We Can't Wait : A Millenium Time-Capsule

December 14, 2015 7:39 AM

A long time ago (1999), in a galaxy way, way afar . . . in anticipation of Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace. Lines form outside theatres across the country. Here's a time travel trip through 1999 to visit the lines in Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Dallas, New York, and San Francisco!
posted by gkr (95 comments total)

If it were the first "Star Wars" movie, "The Phantom Menace" would be hailed as a visionary breakthrough... "Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace," to cite its full title, is an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking. - Roger Ebert (May 17, 1999)
posted by Auden at 7:42 AM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

How can we have this post with out triumph's visits to the lines ? (ah, was attack of the clones, but the commentary still stands .. )

Man, I had a friend who re-painted his 70s era van in a star-wars motif, with "use the force" taking up one side.
posted by k5.user at 8:23 AM on December 14, 2015 [8 favorites]

Being in HS when this came out my friends and I were extremely hyped. 3 weeks before it premiered I stood in line for 2 hours just to get tickets for the film. The first showing available when I finally got to the counter was somewhere around 3:30pm on the first day.

The day of the premiere myself and my 2 closest friends arrived at about noon to stand in line and get good seats. In doing so we had to skip 2 afternoon classes. Luckily for us our parents were the cool kind and gave us excuse notes for "local culture and family reasons."

The next day when we arrived at our first afternoon class, Spanish with Mr. Martin, once all the students were seated Mr. Martin got up from his desk, walked to where the 3 of us were sitting and placed a copy of the local newspaper on my friend John's desk.

Frontpage, big picture of the theater with hundreds of people outside in line and almost dead center of the frame was my friends John and Mark. Mark had taken to wearing a ridiculous black trench coat that only came to his thighs and John was unmistakably tall and German. Mr. Martin set another copy on Mark's desk and then a 3rd on mine. I, however, was not in the frame, I was behind a column and out of view of the cameraman.

"I know you were there too," he said to me, "Local cultural event indeed." And then walked away as everyone burst into laughter.

But it was a cultural event! This post proves it!
posted by M Edward at 8:49 AM on December 14, 2015 [18 favorites]

I was in one of those lines. It was the first time I ever saw a grown man wear a bathrobe at a movie theater to which children were also allowed entry.
posted by snottydick at 8:59 AM on December 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

I was too young to do anything but get completely caught up in the hype -- before the movie came out, was there any sense that it would be, y'know, bad? Did people see it coming, or was it just a total surprise?
posted by Gordafarin at 9:03 AM on December 14, 2015

Both of the trilogies improved with each new movie.
posted by fairmettle at 9:08 AM on December 14, 2015

before the movie came out, was there any sense that it would be, y'know, bad? Did people see it coming, or was it just a total surprise?

Total surprise, and I saw it at a base theater in Germany after it came out everywhere else (avoiding spoilers was a lot easier in 1999).
posted by Etrigan at 9:14 AM on December 14, 2015

Luckily for us our parents were the cool kind and gave us excuse notes for "local culture and family reasons."

June 1st, 1984 -- My father comes to my school at lunchtime and tells the principal there had been a death in the family, so I needed to come with him. I pack up my stuff and ask "Who died?" My dad says under his breath as we walk out the front door, "Spock."
posted by Etrigan at 9:19 AM on December 14, 2015 [25 favorites]

Did people see it coming, or was it just a total surprise

Total surprise.
posted by snottydick at 9:26 AM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I saw it coming, but no one asked my opinion.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:32 AM on December 14, 2015

I did not like that movie.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:33 AM on December 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Not only was a it a total surprise to nearly everyone, but most people couldn't accept or articulate what had happened until some time afterwards. Which is why I'll be waiting at least a few days before seeing this one. Well, that and apparently tickets for the opening night were sold out a week in advance.
posted by sfenders at 9:34 AM on December 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

at last a thread which will answer the burning question, were people disappointed in The Phantom Menace
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:36 AM on December 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

Auden: "If it were the first "Star Wars" movie, "The Phantom Menace" would be hailed as a visionary breakthrough... "Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace," to cite its full title, is an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking. - Roger Ebert (May 17, 1999)"

A wonderful reminder that Ebert was not always right.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:37 AM on December 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

Anyone remember that video review that shredded the Phantom Menace that was longer than the actual movie itself? (Link goes to first part of a 7-part series)
posted by surazal at 9:39 AM on December 14, 2015

Ah, 1999. Everyone thought The Phantom Menace was going to be really, really good and that Y2K was going to be really, really bad.

And then the next year everyone was all "Gore, Bush—what's the difference, anyway?"
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:39 AM on December 14, 2015 [12 favorites]

Anyone remember that video review that shredded the Phantom Menace that was longer than the actual movie itself?

It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to put more mental and/or critical effort into TPM than Lucas did.
posted by Etrigan at 9:44 AM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Lock. Box.
posted by AndrewInDC at 9:44 AM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

"The Phantom Menace clings on in the top twenty all-time box office hits. Its position isn’t due to a 'box office mugging' either. (Planet of the Apes (2001), did well over its opening weekend, but nosedived once people who’d seen it talked to anyone.) Its business sustained throughout its cinema run. Critically too, it did better than you remember. Janet Maslin (New York Times) called it 'up to snuff', Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times) wondered how jaded an audience would have to be to reject it, writing 'How easily we become accustomed to wonders'. The Daily Telegraph review is notable for the fact its critic felt the need to justify having 'loved' the film, released in the UK two months after the US. This followed weeks of negativity flowing across the pond, which had by that point taken on a life of its own.

"From where did that negativity come? From those to whom the previous Star Wars films mattered the most: the fans...

"Kids too, never noticed – indeed, continue not to notice – the asserted qualitative difference between the trilogies. Because it’s not really there. You’re probably familiar with the concept of the vanity of small differences, and that’s what’s at play here. "

- James Cooray Smith, The New Statesman: "There is no way Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be as good as the prequels."
posted by koeselitz at 9:48 AM on December 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I probably would have given it a good review if you'd asked me right after I'd seen it. I was too caught up in the idea of a new Star Wars movie to really view it critically.
posted by octothorpe at 9:53 AM on December 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

From where did that negativity come? From those to whom the previous Star Wars films mattered the most: the fans...

Kids too, never noticed – indeed, continue not to notice – the asserted qualitative difference between the trilogies. Because it’s not really there.

I remember people almost immediately dismissing criticism of TPM by saying, "Of course you don't like it now that you're 20 years older -- your parents hated A New Hope."

(Which of course is not universally the case, but it's a good point.)
posted by Etrigan at 9:54 AM on December 14, 2015

There is no way Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be as good as the prequels.

And the Flamebait of the Year Award goes to...

(now if y'all excuse me, i'm going to hire a bounty hunter to hire another shape-shifting (yet mask-wearing!) bounty hunter to send a droid to drop some worms off in Smith's apartment instead of, y'know, using her giant sniper rifle to pop a blaster bolt in his head from a klick away.) what could possibly go wrong?)
posted by entropicamericana at 9:54 AM on December 14, 2015

Maybe it was just my friends and the corners of the Internet I was frequenting in 1999, but almost everyone I knew had a feeling that The Phantom Menace might not be great. There was that dumb name, and Jar-Jar had already been so roundly mocked that he was added to the South Park movie before Episode 1 even came out.

If we were surprised, it was more along the lines of "wow, I thought that was going to be sorta okay, but it was actually sorta bad." Certainly the level of hype and enthusiasm for The Force Awakens blows away the cautious optimism for The Phantom Menace as I remember it.

Now you want to talk about a bad movie that truly came out of nowhere? The first Matrix sequel. Pretty much everyone I knew was excited about that and almost nobody thought it was going to be a letdown. There was a tremendous amount of goodwill for the film coming out of the trailers and Super Bowl spot, and it being not-so-great was a big surprise for a lot of people.

I went to see the midnight showing on opening night and when the lights came up everyone just sorta looked at each other like "What" and filed out in silence.
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:00 AM on December 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

I remember reading a review of/article about Phantom Menace in Newsweek a week before it came out which in summary said, "This movie is not good, but you're going to see it anyway." So some people were talking about it before the general release.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:02 AM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was very very excited to see TPM. By about 30 mins in, I knew I was not going to love it. By the end, I was incredibly disappointed. As I mentioned on Fanfare - it was the single biggest gap between expectation and result I ever experienced.

So, don't be all telling me I'm only hating it in hindsight, internet contrarians. It sucks.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:05 AM on December 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

I was kind of young when it came out, and while I didn't particularly find TPM enjoyable, I very much felt like I was the outlier (although I didn't have any particularly fondness for the original trilogy at that point in my life either). Basically, I thought it was kind of boring.

Lots of my classmates loved it.

I don't doubt that there were many reasonable people who correctly saw through the movie's BS, but I can definitely say that there were a lot of people who liked it.
posted by schmod at 10:22 AM on December 14, 2015

James Cooray Smith, The New Statesman: "There is no way Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be as good as the prequels."

What a strange article. The fact that the prequels duplicate themes, dialogue, and shots from the original trilogy just makes their lackluster scripts, plodding place, and poor editing that much more obvious to me, not less. Everything the prequels try to do, the original trilogy did better.
posted by AndrewInDC at 10:26 AM on December 14, 2015

Waiting in line for Phantom Menace was (sadly?) one of the defining moments of my adolescence. It was the first time I ever stayed out all night downtown. It was the first time I ever stayed out all night downtown with BOYS (older boys, no less!). It was the first time I ever surreptitiously sipped horrid rum from one of the older boys' pocket flask, while trying desperately not to let on that I was entirely terrified that I was going to be caught and grounded for life and beyond. It was the first time I ever really felt "grown up" (despite the fact that the entire thing - the camping out on the sidewalk, the skipping school, the awe I felt at the fact I was hanging out with SENIORS, the coolness I felt because I was the only girl invited, the getting buzzed on approximately 3 sips of alcohol, the obnoxious and gleeful and joyous FUN we had in our little mini urban campsite, all of it - all of it was just so juvenile and innocent and fun).
So despite the fact that I was bitterly and crushingly disappointed by the film itself (a thing it took me months and months to actually admit), I do have very fond memories of the anticipation, and the waiting, and the hanging out with a bunch of other nerds who were just as giddy and young and silly and pumped up on the adrenaline of all the rule-breaking that this cultural moment was allowing us to participate in. It was a very silly thing, but it was loads of fun. So, in a really odd way, TPM for me is engulfed in a whole lot of sweet and silly nostalgia that kind of overtakes the horribleness of the actual movie, so when I look at photos of that mop-headed Anakin kid, I still sometime get a big grin on my face, remembering sitting in that line outside the theatre and feeling like this was somehow my first foray into adultiness. An odd thing for a children's movie to accomplish, I suppose...
posted by Dorinda at 10:29 AM on December 14, 2015 [12 favorites]

Oh fuck anyone who says garbage like "You wouldn't like the originals now cause you're older." No, shut up, I like ridiculous stuff now and I liked it then. You know how I know this? I see ridiculous stuff being well made now! And it's cool! Like Guardians of the Galaxy. I enjoyed the new Star Trek because it was well made. I did not enjoy the prequels because they were not well made.

It's really not that hard. We just had the seventh Rocky movie and it was actually really well made. Or the fourth/fifth mission impossible! We've now learned that if you put a good director, with a good script, together with actors that can do their stuff you get an enjoyable movie regardless of franchise age or baggage.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 10:37 AM on December 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

I look forward to seeing this in the company of friends, because if it sucks, then the misery is shared.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:44 AM on December 14, 2015

AndrewInDC: “What a strange article. The fact that the prequels duplicate themes, dialogue, and shots from the original trilogy just makes their lackluster dialogue, plodding place, and poor editing that much more obvious to me, not less. Everything the prequels try to do, the original trilogy did better.”

Well, it is an interesting argument. I pretty much agree with it on two points only:

(1) The Phantom Menace is not as bad as people say it is. It's absolutely not the best movie ever made, but people mush the new trilogy together and misremember it a lot. Attack of the Clones is so monumentally terrible that it's hard to see how Smith glosses over its awful points; in comparison, The Phantom Menace is really quite enjoyable as a children's movie. But there was this historical thing that happened, even at the time they were coming out, that I think everybody forgets; as we can see here in this thread, there were plenty of people who despised The Phantom Menace when it came out, but at that time there was also a big contingent of people who really kinda liked it, and who vocally disdained those haters who wouldn't shut up about how bad it was. "The pod race was actually fun! The kid was a pretty good actor, for a kid! I like the visual effects – imaginative and enjoyable to look at!" All of these are legitimate and fair praises of The Phantom Menace, which, as I said, succeeds pretty well as a children's movie. The strife between those who loathed The Phantom Menace and those who thought it was okay ("and why are you being so uptight, anyway?") raged for those few years after it was released.

But then Attack of the Clones came out, and everything changed. That movie seemed to stand as proof positive that the haters were right. Where The Phantom Menace had succeeded as a children's movie, Attack of the Clones was chockablock with scenes no child (or even adult) ought to be subjected to: in particular, offputtingly petulant romantic scenes. "See?" the haters said – "we were right." And the rest of us sort of gave in and tossed it all in the bin, accepting that it was just bad. By the time Revenge of the Sith came along (another not-so-bad movie!) we were pretty much resigned to the series just being terrible.

So – I think there is some misremembering of the prequels, along with some emphasizing of unimportant stuff that fans think ought to be more central than it is.

(2) I also will admit to some pessimism about The Force Awakens. George Lucas may have proven himself shoddy and uneven as a filmmaker, and given to all kinds of hackish glurge; J J Abrams has proven himself incredibly successful at making popular films that pretty much completely lack any enduring spiritual or cultural significance. I agree with Smith that it's worrisome how easily and glibly Abrams is able to dismiss Lucas' claim that he wanted to "tell a story" with a remark about how you just have to keep the fans happy.

I'm actually anticipating something different this time around – I expect that tons of people will absolutely love The Force Awakens, and I'll be left feeling like it's just empty. Then again, Star Trek Into Darkness caught a lot of flak for that very thing, so who knows.
posted by koeselitz at 10:47 AM on December 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

It wasn't surprising that the new movies didn't live up to the originals, but it was crushingly surprising that they shat all over them. Whether it was the slanty eye'd aliens speaking English in a bad Asian accent, the Jar Jar minstrel show, or the force as a triumph of eugenics, everything about The Phantom Menace struck a deeply sour note. How could the guy that invented this world have understood so little about it?

I'm not really excited to see the new one either. J.J. Abrams is a competent director, but seems incapable of making a film that's about anything larger than a plot line. Lost, Fringe, the new Star Trek: none of these shows ask larger questions. They're just about getting from point A to B. They don't hold a candle to, say, an old Twilight Zone. Of course, just getting a competent Star Wars movie will be a sigh of relief.
posted by xammerboy at 10:58 AM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

TPM was terrible. Terrible. You could tell from the opening lines -- it was pure gibberish. And somehow Lucas managed to direct Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman into giving spiritless, wooden performances. The special effects already seemed dated when the movie came out. Jar-Jar was a racist trope. The Force was changed from a democratic power attainable by those who just wanted it enough, to a force harnessed only by a Master Race who had the requisite blood.

I remember laughing out loud at how bad the movie was.

I also remember seeing on the news how people lined up all night to see it...yet I strolled down to my local theater with several co-workers at lunch time and simply bought tickets to get in, no wait, and saw it in a half-empty theater.

Needless to say, I am not setting my expectations high here.
posted by touchstone033 at 11:01 AM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Force was changed from a democratic power attainable by those who just wanted it enough, to a force harnessed only by a Master Race who had the requisite blood.

I also hate the idea of midichlorians, but I never had any doubt throughout the original trilogy that the Force only worked for people who had some innate Force ability.
posted by Etrigan at 11:03 AM on December 14, 2015

Whether it was the slanty eye'd aliens speaking English in a bad Asian accent, the Jar Jar minstrel show, or the force as a triumph of eugenics, everything about The Phantom Menace struck a deeply sour note.

Don't forget about Watto, the money-loving crooked-nosed Shylock.
posted by octothorpe at 11:14 AM on December 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

My kid is super excited to get to see a Star Wars movie in the theater; his dad and I are holding back our expectations, because we went to TPM together and were both really confused by how muddled and depressing it was. We saw the other two out of a sense of obligation, only to have that stupid NOOOOOOOO be our final shitty memory of the trilogy.

Neither of us is any kind of purist about the franchise. It doesn't have to make us feel 7 years old again. It just has to not have obnoxious pointless sidekicks or trade negotiations.
posted by emjaybee at 11:20 AM on December 14, 2015

The scene in TPM where Artoo rolls all business-like out onto the Queen's ship, coolly stares death by laser fire in the face while his colleagues get picked off one-by-one, completes his repairs, and scoots on back inside like it wasn't any big thing while the ship accelerates to lightspeed is probably the best character introduction scene and hands down one of my favorite moments in any Star Wars movie.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:31 AM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I ended up seeing TPM in theaters twice, because I had committed before the release to seeing it with two different groups of friends. It wasn't until after the second full viewing that I allowed myself to admit that it was in fact a really bad movie.

To hit the high points of the weird longer-than-the-movie-itself analysis of TPM by that guy who's really smart about filmmaking (but really bad about knowing when to leave out rape jokes, which is why I'm not linking to him), one thing that marks TPM as being much worse than any of the movies in the original trilogy is that it is impossible to describe any of the characters from TPM without making reference to their physical appearance or their job titles. You can describe Luke without giving his job, you can describe Han, you can describe Obi-Wan Kenobi — but good luck recognizably describing Amidala's personality and motivations outside of her job title, because she doesn't really have any.

The other thing that makes it actively unpleasant to watch is that the movie only contains the following types of scene:

1. Scenes where people walk into a room and sit down and talk, and
2. Scenes where everyone is jumping and swinging and shooting and fighting in a visually crowded CG space

The talking scenes are visually uninteresting, no matter how much CG stuff Lucas piles into the backgrounds of them. And the fighting scenes seem cartoonish and disconnected from the talking scenes, because, well, they are cartoonish and disconnected from the other scenes. We only see people moving at two speeds — they're either ambling over to a couch or conference table, or they're leaping around through space like incredibly fast-moving marionettes. There's no way to mentally jibe these two speeds without scenes in the middle, where some sort of human-scale athleticism is on display.

That guy with the smart film analysis buried under crappy rape jokes notes, meanly but aptly, that these two types of scene have one thing in common: George Lucas can direct them while sitting down. This literally lazy directing stands as a synecdoche for the overall laziness of the movie as a whole — the lazy plotting, the lazy (and overtly racist) characterization, and the incoherent worldbuilding. There are serious problems with TPM that the original trilogy didn't have, and they're problems that remain problematic even if you think of the film as a children's movie rather than the grownups-and-children movie it was marketed as.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:52 AM on December 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

I also hate the idea of midichlorians, but I never had any doubt throughout the original trilogy that the Force only worked for people who had some innate Force ability.

Well, yes, but it was something about a person's character, too, like you had to be open to the idea of the Force and willing to work to attain control of it, like Bushido or achieving Nirvana, etc & co.

If you were a kid in the 70s, you grew up believing maybe you could harness the Force and be a Jedi. After TMP...well, if you weren't of the proper breeding stock, tough luck, kid.
posted by touchstone033 at 12:04 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, yes, but it was something about a person's character, too, like you had to be open to the idea of the Force and willing to work to attain control of it, like Bushido or achieving Nirvana, etc & co.

If you were a kid in the 70s, you grew up believing maybe you could harness the Force and be a Jedi. After TMP...well, if you weren't of the proper breeding stock, tough luck, kid.

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive -- proper breeding stock and having the right character. Kids can still imagine being a Jedi after TPM, because it's not like midichlorians are measured by any test we have here. Lucas didn't make it "His blood type is B-positive! That means he can be a Jedi!"
posted by Etrigan at 12:13 PM on December 14, 2015

All I know is that George Lucas and midichlorians made Silent Bob look like an idiot in Mallrats.
posted by AndrewInDC at 12:32 PM on December 14, 2015

Midichlorians is disappointing on every level.

The force being a mystical thing that yes, chooses you, is something that everyone can aspire to. Sure, we're not all here to bring balance to the force... but maybe you are! When you overexplain it as something we can blood test for... yeah, the magic is gone.

It is a representation of everything that failed in the prequels, IMO. Every decision was pretty deliberately shitting on the past magic and fun.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:33 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

You Can't Tip a Buick: "To hit the high points of the weird longer-than-the-movie-itself analysis of TPM by that guy who's really smart about filmmaking (but really bad about knowing when to leave out rape jokes, which is why I'm not linking to him)"

Already linked in the thread, so I feel okay saying we're talking about Red Letter Media here.

My feelings on those are:

1) The rape/murder stuff is really, really tasteless and offensive and not at all funny. They do seem to have dialed that back to just a basic frat boy-ishness in their recent stuff, but I don't blame anyone for not wanting to watch the TPM review, or in general. I just skip the shitty stuff as needed.

2) I think their analysis is, for the most part, spot on. There was a lot of injured nerd reaction when the review came out that was largely unconvincing ("But YOU said Anakin doesn't appear for 15 minutes, and he shows up at 11:13!"). The main issues pointed out as flaws are correct - no real protagonist, people act without clear motives, endless flat shot/reverse shot, too many plot threads at the end.

TPM is a mixture of incoherent and boring, and the RLM review nails that on the head.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:39 PM on December 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

yeah, when I first saw the RLM videos, at first I was disappointed that because of the obnoxious voice and the clumsy rape jokes I couldn't in good conscience share it with my friends. But then I was excited, because the presence of the obnoxious voice and the clumsy rape jokes gave me cover to rip off the RLM analysis wholesale without citing my source, making my friends and acquaintances think I had somehow independently figured out how to explain exactly what's wrong with the prequel trilogy.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:48 PM on December 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

has anyone made a "machete edit" of the RLM reviews — you know, a version that cuts out the serial killer subplot and maybe replaces the creepy voice with something less fingernails-on-chalkboard to listen to?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:53 PM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I wish that there was a transcript of the RLM reviews of the Star Wars movies with all of the serial killer stuff edited out. He really says a lot of insightful things about the narrative failings of the prequels but I hate to share them with anyone because of all of the pizza roll and rape stuff.
posted by octothorpe at 12:55 PM on December 14, 2015

Or on non-preview, what YCTaB says.
posted by octothorpe at 12:56 PM on December 14, 2015

Ooh, I should take that on as a project - writing up just the actual criticism parts (I don't have the film editing skills to "despecialize"). Maybe over the holidays.

I will confess that I still laugh when I hear, "Send me an email at this webzone and I'll send you a Pizza Roll."
posted by Chrysostom at 1:02 PM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

This morning, one of my coworkers made a pretty solid argument that the prequels were a tragedy -- in the literary sense. We're basically watching a pre-ordained series of events play out. There some argument about exactly when the Republic was irrevocably doomed, but it's difficult to argue that any of the characters that we were watching were responsible for the tragedy, or ever had any capacity to avert it.

Heck. Even on the dark side, I think that you could even argue that Anakin isn't terribly important. Vader is only Palpatine's general. The empire was going to rise with or without him there to guide it.

Yes, the empire needed to emerge, but the prequels don't even really grant us a Pyrrhic victory (which is arguably what we get in Ep 4-7) -- the Sith are more powerful, the Jedi are assholes, the republic won't save itself, and there is nothing in the cold and uncaring universe that will change any of that.

Imagine how awful The Lord of the Rings would have been if Sauron's victory had been guaranteed from the moment that Bilbo picked up the ring? Sure, mankind makes a valiant effort to fight back, but it turns out that Sauron is more powerful, and the armies that he was building off-screen are way bigger. Mankind doesn't stand a chance. We invested in characters that never mattered.

Arguably, you might even be able to make that narrative work, except that the mythology of Star Wars and LotR differ in one key way: Middle Earth does not exist in a cold and uncaring universe. That's arguably a topic for another discussion, but at the very least, we know that we're supposed to be rooting for Frodo, and there are a handful of subtle signs that he is somehow special, and that he's special for a reason.
posted by schmod at 1:13 PM on December 14, 2015

"All efforts against Evil are doomed to fail; the best we can wage is a long, noble defeat," is pretty much the Silmarillion. It's not "awful", but it is somewhat depressing.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:19 PM on December 14, 2015

It's a prequel, of course it's predetermined. A prequel trilogy where Obi-Wan defeats the Emperor would make even less sense than the one we got. This adds a difficulty multiplier to the script: You have to make us care about the characters, and the prequels failed on, horribly.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:22 PM on December 14, 2015

This is why if Abrams ever makes a new version of the prequel trilogy, he should have Vulcan Tatooine get blown up in the first act of the first movie.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:29 PM on December 14, 2015

I disagree that the special effects looked dated in 1999. It looked great. ILM did a bang up job on all three of the prequels. All of the below-the-line trades did. The problem was 1) the writing 2) the casting and 3) the direction of the non-action sequences. Back in 1978, George Lucas said he wanted to make a film series like James Bond, and he wanted to have different writers and directors every time. He wanted to create a sandbox for filmmakers to play in. This worked really great on Empire, and pretty well on Jedi. Lucas' real talent is as an executive producer. He said time and again he didn't like to write, and that it was a struggle for him. And yet, his ego got the better of him, and he wanted to be a writer director for the prequels. Both Spike Jones and Steven Spielberg offered—no, BEGGED—him to let them direct a Star Wars movie, and he said no. As Marcellus Wallace said, "That's PRIDE fucking with you. FUCK pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps."

There's nothing wrong with any of the prequels that couldn't have been fixed very simply in pre-production. One more draft of the Phantom Menace screenplay was all it would have taken. Make Aanakin 19 years old instead of 9, cut Jar Jar, make Padme more like her daughter. create the suggestion of a love triangle between Obi Wan, Aanakin, and Padme, and nix the midicholirans, and you're good to go.
posted by vibrotronica at 1:36 PM on December 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

"All efforts against Ewoks are doomed to fail; the best we can wage is a long, noble defeat."
posted by sfenders at 1:38 PM on December 14, 2015

This morning, one of my coworkers made a pretty solid argument that the prequels were a tragedy -- in the literary sense. We're basically watching a pre-ordained series of events play out.

Well at least that what it should have been. The movies should have been the chronicle of the rise of a great hero and his inevitable fall caused by his inherent flaws. He could have just stolen the plot from MacBeth then at least Padme would have gotten more to do and had a better character arc.
posted by octothorpe at 1:45 PM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's nothing wrong with any of the prequels that couldn't have been fixed very simply in pre-production. One more draft of the Phantom Menace screenplay was all it would have taken. Make Aanakin 19 years old instead of 9, cut Jar Jar, make Padme more like her daughter. create the suggestion of a love triangle between Obi Wan, Aanakin, and Padme, and nix the midicholirans, and you're good to go.

Also replace the Trade Federation with an antagonist with motivations that can be explained and actually bother to explain them. Also cut the robot army or give them special effects that make them look somehow menacing and/or brutally elegant, rather than goofy and fragile. Also abandon the use of racial/ethnic stereotypes as shorthand to indicate how we should feel about different alien characters. Also change basically everything about the movie. easy peasy.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:50 PM on December 14, 2015

I've never really understood the objections to a trade dispute being the spark that ignited the galactic civil war. I mean what's the problem with everything falling to pieces over some obscure, boring facet of economics? Does everything have to be prophecies and power crystals?
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:54 PM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

it's not so much that everything started falling apart because of a trade dispute, it's that the terms of that dispute weren't explained particularly well, largely because (as far as I can tell) they weren't ever really worked out in the first place.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:07 PM on December 14, 2015

(like for reals if anyone can comic-book-store-guy out how the Trade Federation's blockade makes sense and why they're doing it and what they're trying to accomplish with it, I would legit love that.)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:14 PM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

A thought experiment I fall back on a lot is what I would have done if, magically, Lucas had come to me to plot out the prequels, and I was free to jettison any canon that wasn't on the screen in the first three movies.

For a while, I thought The Godfather would be an interesting prototype, with Anakin as Michael, whose desire to escape the violent Jedi lifestyle is eventually at odds with the loyalty he feels to his family.

But the other night I rewatched the amazing Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and it occurred to me that what I'd really like to see is Casey Affleck as a young Anakin desperate to be taken seriously by the Jedi he idolizes, until that desire becomes torment and he turns on them...

Obi-Wan: You're not so special, Mr. Skywalker. You're just like any other tyro who's prinked himself up for an escapade, hoping to be a Jedi like them one-credit holograms are about. You may as well quench your mind of it, because you don't have the ingredients, son.

Anakin: Well, I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, as I put such stock in your opinion. As for me being a Jedi, I've just got this one granddaddy lightsaber and a borrowed belt to stick it in. But I also got an appetite for greater things. I hoped by joining up with you, it'd put me that much closer to getting them. Let me be your padawan.

Obi-Wan: Padawan?

Anakin: So you can examine my grit and intelligence.

Obi-Wan: I don't know what it is about you, but the more you talk, the more you give me the willies.

posted by Ian A.T. at 2:17 PM on December 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

(like for reals if anyone can comic-book-store-guy out how the Trade Federation's blockade makes sense and why they're doing it and what they're trying to accomplish with it, I would legit love that.)

The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute, so the greedy Trade Federation has instituted a blockade, stopping all shipping to the planet Naboo. Presumably the TF is on the pro-commerce, anti-taxation side of things, so one can surmise that Naboo was trying to levy a tax on imports and the TF is using their spaceships and droid armies to muscle them into acquiescence. The Republic would obviously be on the pro-taxation, pro-government side and sent the Jedi to get the TF to back off.

I mean yeah, it's banal? But I think that's the point. And it's not hard to intuit all of this from the opening crawl and the first scene; you don't have to pull in any supplementary material to flesh out this scenario and frankly I have no idea if it contradicts anything on Wookieepedia or whatever.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:25 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

The blockade is explained in the opening crawl:

Turmoil has engulfed the
Galactic Republic. The taxation
of trade routes to outlying star
systems is in dispute.

Hoping to resolve the matter
with a blockade of deadly
battleships, the greedy Trade
Federation has stopped all
shipping to the small planet
of Naboo.

Essentially there's a megacorporation (the Trade Federation) with political power (they have a Senator, Lott Dod) that's angry that the Republic wants to tax their trade and eat their profits. They've been secretly manipulated into the blockade by Darth Sidious, who is actually Senator Palpatine. Sidious secretly orders the invasion of Naboo in order to force a vote of no confidence in the Galactic Senate, telling the Trade Federation head that he'll retroactively legalize the invasion when he gets into power.

Basically secret evil wizard provokes mega-corporation into wildly escalating its response to government taxation to allow the evil wizard to seize total power.
posted by majuju at 2:33 PM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah I always thought the whole deal where Palpatine engineers a crisis of faith in the Republic by manipulating the conflicts between economic and state powers is one of the things the prequels did right.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:37 PM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Fun fact: You can tell the Trade Federation is supposed to be evil because the character who is the head of the organization is named Nute Gunray. (Yes, that's an intentional mash-up of Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan. George Lucas can be quite the mischievous imp!)
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:31 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Cinema Sins, "Everything Wrong With Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace": part one, part two.

A New Hope's first scene? Battle of Vader overtaking Leia's ship. Empire's first scene? Hoth battle. Return of the Jedi's first scene? Tatooine rescue. But this movie's first scene? Political ambassadors part of an envoy to talk about trade blockades.

The Phantom Menace is really quite enjoyable as a children's movie

Yeah, kids love trade disputes, blockades, treaties, Senate proceedings, and negotiations.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:32 PM on December 14, 2015

How do kids feel about the murder of children, domestic violence, amputations, and fourth degree burns?
posted by entropicamericana at 3:46 PM on December 14, 2015

They love 'em!
posted by kirkaracha at 3:54 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Gordafarin: " was too young to do anything but get completely caught up in the hype -- before the movie came out, was there any sense that it would be, y'know, bad? Did people see it coming, or was it just a total surprise?"

My impression was also "total surprise".

While I was in university Phantom Menace was still in pre-production. The plans to make the movie had been announced, but casting hadn't even begun. I knew a tremendous Star Wars fan (I wouldn't call him a Star Wars geek, because he was a really funny, likeable, cool guy). I remember him talking about Christian Slater being a huge Star Wars fan, and rumor had it that he was trying to get a role in the movie. My friend said that you would be able to predict if the movie was going to be any good depending on whether or not any famous actors would be in it. My friend's position was that the first trilogy basically only had Sir Alec Guinness, and everyone else was virtually unknown when cast. If Lucas ended up casting various famous people, that would be a sign he'd drifted too far from his roots and the movie would suck.

Now, the movie did suck, but it wasn't the fault of Ewan or Liam or Natalie. But I bring up this anecdote because I distinctly remember it was 1) the first time I'd heard anyone venture that it could straight-up suck, and 2) coming from a superfan, no less. The worst I'd ever heard someone conceive is that it might be just kinda okay, but I'd never heard someone imagine the idea that it might be actively bad.

Etrigan: ""Of course you don't like it now that you're 20 years older -- your parents hated A New Hope."

(Which of course is not universally the case, but it's a good point.)"

I would say that the case is so far from universal that it's actually not a good point. In fact, it's kinda the opposite of a good point, because the correct quote would be more like "You don't like it now that you're 20 years older, despite the fact that adults fucking loved A New Hope".

prize bull octorok: "The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute, so the greedy Trade Federation has instituted a blockade...etc."

Yeah, that part I get, and it's fine. Got no problem with that. But I don't understand anything about the trade blockade that comes after the crawl. Like, someone needs to get Amidala to sign something that would make the blockade legal? I'll accept that in Space Politics that kind of signature under duress could still be counted as legal. But 1) Why (in the context of the Trade Federation blockade) did they need the blockade legalized? I kinda got the impression that that was in fact the goal of the blockade, but that doesn't make any sense ("Let's blockade the planet so that we can force an agreement that legalizes the fact that we blockaded the planet!"), so maybe that's not the goal, but a secondary goal? And 2) Why (in the context of the emperor) did they need the blockade legalized? I mean, I understand the basic idea was to create conflict to get Palpatine into office, but how was legalizing the blockade conductive to that? It would seem like if you wanted to create conflict to put yourself in power, you'd want to make damn sure the blockade was illegal. Oh, and 3) Why did they try to kill the Jedi at the start of the movie, anyway? Was that just a conflict-creation thing? (That would make sense) But wasn't Palpatine put out by that? I got the impression that he was unhappy the Jedis came, not cackling "Yes, yesss...everything according to plan."

I'm not nitpicking, I just straight-up don't understand the plot. I'm totally cool with the trigger being taxation or trade disputes or the like, but I don't get why people are doing the things they are doing in the movie, and I would actually love to understand!

entropicamericana: "How do kids feel about the murder of children, domestic violence, amputations, and fourth degree burns?"

Based on observation of my own two kids (ages 6 and 9): Not particularly interested in child murder, domestic violence, or the many, many hand amputations. Find the larger amputations and fourth degree burns of Revenge of the Sith "kinda gross", but not particularly off-putting. Basically, the new trilogy is a series of lightsaber fights and space battles with some kinda boring talky stuff in-between, just like every other cool action movie.

In fact, watching movies through their eyes, it's pretty clear that comedic action movies are the best movies, because it's "action, comedy, action, comedy, action" as opposed to "action, boring, action, boring, action".
posted by Bugbread at 4:23 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

OK, watching the second Cinema Sins video, I'd forgotten that Kid Anakin pretty much single-handedly wins the Battle of Naboo by blowing up the droid control ship from the inside. So, kid grows up to become Darth Vader and is involved in not one but two Death Stars that get blown up the same way. Lazy screenwriting, or is Vader a good-guy sleeper agent?
posted by kirkaracha at 4:28 PM on December 14, 2015

kirkaracha: "So, kid grows up to become Darth Vader and is involved in not one but two Death Stars that get blown up the same way. Lazy screenwriting, or is Vader a good-guy sleeper agent?"

It's like poetry.
posted by Bugbread at 4:34 PM on December 14, 2015

And 2) Why (in the context of the emperor) did they need the blockade legalized?

I'd guess they were trying to get the planetary government on the side of the Trade Federation vs the Republic, but I have no doubt that the logic will break down somewhere along the line if you really try to map it into a coherent galactopolitical context. Then again, AT-ATs don't make any fucking tactical sense; things not holding up to close scrutiny is more of a Star Wars problem generally than a prequels problem specifically.
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:39 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

hey here's a low-hanging fruit motivation for Trade Federation power-play: let's say the Trade Federation thinks slavery is great, but the rest of the republic is like "uhh have you considered droids instead cause we make pretty good droids these days," and the Trade Federation is like "nope, slaves it is!" to which the republic responds "gosh we'd like to stop you but we can't figure out how cause our Republic is kind of a shambles." Republic forces (or the Jedi acting independently) do something ineffectual to stop the slave trade, the Federation flips out and take Naboo hostage in response.

Straightforward conflict, in keeping with the themes of the series, in keeping with the backstory established in the original trilogy, presents lots and lots of occasions for intrigue and manipulation and betrayal that can all be secretly managed by an evil space wizard with sparky fingers.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:51 PM on December 14, 2015

or hey everyone watching the original trilogy noticed that the Empire is pretty human-supremacist, while the Rebellion has other sentients in high leadership positions. Maybe the thing that got it all going in the first movie could have had something to do with Palpatine leading a human-supremacist faction huh?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 5:01 PM on December 14, 2015

Both of those scenarios position the Republic/Jedi as explicitly good and just and the TF as uncomplicatedly villainous, and I believe it's quite intentional that the Jedi and the Republic went down fighting for amoral politicized nonsense.

Not that you have to like that, but I think it's a reach to say that the whole Trade Federation business was an objective flaw in the storyline.
posted by prize bull octorok at 5:12 PM on December 14, 2015

prize bull octorok: "Then again, AT-ATs don't make any fucking tactical sense; things not holding up to close scrutiny is more of a Star Wars problem generally than a prequels problem specifically."

True, but my problem is that in the other five SW films things make sense on the surface, but when you start looking deeper, they break down (true of most movies, for that matter). The Phantom Menace had two big chunks which I couldn't understand on the surface: the blockade (Palpatine's actual intentions, what he wants the senate to believe are his intentions as Senator Palpatine, and what he wants the trade federation to believe are his intentions as Darth Sidious), and the Pod Race bet.

In fact, I just rewatched the Pod Race bet scenes, because they are short and I figured "it can't be that hard", and...what?!
<First scene>
Neeson: "I'll pay for the entry fee with my ship, and I'll supply the pod"
Insulting Jewish Stereotype (IJS): "Okay, I'll supply the boy. We split the winnings 50-50."
Neeson: "Changed my mind. You pay the entry fee, I supply the pod. If we win, you keep everything but I get the parts I need for my ship. If we lose, you keep my ship. Either way, you win."
Me: What? No. The entry fee is apparently about the same price as the ship. So if you win, yes, IJS also wins. But if you lose, he breaks even by selling your ship to recoup the entry fee he paid. So it's a "win or break even" bet for IJS. Okay...
<Second scene>
IJS: "Sebulba is going to win. He always wins."
Neeson: "I bet you Anakin wins. I'll wager the pod itself against Anakin's freedom."
Me: Okay, so if the boy wins, IJS gets the prize winnings but loses both Anakin and the entry fee. If the boy loses, IJS gets the ship (recouping his entry fee) and gets the pod.

It took me about five minutes just sitting here retyping and rewriting to figure all that out. It actually (kinda) makes sense. If we assume the prize winnings are worth more than Anakin + entry fee, then this second bet finally does make it a win-win situation for IJS. He either makes a little net profit from (winnings - Anakin - entry fee) or a little net profit from (ship - entry fee + pod). Admittedly, he makes less money if Anakin wins than he would have before the second bet, but he hedges his losses (or, rather, turns a "Big Win vs. Break Even" bet into a "Little Win vs. Little Win" bet. Though if he was so confident Sebulba would win it's a bit odd that his first bet would only have paid out if Sebulba lost. But, sure, whatever, since the worst case scenario was "break even", maybe he just thought "What the hell, why not."

So the bet actually does hold up under further scrutiny...but it's nigh incomprehensible (or, at least, I'm not smart enough to comprehend it) on initial or second viewing.
posted by Bugbread at 5:40 PM on December 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I made it about ten minutes into that film and turned it off for excessive badness. (And trust me, my standards are flexible, but there was just nothing good.)

I still feel sorry for my friend who not only stood in line but also dressed up in costume. He was just about heartbroken at having invested so much into something so bad, or maybe it was more a feeling of betrayal towards Lucas.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:33 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

kirkaracha: "Yeah, kids love trade disputes, blockades, treaties, Senate proceedings, and negotiations."

Maybe five minutes of TPM is those things. Seriously. The entire movie is telegraphed clearly - "GOOD GUY HERE. BAD GUY THERE. GOOD KID RACE THINGIE, WIN RACE AGAINST MEAN DUDE. SLAVE KID FREE." Another thing kids love: completely ignoring the opening crawl, even though it's very tempting to point out that it mentions trade negotiations and blockades, and very easy to point out that a movie that was actually about trade negotiations would quickly get boring.

Really, I'm not saying it's an amazing work of art - far from it. I do also think Lucas was trying to duplicate something he did with the first three, and especially the very first movie: making the plot arcanely complicated, yet making the surface relatively easy to follow, so that you kind of just get lost in the weeds overall but are never really confused. Seriously, try describing the plot of Star Wars in one sentence - it's actually rather difficult, because it's unnecessarily complicated and filled with all sorts of details that don't really advance the plot at all, and the characters seem to wander from one thing to another. In fact, I'd say that was actually what Lucas most gained from reading Joseph Campbell - Campbell could be a bit trite, but he gave Lucas enough details about these standard tropes to help him telegraph all the characters effectively - so you can watch a confused morass of odd turns and silly techno-stuff like Star Wars and still say to yourself, "oh, this is the farmboy, he's about to go on a quest; here's the mysterious old man, he's going to help him discover something; here's a cool pirate dude, and here's the princess (she's actually called a princess, that helps!) he's going to fall in love with; here are the bumbling sidekicks; etc." You're never confused about who's supposed to be who, or what they're supposed to be doing, even though the plot is really a weird thicket when you think about it.

And I think that still kind of works with The Phantom Menace. If you kind of just sit there and ignore the urge to make sense of things, just let the weird crap wash over you and accept the obvious things that it's banging you over the head with visually, just sit there and enjoy the cool ships and the fun race - eh, it's fine. Stack it against Cars and I'll easily pick The Phantom Menace every time.

I will admit, the racist crap is pretty thoroughly awful. But aside from that, eh. Passable children's fare. Not in any way as offensively awful as Attack of the Clones.
posted by koeselitz at 7:37 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

> So the bet actually does hold up under further scrutiny...but it's nigh incomprehensible (or, at least, I'm not smart enough to comprehend it) on initial or second viewing.
posted by Bugbread at 5:40 PM on December 14 [1 favorite −] [!]

Things Lucas didn't bother to get right:

• Plotting
• Characterization
• Presenting the Force as a numinous all-binding power rather than some people with magic mitochondria

Things Lucas bothered to get right:

• Cutting-edge visual effects
• Realistic hedging strategies

posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:39 PM on December 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Some of the creature effects in the first film were charming in a simple and rough way but all I saw of TPM was the pod race bit and I couldn't get over the fact that there was a secondary character in Anakin's pit crew walking around with a giant paper-mache head. Somebody ok'd that!
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:04 PM on December 14, 2015

bonobothegreat: "I couldn't get over the fact that there was a secondary character in Anakin's pit crew walking around with a giant paper-mache head. Somebody ok'd that!"

Was this just a mean trick to make me go rewatch that scene? When you first see Anakin and his elementary school crew there are four humans and a Rodian (sp?) (Greedo alien thing). During the race itself it's one human and the Rodian. No giant paper-mache heads.
posted by Bugbread at 10:01 PM on December 14, 2015

"Here I will seek to establish that Jar Jar Binks, far from being simply the bumbling idiot he portrays himself as, is in fact a highly skilled force user in terms of martial ability and mind control."
posted by panic at 12:46 AM on December 15, 2015

Seriously, try describing the plot of Star Wars in one sentence - it's actually rather difficult, because it's unnecessarily complicated and filled with all sorts of details that don't really advance the plot at all, and the characters seem to wander from one thing to another.

Farmboy teams up with space pirate, space bear gorilla and space wizard to return stolen secrets to space princess, gets tricked into taking space princess and secrets back to hidden rebel base while evil space empire follows them, then uses secrets to defeat empire with help from redeemed pirate and bear gorilla and wizard in audible ghost form. Fill in the gaps with bits and pieces from Dune, Hidden Fortress and Freud and there's your film.

Anyway, the real problem with the taxation/trade dispute stuff wasn't that it was inherently bad, although it could have been better. It was just told so ineptly. The Star Wars backstory had the Emperor dissolving the senate, abolishing the bureaucracy and devolving power to his regional governors, and various parts of the Imperial military (the Death Star faction, the fleet faction and the space wizard faction) bickering amongst themselves, which has a bit more potential, but 1999 Lucas could still have made a shit boring movie out of it by filming it like the first 40 utterly rubbish seconds of this. Instead we got one of the greatest scenes in any movie ever.

I will, however, happily agree that Send In The Clones was even worse.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 2:46 AM on December 15, 2015

Concerning the rapey stuff complaints about the Youtube guy with the brilliant analysis of the ways the Star Wars prequels go wrong: it's a riff on the weird-sounding serial killer in The Silence of Lambs, the attempted joke being that only someone equally nuts and lacking in basic social skills would waste so much time and effort making videos about things like that.

I can see how, if you're not a Silence of the Lambs-jokes-all-the-time kind of type, you could forget about that and find it tasteless and unfunny. But my sense of it is that it's a 'Put the lotion in the basket!' kind of gag rather than 'Ha ha ha, there are nutters who abuse women.'
posted by Mocata at 4:14 AM on December 15, 2015

I remember looking forward immensely to Phantom Menace, enjoying it and being totally blown away by its visuals when I saw it, and afterwards feeling a growing sense of hollow disappointment. But it wasn't the first time I'd got what I wanted more than anything, only later to realize no, that wasn't what I wanted at all. You see, many years before, my mom had driven me to the mall on a school day so I could catch the 10:00AM opening day showing of a little thing entitled Star Trek: the Motion Picture.

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.
posted by Devoidoid at 6:40 AM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Now if you want to talk immediate disappointment, I remember standing outside the AMC next to Boston Common with a bunch of grad school friends trying to process how horrible The Matrix Reloaded was. We stood there for 20 minutes talking about how bad it was in increasingly angry ways.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 7:20 AM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think the problems with the graphics in TPM etc are that they are TOO glossy, too perfect. In the OT, everything is REAL. Its gritty, its used, its lived in, it more or less makes sense (If sometimes filtered through the logic of a massive bureaucracy run by an insanely evil space wizard)

In the prequels, everything is super bright and shiny and chrome (riding eternal...)

I get that 20ish years of clone wars and whats basically a massive Galactic civil war (of... Palpatine... vs his other army?) can kinda grind down the artisan craftswork of a place like Naboo, and the Rebels are a ragtag bunch of guerrilla warriors, but... eh. One looks and feels real, one looks like Disneyland, a nice place to visit....
posted by Jacen at 7:44 AM on December 15, 2015

Elementary Penguin: "Now if you want to talk immediate disappointment, I remember standing outside the AMC next to Boston Common with a bunch of grad school friends trying to process how horrible The Matrix Reloaded was. We stood there for 20 minutes talking about how bad it was in increasingly angry ways."

I was mostly OK with Reloaded when I saw it first because while it made very little sense by itself, I figured that they'd tie up all of the narrative strands in the third movie. And then Revolutions made even less sense than Reloaded which retroactively made me like the second movie less.

The freeway scene was cool though.
posted by octothorpe at 7:52 AM on December 15, 2015

But I don't understand anything about the trade blockade that comes after the crawl.

Having just watched TPM last night (I'm not sure why), I'll take a whack at this . . .

The plausibility of the whole "blockade" plot pretty much rests on the idea that Naboo and (maybe) the planets of the Trade Federation are minor planets out on the fringe of the Republic, where the Republic's influence is low and communication is poor. (Lucas pretty much says this is the case, but does a poor job of showing this, which is part of the problem.) In theory, all sorts of shenanigans can happen out there and get "resolved" before the Republic notices or does anything about said shenanigans.

"Taxation of trade routes" is really vague, but I think we can figure that Naboo is taxing Federation ships that pass through their system and/or taxing Federation transactions on Naboo. The TF is ticked about this, and so when Mysterious Hooded Figure comes up with the idea that the Federation can pull a fast one by using a blockade and threat of invasion to "renegotiate" a trade treaty with Naboo before the Republic notices, they jump on it. (While the audience may or may not have figured out that Mysterious Hooded Figure is really Palpatine, I think the Federation has no idea.)

1) Why (in the context of the Trade Federation blockade) did they need the blockade legalized?

So, it's not that they want the blockade per se legalized - it's that the Federation wants to force Naboo to sign a new trade treaty. If they can do this before the Republic shows up, they can play the innocents - "Who, us? Military action? No, no, just a minor disagreement over tax rates, no need for you to get involved. We've got this nice new legal treaty, see?" If a legally signed treaty is a fait accompli by the time the Republic arrives, no-one's going to bother questioning how the TF got Naboo to sign, because, again, fringes of Republic, largely ignored. (Yes, Lucas does a poor job explaining this.)

I mean, I understand the basic idea was to create conflict to get Palpatine into office, but how was legalizing the blockade conductive to that?

Legalizing the blockade isn't conducive to this - Palpatine has a secret plot going that the Federation isn't aware of. His secret plot counts on Naboo not caving in to the TF's demands, which means the Federation will feel pressure to escalate to the point of boots (droids) on the ground in order to get Naboo to sign a new treaty. Which then means that two members of the Galactic Senate are openly at war, which means that Palpatine (as a Senator) can make a play to be elected Supreme Chancellor, claiming that a stronger, more forceful SC (himself) will not allow tax disputes to escalate to the point of open warfare. Palpatine is using the TF as pawns - they think they're just engaging in some "forceful negotiation" shenanigans, and again, they don't realize that Mysterious Hooded Figure is Palpatine. (Or even if they do, they just don't see the bigger picture or get that Palpatine actually has his own secret reasons for having them attack Naboo.)

3) Why did they try to kill the Jedi at the start of the movie, anyway?

This makes some sense from the Trade Federation's standpoint - if the two Jedi just mysteriously disappear (as far as the Republic is concerned), the Federation has more time to try to force Naboo to sign a new treaty. It'll take a little bit before the Republic realizes they haven't heard from the Jedi sent out to Naboo, more time to send a couple more, and when the new Jedi arrive they are likely to be just as if not more concerned with finding the missing Jedi than interfering with the Federation.

Palpatine's reasons for ordering the Jedi killed are less clear. Possibly so as not to blow his cover as Mysterious Hooded Figure - remember, the Federation thinks MHF is acting in their best interest, so of course he would suggest that missing Jedi means delayed interference from the Republic. Possibly he thinks Qui-gon and Obi-wan would actually be killed, which means two less Jedi to oppose his rise to power in the long run, and wouldn't make much difference to his short-term plot to get elected SC; simply the presence of Jedi is enough to panic the TF into invading, which is the trigger incident for Palpatine's play for SC. Once they've panicked, Jedi alive or dead doesn't matter. Possibly he's confident that the Jedi won't be killed, which plays into his secret plot, since two living Jedi running around Naboo will definitely panic the Federation into going ahead with an invasion. (In which case his supposed chagrin at the arrival of the Jedi is fake.) Or possibly he miscalculated, didn't think the Republic would respond so quickly, fears that the Jedi will defuse the tension, and so at the very least wants the Jedi running for their lives rather than brokering a peace between the Federation and Naboo. (Again, Palpatine doesn't actually care about the Federation's desires, he just wants a public incident so he can become Chancellor, anything that gets the Federation to take open military action works in his favor.)

(This episode of "The Galactic Politics Hour" has been brought to you by American Spirit cigarettes and Peet's Coffee. Tune in next week when we discuss the economic implications of the Rebellion using entirely different models of starcraft than the Empire, rather than seizing and repurposing the Empire's already constructed military spaceships.)
posted by soundguy99 at 9:31 AM on December 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

Awesome, soundguy99!! For the first time ever, it makes sense. The next time one of my kids watches the movie, I may even watch it with them (though I'll probably go for a walk or read the entirety of War & Peace during the interminable pod race).
posted by Bugbread at 2:05 PM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

“I was wrong about Star Wars,” Simon Furnivall, Cinetropolis, 16 December 2015
posted by ob1quixote at 10:56 AM on December 16, 2015

There is no way Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be as good as the prequels.

Seen it. He's correct, in the sense that 'vastly exceeds in every possible way, to the extent that you'll never be able to watch the prequels again' is not the same thing at all as being 'as good'.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:36 PM on December 16, 2015

to the extent that you'll never be able to watch the prequels again

To be fair, that's probably how most of us already feel.
posted by entropicamericana at 5:31 PM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Part of me used to buy into the whole 'the prequels weren't that bad, the original trilogy was also affected by a wide range of stupid issues, you're just overly nostalgic / picky' thing.

The Force Awakens showed me that this is actually complete bullshit, that there really was something about the original trilogy that was special and wonderful, that this something is utterly absent from the prequels, and that now it's back.

Now part of me is just cranky I had to wait 32 fucking years for that to happen, and to wish Sarlacc-level suffering on Lucas and all his little yes men.

Fortunately, it's a small part of me that is easily drowned out by nine-year-old me going SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE after being kicked in the feels for two hours straight.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:17 PM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Foreign Policy: After Return of the Jedi, the victorious Rebels declared “mission accomplished” a bit too early. Here’s how they can win, for good this time.
posted by Kabanos at 9:42 AM on December 17, 2015

Hi, I was directed to this thread from askme as I slapped together an edit of the Plinkett / RLM Star Wars reviews (so my partner and I could enjoy them without all the rapey overtones) earlier this year.

Note the original is full of jarring/abrupt jump-cuts anyways, so in that sense it doesn't make a huge difference that there's a handful of new ones too. But it does mean that depending on what player you use (quicktime, vlc, etc) it seems like you might sometimes get a brief flash of the removed clip at the moment where my edit is. Wasn't able to 100% clean that up unfortunately.

Basically, sometimes it looks weird for a sec but it gets the job done.
posted by churl at 12:25 AM on December 20, 2015 [1 favorite]