I know a lot of 35+ fags post here.
Tell us how it was.
Tell us about everything - the hype, the trailer reaction, fan theories, the premiere.
I know it was huge, but there's no way I would've been able to live through it as I'm too fucking young. I want the feelings, the sweet-sweet details, the whole atmosphere of this event of a film.
I know a lot of 35+ fags post here
I was eight when this came out in theatres. There was so much excitement and anticipation for this movie. I remember my Dad renting the original trilogy on VHS marathon over a weekend to prepare us for it.
I liked the film, but was a bit confused about the politics of the film, and found the senate scenes a bit boring, it was more than made up for with the action.
Jar-Jar was omnipresent in kids advertising, but I don't remember anyone finding him funny or liking him very much.
I remember enjoying it and getting toys and shit.
There was an insane level of hype leading up to it. Probably the most hype I've seen for a movie in my life and I haven't seen hype like it since.
I didn't really care about Star Wars when AotC came out. I never saw RotS and I never will.
I wish I could have experienced Star Wars back when there were no prequels yet and the backstory was still mysterious and interesting. I like some of the ideas in the prequels but these movies really don't complement the OT that well, it feels more like its own thing that then got connected to the OT world in a really awkward and unnatural way.
I don't remember anyone finding him funny or liking him very much.
Sometimes I really wonder what Lucas was thinking with this character
people think disney isnt astroturfing these incessant threads because they uhh resent the prequels they make money from for being too based or something
i was a kid, people were absolutely blown away by Darth Maul, he was like the motherfucking devil and that lightsaber was a hype generator, people were too much excited about that kid being the future Darth vader and we wouldnt even dream about how that kid would fall so hard, the effects and all the cinematography looked amaziing and i remember the podraciong competition being a really nice part.
People receive it very well, it was awesome back then, but yoy know, years after some fucking faggots began to whine about the politics and shit, but i remember it as a great movie.
People didint hate Jar Jar as much as they hate him today, he was just a silly character, we were blown away by the Jedi abilities too, the original trilogy have an Old Darth Vader and a luke that barely can be seen as a true Jedi, so it was great to see 2 Jedis doing crazy stuff with the lightsabers
I was also 8 when this came out. Hype was absolutely huge. Everyone I knew was excited for it, toy promotions, fast-food promotions, et cetera. We were already big on the original Star Wars movies in our house, rented them several times a year.
I honestly liked it, my brother liked it, most of my friends liked it. A few friends who were a little more "plugged in" to adult opinions, either through internet or older siblings or nerdy parents or whatever, were trashing it, but they were a minority opinion in my circle of influence at that time. I definitely didn't think it was "as good" as the originals, but I wasn't disappointed, I was into it. Obi Wan and Qui Gon were cool, Darth Maul was cool, all the new droid designs were cool, the Gungan city was cool, podracing was cool. I was into the video games and legos after the fact.
By the time Attack of the Clones came out, I was a little bit older, and the movie seemed notably bad to me. Much of what I liked was not present, and I was at a point where I would actually notice if lines of dialogue were very stupid, and there was a lot of that. By the time episode 3 came out I just didn't really care anymore, I went along and saw it but I wasn't pushing to see it
I was legally an adult when it came out and it was a movie that was released. Only huge dorks and little kids really gave a shit. It was ok
I remember the other children would laugh at jarjar binks' antics but I did not
It was cool seeing "Old Ben" as a padawan. Qui Gon's character was really cool, a wise mentor whose humility never undermined his resolve or conviction. The worldbuilding was interesting too - political feuds causing problems for individuals who aren't even involved, tangible and relatable reasons for the plot moving forward. Anakin as a bright, heroic yet immature individual really underscores the way people can change when moved by tragedy. The lightsaber fights were WICKED, far better than anything in the OT; I remember them capturing the imaginations of the kids on the playground. My brother and I used to bring shortened pool noodles out to have swordfights, imitating our heroes. What an undeniable cultural phenomenon, something that couldn't be tarnished even by the jeering of a greasy obese jew and his entourage on youtube.
ROTS is unironically the best starslop movie
He wanted a goody comic relief character that the kids would like. We'd all grown up on old Star Wars and his character didn't sit right with us.
My greatest Jar-Jar memory is that they used to sell Jar-Jar sticky tongue toys (pic related) that you could use to grab small cardboard targets, but kids held it by the tongue and used it to hit other children, so they were quickly banned at school.
He said you all hated c3po in ANH
I was in middle school when it came out so I don't completely remember. But I was a huge Star Wars fan since I was a little kid and we owned the OT on VHS.
I remember that people camped out in front of the movie theater to get tickets, some of them wearing costumes. I don't think any movie in my life has had that level of hype. I thought it was good overall. I remember just thinking that it wasn't quite in line with the OT, and even though I was only 13 I still thought parts of it were dumb and childish (like Jar Jar, or Anakin's "oops" as he accidentally beats the bad guys), but the podracing was fucking great and so was Darth Maul and those fights. Qui Gon's death caught me off guard, I thought he was going to be a main figure in the trilogy I guess.
I was 24 when the movie came out.
First concrete info we got about the movie was in the official SW magazine around '97 or so when they showed concept art. Then slowly after, leaked set photos, plot rumours and toy pics. All of which I devoured until they started getting a little too spoilery, so I hit the brakes and went blind. I was even intending on skipping the trailers, but it got shown on TV during a show I never thought would have shown it (that's how big it was) late at night while I was baked out of my mind on weed. To say it was almost better than sex is no exaggeration. My mum worked at a retailer which received toys and she would tell me about them. A friend of mine saw the movie on pirate VHS and he was highly positive, which got me even more hyped.
Launch weekend you could not get away from the movie if you tried. It didn't matter where you were. It was insane. I went to see it with a different SW nerd friend. It was morning and local news crews were wrapping up from interviewing attendees from the midnight screening. We sat in the audience waiting while they played music from the movie, amazed because we didn't recognise it. The movie finally started and he let out a 'FUCK YEAH' which got a laugh. I absolutely loved the film and still do. I went to see the rerelease with pirate VHS guy last year and had a blast. We still gift each other Jar Jar toys at christmas.
You're right, there has never been a movie with the insane amount of hype it had and there never will be again. It was truly a unique moment in time.
I remember being excited for it.
Then I saw it and was no longer excited.
I never bothered with anything else having to do with star wars after that.
We still gift each other Jar Jar toys at christmas
Hmmmm
Camped for three days in the west Texas heat to get tickets for myself and 10 other people. The hype was very real. In hindsight, I think I derived more pleasure from playing Star Wars Trivial Pursuit with the strangers in the line than I got from the actual film.
The hype was unreal. Endgame was the last time the hype for a movie even sniffed Phantom Menace. They did not hold back with the advertising. You'd have people pay full price for a movie they didn't want to see, just to watch the Episode I trailer and walk out when it was finished. My best friend and I would talk about it nonstop, and we collected the Taco Bell pogs with all the characters on them.
As for the movie itself, it wasn't life-changing, but we definitely liked it. The Darth Maul lightsaber fight lived up to expectations. The podrace was great, too. Everything else was just sort of a neat adventure. We'd play make-believe Star Wars and make up our own Jedi thanks to the precedent of there being lots of them. Episode II was the one that really soured my opinion of the prequels.
i remember going to the theater with my dad and younger sister but I was 9 so I don't have a very crisp memory. more importantly it got me into this book series which in turn got me into reading in general.
There were tents outside of theaters
The hype was crazy
I was not allowed to watch TV, so it was probably another 10 years before I actually saw it
Whole family was disappointed with the movie overall. I was 10. Podracing scene was pretty cool and the lightsaber fight were great plus the music, but everyone hated jar jar and did the meesah voice for months afterwords.
The anticipation was better than the film. Collected all the Pepsi cans with the characters in them. I can't express the amount of marketing and excitement everyone had leading up to release. The whole world was going to see this movie, and they were mostly underwhelmed. For weeks every snl or madtv skit was making fun of jar jar.
44 year old boomer here. i'll recount it as a i remember it.
Before prequels:
Mom is a huge Star Wars fan. She has fond memories of watching it in the theaters. It was the biggest thing during their time and the it really revolutionized scifi. I grew up hearing stories how great it was. Hell I've watched the original trilogy probably 20 or more times before I turned 13.
Prequels announced:
Man, the advertising and promotion for The Phantom Menace was unreal. Everywhere and I mean everywhere, tv, radio, billboards, you can see it. The hype is unreal. Everyone was anticipating for it.
Movie comes out:
I remember watching the movie with my mom, we were so hyped. Sadly the movie is meh. After the movie ended, the people just left quietly, I knew it wasn't good but I kept quiet but my mom said after "well that movie was quite bad".
I felt sad. I really wanted to be part of the hype of the star wars culture, but now we have this slop.
2nd prequel movie comes out.
I didn't watch this one, I just waited it on DVD, it was better but I grew out of my nostalgia for Star Wars by tha ttime then. I'll look fondly to the original trilogy but the prequels will always be shit to me.
thanks for reading my tedtalk
I was in high-school. Grade 10 I think.
I was a huge star wars fan as were a few of my pals.
We went opening weekend to a matinee.
The hype was unbelievable.
The only memory I have was walking out of the theatre after the show being blinded by the sun and having a massive headache and thinking "what the fuck was that". I was numb. Maybe shell shocked.
I can tell you no movie even comes close to the amount of marketing and anticipation and hype of this movie. The entire country was going to see this movie. Avengers end game was maybe 2% of episode 1's hype, you obviously remember that.
They tried with Avatar but it also wasn't even a fraction of what this movie was culturally as global anticipation goes. Easily the most anticipated film in history and it's not even close. Not even the two towers (which I went nuts for) measures up.
But it was kind of a bust, jar jar really took a beating, and probably ruined it. Watching that opening text crawl with the music was the most excited I've ever been in a movie theater and will never be topped.
The hype was absolutely insane. When that trailer showed a double edged lightsaber, we all collectively lost our shits
opening crawl
man that shit still gives me the chills. everyone in the theater clapped when it was shown along with OOOOOOOUWWWWWWUUUUUU
Similar for me. I was probably 19 or 20 at the time. Was lucky enough to see ROJ in theatres and was a massive fan of the movies and toys for the original trilogy.
I know the internet was out there before this came out but it was before I was really ever online so I didn’t have access to spoilers or message boards. It was all very mysterious. A music video was released on MTV for Duel of the Fates that showed a lot of footage. A review came out in Time or Newsweek that pretty much savaged the film so I was prepared for the worst. I went to a midnight showing on opening night. A guy in full Darth Mail costume took a piss next to me in the bathroom before the movie.
Was absolutely horrified after. The hype was just too big. Nothing was ever going to live up to the expectations of us fans of the OT. Looking back at the movies they are fun now but they were really terrible and a stake through the heart at the time.
AICN spoiled everything
I miss going to AICN everyday.
Same man, I was 10 and I still get nostalgic for it. The movie credits ended and it got real quiet and then
a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....
DAHH DUDUDUDUHHH....
the whole theater went nuts and I remember getting the chills. It was so fucking awesome and then... oh muey muey I love you.
...uh wtf is this?
I had that Jar Jar lollipop where you'd suck his tongue
can attest. Was roughly 9 and I never found Jar Jar funny in the slightest. But I never hated him either. The hate came from the older crowd who expected their serious star wars--and I get that. But I never found any real reason to hate the guy. Thankfully Lucas toned him down immensely in the second and third episode as I expect he might've came across as far obnoxious than intended.
Outside of that, I really enjoyed the podracing sequence and the lightsaber duel with Maul. The politics also flew over my head but I wasn't bothered by it. It wasn't nearly heavy handed as many people like to think. In retrospect as an adult, I wish there was a deeper examination of galactic politics but I guess that's what Andor is for.
I played the PS1 game of Eps I, which was great. I also bugged my dad to buy the soundtrack which I still play. In the decades afterwards, I never felt guilty about liking it or the rest of the prequels. I think much of the lashing out came from, again, older fans who were expecting much more than what they were given and they formed a cult around that. In truth, they're right though only slightly. When you look at the material that was removed from all three movies, there was something that would've made these movies legendary. But in the end, Lucas went with what he wanted.
If you're looking for something deeper, I recommend the novels.
sometimes i wish i could go back at that time and experience it all over again. I have never ever ever felt getting hyped for something like that in my life again. Whether its a new game, a new movie, a new something, nothing could ever top the anticipation for TPM. I really wish I could experience it one more time before I die or at least see my son anticipating for something like that.
I had this darth maul rubix cube thing
I'm 33 but in any case: after spending more hours than I'm willing to admit reading (((non-canon))) Star Wars books I finally understand the prequel politics, which all hinge on Palpatine and his motives.
Palpatine and his Master Darth Plagueis are attempting to dominate the galaxy by means of political manipulation. Plagueis is tied to the banks and uses his wealth to fund groups that will benefit him. As a political figure, and eventual Senator of Naboo, Palpatine focuses on manipulating the Trade Federation. On one side, he pressed Supreme Chancellor Valorum to impose taxes on the Trade Federation - this will strengthen the Republic by bringing in more credits. At the same time, this will offend the Trade Federation, who see this taxation as theft. During this time, Palpatine also secretly works with pirate factions (e.g. the Nebula Front) to have them attack the Trade Federation - forcing the Trade Federation to bolster their defenses, namely by getting a Droid Army. Palpatine, now as Darth Sidious, tells the Trade Federation to enact a blockade on Naboo, which eventually a) erodes confidence in Supreme Chancellor Valorum and subsequently gets Palaptine elected in his place and b) further creates schisms between the worlds of the Republic - who continue to see the Republic as a large, slow, bureaucratic mess. This eventually leads into Separatist movement which is explored in Episode II.
documentary
I remember waiting in a line that wrapped around the block for hours just to buy tickets when they went on sale a week before the movie came out. I remember when they had a midnight sale for the toys at Toys R Us and the line for that was massive and people went insane once inside buying all the merch. I remember all the fast food tie ins and going to Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC to get limited movie items. Even when the trailer came out, people were buying tickets to Meet Joe Black and then walking out after the trailer played instead of staying and watching the movie. I have never seen hype for a film since then. Nothing has ever reached that level. Now imagine how insane it would have been if Lucas had delivered a classic, instead of a divisive film.
Nothing was ever going to live up to the expectation
This is the thing that I think op won't be able to grasp. It was literally larger than life and it was ironically too much. People were so excited even passive fans. It kind of shot itself in the foot. Even if jar jar was handled better and the whimsical crap was cut down it would never be as good as people were hoping for.
It was the first trailer I ever watched on a computer. I had to let it download overnight.
While the movie was disappointing, the trailer 100% lived up to the hype. As Mr. Plinkett said, "Never again will anything be more wildly anticipated, or a bigger disappointment."
Other things that added to the hype/optimism:
1. Years of awesome LucasArts games.
2. The 90s in general were an awesome, optimistic time, and this was the culmination of the era.
3. Computer stuff just kept getting better and better, so we were hyped for Star Wars but with novel computer effects.
4. Surround sound in theaters was relatively new as well.
It was an interesting time. I think a lot of us didn't really know what to expect with an entire prequel trilogy meant to build up to the original films.
As we all know, Duel of the Fates went hard and a LOT of criticisms people had of the movie were blasted right out of the airlock when they saw those scenes. Jar Jar wasn't funny, but unlike a LOT of the sequel trilogy characters, he actually had a personality based on experiences and had a purpose to the story. The Pod race was also an EXCELLENTLY done scene that people loved, even if it was basically pointless to the overall story. There was so much creativity in the setting, characters, droids, plot beats, and Jedi/Sith philosophies to make us even more invested in the universe. No one cared about the midichlorian explanation until RLM (misunderstanding what they were supposed to be) bungled their fat asses into the conversation. It was a different time where marketing was everywhere yet you still had no idea what the story would be about. Darth Maul was a cool addition. Fan theories were everywhere regarding how the two films would connect to the OT. Jake Lloyd was criticized for his acting, but to be honest, I think that's also an issue of Lucas' inability to bring out better acting under his direction and his ability of being blunt with his dialog. He's a lot like Hideo Kojima in that way. I would also say that Natalie Portman's acting is just as wooden, but she gets none of the criticism here.
It still had that Star Wars magic, but it was still such an anomaly because it was so different from the other films.
I mean, you can still go there, but yeah it's not the same. AICN was *the* place to go for movie news and discussion in the late '90s and early '00s.
I wonder how many people felt something drop within them as soon as that first paragraph was fully revealed.
"Phantom Menace was boring! It had politics!"
"A New Hope" literally opens up with a conflict about the Senate gaining sympathy for a splinter faction of the government.
Star Wars literally opens with the most impressive spaceship effects in sci-fi history at the time firing on each other.
For me, it was when the half asian/half jew alien says "as you know our brockade is perfectry regal." My friend and I looked at each other and were like "oh no." There were still some great elements in the film, but Lucas really needed someone to stand up to him and tell him to cut some of the dumb shit. But he was surrounded by "yes" men who were afraid to call him out.
Pretty much. People thought it was going to change their lives or give it new meaning. They turned up at premieres wearing costumes as a badge of honour. Lucas can say 'it's just a movie', and he's right, but sometimes I don't think he quite realises how important Star Wars is to nerds who don't have much else going on.
Massive hype unlike anything that has come after that completely fizzled out by the time AotC was released because TPM was just that bad.
"yes" men
That butterface oof... poor girl, she obviously worked hard to get that body that a commitment, she's fucking tight as fuck...I mean still would no question but this is a fucking brutal face mogging.
Yes, I forgot Phantom Menace has no action at the start.
youtu.be
I will always find a reason to add this video:
That scene is how many minutes in?
Keep spamming your retarded text wall, loser. Lucas did not finance ANH, so he did have to listen to producers and executives on the project. Also, Lucas never directed the kinds of decent acting performances is his other SW films than what we got in Empire Strikes Back. We know Natalie Portman can act, and Hayden can act, as they have had really good performances in other things, but they were dogshit in the prequels and that is due to Lucas.
Yeah it's becoming more well known that the revisionist bullshit of RLM and their ilk is exactly that, bullshit
Rick Worley's videos on the subject are particuarly and decisively savage. Lucas wins more every day
Who cares? Better action than ANH, or are we only going by the metrics you think matter?
One begins three minutes in the other is five minutes in. Are you a barber? Because you REALLY are splitting hairs.
Lucas did not finance ANH
Correct
he did have to listen to producers and executives on the project
False. He answered to Ladd Jr and that's it. Ladd Jr was so enamoured with American Graffiti that he basically let Lucas do whatever he wanted so long as he didn't go over budget.
actors don't emote unless the director encourages it
You unbelievably retarded fuckhead. Actors left to their own devices will improvise, add flourish, and generally show off. The subdued performances of the prequels are a deliberate throwback to pre-method acting. Get out of this thread you uneducated fucking parrot
Shadows of the Empire multimedia campaign through the 90s to set up the Prequels, financially and hype wise
titular N64 game + Rogue Squadron hype for new 3D home consoles
Re-release of OT in theaters (great, despite janky Jabba)
Needed more Palps & Maul scheming. More galactic politics exposition. Jar Jar tolerable bio-C3P0 slapstick, but yung Anakin was harder to watch (but more or less accurate-- ought've been closer to tweens to make the Hayden Christensen recast less jarring). MacGregor & Nielson weren't hard to get invested in as new characters.
Long lines. Remember people in costumes and such queueing.
If Asimov Mule type Chaotic Neutral force user was the idea with Jar Jar, there had to be more sussy scenes of him telling Anakin to trust his gut. The opening introducing him to Qui-Gon & Obi - them not detecting his presence in the force - suggests the lizards were Ysalamiri (force absorbing/blocking creatures from the Thrawn EU trilogy), and/or Jar Jar himself was some kind of force user-- and his exile from Gunganland made it sound like he was a murder suspect. Whatever it was, George was too subtle with it.
The podrace was great, too.
So was the game. Felt like fighter pilot (Star Fox) POV but on the ground.
For ROTS there's a 5 hour cut. Presumably similar amounts of cut material for the others. We'll live to see Extended Editions, like LOTR. There are definitely tighter narratives possible with the existing material.
no movie even comes close to the amount of marketing and anticipation and hype of this movie.
Still remember the Taco Bell 'happy meal' toys for the OT rerelease. That kind of decade long media campaign by Lucas was exactly what wasn't done after the Disneed sale. Iger wanted a quick return, and he got it, albeit radically underperforming compared to the Prequels in merchandising & box office (they arguably bankrupted Toys R Us single handedly, Hasbro's steel reeling from it).
I recommend the novels.
The Revenge of the Sith one is objectively good, genre fiction or otherwise, and has exposition even TCW didn't satisfy.
There is nothing worse than a comic relief character that is not funny. Maybe little kids thought Jar Jar was funny, but he was so annoying that it really made me pissed off coming out of the theater in 1999. I remember thinking what a dissapointment it was, waiting 16 years for new Star Wars and we got....THAT? The only good thing from it was Ewan as Obi-wan.
Imagine the CIS systems seeing the Empire rise from the Republic they lost to. That's the kind of non-aligned 3rd wheel motivation to GTFO that would have given more depth to Luthin & Saw in Andor material. It's a shame Lucas didn't come up with Dooku & Lee's character until the second film + setups for it in the first. The Qui-Gon connection's potential's underdeveloped.
Better action than ANH
Oh my god, fuck off you retarded zoomer.
No one cared about the midichlorian explanation until RLM
Even space faring people still have religion (Jedi/Force), and the midichlorian correlation was as best as they could come up with to measure force user potential (which wasn't guaranteed). It was fine, if clunky.
The merch was everywhere. The toys with the little chips that you could scan on the communicator were sweet, Jar-Jar lollipop, KFC collectors cups, promotions in potato chip bags, the PS1 game murdering all the npcs, Star Wars racer with all the pods from the movie, then the movie itself. I was only a kid at the time but it was still a big fucking deal.
Jake Lloyd was criticized for his acting, but to be honest, I think that's also an issue of Lucas' inability to bring out better acting under his direction and his ability of being blunt with his dialog. He's a lot like Hideo Kojima in that way.
Lloyd and the role were perfectly plausible naive small boy dialogue. It's just intrinsically hard if not cringe to watch. The age gap's simply too much and he ought've been 12 at least, if just for professional child actor maturity & softening the recast age jump to Hayden. Partagaz & Krennik's actors in Andor are examples of actors that get the mission intuitively (Lee too). It's just a shame the burden of directing for Lucas was too much to bear and enough of his top choices balked to where he had to say "Fuck it." and do it himself, despite hating directing.
I remember not really liking it when it came out, but maybe being optimistic I'd get it later. I was raised on the OT vhs, collected the toys, read the books, played the video games and just felt like Star Wars was "bigger" than a movie I didn't immediately care for. I guess I felt indifferent?
There definitely wasn't an immediate backlash, but I was definitely part of the wave of people that thought "maybe I'll just stick with the OT." I would say prequel love was "uncommon" during, say, the Obama years.
But hey, since the ancient heads are here, do you really think Phantom Menace hype was bigger than Batman 89? I still have Batmania as the bar for monoculture franchise hype, but you tell me
Natalie Portman can act
Leon doesn't count, nonce.
The subdued performances of the prequels are a deliberate throwback to pre-method acting.
So Lucas intentionally wanted them to act like shit? Or maybe since he hadn't directed a film in decades, and spent so much time on all the other parts of the film, he lost the ability to get good performances from his actors.
It's really simple, bitch. Did Lucas have more control over the prequel trilogy or the original trilogy? You can't say he had the same level, as he did not have complete control over ANH, and he had complete freedom with the prequels, and by that point had achieved legendary status so people were less likely to question him. So we know he had more control of the PT than the OT, therefore when given more control and freedom he delivered a worse product, as it is universally known that the PT was not as good as the OT.
Disney has turned SW to shit, but let's not try and rewrite history and make it seem like Lucas could do no wrong.
The hype
Unironically paid to see three movies in a day just to watch the teaser trailer (did the same again when the real trailer came out)
the reality
More disappointed than mad. You also have to put into context that '99 was a kino year so it looked worse than it was, and you quickly forgot about it because so many good movies were coming out. It also didn't really kill the hype, because even though no one expected Clones and Sith to be any good, everyone spent ages on AICN etc constantly looking through leaks and news and speculating like crazy.
No one cared about the midichlorian explanation until RLM
That's not true at all. If you weren't a kid when TPM came out most people thought the delivery of that whole midichlorian exchange between Jake Lloyd and Liam Neeson was retarded, and the explanation was not asked for and dumb.
Oh my god, fuck off you retarded zoomer.
Wow, only a boomer is so deluded.
Yeah, why did Anakin have to be that young in the film? It becomes much harder to find decent actors as that age. Plus it makes the Anakin/Padme thing creepy. He should have been a tween or young teenager.
and the explanation was not asked for and dumb.
It had to be based on blood. They already said so in the originals: "The Force is strong in your family."
If the Force was based only on training that anyone can do, then literally there would be no reason why there wouldn't be numerous factions of force users wouldn't be across the entire galaxy.
do you really think Phantom Menace hype was bigger than Batman 89?
Easily. Massively. But Batmania was still no joke. Prince on the radio 24/7, every fifth guy you walked past had a Joker shirt, posters and merch everywhere. In order in terms of prerelease hype-
1. The Phantom Menace
2. Batman
3. Jurassic Park
4. E.T.
Titanic is a weird outlier by having bags of post release hype but little for prerelease. Word of mouth and general exposure was insane once people actually saw it. People say Avengers was a big deal but I don't remember shit about it.
It was needed to emphasize the attachment from the loss of his mother
correction
1. The Phantom Menace
huge gap
2. Batman
There's a huge fucking gap between TPM hype and The Batman Hype. The TPM anticipation was an another level.
There was episode 1 Pepsi shit everywhere
Age may play a part in this. I was 18 when TPM came out plus we had internet. The hype around Batman 89 was MASSIVE to me and the school yard. I remember being so mad that I wasn't old enough to see it in a theater and then the excitement of seeing a wall of copies of the VHS at the rental store the year after with the Batman Logo as the sole image. I remember the adults (notably my uncle) shitting on 89 Batman as a complete travesty, while I absolutely loved it. I also had the tie in graphic novel. Meanwhile I strongly disliked TPM and AICN and other sites were at full power by then so it wasn't just "oh well, that sucked, move on", it was months of bitching and nitpicking and Banned From The Ranch and the Cannes leaks and IMDB spoilers etc.
If you weren't a kid, you were the retard for watching lol
Titanic had a pre-release documentary that played on TV that built huge hype among foids in a short time. But like Sixth Sense that hype train was a genuine audience, word-of-mouth reaction really. I thought titanic was mega gay, but people lost their fucking minds for that film in a way I hadn't seen before.
I was a kid. The movie theater in my town felt like a mini Star Wars convention. Nerds were in cosplay and had plastic lightsabers and stuff.
I remember "kinda liking it" for the same reason I kinda liked everything I saw in theaters. Flashing lights and colors, loud sounds, etc. Weeks afterward he only part I could remember was the Darth Maul fight, which was explicitly made to make adolescents think it's kewl.
It was my first ever star wars movie and I hated it. And I was the target audience. I thought jarjar was annoying. I didn't like that quigon died. I hated anakin. Couldn't relate to him at all. I like obiwan though. Amidala pissed me off. Story was to complex for my little six year old mind to comprehend. I never saw another star wars movie until episode 3 came out. I didn't understand why there was so much hype around the franchise. Then I saw the originals. My god those were so good. 4 and 5 especially so. 6 sucked. Felt too much like new star wars with the ewoks. I really wish that I watched the original trilogy before the prequels, because knowing that vader was anakin really ruined empire for me. It was still good just not as good as it could've been. Saw episode 7 walked out half way. Thought it was garbage. Haven't watched another star wars movie since. Dont like star wars videogames either.
Did Lucas have more control over the prequel trilogy or the original trilogy?
Yes, by a fraction. Which has nothing to do with your lazy, borrowed critique of the prequels.
Also, define 'good' acting. You can't because you don't understand how acting works.
Then, as now, I felt absolutely nothing but confusion and indifference. The soundtrack was better than the film.
Pic related completely stole the prequels thunder.
You don't need the midichlorians to achieve that explanation though. Even the midichlorians don't create the force, but are attracted to it so they show up in higher levels in a person strong with the force. It was a dumb idea. We know from previous films that force sensitive people can tell if the force is strong with another person just by feeling it, so why did they need a measurable entity? Just say it can be passed on from parents, and other force users can feel when someone is strong with the force, and they travel around the galaxy to meet special kids to see if they might be candidates for the Jedi academy. Instead a simple blood test at birth determines if you become a Jedi, that's lame, and makes it much easier for new force users to be found.
Intelligence is hereditary and you don't tell someone's intelligence from a blood test.
I need this esky so damn bad. Episode 1 easily has the best tie-in merch. Only episode 3 comes close to the level of social ubiquity.
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Also not sure if mentioned - but we all knew two more movies were coming. So some of the disappointment was offset by hoping they would be great. Also it was nice to have Star Wars again. The other thing, was that unlike Harry Potter or millenials 2000s nerd culture, there was still a touch of lameness to Star Wars. We all remember Triumph going to the opening weekends etc.
I saw it when I was 12 and even I knew the gungans and jar jar were supposed to be black people and I thought it was strange. I had a bunch of Darth Maul shit so I fell for the dual lightsaber meme
Tell us about everything - the hype, the trailer reaction, fan theories, the premiere.
The hype was so fucking huge, it was before the era of teasers for movies premiering online first, its was 1999 and you had to see the trailer in the theater before a movie, and there was people paying full price for a movie just to see the Phantom Menace trailer. I remember seeing the first ad on tv, seeing Ewan McGregor as young Obi-wan, and Darth Maul igniting his double lightsaber was so fucking cool.
Then I saw the movie and it sucked balls.
be me
be in IRC
lmao LOTR looks fucking stupid. That first trailer looks embarassing. This is gonna flop. Even Harry Potter is going to destroy it. What were they thinking. George Lucas should send condolensces to Jackson
2nd "internet" trailer drops
hmmm. That was actually pretty cool
See it opening weekend
meh, fantasy gay, if Star Wars is still nerdy, than normies are going to abandon this after opening weekend
becomes absolute juggernaut, dwarfs Star Wars, no one getting bullied for liking it, foids have Legolas posters on their walls
Will admit I was very wrong about LOTR
I've always thought him belong 17 would solve 90% of the films problems. Don't even have to change any dialog.
are you an angel? You're a funny little boy
Would hit so much differently him actually hitting on her.
he's too old.
Makes more sense, how fucking young so you have to be?
winning the podrace being a genius building 3p0, being cocky and disobeying quigon and flying into space and blowing up the ship.
Literally everything makes more sense and more believable. Even leaving his mother would be even more of an emotional gut punch being older with the exact same dialog.
there was still a touch of lameness to Star Wars. We all remember Triumph going to the opening weekends etc.
This ("bullying" culture from the mid 20th century to the 2000s) morphed into "cringe culture." The weird thing is people who are now "into" Star Wars as some bloated mediocre Disney property would have been the same people mocking its fans back in the day. Some of them probably are the same people.
I'm a massive Cameron fan and even I didn't bother to see it at release because I thought it looked homosexgay. I was wrong of course, it's a fucking masterpiece.
I watched the OT on VHS at least once a week for years. Had a bunch of toys. I barely remember anything about the actual theater experience other than watching the film, but I loved it, Jar Jar and all. The huge multimedia push at the time really made it feel like an event: video games, constant new action figures, Pizza Hut collaborations, etc.
The following couple years felt like the Star Wars universe was opening up in ways we could have only speculated about before, and it was insane to finally start to see the threads connecting. Unfortunately I really didn't like the digital slop, militaristic vibe of the following two films, and I kind of fell off of Star Wars for a while. AotC and RotS lacked the whimsy of Star Wars in a big way, I think. Reevaluating the films as an adult, I think I honestly like them more, and of course they pretty much had to deal with the Clone Wars in some way, but it's so weird to me that there were kids who grew up on a show about a bunch of Boba Fetts running around and doing gay army stuff.
See this is my experience as well. I'm sure if you start breaking down numbers the Phantom Menace hype, merch, etc outdid Batman, but there was no facet of life Batman didn't didn't penetrate. The only real claim Batman has over TPM for cultural dominance was the attachment of Prince. Memories are a funny thing, but I swear the amount of shirts and bumper stickers you would just see "around" during Batmania proper beat Phantom Menace.
I'll also throw Independence Day, Men In Black and T2 in the rink for omnipresent cultural events on release.
That movie is bullshit. Instead of focusing on the heroism of normal people attempting to save others at the cost of their own lives, it's all about this retarded romance between these two fictional nobodies where they also had First Officer William Murdoch commit suicide for taking bribes where he was an honorable man. It's a slap in the face of the actual history.
Cameron is a telenovela filmmaker tricking people into thinking he's some kind of grand emotional filmmaker using sci-fi trappings.
as a casual Star Wars viewer who has seen all of the mainline movies (but only seen the prequels once or twice) I still don't even know what the clone wars were about or why it happened
This could be partially me not paying attention but I really think it's mostly poor conveyance on Lucas' part. Nobody doesn't remember or understand basic plot stuff from the first trilogy
Podracing was cool as fuck. Can't believe they haven't done anything with it other than the rerelease on switch.
Yeah, Lucas fucked up by not mirroring the OT. Make Anakin close to the age Luke was in ANH, but we see him turn to the dark side, instead of resisting it like Luke.
I walked out after 45 minutes and watched the rest later on VHS.
It's a garbage movie that doesn't even feel like Star Wars while Jar Jar Binks was and still is fucking terrible.
You can tell Lucas had regressed intellectually and had no one around to tell him how everything he was doing was shit.
Fuck this trash, fuck the prequels and most importantly FUCK YOU!!!FACT!!!
this the late night showings were more hype
CITIZEN LUCAS!!!FACT!!!
George Lucas dropped himself into shit by running his mouth off at Disney (during an interview with Charlie Rose) over Star Wars Episode 7 The Force Awakens, referring to them as “white slavers” in regards to their handling of the child he sold to them in exchange for four billion dollars, which also included Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound and Indiana Jones.
Afterwards Turkeyneck had to release a “special edition” of his comment where he claims to have misspoke and apologized but you know what’s really bothering him? A Star Wars movie was made without his involvement to huge financial success and it’s burning him up inside because even at this stage in life, George Lucas is and always has been a money grubbing control freak.
On the outside he’s cold and detached but, speaking as someone who was also born under the zodiac sign of the Taurus, under this exterior lays a strong-willed character with great perseverance, determination and passion who occasionally shovels out a lot of fucking bullshit!
One of the things that always confused me about the prequels was the reason why Lucas decided to Direct them when he hadn’t sat in the Director’s chair since making the first Star Wars? Over the years I thought it was because he was worried that either someone would make better movies than him, as Irvin Kershner did with The Empire Strikes Back, or that he just didn’t want to share a slice of the box office pie with whoever helmed them.
A gift. I got rid of the white dots and sharpened the image a little.
But Lucas is the type of guy who doesn’t do something unless he has a burning desire to and I now realize what that was.
Born in Modesto California, Lucas was an angry and repressed boy living with his parents and under the thumb of his Conservative Father which fueled George’s lifelong anti-authoritarianism. After high school he went to USC (University of Southern California) in the late 60’s where he found his vocation as an editor/filmmaker, eventually coming under the tutelage of Francis Ford Coppola with whom he co-founded American Zoetrope. During this time George met Marcia Griffin, a fellow editor, who he fell in love with and married while becoming friends with some of the most influential filmmakers of that time such as Steven Spielberg, Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, John Milius and Paul Schrader among others.
This was the height of Lucas’ success as he had nurturing support and healthy criticism from his near and dear while fandom regarded him as a God. But each movie that George Lucas has Directed reveals a piece of the puzzle that is his psyche as it unravels from idealistic youth to embittered old man living in his own Xanadu known as Skywalker Ranch.
THX 1138 was a feature film version of the award winning short film that brought Lucas to Coppola’s attention. In an underground futuristic Orwellian dystopia, THX 1138 is a worker drone emotionally controlled by the state. He’s brought out of his conditioned conformity by LUH 3417 with whom he makes love, which is forbidden, and inspires THX to escape onto the sunlit surface of the Earth. The thesis of the film is that emotion, love and sexuality can help free your mind and reflects George’s relationship with Marcia during those early days.
Unfortunately the movie bombed which is why Lucas changed gears and made American Graffiti. Now pushing 30, George’s reflective film was a nostalgic elegy for his childhood, set in 1962 before the cultural/political upheaval that later took place in the United States, about the fear and uncertainty a group of teens feel towards their upcoming graduation as adulthood beckons. The movie was a massive hit, giving George success far surpassing that of his Father but he now had bigger competition in the form of his former mentor Coppola who had become one of the most exalted filmmakers on the planet with The Godfather.
Lucas had no expectations with Star Wars, was convinced it was going to bomb and hoped that he could make more money than Francis with toy sales. In the end he made a movie that had more cultural impact that any other in cinema history not to mention the vast fortune he amassed from it. But despite its simple black and white, good versus evil plotline mined from mythology, it still feels like a deeply personal film that people have mistaken for a Vietnam allegory but is actually about his relationship with Coppola and Hollywood.
Luke Skywalker is a disaffected young man living in a cultural wasteland and spends his time hot rodding as Lucas did in Modesto. Longing for more in life, he comes into contact with young woman (Leia/Marcia) who leads him to an older sage (Ben/Francis) who takes him on an adventure to defeat the ruling class (Empire/Hollywood) and by using smaller equipment and fewer resources, the Rebels/Artists are able to take down the Death Star which could be seen as a metaphor for the Studio System who were trying to squash independent filmmakers with an original vision.
And even though he didn’t Direct them, you can still feel Lucas throughout Empire and Jedi. Now in a position of power himself, Luke/George is pursued by the Empire/Hollywood who wants him to serve them. The most significant scene in Empire is the vision in the cave when Luke decapitates Vader. This foreshadows the danger of Luke becoming like Vader, an authoritarian who is revealed to be his Father as Lucas must have been concerned that his drive for success was turning him into that which he rebelled against during his childhood. But by the time Jedi was released there was no happy ending as Lucas had turned to the Darkside which is why, on the surface, he paints a rosy picture of good defeating evil with the Ewoks being his subtextual comparison to the end of the Vietnam War and Luke rejecting the Emperor. But the reality is that even though a system of control was eliminated, another one would inevitably take its place just as the Hollywood moguls of old made way for the younger generation, like Lucas who aspired to not make the same mistakes and, in the end, replicated them while lying to himself in order to justify his actions.
It’s also noteworthy that by the end of the original trilogy Luke had lost Leia as a love interest just as Marcia left George soon after finishing Return of the Jedi as he became wound tighter due to his need to maintain success. This is why he’s more Turkeyneck now than man. Twisted and evil.
The Bagman logo WAS everywhere. T-shirts stickers, posters etc. Probably part of the perception.
During his hiatus from Directing, Lucas made some half-assed attempts at Producing films such as Howard the Duck, Willow and The Radioland Murders, all of which tanked. Then in 1994 he announced that he was going to be doing new Star Wars movies utilizing the latest digital technology which he claimed would allow him to make them the way he always dreamed of. Lying to one’s self is the beginning to the path of darkness and by the time the 90’s rolled around Lucas was also at ease with lying to the public.
Lucas originally saw the incredible success of Star Wars and its technological advances as something that he could use to transform cinema. But by the time the “Special Editions” of the OT were released it was clear that the new blockbuster system he helped to created had changed him and now he not only hated Star Wars but despised its fans. He would stick the knife in with Greedo shooting first and then twist it with Jar Jar Binks. This is because despite being a good idea man, Lucas just never really had anything to say and the only thing that ever really drove him was surpassing the success of his Father figures while maintaining his anti-authoritarian stance in a form of FUCK THE MAN! posturing. But as the 80’s wore on he began to strip himself of the people who helped guide him which is why, with the help of his wife and friends, Star Wars was filled with warmth and humanity unlike the prequels which are cold and lifeless.
TPM hype was ridiculous, but Batman gets an honorable mention for going up against Ghostbusters, Star Trek, Back to the Future, and Indiana goddamn Jones and still making them feel like also-rans. I didn't think Mr. Mom had it in him. BttF 2 and Last Crusade had better legs for cultural impact over time, but Batman ruled 1989 with presence.
Lucas could have hired more capable people to Write and Direct new Star Wars movies but he was determined to do them himself because he really did have something he wanted to say. At first I thought Anakin was supposed to be the Christ Child, born from an immaculate conception and destined to free the slaves ala Moses. But in reality he’s now the character George identifies with; a child without a Father figure who tinkers with technology as he himself had regressed, making the Phantom Menace into an infantile mess over reliant on cartoonish caricatures such as Jar Jar.
And while the crux of THX 1138 was about a man ascending into a new world through love and emotion, the Turkeyneck of today sees love as being a destructive force that brings people to ruin as it did to Anakin Skywalker. The Emperor in the Prequels is STAR WARS itself who used Anakin’s ambition against him, destroyed his marriage and employed him to eradicate the Jedi/Cinema with a clone army (JJ Abrams, Michael Bay, Brett Ratner, Paul “What Script?”Anderson, Len Wiseman etc….) to ensure the domination of his new Empire which he also did out of spite because “They don’t give Academy Awards to popular films” as Lucas commented to Charlie Rose in a blatant lie which was reminiscent of Anakin bitching about being allowed on the Jedi council yet not being given the rank of Master as Lucas no doubt see's himself, having never won an Oscar.
In gradeschool I had a wicket doll, a green plastic lightsaber, Jedi was the first one I was old enough to see in theater. At that time we were ALL wearing Michael Jackson jackets or sequin gloves, and talked about star wars all the time. It was common gossip that Lucas was planning 3 prequels and 3 more after Jedi. When it finally happened, I liked phantom, I liked that they were talking about trade routes causing war, because I was older then and star wars always seemed a little childish (star trek was rules and military in space, not as fun), it seemed more realistic. I won a Phantom VCD (cd-rom but with the movie pirated on it, i still have that) off ebay. Weird Al nailed the plot just from seeing trailers. As anons say, Phantom was *everywhere*. South Park did the jar-jar spoof.
So why did Lucas start shooting his mouth off during the interview? It’s because he’s an irrelevant old man who’s been living in his own reality for far too long. One of the things about getting old is realizing that you’re no longer a part of the zeitgeist and time is passing you by while you begin to assess the sum-total of your existence as you get closer to the end.
Turkeyneck lost the love of his life, never fathered any children, allowed his ego to burn down his legacy with the Prequels, not to mention Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and then let his greed piss on the ashes by selling everything he built before mouthing off to a corporation to make himself feel like he was sticking it to The Man before walking that comment back like a Flannel wearing dog having its nose rubbed into the shit it took on the carpet.
George Lucas has nothing left, not even his pride or dignity.
"Mr. Lucas was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe "Han shot first" was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any phrase can explain a man's life. No, I guess "Han shot first" is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece.”
!!!FACT!!!
I remember fan theories about the Clone Wars in the years before the PT. Some thought it meant Jedi were being cloned and raised to be evil, some thought politicians were being cloned and replaced so the Emperor could take over the galaxy. There were so many ways it could have gone. I don't think anyone thought it would be an army of Jango Fetts, who turned out to be a the dad/clone-donor of Boba Fett.
Right, it's so obvious, you know somebody brought that up and he probably fired them for it.
It's nerdy as hell but whenever I re-watch I imagine he's 17 and adjust the context of the dialog in my brain to fit.
Makes the movie so much better.
I was 14 and had a whole bookshelf full of star wars stuff and I watched it with great interest and enjoyed it and then on the car ride home I started getting these nagging feelings about what I just experienced. It escalated out of control from there until I was essentially some version of the RLM review before it was made or known.
It's a flawless masterpiece before RLM hate was publicly known.
I remember people saying after TPM, just wait until Episode 2, ESB was the best of the OT, so this next one is going to be great and redeem the TPM. Instead AOTC was the worst of the 3 PT films.
1999
new star wars is coming out
mom finds out i never watched them
she rents the trilogy and we watch it
meh
don't go see the phantom menace
I've actually reimagined the PT in my head, and when thinking about an older Anakin when they began filming TPM in 1997, I looked up which male actors would be available and would look the part, and always thought Heath Ledger would have been a cool Anakin.
Collected all the Pepsi cans
Wow. No easy feat. Came here to post picrelated and crtl-f'd "cans" first to see if it was mentioned.
Did Lucas have more control over the prequel trilogy or the original trilogy? You can't say he had the same level, as he did not have complete control over ANH, and he had complete freedom with the prequels,
Nah I did the reading on this and he more or less did have complete creative control over the originals same as the prequels. He wrote and directed the first one anon, the idea that somehow he wasn't in control is just absurd. That doesn't mean the prequels are necessarily good... or bad, the quality has nothing to do with this. It's just weird that people keep on saying easily disproven myths about what's literally the most well documented movie production in history. There are fucking moon landings with less information publicly available on them than we have about the making of A New Hope - why are we making shit up about this?
He could have worked, of course the obvious choice is just going with Hayden for all three but he's really not that good if an actor, he was miscast from the start.
Only the Pepsi ones and almost all mountain dew. Fuck Pepsi 1, I'd almost forgot that was a thing.
Years of awesome LucasArts games.
Shadows of the Empire though a buggy mess with awkward controls was one of my favorite 64 games.
I also managed to get a gold medal in every single mission in Rogue Squadron. For some reason dropping bombs on shit with Y-Wings was one of my favorite things to do.
Right, it's so obvious, you know somebody brought that up and he probably fired them for it.
It's nerdy as hell but whenever I re-watch I imagine he's 17 and adjust the context of the dialog in my brain to fit.
Makes the movie so much better.
I've actually reimagined the PT in my head, and when thinking about an older Anakin when they began filming TPM in 1997, I looked up which male actors would be available and would look the part, and always thought Heath Ledger would have been a cool Anakin.
Making Anakin older would have made more sense while DiCaprio would have been the obvious choice and it's funny because later Lucas wanted him as Anakin for AOTC but he turned it down because Lucas wasn't willing to pay him 20 million!!!FACT!!!
It's all pure dunning kruger.
Yeah, it's just that Hayden was underage at the time, and that limits what you can do on a film, their hours and such. Meanwhile, Heath would have just turned 18 before filming began.
Fell in love with Star Wars in 1992 at age 4 when they played on tv. People around my age were the last people to have a chance to enjoy Star Wars while also believing there would never be any new movies.
No movie in my life has matched the hype that there was for Episode 1.
I guess it would be like if Avengers End Game was about to come out but all the other Marvel movies were 30 years old and everyone thought Infinity War would be the last one and also the X-Men were going to be there this time. And also if people weren’t tired of Cape Shit like it’s still 2018.
DiCaprio just got done with that grueling Titanic shoot by early 97, so he might not want to jump right into another big film. And I think the Man in the Iron Mask would overlap with TPM filming, so he'd have to drop out of that one.
Good dammit I hate this timeline more and more everyday. Now I have to mourn the kino that could have been
>Did Lucas have more control over the prequel trilogy or the original trilogy? You can't say he had the same level, as he did not have complete control over ANH, and he had complete freedom with the prequels,
Nah I did the reading on this and he more or less did have complete creative control over the originals same as the prequels. He wrote and directed the first one anon, the idea that somehow he wasn't in control is just absurd. That doesn't mean the prequels are necessarily good... or bad, the quality has nothing to do with this. It's just weird that people keep on saying easily disproven myths about what's literally the most well documented movie production in history. There are fucking moon landings with less information publicly available on them than we have about the making of A New Hope - why are we making shit up about this?
In Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls, my favorite book, Lucas was given creative control to a certain extend because Alan Ladd was in charge of Fox and pitched the movie to him as Captain Blood meets Flash Gordon.
The success of American Graffiti was also a factor while the budget was relatively small, so Lucas was more or less left alone.
Lucas financed Empire himself but Irvin Kershner went over schedule and over budget, so Lucas had to renegotiate with Fox which made him feel humiliated and why he fired Gary Kurtz, who had Produced American Graffiti and Star Wars.
It also helped that while making SW Gloria Katz
and Willard Huyck (who had co-wrote American Grafitti with Lucas) had done uncredited re-writes and during post-production got some helpful advice from people who he would listen to.
Now here's the thing, I give full credit to Lucas for Star Wars as it was his vision but he was never more than a good idea man and lucky to have a lot of talented people helping him and why TPM was shit!!!FACT!!!
I'd say it's close to the Mandela effect honestly. People fucking hated the prequels back in the day and started speculating as to "what went wrong" on fan forums and their own websites in the early internet days. It's just that that went on for SO LONG (almost 20 years) and stuff got repeated and repeated so often that it just became "fact" even though a lot of it wasn't true. I can't blame anyone for falling for these bullshit myths - it's a giant game of internet telephone where everyone's citing each other in an endless loop and very few people even recognize some of this stuff is really just Lucas bashing and not even true.
I already stopped caring about star wars because I was 14/15. The same year, I don't know if it was before or after, I wandered into some movie called 'The Matrix' because the poster looked cool and holy shit. You can't go back to "star wars" after that (for a good decade, anyway). You can't go back to slide whistle playing when a guy flies up and then down into a pratfall, to Tarzan's yell when a monkey guy swings on a vine. This is stuff from the OT btw let alone the new one. The only thing I remember about the Phantom Menace original '99 watch was the pod race being terminally boring and annoying. For people with zero technical or spatial sense maybe it's exciting. But otherwise even as a kid/teen you're just going to be seething at the protagonist going a longer way (up into the air) and that being treated in the movie as a successful 'short cut'. No nigger look up the triangle inequality. The matrix had shit like this too, the battery thing, but - fuckin Guns lots of guns and environmental destruction and fuckin sunglasses and ammo straps and the music fucccck
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Totally don't believe you, sequelfag. Nice try larping as a Xer you seething Zoomer.
DiCaprio just got done with that grueling Titanic shoot by early 97, so he might not want to jump right into another big film. And I think the Man in the Iron Mask would overlap with TPM filming, so he'd have to drop out of that one.
I might have misspoken causing you to misinterpret what I said but Di Caprio wasn't considered for TPM because Lucas wanted a young child for Anakin and to the best of my knowledge never considered making Anakin older.
What I meant was that he wanted him for AOTC but DiCaprio wanted 20M while I don't know if he looked at TPM and said no thanks after reading the script for AOTC.
It's funny but before the special editions and the prequels, when people would talk about Star Wars there was always this looks in their eyes and spoke of the OT with such reverence as if it was something holy and sacred to them.
I was born a year after SW came out and wasn't there at the time but reading about it you understand how it had more of a cultural impact than any other movie in history.
Not just in cinema but on every level while John Milius said it best that Star Wars pulled people out of the counterculture and got them interested in technology.
And I still wish that Lucas could have hired Ridley Scott to Directed ROTJ!!!FACT!!!
People fucking hated the prequels back in the day
(You) don't speak for everyone, you fucking faggot. Yes, manbabies like you complained but most people liked it.
It's just that you neckbeards bitched about it for so long that people thought you fags were the majority.
Those atrocious Plinkett reviews have gaslit people into thinking the Prequels were universally hated. The box office earnings 20 years laters say differently. Eat shit.
In RotS, Anakin schizophrenically falls ot evil, in a 2-hour movie, he murders innocents, justifies evil, all in the span of a few days.
You're pretty much on the money about A New Hope. The stuff about Empire is a little bit off though. What happened was Empire went so over-budget that the bank actually withdrew their loan so Lucas had to scramble to refinance the movie in less than two weeks before the movie collapsed. This was also mostly Gary Kurtz's fault not Kershner's hence why he got mostly replaced by Howard Kazanjian and George Lucas himself for the last bit of filming and then pretty much fired after production wrapped. Gary Kurtz then spent the next several decades saying otherwise (that he left on his accord and that his version of Return of the Jedi would've been darker and had blackjack and hookers) but it's all mostly bullshit and Kurtz trying to make himself feel better. Also it wasn't Fox who humiliated Lucas, it was actually the banks when his production went $5 million over. I think somewhere along the way some wires got crossed and the banks turned into Fox in the telling.
It also helped that while making SW Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck (who had co-wrote American Grafitti with Lucas) had done uncredited re-writes and during post-production got some helpful advice from people who he would listen to.
Nah I've read the script pre-the Hyucks getting a pass on it and it's literally just a dialogue pass. The actual plot beats, characters and so on are exactly the same. Don't get me wrong they helped because they can write dialogue and George Lucas is George Lucas but acting like they were the "secret sauce" to why the movie was good is a bit of a stretch.
Also yeah Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is great BUT there's some minor factual errors at least with the Star Wars chapters. That's fine btw - Biskind's telling the whole story of 70s New Hollywood in its totality but I'd recommend other sources if you want to go deep into the nitty-gritty of the specific movies he's talking about.
It was hated then as it was now
literally just a dialogue pass
But that's what the prequels needed more than anything. Ignore everything else about them, the dialogue (and direction for the actors) is horrific.
The Matrix really did steal the thunder from TPM as it captured the cultural zeitgeist the same way SW did in 1977, as it was more in tune with what was going on with technology and its ramifications on civilization, tapping into the feeling of fear and paranoia over the advancement of A.I. while I myself find it unsettling at how fast it's been developing, just in the last few years alone.
I can go on X and talk to Grok and it's like chatting to a real person to say nothing of the insane things that A.I. image and video generators are capable of.
I have this theory as to why H.P. Lovecraft has got more traction over the last few years and it's because his fiction usually involves the breakdown of reality which is what modern A.I. seems to be doing culturally.
I asked Grok to calculate how much A.I. generated content could be produced per year and it said it was in the billions....
!!!FACT!!!
I'm not one of those people anon. Read what I wrote again. I'm saying people lied on the internet about George Lucas for so long that now people don't even realize some of this shit is based on lies.
Also I slightly disagree on the Plinkett reviews being THE THING that gaslit people into hating the prequels - oh it had an impact no doubt but those came out a decade after thd films. People were doing almost the exact same shit when the movies were coming out. Case in point: here's Chefelf's old ##number of reasons to hate the prequels website. It's literally the exact same thing as the Plinkett reviews - pedantically nitpicking the movie while telling shitty jokes (I mean fuck, at least RLM are actually funny) and these were out alongside the movie's releases. I'm just saying Star Wars 'fans' being pedantic dicks about Lucas and the prequels predates RLM by a solid decade
Totally don't believe you, sequelfag. Nice try larping as a Xer you seething Zoomer.
The sequels are trash but doesn't make the prequels better!!!FACT!!!
Yeah but all of the prequels had dialogue passes done to them as well. In fact Attack of the Clones got so much dialogue reworked that the other writer Jonathan Hales even got a writing credit. And Clones is always the one that I'd point to as needing the most work dialogue-wise.
Look I get where you're coming from but a lot of the reasons people cite as to why the prequels were bad/the originals were good are just based on kinda faulty, incorrect assumptions.
Jar-Jar was omnipresent in kids advertising, but I don't remember anyone finding him funny or liking him very much.
That's because Jar-Jar was meant for literal toddlers. I remember being 3 and having the dancing Jarjar bank, the plushie of him where you'd squeeze him and he'd stick out his tongue/make a weird noise, and my older cousins downplaying their hatred of him (and telling me about it when I was older) because I just thought he was the best and they didn't want to ruin that for me.
Also weird that I remember all this shit since I was literally 3 but w/e
Only morons think RLM invented hating the prequels.
Who the fuck even is Jonathan Hales? The point is there were probably no talented people around to rewrite Geroge's terrible dialogue because George had long since surrounded himself with yesmen or people so untalented they didn't threaten to outshine him.
I'm 31 but I actually do remember seeing it in theaters.
parents let me watch the entire original trilogy in the days leading up to release
was confused at how Anakin was supposed to be the future Darth Vader
was confused by Jar-Jar because he seemed incredibly out of place from the rest of the movie's tone
was confused at how everything seemed more futuristic despite taking place before the Original Trilogy
thought Natalie Portman was cute and Qui-Gon was a cool dad figure
There was this terrific hard cover book at the library with pictures of the internal workings of lightsabres. It was truly epic. Lol. I really would have thought that.
Plus I mimic'd Jar Jar's voice a lot. Loved that guy.
Jar Jar Binks puts his face in the electric field between the podracer engines! Lol!
Agreed, Cameron did the crew dirty, especially Murdoch and Ismay. I think he deliberately cherry picked from testimonies to fit his story. Sure made for a good film though.
So was the kid, doesn't really make your point.
The point is there were probably no talented people around to rewrite Geroge's terrible dialogue because George had long since surrounded himself with yesmen or people so untalented they didn't threaten to outshine him.
Yeah that's one of the many lies Star Wars fanboys invented. It's not true. But you are right RLM didn't invent the idea that "George surrounded himself with yes-men/people who were afraid to outshine him." That predates RLM by a bit. They did help spread it though.
Seriously I love how I show you that someone provably did rewrite George's dialogue on Attack of the Clones at least and somehow that turns into "NO ONE WAS AROUND TO REWRITE LUCAS'S DIALOGUE." It's just nonsense. And to be clear: this doesn't necessarily mean the prequels are good (or bad - the quality has nothing to do with this point) just that we're going in fucking circles.
Who was around to read the shitty prequel dialogue and tell Lucas it was shit though? Obviously not Jonathan Hales since he helped write that atrocity.
From what I recall reading the "secret history of star wars" site multiple people punched up Lucas' scripts for him. Lucas needs multiple tard wranglers or apparently he can't write a character that remotely resembles a human being to save his life.
I was 9-10 when it came out. What i remember most was the excessive marketing. It was star wars characters on soda cans, toys in the kids meals at taco bell. The action figures had the weird little microchip that you hooked up to a machine to hear famous lines from what ever character you bought. The bookstores had a huge section for star wars. Everyone thought darth maul was cool as fuck. Then it came out..
Im not gonna effort post for a bunch of broccoli headed faggots
First Officer William Murdoch commit suicide for taking bribes where he was an honorable man. It's a slap in the face of the actual history.
To be fair, he literally throws the bribe money into Caul's face and is later very prominently featured in Rose's dream at the end (as in, he's literally standing right next to the Grand Staircase and you can't miss him) so show that he died a hero.
Also I think Cameron should have lifted even more from Romeo and Juliet and had both Jack and Rose freeze to death in the water. Maybe when the SS Mackay-Bennett tries to recover their bodies days later, they're both found to be quite literally inseparable due to rigor mortis and are fittingly buried at sea.
A Romeo and Juliet analog should have a Romeo and Juliet ending. Ironically Star Wars did this a lot better with Padme dying and Anakin becoming more machine than man (essentially suffering spiritual death, and ultimately physical death years later).
Oh God... well, that's because Secret History of Star Wars is a load of old bullshit. I wouldn't trust it with a barge pole anon. Seriously like half the shit on that website was basically made-up. Kaminski had a real bad habit of partially quoting (where the full quote in context actually hurt his arguments) and editorializing to an extent that I'd call misleading at best, blatantly making shit up at worst. It's not ENTIRELY without merit but a lot of that stuff is just arrogant fanboy conspiracy drivel from back in the "we hate George Lucas" days.
No seriously like by all means feel free to hate the prequels but that blog/book is a massive pile of shit. I even know the exact article you're thinking of (Nature of the Beast) and it's a crock of shit - as in half his sources DON'T actually say the things he's claiming. Really if you take anything away from this it's that Secret History (and all of Kaminski's other websites) are fucking nonsense. I swear so much of the most commonly referenced misinformation about Lucas and the production of those movies has its roots in Secret History. Not all of it, maybe 70% and I swear that's not an exaggeration.
feel free to hate the prequels
Nothing's going to make the shitty prequel dialogue better so whatever
but that blog/book is a massive pile of shit.
So according to you this direct quote of George taking his scripts and ideas to other people, his film school buddies, is just totally fake news?
There are also those who, in addition to being screenwriters, are directors and friends of mind: Coppola, whom I've already mentioned; Phil Kaufman; Martin Scorsese; and Brian de Palma. I show them all my footage and they give me precious opinions that I count on...I wrote the first version of Star Wars, we discussed it, and I realized I hated the script. I chucked it and started a new one, which I also threw in the trash. That happened four times with four radically different versions. After each version I had a discussion with those friends. If there was a good scene in the first version, I included it in the second. And so on...The script was constructed this way, scene by scene.
That's a direct quote of GL from the article you just mentioned.
You're pretty much on the money about A New Hope. The stuff about Empire is a little bit off though. What happened was Empire went so over-budget that the bank actually withdrew their loan so Lucas had to scramble to refinance the movie in less than two weeks before the movie collapsed. This was also mostly Gary Kurtz's fault not Kershner's hence why he got mostly replaced by Howard Kazanjian and George Lucas himself for the last bit of filming and then pretty much fired after production wrapped. Gary Kurtz then spent the next several decades saying otherwise (that he left on his accord and that his version of Return of the Jedi would've been darker and had blackjack and hookers) but it's all mostly bullshit and Kurtz trying to make himself feel better. Also it wasn't Fox who humiliated Lucas, it was actually the banks when his production went $5 million over. I think somewhere along the way some wires got crossed and the banks turned into Fox in the telling.
You're somewhat correct about Empire. I went back over Biskind's book and production went over budget because Kershner was moving at a slow pace while Lucas' attention was being divided between Empire and Raiders, so he blamed Kurtz for allowing Kershner for doing so.
As a result Lucas had to go to a bank to get a loan and needed Fox to co-sign which he found humiliating (reminding him of how he had to go ask his father for money one time after defying him by going into filmmaking) and had to renegotiate some of the merchandise rights and why Lucas fired Kurtz.
Everyone here is trying to revise history while I maintain that Lucas sold Lucasfilm based on the prevision that Kathleen Kennedy was put in charge because he doesn't like her and only tolerated her because she worked with Spielberg.
Otherwise he regarded her as nothing more than a pencil pushing coffee bitch and was playing 4D chess knowing that she'd fuck things up and make the prequels look better in hindsight!!!FACT!!!
Why are you so angry, millennigger?
"There were sections of the script, which, when I read them, made me say to myself, 'I can't believe George wrote this scene. It's terrible,'" Kasdan recollects in John Baxter's Mythmaker.[50] An example of Lucas' dialog for a scene wherein Han flirts with Leia: "Don't worry, I'm not going to kiss you here. You see, I'm quite selfish about my pleasure, and it wouldn't be much fun for me now." Shades of Attack of the Clones, indeed.
That's so funny it has to be true. Fucking George.
Only morons think RLM invented hating the prequels.
Correct. They just want to point to RLM being the only reason why people hate the prequels and not the general public.
There's just soo much revisionist bullshit being slung around by people who are simply stating objective facts vs NPC's who just get off on being contrarians!!!FACT!!!!
If it really was George's masterplan to sell the franchise because he knew Disney would fuck it up and make the prequels look better in hindsight, and I'll admit they do, then that that was the last good idea George has had in 30 years.
imo the prequels still suck, the sequels are just that much worse.
Yes - but THE WHOLE ARTICLE IS FAKE NEWS. That quote's real but been taken massively out of context to prove a point that didn't actually happen.
First up though, here's the original version of that article before Kaminski rewrote it back when it was way more obviously an arrogant fanboy rant about the prequels. It makes it way more clear what the actual intention was when writing it:
web.archive.org
But going to the version you're reading (which is almost exactly the same but with all the arrogant fan ranting edited out) his conclusion about the writing of A New Hope is complete bullshit according to his own sources:
However, starting here, Lucas himself began to have less of a direct influence, instead orientated by a circle of collaborators, whom had already been integrated into an informal feedback loop... We see here that Lucas did not simply gather input the way writers typically might do so, but instead had systematically instituted the critique process into the structure of the screenwriting
His main source for this claim is The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler (pic) the problem is that Rinzler's book says exactly what his friend's feedback on the scripts was and it was almost all shitty, bad advice. Coppola loved the first script and thought George should've filmed that, his friends Matt Robbins and Hal Barwood thought starting the movie off with the droids was a terrible idea and got Lucas to add in the scenes with Biggs and De Palma famously thought the force was shit and tried to convince Lucas to get rid of the line "May the Force be with you," entirely. This is all according to the main source Kaminski is citing here. He's just making shit up based on partial quotes and you're falling for it. Seriously you're believing the 20 year old lies of an arrogant blogger - read an actual book on this, Kaminski's theory doesn't match reality.
If it really was George's masterplan to sell the franchise because he knew Disney would fuck it up and make the prequels look better in hindsight, and I'll admit they do, then that that was the last good idea George has had in 30 years.
imo the prequels still suck, the sequels are just that much worse.
Could just be that the guy was just tired of having it around his neck.
The thing that bothers me the most is that he always pretended to see himself as an artist lamenting that he and other filmmakers didn't have financial freedom to do what they wanted.
Meanwhile he's been a billionaire for decades and apart from producing shit (Howard The Duck/Radioland Murders) and others he did as a favor (Mishima, Tucker: A Man And His Dream) he never went out of his way to sponsor low budget independent projects, same as Spielberg.
And where are all of those experimental films that he could have been making for the last 50 years?
!!!FACT!!!
Baxter's book is a hackjob filled with massive sections where he flat-out plagiarized both Skywalking by Dale Pollock (1983) and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind (1998) and the bits that aren't flat-out stolen have tons of obvious factual errors. It's a very shady source so naturally Kaminski cites from it extensively.
Also I don't know where Kaminski got that line from because there's no fucking citation. And I really have to question it since Lucas's 2nd draft of Empire (the one he completely wrote from scratch) has never been released. I mean I'm sure it's real it's just that he's doing that thing where he's judging a script he's never read based on a quote from a really shady book that confirms his pre-existing opinion (which is a problem that plagues the entirety of Secret History)
So if you don't believe anyone helped Lucas write the OT at all, what's your explanation for the prequel dialogue being trash. Getting old and out of touch?
Lucas did bluster a lot about wanting his own "arthouse" movies but honestly I think THX-1138 was the beginning and end of the unique vision of society he wanted to express. And that just seemed like 1984+Metropolis but less impressive visually. After that he was in it for nostalgia (American Graffiti) and making an entertaining blockbuster (Star Wars)
Again Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is a very good book but has some very minor inaccuracies - which is fine but I'd recommend checking out some other sources for the nitty-gritty details. I'd recommend either The Making of The Empire Strikes Back or some sections from Howard Kazanjian: A Producer's Life both by J.W. Rinzler for the real details.
And no, it WAS TOTALLY mostly Gary Kurtz's fault. Kurtz flat-out stopped reporting the budget overruns to Lucasfilm at one point. The guy was a bit shit at producing. There's been some confusion over the years because of contradictory things Kurtz himself has said over the years but every other source that isn't Gary tells the same story.
It sucked and I walked out knowing I wasn't a fan anymore. When I went home I put all my Star Wars novels and comics and figures in a box and stuck it in my parents' shed. That box is still there. It will always be there.
expecting a comfy nostalgia TPM with my fellow boomers
turned into a shitflinging referencing plinkett / RLM reviews
I fucking hate you niggers so much.
I am 40 now. I hated it then. RLM is unironically right about everything. It fucking blows.
Im glad i survived to watch Andor my life is now complete
37 here. It was quite literally everywhere. There was a lot of chatter that the movie sucked though, basically the adults thought they were way lesser films and the kids liked them. Kids eventually pretended they didn't like them because they wanted to be seen as having adult tastes.
No I don't believe Kaminski's lies. I've read most of his sources. They don't actually say what Kaminski claims. He takes quotes way out of context and makes shit up. That entire article you're reading is bullshit. I could go through nearly every point he's making and go through what's real (because again - there is SOME truth scattered throughout the bullshit) what he's taken massively out-of-context and what he's just plain made-up. And it's not just that article either - he's the guy who more-or-less invented the whole "George's ex-wife magically saved the first movie" myth too. Do not trust him - he's a slimy little weasel.
Anyway George was never great at dialogue. He even said so himself. But no, the prequels all got dialogue polishes by other writers same as the first movie - it just didn't work as well for whatever reason. And personally I find only Attack of the Clones has really awkward dialogue and that's the one that got reworked by another guy the most to the point where he got a writing credit.
It sounds like shitty prequel dialogue so even if the source might not be reliable to some people, it sure seems legit.
The problem with every defense of George is the shitty prequel dialogue, I've never seen anyone explain it away. The only logical conclusion is that during the writing of the OT other people, probably numerous other people had some influence on him, because alone he's just too much of a spergy autist to write human dialogue, something even he admits.
Also from the article is another direct quote of Lucas
I don't think I am a good writer now. I think I'm a terrible writer...I went to USC as a photographer--I wanted to be a cameraman--but obviously at film school you have to do everything...Well, I did terrible in script writing...I didn't want to know about stories and plot and characters and all that stuff. And that's what I did. My first films were very abstract.
Is that a lie/fake quote? Lucas is outright stating he sucks at writing.
No. He sucked at dialogue even back then. (Although it's worth noting George is a bit of a pessimist about his own talents so judging certain things by his own self-deprecating remarks isn't best strategy.)
The problem is that your "logical conclusion" is meaning you're believing Kaminski's utter fucking lies because it confirms your own theory. He is SERIOUSLY suggesting that George Lucas showing his early scripts to his friends for feedback means that they are just as responsible for the final script as George is. That's absurd. Like what is George Lucas literally the ONLY creative ever to show some work-in-progress stuff to other people for feedback? It's such a dumb fucking stretch and that's before we go into the fact that Kaminski's own sources (namely Rinzler's Making of Star Wars) say what that feedback was and all the examples given were bad and not good for the movie at all. He's just lying to you and you're eating it up because it confirms your own biases.
It's literally conspiracy shit mate. Kaminski literally thinks he discovered some "Secret History" to Star Wars that was covered up despite the fact that it's mostly just him reading the official making of books and spinning them to suit his own narrative while occasionally doodling his own little conspiracy theory in the margins. It's so dumb
And personally I find only Attack of the Clones has really awkward dialogue
They all have their own uniquely horrible moments of dialogue imo. AotC only stands out because it has the most of what can only be called Lucas' failed attempt at writing romance in it.
But no, the prequels all got dialogue polishes by other writers
Who "polished" TPM and RotS? Who signed off on the "Are you an angel?" and "It's only because I'm so in love with you" lines? They need to be brought up on fraud charges because they didn't do their jobs.
I was 10 when this came out. my dad took my brothers and i to watch it. my family had already watched the original star wars trilogy often, quoted it, played the snes game ' super star wars ' and enjoyed all the pop culture references whenever they appeared. we didn't read the books or things like that though, we were almost at that level of autistic/smart but not quite.
we were insanely hyped when it was announced and there was so much media buzz, ads, and local news interviews of fans.
the day finally came and we sat slightly higher than the center.
we loved it, the audience was hyped when the text crawl showed up with the blaring theme. the premise seemed a bit boring at the time, what with the trade routes or whatever, but we didn't really care. it was insane seeing jedi and learning about their ways. everyone cheered when yoda appeared, when c3po appeared everyone went crazy learning that vader as a kid built him. when qui gon tried the jedi mind trick the theater went ballistic - and when it didn't work they laughed their asses off. we all hated jar jar binks. the podracing, space dogfights, and random jedi shit made up for it though. i remember thinking the lightsabers looked so much cooler now. i loved when they went underwater to gungan city, still hated jarjar. when darth maul fight happened it was absolute magic, the song was haunting, the fighting was intense, we'd seen nothing like it before. qui-gon death was a shock, and obi wan's comeback seemed immensely satisfying and pulled off incredibly well. people cheered when he sliced darth maul in half. the ending with the happy vibe showing anakin with his padawan haircut just felt perfect. dad said he thought it wasn't too bad and he seemed to at least have fun. he said the originals were better, of course - he'd seen them in theaters when they were new. my brothers and i loved it, and we always thought episode 1 was kino and good. theater with dad was awesome, tons o kino
I knew I liked the action scenes and Padme.
I just ignored the story because I didn't understand it, I don't think I knew what a politician was at 9 years old.
they are just as responsible for the final script as George is
I don't think they're "just as responsible" as George but they must have had some influence that jostled the parts of his bizarre autist/alien/robot brain enough to motivate him to not write his characters to be as dull and inhuman as he otherwise seems to write them when he's left in a vacuum, or as in the case of the prequels at Skywalker Ranch.
I'll accept that maybe some of the things Kaminski says are skewed, but is it not true
Like what is George Lucas literally the ONLY creative ever to show some work-in-progress stuff to other people for feedback?
Of course not. But maybe Lucas is someone who absolutely needs a bunch of feedback from a "respected peer" or he goes off the deep end.
all the examples given were bad and not good for the movie at all
Ok but who knows how many meetings there were, and how many ideas could have been improvements, we're only getting this tiny peek into the writing process that must have been over months if not years. Even if Kaminski is wrong about some things, the overall idea, that Lucas needs more than one nobody looking over his script could be accurate.
Tom Stoppard did a bunch of work on Revenge of the Sith. I genuinely forget who helped Lucas on Phantom Menace.
Who signed off on the "Are you an angel?" and "It's only because I'm so in love with you" lines? They need to be brought up on fraud charges because they didn't do their jobs.
Well the person who "signed off" on those was George, and sure they're both awkward. But the person who "signed off" on practically all the lines in the original trilogy was also George Lucas (with some exceptions in Empire to be fair although that was mostly lines improvised on the day.)
Anyway you've changed the topic from how Kaminski lies about fucking everything and should not be trusted. All those quotes are real but they've being used to create a fake narrative that you've completely fallen for.
blames Kurtz for Empire being a fiasco
blames Kershner for Empire being a fiasco
Lucas wasn't even on the same continent when Kershner was directing by the way and Kurtz is right about merchandising driving Lucas' decisions by Lucas' own admission (eg Not killing Han off in Jedi).
I think you can see pretty drastic acting downgrades between Empire and Jedi, particularly Carrie is quite bad.
Fucking thank you! As someone who loves history, this one boils my blood because you had a great story and turned it into a generic romantic story. It's like centering a romantic story around two people who worked in the Twin Towers around 9/11.
No he was essentially writing in a vacuum when he wrote A New Hope. The final script for A New Hope (with some last minute dialogue revisions by the Hyucks admittedly) was George working on his own.
Okay look some of the confusion about this is from a misunderstanding about the EARLY scripts for Star Wars. Basically people have heard that the early scripts had a bunch of weird, out-there, supposedly "bad" ideas in them (like Luke Skywalker was a 60 year old general, Han Solo was a big green alien) and assume someone else must've come in, told George "no" and vetoed his "bad" ideas and that's how we got the OT we all know and love. And it's complete bullshit. There was no one telling George "no" or who had any veto power over his scripts - that was George working on his own prerogative. What people are actually talking about is the EARLY scripts - as in the rough draft/first draft, but the final shooting script (the revised 4th draft) is literally just A New Hope (plus all the deleted scenes.) And almost all of those supposedly "bad" ideas are actually early versions of beloved "good" ideas from the final film (or films - some of that stuff from the early scripts ended up in the sequels and prequels) just in a really early, embryonic form. For instance: yes, in the rough draft Luke Skywalker was a 60 year old general and Jedi Bendu but that character evolved into Obi-Wan Kenobi, a 60 year old FORMER general and Jedi Knight. See what I mean? It's just a complete misinterpretation of the creative process.
And no, Kaminski's work isn't just 'skewed,' that whole piece you're reading is a lie. He's a liar, stop believing his nonsense and go read an actual book on this.
The Yes Men stuff is true, but acting like that is artsy fartsy, serial loving, quiet spoken George's fault just doesnt work
The OT was like the bible, and people saw him as a Shakespeare like talent.
A good comparison is Gabe Newel wanting to help with grunt work, only to realize people think he shits gold
"Ani, your such a weaselly limp dick."
Tom Stoppard
Any idea what he did? Because it didn't seem to help much except, there's one scene that makes me suspicious someone else wrote it and when I googled Tom Stoppard and RotS pic related was the first result.
I never thought that the whole Plagueis story might have been from someone else, but who knows.
you've changed the topic
I'm not the original anon, my point has been the prequel dialogue blows, and someone has to take the fall.
Carrie Fisher pretty heavily script doctor'd the dialogue for/with Lucas for ANH and the subsequent films.
I'm not the original anon, my point has been the prequel dialogue blows, and someone has to take the fall.
Okay - sure: that's easy: it's George! Obviously. My point is that A New Hope was also written by George back in the day. Yeah sure it got a dialogue polish which helped but so did all the other prequels (and there it seemingly didn't help.)
Look I need to make my stance clear here: feel free to hate on George Lucas for the prequels (or love him if you're a prequel fan - I don't give a shit either way.) Where I draw the line is where we engage in this stupid revisionism wherein actually George Lucas didn't make the originals or someone else came in and "restrained" him or that he did write and direct A New Hope but it was terrible and the editors/George's ex-wife then magically saved it somehow... or whatever other variation of it that you've heard. It's all mostly bullshit (and a shocking amount of evidence to support those theories actually comes from Kaminski's shitty book and websites but that's it's own rabbit hole.)
Carrie Fischer didn't start "script doctoring" until the 1990s. She was 19 when they shot Star Wars - she wouldn't start doing that for another decade and a bit.
Annoying as it may be it proves their point
Plinkett fucked over all discourse about the prequels for decades and even those fans who like it have to deal with that manchilds video.
Even if they avoid mentioning RLM, some faggot parroting those videos blindly sends them all into a frenzy
I was 15. They hype was massive and everybody I knew loved it. It wasn't until a few years later when I discovered internet forums I found out that people hated it and I couldn't understand why. It was everything a Star Wars movie was supposed to be.
For instance: yes, in the rough draft Luke Skywalker was a 60 year old general and Jedi Bendu but that character evolved into Obi-Wan Kenobi, a 60 year old FORMER general and Jedi Knight. See what I mean? It's just a complete misinterpretation of the creative process.
That's fine and all but just knowing that Lucas was in Hollywood getting advice and feedback lends credence to Kaminski's argument. We don't know what exactly what was in the original drafts and how he was influenced aside from a few points.
But there is enough circumstantial evidence. We have a director who
-writes terrible dialogue by his own admission
-wrote terrible dialogue when mostly on his own for the prequels
-somehow didn't write completely terrible dialogue for the originals
-passed his scripts around in hollywood in the 70s for his buddies to read and give advice on
With that circumstantial evidence alone, the most logical conclusion is that outside influences, like other people, had some effect on Lucas's writing. Even if it was just "he tried to make his characters talk like actual people so his friends stopped laughing at his clunky dialogue".
I was 9 when the film came out, there was high anticipation from everyone. I had a lot of friends who were very into Star Wars, I personally preferred Indiana Jones but there we go.
I didn't know a single kid that liked The Phantom Menace. Not one. Everyone thought it was boring and stupid. We put up with a ton of garbage as kids but this was seemingly the limit. It was probably the first time many of us actively disliked a piece of media we were supposed to like.
And it was impossible to escape the never ending torrent of advertising, every bus, every Toys'R'Us, every place our eyeballs might be there was fucking Jar Jar. 9 years old and we all felt like Jar Jar was for littler kids, yet none of us seemed to have younger siblings who actually liked him, at least not those who were capable of verbalising it. Maybe he was for actual babies?
We don't know what exactly what was in the original drafts and how he was influenced aside from a few points.
What are you talking about? We know exactly what was in the early drafts. All of them have been up on the internet since the 90s and there have been multiple books published over the years with full breakdowns of the scripts and how they evolved over time (including The Annotated Screenplays, Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars series and The Star Wars Archives by Paul Duncan.) When know when Lucas changed things and why. I'm sorry but this is nonsense. This is SO WELL documented, why are you doing this?
No there is no creedence to Kaminski's argument. And that's just the bit about A New Hope. The bit about Empire is half bullshit (the story about him loosing his rag during the editing one time is true - it's from Skywalking but he's spun it into something it's not and his conclusion is not supported by Skywalking at all) and the story about Jedi is completely made-up (not by Kaminski but by Gary Kurtz.) The whole piece is drivel, I'm sorry. I get it, and really feel free to hate the prequels if you want - really. Just don't believe Kaminski whatever you do, he's an arrogant little weasel and you're just believing him because it confirms your own biases.
You will never produce films so good grown ass adults obsessed over it for multiple decades.
You will never be groundbreaking filmmaker, let alone do it multiple times.
You will never negotiate a toy deal knowing damn well you were making movies for families, with full confidence the children will love it.
You will never have hordes of fans come out of the woodwork DECADES LATER to defend ambitious yet sub-par movies that were a core part of their childhood.
You will never make kino.
You will never be George Lucas.
You could make something an incompetent cynic could though, like space cop.
full breakdowns of the scripts and how they evolved over time
I'm sure there's bare bones plot summations like what you posted, there's no way they have the minutes of George's after hours meetings with his friends in Hollywood and who suggested what.
Just don't believe Kaminski whatever you do
For the sake of argument lets assume everything Kaminski says is a lie. You still have direct quotes of Lucas saying he sent his scripts around his circles of friends to get looked at and commented on.
I was a senior in high school when it was released. The theater started selling tickets to the opening night showings a month beforehand starting at 4pm.
My friends and I skipped school that day and got there at 6am and the line was already around the one side of the theater. We waited 10 hours in line (which had grown to being wrapped around the theater by 2pm.
Needless to say, the anticipation was intense. That's why back then people said it wasn't good, because the fact was that there was so much hype to it, the movie would never meet expectations.
You forgot that he also chokes the shit out of his wife and loses three limbs THE SAME DAY.
the fact was that there was so much hype to it, the movie would never meet expectations.
That and it was shit
It was cool
born 1993
I really liked the Gungan Dinosaur shield
I played the shit out of the podracing game.
(((non-canon)))
what do you mean by that
did the jews make it non canon
I was in high school, thinking of other things and having sex with high school girls.
That being said, I had all the Star Wars original movies on VHS and watched them over and over as a younger boy. There was great anticipation and then great disappointment when we finally saw the movie and how fucking shit it was.
The judgement was the same as it is now... nice lightsabers but wtf were you thinking with this Jar Jar shit and the boy Anakin was fucking terrible.
Anyway I didn't bother watching the other 2 until many years later because I wrote it off after Phantom Menace.
I'm sure there's bare bones plot summations like what you posted, there's no way they have the minutes of George's after hours meetings with his friends in Hollywood and who suggested what.
Did you just miss the bit where I mentioned the full scripts are out there for you to read right now? And while no, we don't have the minutes of the times George showed the script to his friends (which you're calling meetings) we do have multiple quotes from virtually everyone about what they suggested and contributed. Again Star Wars is one of the most well documented movie productions ever. And while we don't have the "meetings" (which aren't meetings) with George's friends about A New Hope we actually do have the minutes of the story conferences for Empire and Jedi - and in them Lucas is the one who's most often shutting down Lawrence Kasdan's shitty ideas funnily enough (pic related)
For the sake of argument lets assume everything Kaminski says is a lie. You still have direct quotes of Lucas saying he sent his scripts around his circles of friends to get looked at and commented on.
Yes everything Kaminski says is some shade of a lie. And while yes we do a quotes where Lucas talks about how he showed the script to his friends Kaminski used that as proof of some daft theory where apparently Lucas is the only person in history to ever ask for feedback and really the script should actually be credited to Lucas's friends for reading it, not George who actually wrote it. It's dumb and the fact that you're still clinging to it really worries me. Like, it's obviously a stretch and all the other evidence I've shown you pokes massive holes through it.
I never sat and watched the original trilogy, only caught pieces of it on Anon Babble, never thought much of it, to me it looked indistinguishable from all the other B movies they'd air. I watched TPM when I was 12 I thin, my dad took me, he wasn't a fan either, it was just what everyone took their kids to watch. I remember liking it, mostly because of the Maul parts, the fight scenes were so much better than those of the original, the music was cool too, Padme was pretty (and Keira too) but I didn't pay too much to what she was saying. The aliens were cool, didn't mind Jar Jar as much as apparently everyone else did, even if his shtick got old real quick. If anything I found Anakin more irritating, mostly because I didn't care about him and a big chunk of the movie revolved around him, I'd have preferred the focus to be more on Obi-wan. I liked the second one better and by the time the third one came out me and my friends were all hyped for their fight.
shutting down Lawrence Kasdan's shitty ideas funnily enough (pic related)
He's ultimately right in the sense that at the end of RotJ it feels like too big of a win without enough of a loss. But I'm sure you're aware of the criticisms some people have of RotJ, although imo dialogue is not one of its problems.
Anyway that convo isn't related to the dialogue and I doubt any such records exist on meetings related to it for rotj or the original star wars. That meeting seems to be about "big ideas" the overall plot points in the series, major character deaths, not the nitty gritty of actually writing the script.
Whatever meetings and interactions occurred in the 70s and 80s and the precise way they influenced Lucas is unknown and unrecorded as far as I can tell. It's just names and generic references to meetings that crop up in Lucas's own quotes, but circumstantial evidence alone leads me to assuming something in his interaction with others influenced Lucas to at the very least temper his autism in his scripts
Here's another stupid thing about the PT.
Is the whole Palpatine = Sidious thing supposed to be a mystery to the viewer? Because that's the way the story is told from the prequel perspective. But the movies are intended to be watched 4-5-6 then 1-2-3. And anyone who has watched return of the jedi knows the chancellor is the sith lord. Yet the PT still does these "wink wink maybe this guy is bad' thing in episode 1 and 2.
Bad storytelling. These movies get even worse, the more you think about them.
Whatever meetings and interactions occurred in the 70s and 80s and the precise way they influenced Lucas is unknown and unrecorded as far as I can tell.
Genuinely what the fuck are you talking about? I just posted an excerpt of a meeting that occurred in the 80s, so that isn't unknown and unrecorded. I... I'm sorry but this is the most baffling thing you have said so far. I think you're denying the reality in front of you at this point mate. No, we have the full recordings of the Empire and Jedi story conferences - they got published over a decade ago. What are you on about?
And no, what circumstantial evidence? Your one bit of evidence is a blog written by this guy in 2007 that quotes people out of context and makes shit up. What on earth are you talking about?
I grew up a Star Wars fan after seeing Ep. IV on VHS at a neighbor's house. I was in my early-mid 20s when Ep.1 was in theaters, saw it like eight times
I'm old enough to have had friends who hated it. some ancientfags (my age and older) felt betrayed that it was a kids' movie. Lucas waited until the original fans had kids, then made a movie to make those kids into Star Wars fans
I saw it with some friends that I didn't hang with much. one of the guys was married and his wife didn't want him hanging out with his single friends, but we all watched it every week for eight weeks. opening weekend there was a couple with kids next to us in line. they had seen the original trilogy in theaters and they had kids old enough to see Ep. 1. everyone was dressed up as Star Wars characters opening weekend and it was a blast.
Can you stop posting the same fucking Starshit threads every single day?
Star wars thread # 82,765,997
Star Wars is still relevant despite Disney's attempts to kill it.
Get over yourselves and post in a different thread- hell make your own and toil over it.
Star Wars was the first movie I saw in a theater. I saw empire at 8 and Jedi at 11. Empire was the best. Jedi was just okay and the Ewoks were lame. I played with the toys. I wanted to be Han Solo when I was little. I tapped the telephone pole cables on the way home from school to make the blaster sounds. I made a pair of Hoth binoculars with an empty metal band aid box and ran around the neighborhood.
By Jedi it was over. I didn’t really think much about it after that.
There were SW geeks in the 70s, but they were a pretty small number. Then in the late 90s the prequel people camping on the sidewalk and shit were clearly a branch of those folks.
In the early 2000s I had some time to kill and had heard that Sith was the best of the new ones. I sat in the theater next to grown men who had plastic toys with them and I couldn’t process the badness of what I was looking at on the screen. At the NOOOO Frankenstein part the awfulness was so overwhelming that I actually questioned my own existence.
LotR is close to that time, right? That was an actual movie.
Such a stupid fucking post goddamn.
No its not supposed to be one of JJs mystery box stories, it was supposed to be obvious to the viewer who know the future
Not obvious to the characters.
Its called dramatic irony you brain dead mongoloid that can't even understand Lucas's shitty movies for children.
Kurtz was full of shit and never stopped trashing Lucas after he got fired by him
Kershner is a liegit character director and he brought performances to Star Wars which are much livelier than Lucas or Marquand did. That doesn't necessarily mean it's better for the movie or more challlenging for the actor, it's simply a directing preference.
Regarding Fisher, it's clear that she (and Ford for that matter) had had enough of Star Wars by that point. But she was professional and sold her character, which is all an actor is required to do at the end of the day.
backstory was still mysterious and interesting
This was the worst thing about the prequels. I'm 40 and as a 12 year old was dying for more cool stuff about the force and training like we got in empire strikes back, the eastern mysticism/kung fu aspect.
Really huge letdown of it being germs and also just not a good movie. They really leaned into it being a movie for 9 year olds and younger.
I was 5 and liked Jar Jar, he was meant for my age group. I had a Jar Jar pencil case they I used until I was 9 or something
Half this board is fucking star wars. Just make a fucking star wars board already
but he's really not that good if an actor
He is though, check out his performance in Life As A House. He's so good in it.
If only Tony Gilroy directed the Prequels
Or if george lucas was aborted
I remember everyone hated jar jar binks for some reason
As someone who doesn't really like star wars and considers it boomer nerd shit, can someone explain why everyone hated him so much?
He's loud, obnoxious, unfunny and overstays his welcome. I don't know what George was trying to say by casting a black actor in the role.
episode 1 and especially 2 were my favorite star wars movies after they came out. saw 2 for my twelfth birthday party. never heard a bad thing about them from people around my age until reddit letter media made their meme video.
He's ultimately right in the sense that at the end of RotJ it feels like too big of a win without enough of a loss.
This is where the fundamental difference in the way Lucas, and the way everyone else sees Star Wars. Everyone thinks of the original trilogy as being three separate films, but Lucas has always treated them, and eventually the Prequels as one big film. ROTJ isn't the third film, it's the third act. If you think of Ben dying as part of the first act, and the Han being frozen and Luke losing his hand as the all is lost moment at the end of act 2, then ROTJ's ending feels not only more earned, but much more rewarding in terms of being a true fairytale ending.
If only the guy that doesn't like Star Wars directed the Prequels
Andor is a solid sci-fi show, but its contempt for the franchise is evident all the way through.
I remember seeing 2 with some friends for a birthday party. We all rolled up newspapers and played lightsabers in the park after. We couldn't have been too old since friends mom was shaperoning us.
Can't say I thought the movie was all that great or anything to tell you the truth I don't think anyone did. But lightsabers and laser guns were cool and it was fun to hit each other with rolled up newspapers.