I don't really mind it because I've never had the incredible love for Star Wars that some folks do (Phantom Menace and the Clone Wars cartoon series are enough for me. I don't need the others.)

The pod race and lightsaber battles at the end of the movie were fine, and that's what I wanted to see when I went in to see the film.

I also remember TPM being the reason pre-ordering movie tickets became a thing.

Yeah, my friend was working at this theatre that had whatever movie it was, and it sold out, and almost everybody walked out after the trailer. I guess good for whatever movie it was. Same thing happened with the LotRs too if I'm not mistaken. Oh, the days before HD OFFICIAL trailers and such.

I'm surprised industries have given up on the "Toy inside" mentality, I guess one where you throw away the cracker jacks just to see what you got, or buying Tobal 2 because it came with the FF7 demo. I had to look it up and the movie was Meet Joe Black, a Brad Pitt movie that actually looks good, and probably did better domestically because of the trailer.

Thanks for sharing, I know that was difficult for you to relive that terrible day. I don't recall having any feelings at all, just a cold numbness that lasted for days.

Star Wars Holiday Special.

Need I say more?

Are you imagining Bea Arthur naked?

It's interesting that you have that reaction to it because I have the opposite reaction - one additional reason I enjoy watching the movie is my memory of going into the theatre to see it - the economy was still strong, we weren't stuck in foreverwar with Iraq, I could go through the airport without wasting my time being harrassed by TSA, and I still had most of my hair.

As far as my yearly rewatching of the Holiday Special, I'm going to wait until it's closer to Dec. 25 and enjoy the Special with some home-baked Wookie Oookies.

I mentioned it above, but I didn't see it opening night. So when I first saw it, I think 3 days later, people were booing it from the start. Yeah, they paid another 4 dollars to see it just to boo it. And this was before Jar Jar showed up. In a way, I liked it: people throwing popcorn, getting shushed by the ushers, etc. I had no idea why they hated it and just tried to enjoy it, but it felt like a Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showing in the middle of the day: day-drunk star wars freaks who were "betrayed." It was just fun.

Once the crowds died down I was able to get a more objective opinion: Jar Jar, to me, was no more "offensive" than the Ewoks. He just wasn't cute. The first version of RotJ I saw was the one that cut out the Ewok song at the end, which seemed to create a rift: "We want the Ewok song ba.. oh wait didn't we used to hate this?" Overall the movie did suck, but it was in a way my introduction to Star Wars. For the most part I didn't care after a while and went back to the things I normally watched, like Ghost Dog and Princess Mononoke, at the time.

Very brave.

Cunty one-star reviews=auto-5

cunty = you don't like it

star wars is fucking boring and stupid, and getting worse with every xbox kinect game

star wars needs more cunt

http://youtu.be/KF02VoDQSd0

I have to agree with you - it's really not that bad, and taken as a whole, I feel that ep2 is the worst of all of them.

i disagree, it really IS that bad. taken as a whole, the three prequels absolutely suck and are best forgotten about. rick mccallum and george lucas shit the bed with these installments.
and i'm not even a hardcore fan... i just agree with every point that Stroke Guy makes

Yeah. I remember when Ep 2 came out, and everyone was willing to give it a second chance. After all, V was arguably the best in the original trilogy. Annoying kid is gone (seriously, most of my friends' kids could do a better job, and they don't even act) and it was pretty much promised that Jar Jar would keep him mouth shut. "There. This should satisfy the haters.." and SOMEHOW it was worse! So I didn't even see the third one for years, even though my friends who hated the second one were like "you know, I hated the first two but this one wasn't that bad."

And yeah. I finally saw the third one and it wasn't that bad. But it's also kind of a "fuck you" to fans. We can all agree that SMB 1 2 and 3 were all awesome games, but if Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island were horrible, I wouldn't have been interested in Mario 64. Not the best analogy, but you know what I'm saying.

I think the effects made it worth watching if you forget that it's the long awaited return of the most beloved franchise ever. I've never seen anything that reminded me so much of classic sci-fi art. Maybe instead iof "effects", I should praise the art direction.

I picture Lucas impulsively tacking "Episode 5" onto "Empire", at the last minute, before he had much of a script fleshed out for part 1.

I thought that 3 was okay, but none of it was necessary. Seeing the relationships and origin stories that have been evoked by 4-6, acted out illuminated nothing.

It might have been halfway decent if they hadn't spent so much time on the clone wars garbage. The audience knows from the start that it's all a sham with both sides being controlled by the same villain so the battles are all pointless. There's not even a human element of soldiers caught in the middle because it's fucking disposable clones vs disposable robots who slip on oil and say roger roger.

If they had kept the war as a background thing and just concentrated on night of the long knives shit at the capital city it would have been a lot better.

Well, now, I think I agree with Nominal.

I disagree. I think the Clone Wars was quite good, FAR better than the New Trilogy, and the Clone troopers themselves were probably the best part! While it's true that their cloneiness made it theoretically difficult to empathize with the human dramas they faced, the writers actually did a damn good job meeting the challenge. The decision to give each clone trooper his own hairstyle and tattoos helped, but mostly it was just how interesting the clone trooper plots were, and how well the characters were developed, making us care for them - sometimes more than the core Jedi themselves.

"Rookies" and the whole "Umbara" arc were probably my favorite episodes.

Oh, wait, do you mean the Clone Wars *film*? Cuz that one sucked.

I never bothered with the movie. The reviews actually made the trilogy sound good in comparison. But what I heard about the show sounds interesting.

The show was really good; far better writing and acting than the movies. I'd even go so far as to say I liked TCW better than the original Trilogy!

Oh, since we're sharing stories about all three, I guess I'll break down the things that the prequel trilogy taught me:

The Phantom Menace: You're no longer a kid and you never will be again.

The Clone Wars: Confirmation that none of the things you liked as a child will ever provide you with enjoyment ever again.

Revenge of the Sith: Other people are arguably stupider than you are and you shouldn't listen to them when they tell you something is good when your instinct tells you it won't be.

Yeah. W/r/t my above comment, I played TIE Fighter and Rebel Assault was sort of the game to judge what kind of CD-Rom I should get, stuff like that. But I never bothered to see the actual movies until they were re-released. The hype surrounding the new ones, with the CGI Jabba, new songs, etc. sounded really cool to a 14 (I think) year-old me: "This ain't your daddy's Star Wars!" Also they were released like a month apart. I'd say my generation had the LotR trilogy, but I'd already read the books so it wasn't the same sort of cliffhanger mentality that must've driven kids insane in the early 80s. "Too antsy about what happens to Frodo and the gang? Well visit your local library!"

When I was in college I decided to buy this guy's DVD collection of the Laserdisc versions. Overall it was an amazing deal: 20 bucks for a whole bunch of DVDRs but tons of extras, like the Life Day special, appearances on Sesame Street, audition tapes, things that in 2003 would've been really hard to find unless I sought them out. But by that point I'd kind of grown out of it. "I get it, Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress is a huge influence on Episode 4's plot." We don't need to be talking about this in an advanced film studies class. The franchise will always have a place in my heart, and I probably will see 7, mostly out of curiosity (I for one didn't like the vibe in Abraham's Star Treks.. they just didn't feel like Star Trek, more like (wait for it) Star Wars.

@zest we are on the same page when it comes to the rebootarded Star Treks. I want to see an interesting cast of characters doing deep space exploration or manning an outpost in the middle of nowhere instead of huge ship battles.

Maybe those Auralnauts can do something with it.