What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion. — Page 9

Just a random comment, but I don’t really get it when people say Obi-Wan should’ve been the protagonist of the prequels instead of Anakin. Obi-Wan’s a great character, but if executed well, Anakin’s arc is easily way more interesting.

It feels like making Hank Schrader the protagonist of Breaking Bad instead of Walt.

rocknroll41 said:

What do I think of the PT, you ask?

Used to be underrated and now it’s overrated.

This pretty much sums up my feelings I think.

Funnily enough ANH Luke still feels more like someone that could become OT Vader then AOTC Anakin.

That cold angry stare when witnessing his uncle and aunt’s deaths feels like how a younger Vader would react to the death of a loved one. Luke was even able to stay collected and focused after the loss of his best friend.

Mocata said:

Does anyone think that making Vader a tragic figure was a big mistake? I feel like beyond the lack of camaraderie between Anakin and Obiwan, they should have shown him liking power, or liking throwing people around. It would fit more with his attitude in SW towards the Admiral Motti for example. It would be more believable, and any idea of regret or sadness could be much more subtle.

I do think “he’s just not a good guy” could be a potentially interesting route, but I’m worried that it would lead to Vader’s redemption not really feeling earned. If he was always a psychotic narcissist deep inside, is it really a “redemption”, or just a deathbed conversion?

My ideal take on Anakin’s turn would combine a desire for power with the “save Padme” thing from the original movie. He starts out with seemingly noble intentions (although his real motivations are more narcissistic), but the more dark things he does in his wife’s name, the more he realizes how good the dark side feels. By the end, he’s become fully mad with power, to the point where he makes his visions come true by choking his wife to death, and doesn’t even realize the irony of it afterwards.

No matter what, though, the “Palpatine gaslights Anakin into thinking the Jedi are evil” plotline has to go. It’s possibly the worst aspect of the original movie. Anakin should be an intelligent person who was seduced by attachment and the promise of power, not a moron who fell for the most obvious lie in the history of the galaxy.

StarkillerAG said:

I do think “he’s just not a good guy” could be a potentially interesting route, but I’m worried that it would lead to Vader’s redemption not really feeling earned. If he was always a psychotic narcissist deep inside, is it really a “redemption”, or just a deathbed conversion?

My ideal take on Anakin’s turn would combine a desire for power with the “save Padme” thing from the original movie. He starts out with seemingly noble intentions (although his real motivations are more narcissistic), but the more dark things he does in his wife’s name, the more he realizes how good the dark side feels. By the end, he’s become fully mad with power, to the point where he makes his visions come true by choking his wife to death, and doesn’t even realize the irony of it afterwards.

No matter what, though, the “Palpatine gaslights Anakin into thinking the Jedi are evil” plotline has to go. It’s possibly the worst aspect of the original movie. Anakin should be an intelligent person who was seduced by attachment and the promise of power, not a moron who fell for the most obvious lie in the history of the galaxy.

I agree with this 100%. This this this. All about this.

Vader does love the dark side in the OT. He loves punishing those he hates, even Imperials like Motti, Ozzel and Needa. He even makes sadistic jokes about it. But deep down he does have guilt because there’s a good person buried deep down. He just keeps giving into his lust for the power of the dark side and his hatred.

Channel72 said:

Yeah, but like… nobody wants to see this. And there’s no reason Anakin had to be written this way. Lucas decided to portray the Jedi as a weird cult that suppresses familial bonds and romantic attachments, but there’s no reason they had to be written that way. I always imagined Anakin as this well-adjusted, somewhat brash ace pilot. Not “roguish” like Han Solo, but just confident and principled. Yeah, it’s just my personal preference, but I would argue that this portrayal would benefit the story way more than what we got, because the entire point of Anakin’s arc is that he was supposed to be a good man who fell from grace. But the Prequels instead portray him as this emotionally unstable hormone explosion with homicidal tendencies from the very moment we first meet him. (Not counting Episode 1, which features an entirely different Anakin.)

The funny thing is that the Jedi aren’t actually supposed to be that, Lucas just makes them look that way because they’re written in the most boring, flat way possible and he never explains what he means by “attachment” (which is the Buddhist definition, the inability to let go of things).

Also hard agree there. Not only was Vader clearly not an explosive character, thus creating disconnect, but he’s also just not likable at all. Your audience needs to care about your main character to get invested in their arc.

Lucas seemed to think that portraying Anakin initially as this cherubic, innocent little child would produce such a stark contrast with Vader as to sufficiently fulfill the “fall from grace” narrative. Except the whole point of a “fall from grace” narrative is to track the character transformation as it plays out via personal choices. A little kid doesn’t even have a brain developed enough to make any dramatically interesting choices.

Bingo. If someone peaked when they were 10 then there’s literally nothing to save. They’re not a good person at all. Hell you can even be a mean kid who steals the other kids toys and pulls the girl’s hair and then be really mature and well-adjusted as a teen and adult. Nobody gives a shit, the first 12 years of your life are basically just a free trial.

Michael Corleone would have been a useful model when writing Anakin, in a broad sense. I wouldn’t want Anakin to be as serious or as emotionally reserved - I mean it’s a Star Wars movie, it needs to be snappy and upbeat most of the time. But Michael Corleone provides a good template for the general arc required here - somebody that makes a series of individual choices, initially with honorable intentions, but slowly becomes more and more of a monster. Michael Corleone activates full Sith mode when he kills his brother-in-law and then coldly lies about it to his widowed sister.

Yep, and Michael also has that cold, collected, commanding demeanor that Vader has. He’s like the perfect template to to the point where I can’t help but think there wasn’t some inspiration from him when OT Vader was written. Coppola and Lucas were great friends after all.

I want to give my full opinion on the subject, because it almost may seem that I’m a Prequel apologist, when it’s not true.

In my opinion the Original Trilogy is better executed than the Prequels in terms of story and pacing. Yes, I don’t have many problems with most of the acting or the dialogue, but I think that some plot points were executed poorly. However, with some adjustments, edits and with the insertion of some deleted scenes, I think the Prequels can become as good as the Original Trilogy. That’s why I started creating my personal Prequel fan edits, because I think the movies are not as bad as everybody says, but they would be even better if they were fixed and trimmed in some parts.

The romance in Attack of the Clones is a clear example of this. I like the idea of Anakin being a socially and romantically illiterate teenager with a very awkward behaviour, but sometimes the execution was a bit over the top, so I just trimmed out some lines to make Anakin’s awkwardness to be more believable. Also, I never liked the scene where Anakin and Padmé kissed on the balcony near the Naboo lake, because I think their kiss on Geonosis, on the verge of death, should be their first kiss. Therefore, I’ve cut off that scene and replaced it with the deleted scene where the two of them have dinner with Padmé’s parents, then I removed every mention of the kiss from the fireplace scene, and I’ve also trimmed out some of Anakin’s monologue from that scene, to make it feel more consistent with the rest of his speeches throughout the movie. This way, the romance turns out to be more gradual and has a believable amount of awkwardness, but at the same time 90% of the original dialogue is still preserved. The romance is 80% believable in my opinion, but I’ve trimmed it out enough as to make it 100% believable (at least for me).

The Phantom Menace is another clear example of this. I have no problems with most of the plot, most of the acting, most of the dialogue, etc, but I think Jar Jar’s behavior is over the top in some parts. Jar Jar is a character whose clumsy and stupid behavior is supposed to counterbalance the serious behavior of the Jedi and Padmé, but at times his clumsiness is exaggerated beyond belief. Therefore, my intention is to cut some of his over the top behavior, thus leaving only the parts in which is clumsiness is believable, and can serve as a fresh and wholesome counterbalance to the Jedi’s and Padmé’s serious and stoic behaviour. Also, I don’t have a problem with most of the little Ani stuff, but I think the movie would benefit a lot from a simple change: instead of being accidental, I think it would be better if the destruction of the Trade Federation’s mothership was intentional on Anakin’s part. So, my intention is to basically adjust everything to make Anakin’s takeoff from the platform, his going into space and his destruction of the mothership as intentional on his part, to reinforce the image of the “best star-pilot in the Galaxy” of which Obi-Wan talks about in A New Hope.

What am I trying to say with this speech? Well, it’s simple: are the Prequels perfect? No, but it’s nothing so serious that it can’t be fixed by a simple fan edit, at least in my opinion.

And this is why so many people abandon Prequel film edits entirely in favor of prequel rewrites. Because the concept is so much more interesting than the plot and characters that we actually got in the films.

Mocata said:

If only George had relinquished control and given directorial duties to others like with the OT it might have worked out better. But by that stage he believed his own legend so having another film like ESB with the likes of Kurtz and Kersh having creative input was impossible.

No, that’s not true. Lucas actually didn’t want to direct the Prequel Trilogy. He asked three different directors to direct the Prequels, including Steven Spielberg. But all these directors rejected his offer and said that he should do that himself, since they all trusted him and were convinced that he would do a great job. So, it’s not that George was arrogant, complacent or excessively self-confident, it’s just that he was forced to do it himself because everybody rejected his proposals. Also, what you’ve described is exactly what happened with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In that movie George was the man of the ideas, while Spielberg was the director. Guess what, everybody hated that movie anyway. So George having more control over the movies is not the real problem here, because people got what they wanted and still complained about it. In my opinion, the real problem is that people had too high expectations back when the Prequels were coming out, so it was virtually impossible to satisfy everyone. Of course the Prequels have some problems, and I’ve listed some of these problems in one of my previous posts. But I still think they’re not the disastrous movies everybody here like to depict them as.

Not only is that Filoni’s interpretation not Lucas’ but Vader’s fate being based on a duel he wasn’t in when he was 9 and implying his turn is the Jedi’s fault is so fucking stupid.

We were told Vader was seduced to the dark side, not that he was a poor baby victim of bad Jedi teachings.

We were also told the Jedi were in their prime before the Empire.

It’s like blaming Walter White becoming Heisenberg on Hank.

I’m not one of those people who thinks we should just accept everything Lucas says in regards to Star Wars, our interpretations are just as valid, but I do want to add this in here:

“The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that [Anakin] cannot hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first years and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.”

(Also I cut this quote short because it’s extremely long. But if anyone is curious to what he says next I can post it. The point Lucas is getting at is: Attachment=bad. Jedi not acting on attachments=good. Love=/=attachment. Jedi have no issue with love. And most important in regards to the topic I’m adding to, Anakin fell because he didn’t listen to Jedi philosophy.)

I actually really like many of the ideas Lucas is presenting in all these behind the scenes interviews about the prequels and whatnot, but its a shame its not conveyed as well in the films.

Look, I actually criticize Filoni very much, but this is one of those times in which I prefer his interpretation over Lucas’, not only because it’s much more compelling, but also because it works better with what’s shown on screen in the actual Prequel Trilogy.

We were told Vader was seduced to the dark side, not that he was a poor baby victim of bad Jedi teachings.

One thing doesn’t exclude the other. It can be both things at the same time, like 50/50. As I’ve said multiple times, the blame for Anakin’s fall shouldn’t be traced to just one person or a single group of people, but it can also be attributed to everyone at the same time, for different reasons. Everyone played a role.

We were also told the Jedi were in their prime before the Empire.

What Obi-Wan told to Luke could also be seen as a highly romanticized version of the events. I mean, of course Obi-Wan had to keep Luke fascinated and intrigued, so that he could eventually feel motivated enough as to embrace the Jedi path. In my opinion, to criticize stuff based on a literal interpretation of the Original Trilogy dialogue leads you nowhere. If everyone thought like this, then every Star Wars movie would suck except for Star Wars '77, because all the other movies more or less contradict some piece of dialogue from the original movie.

of_Kaiburr_and_Whills said:

I’m not one of those people who thinks we should just accept everything Lucas says in regards to Star Wars, our interpretations are just as valid, but I do want to add this in here:

“The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that [Anakin] cannot hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first years and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.”

(Also I cut this quote short because it’s extremely long. But if anyone is curious to what he says next I can post it. The point Lucas is getting at is: Attachment=bad. Jedi not acting on attachments=good. Love=/=attachment. Jedi have no issue with love. And Anakin fell because he didn’t listen to Jedi philosophy.)

I actually really like many of the ideas Lucas is presenting in all these behind the scenes interviews about the prequels and whatnot, but its a shame its not conveyed as well in the films.

I agree with this completely. I was talking about Filoni’s interpretation of the prequels. Which most people in the Star Wars fanbase accept. Lucas’ idea about the Jedi teachings being right is good.

I don’t like how Lucas portrayed Anakin’s fall either, but I’d rather have him be an idiot who blindly believe Palpatine’s claim about cheating death then blaming the Jedi. At least it’s still a selfish power hungry motivation and kinda being “seduced by the power of the dark side”, even if he’s idiotically tricked into becoming evil.

I hate the Filoniverse. The worshipping of Ahsoka and Qui-Gon, the hate on the Jedi like Obi-Wan, Yoda and Mace Windu, and how it’s warped the fanbase into believing that the prequels are actually a super brilliant critique on the Jedi Order. I love The Mandalorian and (some of) The Clone Wars, but still.

G&G-Fan said:
The worshipping of Ahsoka and Qui-Gon, the hate on the Jedi like Obi-Wan, Yoda and Mace Windu, and how it’s warped the fanbase into believing that the prequels are actually a super brilliant critique on the Jedi Order.

The worshipping of Ahsoka is bad, I don’t like it either. Everything else is good, and should have been the actual interpretation of the Prequels (maybe it could have been if Lucas wasn’t obsessed with pseudo-Eastern bulshit).