Bare in mind that this is the same Darth Vader (and Anakin Skywalker in his previous life) who murdered children, partook in a genocide, became one of the lynchpins of an oppressive regime that saw death and suffering on a galactic wide scale, and sat back and did nothing while a planet was destroyed in front of him while his daughter was forced to watch.
shareForget the prequels. They were poorly written crap. The OT Vader never was this genocidal maniac. He was a ruthless, military henchman. All of his victims in the OT were military men. It was Tarkin who blew up Alderaan. In OT context the remark makes sense in a way.
shareHow old are you?
shareYeah, AckbarsRevenge is like a whiny child, isn't he?
I'm thinking that he is at least 45, as the majority of SW fans who dislike the prequels tend to be....
shareI'm 50, and I like the Prequels, mostly (Clones is the most boring IMHO).
Why does the age matter? If you're in your 20s or 30s and somebody said, "Well, that's what the majority of SW fans of like the prequels tend to be," I doubt you'd appreciate having your opinions implicitly or explicitly mocked and dismissed just because of your age.
shareI think that when it comes to SW it is a bit different. It is a film that we are often introduced to as a child. I was introduced to the original trilogy when I was about 10. By the time the prequels came out I was around 15. I think if you are a grown adult, you tend to be a bit more critical, hence why the prequels flaws might have been more difficult for an older person to overlook.
Take the sequel trilogy. I thought TFA was pretty decent but the following two films were a fucking mess.
The point I'm trying to make is that a person's arguments or ideas shouldn't live or die with their age (or other personal characteristics).
Maybe I'm missing your argument? You're saying that nostalgia for the SW films one grew up with causes one to give them a "pass/fail"? Or are you saying that as a person ages, they notice flaws in films more?
I think of TFA as fun, but I thought it's erasure of ROTJ's ending and reversal of Han's character development was a huge mistake (at best), and lazy writing. It's super-fun, and hits the nostalgia button to gain points with long-time Star Wars fans, but I don't think it's a good continuation of Star Wars. Now, if it was a standalone film or the start of the SW saga, I'd think more highly of it, but it would still have some flaws.
The other films basically tried to overcorrect for the previous film. TLJ went loopy ("subverts..." blah, blah) because of the accusations that TFA was just ANH with fresh paint; TROS retconned all of the least-popular elements of TLJ and tried to go back to the nostalgia well, but they delved too deep and too greedily and awakened Palpatine...
Dude, I was 14 when I saw TPM. And I disliked it very strongly, and AOTC and ROTS were not much better, just because I saw them in my late teens.
So I am the living rebuttal of your argument.
Ace_Spade is right - age does not matter. You can have any opinion about any movie at any age.
I've asked the same question.
Same as in the abominable Force Awakens when a father who has done nothing to reach out to his son (Kylo Ren), and watch from a distance as his son wreaks havoc and murders, can think that by showing up and offering him a hug will he rehabilitate him.
I think the difference between ROTJ and TFA is that TFA's internal logic doesn't work. The OT built a character who was good and is evil. Therefore, this person might return to the light. The PT presented little observable argument for why Anakin was ever really that good in the first place, but that's not a problem with the OT, that's a problem with the PT.
TFA gives us a character who was never a good father and then shows how important his son is to him, which contradicts the evidence in the movie. Had we spent more time with Han and Leia, we might have seen a conversation about how Han tried and tried and tried and was pushed away by his jerk son, or maybe how he was constantly frustrated by the cloistering of Jedi students and Leia's all-consuming focus on politics. We don't get any of that, though, so based on the information we have, it doesn't make sense. But, again, that's within the same film. It undercuts its own narrative. It's not and ROTJ or even OT problem that Vader seems irredeemable.
I agree with your assessment.
When I said "same" it was in the most general sense that the scenarios were problematic, not "same" in the particulars.
The OT (sans PT) is an easier pill to swallow.
As far as TFA is concerned, even had we seen, or had it revealed, that Han had tried over and over and over to reach his son the final encounter would have still flopped. Since the scene was obviously intended to mirror ANH with Luke watching Obi Won die at the hands of Vader it would have been better to have had Han fighting his son and go down as a martyr.
Maybe.
But I don't waste time thinking of how TFA could be salvaged. It would demand a massive rewrite to the point a completely different film would emerge.
Ah, yes, I see what you mean.
TFA had a bunch of problems, and it needed a lot of work to be awesome. To me, it's mostly in the same category as Abrams' first Star Trek film: switch off and have fun with the nostalgia and the action scenes and don't think about it in concert with the original material too much. Do that and it's fun. It's like the biggest budget fan fiction ever.
It's right there in the movie. "There's still good in him. I can feel it"
The OT was all about trusting your feelings. It was never about observable evidence such as you are looking for.
It's not about some Law & Order style trial argument on whether Vader can be redeemed - or some psychological evaluation about brain chemicals. It was about the [then mysterious] force and letting go to trust your instincts.
Luke's instincts, through the force, told him that there was still good in his father. It's simple. How is this even a question?
Well said. As Luke's connections with his father and the Force increase, he becomes aware of what he must do.
shareA New Hope told us that Anakin was a good, noble Jedi and friend of Obi-wan's, and between that and Luke's Force-sensing the good in Vader, that gives us what we need to know.
The Prequels have, in my opinion, synchronicity problems with the OT. They create frustrating gaps like this one where we don't get the story of a good Jedi's fall, we get the story of a cluelessly cherubic child turning into a petulant teenager and then just spiralling into selfishness and evil.
Yes, Vader is callously destroying worlds by the time we see him, but the OT's setup created a character who fell from grace, not one who was always mired in some sort of nastiness.
Because he felt it. He literally says so in the film itself.
And you can't count the actions of Anakin Skywalker in the prequels as they were written on the back of a fag packet literally decades later and do not fit in with the OT continuity anyway.
You may as well ask why Jonathan Kent is alive again in Man of Steel when he died in Superman '78. Same name on the tin but a completely different product...