Lies & Damnable Lies

There’s a reason why I posted that Homework Assignment yesterday. The L.A. Slimes posted a piece (you can find the link on TFN) about screenwriters pitching ideas for Ep. VII that devolved into you guessed it, collective prequel bashing and lying mc lies. It even claimed that ROTS got a “critical mauling” when it came out in 2005. As Jonathan Bowen put on his Facebook page:

It’s actually really annoying because I feel like it is working to erode reality to some extent, it’s like this massive history revision of what actually happened and what people actually thought. The Phantom Menace got an A from CinemaScore, that’s exit polling done right out of the theater, and it AVERAGED an A rating from moviegoers. Revenge of the Sith was an A+. So where is this huge majority I keep hearing about who hated the prequels?! It doesn’t exist. But I swear about 90% of people in the media hate Star Wars. It’s some weird convergence where the age range is just right, the mentality is just right, and suddenly you have a group with a lot of voice telling us all that we are the minority. I’m not the minority. Most people enjoyed the prequels. I’m not saying most people loved them or that they’re everyone’s favorite films, but I am saying they were well received and enjoyed by the vast majority of moviegoers. I also get annoyed that it always becomes “the prequels,” as if it’s basically one movie. It’s true that TPM had a rocky reception among die-hard fans and that the reviews were iffy, positive overall but kind of all over the board. It is not true that Revenge of the Sith shared a similar fate. It was given some of the year’s best reviews and fans loved it. A lot of the people who hated the first two prequels, the crazy bashers, still loved ROTS. So I have no idea what these people keep writing about “THE prequels” for like it’s just no different at all.

Dear Entertainment Weekly

Dear Entertainment Weekly,

So you think, based upon the sage advice of notorious prequel-basher Simon Pegg, that it’s “cool to like Star Wars again.” Unlike the mindless pop culture zombies who slavishly follow wherever you lead them, I don’t need anyone’s permission to be a Star Wars fan.

You see, I’ve been a fan 35 years, longer than most of your staff or readers have been alive. I’ve stuck with it through thick and through thin. Do you know when it was really uncool to be a Star Wars fan? Try 1985-1990. Marvel shut down its Star Wars title after writers couldn’t come up with anything more than fat green people menacing the galaxy. The original Star Wars fan club shuttered in 1987, just in time to celebrate A New Hope’s 10th anniversary. Kenner stopped making Star Wars toys. The first attempts at producing an animated t.v. series were gone by the time I started my senior year in high school. It seemed like by then Star Wars had fallen off of the cultural map.

Oh sure, by that time Harrison Ford was the biggest star in Hollywood, but he didn’t want to talk about those movies (still doesn’t). Yes we got the first launch of Star Tours, but that was at only one Disney park. Certainly, there was a 10th anniversary convention in Los Angeles in 1987 but it was far smaller in scale than any of the Celebrations of the past 13 years (and I didn’t go).

Nobody knew for sure if or when Star Wars was ever coming back. The first trilogy was over and remaining fans went underground, and with the exception of a small circle of zine publishers and fan fic writers, had to endure it alone. Read Steve Sansweet’s 1992 book “From Concept To Screen To Collectible.” He talks about how memorabilia and toy shows refused to let dealers sell Star Wars stuff in the late ‘80s. The 1990 edition of Dale Pollock’s “Skywalking,” a George Lucas biography, called Star Wars a ‘70s fad. Meet any other fannish types prior to 1991 and their usual reaction to your Star Wars fandom was, “Why are you still into that?”

By the way, 95% of those old fanboys who claimed they worshipped the holy trilogy back in the day abandoned it the second they got old enough for chicks and cars. Trufax, as your young readers might say.

There always were whispers of interest in the saga, people asking me if I knew anything (“sure, I’ll ask George the next time I see him”) but those were regular people. Not the precursors to today’s professional geeks. The media and Hollywood didn’t give a womprat’s butt about Star Wars. I certainly don’t recall very much about it in the early days of your publication.

When I started my fanzine in 1993, the letters I got from readers were like confessionals at an AA meeting. People were just coming to terms with the fact they still loved the Star Wars films. Over the next four years though, everything changed. The Star Wars bandwagon got rolling again.

But I’m guessing, given the media’s often short memory, the Era of Uncoolness you’re describing began in 1997 and if not with the Special Editions, then definitely with The Phantom Menace.

Guess what? This old school Star Wars fan embraced the Special Editions and the prequels. Just as I didn’t abandon Star Wars when it wasn’t cool in the mid ‘80s, I didn’t abandon it when you guys and your followers turned on it years later. Remember the Clone Wars movie? You people graded it with an “F.” I enjoyed it and saw the show’s potential right away. But four years later the show’s a hit, so it’s “cool” to like it now.

Whatever, EW. You don’t speak for me and you aren’t the arbiters of “cool.”

No Love,
lazypadawan

Rebelscum’s Magazine Retrospective

Rebelscum.com has featured magazines for sale on eBay surrounding each prequel release this week. I remember buying a ton of them when TPM came out and after that, severely limiting my purchases. Still it’s fun to recall those heady days when Star Wars dominated the newsstand.

Here are TPM, AOTC, and ROTS.

Ahmed Best Interview

I’d heard about this interview a while ago, but it wasn’t until today that TFN posted a link to Entertainment Weakly’s chat with Ahmed Best. It’s an informative read and I have to say, even with all of the totally unfair bullcrap dumped on Best and on his alter ego (much of it I could blame on the likes of EW), he has a great attitude toward his time in the GFFA. Props also to his former co-stars sticking up for him.

Pigs Take Flight And Satan Buys A Parka

Entertainment Weakly sez “Revenge of the Sith” is one of the best prequels ever.

No, you weren’t hallucinating…

Funny Business At Rotten Tomatoes.com?

While perusing comments at A Certain Point of View, I saw this from Boba’s Vette:

I don’t know if this is the best place to write this, but I’ve noticed that it seems like the haters in the media (the worst ones) are on a mission to give The Phantom Menace a rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Judging by what the writers of (RT) have said about the Star Wars prequels in the past (quite snarky and negative mostly), they are willing to roll out the red carpet and fling open the golden gates allowing any old hack critic and their “13 years-too-late” review of TPM get in. This is even without seeing it in 3D, which I would have considered a tad more relevant than a handful of reviews popping up a week to days before the 3D re-release. Not to mention there have been no screenings for critics so there’s no way they could have seen it.

TPM was once at 62% fresh and just recently it dropped to 60%. Now it seems like every time I go to look there’s a new negative review popping up. It won’t be long until it gets pushed into the realm of rotten. Not that it even matters because it doesn’t change the quality of the movie one bit. The movie will always be fresh to me, but there seems to be a motive to make this happen and it seems very shady.

Here are some disturbing things I’ve noticed about the more recent batch of negative reviews:

1. There are 2 within a year of each other that are the exact same review, so one negative review all of a sudden tallies as 2 negative reviews? Not very fair, eh?

2. One of the duplicates is lists the same person on the previous page where they have given it a very positive review. Same person listed, different publication. Now a negative review.

3. Of the 3 latest reviews that came out in the last 3 days, the review from “Projection Booth” is a guy who was once or still is affiliated with “Slant Magazine” which is funny since there’s a recent review listed from “Slant Magazine” where the guy gives it 0/4 stars. Seems like an inside job or something. These guys just may all know each other and like I’ve heard you say before, “hateboys with jobs”. This could very well be the case.

If this is the case, then Rotten Tomatoes is made up of dishonest smear merchants and have no credibility.

EW.com: TPM Wasn’t All That Bad

Owen Gleiberman at EW.com revisits his opinion of TPM. Not that I agree with everything this guy had to say, but hey, it’s a start.

More Media Stuff On TPM

Why bother to list them myself when Eric at TFN did such a fine job? There you’ll find links to articles, Ray Park’s appearance on “Attack of the Show,” etc..

Figuring It Out–A Commentary

Cross-posted on my LiveJournal:

Nothing like unwinding after a long week with a little Facebook battle to get you through a Clone Wars-free night. You’ve seen before on this LJ how much I despise Lucasfilm’s baffling boosterism of various people like Simon Pegg who proclaim they’re really big Star Wars fans/geeks yet will run to every waiting reporter with the nastiest comments about the prequels, which of course get published and widely disseminated. Well, I unloaded a lot of frustration on starwars.com’s Facebook and of course, the usual tools defend starwars.com and Pegg.

Imagine if you’d ever see a celebrity say to the media something like this:

The first Star Wars movies were total rubbish. The special effects aged badly, the creatures look like muppets, the story was simple-minded with an irritating black-and-white approach to good and evil, the dialogue was below par for a comic book, and the acting was terrible with the exception of Alec Guinness.

Now the prequels were by far a vast improvement. Imaginative worlds, real artistry in Lucas’s vision, a thinking person’s musings on the gray areas between good and evil, real drama, and a far more talented cast. It’s like comparing sugary soda pop to fine wine. Too bad Lucas matured later instead of making his first set of movies closer to the commentary on the Vietnam War he originally envisioned. Because if he had, then Star Trek wouldn’t have won the science fiction battle.*

Like hell Lucasfilm would ever promote this guy’s work or re-tweet his comments or regard him as a friend of Star Wars. You wouldn’t see this guy at a Celebration ever, only if he’s walking around with a badge he bought himself and with no Tumblr photo ops. Many Star Wars fans would consider him at best a “non-fan” and at worst a total pariah.

By the same token, if a Celebration guest ever started ragging on the first set of Star Wars films or told jokes at the expense of say, Carrie Fisher’s personal problems, that guy would get the hook right away and never get invited back.

Yet all of those things I’ve described have been directed at the prequels, and still such people are welcomed as Star Wars fans and promoted by Lucasfilm.

Why?

Because Lucasfilm understands and respects the emotional connection–attachment if you will–fans have with Eps IV-VI. They would never sanction anyone denigrating those films because they genuinely worry about upsetting fandom’s sensibilities. Everybody involved with Star Wars, whether it’s a prequel film actor or someone involved with Clone Wars or a game designer or a comic/book author, is expected to speak about those films with reverence.

However Lucasfilm doesn’t think very many people have that emotional connection with Eps I-III, so it’s not understood and it’s certainly not respected. Toes can be mashed, feelings can be hurt, movies can be crapped upon because really, who loves them anyway? And the ones who do, well, they don’t matter. They’re not real fans: too young to have experienced the glory years of ’77-’83 and too old to be Clone Wars fans. Since when is anyone associated with the first set of Star Wars films, games and other expanded universe, and Clone Wars expected to speak about the prequels with the same reverence expected of the Imperial trilogy? When have you ever seen people excited about how such and such is going to reference the prequels?

For Lucasfilm and lot of the tool poseur groups out there, a real Star Wars fan must at least love Eps IV-VI even if he hates everything else. A vociferous fan of those movies is considered passionate and genuine. An equally passionate advocate of the prequels is considered fringe, militant, weird, a dilettante, and not genuine. Not that they mind taking our money of course.

As long as they have this two-tiered view of fandom, nothing is going to change.

*This is of course NOT my personal opinion.

Rolling Stone Suddenly Remembers Jar Jar Cover Story

In light of the announcement of TPM 3D’s release date, Rolling Stone highlighted its 1999 cover story featuring good ol’ Jar Jar. Well, I’ll be.