Indeed, the studios are smart when it comes to making money - regardless of personal opinion on the prequels, they are all to aware the the general perception of them (as shown on this thread) and are aware the best way to sell a new film is to make it "not the prequel". "Capture the spirit of the original trilogy" is a good marketing campaign, "Capture the spirit of all six movies" will alienate a large group, reducing revenue.

great and the acting careers of everyone who wasn't Harrisson Ford? I'm just saying.

And arguably that was at least as much Raiders as it was Star Wars.

But Mark? Yeah, Slipstream, The Guyver and The Flash. It was Batman that was his big comeback roll. Carrie? Blues Brothers and Under the Rainbow - not exactly tearing up the box-office.

In addition feel free to link an article where JJ Abrams or anyone involved in the production of the new movies was quoted as saying they want to capture the essence, performances or look of the PT in the new movies being produced

I'm not putting a lot of stock in Abrams, who seems to be so intent on making a Not Prequel film that all he seems to be doing is doing a Star Wars Greatest Hits - at least judging by the spoilers thus far (and, to a degree, his take on Star Trek).

OK, maybe that's JJ thing, but feel free to post an article, any article, where anyone, anywhere, in industry ever said, 'man, we should just make it like the Star Wars PT', anyone, anywhere, anytime....I'll wait.

Why, it wouldn't make money because a large portion of the target audience hated the prequels. That's a marketing situation independent of the quality of the movie. It doesn't prove anything. The prequels are referenced in the industry as failure due to over anticipation and has been quite interesting in how movie marketing has continued.

Why, it wouldn't make money because a large portion of the target audience hated the prequels. That's a marketing situation independent of the quality of the movie. It doesn't prove anything. The prequels are referenced in the industry as failure due to over anticipation and has been quite interesting in how movie marketing has continued.

Clearly a large portion of move professional hated them as well if it had such an overwhelmingly negative effect on Ms. Portman's career. That's an impact well outside any monetary consideration. I take issue when people say the OT was just as bad as the PT, I have a news flash for PT fans, you're allowed to like the PT, you aren't allowed to make that observation because it is quantifiably refutable myth with actual evidence.

Correction: Movie hiring professionals a) thought her acting was poor in the PT. or b) thought her connection to the PT would be temperamental to their movie.

I'm a fan of pretty much everything Star Wars (only exception I can think of is the Holiday Special). I have 0 issues with the prequels (I will watch EP I over EP IV because ANH is boring as hell, but I still watch it and love it). Everything new and "official" that comes out that is Star Wars is fascinating to me because it deepens and broadens the already expansive universe I love.

My gut feeling is JJ will pander to the OT crowd. And that makes sense given the nerd-rage vs. the prequels. I will be sorely disappointed if the sequel trilogy (?) does indeed purposefully pander to the OT crowd. But I know I will still watch the ST a million times because I love Star Wars. For me it is really that simple.

We bash the holiday special but to a content starved fan of 6 years old it was great, Heck how else would I have known that Wookies have families in tree towns prior to that or that Boba Fett was pure awesome with a rocket pack.

Although I would argue that the emotional payoff of the Vader story arc saves the movie.

Yep, definitely one of the high points I was referring to.

Plus, even 30 years on, no fighter combat scene - not the new episodes, not ID4, not anything in the modern era of movies - has beaten the Starfighter furball over Endor.

I don't know, I prefer a lot of the TCW furballs to that. The problem is (and just MHO) it's too fast and disjointed. It's hard to get a sense of continuity, following a single fighter for more than a few seconds. The Death Star interior run was, and remains, awesome though.

Why, it wouldn't make money because a large portion of the target audience hated the prequels. That's a marketing situation independent of the quality of the movie. It doesn't prove anything. The prequels are referenced in the industry as failure due to over anticipation and has been quite interesting in how movie marketing has continued.

Clearly a large portion of move professional hated them as well if it had such an overwhelmingly negative effect on Ms. Portman's career. That's an impact well outside any monetary consideration. I take issue when people say the OT was just as bad as the PT, I have a news flash for PT fans, you're allowed to like the PT, you aren't allowed to make that observation because it is quantifiably refutable myth with actual evidence.

Look I dislike the prequels for a few reasons but I'm not going to pretend the original was without its own plethora of flaws simply because theyre nostalgic and I grew up on them. A billion food critics could tell me fish is a fantastic food, but an argument from authority is still a fallacy and taste in movies is just as subjective as taste in food.

ooof! Talk about nerd rage!

http://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-2-first-look

Look I dislike the prequels for a few reasons but I'm not going to pretend the original was without its own plethora of flaws simply because theyre nostalgic and I grew up on them. A billion food critics could tell me fish is a fantastic food, but an argument from authority is still a fallacy and taste in movies is just as subjective as taste in food.

I agree with you up to a point . There are objective measures of good storytelling and filmmaking, there are schools devoted to teaching these skills. By these measures the prequels are poorly executed films. I will not argue that the acting was especially good in the original films but the storytelling, dialogue, character development, and cinematography was, by any measure, superior.

Again, if you haven't watched the reviews linked in my sig, please do as they make the argument better than I can.

Again, if you haven't watched the reviews linked in my sig, please do as they make the argument better than I can.

Watched those years ago. Never got my pizza roll...

OK, maybe that's JJ thing, but feel free to post an article, any article, where anyone, anywhere, in industry ever said, 'man, we should just make it like the Star Wars PT', anyone, anywhere, anytime....I'll wait.

I'm not saying that anyone said that. I'm saying that by all indications they're leaning WAY too heavy on the Nostalgia button, going "Remember all the movies you loved as a child? Here they are again!"

So you and Natalie - a movie industry professional - agree that the movies were terrible. 57% , 67% and 80% of the critics - also movie industry professionals - don't agree with you. And after 25 years of watching At The Movies, I'll respect the opinion of someone who's entire life was spent critiquing movies. Mind you, he also wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - but don't hold that against him,

Did you like them? No. Did Portman like them? No. Did I? Actually. . . yes. The worldbuilding was strong, the costumes were great, the soundtrack was excellent as always, the effects were pretty good and the action was great. Say what you will about his writing, Lucas knows how to cut a climax. And honestly even a terrible Star Wars movie is better than other hollywood fare. I would rather watch Phantom Menace a hundred times than Transformers 5 or Lone Ranger or Man of Steel again.

Isn't Mark Hamill an extremely successful voice actor now? Personally I think that's worth something.

The prequels take a lot of bashing. But they are so beautiful visually that I find it easy to forgive the uneven emotion and dialogue.

The Revenge of the Sith has by far the most beautiful set pieces of any movie I have ever seen. Attack of the Clones has the first battle of the Clone Wars and it too is a feat of moviemaking.

There is a spirit of adventure and epic fantasy to all six movies.

Midi-chlorians and ten year old saviors of the galaxy are maybe a little too honest for the cynical age they debuted in but they are true to the spirit of the originals.

Isn't Mark Hamill an extremely successful voice actor now? Personally I think that's worth something.

No one will ever be the Joker in my mind more than Hamill.

Look I dislike the prequels for a few reasons but I'm not going to pretend the original was without its own plethora of flaws simply because theyre nostalgic and I grew up on them. A billion food critics could tell me fish is a fantastic food, but an argument from authority is still a fallacy and taste in movies is just as subjective as taste in food.

I agree with you up to a point . There are objective measures of good storytelling and filmmaking, there are schools devoted to teaching these skills. By these measures the prequels are poorly executed films. I will not argue that the acting was especially good in the original films but the storytelling, dialogue, character development, and cinematography was, by any measure, superior.

Again, if you haven't watched the reviews linked in my sig, please do as they make the argument better than I can.

You could say they "did objectively better" in that they got better overall reviews and General reception, but as soon as you start trying to apply better and worse on things that rely on personal likes and dislikes to an individual you move immediately to the subjective range.

In the end though no one should care, I don't care if someone thought jarjarbinks and swims where the greatest parts of Star Wars to them. When did it become so important in society that we had to insist that others like exactly what we like, that if someone thinks something we like is not as good as something we dislike that somehow there's a problem? If it's not hurting anyone then who cares.

Also this might come as a shock to folks, but Empire was not well received or review at the time of release. Oh sure, people came around, but there was a lot of hate leveled at the flick at first.

Genuine interest here - why was that? What was it people found lacking or were bothered by?

I will watch the prequels and enjoy bits of them but then there are moments in them that jar me out of enjoying the moment.

Worst of these is still my number 1 bad bit of Dialogue/overacting ever.

"Annie I love you but your going down a path I cannot follow"

*shudder* And this is from someone who will watch sharknado and is hyped for Iron Sky 2

Why, it wouldn't make money because a large portion of the target audience hated the prequels. That's a marketing situation independent of the quality of the movie. It doesn't prove anything. The prequels are referenced in the industry as failure due to over anticipation and has been quite interesting in how movie marketing has continued.

Clearly a large portion of move professional hated them as well if it had such an overwhelmingly negative effect on Ms. Portman's career. That's an impact well outside any monetary consideration. I take issue when people say the OT was just as bad as the PT, I have a news flash for PT fans, you're allowed to like the PT, you aren't allowed to make that observation because it is quantifiably refutable myth with actual evidence.

Honestly, this whole line of argument is essentially an Appeal To Popularity. We can argue whether the PT were popular or not, but that is and should remain, a separate argument to whether or not they were good . The reason it should be kept separate is that you have just used support for one (popularity) as a response to someone arguing the other (quality). That's not actually a rebuttal and shouldn't be used as one. And if you disagree: "Michael Bay" is all I'll say.

those aren't onjective though if even a single person genuinely disagrees. We're not talking about a measurable distance or something like that, the schools just teach what most people tend to like, which mind you is incredibly valuable if you want to be successful in a society upon which those findings are built on but it none the less still makes them subjective.

I know what you're trying to say when you say "if even a single person disagrees", but that's not what we're talking about. There are measures that are objective for any practical interpretation. One cannot be objective about whether or not something is good in itself (e.g. not everyone will like a romance), but one can assess in many objective ways whether someone achieves what they set out to do. This is better with an example... Suppose you want to convey the size of a spaceship. Having someone walk down a short interior corridor will not accomplish that - it is objectively bad. Make it a very, very long corridor and open with a shot from behind of someone walking down it and you can see the grey steel vanishing into the difference with droids and officers walking in the distance, now you have. Open with a shot of a spaceship passing overhead unexpectedly and thus conveying size through the audiences angle of view... and then follow it up with an unexpected following ship that it many times the size of the one you have just calibrated your audience's expectations to - not THAT is objectively a good technique to convey the size of the ship.

One cannot say that every person in the world will react emotionally to seeing a really big ship. But one can objectively say whether or not the director achieves conveying that a ship is really big.

That is what we talk about when we say there are objective measures of whether a film's quality. Unless we disagree with what the director is trying to achieve, we can discuss whether what they try to achieve meets the criteria well without it getting too subjective. That opening shot of Ep. IVis one of the greatest movie openings I can think of. And I speak as someone "arty". So we can look at a scene like that of Anakin talking to Padmé as they flee Coruscant about "scars on his heart" and ask ourselves what does it set out to achieve and does it succeed? If its aim is uncertainty or excitement, it's a failure - we know what's going to happen, we know how it's going to happen, there's no risk or curiosity. Is it supposed to make us feel empathy for these characters and care about them? That's probably closer to the mark. Does it achieve that? Almost certainly not - if you parse Annie's words down to their actual meaning it doesn't say: "I care about you" or "I love you" or "I will protect you" or any things that would objectively make the audience feel that their love is noble. Instead his words boil down to "I am angry because I'm not getting what I want". So maybe the aim is to convey a building distrust or fear of Anakin and where he is heading. But it doesn't work as that either - it's just a bad scene.

That's the sort of analysis you can do to discuss the quality of a film - it's far more nuanced than liking something or not and saying if anyone disagrees it is all subjective honestly undervalues the value of that sort of analysis and the weight it carries. I'm not saying it's black and white, but I don't think it's fair to reject outright the idea of objective measures of film quality.

What you can't do, however, is apply this sort of analysis arbitrarily. There is a great deal of subjectivity in films. Jar-Jar getting his tongue stuck on a pod-racer. To me? Excrutiating. To a six year old, it's probably high comedy. That is subjectivity in judging a film. The objective measures are to say whether it makes a good film for six year olds or a good film for adults, not which it should be or is.

My 0.02 credits.

but then there are moments in them that jar me out of enjoying the moment.

I see what you did there!

Also this might come as a shock to folks, but Empire was not well received or review at the time of release. Oh sure, people came around, but there was a lot of hate leveled at the flick at first.

Genuine interest here - why was that? What was it people found lacking or were bothered by?

Mind you, it's been years since I went through the opening day notices, but I seem to recall that people took issue with the lack of ending (which, to be fair, the movie does kind of just . . . . stop), and Yoda was too goofy and that the darker tone didn't fit well with the first movie.

Of course, not everyone thought like that:

Also this might come as a shock to folks, but Empire was not well received or review at the time of release. Oh sure, people came around, but there was a lot of hate leveled at the flick at first.

Genuine interest here - why was that? What was it people found lacking or were bothered by?

Mind you, it's been years since I went through the opening day notices, but I seem to recall that people took issue with the lack of ending (which, to be fair, the movie does kind of just . . . . stop), and Yoda was too goofy and that the darker tone didn't fit well with the first movie.

Thanks for that - I was interested to hear the objections. I think I can actually say most of those are quite fair, with the exception about the darker tone jarring. I see nothing inherently wrong with progression in a trilogy and a darker middle arc is very often effective.

Of course, not everyone thought like that:

That was entertaining. Oddly enough, I could hear myself saying pretty much everything the negative critic was saying with the exception that at the end of it all I would have added "...but on the other hand, it is quite fun."

I don't like the prequels, but if you do then good for you.

I don't know why we come down on people for finding joy in things.