Posted 19 May 2005 - 12:46 PM
Agreed. In fantasy, rules of nature will be broken. Therefore internal consistency is important for verisimilitude. Remember that word: it's the other half of the formula that includes "willing suspension of disbelief." Lucas and his apologists ask viewers to bring their part, but George on his end doesn't bother. He figures every time he loses some of his former fans, it's their fault.
(Grain of salt time: if the prequels were perfect, and I mean perfect, there would still be folks who loved them, and folks who hate them. So Lucas really doesn't know any better).
Back to bashing: My criteria have always been even simpler than verisimilitude. I hated TPM because it wasn't any fun. I sank in my seat right from the landing on Naboo, and never sat up. For this reason, the continued popularity of the prequels amazes me.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).