fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2272 ]

[ SECRET POST #2272 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2272 ⌋

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You know, I would have said "none," but then I read this thread. :/

Batman and Robin
Quantum of Solace
Waterworld
The Phantom Menace
Die Another Day
The Fast and the Furious movies

So, I guess I just don't pay that much attention to public reaction, because the fact that some of these movies are hated really surprises me. Or I just have bad taste, who knows.

OHYES, The Phantom Menace. So much. I loved it and the original trilogy alike, genuinely don't see the difference. People explained that it may be because the first one was "new" and fresh, while the second one wasn't, but I don't see how it relates to the quality? Anyway, I enjoyed it because it was well done, not because of the freshness.

This isn't a thread for saying what movies you think are terrible so I don't want to get into this too much. But I don't think "new and fresh" is the primary reason people dislike Phantom Menace and, to a lesser extent, the other prequels; I think it has as much to do with the movies themselves.

But if you enjoy them, cool.

Well, yes, but why? I'd appreciate a tl;dr (or not so tl) on this topic. Perhaps it's already written, I just didn't happen to stumble across it yet.

Anon below got into some of it, and there's also a fairly well-known, hour-long video deconstruction of it (it's unfortunately packaged with a weird, unfunny framing device, but it's a fairly competent piece of work in itself; it's also very popular and probably the canonical account of why people don't like Phantom Menace).

But on the most basic level, it's a story that doesn't work. It has a basically dysfunctional plot. The central driving plot of the movie, nominally at least, is "A trade disagreement leads to the hostile occupation of a planet; the main characters defeat the enemies and liberate the planet." But a huge amount of the movie doesn't actually have anything to do with that - think about how much time the movie spends on Tatooine, and how much time the movie spends on dealing with Anakin's storyline (which is much more important than the Naboo storyline to the series as a whole), when that has almost nothing to do with the Naboo storyline. And the amount of stuff that's going on in the movie really hurts it - it makes it confusing, in the sense that it's easy to get lost and forget about why the main storyline matters and why the characters are doing it, and it makes it weak, in the sense that the force and the impact of everything that happens is divided because there's so much going on. It's a movie where a bunch of unrelated shit is going on at the same time.

This leads to a problem with the characters where their motivations, their characterizations, and their actions get mystifying because of the confusion in the plot. For instance, you have Qui-Gon having two motivations, which have nothing to do with each other - dealing with Anakin and dealing with the trade blockade. This also leads to the problem that the movie doesn't really have a central protagonist, because it doesn't really have a central problem - is Amidala the central protagonist? But she doesn't do much for most of the movie. Neither does Obi-Wan, really. Is it Qui-Gon? But he obviously doesn't have his whole attention focused on either problem, or a strong motivation.

And these aren't nitpicks, I don't think. I think they're fundamental problems with the way the story is told. The movie doesn't have anything that it's about. It doesn't have clearly-defined characters with identifiable desires. And that leads to a movie where lots of things happen for poorly-defined reasons, and characters react to them for reasons that we're not entirely certain about. The movie is kind of a confusing morass. All of this is exacerbated by dialogue and cinematography and such that a lot of people feel is pretty fatally flawed. But it's a bad movie on a pretty fundamental level, in my opinion.

Sorry, I hope that wasn't too tl;dr.

No, it's perfectly fine. If anything, I feel happy reading walls of text about something interesting.

Thank you, now this is much clearer to me. Indeed I agree that plotwise the second trilogy is a mish-mash; but it doesn't repulse me from it: I guess it makes the films more like... real life.

And yes, there are many immature characters. Hell, most of the time Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan behave like five-year-olds. Then again, I wasn't exactly adult when I first saw Star Wars, so it wasn't a problem. Still isn't; perhaps I haven't grown up as much as I thought after all.

[Yeah, I hated Padme and Anakin. Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Yoda and Mace Windu were the only characters I actually liked.]

People hate the prequels because they were bad stories, simultaneously having overly-complicated plots about trade negotiations and stuff while having childish emotions, ideas, character arcs, and sequences. The characters were not nearly as well-realized as the original trilogy's. The action sequences were too flashy, too prolific, too long, not tense enough, didn't happen for important reasons at important points like they did in the original trilogy, and too full of FX.

There was way too much CGI in the whole movie, which made scenes distracting, fake-feeling, or lazy. The scenes were too short and many of them were interchangeable or unneeded, i.e., it failed to give many of the scenes purpose. The arrangement of scenes didn't have narrative drive. The dialogue was atrocious and clunky (though tbh, A New Hope didn't have the greatest dialogue either). Not much of importance happened in Attack of the Clones.

No one liked Padme or Anakin, and they had no reason to be drawn to each other or have a unique dynamic, while everyone liked Han and Leia and thought their dynamic was vivid, so comparisons were made and the Padme/Anakin storyline was deemed tedious and irritating (this is far more subjective, of course).

There are more reasons I think, but those are the ones that stand out to me. But IMO, The Phantom Menace >>>>>>>>>> Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. I didn't like it a whole lot, but it was a good deal better and had more substance than the next two.

...all of the reasons you're giving are either subjective or the reasons why I liked the new trilogy. I find political-heavy stories interesting, Star Wars has never been about the characters to me as much as the world (which is a good thing, because frankly Luke in the old trilogy is the character equivalent of a choose your own adventure book), I loved the action scenes.

I'll grant you that there's too much CGI in general, but that's hardly a problem exclusive to these movies. Overall, I think the people who argue that these movies failed as stories period don't have a leg to stand on; fair enough if they weren't for you, but they were pretty solidly enjoyable for me.

nayrt

I don't think the politics works that well, in the Phantom Menace at least. I love some good intrigue, but there isn't much there there in Phantom Menace, unless you don't know that Palpatine is a baddie to start with. Besides the Palpatine stuff, it's pretty much just "One side is bad. They invade a planet. The good guys have to stop them." Which isn't a bad plot, but it isn't particularly intriguing or novel, either.

A simple plot wouldn't be bad in itself; A New Hope wasn't exactly rocket scientist. But on top of that plot, Phantom Menace piles a whole bunch of stuff, first about Gungans (which we're never given a particularly good reason for caring about) and then about Tatooine and Anakin. And the sum total of the relevance of Tatooine and Anakin to the nominal main plot about Naboo is: "The good guys get a new ship on Tatooine so that they can go on to Coruscant like they originally meant to." That's it. But the movie spends a ton of time on Tatooine, setting up an incredibly convoluted bet on a lengthy podrace, so that they can get to that point and pick up Anakin - and then they have to deal with Anakin, which is one of the main points of the movie from the perspective of the series as a whole, but which doesn't have anything to do with the Naboo storyline. And I think that's really a major failure for the movie - its central plots don't really work, because they have nothing to do with each other, and while one is on screen, the other is just kind of languishing. They interfere with each other. That's not successful to me.

All the rest of it is, I'll grant you, subjective. Personally, I don't think the action scenes were any good, or the cinematography, or any of it. If you liked the action scenes, that's not a preference I understand. But, as I said somewhere else in this thread, if you enjoyed the movies, more power to you.

(In passing: I think Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith work somewhat better in terms of their plots, but are still quite bad in terms of dialogue and acting, especially Attack of the Clones. Revenge of the Sith isn't great but it's the best of the prequels)

I agree about the childishness. Especially in Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. [still didn't prevent me from liking them, but I'm not much better in this regard]

Yes, I most certainly didn't like Padme and Anakin; but then I don't think that characters should be likable to be good, even if they were meant to be protagonists.

Thank you! Now I understand the hate. I think I like the second trilogy mostly in a child-like manner, as a grand and bright action story. I'm still delighted when I recall that the sound of the clapping of Watto's wings was made with the help of an umbrella. Besides, I find Jar Jar cute [x_x'... yeah], and Qui-Gon&Obi-Wan are my favourite Star Wars duo.

Oh, and I loved Padme's costumes and make-up!

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[ SECRET POST #2272 ]

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