I’ve recently played Resident Evil 6 for the 1st time after playing Resident Evil 4 (an absolute masterpiece) & Resident 5 (a pretty good game). I was already aware of the hate this game got over the years. But after experiencing it, it’s only bad in an artificial way. Like yeah, it’s nothing like the classic games and it’s too much in the action category.
Otherwise, as someone who loves action games, it’s a pretty fun game. Especially in Mercenaries Mode, where it’s fun to mow down body-horror themed enemies. As a Resident Evil game, it’s pretty bad. But…as an action third person shooter with splatter punks, it’s quite well executed
The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.
Story time. I’m nearing 30 and had only seen bits and pieces of the original trilogy (not more than 10 minutes or so at a time), and I saw episode 7 in theatre. Last year, my roommate (who is a huge Star Wars fan) and I decided to watch through the whole series. We started with the original, then trudged through the sequels so we could line up the prequel rewatch with the 20th anniversary of episode 3 and see it in theatre.
I went into it “knowing” that the originals were the best, the sequels were embarrassingly bad, and the prequels were pretty heavily shit on but still decent. I actually ended up liking the prequels more. From a technical standpoint I’d argue that they are probably “worse” movies. There’s the obvious things that don’t make sense (like Anakin being a child in episode one and a young adult in episode two yet Padme looks relatively unchanged) and the dialogue is certainly goofy at times, but I felt a lot more connected to the story and had more fun with the prequels than the originals.
The sequels were, in fact, absolute dog shit though.
Really, a lot of the prequel hate comes from them taking such a huge step down from the OT. In 1999, The Phantom Menace was the first major Star Wars film in 16 years; it wasn’t just a cool new thing, it was a cultural event. People expected great things.
Obviously it failed at that. Not once, but twice. Revenge of the Sith barely even got a chance.
And so the backlash was brutal. While the critique wasn’t unfair in its points, it also came from a perspective of starkly emotional disappointment. People say the prequels are looked at more fondly now due to ‘nostalgia’, but mostly I think it’s that the emotional pain has faded and we can analyze them more objectively as flawed, but ultimately solid films rather than ‘disasters’.
It may be that one day the sequels will be more coldly studied as well, with more focus placed on the issues produced by cycling directorship and management pressures… but I also think even a coldly analytical appraisal of them will still come up as “hollow and emotionless”.
I think they might still be at least verging on disasters, though certainly more interesting ones than JJ’s movies (see elsewhere in this thread for my thoughts on TLJ). The PT actually reminds me a lot of other passion projects (Megalopolis is probably the most recent, and surprise surprise, Coppola is a friend and mentor) that reveal the limitations of deferring to the auteur’s singular vision in a collaborative artform.
The “saved in the edit” narrative for ANH is disingenuous I think, inserting a miracle for a particularly strong example of how the workflow for a weird project should work, but it does hint at the truth that somebody like Lucas has as many bad ideas as good ones, and only the ones he can sell to fellow respected professionals should stay in the final product.
I also think it’s fair to say that because he was frustrated by the “compromises” with actors, writers, directors, and studios who all felt they were equal stakeholders, the unfiltered Lucas was a jarring departure from the OT, yet ostensibly targeted the exact same demographics, and that made it even harder to evalute the PT on its own terms. For me personally, I could never truly get over the stilted line readings that felt exactly like the cheesy serials that Lucas loved, but that the New Hollywood “kids” and British stage veterans refused to let infect the OT. “You can write this shit, George, but you can’t say it.”
I’ve never understood the hate for the prequels. I thought The Phantom Menace was kind of boring and I’ve never successfully removed Jar Jar’s voice from my head, but I straight up liked Attack of The Clones and Revenge of The Sith.
The sequels have a bipolar plot, it gives you whiplash seeing the tonal shift and direction change each movie goes through.
The prequels are definitely flawed (George, how much political mumbo jumbo do you really think people want to see in their space wizard drama?) but they have a more or less coherent story. You can see how A>B>C and it makes sense.
Plus, the absolute memefest that the prequels turned into has helped a ton.
The prequels are the only Star Wars movies that I regularly rewatch. The other 6 are never on at our house, and the spin off movies are completely ignored.
Rogue One and Andor are pretty good
Rogue One has some banger set-pieces, and it’s a decent enough war movie in Star Wars cosplay, but while it’s fun to watch it after Andor, doing so also really underlined to me how thin and overhyped I think it was.
I like both