rad

might be in the minority here, but I like the prequels better than the originals!

You know, a lot of people give what we've come to know as Star Wars: Episode's I-III a lot of crap. Were they great movies? Absolutely not. In fact, of the three origonal movies, only one of them stands out as actually "good" and that's The Empire Strikes Back. The other two are barely "ok". Having said that, you have to remember there was nearly twenty years of technological advances in film making, speculation on the story, fan created stories, sanctioned novels, comics, video games, and merchandising. Our expectations were very high.

Could different people been cast for the parts, probalby. There were only three actors of any note in the first Star Wars Film (Alec Guiness, Peter Cushing and Harrison Ford) the rest were unknowns. Was the story line thin? Yes, but if you look at the story line for the whole series, it's pretty thin, quite a bit of this fact is hidden behind the veil of special effects - we were so amazed by how the movie looked, we didn't really care about a Princess (wtf?) being rescued from a planetoid sized space station (now we're stretching it) by a moisture farmer (double wtf?), a smart ass (ok, there's one on every team), a huge monkey/dog/bear thing (mmmkay...) and a wise old man that carrys a really fancy flashlight (who just happens to get killed, so much for being wise).

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Star Wars (all of them actually) but I think people really had unrealistic hopes when the new movies came out. I'll tell you one thing though, my boys love the new movies far more than I loved the origonal films. Let's face it, they weren't made for a jaded thrity/fortysomething crowd. They were made for kids. If you look at them from the prospective of a 6-12 year old, they're amazaing.

I liked Episodes I, II, and III for the most part. I really liked Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan. Hayden Christensen was ok as Anakin but there was just something I wish was better for that character. I also liked all the references to the original movies and obviously the special effects are so much better. I think Jan is right about the movies being geared towards kids. I saw the original films when they first came out, and I saw Star Wars (New Hope) dozens of times when I was 7-10 years old. It was just an awesome thing for a kid. And that's what drives my geekiness today, I'm sure.

The movies may have been geared more towards children, but the 25 years worth of back stories and other ideas that were spurned from the kids that saw the originals weren't as much.

For the most part, I despise the prequels. The clone war/fall of the jedi/rise of the empire is easily the only good thing that came out of it, but I still look at it this way. For 25 years, anything, ANYTHING that was written into the Star Wars canon had to go through Lucas. Not a committee, not a secretary, but George fucking Lucas.

That means that everything that was added to the sw universe was approved personally by the man who created it in the first place. So for all those years, while Lucas sat around collecting royalty checks from other peoples' creativity and continually saying how much work he was putting into making the prequels (never been let down so much from getting jerked off) other writers were expanding stories on everything that the trilogy had to offer.

Nearly every single character or creature that you saw in the movies, even if it was a single 1 second shot of some alien in the cantina, was given a god damn back story. Because of Lucas' license and demands, certain character's back stories had to be limited to theoretical or "maybe it happened this way, but we won't know for sure" ideas.

Then, 30 years after the A New Hope, Phantom Suckbag hit theaters and rapes half of what was made by writes far more talented that Lucas could ever be. Three years after that, Send in the Clones forcibly sodomizes it's way through the other half of the Lucas approved universe.

The most used argument to that is that "it's property of George Lucas, he can do what he wants with it," and yes, legally that is true. But as soon as he sat on his ass, reaping the rewards of other people's work, it stopped being just his. Star Wars became the property of the fans, and the people dedicated to expanding the imagination that Star Wars provoked, and George Lucas showed just what he thought of his fans when he released the three biggest let downs in the history of story telling.

Retconning is the death of literature and art. Simple as that.

TL;DR version: George Lucas should've died in a plane crash in 1993, then Star Wars wouldn't be so faggy.

I agree with Auggy, Lucas should have handed over the reigns a long time ago. But according to his wallet he's doing a fecking amazing job! As long as ppl keep buying into it, he's going to keep making it. Maybe someday when he dies he will pass the legacy onto one of his children and they'll go "our dad was a moron, lets get this done right!" And all will be right in the world. And don't worry, I already have a hit out on Micheal Bay, just in case.

He did hand it off. In 1983. There was a 26 year gap where Lucas himself added nothing to the Star Wars universe, but he gave it to people more interested with making stories than he was.

Let's say you lease a house from someone. And it's a nice house, not perfect, but for when it was built, pretty solid construction and foundation, etc. You live there for a quarter of a century, and throughout that time, you're improving things in the house. Bigger bedrooms, more storage, better pipes, modernized kitchen, shit like that. Then, 26 years later, the guy who legally owns the house comes along and takes out everything that you've put your blood, sweat, tears and semen into. Then he replaces it with shitty offhand equipment. Suddenly, your state of the art electric/gas stove is now a half-broken grill that hasn't been used or maintained since the 1800s. Your hurricane jet jacuzzi bathtub is now an old wooden water tank that leaks out on to your polished, hardwood floors. But that's okay, the hardwood floors have been replaced by 1970s brownish yellow shag carpet. Oh, and that porsche you had? It's now a jalopy.

But you still have to live there. And you're welcome.

Here's a math problem to back up my theories...

(X + Y)(Z + T) = (U + G)

Well at least the books and comics are still out there for those willing to read them.