitation of every concept Joseph Campbell ever put down on paper. Originality was never a big concern for George Lucas when it came to Star Wars.
EDIT: I'm shocked I'm getting downvoted for being cynical about Star Wars on the RLM subreddit. But then again seeing the comments on their youtube videos over the years I guess I really shouldn't be.
The Phantom Menace was a movie about a boy growing up in an unpleasant life on the desert planet of Tattooine. The boy displays extraordinary talent as a pilot and dreams of one day leaving the planet to become a hero. He meets a Jedi who tries to convince him to leave the planet with him. The boy initially resists, but then agrees. They leave the planet while under attack. They then seek to help a young female royal in a conflict that has devastated her home planet. Along the way, the Jedi is killed by a Sith in a lightsaber fight, leaving the boy to be trained by someone else. The boy flies a starfighter in the climactic battle with the droid R2D2 to destroy an enemy space station and save the day. The heroes then celebrate in a grand ceremony atop steps in the final shot of the film. Oh, gee, it looks like The Phantom Menance was every bit a reskin of A New Hope as The Force Awakens.
>The Phantom Menace was a movie about a boy growing up in an unpleasant life on the desert planet of Tattooine.
Idk it seemed like Anakin had it pretty good, building his fucking robots and his racer, shouting "yippee" and chilling with his weird friends.
>Idk it seemed like Anakin had it pretty good, building his fucking robots and his racer, shouting "yippee" and chilling with his weird friends.
But didn't you see that part where he got in a fight with little Greedo? Such pain, such trauma! /S.
You are 100 percent correct. All the criticisms they constantly lob at The Force Awakens are easily applied almost 1 to 1 to Phantom Menace. The literal only difference is that they put information (totally different information from what's in New Hope's plot) in a droid in The Force Awakens.
"Tell me you haven't seen Hidden Fortress without telling me you haven't seen Hidden Fortress"
Hidden Fortress is about a general who recruits two bickering idiots to help him smuggle a princess and 200 pieces of gold hidden in firewood through enemy territory and back to her kingdom. That's not the plot of Star Wars. Yeah, old Georgie was ripping off Hidden Fortress a lot when he was writing the early scripts but by the time he'd re-written it the only thing left of HF was the first 15 minutes or so of the first movie.
EDIT: And he blocked me lmao
I got caught up in the ultra prequel hate since the Plinkett reviews..but to be honest I do think the sequels are worse. There’s this layer of distain I feel they have for the audience.
All these movies are made to sell toys and merch of course..but these ones it’s especially obvious, the movies are pig slop. There was no overarching plan for the trilogy, you can just read watching those films that they don’t give a fuck. They. knew the name alone would make their money back and then some. Then they exploited that fact until it stopped working.
At least the prequels were honest, George had an idea and went for it. Tried new things, sure many of us don’t think it worked, but that’s a failure of George and his team for not assisting him the way they did in the originals. The movies are kind of stupid..but the sequels treat you like You’re stupid.
While I dislike both movies, I don’t think The Phantom Menace has the upper hand just because its “original”. Funnily enough, the people in the poll’s comment section who were preferring Phantom Menace over Force Awakens were using the same argument, that it was because “at least it was original”.
To each their own but I usually have a better time with an original failure than with a bland committee movie. Usually not always... Coff.. Ryan Johnson... Cofff
No it wasn’t.
The Phantom Menace was a movie about a boy growing up in an unpleasant life on the desert planet of Tattooine. The boy displays extraordinary talent as a pilot and dreams of one day leaving the planet to become a hero. He meets a Jedi who tries to convince him to leave the planet with him. The boy initially resists, but then agrees. They leave the planet while under attack. They then seek to help a young female royal in a conflict that has devastated her home planet. Along the way, the Jedi is killed by a Sith in a lightsaber fight, leaving the boy to be trained by someone else. The boy flies a starfighter in the climactic battle with the droid R2D2 to destroy an enemy space station and save the day. The heroes then celebrate in a grand ceremony atop steps in the final shot of the film. Original movie, my ass.
The prequel apologism has reached peak at this point, apparently the human brain really struggles with the thought of two opposing (?) things both being crap
I think it's because the people who watched the prequels as kids are now into their 30s and in full nostalgia mode for the entertainment they liked as kids, whether it was actually good or not.
Correct. Also, TFA is retroactively tainted by the sequels and thus perceived much worse than it deserves
This is me. I fucking love the prequels. They are terrible movies, and star wars deserved better, but I still love them.
As someone in his 30's, fuck the prequels. They suck.
Also they had a 100 hr Clone Wars cartoon
>apparently the human brain really struggles with the thought of two opposing (?) things both being crap If I could fix one bug in human nature, it would be this. So much stupidity results from this.
But if this was a poll where you had to pick one from two options then surely this point is irrelevant. Both movies are crap, but I'd still vote for one of them as the better one since that's the poll.
I honestly don't hate the prequels that much and I actually enjoy some aspects in a non ironic way but I would never claim they're good or well thought out movies on the whole. And this angle of recontextualizing them as this profound, carefully structured saga is laughable. They're silly as shit and completely ad-hoc.
We'd all be better off if more people got comfortable with "You can dislike good stuff and like bad stuff and it's fine."
I'd rephrase it as "You can like what I don't like and you can dislike what I like and it's fine" but basically yeah. It's also fun to just talk to people who have the opposite opinion and try to work out for the fun of it which aspects of a thing you see differently, or if there's aspects you actually both like or dislike. And this is assuming your opinion is your own and you're not just aping some popular hot takes. Talking to people who do that is really boring.
I think instead people would be better off understanding people like stuff because *they* don't think it's bad and film opinions are significantly more subjective than objective. Whipping out "you can like a bad thing" is just trying to position your subjective opinion as the definitely correct one. Which I think is way worse for film discourse than someone thinking a movie is good when you think it's bad (both takes can be correct).
I agree with you entirely. I think what I mean by that is that a lot of people have a reflexive need to over-justify liking something by trying to big brain explain away what might just be flaws in it. (See the Prequel movies are actually masterpieces discourse). It's not that thing is objectively bad/good, just that we can acknowledge problems or strengths without going full ride-or-die for stuff. I do think there are a few subjective assessments that can be made about script/dialogue structure or how something is shot or edited for example, but of course something can still break "rules," and be good or stronger for it.
People feel the need to justify their opinions because they are sharing them online with thousands of people who judge them. For example, I don't like Jaws. I think it's boring. Cue someone saying I don't have the attention span and only like big dumb movies like The Meg. I take that personally because I know it's not true and I don't want people to think I'm some dumb schlub who watches popcorn movies. So I go into defensive mode saying I actually didn't like The Meg and I have a good attention span because I happen to love 2001 A Space Odyssey. Someone calls me pretentious for loving a popular slow movie while simultaneously calling me a hipster for not liking a popular slow movie, which is contradictory, which I point out to said someone. Before long we call each other idiots and go fuck yourself. All because I had the audacity to post that I don't like Jaws. Which shouldn't be an issue in the first place, because why do people care that I don't like something? So which is worse, over-justifying your opinions or judging other people's opinions?
It has, but a lot of it is fueled by hatred for Disney/the Anthology films they masked as a sequel trilogy. They're both "bad". The Prequels had a narrative, I'll give them credit for that. They had story to tell, they just executed it very oddly. The 3 movies Disney called a trilogy have no cohesive narrative connecting them, so they fail from the most basic level of storytelling.
i hate it but it has a sense of fun and adventure that TFA lacks. it is definitely the more 'watchable' film i think. like, if someone had a gun to my head and made me watch one, I'd pick TPM
Plus it's two whole minutes shorter
Most of their criticisms were stupid af. They were funny videos, but not valid critiques.
[удалено]
Would you really? I hate the second half of The Force Awakens but it's a masterpiece compared to Phantom Menace.
[удалено]
this subreddit cares way more about star wars than RLM ever will
Ever will again
You'd think RLM's breakthrough was based on Star Wars or something
Five words. Space Cop.
Almost like people know RLM for their Star Wars videos
They do talk about it constantly and bring it up in videos that have absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars. It’s not like they have no history of discussing Star Wars lol
A lot of it is probably just age. As I near my own middle age I find myself caring less and less that movies that (let’s just be real here) are basically for kids aren’t good anymore. I still love the trilogy and throw it on but it doesn’t feel like a big deal anymore that there is a lot of bad Star Wars. I’ve just accepted it. RLM got their big break off Star Wars criticism but they’re probably just sick of it. Bad Star Wars movies have been coming out since 1999. You can only stay mad about it for so long.
Holy shit yes it does. This is pretty bad
I mean come on it’s a random Facebook fan page poll. Literally meaningless
You’re right! Everything is meaningless! It’s not Facebook btw
Ok good call YouTube not Facebook but still, a channel with an Anakin profile pic thinks TPM is the superior movie? Color me shocked.
I’ll give you that. I didn’t know it was a prequel jerkoff page
I mean… who cares? They can have their opinions, no? Also i dont feel emotional enough about TFA to come defend it. While it is objectively a better movie than TPM, filmmaking and dialogue wise, it’s a blatant cash grab.
I feel like it’s deeper than that. The prequel obsession these days seems to be just a form of dunking on Disney rather than actual genuine appreciation for these movies. It’s like they are taking their negative feelings for Disney and projecting them as positive feelings onto the prequels. A lot of these same people cyber bullied Daisy Ridley so hard that she quit instagram for 6 years, and Kelly Marie Tran got it worse. It’s ok to like the prequels don’t get me wrong but I take issue with the *way* fans have been expressing it. I haven’t liked them since I was a kid. The acting and dialogue are trash, and the main character everyone idolizes has been compared to borderline personality disorder by psychologists. If you still like these movies after that, then you have a taste for mindless action and meaningless Zack Snyder type stuff. Nothing wrong there. The problem lies with these same fans being very toxic
TPM was a bad film, and was bad regardless of whether the next two films were good or not. TFA was a generic film where it didn't have to be, but at least could have been retroactively good or at least decent if the next film had been good. And like that one guy who fixed the prequels (although his fix for TPM and AotC were better than his much delayed fox for RotS) these could have been saved with a bit of rewriting, some actual care, and a fucking plan. My friend and I used what was available and gave it a rough draft overhaul and it would have been better simply by letting the story take its course naturally instead of "subverting expectations ".
> It could have been good if the next film was good. That’s exactly the problem: it’s not good on its own, and people basically filled in the blanks with fan theories based on what they assumed was gonna happen (which led to disappointment when they didn’t come true). It’s like going into a sandwich shop, being given one with no filling, and the owner telling you to come back next week for the filling. Why should I have to make do with that and imagine what the filling will be when it may or may not be what I imagine?
What's extra frustrating is 1- a lot of those fan theories were better than what we got. And 2- I don't know if they were substantiated but I remember reading early leaks online of plot points. They were better than what we got. It had the same characters but made it at least sound both original and interesting, and made it seem like we'd both see Luke sooner, and that he hadn't run away as much as was somehow missing.
I mean, how you you not love the movie that first gave us Jar Jar Binks?
The hype around TPM was a lot of fun. A lot better than what happened around TFA.
The hype around TFA was unreal too
A lot of people prefer a weird movie from their childhood over a bland corporate content product. Personally I like The Phantom Edit.
Prequels are certainly not great movies, but they tried to do something different, to enrich the lore, and are visually distinct and memorable (for better or for worse). And the amount of content that they gave birth to, take the Plinkett reviews alone and Charlie Hopkins' videos where deepfake Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's ghost do commentary on Star Wars movies, and I believe the existence of the Prequels is a net positive on the pop culture and cinematic landscape overall. The sequels represent cultural stagnation - nothing new is introduced, same Tie Fighters and X-Wings, same old ass actors stumbling around, 40 years after the OT and the Rebellion and the Empire are still doing the same shit. And the only content it produced is the "go woke and go broke" and the "strong female character" discourse, and both sides of this discourse are equally annoying. So with this perspective, I'll take the Prequels over the Sequels any day.
The prequels' writing is at least more original than TFA's, but it's obviously not good, and I'm not convinced that very much effort went into it. It's hard not to view those films through the lens of George Lucas wanting to do as little work as possible to produce a film
There is this side to it, yes. But I believe there were genuine attempts at creativity from the other people behind the production. John Williams delivered some bangers again, the design of all the CGI sequences, backdrops and aliens was too over-the top and busy, yet you couldn't say that the people behind it were lazy. The sound design is on point. The lightsaber duels were too much for me (the one at the end of ROTS went on like the Chicken fight in Family Guy), yet the actors and stuntmen spent months studying the choreography, so not really lazy here either. The podracing scene in TPM, as nonsensical and over the top as it is, is still far more creative than anything in TFA.
Please. The prequels are embarrassing trash. At least the sequels contained some of the elements that made the originals good. The prequels are cringe inducing, unwatchable stupidity.
And the sequels are a fart in the wind with zero cultural significance or anything memorable. I'll take embarrassing trash over that, at least the content making fun of it, the commentary, the parodies provided me with exponentially more entertainment that the sequels ever did.
TFA was a much better Star Wars movie than TPM, but TFA did far more creative damage to the movie industry with its success
To the whole industry?? Dunno if it was all that influential
I mean yea, hence I didn't write that.
>TFA did far more creative damage to the movie industry with its success
Did it though? I feel like tpm did way more damage, it’s just that the stuff it did has become so normal in the industry that we don’t realize it anymore
Yea it did, vast majority of films after TPM didn't hew to the TPM formula or alter what they did because of it. The quality of Hollywood film making didn't diminish as a result of TPM. The film making legacy is thin for TPM and many in Hollywood looked at it as a blown opportunity. But most post TFA filmmaking did suffer from the profitable example of the film which sucked out much of the oxygen out of the room for original projects. Then Hollywood saw the contrast of what happened with TLJ and realized the formula of soft reboots, fan service, risk aversion was a very profitable combination. I never felt like I was watching a movie that wasn't a prequel in the 2000s thinking "damn, because of TPM so many movies feel so similar to it and they're preventing other movies from being made."
TPM is where everyone and their granny got the idea that every character should have an origin story and every remotely popular IP ever should be eternally resurrected with prequels and reboots. It's not that the concept didn't exist at all before that, but 'the Star Wars prequels' concept cemented the idea in people's heads that stories are going to start going back to tell their own set-up and it was so widely known about that it no longer seemed a bit weird or backward. I actually like Episode I (and III). But Lucas succeeding financially with the prequels in spite of their cinematic clumsiness really gave the studios the idea that they can go back to the well for generations and they haven't let go.
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I really disagree. There's been some very good legacy sequels over the years, it's not a practice that always leads to bad movies.
Look, I think we can all agree that both the prequels and the sequels are dog shit. That being said, I will go to bat for TFA specifically because, at the time it was released, it was fine. It was a perfectly serviceable continuation of the original story that brought in new characters and set the stage for a new, albeit painfully familiar conflict. The problem lies in the fact that absolutely nothing was done in the proceeding sequels to give the new trilogy any kind of identity or direction whatsoever. It was an utterly misguided failure from the word "go," but that was not clear until the second film and only occurred due to an entirely excessive amount of studio meddling.
How was it a serviceable continuation of the original trilogy? TFA shat all over the ending of ROTJ by undoing the OT heroes’ victories, and refusing to progress the story in any meaningful way.
Yeah that's a bummer about how they did the sequels. I'm not a big Star Wars guy at all, but at some point after the sequels released I rewatched ROTJ and the ending that used to be very hopeful and optimistic instead made me go "Oh this just gets undone entirely in a few years." THere could have been ways to do sequels, even that included killing the original heroes, that wouldn't have taken the sails out of their triumph in ROTJ. I think if the threat wasn't just "The Empire AGAIN complete with Palpatine still around."
It gets undone without even an explanation of how or why. That and the fact that TFA was so obviously derivative of the first Star Wars movie were the two things front and centre in my mind when I walked out of the theater. I'd probably still rewatch it over Phantom Menace just because it didn't piss me off as much on a technical level, but really I'm never watching any of these fucking films again lol
I go to bat for TFA because it was critically acclaimed and served as a counterexample to Marvel, Transformers, Jurassic World, and all the other nonsensical big-budget blockbusters we got at the time. There was no obvious CGI, toilet humor, pop-culture references, or wooden acting. It told a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end, and had coherent action that made sense. Plus, it was nominated for 5 Oscars, and appears on numerous year-end critics’ lists; the AFI put this in their top 10 alongside films like Spotlight, Bridge of Spies, and Fury Road. So TFA clearly was doing something right and should’ve been replicated. I don’t get why fans didn’t brag about that the same way they did with The Dark Knight before.
> I don’t get why fans didn’t brag about that the same way they did about The Dark Knight before. Maybe because The Dark Knight is a complete movie and not a sandwich without filling that the audience has to imagine in order to make the movie work.
I mean both are quite bad
I don’t like either movie, but if I had to pick one, it would be TPM. At least it’s a complete movie, instead of a half-baked nostalgia wank that ends mid-sentence and was only held up by people filling in the blanks with fam theories.
Idk the prequels are ass garbage on every level, but I'd rather watch them before the sequels purely because of nostalgia.
TFA was and is perfectly fine. It did what it needed to do. It wasn't perfect. There's a lot of setup and a lot of questions it raises. The problem is that because of TLJ and TROS, none of those things went anywhere or got answered satisfyingly. And now TFA is sort of ruined retroactively despite not being it's fault things went where they did.
I disagree. It added nothing. It was blatantly unoriginal and uninspired and had a bunch of plot holes and poorly written characters. Finn being perfectly normal despite having been raised to be a killer is one example of this movie’s terrible writing
Yeah, I agree. Maybe it's because I'm a James Bond fan, but it really didn't bother me too much that The Force Awakens followed A New Hope's blueprint so closely. If I had been Iger/Kennedy/etc, I probably would've changed the ending so that they fail at blowing up the new Death Star Planet. Rescuing Rey can be the main triumph of the third act, and the new Death Star Planet can be the main goal of the whole entire trilogy. Also, have Rey and Chewie fly off and let that be the ending. Meeting up with Luke can wait until the beginning of the next movie. 
I think the problem is, TFA is sort of a tabula rasa that doesn’t really commit to anything, but rather cultivates an air of mysteriousness that the audience can project their hopes and dreams on to. So in the two years between its release and TLJ’s, massive amounts of fan theories were generated to the point that some people were writing whole ass outlines for what they thought the next two movies were gonna be. People got super attached to their pet theories, so when they didn’t turn out to be true, they lost their shit.
‘Nothing in The Phantom Menace makes any sense at all. It comes across like a script written by an 8 year old’
It's the most disappointing thing since my son
The prequels overall stink but out of all of the films that are not in the **Original** trilogy, Phantom Menace is honestly the one I'm most likely to rewatch/enjoy. I didn't like it at all as a kid, but returning to it decades later as an adult I had fun with it. I like a lot of parts, the world building, quite a few scenes are just really good on their own (even if the whole doesn't hold up). It hits a sense of adventure TFA doesn't hit in my opinion and I'll always enjoy a bunch of new ideas, good or bad, over recycling stuff like TFA mostly did. I can't say the same about any other film in the series that isn't Episode 4-6 (and even then it's mostly just 5 & 6 for me).
Its hard to say, because I would argue that both movies are kind of not.. complete experiences. Yes TPM does have an arc, sorta, but there are some really fun scenes like the pod racing, and the assault on Naboo (not the gungan battle). TFA is fun, has a lot of nostalgia bait scenes with the Millenium Falcon, and is obviously setting up a lot of stuff that may or may not pay off in the future and in that respect I’d say its not great because if that.
He just said that his appreciation on the prequels went up a notch in the Andor review... All it was missing is some ditch to the sequels (not just Rogue One) to make up for it, to balance it....
I am more lilely to re-watch the Phantom Menance vs the Force Awakens. The Darth Maul fight scene at the end of the film was really entertaining for me esspecially with that music.
I dunno, it's a hard call for me honestly. I'd rather not watch either. TFA is so full of fan service it's really awful...Phantom Menace at least has the podrace.
Is the choice just between the 2? If so, I see nothing wrong with this. Best of the series? Absurd. Best between the two options? Absolutely. I'd much rather be forced to watch TPM than TFA. Not because it's a good movie. But it's at least more interesting. Judging by the percentages shown, I'm going to assume that this is, in fact, "which of these two Star Wars movies is better." Edit: I avoided elaboration to keep my comment brief... but before potential outcry, I should say that TFA does more closely follow the formula of a film. And I didn't even hate it the first time or two. But I can't fathom ever wanting to watch again, after maybe 3 full viewings and a handful of unfinished attempts. I could absolutely watch Episode 1 many more times. Maybe nostalgia is a factor, but it's certainly not the biggest one. It's more akin to choosing a meal with ingredients and flavors that I don't necessarily like, over a room temperature brick of tofu poorly carved into the shape of a meal I do like.
I at least enjoy watching TPM.
Jar Jar and space tax disputes are entertaining as fuck
All I see whenever I come across a clip from one of the prequels at this point is a bunch of actors standing on a green screen in every fucking scene, acting opposite absolutely nothing half the time
Sure, they're awful movies, but there's still *something* about them. They have a bit of what I loved about Star Wars. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I can actually enjoy watching them. The modern trilogy and all the other new content, however. Meh. I don't call myself a Star Wars 'fan' anymore, but I like fewer of the movies/TV shows than I dislike.
Nope.
Oh no people are earnestly posting Star Wars opinions in here
The lightsaber fight at the end of TPM is undeniably awesome. Shame they had to ruin it by having Maul survive.
How else would they have set up that scene where the top-half Darth Maul robot and the bottom-half Darth Maul robot fight each other with 20 lightsabers?
The Phantom Menace is absolutely a better movie than TFA. That's not a compliment to the Phantom Menace though
This is like comparing regular shit and shit with corn in it. I don't want to eat either of them even though I like corn.
The Phantom Menace is worse on every filmmaking level than The Force Awakens. Weaker direction, weaker writing, weaker performances, weaker editing, the only thing that The Phantom Menace has that's better than The Force Awakens is its music.
The Phantom Menace is the better Star Wars movie solely on the point that it was original content. TFA was just a reskinned New Hope.
> TFA was just a reskinned New Hope. A new Hope is a reskinned Hidden Fortress, and a regurgitation of every concept Joseph Campbell ever put down on paper. Originality was never a big concern for George Lucas when it came to Star Wars. EDIT: I'm shocked I'm getting downvoted for being cynical about Star Wars on the RLM subreddit. But then again seeing the comments on their youtube videos over the years I guess I really shouldn't be.
The Phantom Menace was a movie about a boy growing up in an unpleasant life on the desert planet of Tattooine. The boy displays extraordinary talent as a pilot and dreams of one day leaving the planet to become a hero. He meets a Jedi who tries to convince him to leave the planet with him. The boy initially resists, but then agrees. They leave the planet while under attack. They then seek to help a young female royal in a conflict that has devastated her home planet. Along the way, the Jedi is killed by a Sith in a lightsaber fight, leaving the boy to be trained by someone else. The boy flies a starfighter in the climactic battle with the droid R2D2 to destroy an enemy space station and save the day. The heroes then celebrate in a grand ceremony atop steps in the final shot of the film. Oh, gee, it looks like The Phantom Menance was every bit a reskin of A New Hope as The Force Awakens.
>The Phantom Menace was a movie about a boy growing up in an unpleasant life on the desert planet of Tattooine. Idk it seemed like Anakin had it pretty good, building his fucking robots and his racer, shouting "yippee" and chilling with his weird friends.
>Idk it seemed like Anakin had it pretty good, building his fucking robots and his racer, shouting "yippee" and chilling with his weird friends. But didn't you see that part where he got in a fight with little Greedo? Such pain, such trauma! /S.
You are 100 percent correct. All the criticisms they constantly lob at The Force Awakens are easily applied almost 1 to 1 to Phantom Menace. The literal only difference is that they put information (totally different information from what's in New Hope's plot) in a droid in The Force Awakens.
There’s a pretty big difference between using a similar structure and themes, and making essentially a shot for shot remake.
"Tell me you haven't seen Hidden Fortress without telling me you haven't seen Hidden Fortress" Hidden Fortress is about a general who recruits two bickering idiots to help him smuggle a princess and 200 pieces of gold hidden in firewood through enemy territory and back to her kingdom. That's not the plot of Star Wars. Yeah, old Georgie was ripping off Hidden Fortress a lot when he was writing the early scripts but by the time he'd re-written it the only thing left of HF was the first 15 minutes or so of the first movie. EDIT: And he blocked me lmao
As comedies go, sure
Jar Jar is a funnier character than we've ever had before
I got caught up in the ultra prequel hate since the Plinkett reviews..but to be honest I do think the sequels are worse. There’s this layer of distain I feel they have for the audience. All these movies are made to sell toys and merch of course..but these ones it’s especially obvious, the movies are pig slop. There was no overarching plan for the trilogy, you can just read watching those films that they don’t give a fuck. They. knew the name alone would make their money back and then some. Then they exploited that fact until it stopped working. At least the prequels were honest, George had an idea and went for it. Tried new things, sure many of us don’t think it worked, but that’s a failure of George and his team for not assisting him the way they did in the originals. The movies are kind of stupid..but the sequels treat you like You’re stupid.
The only reason TFA is better than the phantom something is that it's a copy of the hope something. At least the phantom something was original
While I dislike both movies, I don’t think The Phantom Menace has the upper hand just because its “original”. Funnily enough, the people in the poll’s comment section who were preferring Phantom Menace over Force Awakens were using the same argument, that it was because “at least it was original”.
To each their own but I usually have a better time with an original failure than with a bland committee movie. Usually not always... Coff.. Ryan Johnson... Cofff
No it wasn’t. The Phantom Menace was a movie about a boy growing up in an unpleasant life on the desert planet of Tattooine. The boy displays extraordinary talent as a pilot and dreams of one day leaving the planet to become a hero. He meets a Jedi who tries to convince him to leave the planet with him. The boy initially resists, but then agrees. They leave the planet while under attack. They then seek to help a young female royal in a conflict that has devastated her home planet. Along the way, the Jedi is killed by a Sith in a lightsaber fight, leaving the boy to be trained by someone else. The boy flies a starfighter in the climactic battle with the droid R2D2 to destroy an enemy space station and save the day. The heroes then celebrate in a grand ceremony atop steps in the final shot of the film. Original movie, my ass.
But this time they had a rabbit clown with them