[SPOILERS] Star Wars Films - Do You Prefer Prequels or Sequels?

lackblogger said:

Can I ask you fine people another question in addition to the OP's:

How bad does a series you like have to get before you stop following it?

I mean, we've had eight pretty rubbish Star Wars films come out since the series ended in 1983 and the cycle of hating on the new one and retconning to 'like' previous shit episodes as a means to attack the new one is kinda tiresome?

What's your limit? How shit is "give-up already" shit?

Click to expand...

I'm fairly lenient & always open to more good movies, but I stopped paying to watch Star Wars after TFA.

The prequels all got a viewing at the cinema, and tbh I came out of each moderately satisfied. They were crap, but there was enough in there to make for an entertaining night out. They were bad Star Wars stories, poorly acted & told, but at least they felt in keeping with the universe. I didn't leave any disgusted, just disappointed.

But TFA, ye gads. After all the hype I expected something half decent, and left shaking my head at how awful it was. What made it worse was how many were loving it. I couldn't believe my eyes. That's when I said I wouldn't give one more penny to the franchize.

Love reading all of this and looking forward to more. Here are some thoughts ...

As I have made clear, I've been a HUGE Star Wars fan since 1977, # of times I saw each of the 'main 9' in theaters:
- Star Wars: >12
- Empire: ~6ish
- Return of the Jedi: 3 or so.
- Phantom Menace: 1
- Attack of the Clones: 3 (including once in IMAX)
- Revenge of the Sith: 2
- The Force Awakens: 3
- Last Jedi: 2
- Rise of Skywalker: 1 (no longer likely to become 2)

Here is an assumption: any adult Star Wars fan over 40 prefers the Original Trilogy. It IS Star Wars to most of us, warts and all. Also, if you go back and view press coverage and reviews, it was viewed as 'pure escapism' - which goes with my basic feelings since the start.

Some Pros and Cons:

OT:
+ It IS Star Wars
+ Great characters
+ Solid mythology
+ OMG the music!
- Empire had some work to do to make it a 'real Trilogy' (same for Jedi)
- By RotJ the 'multi coincidence' plot structure was overdone.
-Wait - a *second* Death Star? Isn’t THAT original!

Prequels:
+ Each one better than the last
+ Incredible soundtracks across the board
+ Obi-Wan was better than in OT
+ Seeing the 'arrogance of the Jedi' just before the fall really worked
+ Anakin grew into the role by last movie
+ Revenge of Sith managed to be better than Return of the Jedi (IMO, of course)
- the horrific racial stereotypes of Phantom Menace
- Cringe-y dialog
-Phantom Menace too clearly aimed at selling stuff to kids
-Entire trilogy tries too hard to establish contextualized backstory for everything - much of it we just didn’t need to know.

Sequels
+Solid characters throughout
+Really good acting, great chemistry
+fun set-pieces, cool Jedi powers, excellent lightsaber battles
+In particular the post Snoke scene in TLJ is pretty awesome
+Enforces the failure and arrogance of the Jedi (TLJ-only)
+Many EU callbacks (Sun Crusher becomes Starkiller, Clone Palpatine, etc.)
-WTF happened to John Williams excellence? Soundtracks are a throwaway.
-Force Awakens destroys everything the OT accomplished
-Yay, another Death Star-ish thing (and yet another by RoS)
-TLJ relies on things (like fuel) that have never been brought up before
-In TLJ nobody trusts each other, even on the same side … and people alternate between clairvoyance and idiocy.
-RoS betrays everything good or bad about TLJ and uses so much time doing so it is unable to come up with a real sense of purpose
-RoS … ugh, so in the end of the ‘Skywalker Saga’ the climax is a battle between two Palpatines? Seriously?
-RoS engages in so much fan-service (Chewie gets a medal!) and ‘playing it safe’ (Rose Tico) that it drowns out any attempts to establish real empathy with the characters
-RoS feels like a ‘not bad’ Star Wars movie due almost entirely to Ridley & Driver … but once you have a chance to think about it … it gets worse by the hour.
-For every great new Force power revelation, there is another that is a McGuffin (heal is great when Rey uses it on Ben, but at the end is Rey actually dead or just near-death? Is it heal or resurrect?)
-So much of the Sequel Trilogy ends up as ‘cut rate rehash’ - remember discussions about ‘Dash Rendar’ from ‘Shadows of the Empire’ game being an EU Han Solo wannabe? Here we get Poe suddenly being a Han Solo rehash, cut-rate Tatooine (Jakku), cut rate Mos Eisley(where we see Maz), and on and on.

I really enjoyed Force Awakens even though I disliked much of what it did to the OT (and of course how it laid waste to the non-Canon EU). Rey is a classic character (any ‘Mary Sue’ assessment is misogynist BS) who has honed skills and is very strong with the Force. She is in line with folks like Luke or Anakin or Harry Potter - obviously over-powered for ‘plot reasons’, but not out of line with other ‘hero’ characters (other than being female, which explains ~100% of negativity). Other characters were interesting, and the interplay and chemistry actually worked.

The Last Jedi had some really interesting things, most for me was Luke’s arc … he is the embodiment of the PT hints at the failure of the Jedi through arrogance, something that Obi-Wan and Yoda each failed to fully grasp and failed to teach Luke. It took the near destruction AGAIN of everything to teach the lesson that Qui-Gon and Dooku and others were trying to show - that balance isn’t the absence or ignorance of one or the other.

Rise of Skywalker ... well, as you might have guessed, I was able to stick with things through the first two, and my pretty serious Star Wars Fanboy ‘rose colored glasses’ helped me through viewing RoS ... but since seeing it on opening night, every time I think about it, it gets worse and takes part of the Sequel trilogy with it.

Tl;dr with the passage of time the Prequels get better, whereas the Sequels get worse.

Hear hear

I would like to add two stupid conceits

1. that you can ram a flotilla in hyperdrive and it will oblitirate it.
Suddenly a death star or any other ship of size is no longer a threat just equip any barely spacewothy wreck with a hyperengine and point it.

2. ah I´ve already said it but anyway. Suddenly the new deathstars/armadas are going to be operational in a matter of minutes hours and can project force all over the galaxy instantly so we gather all unaligned ships in the galaxy to thwart the threat at this location which you couldn´t really travel to without acepilots in just a few hours through space cb-radio. Why can´t the time limit be weeks months, why don´t they have to at least try to prepare, why does it have to be a stupid bomb downcount, why can they travel everywhere instantly

It´s beyond lazy writing and there is never any tension

At least they didn´t use the stupid conceit that they where going to destroy earth as so many non sci-fi script writers use in a desperate attempt to make the audience care when it is completely irrelevant to the source material

Thank you Joxer

I had no idea that there was going to be more clone wars

The first seasons as i remember are quite childish but it grows into something better
Which is what everybody told me, and for a long time I refused to belive them but during a convalcence for something or other I gave it a real chance and it really grows on you and really expands the universe in a mostly coherent way

I would go as far as to say that the creators of clone wars had more respect and appreciaton for George Lucas creation than Lucas himself. But I did like the more worldbuilding aspects of all the Kotors so I´m probably biased

txa1265 said:

Wanted to clarify this one a little bit to understand … you claim that the video games that existed prior to the 1999 release of The Phantom Menace had raised your hopes about a ‘Old Republic’ era movie series?

The problem with that line of reasoning for me? KotOR - the FIRST Star Wars Old Republic game - was released in 2003, by which time we’d already gotten Phantom Menace AND Attack of the Clones.

Help me understand. (Btw - would LOVE something in the old era)

Click to expand...

Not sure if it was because of games, but I seriously thought the prequel trilogy won't be Vader's biography. Not completely at least, I wish only the third movie covered it as something like 10 mins fastforward through.
I have a serious problem where I'm not interested in biographies generally, especially not of mass murderers. Nor I care about how someone becomes a villain regardless of it being fantasy or reality. "An opportunity makes a thief" - but some of us wouldn't make such choice and I don't have to watch those who do for the xth time stretched as a trilogy.

mprod said:

Thank you Joxer

I had no idea that there was going to be more clone wars

The first seasons as i remember are quite childish but it grows into something better
Which is what everybody told me, and for a long time I refused to belive them but during a convalcence for something or other I gave it a real chance and it really grows on you and really expands the universe in a mostly coherent way

I would go as far as to say that the creators of clone wars had more respect and appreciaton for George Lucas creation than Lucas himself. But I did like the more worldbuilding aspects of all the Kotors so I´m probably biased

Click to expand...

We still don't know what happened with Ashoka after she refused to return to Jedi order. Honestly I support her decision - everyone and their mother betrayed her and now she should forget that? Well, I'm kinda exactly the person she is and I'd take the screw you attitude too. And how did she become Fulcrum?
We also don't know how, why and which clones removed chips. For some we do (Rebels), not for all.
Etc, too many questions were left unanswered and the final season was the right thing to make instead of podcasts, comics, books or whatever that isn't animated series.

Big demand for SW. People are frustrated, in expectation, in withdrawal. Disney does a good job.

What are you talking about. No.
Big demand for being a part of herd. It's the evolution's failsafe mechanics to preserve species from extinction that triggers elsewhere (religion, entertainment, sports, etc) for unknown reasons.

So where's the herd? In this case is sitting in cinemas during SW9 screening. Rush for it before you're doomed.

The positive side - at least this herd is not there for the barbaric public execution.

Final note: society, evolution, demand, manipulating, psychology, mass histeria, history, capital punishment, etc are all off topic. So open a new thread about history repeating Titanic phenomenon. I won't.

Option 1:

Disney and J.J. Abrams destroyed it. They have no soul was an excellent summary.

I like the last movie of the prequels quite a bit, the first one not so much.

joxer said:

Not sure if it was because of games, but I seriously thought the prequel trilogy won't be Vader's biography. Not completely at least, I wish only the third movie covered it as something like 10 mins fastforward through.

Click to expand...

Cool - the Old Republic graphic novels were in the mid-90s as well as the best of the EU books, and I know I formed a lot of opinions on ‘future Star Wars’ from those ... which I managed to suppress through Force Awakens, but which have re-emerged with white hot fury after Rise of Skywalker

txa1265 said:

Cool - the Old Republic graphic novels were in the mid-90s as well as the best of the EU books, and I know I formed a lot of opinions on ‘future Star Wars’ from those … which I managed to suppress through Force Awakens, but which have re-emerged with white hot fury after Rise of Skywalker

Click to expand...

I read some EU books back in the days, and to me they had a MUCH better continuation of the lore than the crap Disney changed to. Luke starting a Jedi academy, Leia becoming a Jedi etc. It made sense. And there's a hundred ways they could have chosen to move the story forward with the new movies, introduce new threats to the galaxy in the form of a new alien menace or a resurgence of Sith or whatever.

But to simply rewind to pretty much the same situation that we had in A new hope? Nooo, we have the Resistance instead of the Rebels! And we have a Death planet instead of a Death star, it's so cool! And we have The First order instead if the Empire! And we have no.fucking.imagination.whatsoever.

Wow. I'm truly shocked Prequel is outranking Sequel in the voting. The Prequel trilogy has to be one of the most epic fails in the history of media / entertainment. I get angry-sad just thinking about them.

It seems the once-upon-a-time-joke that people treat Star Wars like a religion:

The Jedi census phenomenon is a grassroots movement that was initiated in 2001 for residents of a number of English-speaking countries, urging them to record their religion as "Jedi" or "Jedi Knight" (after the quasi-religious order of Jedi Knights in the fictional Star Wars universe) on the national census.

Click to expand...

is actually true judging by this thread. You can almost feel the evangelical enthusiasm seep from the posts

Well I don't joke about it - IMO it has more positives than any traditional religion out there.
The reason #1: it doesn't need milking masses with microtransactions or a few with macrotransactions to survive.

Nah, I'm an atheist at heart. But if I had to pick a religion The Force does make more sense than most of the ones currently represented on Earth. That's hardly a discussion fit for this thread however.

Indeed, you don't want people to start praising the last rubbish religion because the new one is rubbish by comparison

For me Rogue One was the best SW movie since the original trilogy. It was the most hard sci-fi of all the Star Wars films. No cuddly aliens, no cute robots, and almost none of the 'Force'; just adults trying to save the galaxy from advanced technology. There was no happy ending, just a successful but deadly mission.

rjshae said:

For me Rogue One was the best SW movie since the original trilogy. It was the most hard sci-fi of all the Star Wars films. No cuddly aliens, no cute robots, and almost none of the 'Force'; just adults trying to save the galaxy from advanced technology. There was no happy ending, just a successful but deadly mission.

Click to expand...

Huh, guess I should get around to watching it then. After TFA I didn't really feel any urgency in watching any more of the new movies. I did watch TLJ in cinema as well because my brother wanted to go, but it's not like that improved my view of the new batch of movies...

joxer said:

So where's the herd? In this case is sitting in cinemas during SW9 screening. Rush for it before you're doomed.

Click to expand...

The herd as it is called is larger than those who went to the theater. People who could not care less are not part of the herd. People who feel a sense of lack, who are in expectation are part of it. Unsatisfied demand is an essential cog. They will come back as soon as they hear the whistle sound.

Disney never ruined it. If they did, people would have turned the page, not looking back, a corpse that wont bounce. When they are still demanding. A drug addict complaining he did not get his fix still is demanding.

The future is bright for SW, they corrected things as they had to. In a few years, this site will praise the incoming episodes.

I don't disagree Disney did good in regards to mainstream appeal and garnering millions of new fans, and I understand perfectly well if they don't care the slightest that they alienate plenty of old fans of the universe.

But the discussion wasn't about whither Disney was smart in regards to the financial viability of the series, it was about our personal opinions on the prequels and sequels.

If I start praising the new movies being released further down the line no one will be happier than me, because like Chien mentioned getting my Star Wars "fix" is a good thing. Currently the only thing the new movies have managed for me is to increase my withdrawal symptoms.

TomRon said:

I don't disagree Disney did good in regards to mainstream appeal and garnering millions of new fans, and I understand perfectly well if they don't care the slightest that they alienate plenty of old fans of the universe.

Click to expand...

Except Disney never did the second part. Frustrating people is nothing like alienating people.
A prostitute frustrating a client is not alienating her or him: she makes himself or himself more desirable in the eyes of the client.

It turned on topic as soon this thread claimed Disney ruined the franchise when the very existence of this thread proves Disney serves well.

Disney would have ruined SW if they had turned people apathetic, not frustrated, not angry. Not the case. People are on a leash, SW is their past, present and future. They are tormented, tortured, their minds are invaded by SW.

SW count much for them, they are defined by SW.

Disney has been managing frustration of some when satisfying others, that is an engine for growth.

Disney served well. They did not kill SW. They kept the passion alive.