I thought what he meant was when I said that him praising the prequels as much as he did was "like he was joking".
Yep, everyone, this is what I was referring to. And it was the only thing I was referring to. Nothing that jingle or gmillerdrake said. Just this:
But 425, it's like you're joking with your arguments.
I mean, I'm not mad at BlackInk or anything. I just thought it was a bit abrupt and uncivil of a thing to say, but I was fine with it.
But then I say something similar but slightly less personal in this thread and get chastised for it. Either we were both okay or we both crossed the line. It's really hard to simultaneously argue that what he said is okay while what I said was so far out of line. Mostly I just want people to apply whatever standards for conversation equally.
I'm glad that you like them as much as you do, 425. But the protestation of other people's disregard comes off as a little much. Even for us older fans who much prefer the OT, we didn't go into the PT expecting it to suck. We wanted to love new Star Wars as much as we did old Star Wars. But what we got was not in the same vein as what we were originally given, and it certainly was not an improvement over what came before.
Would you not agree that it will be interesting to see where popular opinion goes as those of us who grew up with the prequels become more of a presence in popular media? Because, totally anecdotally, nobody I know who is my age (college age) regards the prequels with the level of disdain that is shown for them by older people. The general perception among people I know who have seen all the films is that the prequels are good, not quite as good as the original trilogy, but not that far behind, either. I have a friend who shares my view that ROTS is the best. I have a friend who likes ESB the best, but regards TPM and AOTC even more highly than I do. The lowest opinion I have heard from someone my age is that TPM is silly and not great, although it has some very good parts, but that ROTS is nearly at original trilogy levels. Also anecdotally, I have a friend who showed his friend the whole series when this person was around 16, and that person strongly preferred ROTS to all the other films and preferred Anakin's story to Luke's.
This is all anecdotal, but I think it will be very interesting to see how things are borne out as those of us who, for example, were just barely old enough to see Revenge in the theater when it came out, move into being the people who are doing a lot of the writing about these films.
Not to criticize fans of the older trilogy. But my perception of TFA has been very dependent on the age at which I first saw it. I notice this, I'm willing to admit this, and I'm trying to make sure it doesn't cloud my understanding of that movie, which is hard if not impossible. That's my own experience: the age at which I saw it mattered (I was 8 when ROTS came out. I think I first saw all six films when I was 8. I am now 19). Maybe it matters for others, maybe not. But I don't think it's too crazy to suggest that it might.
I don't want you to stop engaging in discussion. You raise some great points (as you often do in other threads as well). I just felt like you were pushing TOO hard in this one and crossing the line.
Thank you for the compliment, but nevertheless, I probably will pull out of this one (notice that despite being a huge Star Wars fan, I believe I did not post in any Star Wars thread here before Friday) fairly soon. I find it really hard to engage with Star Wars fans because every time the prequels are brought up, they get slagged constantly, which I vehemently disagree with, particularly in the case of Revenge of the Sith.
It's like, most of you probably wouldn't participate in that many conversations about Dream Theater if the awfulness of your favorite album, say, SDOIT, was taken as a given and every conversation about Dream Theater somehow became about how awful SDOIT is, and any time you tried to say that SDOIT is actually really good, people had a hard time taking you seriously. Nothing against those people for thinking like they do, but I imagine after a while you would get tired of having your favorite album picked on constantly, so you would probably participate in those conversations much less frequently. That's me and Star Wars conversations. I just get pretty tired of "well everyone knows the prequels are worse than everything that ever happened and were created when George Lucas was literally possessed by Satan himself."