The Force Awakens vs the Prequels?

[Adam Reynolds]

Given that many in various places have had major criticisms of The Force Awakens, I figured I would throw out this question.

While this is not entirely fair given that The Force Awakens is a standalone, while the prequels are finished, it would still be interesting to see what the consensus is here.

[Gandalf]

The prequels, for all of their flaws tried to do some new and interesting things, albeit in a merch friendly way.

TFA felt like a big safe film designed to tick all of the boxes that would lower nerd rage. It was a big safe commercial for Disney's Star Wars.

[hunter5]

While I did enjoy the prequels they never seemed to really fit in with the orignial trilogy well (although that may have been more them being written after then anything else). We got a lot of tell not show though it did dawn on me recently the akward dialogue we got between Anakin and Padme made sense given how they were raised. That being said I enjoyed The Forced Awakens more as they did much better getting the point across.

[eMeM]

Eh.
IMO TFA was a good movie and bad Star Wars, the polar opposite of the prequels.
But I'm more of a Star Wars fan than a movie critic, so my vote goes for the prequels

[Joun_Lord]

I enjoyed the Prequels because in some ways they were "my" Star Wars. I was a teen when they came out, born after the last of the OT came out. So I really ain't looking at the OT with nostaligia googles and was old enough to not get too invested in the Prequels to not see their flaws. They were flawed movies, both as movies and as Star Wars movies. But damn if I didn't enjoy them, damn if I didn't want to go buy some merch.

I enjoyed TFA but it didn't have the same magic that watching the OT for technically the first time brought (I'd had watched it before but was way too young to understand it, like I was 4 or 5 and thought the 2nd Death Star was just the first damaged), didn't have that edge of the seat excitement that the PT had me at. Maybe its because I'm old bitter, and lets face it, crazy over the years I am unable or unwilling to get excited for the ST. Don't feel like buying any action figures because they suck, don't feel like buying any micro machines or models to clutter the fuck out of my desk like the TIE Defender, LAAT space Hind, yellowing Clonetrooper head from some sucker, and beat up ISD I need to get around to repainting because none of the designs are really interesting, don't feel like trying to drag some friends out to see the stuff in theaters or anything.

I know I'm doing what some who grew up with the OT were doing with the Prequels, being to old and set in my ways to fully enjoy it.

Of course like kids with the Prequels, kids today are going to enjoy the Sequels just fine and in the end thats all that matters.

[ray245]

I watched Star Wars to be "wowed". The prequels did an excellent job of giving me scenes after scenes where the production team manage to exceed my imagination. I thought they would use a Z-95 in the prequels, they gave me the ARC-170. I thought we will end up with Victory Class Stardestroyers, we got the Venators.

TFA on the other hand, stayed well below my imagination. I suspected they would reuse all the old design and planets, and I wasn't wrong. We got a new Tatootine, X-Wings and TIes that looked almost the same as the old ones. Where are the spacebattles that is far larger in scale than every other modern sci-fi movies? Where are the land battles that just felt epic in scope? At least they seemed to hire a better director for Rouge One.

I loved the stoicism of the Jedi knights in the prequels, like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. I don't particularly care for spunky heroes because we saw them everywhere in Hollywood movies. A zen-like protagonist? That's something really rare.

To me, I see TFA as non-canon to Star Wars in my personal headcanon. The state of the Galaxy, as well as the characters, felt too poorly written to be a proper Star Wars sequel. It's just another badly written EU novel. I feel bad with Rian Johnson because he is forced to work with the shitty set-up given to him by JJ Abrams.

[Tiriol]

The Prequels are flawed creations, but they did capture the grandeur and wonder of a huge galaxy better than TFA ever did. The world-building was immense and much more immersive, even with all the jarring talk about bureaucracy and politics that, while somewhat important for the plot, was often delivered with such wooden performance it didn't really sell itself. And the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire was much more compelling story than the First Order that is and is not a government organization, a terrorist organization, a military organization, and/or a bunch of Neo-Nazis in space, and their struggle with not-Rebellion Resistance. This is not a fair comparison, though, since the Prequels were building up something we already knew would happen, we just didn't know how and under what circumstances; TFA had to start from a scratch (and unfortunately they apparently lacked any coherent vision of the state of the galaxy after Palpatine's death and how it would realistically work).

I prefer the Prequels, if only because their visuals were better than those of TFA, the story made more sense and they didn't try to ape something that had already been done (A New Hope). I admit that they could have been a hell lot better, than but they are also a hell lot better than many people give them credit. TFA is a great big "meh" for me, even though the acting is much, MUCH better than that in the Prequels (apart from Ian McDiarmid, Ewan McGregor and Frank Oz - and I argue that when he got the freedom to actually act, Hayden Christensen - notwithstanding).

[K. A. Pital]

Prequels.

With all the faults, they had their own story.

TFA is a lame A New Hope carbon copy (sorry Han!)

[Joun_Lord]

I thought they would use a Z-95 in the prequels, they gave me the ARC-170. I thought we will end up with Victory Class Stardestroyers, we got the Venators.

TFA on the other hand, stayed well below my imagination. I suspected they would reuse all the old design and planets, and I wasn't wrong. We got a new Tatootine, X-Wings and TIes that looked almost the same as the old ones.

That is actually something I've had a problem with. As you said TFA felt like a badly written EU novel. It also had designs like one.

The old EU barely had an original idea, like ever. The Z-95 was just a X-Wing with one wing based on concept art, the Victory Star Destroyer was just a smaller ISD that somebody gave Red Bull to (it has wings), the TIE Defender while I love it was just a TIE Interceptor with an extra wing and the wings flipped over, and various stormtrooper variants were mostly just slightly altered Stormtroopers, hell Blackhole Stormies were just them painted black. Even by the Legacy era they were still just using Star Destroyers, TIE Fighters, X-Wings, and stormtrooper armor barely modified.

Now look at the TFA, like you said it was just the same designs. Probably the most changed design was the FO Stormtrooper armor and even that wasn't that changed, the variants were just armor repainted black (and silver) or slightly modified versions of designs like the Snowtrooper or regular stormtrooper with a different visor.

Now compared that to the Prequels where we had designs similar to existing designs but not the same, no barely altered copies. Clonetrooper armor is similar to Stormtrooper but a completely different design, the Venator pretty much only have a wedge shape in common with the ISD and even that is different, the ARC-170 looks kinda like a X-Wing but is a radically different design and isn't even built for the same role despite what Battlefront 2 might say, the Jedi Starfighters have some design elements of the TIE Fighter but aren't copy copies.

The main thing about TFA is it just is afraid to do anything different. In some ways thats understandable, look at the overblown online backlash over the Prequels changing shit up. But part of its just a lack of vision, of laziness, of falling into the same trap the old EU authors fell into.

[The Romulan Republic]

I think TFA suffers from being part of an incomplete story.

I'd probably rate it over any single entry in the Prequels.

And yet, I'd probably rate the Prequels as a whole at least as high.

Edit: Still, after much thought, voted TFA.

[Galvatron]

I think I've shit on the prequels enough so I'm pretty sure you all know what I think.

[Kingmaker]

The Prequels had a number of major things I found aggressively annoying. TFA was just... slack, somehow. It wasn't bad per se, but it felt small and didn't impress.

[Crazedwraith]

I was the right age group for the prequels when they came out. I was 11 when TPM came out. I never realised how bad they were until the internet told me. *shrugs* I've not watched them for years but then I could say the same of The OT.

TFA on the other hand actively annoyed me and seemed a pale, stupid imitation of the EU and OT. (And I still think people let It get away with the exact tropes they complained off in the EU) But then I was prejudiced against TFA for klling the EU anyway. (I know it's stupid and I know it's still there but that doesn't change how I feel man)

So on balance I come down on the side of the PT.

[Galvatron]

TFA is also at a disadvantage for being far less self-contained than ANH was. ANH was a complete story unto itself and didn't really need a sequel.

Therefore, I'll give the sequel trilogy the same chance I gave the prequels after I saw TPM.

[ray245]

I thought they would use a Z-95 in the prequels, they gave me the ARC-170. I thought we will end up with Victory Class Stardestroyers, we got the Venators.

TFA on the other hand, stayed well below my imagination. I suspected they would reuse all the old design and planets, and I wasn't wrong. We got a new Tatootine, X-Wings and TIes that looked almost the same as the old ones.

That is actually something I've had a problem with. As you said TFA felt like a badly written EU novel. It also had designs like one.

The old EU barely had an original idea, like ever. The Z-95 was just a X-Wing with one wing based on concept art, the Victory Star Destroyer was just a smaller ISD that somebody gave Red Bull to (it has wings), the TIE Defender while I love it was just a TIE Interceptor with an extra wing and the wings flipped over, and various stormtrooper variants were mostly just slightly altered Stormtroopers, hell Blackhole Stormies were just them painted black. Even by the Legacy era they were still just using Star Destroyers, TIE Fighters, X-Wings, and stormtrooper armor barely modified.

Now look at the TFA, like you said it was just the same designs. Probably the most changed design was the FO Stormtrooper armor and even that wasn't that changed, the variants were just armor repainted black (and silver) or slightly modified versions of designs like the Snowtrooper or regular stormtrooper with a different visor.

Now compared that to the Prequels where we had designs similar to existing designs but not the same, no barely altered copies. Clonetrooper armor is similar to Stormtrooper but a completely different design, the Venator pretty much only have a wedge shape in common with the ISD and even that is different, the ARC-170 looks kinda like a X-Wing but is a radically different design and isn't even built for the same role despite what Battlefront 2 might say, the Jedi Starfighters have some design elements of the TIE Fighter but aren't copy copies.

The main thing about TFA is it just is afraid to do anything different. In some ways thats understandable, look at the overblown online backlash over the Prequels changing shit up. But part of its just a lack of vision, of laziness, of falling into the same trap the old EU authors fell into.

That's why I was vehemently against JJ Abrams. I felt that Star Wars needed a very strong visual director as opposed to one that specialise in handling actors. We have 20 over years of EU materials showing us how limited most people are in imagining Star Wars. You can easily tell the difference between a EU ship design and a George Lucas's design in the prequels.

I think even James Cameron hated the TFA because he felt how unoriginal the visuals were.


To me, the greatest crime JJ Abrams did was to reboot the EU, without replacing it with anything better. The Thrawn trilogy at the very least offered something different from another dark side empire with superweapons story.

[Galvatron]

I felt that Star Wars needed a very strong visual director as opposed to one that specialise in handling actors.

Yeah, because the last time they hired a director like that we ended up with TESB.

[Joun_Lord]

That's why I was vehemently against JJ Abrams. I felt that Star Wars needed a very strong visual director as opposed to one that specialise in handling actors. We have 20 over years of EU materials showing us how limited most people are in imagining Star Wars. You can easily tell the difference between a EU ship design and a George Lucas's design in the prequels.

I think even James Cameron hated the TFA because he felt how unoriginal the visuals were.


To me, the greatest crime JJ Abrams did was to reboot the EU, without replacing it with anything better. The Thrawn trilogy at the very least offered something different from another dark side empire with superweapons story.

I think JarJar, like Lucas, needed reined in and needed someone else working on it that were strong in areas they were deficient. Both were too far up their own asses to really do much different from their set visions. This is both a good and bad thing considering I don't think directors should be bending over to fit fans visions, that road would lead to only terrible shit. But they need someone to tell them when something doesn't work.

Really Abrams and Lucas together would make one fantastic director. Lucas is an idea guy, creates fantastic worlds and designs or can recognize others peoples talents to do so. However for like human dialogue he can be a bit deficient though less then some people think. Abrams wouldn't know an original idea if it bit him in his ass. Even shit that people were creaming about like the TIE Fighters against the sunset in the trailer was taken from I think Apocalypse Now. But he does characters pretty good, Finn, Rey, and Kylo were all enjoyable characters. With their powers combined they would have the power to make some fantastic shtuff.......so long as people are reining them in.

I have long since stopped disregarding anything Cameron says. While Avatar had relatively original visuals (except where he might have ripped of Felucia and maybe ripped off artist William Dean's floating mountains) the story was so fucking terrible, so goddamn derivative of Pocahontas I'm surprised Disney wasn't suing him. The same guy who said Terminator Genishyt reinvigorated the franchise and was respectful to the first two films despite going out of its way to shit on them. Cameron is a guy who does put visual over story just like people accuse Lucas of doing and people fucking love him for it.

Agreement on the Thrawn trilogy being different. It stuck out among the EU for how unique it was. Thrawn might be wanked all to hell but its pretty impressive he was more effective with less then 200 severely outdated relatively light starships then any tin-pot Imperial with the superweapon of the week. Which is something that made it closer to the Prequels, there were no superweapons in the Prequels(the squishy tank thing from the 2d Clone Wars series and the Malevolent from the 3d series notwithstanding), it was armies of dudes and ships kicking the crap out of each other.

[ray245]

I felt that Star Wars needed a very strong visual director as opposed to one that specialise in handling actors.

Yeah, because the last time they hired a director like that we ended up with TESB.

With Lucas being heavily involved in the direction of the movie. TFA had no guiding hand. Kennedy is certainly not the person capable of doing so.

I think JarJar, like Lucas, needed reined in and needed someone else working on it that were strong in areas they were deficient. Both were too far up their own asses to really do much different from their set visions. This is both a good and bad thing considering I don't think directors should be bending over to fit fans visions, that road would lead to only terrible shit. But they need someone to tell them when something doesn't work.

It's sad that they chose someone who couldn't do anything differently from the average EU writers and designers.

Really Abrams and Lucas together would make one fantastic director. Lucas is an idea guy, creates fantastic worlds and designs or can recognize others peoples talents to do so. However for like human dialogue he can be a bit deficient though less then some people think. Abrams wouldn't know an original idea if it bit him in his ass. Even shit that people were creaming about like the TIE Fighters against the sunset in the trailer was taken from I think Apocalypse Now. But he does characters pretty good, Finn, Rey, and Kylo were all enjoyable characters. With their powers combined they would have the power to make some fantastic shtuff.......so long as people are reining them in.

The movie audience are to blame for this. They think that having fast and quick edits equates to good visuals in Star Trek. JJ is decent at creating tv pilots that you forget about, but shit at making a movie that can stand up to repeat viewings.

I have long since stopped disregarding anything Cameron says. While Avatar had relatively original visuals (except where he might have ripped of Felucia and maybe ripped off artist William Dean's floating mountains) the story was so fucking terrible, so goddamn derivative of Pocahontas I'm surprised Disney wasn't suing him. The same guy who said Terminator Genishyt reinvigorated the franchise and was respectful to the first two films despite going out of its way to shit on them. Cameron is a guy who does put visual over story just like people accuse Lucas of doing and people fucking love him for it.

I had my own problems with Avatar. But I would say that at least Cameron doesn't pretend to that his story is something original or special. He knew that the audience is going in to watch the visuals. He knew that story comes second for the majority of the viwewers. it's the same when it comes to Star Wars.

The problem is people tend to pretend that the OT had deep storylines, excellent acting and etc because of the stupid nostalgia bubble they've built up over the years. It's why TFA was a minor success in China, where people didn't grow up with Star Wars.

Agreement on the Thrawn trilogy being different. It stuck out among the EU for how unique it was. Thrawn might be wanked all to hell but its pretty impressive he was more effective with less then 200 severely outdated relatively light starships then any tin-pot Imperial with the superweapon of the week. Which is something that made it closer to the Prequels, there were no superweapons in the Prequels(the squishy tank thing from the 2d Clone Wars series and the Malevolent from the 3d series notwithstanding), it was armies of dudes and ships kicking the crap out of each other.

There's a lot of disucssion in this forum a decade ago about hoping for a Geroge Lucas directed sequel because everyone was hoping for something better than the EU. In fact, many posters used to share the view that anything written by Lucas is probably far more imaginative and better than the average EU novel and games.

It's why I had such anticiaption for a sequel series written by George Lucas. I wanted to see how he could have done something different from the old EU. Instead, what we got was EU 2.0, exactly the same as most EU novels.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Thrawn trilogy actually expanded the universe is why it was unique. It showed other jedi could exist, that the force had wide ranging powers precisely because it was in every living thing (almost, though this paved the way for the midichlorians too...) and some other stuff, gave the galaxy it's capital for example.

The Force Awakens added nothing, and had Mary Sue at the center of it which becomes really annoying if you think about it, but the movie is also easily forgettable past the action which is a positive. It's never actively painful to watch the way some lines and whole scenes are in the Prequels. On that basis it's just far superior.

Also I think Disney completely knew this and more problems, and from even half of rumors JJ Abrams would have acted at leas somewhat differently given a chance, not that I'm a fan. But what the Force Awakened really needed was another 1 year of production time, from the start. Disney was not going to do this because it's stock price wouldn't have liked that. Still it was made in little over two years. Movies like that normally take at least three of production, and are generally the result of dealings and story work done for prior to that point. All the other movies are getting a lot more time, if they exploited it for any value is yet to be seen.

This meant the movie had to be made on a plan that was more or less absolute, because say CGI shots could simply not be risked as too complex to make that X-mas deadline. I think this is why some of the X-wing stuff doesn't actually look that good, or at least, it's not the best I've ever seen, and it's not like Disney doesn't have money. But they didn't have an extra 1 year of time to actually write a bunch of new 'star wars' tailors rendering tools and ilk.

I BTW have no problem with Republican superweapons as an alternative, which I bet is going to show up in one movie or another. It makes sense for the exact same reason reason nuclear deterrence works. Also who says the Republic has to be run by people who are nice? It would totally be more like Space Rome. Its voting on everything with super rich space royalty in the first place! In universe it would make sense if a unionism movement had existed for centuries of the Republic's existence.

Since Disney is a corporation with Star Wars forever and no specific obligations to time I figure it some point its going to start making OLD REPUBLIC serial movies to stream online. They will probably be terrible, but look out for it once they've exhausted the near term money making of theater movies after doing five or six more of them as they've already got rolling.

[ray245]

The issue isn't even about timing. Practically any decent director could have directed Episode 7 and it would still make somewhere close to 2 billion at the box office. What I am concerned is how will TFA affect the rest of Star Wars? I'm extremely uninterested in Ep 8 because the set-up or lack of in EP 7 makes me bored about this "new" star Wars galaxy.

Why do I have to watch a remake of Luke's journey via Rey? How is Rey's storyline going to be any different from the journey undertaken by Luke?

[Galvatron]

In retrospect, especially considering how much Vympel loves TFA, this ancient thread from 2002 is hilarious.

[Elfdart]

The Thrawn trilogy actually expanded the universe is why it was unique. It showed other jedi could exist, that the force had wide ranging powers precisely because it was in every living thing (almost, though this paved the way for the midichlorians too...) and some other stuff, gave the galaxy it's capital for example.

The Force Awakens added nothing, and had Mary Sue at the center of it which becomes really annoying if you think about it, but the movie is also easily forgettable past the action which is a positive. It's never actively painful to watch the way some lines and whole scenes are in the Prequels. On that basis it's just far superior.

Also I think Disney completely knew this and more problems, and from even half of rumors JJ Abrams would have acted at leas somewhat differently given a chance, not that I'm a fan. But what the Force Awakened really needed was another 1 year of production time, from the start. Disney was not going to do this because it's stock price wouldn't have liked that. Still it was made in little over two years. Movies like that normally take at least three of production, and are generally the result of dealings and story work done for prior to that point. All the other movies are getting a lot more time, if they exploited it for any value is yet to be seen.

This meant the movie had to be made on a plan that was more or less absolute, because say CGI shots could simply not be risked as too complex to make that X-mas deadline. I think this is why some of the X-wing stuff doesn't actually look that good, or at least, it's not the best I've ever seen, and it's not like Disney doesn't have money. But they didn't have an extra 1 year of time to actually write a bunch of new 'star wars' tailors rendering tools and ilk.

You can thank Bob Iger for that one. When Kathleen Kennedy suggested that Harrison Ford's near fatal accident on set* (one that caused the UK version of OSHA come down on the studio like a load of bricks) might set back the release date from Christmas to Memorial Day, Iger shot it down immediately: the movie was coming out in December come hell or high water.

* If they had just CGIed the shot, Ford might have been spared a crushed leg.

Back on subject:

It's not really fair to say TFA is just a lazy, hackneyed, uninspired retread of Star Wars. In many ways it is, but it's also a lazy, hackneyed, uninspired retread of Under Siege 2: Dark Territory - a much better movie, by the way.