Red Letter Media

[BetterFuckChuck]

exactly. you need to build an audience. saying "oh in ten years everyone will be talking about how good ready player one was" doesnt hold up if it didnt engage an audience. it's slop

 

[FlawlessCowboy]

Here's what happened with the Prequels:

Adult Star Wars nerds hated them as they were being released. Kids, however, loved them. Those kids have grown up to have nostalgia for the Prequels and the hype surrounding every one of their OG theatrical releases.

What kid actually enjoys Disney Star Wars though? I don't see any.

And, while I have always had my gripes about the Prequels, I never hated them outright (and, I've always overall liked ROTS, warts and all). I dunno, those movies never made me angry. Back when the Prequels came out, I was too busy obsessing over the LOTR movies and the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. lol.

Also, even if I thought the Prequels were irredeemable dogshit, they are still masterpieces compared to what Disney has shat out.

Edit: Also, I remember when I saw the 2009 Star Trek movie. My husband (who was my boyfriend at the time) wanted to go see Into Darkness for a date night, so I finally decided to check out the 2009 movie literally on the night before we saw Into Darkness on opening night.

As I was watching the 2009 movie, I was proverbially scratching my head the entire time, wondering why the hell it got so much hype. I personally thought the screenplay was bad and clunky. Well, when I saw Into Darkness in theaters, I practically turned into Rich Evans ... I was howl-laughing throughout the entire damn movie because it was so laughably bad. The entire audience I was in the theater with laughed at the movie too. Everyone there knew it was awful ... Which actually made for a fun movie theater experience.

Sheev hard carries the sequel and he's just too likeable. His lines in the prequels are great and he's perfectly hammy when becoming the emperor.

that clone wars cartoon show is what revived the prequels, zoomers got a taste of saturday morning cartoon goodness for a few years growing up

The Clone Wars had Sheev. The 2D cartoon is also kino. Grevious from the Cartoons is awesome.

 

[Gog & Magog]

exactly. you need to build an audience. saying "oh in ten years everyone will be talking about how good ready player one was" doesnt hold up if it didnt engage an audience. it's slop

The Prequels were slop! Except the music, the sound production, and visual design. That was all golden. I cannot recall a single musical motif from the Sequels.

What kids enjoyed The Force Awakens though?

hmm...

 

[Shartavius]

Mike needs to rewatch the Nerd Crew episodes and recognize that the guy he's pretending to be in those is himself.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

The Prequels were slop! Except the music, the sound production, and visual design. That was all golden. I cannot recall a single musical motif from the Sequels.

hmm...

I mean, imagine you're John Williams and you have to listen to JJ and Rian talk about their movies. You'd have trouble creating leitmotifs yourself.

 

[StarkRavingMad]

@FlawlessCowboy

The Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoon was my utmost favorite version of Grievous. He was so fucking awesome in that cartoon ... It's unfortunate that if you don't watch any of the Clone Wars cartoons, Grievous just comes across as a punk ass bitch in Revenge of the Sith.

And yes, Sheev rules in the Prequels. He makes Revenge of the Sith. He's so fun to watch, and Lucas definitely wrote the best dialogue for him.

 

[Hentai-Semitism]

Mike needs to rewatch the Nerd Crew episodes and recognize that the guy he's pretending to be in those is himself.

That was my main takeaway after watching a single minute of the first Nerd Crew video and never touching those again. The only difference between RLM and the people they're mocking in those videos is the overacting. It's just too much.

It's like the Endless Trash video. It's not funny when they're talking about new reprequels and remakes while making silly faces. It's ESPECIALLY not funny when they review half of those anyway. Yep, at least a dozen or so had their own HITB episodes.

 

[ddlloo]

What kids enjoyed The Force Awakens though? The Force Awakens in of itself was nostalgia bait for the grown ups.

That's my point. Kids watched the Prequels. There's no young audience for Star Wars anymore-- Zoomers and Alphas don't acknowledge it.

I give the prequels a bit of slack because they were designed for kids. I completely understand why some get angry about it though.

Lucas is a weird guy. Kind of stupid in some ways too, or maybe the prequels are just what happens when a creative is disconnected from the fans and gets a bit lazy and also doesn't have someone around to hit him with a rolled up newspaper when he tries to do something dumb. A lot of talented creatives lack a 'no that's fucking dumb' man that they trust.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

What kids enjoyed The Force Awakens though? The Force Awakens in of itself was nostalgia bait for the grown ups.

That's my point. Kids watched the Prequels. There's no young audience for Star Wars anymore-- Zoomers and Alphas don't acknowledge it.

The people I've seen talking about the Disney stuff tend to only focus on how it's so great that it pisses off the men, but then don't really have much to say about why they love it besides that. It's all superficial, either they're trying to get Disney to notice and hire them like Moviebob, or they want the clout that comes from 'fighting the patriarchy' without doing any actual work.

Actual normies? Nothing from them.

 

[Historical Strelkov]

The prequels come across like they take place in a different world than the originals because of how they are made, and I don't know how you can say that is a good thing if they're supposed to be part of the same story. The insane jump between ROTS and ANH in terms of both canon and technical film making was jarring to me as a child when the prequels came out, and I don't see a reason why as an adult that would be different?

Every conversation about "kids liked it" needs to be annotated with
Nearly everyone who watched the prequels from 1999-2005 had already seen the originals.
The original RLM review stands up in the framework that most people saw The Phantom Menace with Star Wars tinted goggles on, but the more you think about it, the more it feels like theres a series of choices that don't fit. From midichlorians to CGI jar jar never shutting the fuck up and "just being there" the entire first movie.

The problem with the sequels is that they make the exact same mistakes but with barely any of the redeeming qualities of the originals or the prequels. What is from the originals is a copy. What is from the prequels, are stupid CGI and juvenile humor.

What's missing from the originals is the big scale, fantastic narrative with extensive aesthetic sets and miniatures that tell a fun, wholesome story about clear cut, likeable characters. And what's missing from the prequels are the depth, the scope, the complexity of concepts, and the wild range of locations, aliens, and action set pieces.

So while everyone plays "love triangle" with the 9 movies being split into trilogies, I just see how for 45 years there really hasn't been "another ESB" type of Star Wars where the fantasy and "realism" were married together. The "rejection of the prequels" in terms of Disney's bullshit course correction away from complexity and political intrigue was just as stupid of a choice as doing a "soft reboot" of the originals but "subverting expectations".

We're just not going to get anything that was like watching ANH for the first time and then seeing ESB afterward ever again, and I don't relate to anyone who thinks that wasn't the overall peak of the series conceptually, creatively, and narratively. I don't see how books, video games, or cartoons are "superior" to the first 2 Star Wars movies, or how anything after that spins a web of originality as much. ROTJ is where we started rehashing the death star, and then poetry. But between ANH and ESB there's a story that even though there are similar themes, progress the entire franchise forward. After that, it's basically wondering what else someone could do, and at this point the meta is "Star Wars is made by people who shit on the fans, and no one is ever happy".

I don't know why Mike can't advance Plinkett's plot like that. On one hand hes lamenting how good Andor is (Ok food tastes great when you're starving), on another hand he wants more retarded witchy star wars prequel knockoff stuff from the Acolyte because...it's like the prequels with its weirdness?

And all of this...all of this, is in negation of two essential factors that are necessary for "the star wars saga" to "feel complete".
One is fans being respected. [Release the official 4k cut you fucking faggot, make alternative timelines based on the EU, and respect it, disney faggot.]
There's no "business" or "creative" reason that star wars was turned into trash. The only explanation is demoralization.
Two is the original sequel storylines by Lucas being shitcanned so we can have whatever this is. [Make his fucking sequel ideas you fucking disney faggot, it's been proven that no one actually knows better.]

 

[BetterFuckChuck]

The Prequels were slop! Except the music, the sound production, and visual design. That was all golden. I cannot recall a single musical motif from the Sequels.

hmm...

They are slop, but they're slop which got into the brains of kids. This video and its comment section is a big example of the fundamental reason why the Prequels are different from the Sequels:

in terms of reevaluation being commercially successful is a huge factor towards that. you can be terrible, but so long as you sell you have the chance to be a guilty pleasure. think of the nostalgia for street sharks. whereas the sequel merch never sold and its characters have literally zero recognizability. People do the cultural impact meme, but you can recognize a navi. Who the fuck recognizes Reva? Who can tell you the names of the 2016 Ghostbusters? Who can name a storyline from post-Capaldi Who?

If the slop flops, it can't climb back to the top. The Star Wars sequels, modern MCU and modern Trek are like Fant4stic: no one will be there to reevaluate them because they never occupied the wider public's headspace, especially not the youth. Gen Z dont watch Star Wars or superhero films. No kid grew up with Fant4stic. The reevaluation of the Prequels specifically is because of the fact it was pushed towards kids and became a fad of sorts. It's not ever going to be well liked because it was a fad, but it occupies a 2000s nostalgia aesthetic in a different way from the Sequels. LIke more kids who grew up in 2015 and 2016 are nostalgic for literal memes than they are films, but especially not Star Wars. It was something their dad dragged them to

It's a similar thing that's killing LEGO that is killing superhero movies that is killed Doctor Who that is killed Star Wars:

They assumed male youth would always be around, so wanted to target (in lego and star wars' case) big fat soy consumer 40 year olds with big expensive toys and fanservice-laden films, but by doing so essentially locked them out of being able to afford or enjoy this stuff. Now they're scrambling to get them back, but they've fumbled it. No one is thinking at age 25 "I should get into Star Wars"

 

[Acoustic Virgin]

The people I've seen talking about the Disney stuff tend to only focus on how it's so great that it pisses off the men, but then don't really have much to say about why they love it besides that.

That's a disturbing trend lately. So many people "enjoy" things not because they themselves actually like those things but because some other group doesn't like them. I don't choose the movies I watch because it will "own da libs" or "piss off the MAGAs" -- I just want to watch a good movie that I like.

 

[Evil Peter Griffin]

I hate the prequels and the sequels. But the only positive I will say about the prequels is that they are memorable in how bad they were. The sequels are just slop and will be forgotten.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

The fact people actually made a song called “George Lucas raped my childhood” and didn’t die of cringe afterwards shows they weren’t actually people deserving of being taken seriously.

The same people who want people fired for making edgy jokes now.

I hate the prequels and the sequels. But the only positive I will say about the prequels is that they are memorable in how bad they were.

William Shatner singing rocket man will be more popular and iconic than anything from Nu-star trek and Red letter Media memes for this reason alone. FYI William Shatner did nothing wrong when he mocked Mike Stolas for being a faggot online before anyone else.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

That's a disturbing trend lately. So many people "enjoy" things not because they themselves actually like those things but because some other group doesn't like them. I don't choose the movies I watch because it will "own da libs" or "piss off the MAGAs" -- I just want to watch a good movie that I like.

Same, I've never understood how punishing yourself by watching something bad simply because you think it will upset someone else is fighting for a cause. You're just making your life worse, go watch the thing you like. I just rewatched Casino for the twentieth time because I love that fucking movie.

I hate the prequels and the sequels. But the only positive I will say about the prequels is that they are memorable in how bad they were. The sequels are just slop and will be forgotten.

They had their moments. It's funny that one of the best scenes in the whole trilogy was one with barely any dialogue.

 

[INDEED]

The ridiculous "NOOOOOOOO" was again the only redeeming thing.

The biggest sin of the prequels was spending three movies waiting for Vader only to get about 10 cringe-inducing minutes at the very end.

 

[Well Intentioned]

The 4K James Cameron movies was just a recent example of how a director can fuck up his own movies

My favorite example of this is with E.T. and how Spielberg digitally removed all guns and replaced them with walkie talkies.

You can talk about directorial intent and creative vision and shit, but there comes a point where the original intention diverges from subsequent meddling and you get shit like what happened in E.T.

 

[LordofCringe7206 Vol. 2]

I hate the prequels and the sequels. But the only positive I will say about the prequels is that they are memorable in how bad they were. The sequels are just slop and will be forgotten.

I've said this a million times before, but a big issue with Disney's handling of the franchise is that everything outside of the films also suffered. Even if the prequels were bad, we still received fun video games, comics and books through. There was still a lot of good things coming out of the franchise during that period.

Nothing good however came from the sequels. No good video games, comics or books. Everything that could be produced by the franchise has been complete crap.

 

[Pokemon Conquistador]

It's sad to think that we'll have to wait for the perfection of AI or for the Star Wars copyright to fall into the public domain in order to get decent Star Wars movies again.

 

[Rabo 2: Electric Boogaloo]

I've said this a million times before, but a big issue with Disney's handling of the franchise is that everything outside of the films also suffered. Even if the prequels were bad, we still received fun video games, comics and books through. There was still a lot of good things coming out of the franchise during that period.

Nothing good however came from the sequels. No good video games, comics or books. Everything that could be produced by the franchise has been complete crap.

I'm enjoying Squadrons, but only because I'm playing it in VR using a HOTAS so I get to fly an X-wing in the most immersive way possible. I still gotta admit it doesn't hold a candle next to any of the previous Star Wars games where you piloted stuff. Holy fuck I didn't know how much the Empire was an equal opportunity employer.