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Writer: Why Watching the Original Star Wars Again Was a Bad Idea (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: CNET's Michael Franco recently sat down and watched Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope again in preparation for the release of The Force Awakens later this week. His advice to anyone who's thinking of doing the same is to save your childhood memories and skip watching it again. Unlike wine, Franco doesn't think the movie gets better with age. He writes: " Since that first viewing, Luke, Vader and company have loomed large in my imagination, and clearly in the imaginations of many other adults introduced to the sci-fi franchise as kids. So have the rest of the characters, as well as the sounds of a lightsaber, a Wookiee and a TIE fighter and the idea that someday I would learn to control people through the power of suggestion and a wave of my hand. But it now seems that maybe all that got a little gilded in my memory."
You can save yourself the trouble of this one if you just read thi quote:
I know I've been spoiled by movies with bigger and bigger budgets over the years, but it seems like Lucas could have leveled up those costumes.
If you're the kind of person who can't appreciate something as being from an era, because OOH FAST SHINY LOOK A SQUIRREL then OK, rewatching the original films may not be for you. Otherwise, they're still just as good (or not) as they were when they were new.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... and I didn't think it had aged too badly. It's more or less what I remembered. A lean, fast-paced space opera, with a handful of iconic scenes and an uncanny ability to raise a smile. It's not a deep or profound movie, which is in some ways part of its charm.
For me, the Star Wars I loved growing up was never really about the movies. It was about the 1990s games; in particular X-Wing and TIE Fighter, which unlike most other space combat games of the time weren't afraid to allow their starfighters to be complex, tricky beasts, and the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games. It was also about the early novels; the Timothy Zahn ones in particular, before the later degeneration into unreadability. Those games and books showed a very different Star Wars to the one you saw in the films; darker, more complex and more focussed on detailed world-building, compared to the light-touch magical space-opera of the films.
That Star Wars is gone now; it took a body blow when the prequels ignored it and since Disney took over the franchise it's been officially retired. But that's fine, I can live with that. I'll go and see the new movie and I hope I'll like it. I'm fairly confident it won't be a mess on a par with the prequels. But it won't be the Star Wars I grew up with.
I was nearly 20 when "Star Wars" first hit the screen and, except for "2001", it was the best science fiction movie to date. Compare it to "War of the Worlds", "The Phantom Planet", Panic In The Year Zero", "Robinson Crusoe On Mars", "Crack In The World", "Farenheit 451", "Planet Of The Apes", etc and you will find nothing comes even close to the epic sweep of adventure that the original "Star Wars" brings to the screen. Hell, I do a rewatch every year and it is still my favorite episode in the series.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Frankly, I think you just saw Return of the Jedi at precisely the wrong age. Your comment reads like the xbox fanbois who won't play Super Mario Bros or Zelda because its a 'kids game' and they want everyone to know that they only like mature things and therefore are mature.
I saw RotJ when I was 10. And I loved it.
Today I watch it and I get that the ewoks are a bit too cute. But all the scenes they are in are still fine. From them finding Leia, to C3P0 pretending to be a deity, to their attack on the shield generator. I just don't see anything wrong with them; such that they 'ruin' the movie.
They only ruin the movie for someone who wanted... no... needed RotJ to be a "mature" movie so he could enjoy it without people questioning his adulthood. The ewoks aren't "dark" they aren't "serious"... and their presence softens the tone of the movie (especially as Luke was much darker and more serious in this movie and the ewok scenes are spliced with the MUCH darker throne room scenes). But too me RotJ really is quintessentially "Star Wars".
I watch them again before the release of the new trilogy, this time as an adult, and found the original trilogy to be nothing but movies for kids
Right. That's all it ever was.
Apart from the pleasure of reliving childhood memories, I was seriously disappointed.
That's more on you then on the movies. The movies haven't changed. I re-watched them WITH my kids; and they were just as enjoyable as they were the first time(s).
Perhaps I'm wrong about you. Or perhaps I'm right and you won't admit it. ;) But whether or not I am right about you specifically, I think a lot of Ewok hate in general is from people who were becoming adults themselves, who wanted Jedi to be a 'mature serious war movie' and not a 'family fun' movie.
As for the prequels, they are just bad movies that spend far too much time throwing shit in your face then telling a story. And then when they get around to the story telling its just painfully bad.