I watched the Prequels once in theatres. Watched them again. Now, I have no desire to ever own a copy of, or even watch those films again. When people ever ask me what they think of the prequels, I have to say, "What prequels? They made prequels? I think you're looney." I have disowned these films from my love of star wars and instead I am reverting to how I imagined all of this happened before any of these movies came out.
You buy up as many copies as you want, discuss it, convince people it's "not that bad", but I will never - I mean NEVER - look at the old trilogy and think, "Luke has a lot of midiclorians too!", "Darth Vader built C3PO!", "Those stormtroopers are CLONES!", and other inconsistacies that plague those movies.
Here's my undying opinion of the prequels to which none of you will be able to make me change my mind: Episodes 1, 2 and 3 were some of the worst films ever created. They rank up there with Howard the Duck, Catwoman and Gigli. Why? There is no imagination. No wow. Let me go through the films' faults by topics: Effects, Characters/Story and Direction.
Special Effects: To me, this will be the prequels ultimate demise as time goes by. CG, despite what lucas says, is not photorealistic. It's fake. It looks pretty damn good, but it's still fake. Creating an entire movie out of CG - and really rushed CG at that - only adds to the fakeness of the images. Sure it might have looked really cool when the films first came out, but they will age. They will age just as all movies do. In ten years, we'll have video games that will look more realistic than the images in this film and so what will generations in the future say about it? My guess is, they'll say it looks "dated" and "fake" just like some people like to point out that the effects in the old trilogy have unquestionably have. The difference between the two is the "wow factor" in the effects. The special effects in the old days were effects that took a LOT of time and effort to create and because of it, you were always (and still are) saying to yourselves, "Wow! How could they do that?!" Today, when everything is at the touch of a button and even kids in their parent's basements are getting closer to creating images that rival those of the PT, there's none of that wow factor involved. We just swallow the information and go on with the show. As I mentioned before, a lot of the effects don't even live up to their potential! Why is it that all the old star wars movies won best special effects oscars and/or achievement awards, but the new ones haven't won a single one (yet anyway)? There's nothing new to them! There's nothing exciting! I remember when Episode 1 came out, I was reading a magazine about the film's special effects and to demonstrate how "wonderful" Jar Jar was, they wrote in captions under a picture: "Look how his fingers curve around the door realistically!" Ooo. How exciting. At least with Golum in LOTR, they went all out to create the most realistic CG creature possible and pointed out more interesting things such as facial expression and their amazing skin generators.
Sorry Lucas.
Characters/Story: What this movie really lacks is a set of defined characters and a tighter story. Throughout the prequels we have a lot of characters who are important to the plot but just sort of pop up here and there and exit very unsatisfactory. This is most apparent with the sith lords/generals who are many in numbers but few in importance. Episode 1: Darth Maul/Trade Organization. Episode 2: Count Dooku
Episode 3: Dooku (sort of)/Grievous (sort of)/Palpatine. What would have been better for the whole trilogy would be to have one apprentice and Palpatine throughout ALL 3 films. None of these semi-siths who just say a line and then die later on. No generals who just happen to be the most dangerous threat to the galaxy, only to be destroyed by a smiling Obi-Wan (who might as well have been filing his nails seeing the ease it took to finish him). We should have established these characters from stage one...that being episode 1. We should have had seen Dooku in Episode 1 planning to leave the Jedi Council, fake his death and join the dark side. Same thing with Grievous. Even if he was just introduced in Episode 2, we would have at least had SOME kind of establishment. The fact that the only character development he gets is from a Cartoon Network mini-series is both lazy and insulting. If episode 2 were the Clone Wars miniseries, imagine how much better of a plot that would have made? Not to mention better development overall. Finally in episode 3, Dooku dies at the beginning. What a lame exit for such an important character! In my opinion, it would have made more sense if Palpatine had set up a duel between Dooku and Anakin much later in the film a la Luke vs Vader in Return of the Jedi. And that this duel would seal his fate for his journey towards the darkside. Much like Luke's hateful destruction of Vader would have turned him towards the dark side, Anakin's hateful destruction of Dooku would have made him a sith.
Enough, "what if" talk. Let me critic the films at hand. The stories that we have on the store shelves today are plagued with exposition and an excess of storylines. Episode 1 deals with a trade federation embargo, Anakin being found as a powerful Jedi and saving him from slavery, issues concerning the stability and reliability of the Galactic Republic and the return of the Sith. Gah! Too much information! Keep the story simple George. I don't wish to sound like a know-it-all, but having taken a screenwriting class, one of the fundamental rules they teach you is to keep it simple. Don't go overboard with backstories and subplots. Keep it as simple as you possibly can. I'm not saying the story was bad, but Lucas could have tied everything together much neatly. Another rule in Screenwriting was to avoid what my teacher called, "Doctor Exposition": that annoying habit to tell everything through dialogue. I'm sure I don't need to give examples of this in the PT. It's basically insulting to the audience.
Of course, the reason you take classes or learn about things is to know the rules...and then break them. But Lucas is not making the type of film that screams the need to rebel against common rules of storytelling. His films EMBODY the very fabric of the traditional 3-act structure.
The lot of these films are plagued with these sort of annoying storyline issues that chefelf and mannox has more successfully delt with than I could put to words. Go to their respective websites for futher comments.
Direction: George Lucas cannot direct. He could. He can't now. I don't understand why. Maybe the real George Lucas was abducted by aliens and he's looking down at us right now saying, "Nooo! I didn't want Ewoks! I didn't want Jar jar! Nooo!". That's a nice thought, but given the likliness of that happening, I must come to the ultimate conclusion that George Lucas has lost the touch. He's not the only one, mind you. I've noticed lot of directors start out wonderfully in their careers only to be bogged down with a list of mediocre films later in their lives. Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini, Kevin Smith. I'm sure these names will create massive panic on this thread, but people: when was the last time Spielberg made a movie that didn't have a unnecessarily sappy, sentimental ending? When was the last time Scorcese made a film whose calibre was equal to those in the 70 and 80s? Fellini was a genius in the 50s. Was. Kevin Smith...makes good movies when he has no budget and isn't pleasing fanboys. But of all these examples, none is more tragic than George Lucas. The same person who said that Science Fiction films were too dominated by special effects makes three films that are nothing but. The same person who says that story is the most important thing in a film makes three films that