Red Letter Media

[Bunkerhousing]

So I have not ben updated on RLM, I stopped following them when they said the Kenobishow was good. Have read the last pages, what is their status? They seem to be failing?

 

[Cryogonal2]

So I have not ben updated on RLM, I stopped following them when they said the Kenobishow was good. Have read the last pages, what is their status? They seem to be failing?

People are mad that RLM is overly dismissive of overly critical nerds when RLM themselves got popular because of being overly critical nerds and Mike's own self-admitted tendency to be an overly critical nerd about Star Trek. They're also mad that Mike took a "fuck both sides" stance with regards to liberal media and also Jay's claim in the newer Acolyte video that Velma got a second season because of hate watching

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

This will never be true no matter how young you were when you saw the prequels and no matter how many times you say it. They're shit films. They were shit at the time. They're shit now. They're just a different kind of shit than the Disney garbage, which is terrible for different reasons.

The scripts are awful and feel like first drafts. The acting is terrible, and that's impressive, because the cast is good. The designs are nice, and the soundtrack is godly, but that can't save drek. I won't pick on the terrible CGI except to say Lucas was an idiot to use so much of it. Like everything about the prequels, he seems to have learned nothing from the original trilogy.

"Oh, they look pretty good in comparison now, don't they?" No, they don't.

Might be because I've see the remakes while I was young but I still like them and occasionally doze off to them on a flight. People treat them as George Lucas raping their mother and it's absolutely ridiculous. It has great action scenes, very quotable moments, design and plot that was good enough for a whole lot of fictional stories to be based around them, it managed to show the Jedi Order as imperfect without resorting to villainizing them. At worse they are mid.

 

[Nick Obre]

It has great action scenes

This, in itself, is part of the post-Disney Stars War retcon that seems to have happened in people's heads.

Aside from the Maul fight, which I'll grant you any day, and was always one of the few things universally well-received from TPM (the other being the soundtrack), the action in the prequels was thoroughly mocked on release. Everyone hated, and laughed at, Yoda spazzing around like a spinning top, and every other lightsaber fight looking like a rave.
The final Anakin vs Obi Wan fight, which is so praised now, was hated for how drawn out and over the top it was; to say nothing of the high ground line.

I swear to God, what I and othjers, if discussions I had at the time are to be trusted, felt while watching these movies, can nowadays only be explained by directing you to watch the LOTR trilogy, then speedrun the worst parts of the Extended Hobbit trilogy. The whiplash will just about kill you.

 

[Shartavius]

Every person I've met who describes the Star Wars prequels fondly were sat in front of them when they were between the ages of 3 and 11, received toys from those movies as Christmas and birthday gifts and, furthermore, insists them to be objectively good films which have stood the test of time. Then they gripe about the cash-grab Disney sequels and retconning raping their childhood memories. I did not solicit these impressions - They bring them up in the way other people mention personal achievements.

 

[#lurker]

Every person I've met who describes the Star Wars prequels fondly were sat in front of them when they were between the ages of 3 and 11, received toys from those movies as Christmas and birthday gifts and, furthermore, insists them to be objectively good films which have stood the test of time. Then they gripe about the cash-grab Disney sequels and retconning raping their childhood memories. I did not solicit these impressions - They bring them up in the way other people mention personal achievements.

Ironic because your same criticism can be thrown at the original trilogy fans who are obsessed with hating the prequels.

 

[Shartavius]

Ironic because your same criticism can be thrown at the original trilogy fans who are obsessed with hating the prequels.

Very true. I'll bet plenty of sci-fi fans in the era of the original trilogy also griped about Star Wars essentially being a series of toy commercials which experienced such runaway success as to ruin science fiction cinema. Depending on who you believe, Lynch's adaptation of Dune was doomed from the start; due to De Laurentiis' insistence that it be "another" Star Wars.

Even if that first Star Wars film didn't take off like it did, our species seems inherently susceptible to the parasocial effects of those who indulge in escapism as their preferred pastime seeing themselves in any turd polished enough to reflect; sponging up others' fiction and mediocrity until they identify it with an inflated sense of self-worth they'd otherwise only earn through having stories of their own.

 

[Mola Ram]

Very true. I'll bet plenty of sci-fi fans in the era of the original trilogy also griped about Star Wars essentially being a series of toy commercials which experienced such runaway success as to ruin science fiction cinema.

You should check out Harlan Ellison's contemporaneous review of Star Wars '77, printed under the oh so cryptic title "Luke Skywalker Is A Nerd And Darth Vader Sucks Runny Eggs."

 

[Stab You in the Back]

Aside from the Maul fight, which I'll grant you any day, and was always one of the few things universally well-received from TPM (the other being the soundtrack), the action in the prequels was thoroughly mocked on release. Everyone hated, and laughed at, Yoda spazzing around like a spinning top, and every other lightsaber fight looking like a rave.

You're without a doubt the stupidest person in this thread. All the action in the prequels is amazing. The Yoda fight is a highlight of Attack of the Clones. And there isn't a lightsabre fight in the trilogy where somebody doesn't lose a limb. Gay ass Disney treats lightsabres as glowing batons, but Lucas knew if you're going to have two grown men swinging around laser swords, limbs are going to go flying. Anakin slicing off Dooku's hands is still an amazing move that has yet to be topped in any other star wars media.

 

[Absolutego]

There's something fascinating about how Rich's Richisms are perfect fodder for autotune.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Might be because I've see the remakes while I was young but I still like them and occasionally doze off to them on a flight. People treat them as George Lucas raping their mother and it's absolutely ridiculous. It has great action scenes, very quotable moments, design and plot that was good enough for a whole lot of fictional stories to be based around them, it managed to show the Jedi Order as imperfect without resorting to villainizing them. At worse they are mid.

I actually do remember the 90s and legit bad 90s movies that are guilty of being toy commercials would be something like Batman Forever or Robocop 3 or Godzilla 98. Maybe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze, but I didn't see that one. The Prequels were definitely mid movies, not bad and they hold up because there is a narrative through line that Gen Xers must ignore or it breaks their worldview.

 

[Midwit]

Batman Forever

Batman & Robin is absolute capekino though.

 

[Spectre Saren]

Anakin slicing off Dooku's hands is still an amazing move that has yet to be topped in any other star wars media.

Soypogged at that move in the theater. It's so goddamn brutal.

People are mad that RLM is overly dismissive of overly critical nerds when RLM themselves got popular because of being overly critical nerds and Mike's own self-admitted tendency to be an overly critical nerd about Star Trek. They're also mad that Mike took a "fuck both sides" stance with regards to liberal media and also Jay's claim in the newer Acolyte video that Velma got a second season because of hate watching

I think this is all a symptom of twitter people with clone troopers pfp hounding the RLM dudes to shit on something they are not even passionate of. The Acolyte videos they did are in no way positive, neither the Obiwan show. I recall Mike laughing about how cheap and bad it was and how that was entretaining in itself. But everyone just kept screaming at him to seethe just as they do.

 

[frozen_runner]

You're without a doubt the stupidest person in this thread. All the action in the prequels is amazing.

Bro, they don't even look like they're trying to hit each other.

 

[Spectre Saren]

But they look cool doe. Unironically, I think it's fine because it's spectacular. My suspension of disbelief is fairly high on anything that has laser weaponry acting like normal guns.

 

[Absolutego]

Bro, they don't even look like they're trying to hit each other.

That user in particular is clearly someone born post-1995 who never watched actual action movies and grew up on the prequels
Very sad. Many such cases

But they look cool doe. Unironically, I think it's fine because it's spectacular. My suspension of disbelief is fairly high on anything that has laser weaponry acting like normal guns.

I guess if flashing lights and men doing tandem pirouettes gets you going. Fucking zoomers, none of those fights have any weight, I don't care that you saw them when you were in preschool and thought the concept was awesome

 

[Mola Ram]

That user in particular is clearly someone born post-1995 who never watched actual action movies and grew up on the prequels
Very sad. Many such cases


I guess if flashing lights and men doing tandem pirouettes gets you going. Fucking zoomers, none of those fights have any weight, I don't care that you saw them when you were in preschool and thought the concept was awesome

A little tidbit for those who are too young to have seen these action masterpieces in the theatre: in the original release of Attack of the Clones, there's a scene where Natalie Portman falls from a transport ship seemingly to her death. Of course she turns out to be fine, discovered by a friendly clonetrooper. In the original cut, when the trooper found her, she bounded up to her feet with such speed and so obviously unhurt that audiences were howling with laughter at how absurd it was. The scene as it exists now (or at least as it did in the last cut of it I saw several years ago) was a hasty patch job of ADR'd groaning and a CGI'd Natalie taking a little longer to get to her feet, hurriedly shipped to theatres so people would stop pointing and laughing.

This is the sort of thing that made people mock these films even during their original run.

 

[Absolutego]

A little tidbit for those who are too young to have seen these action masterpieces in the theatre: in the original release of Attack of the Clones, there's a scene where Natalie Portman falls from a transport ship seemingly to her death. Of course she turns out to be fine, discovered by a friendly clonetrooper. In the original cut, when the trooper found her, she bounded up to her feet with such speed and so obviously unhurt that audiences were howling with laughter at how absurd it was. The scene as it exists now (or at least as it did in the last cut of it I saw several years ago) was a hasty patch job of ADR'd groaning and a CGI'd Natalie taking a little longer to get to her feet, hurriedly shipped to theatres so people would stop pointing and laughing.

This is the sort of thing that made people mock these films even during their original run.

Let's be real, even with as wooden as the action scenes were the real reason these movies were mocked in their heyday is because of the romance scenes where we started questioning how George ever even HAD a wife in the first place to save the first movie and all the politics scenes that were him transparently seething about Republicans in general and Dubya in particular

 

[Mola Ram]

Let's be real, even with as wooden as the action scenes were the real reason these movies were mocked in their heyday is because of the romance scenes where we started questioning how George ever even HAD a wife in the first place to save the first movie and all the politics scenes that were him transparently seething about Republicans in general and Dubya in particular

The seething is really only in the last film, because the first one came out in 1999 and the second one was probably mostly in the can before the Bush hatred reached full flower. But I'll never forget the disgust I felt when I saw he'd appropriated 9/11 imagery into Episode III in the most hamfisted way. ("You can see the smoke from here!")

Are prequel defenders still saying the dogshit romance scenes are "intentionally cheesy"? That's always a hoot.

 

[Absolutego]

The seething is really only in the last film, because the first one came out in 1999 and the second one was probably mostly in the can before the Bush hatred reached full flower. But I'll never forget the disgust I felt when I saw he'd appropriated 9/11 imagery into Episode III in the most hamfisted way. ("You can see the smoke from here!")

Are prequel defenders still saying the dogshit romance scenes are "intentionally cheesy"? That's always a hoot.

I have literally seen some of them in /r/prequelmemes defend the "I hate sand" scene and I'm convinced now that all the irony-poisoned appreciation of those movies our generation made has brainrotted the youth.