TCFHE Press Release: Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Blu-ray) (1 Viewer)

[Douglas Monce]

Originally Posted by Carlo Medina

Admittedly not an absolute quantifier of quality, but an insightful look nonetheless:


Movie / IMDb score

Star Wars: 8.8

ESB: 8.8

RoTJ: 8.3


TPM: 6.4

AotC: 6.8

RotS: 7.8


Rotten Tomatoes

Movie : Freshness Critic%/Audience%

SW: 94/93

ESB: 97/94

RoTJ: 78/93


TPM: 62/65

AotC: 67/69

RotS: 80/64


Anecdotally speaking, I haven't heard of anyone (mostly my friends' kids) who have professed anywhere near the amount of love for the PT that kids did during the OT's heyday. Most are actually into...Transformers (yikes!).

Thats not all that surprising when you consider that about the only thing at that time that was appealing to that audience was 11 year old re-runs of Star Trek. There wasn't much else for kids of my age (I was 11 when Star Wars came out) to get interested in. Now there are LOTS more things to get kids attention.


My brother's kids, the oldest of which is now 20, and their friends know the prequel films inside and out. While they have seen the first 3 films, they aren't as interested in them. They are all in the the whole Jedi thing. Go to ComicCon sometime, and while you see lots of brass bikini Leias, you mostly see people dressed up as prequel Jedis. You don't see nearly so many original trilogy costumes.


Doug

 

[Jim_K]

Originally Posted by Douglas Monce


Thats not all that surprising when you consider that about the only thing at that time that was appealing to that audience was 11 year old re-runs of Star Trek. There wasn't much else for kids of my age (I was 11 when Star Wars came out) to get interested in. Now there are LOTS more things to get kids attention.


Doug

You might want to speak for yourself here because I don't remember the choices in entertainment being all that dire for me. While the selections were nowhere near that of today, there was quite a bit more than just Star Wars and Star Trek reruns for kids to get into during the period of the OT (77-83).

 

[TravisR]

^ But like you said, it's still nothing like the options that kids have today. I think the only thing that even really comes close to the popularity of Star Wars is Harry Potter and even that's probably because it has had 7 books and 8 movies to keep its popularity up.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Originally Posted by Jim_K



You might want to speak for yourself here because I don't remember the choices in entertainment being all that dire for me. While the selections were nowhere near that of today, there was quite a bit more than just Star Wars and Star Trek reruns for kids to get into during the period of the OT (77-83).

I was thinking more of what was available BEFORE Star Wars became a hit and everyone jumped on the band wagon. Personally I was a huge fan of Star Trek and Planet of the Apes. But again both of these had been gone for several years. Even the Planet of the Apes TV show only lasted one year and was gone by 1975. I was also into The Six Million Dollar Man.


But it really wasn't possible to be a fan of something like that the way you can today. Even though it was released before, Star Wars was really on the cusp of home video. Before that it wasn't possible to become so intimate with a movie that you would know every line and every shot by heart. Again I think the closest to that kind of fandom before Star Wars, was Star Trek, and that was because it was on TV every afternoon for years.


Doug

 

[Peter Rohlfs]

wrong thread

 

[Peter Rohlfs]

Lucas had written himself into a hole with the prequals. Galactic politics and the good guys losing was never going to be as fun as the rebels overthrowing the evil empire.


Peter

 

[SilverWook]

Originally Posted by Douglas Monce

Admittedly not an absolute quantifier of quality, but an insightful look nonetheless:


Movie / IMDb score

Star Wars: 8.8

ESB: 8.8

RoTJ: 8.3


TPM: 6.4

AotC: 6.8

RotS: 7.8


Rotten Tomatoes

Movie : Freshness Critic%/Audience%

SW: 94/93

ESB: 97/94

RoTJ: 78/93


TPM: 62/65

AotC: 67/69

RotS: 80/64


Anecdotally speaking, I haven't heard of anyone (mostly my friends' kids) who have professed anywhere near the amount of love for the PT that kids did during the OT's heyday. Most are actually into...Transformers (yikes!).

Thats not all that surprising when you consider that about the only thing at that time that was appealing to that audience was 11 year old re-runs of Star Trek. There wasn't much else for kids of my age (I was 11 when Star Wars came out) to get interested in. Now there are LOTS more things to get kids attention.


My brother's kids, the oldest of which is now 20, and their friends know the prequel films inside and out. While they have seen the first 3 films, they aren't as interested in them. They are all in the the whole Jedi thing. Go to ComicCon sometime, and while you see lots of brass bikini Leias, you mostly see people dressed up as prequel Jedis. You don't see nearly so many original trilogy costumes.


Doug

[/QUOTE]

Going by photos I've seen from other conventions, there are plenty of OT costumes running around. There are enough fans with stormtrooper costumes out there that Lucas had 200 of them marching in the Rose Parade with him in 2007.

 

[Jim_K]

Originally Posted by Douglas Monce MAD Magazine & Cracked were even more popular with us than spandex superhero's & Conan the Barbarian.


I was also heavy into any and all old Sci-fi, Horror and monster movies that played on our local Creature Feature shows and which were regularly showcased in issues of Famous Monsters in Filmland. We didn't care if they were made yesterday or decades earlier. Stuff like Godzilla movies, Universal Monsters, 50's Sci-fi B movies, Hammer horror, Harryhausen classics, Kong, etc, etc.


But yes I do agree with you, it was nothing like today (sat/cable, home video formats, streaming video, PC's, the internet, gaming systems, ipods, cell phones) were everything is at the touch of your fingertips and pretty much anything can be watched over and over at your leisure.

 

[Sam Favate]

September 27 is being reported as the release date.

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by Sam Favate

September 27 is being reported as the release date.

Yeah, Amazon sent me an update saying that was the date too.

 

[Cory S.]

http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/01/20/liam-neeson-star-wars-clone-wars-exclusive/


Could Lucas have gotten Liam Neeson to do the scripted lines for Jinn in Episode III, while doing the animated series, for the upcoming box set?


Can't be a coincidence, can it?

 

[Josh Simpson]

This is very interesting indeed.

 

[MattBradley]

Originally Posted by Cory S.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/01/20/liam-neeson-star-wars-clone-wars-exclusive/


Could Lucas have gotten Liam Neeson to do the scripted lines for Jinn in Episode III, while doing the animated series, for the upcoming box set?


Can't be a coincidence, can it?

I was thinking the same thing as I read the news. After I read that Liam was going to lend his voice to Clone Wars, I am really wanting to go back and read that scene in the book again.

 

[oscar_merkx]

That's great news about the September 27th release date

 

[gallandro]

Actually Carlo, I hate to burst your bubble, but those Rotten Tomato scores are severely misleading, and are largely based on reviews from the Special Edition releases in 1997. So comparing the 1997 score of the OT to the Prequel scores is like comparing apples to oranges; the OT scores are skewed by the nostalgia factor of the Special Edition releases of the OT, and frankly a LOT of revisionist history.


There is a very good article on the Rotten Tomatoes web site from back in 2005. The article also contains links to the original reviews of the OT from back in the day and scores the films based on reviews from the era:


http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_ii_attack_of_the_clones/news/1645247/critical_consensus_star_wars_prequels_actually_better_reviewed_than_originals/



If you take the Rotten Tomato scores of critical reviews at the time of the original releases of the OT in 1977, 1980 and 1983 you get these scores:


31% - Return of the Jedi
52% - The Empire Strikes Back
79% - Star Wars
Average Tomatometer: 54%


Only the original Star Wars managed a Fresh rating. Frankly many people tend to view the OT through the rose colored glasses of their youth. Back in 1980 Empire got mixed reviews at best. One of my local critics in Phoenix loved it, while the other felt it was too dark and lost a lot of the charm of the original... and these views were not uncommon.


Roger Ebert, David Ansen (Newsweek), and Janet Maslin (New York Times) loved Empire and gave the film glowing reviews. However Vince Canby, the New York Times' premiere film critic at the time said: "I found myself glancing at my watch almost as often as I did when I was sitting through a truly terrible movie called The Island." OUCH!!!


Frankly the Complete Saga is going to sell much better than either the OT or PT boxed sets.


Yancy

 

[SilverWook]

Those of us who actually saw Empire umpteen times over the summer of 1980, didn't give a flying hoot what the critics thought.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Yeah, I was seven at the time and didn't even know what a review was. I loved the movie, though. I still remember jumping off the swing set at the highest part of the arc, pretending I was Luke dropping from an AT-AT.


On the other hand, while I liked Jedi when I saw it, it was the first one that had been spoiled for me (a friend insisted on telling me that Leia was Luke's sister, a fact he read in a pre-release storybook), and I distinctly remember that I was getting heavily into girls at the time and had that on my mind while watching. It might have had something to do with a certain metal bikini.

 

[robbbb1138]

That's pretty crazy to look at how many people gave Empire a negative review, when it's now usually in people's lists for the greatest movies ever made. It's a great example though of little the impressions at the time of a release say about how a movie will hold up.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Much of the criticism of Empire had to do with the fact that it was much more serious than the first film. I think most critics thought of Star Wars as a kids film, and they weren’t expecting the film to be so dark.


The big complaint however was the perceived notion that the movie had no ending, and lots of critics, and audience members alike bitched about having to wait 3 years to find out what happens. This is born out by the fact that Empire had the lowest box office of all 6 Star Wars films.


Doug

 

[cafink]

I'm not entirely sure I disagree with the 1980 critics about Empire's ending (or lack thereof). Even today, when I can watch all three films back-to-back, it bothers me that Empire is an incomplete film, which makes no attempt to wrap up its story. I guess multi-part films are becoming increasingly common today (Lord of the Rings, Kill Bill, Harry Potter, etc.), and audiences don't some to have a problem with them, but I'm not convinced that it's always for the better.