I don’t think you’re allowed to call films that came out when I was alive “classics”.
If there’s not a rule against that, there should be.
Plus, this was the first of the really disappointing Star Wars films, so not really a classic in terms of quality.
Return of the Jedi exists. Holiday Special exists. Ewok Adventure exists.
Attack of the Clones is far from perfect but it is nowhere near the first “really disappointing” and there are a lot of redeeming qualities about AOTC - such as wonderful novelization (the case for the entire prequel trilogy), fan edit that reincorporates a shitton of deleted scenes that fix a lot of problems and lots and lots of extended media (i mean - Clone Wars, and OG Battlefront and AoE crossover as well). And Christopher Lee beats Yoda’s ass.
Return of the Jedi exists.
Return of the Jedi is awesome! But the Holiday Special and all that never made it to Central America while I was a kid so I never saw it, you may be right.
ROTJ is the one with the most brainrot - the whole Death Star 2 thing is some lazy shit, grounding Han who is cool pilot is another baffling decision, bringing back Han undercut the stakes, not letting Lando and the Falcon not make it from the Death Star undercut the threat as well, the whole sister thing was pointless and awkward. funnily enough, ewoks are great idea on paper and it seems like it wont work as well with the wookies instead even though there is more mileage in that thing given all the slavery stuff but wookies are big and ewoks are small so here we are but then guerilla warfare was rendered goofy because ewoks are small and primitive. they should’ve gone with wookie guerillas giving empire some hell.
I think a lot of people’s reactions to Star Wars is based on their age and circumstances when they watched it. I was like 14 so the Ewok stuff seemed kind of silly but it didn’t bother me. Yeah, Death Star 2 was really stupid. But… Jabba the Hutt! The Sarlacc Pit! The RANCOR!!! Zooming on speed-bikes thru the forest! Those two-legged mecha walkers! Finally meeting The Emperor! “Wonderful! We are now members of the tribe!” / “Just what I always wanted.” As far as I knew, this would be the last Star Wars movie so I was happy.
I mean, Episode 1 was really stupid in a lot of ways too, but it came out after a couple decades so I was willing to forgive. But once it sunk in that it was all going to be focused on the same handful of people I was like wtf.
also - whacking Boba Fett was some Three Stooges shit that expanded universe kept retconning over and over again. could’ve just let him fly off being “nah, i’m good” once the shit hits the fan because he ain’t getting paid for that.
Episode 1 is a mess because it starts in medias res from the wrong point of view and stays that way. It gets way better once you find out about Palpatine’s scheming behind the scenes and all the tricks he pulled to manufacture a crisis and separatist uprising. turns out there is a lot of meat on the bone and the worst thing about the prequels is that it is basically anywhere else but the movies most of the time - like Attack of the Clones actually has fleshed out Anakin and Padme storylines but it is all in the deleted scenes and the novel - novelizations overall do the manhattan project worth of heavy lifting whipping it into shape.
I read a lot of sci fi as a kid but I never really got into the extended universe. First of all it was hard/impossible to find in Central America at the time. Second of all there was so much great sci fi out there to read already. I only really thought of the movies as somewhere to see state-of-the-art special effects and mech design. But eventually the stories got so stupid as to be distracting. Nowadays if I was gonna recommend space opera-style sci fi to someone, it’d be the Revelation Space series.
hope you ain’t from 1880s.)))