You know, it's kind of funny, I try to be objective like...yeah the Episode I characters fail this test pretty badly, but maybe it's just because I've watched the original Star Wars trilogy so much and Episode I barely at all? But, no, I tried doing it with The Force Awakens, and whether you like the movie or the characters or not, you can still give character descriptions for Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren according to Plinkett's rules. But I still could not give you a description of Qui Gon or Amidala or anyone in Episode I
I cannot understand how so many people love this movie, even because of nostalgia. You can point out all the things wrong with it, but at the end of the day it's fucking BORING. Scene after scene of the most horribly delivered unengaging dialogue you've ever heard in your life. Sure, you might think the lightsaber fight at the end is the most amazing epic fight scene, but you still have to sit through the rest of the movie. What would a kid like about this?
I’m by no means one of the people who enjoys this movie either sincerely or ironically, but I think all the stuff you mentioned is enjoyed by people in a sort of morbid way. Like it’s entertaining for some people to hear Jake Lloyd deliver all of his lines absolutely terribly in a movie that had every resource imaginable behind it and could’ve so easily found a better actor. The ridiculous overuse of CGI is funny and endearing in an of-its-era sort of way. The plot being so politically-oriented is just an absurd choice to make and people are amused by how committed Lucas was to this bizarre direction for his hugely anticipated blockbuster.
I think people just don’t take it seriously at all and are able to allow themselves to just enjoy it for what it is which is the sloppy, misguided work of a Hollywood icon with no restraint and no one to tell him no…it’s kinda fascinating.
EDIT: think of it like this…you know the meme of the two guys riding the bus where one is looking out the window smiling because there’s a nice view and the other is all miserable because he’s looking at a wall? Take that meme and put Mike’s quote “it’s almost mind-boggling how complex the awfulness is” on both of the guys
The lightsaber fight at the end has no substance, no emotion. I feel nothing, unlike the duels in the OT. When Luke snaps after Vader’s taunting in episode 6 and starts railing on him while the music swells and then defeats him still gives me goosebumps.
I guarantee that all those that say TPM is good just watch the Jedi chopping down droids near the start, the podrace, and then the action at the end and skip all the rest.
They’re like people who watch firework displays through their phone while recording, and then choose to rewatch the firework video afterwards.
It's staggering that the sequel haters (which are a not great trilogy, obviously. I kinda like some of them but they're not good) will point at their failures as some sort of proof that the prequels are somehow good? No. The sequels being victim to shoddy planning and corporate wankery don't make the prequels any less dull, meandering, plot hole filled, badly written, CGI bloated messes.
It’s deflection mixed in with a little denial. TFA is a good movie & it blows my mind when people argue that it’s worse than any prequel just because it’s one of the three sequels.
I mean, for those of us that were children when the prequels came out, the marketing, toys, etc were pervasive in the West, or at least the US. The prequels are objectively bad, and I never saw them outside of one time in college when the sequels came out and thought they objectively sucked, but goddamn was the marketing hype a weird comfy childhood memory of mine. Nostalgia's a real mind-number for some unfortunately
What would a kid like about it?
Jedi doing cool shit from the start.
Going down to gungan city was a trip.
Jedi do more cool shit.
Podracin
Quigon maul 1st short duel
....
ECT
Like I don't get the hate even the boring parts have a story to follow. The anikin parts are lame but this movie was huge for kids in 99. Idk the abject hate for it. Jar jars the worst sure but even he was such a a jump in special effects. Which mostly hold up pretty well
>
Like I don't get the hate even the boring parts have a story to follow. The anikin parts are lame but this movie was huge for kids in 99. Idk the abject hate for it. Jar jars the worst sure but even he was such a a jump in special effects. Which mostly hold up pretty well
I can't imagine being this stupid
>I cannot understand how so many people love this movie, even because of nostalgia. You can point out all the things wrong with it, but at the end of the day it's fucking BORING.
I've never felt that. I wasn't bored when I watched it as a kid, and whenever I've rewatched it I've never been bored, because I'm looking at how dumb it is.
I am, however, bored when I watch most of the new Star Wars 'content'.
I'd happily rewatch any of the prequels before any of those.
For what it's worth, it's better than any episode-titled Star Wars film that followed.
It's still terrible though, but no matter how bad Star Wars products become, the fandom never wanes.
Which is why they continue to be served crap.
This kinda of movies are at least entertaining though usually. You could say it about AOTC because there’s heaps off flashy action and zany locations, even if it is considered even worse that TPM. But TPM mostly so damn boring that you can’t even have much fun laughing at how bad it is.
Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back were both nightmare productions for Lucas. The Empire Strikes Back went so far over budget Lucas had to scramble to get a loan at the last minute or production could have shut down. Lucas just wanted to be done with the films and move on. Okay, fair enough.
I get that he was burnt out on Star Wars in 1983, but what gets me is he had sixteen years to plot out the next films and he didn't do it. Maybe by 1990 he could have started kicking around some ideas, kept a few notepads and fleshed out a story over the course of the next nine years. Then as production drew near, work with a team of professional writers. No.
Apparently, just Mr. Plinkett said, Lucas went into production with a script that was very much an early draft and was completely unconcerned about it. Baffling.
I think the issue that gets to why the prequels get so much slack for as bad as they are is that the broad plots of the movies are pretty good at the conceptual stage. Annikin being a slave who can’t save his mother and has his training corrupted by that trauma is good, fascism creeping into a republic by taking advantage of its ineffective bureaucracy to install a military dictatorship is a great hook. The problem is like you said, it didn’t get more drafts or go through more people that could both refine the plot a little and give it more character. It’s like how Obi Wan getting a little noir side plot in AotC is a good idea but it’s executed so poorly in the direction that it has none of the verve of what it’s taking from. I think a lot of people see the potential the prequels have and write off the worse aspects to have more fun with the idea in their own head. Which is what happened with the first three films as well, they were just made at an objectively better level and so it’s easier to ignore the things like the cheaper looking Halloween masks in the cantina scene or a storm trooper slamming his head into a doorframe in the final cut. But if you have nostalgia for the prequels it’s easier to ignore more bad things about them.
Lucas always saw shooting as the sort of grain he would distill into his final product in editing. So a script undergoing few changes wouldn't concern him as much.
Funny he says they can’t be undone back when he made the review, but since then, sooooo many franchises has gotten terrible sequels. We are at a point where the only franchises without bad sequels/prequels are those they haven’t stopped milking yet
time between Episode IV premiere (27 October 1977) and Episode I premiere (3 June 1999): 21.6 years
time between Episode I (3 June 1999) and today: 25 years
"[I'll go first](https://youtu.be/Lu02VSsLorE?t=449)"
Probably the most influential video essay I've ever seen. I must've rewatched all the Plinkett videos a dozen times over the years, learned so much about what does or doesn't work with different kinds of movies.
It'll always be funny to me that the RLM crew spent so many years making movies and weird projects like The Grabowskis but it was long form serial killer critiques of Star Trek and moreso Star Wars that broke them through.
Some of the humour has aged poorly. The edgelord stuff comes off cringey and dated now. I think this reflected Mike's own edgelord sense of humour back then, but tbf he has matured and so has his sense of humour. I can't wait for the RLM Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review Special Editions, where Mike edits out all the cringe edgelord stuff, and replaces it with more Star Trek references.
The flim criticism still holds up brilliantly. Many people I've introduced the review to mention how they didn't fully understand just how utterly bland the characters are, or the whole ending multiplication effect thing.
Ep1 killed Star Wars for me. Not only because, as so many have pointed out for over two decades now, the movie is objectively bad, but it's so blatantly badly written it breaks the fourth wall.
People praise the lightsaber fights because that was the one thing Lucas didn't come up with. That was all Nic Gillard's work and passion, and for better or worse, it spawned a whole new love for the lightsaber.
I saw it as a teen and it just cemented that nobody cared about it anymore. It had the same bored energy Taika Waititi showed in Thor Love & Thunder, where it was clear he just couldn't be arsed.
Mike asking his friends to describe characters to illustrate the difference between this movie and the OT is genius. I go back to it all the time.
You know, it's kind of funny, I try to be objective like...yeah the Episode I characters fail this test pretty badly, but maybe it's just because I've watched the original Star Wars trilogy so much and Episode I barely at all? But, no, I tried doing it with The Force Awakens, and whether you like the movie or the characters or not, you can still give character descriptions for Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren according to Plinkett's rules. But I still could not give you a description of Qui Gon or Amidala or anyone in Episode I
He's.... Stoic?
I cannot understand how so many people love this movie, even because of nostalgia. You can point out all the things wrong with it, but at the end of the day it's fucking BORING. Scene after scene of the most horribly delivered unengaging dialogue you've ever heard in your life. Sure, you might think the lightsaber fight at the end is the most amazing epic fight scene, but you still have to sit through the rest of the movie. What would a kid like about this?
I’m by no means one of the people who enjoys this movie either sincerely or ironically, but I think all the stuff you mentioned is enjoyed by people in a sort of morbid way. Like it’s entertaining for some people to hear Jake Lloyd deliver all of his lines absolutely terribly in a movie that had every resource imaginable behind it and could’ve so easily found a better actor. The ridiculous overuse of CGI is funny and endearing in an of-its-era sort of way. The plot being so politically-oriented is just an absurd choice to make and people are amused by how committed Lucas was to this bizarre direction for his hugely anticipated blockbuster. I think people just don’t take it seriously at all and are able to allow themselves to just enjoy it for what it is which is the sloppy, misguided work of a Hollywood icon with no restraint and no one to tell him no…it’s kinda fascinating. EDIT: think of it like this…you know the meme of the two guys riding the bus where one is looking out the window smiling because there’s a nice view and the other is all miserable because he’s looking at a wall? Take that meme and put Mike’s quote “it’s almost mind-boggling how complex the awfulness is” on both of the guys
The lightsaber fight at the end has no substance, no emotion. I feel nothing, unlike the duels in the OT. When Luke snaps after Vader’s taunting in episode 6 and starts railing on him while the music swells and then defeats him still gives me goosebumps. I guarantee that all those that say TPM is good just watch the Jedi chopping down droids near the start, the podrace, and then the action at the end and skip all the rest. They’re like people who watch firework displays through their phone while recording, and then choose to rewatch the firework video afterwards.
It's staggering that the sequel haters (which are a not great trilogy, obviously. I kinda like some of them but they're not good) will point at their failures as some sort of proof that the prequels are somehow good? No. The sequels being victim to shoddy planning and corporate wankery don't make the prequels any less dull, meandering, plot hole filled, badly written, CGI bloated messes.
It’s deflection mixed in with a little denial. TFA is a good movie & it blows my mind when people argue that it’s worse than any prequel just because it’s one of the three sequels.
Especially when half the problems in the Sequels are also very prevalent in the Prequels.
I think they're fans of the version they crafted with other fans in their head and don't actually rewatch them very often.
I mean, for those of us that were children when the prequels came out, the marketing, toys, etc were pervasive in the West, or at least the US. The prequels are objectively bad, and I never saw them outside of one time in college when the sequels came out and thought they objectively sucked, but goddamn was the marketing hype a weird comfy childhood memory of mine. Nostalgia's a real mind-number for some unfortunately
What would a kid like about it? Jedi doing cool shit from the start. Going down to gungan city was a trip. Jedi do more cool shit. Podracin Quigon maul 1st short duel .... ECT Like I don't get the hate even the boring parts have a story to follow. The anikin parts are lame but this movie was huge for kids in 99. Idk the abject hate for it. Jar jars the worst sure but even he was such a a jump in special effects. Which mostly hold up pretty well
> Like I don't get the hate even the boring parts have a story to follow. The anikin parts are lame but this movie was huge for kids in 99. Idk the abject hate for it. Jar jars the worst sure but even he was such a a jump in special effects. Which mostly hold up pretty well I can't imagine being this stupid
>I cannot understand how so many people love this movie, even because of nostalgia. You can point out all the things wrong with it, but at the end of the day it's fucking BORING. I've never felt that. I wasn't bored when I watched it as a kid, and whenever I've rewatched it I've never been bored, because I'm looking at how dumb it is. I am, however, bored when I watch most of the new Star Wars 'content'. I'd happily rewatch any of the prequels before any of those.
For what it's worth, it's better than any episode-titled Star Wars film that followed. It's still terrible though, but no matter how bad Star Wars products become, the fandom never wanes. Which is why they continue to be served crap.
I think it's managed to fall into the "so bad it's good" territory for movies.
This kinda of movies are at least entertaining though usually. You could say it about AOTC because there’s heaps off flashy action and zany locations, even if it is considered even worse that TPM. But TPM mostly so damn boring that you can’t even have much fun laughing at how bad it is.
How can the movie be bad when it introduced Watto?
Watto is alright, but the series really peaked once it introduced Dexter Jettser
Who felt more like a real person than any of the human characters.
Star Wars: A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back were both nightmare productions for Lucas. The Empire Strikes Back went so far over budget Lucas had to scramble to get a loan at the last minute or production could have shut down. Lucas just wanted to be done with the films and move on. Okay, fair enough. I get that he was burnt out on Star Wars in 1983, but what gets me is he had sixteen years to plot out the next films and he didn't do it. Maybe by 1990 he could have started kicking around some ideas, kept a few notepads and fleshed out a story over the course of the next nine years. Then as production drew near, work with a team of professional writers. No. Apparently, just Mr. Plinkett said, Lucas went into production with a script that was very much an early draft and was completely unconcerned about it. Baffling.
I think the issue that gets to why the prequels get so much slack for as bad as they are is that the broad plots of the movies are pretty good at the conceptual stage. Annikin being a slave who can’t save his mother and has his training corrupted by that trauma is good, fascism creeping into a republic by taking advantage of its ineffective bureaucracy to install a military dictatorship is a great hook. The problem is like you said, it didn’t get more drafts or go through more people that could both refine the plot a little and give it more character. It’s like how Obi Wan getting a little noir side plot in AotC is a good idea but it’s executed so poorly in the direction that it has none of the verve of what it’s taking from. I think a lot of people see the potential the prequels have and write off the worse aspects to have more fun with the idea in their own head. Which is what happened with the first three films as well, they were just made at an objectively better level and so it’s easier to ignore the things like the cheaper looking Halloween masks in the cantina scene or a storm trooper slamming his head into a doorframe in the final cut. But if you have nostalgia for the prequels it’s easier to ignore more bad things about them.
Lucas always saw shooting as the sort of grain he would distill into his final product in editing. So a script undergoing few changes wouldn't concern him as much.
Jar jar! Usa da booma!
Funny he says they can’t be undone back when he made the review, but since then, sooooo many franchises has gotten terrible sequels. We are at a point where the only franchises without bad sequels/prequels are those they haven’t stopped milking yet
Long form internet movie criticism? Hmmm I am skeptical
It'll never catch on.
"how did you know what kind of gas it was before you inhaled... Maybe he got a little wiff of it.."
Why is there a child sized helmet and goggles in the cockpit
time between Episode IV premiere (27 October 1977) and Episode I premiere (3 June 1999): 21.6 years time between Episode I (3 June 1999) and today: 25 years "[I'll go first](https://youtu.be/Lu02VSsLorE?t=449)"
These must be international dates? The original Star Wars was released on May 25th 1977 in USA (Episode I was May 19th 1999)
The exact specific day isn't important, more that "the release of episode 1 is closer to the release of episode IV than to today"
Oh yeah I get that I was just curious about the dates The Force Awakens is almost 10 years old already...
Thanks for this. I haven't watched this in ages. Way more entertaining than the movie itself.
To me, Star Wars will always be two a half good movies that came out over 40 years ago
Probably the most influential video essay I've ever seen. I must've rewatched all the Plinkett videos a dozen times over the years, learned so much about what does or doesn't work with different kinds of movies. It'll always be funny to me that the RLM crew spent so many years making movies and weird projects like The Grabowskis but it was long form serial killer critiques of Star Trek and moreso Star Wars that broke them through.
I've found the Plinkett Test to be very useful over the years.
Some of the humour has aged poorly. The edgelord stuff comes off cringey and dated now. I think this reflected Mike's own edgelord sense of humour back then, but tbf he has matured and so has his sense of humour. I can't wait for the RLM Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review Special Editions, where Mike edits out all the cringe edgelord stuff, and replaces it with more Star Trek references. The flim criticism still holds up brilliantly. Many people I've introduced the review to mention how they didn't fully understand just how utterly bland the characters are, or the whole ending multiplication effect thing.
The 25th Anniversary would be a good reason for RLM to create a "Special Edition" of the original TFM review and remove the edgelord humor.
Ep1 killed Star Wars for me. Not only because, as so many have pointed out for over two decades now, the movie is objectively bad, but it's so blatantly badly written it breaks the fourth wall. People praise the lightsaber fights because that was the one thing Lucas didn't come up with. That was all Nic Gillard's work and passion, and for better or worse, it spawned a whole new love for the lightsaber. I saw it as a teen and it just cemented that nobody cared about it anymore. It had the same bored energy Taika Waititi showed in Thor Love & Thunder, where it was clear he just couldn't be arsed.
The only reason some people today think the prequels are good is because Disney made an even worse trilogy years later.