This is pretty much how I feel.
I’ll add my name to the ‘apprehensive’ list of SW fans.
After all the prequels (Episode 1 was the only one i watched (well nodded off in) at the cinema), i really can’t think the SW franchise can be dragged down any further. So that is the only consolation i can think off, i expect fast paced action, lots of special effects and little ability to tell a well paced narrative above the action. Even having Kasdan involved will most likely probably be more akin to seeing R2D2 and C3P0 in the prequels. A ‘name’ to allow the original fans to reminisce, but handled so badly as to break all the good that came before.
I would feel the same…but after finishing season 3 of the Clone Wars…when George stops paying attention, people make pretty good star wars stuff. I’m kind of excited.
Yeah, Lucas needed to let go a long time ago (in a galaxy really, really close by). I can totally understand why he didn’t, but his vision of he universe these days is so clearly different that what he once portrayed that anything he touches has this cognitive dissonance about it. Hopefully they use VII as somethinge of a different beast, and go with less familiar characters to minimize any notion of betraying the canon.
The wikipedia info about it says that Han, Leia and Luke (and their original actors) are signed up to appear in it:
After the prequels I can’t be apprehensive because FUCK STAR WARS.
Is it official? I thought he hadn’t signed. I’m sure he’ll be fine, but having only seen him in girls, let’s just say, “I have a bad feeling about this”. Hell even the pic in vanity fair makes him look goofy.
I just don’t get the hate. I’m a star wars megafan. I have yodas autograph FFS. I even have Lobots autograph. I didn’t mind the prequels. The acting and dialog was abysmal, but lets be honest, the ewoks and mark hamil aren’t exactly shakespeare. Lucas can’t write dialog, Lucas sucks at casting. He is an awesome editor and has a phenomenal eye for visual design.
I still watch the prequels now and then, although I tune out the dialog entirely. Visually they are incredible.
I’ll go see the new movies, I’ll cringe in parts, and sigh in others, and my jaw will probably drop during space battles. That’s worth the price of admission for me. I couldn’t give a toss if Luke & Leia are in it though.
“Not exactly shakespeare” and “painful to watch” are different things. The Ewoks were pretty bad, but not in the same ballpark as the prequels. If you don’t see a huge quality difference between IV / V and I-III, I’m not sure anyone can explain it to you. I can try, but it’s one of those things that ought to be self-evident.
Um, The Phantom Edit (which basically just objectively applied classic George’s old philosophies on science fiction movies) begs to differ. The prequels films were so poorly edited (partly by design, yes) that they spawned the entire fanedit movement.
In retrospect, I think it’s safe to say that George’s ex-wife, who was directly involved in recutting Star Wars & likely had similar influence on Empire, was one of the driving forces in Star Wars’s original success.
Hell, the “Special Edition” of IV is poorly edited. The standout bit is that Han has a conversation with Greedo, and then repeats the same conversation nearly word-for-word with Jabba a minute later. Any normal editor would have cut one or the other. You could walk into the film cold, with no knowledge of the original cut, and wonder what the hell the editor was thinking.
There are other changes which aren’t as obvious if you don’t know the original cut, but if you do, they stand out as poor editing and poor cinematography. Like the giant lizard walking in front of the camera during the “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” conversation. They’re decisions of a man who thinks showing off a special effect is neat whether it hurts the scene or not.
Oddly, the thing fans hate most, Greedo shooting first, is the least offensive change in terms of editing. There are hinky things about the ways they faked it, but it’s not dead time, repeated lines, or something obscuring the camera at a critical moment.
Right, the Greedo change is hated because it changes Han’s character arc in a stupid way. (And it looks awful.)
The repetition of information is something that plagued Phantom Menace. Almost every plot point is repeated several times. The first hints of doom lie in the special editions, as you point out, much as the first hints of more general doom lie in Jedi.
(That past tense on Phantom Menace is intentional, since it’s dead to me. Only The Phantom Edit resides in the eternal present.)
The saddest part is that George Lucas used to think that most science fiction films failed because they let their special effects get in the way of story. Literally, in some shots.
The way I remember it, the moment when I decided The Phantom Menace sucked was when Qui-Gon Jinn does the Jedi mind trick on the big fish… and then does it again a moment later, as if Lucas thought the audience didn’t get it the first time. There was of course lots of bad stuff before that, but that was the breaking point for me.
I would prefer all unknown actors for the new movies. One of my many dislikes with the 3 newest Star Wars is the loss of disbelief seeing lots of well-known actors. Oh look, there’s Liam Neeson … and there’s Natalie Portman, … and now Ewan McGregor. bleh
Phantom Menace sucked pretty much after he failed at melting through the reinforced door with his light saber.
I play this game with my wife and kids every time I see Episode I,II, or III in the channel list on cable.
If I change the channel to the movie, and it’s not a scene where people are standing around having a meeting, I will declare that the prequel trilogy did not ruin my childhood.
I’ve never lost that bet.
I did my own edit years ago of Episode I. You can make that kid really really evil just by adding the scene where he beats the crap out of kid greedo and removing most of his crappy dialog. Think about it, this 10 year old jumps in a space ship, kicks the crap out of stuff, and blows up a giant baseship, then without a word, then flies out of the explosion and home. If that is not some serious Darth Vader shit…totally works since Jake always has kind of an angry look on his face.
Jar Jar oddly doesn’t need to be chopped up as much, there are some lines that can stay, but most of his full scenes were removed.
I’ve never seen a fan edit, but man, cutting out the dialog would improve that bit enormously. And anything that makes clear he did it all by accident.
Topher Grace from That 70s Show made a 90 minute edit that combines all three prequels (including only a few minutes from the first film) that sounds pretty great. He gets rid of the politics and the clone stuff, and focuses on Anakin.
90 minutes is about right when I think of the good parts.
See I didn’t find the visuals that appealing in the prequels. They were too busy overall i found, to make for a comfortable viewing where i can focus and see what is actually happening in the shot. That’s not to say big epic stuff is not possible to do in a film, just that in the prequels i found it so stuffed to the gills it ultimately detracted from the intensity that clutter was designed to communicate, sometimes less is more etc. That’s my neutral criticism on the ‘special effects’.
Once we dig into the childish and juvenile stuff that was like a badly thought out and executed idea of what an adult thought a child might like to buy merchandise, then the neutrality gloves come right off, hard. The Ewoks were Shakespere compared to Jar-Jar and most of all that kind of stuff in the prequels etc. Still probably it is just better if i quote Gus here:
Because if there is not even a doubt inside of you over the difference between the original trilogy and the prequels, these films might mean different things to us at some fundamental level? For me Star Wars was not about the Lightsabers (even if they were cool, noble weapons), it was much more than that, spiritual and holy even? And talking of things spiritual and holy, the prequels are akin to the Pope taking a crap on the steps to the pulpit at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. That’s how ‘insulting’ the prequels feel to me. I just can’t watch them even as light entertainment, they are that obnoxious towards what went before. Heh heh, if this sounds so extreme and incomprehensible to you, then as i said already, we just view the original films in a different way.
Sadly, the only thing that can redeem the prequels was if time was to go backwards and Lucas never made them at the stage of his life when he did. Maybe, just maybe if he had made them (even without the technology he feels he needed (but is part of the problem of the new films)) four or five years after Return of the Jedi, they might not have been so bad that i would have preferred them to not exist in their current state at all. Maybe. The Ewoks had already shown a bad change of thinking, so maybe the seed of corruption was already in place and really Return of the Jedi should have been the last by all those involved at the time?