The Star Wars prequels vs. The Matrix sequels

The Oregonian’s Shawn Levy ponders which highly anticipated set of -quels let viewers down the most. His conclusion is… Not really all that surprising, actually.

Well, with both trilogies complete and behind us, I’m not sure that those people would have been correct in the least. Lucas improved on quite a bit of “SWEP1” in the subsequent prequels, while the Wachowskis absolutely crash-landed “The Matrix” in their sequels to it. (Let’s leave off “Speed Racer,” shall we, so as not to be overly cruel….) Especially given a decade of reassessment, I’d call Lucas’ three-film enterprise by far the more successful.

(Via io9, where they are polling, and Star Wars is ‘winning.’ Frustrated childhood dreams rear their ugly heads again!)

And can I just say randomly that The Fifth Element beats them all in capturing the madcap cheesy fun aspect of Star Wars? Or will you stone me?

Star Trek vs. Star Wars yet again

The Force-Cast takes on the latest hot topic with a roundtable comparing sci-fi’s two biggest fish. Joining the usual gang is Rebelscum’s Jovial Jay and former Trek and Wars fan club president Dan Madsen.

On that note, does anyone have any idea why the SciFi Channel isn’t rerunning the hell out of the original series? I was feeling the urge to DVR some TOS last night, and spent about five minutes scrolling through a week’s worth of schedule… And the only Trek I could find was Enterprise. (Poking around online shows some TNG on Friday, but nothing but that and Enterprise through most of June.)

This is why you fail, SciFi. (It’s still SciFi until July 7, by George!) I’ll get my fix – I’m pretty sure the local NBC affiliate runs it at odd hours of the night – but I’m just boggled by SciFi’s lack of action here.