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How different do you think the reactions for The Phantom Menace would have been if there had been no Original Trilogy released twenty years ago? Do you think the film still would have made it to the top of the charts and would people still understand the storyline? AND do you think people would expect there to be a sequel?

I have often wondered that. Probably not, since episode 4,5,6 are the middle third of the original Star Wars story that George Lucas wrote. That means lots of action instead of introduction.

Cheers!

A lot of reviews gave TPM four stars, as it seemed to be a good movie, but not quite up to the standards of the other classic movies. I wonder if the reviews would have varied a lot too if the OT didn't exist. Many people thought it sucked, but I bet a lot of reviewers were to ashamed to admit it. It may have only got about two or maybe even 1 star, judging by some people's reaction.

Most people would expect a sequel cause of the way Mace and Yoda talked at the end. But without the OT I doubt people would have liked the movie nearly as much. It probably would have just been seen as some run of the mill summer blockbluster.

TPM is a true prequel movie. On its own, it has no foundation. It would have been VERY different if it had actually been the first in the series.

That's one of TPM's flaws: no foundations.

Anyway, I don't know if anyone of you ever read the first drafts of SW. But the storyline of TPM was never devised as it is now. Before GL started considering making the PT there was not a very outlined idea of TPM. Even if you read the intro in the novelisation of ANH, you can see that GL changed his mind here and there. So who knows what it would have looked like. Maybe one of the things that brought ANH to greatness are the limitations that GL had to make it.

I agree with Ush about TPM having no foundation. It had (and will continue) to have to work hard on its own to be the beginning of a saga that fans the world round have very defined ideas of, because of the OT. TPM could not have begun to built the fan base that the OT did. One of the two main bad guys in TPM died at the end. In the OT, the two main bad guys survived until the very end of the THIRD film. (I'm not counting Tarkin here, obviously). I think that's what really made the OT....the fans wanted more, more, more.. what happens to the bad guys next ? what happens to our heroes ? I highly admire George for laying his story out the way he has. It takes guts to do such huge story on film in the order he has fashioned it.

I certainly agree with Ush on this but on a different point, I think if this was to be the first of the films it would also be very different in how it was done. The plot relies on a great deal of facts that watchers will be aware of. I discovered this whe I met a girl who at this point had never seen the trilogy and as such was disheartened by the fact that there were so many correalating to the trilogy points that she lost interest at times. In actuality her stance upon it was that as a first time watcher if taken as GL was apparently intended as a kiddie movie then it was great given characters like Jar Jar and the droids. Its for hard long serving fans that the problems are noticed and as such arise...

And consider the following things that are not explained in TPM:

Lightsabres (done in ANH)
The Jedi (done in ANH... unless you count the tiny mention on the opening crawl)
The Force! (done in ANH, all Qui-Gon does in TPM is talk about the MCs, which only complicates things for a newbie)
The Dark Side (ANH again, with more in ESB.. picking up a theme here).

But at least it named Tatooine, which is better than ANH did.

Well sort of it decided to discuss the force by throwing internal bugs about I ask you.... Nice points though though it did mention those LASER SWORDS I ask you what has happened to dialogue?

I think it would have flopped at the box office, the story is not strong enough without the original trilogy.

Me too. ANH also has a lot of backbone: dissolving of the Imperial Senate and last remains of Old republic swept away, OB1 old apprentice gone bad, the mysterious past of Luke's father, Leia looses a familiy we have not seen, even the droids talk about a past.

TPM has none of that, it just starts out of nowhere. People I talked to who never saw the OT felt the story was flimsy. I disagreed, but the storytelling was so subtle and only got meaning due to the OT that I understand that people think the story is very weak and flimsy.

Actually it amazes me there are people out there who have never seen any of the OT.

Unfortunate but true but I still hold my ground by suggesting that the film in itself may have been tremedously better, even with the plot it had and choice of second string characters if the dialogue had been better.

Everyone knows GL cabn't do dialogue. He SAYS he cannot do dialogue,.Yet he said he thought the peoople who touched up the dialogue before hadn't made much difference, so he didn't bother this time. Oops...

Yeah, You'd think then that this suggested that he wasn't that keen on the original dialogue. Which just happen to be so far superior to the tripe he threw out this time (not that I do not worship) And damn you are on my tail... Stay on target, you sure you don't want a few bevvies at the bar?