[ForceHippo]

This topic may have been around earlier and debated to death- if so, please ignore this poll. However, I find the topic interesting, since we know have the complete story for our viewing (dis-)pleasure.

In my view, I think it is a fair assumption, that regardless of execution the PT could never have met up with the expectations from the OT. So for me the question reads: these three new SW films or not, although you have to accept that the new films couldn't have met up with the previous standard.

[BadKarma]

I'd have to disagree in that I think the PT as it is should never have even wasted paper and electrons writing it down, let alone filming it! But I do think a great PT could have been made.
The problem was rather than do what worked in the originals (classic fairytale retelling in a space opera scenario) GL flushed it all down the pan and gave us CGI filled scenes of pop-culture trash. No depth of storyline, no progression of characters, no soul.
I might get flamed here (don's flame retardent suit) but 2 recent films made me feel like I was 10 yrs old again and I was able to watch them with child-like wonder and enjoyment, aged 33. It IS possible to make kids films, that appeal to adults and don't have to treat anyone like retards. Jar jar is the classic reason everyone gives when they say Ep1 was a kids movie. I was 7 when I saw ANH. I lapped it up and it made SW my whole world for my entire childhood. It didn't have a lame slapstick character. It didn't need it. Kids are not STUPID. Certain things appeal to their nature more than to adults, but treating them like fools is not required.
So yes to the PT... but not the PT we got.

Oh, you wanna know the 2 films that made me a kid again, just for the 2 hours I watched them?
Ok then! Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (no, I wasn't a fan before seeing it, my wife dragged me along! I'm a big fan now though!) and Pirates of the Caribbean, which was the first film ever to make me walk out of the cinema and say "That was nearly as good as SW!"

[Richard]

I think it was a cool idea to make the prequels, but I would have enjoyed them a lot more if they were done differently.

[jariten]

ask anyone aged 7-12. seriously, i'm curious to hear their response.

[ForceHippo]

I'd have to disagree in that I think the PT as it is should never have even wasted paper and electrons writing it down, let alone filming it! But I do think a great PT could have been made.
The problem was rather than do what worked in the originals (classic fairytale retelling in a space opera scenario) GL flushed it all down the pan and gave us CGI filled scenes of pop-culture trash. No depth of storyline, no progression of characters, no soul.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Quite so, the PT could and should have been better made. I also think that G.L. has been like a servant to the CGI technology instead of the more appropriate other way round. Still, the cult status of the OT is to my knowledge unparalleled in the last 28 year, so to me it seems very unlikely that the PT could have been made in a way, which would have avoided massive critisiscm. Still I won't make up any more excuses for G.L., since he has had a lot of years to come up with something better than the PT of today. Also, kids are certainly not stupid, only adults who think that and adapt their art accordingly are stupid, so yes there really was no need for the entire "poodoo" business of the films.

On the other hand, the PT is not devoid of "genuine" SW moments, and since I from time to time over the last 20 years have been somewhat addicted to the OT, I actually am very open to the idea of more SW screen time. The downside of course being that most of the new material is inferior to the old, but when it comes to SW; more is more for me.

I found Harry and Caribbean quite enjoyable, but when it comes to kiddie films I find that the Pixar studios have been doing an even more impressive work of doing films for both kids and adults.

[BadKarma]

ask anyone aged 7-12. seriously, i'm curious to hear their response.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry, ask them what?
The problem is, I don't hear much talk from kids about SW PT. I get to chat to a lot of kids through my friends youth group and SW is just not a big topic. Which tbh shows how much it's not been done well. If it was the huge success we are told every kid would be spouting SW, but they're not (or not the ones I chat to anyway). Harry P is still top dog with most, and tbh the stuff that 12 year olds are into now is frankly far beyond JJB anyway. Now if he had been a Gungan foul-mouthed rapper, singing about dumping Padme's body in his trunk....!

[BadKarma]

I found Harry and Caribbean quite enjoyable, but when it comes to kiddie films I find that the Pixar studios have been doing an even more impressive work of doing films for both kids and adults.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree on appealing to both levels with the Pixar films. My point with HP and Pirates was that they make me feel like a kid when I watch them, whereas Pixar I watch as an adult and get the more mature, subtle jokes that are there for us oldies! HP and Pirates didn't really have extra subtle comment for the adult viewers, they just happily drew me to their level of excitement and acceptance.
*shrug* maybe it was just me!

[ForceHippo]

I agree on appealing to both levels with the Pixar films. My point with HP and Pirates was that they make me feel like a kid when I watch them, whereas Pixar I watch as an adult and get the more mature, subtle jokes that are there for us oldies! HP and Pirates didn't really have extra subtle comment for the adult viewers, they just happily drew me to their level of excitement and acceptance.
*shrug* maybe it was just me!   

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry, I was a bit sloppy and missed your point about feeling like a kid. This was something I did not experience during those films. However, I certainly wish there were more films, which spur the imagination and make you feel that way. That is what the PT should have delivered, but I'm not going to go all revisionist and pretend that they did.

[CowboyCurtis]

ask anyone aged 7-12. seriously, i'm curious to hear their response.

Yeah, ask them now, but then ask them 20 years from now and see what they think....

Anyway, I know a lot of teenagers around here and everyone thinks Star Wars (new ones) are "gay"*

*Sorry, It's not a term I use, but it's what they say.

[Dunedain]

Surely the PT should've been made, and I, for one, am glad they were. 1 and 2 weren't as good as 4 and 5 (2 may have been as good as 6, if it weren't for the fact that 6 had the weight of two movies behind it, in its story-line)- but I have to say to call them "garbage" is nuts. They weren't bad movies- but they weren't great movies, either.

But, **** yeah they should've been made.

[jariten]

Sorry, ask them what?

If they thought the PT should have been made or not.

Anyway, I know a lot of teenagers around here and everyone thinks Star Wars (new ones) are "gay"*

but isnt that the general response they give to most things?　i guess (about) 20 more years will tell.

[Casual Fan]

This is pretty easy:

1) The original trilogy is a complete story. It has a definite beginning, middle, and end with all loose ends tied up, and if it wasn't for the "Episode IV" appearing on the opening crawl, no one would be talking about prequels at all. In fact, the first Star Wars movie is a complete story in itself and there were no particular need even for the two sequels.

2) The Star Wars universe that Lucas created is, as has been noted by Jariten, a space opera. Its not even based on any work of literature that can provide more depth. A pirate and a farm boy rescue the princess from the evil villain, with the help of a wise old man. This set-up is good for two movies, at the most. Lucas stretched it to three by throwing in that the villian was the father of the farm boy, but already in The Return of the Jedi the stretching starts to show and you start getting more filler.

3) The story of the prequels has already been told by Obi-Wan in Star Wars: A New Hope and The Return of the Jedi. There is no need to add anything, and if you try to make three movies about it you risk either contradicting what he said or bringing in a kind of paint-by-the-numbers plot.

4) Lucas himself said that he only had material for one and a half prequels but felt obligated to make three.

5) To make things consistent with the OT, Vader has to be a "good man" who turned to evil and can to be redeemed, while remaining loyal to the Emperor. This is actually quite difficult and its no surprise Lucas can't pull it off. Either he has to make the light-side of the force less light and the dark-side less dark, and give the Emperor a positive program that a good man can support, or come up with a compelling reason why a good man can side with evil. Imagine three movies about how the hero decides to become a Nazi and support Hitler.

I've been speculating about how the prequels could have been made better but have run into difficulties myself on the last point. The main thing that needed to happen is that they should not have been about the Skywalker family and should not have been Vader's biography. Just like a new theme (the Vader-Luke father son relationship) was introduced halfway into the OT to keep it going for another movie, the prequels needed a theme that had nothing to do whatsoever with the OT. Anakin Skywalker's story would just one variation on this, which grows to prominence in final two movies of the six.

Too much burden was put on the Anakin Skywalker character, which it probably couldn't bear, especially with the actor who was cast for the role. But making even good prequels would have been extremely challenging given the material, and since the OT makes a complete story, better to have just left it alone.

[Darth Dick]

I find the PM to be forgivable. Don't get me wrong, every time Jar Jar does something stupid or Jake Lloyd stumbles over his lines, I wish GL were sitting next to me so I could smack the shit out of him. It was a movie that never had a chance. The expectations were just too high. I liked it on some level though, but it just seems like the most trivial movie in the series now that it is completed. Having said that, there is NO excuse for AOTC. GL had plenty of feedback to listen to, he heard some of it, like less Jar Jar, but ignored most of it. It was supposed to be a very important peice of the saga, but I walked out of the movie feeling dazed and confused. How can a director/screenwriter who likes to point out everything and walk us, the audience, through it step by step create a movie so perplexing? I did not truly understand the plot untill after a second veiwing.
an example of GL overdoing it.
"Whats that explosion, we didn't hit it."
"Its blowing up from the inside!"
"Look! Out the main hanger!"
"Yippee!!!!"
I am certainly glad that he walked us through that.

[Devout Catalyst]

Did the prequels have to be made? No.

Casual Fan is absolutely right; the OT was a complete story, which filled in a good deal of the backstory along the way.

I seem to remember Lucas waffling in the mid-80s as to whether there would be any new Star Wars movies. Originally he said that he had conceived of nine movies to tell the story...three prequels, three sequels. I seem to recall that for a few years after ROTJ, however, Lucas hinted that he was finished with the franchise.

So whether the PT even had to be made to fulfill Lucas's "vision," such as it was, is debatable. In my mind, the fact that these prequels were so non-essential damns them from the start.

But even so, Lucas squandered a great opportunity. I mean, 16 years is a nice chunk of time to hone a storyline. Think of what he could have come up with if for all that time he had painstakingly studied the OT, if he had given the most careful consideration to the right director for the job, the right actors.

Yep, Lucas could have taken some real risks. He's good friends with Francis Ford Coppola, right? Imagine that he had asked Coppola to direct!

Imagine that he turned the series on its head, and took Star Wars from the pop-culture arena and propelled it into the realm of Serious Film. With the clout of the franchise name, he could have made Space Fantasy a respectable genre.

But alas...we can sit around and imagine how we would have made the prequels differently, but it's pointless. We got what we got. Had they been done well, we bashers might instead have marveled at how the prequels were better than we could have imagined.

[Mnesymone]

Hell - not just the OT - Star Wars was a complete film and it didn't need a sequel - Empire worked because it was a new theme, a new context and a different vein of storytelling, while Return of the Jedi didn't because it offered pretty similar things in setting, theme and style.
Phantom Menace offered a new vein of storytelling - a crap one. The deus ex machina, the readily transparent mole of Sidious and Palpatine, the thoroughly episodic story with the "side trip" stories along with the garbled attempts at duplicating moments from the OT. Attack of the Clones offered the same side trips, back-and-forth, even more garbled homagerie and even heavier dosages of deus ex machina, combined with the feeling that all achievements of the good guys are to no avail makes the story fail.
The only 'new and different' kind of story in the PT is Sith - with the 'global' perspectives, the removal of the Sidious/Palpatine mole, the divergent storylines and the twin climax and twin resolution ending, though it is very ponderous and slightly choppy around Grievous.
So - SW, ESB and ROTS are the three Star Wars films that offer stuff you don't get in others.
The PT was unnecessary, while Star Wars could have stood quite happily on its own.