Pete-D
Screenwriter
- Joined
- May 30, 2000
- Messages
- 1,746
It's because Star Wars was placed on a pedestal those films weren't. The Matrix was a pleasant surprise, but it was only one film. That would be more akin to Empire and Jedi being huge dissapointments compared to A New Hope, Star Wars probably would've quietly just fizzled into the 80s.Originally Posted by TravisR /img/forum/go_quote.gif
My mind is as equally boggled (if that's a word) about how much people have to keep telling people how bad the SW prequels were. There's no other movies in human history that make people, a decade after the release of the first one, go on and on about how bad they were. I think it's fair to say that The Matrix sequels, Batman And Robin or even Superman III and IV were disliked by a large number of people but no one spends as much time trying to point out why they were bad movies as people do with the Star Wars prequels.
I think part of the issue is that Star Wars was supposed to be the flagship movie franchise for how to have good storytelling, great characters, and just the right amount of special effects magic. In the 90s, when you'd get a bloated blockbuster that didn't work people would always say stuff like "see ... these guys need to go look at how George Lucas does it".
When 1998's "Godzilla" had was mega-hyped and then was a let down, the Starwars.com website even mocked the film's slogan "SIZE MATTERS", with a "PLOT MATTERS" mock page in the Godzilla font. Lucas and Star Wars was looked at the blue print of what a great story + character driven epic could be.
So when TPM happened, and in the opinion of some was an incoherent, dull mess of a story with really bland characters and bland politics ... it was as if "The Chosen One" turned to the dark side as it were, lol. It was like being stabbed in the back by a dear friend to some people. Not saying I agree with all that, but that's my take on why this issue is still so pervasive and discussed even to this day. What's the old saying? The worse thing you can ever do to someone is not live up to their expectations.