What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion. — Page 22

They seem to have been doing an anniversary re-release every year since Return of the Jedi’s 40th in 2023, and the number doesn’t actually matter. At least they did Revenge of the Sith and not The Force Awakens.

Why wouldn’t they do a reissue of Force Awakens in December 2025 in select theaters.

It’s not like Disney Lucasfilm is raking in money not producing a film since Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And not making a single Star Wars since 2019 for the cinema.

They could even tie it into the announcement the Rey movie is going into production, but there is far too much chaos at Lucasfilm for me to believe that would happen.

Maybe they don’t want TFA and ROTS clashing in the same year?

There’s been a lot of talk for many years now about how the prequels are looked at more fondly thanks to nostalgia. Or how they’re better if you’ve seen things the animated shows. Now battle droids show up in the latest big video-game and characters un-ironically say ‘wizard’ or whatever.

So I’m sitting here spending several hours watching the first two prequels. I guess in my mind it wasn’t fair to trust my memory or only watch ROTS which has just been re-released. Problem is they are bad movies. Not the worst ever but not close to the mediocrity of say TFA. Which means my memory was fine and it makes no difference that I’ve watched most of the Clone Wars and other bits and pieces; them being decent isn’t retroactively changing anything.

Huge parts of the story still make zero sense (the Naboo trade dispute, the mystery of the clone army, the weird creepy romance). The one that’s still the most infuriating is that Obi-wan sees both the clones and the droid plant in the space of like a day, and doesn’t immediately see the conspiracy to create a war. Neither do the Jedi council, they’re all braindead.

A lot of the films also look bad, though AOTC in particular is really ugly. Things like the digital backdrops and characters like Zam and Jango when they become CGI were always lame but have aged badly. It’s like they had that Jurassic Park tech and barely improved on it, then stretched it by having vfx in every scene. John Williams does so much heavy lifting but at the same time outside the pod race everything is pretty tedious. Even the duel of the fates does nothing for me. I’m pretty sure I last saw ROTS in like 2008 on DVD (and maybe these others) but I’m not sure I can be bothered with it now.

Critical flaws in the script can’t be edited in post though. Like I said, I gave them a fair chance and that’s just the reality, same as it ever was. If I can get on board with the plot of a kids show when characters have stupid names like “Savage Opress” then the problem is these movies themselves, not the broad strokes of the prequel era. Or some nebulous idea that everyone is “biased” against “misunderstood” films.

To me the prequel he promised in his original outline and in the OT is what I wanted.

Not the prequel as made.

But I’m not going to argue with kids who grew up on these as being valid as their Star Wars.

But Phantom Menace sans the pod race and duel of the fates, and maybe the design of the underwater city I like so much and Mos Espa, is shockingly bad. Though I do like Maul and Qui-Gon.

But the trade dispute and those trade federation guys whose mouths move funny, is just worse than even the Flash Gordon serials in quality. With none of the old charm of the serials. The beginning of the film lags, and Jar Jar is hopelessly a bad character, who bungles his way into situations accidentally to become a hero.

And the politics dialogue in Episode II is even more listless and boring and even Ian has difficulty delivering it.

I almost hate all the palace and senate scenes and Jedi Temple scenes. Though I think the testing of Anakin in episode I is fine. and I quite enjoy the opera scene in Revenge of the Sith.

I wish Lucas had not made unnecessary retcons and made the prequel to fit the original trilogy.

Christopher Lee brings some gravitas to Dooku, and a presence you never got with Maul, because he barely ever spoke. And Obi-Wan cut him in half pretty quickly. and Grievous was like a cartoon mustache twirling villain. I still remember that animated like sequence of Obi-Wan on some lizard and that was awful in the theater. Chasing Grievous and the noise the lizard made,lol.

You never do see Anakin and Obi-Wan develop a friendship or relationship, its left off screen in between episode I and II. And in between II and III. Leaving this up to EU and Clone Wars which came very much later from Filoni was a mistake. There should have been a falling out between them, but first you needed to see these guys as brother warriors who had each other’s back. And slowly Anakin is seduced to evil.

I will give Lucas credit he is a much better visual storyteller than a writer. The prequel is easy to understand and follow visually and if you follow the notes of John Williams score that gives the ideas a beating heart it’s a reasonable experience. But if one wants to build upon or deepen or recontextualize Star Wars in the manner The Empire Strikes Back did, they will come away disappointed. Or if they wanted the same swashbuckling derring-do of SW 1977 they would be disappointed as well.

And not to double post i do love the soundtrack for phantom menace and probably would enjoy it with in an isolated score track.

JadedSkywalker said:

To me the prequel he promised in his original outline and in the OT is what I wanted.

Not the prequel as made.

But I’m not going to argue with kids who grew up on these as being valid as their Star Wars.

Yeah but everyone is two decades years older they need to mature and develop critical faculties by now. I just saw a video showcasing all the merch madness with Yoda drinking Pepsi or whatever, I mean yeah it’s funny in an excessive way, and it’s fun to look back, but that was long ago. Eventually you have a house clear-out and wonder what half this stuff was about, and it goes in a black bag. I watched ROTS today and it will be the last time, just to put a cap on the weekend, so whatever charm this held back then for me is gone, it’s mostly nonsensical noise.

As much as George spurred on the digital revolution with ILM and Pixar and the Lucasfilm computer graphics group, i don’t think they are nearly as groundbreaking as the originals. They are more contemporary to the films that were coming out in the age of cgi movies. Where films like the Matrix, and Lord of the Rings, and the Spider-Man movies and Superman Returns existed.

And the MCU is, and Disney Star Wars is like their successor.

They didn’t change the face of cinema. Have they inspired an entire generations imagination. Will they be remembered in 50 years as significant. I can’t answer that because i’m too old for the films to have been made for me. The OT was made for me. By the time prequel fans hit 50 i’ll be long gone or old and gray.

It depends when the “shoot everything on a green screen” era came into being. Because in a way we could thank AOTC for so many terrible looking movies, and the entire current trend of “who cares we can fix it in post”.

I rewatched Revenge of the Sith around a year ago, just to see if my opinion would change in light of the widespread “reevaluation” of the Prequels. But no… it still mostly sucked, sadly. This is a case where I genuinely, authentically really want to like these movies. I’ve always been fascinated by the story of Anakin Skywalker, at least on paper. But I just can’t enjoy the actual Prequels. They’re just too flawed, to the extent that the flaws actively prevent me from just enjoying these movies on their own terms. I have too many expectations about what these films should have been, and at the same time the films regularly violate like, just normal cinematic conventions that most people would likely agree constitute “good” film-making.

But anyway, clearly I’m in the minority here, because the recent box office returns alone shows how much people love Revenge of the Sith, at least. What will be interesting is to see, in the coming decades, if the Prequels still maintain such a devoted fan base. My theory is that the current popularity of the Prequels is one case that is mostly driven by nostalgia - that is, like 90% of devoted fans fell in love with these films as children. If I’m right, the Prequels should slowly drift back into being considered mediocre as the late Millennial generation continues to age.

This may seem condescending to Prequel fans, but from my perspective it’s the only explanation that can explain how such seemingly obviously bad movies (from my POV) have such appeal among a particular age group. In contrast, the popularity of the OT can’t be as easily explained as entirely the result of nostalgia, because the OT films have many devoted fans among the younger generations as well, I assume. The OT has become more like a universally acknowledged cinematic classic, along the lines of the Godfather Trilogy or Casablanca or whatever. I would be shocked if any of the Prequels ever end up on like an AFI top 100 hundred list or whatever. But who knows - I’ve consistently been wrong about the Prequels. Back in like 2006 I simply assumed they would fade into obscurity, but I turned out to be totally wrong about that. Somehow Lucas’s weird, quirky and often tone-deaf movies spoke to the generation that came after me.

But by that same logic a children’s film that someone loved as a kid will always be loved by them. Conversely they will never be able to really like a film made before they were born. Which is of course never really true in both cases. Nostalgia only takes me so far before all that nails-on-chalk-board writing and acting. Like I said before some people grow out of stuff but others don’t seem to. That’s just the mystery of personal tastes though I suppose, just look at how infantile most of the biggest box office hits are, in any period of history.

^ Well I mean, there’s tons of classic films that appeal to all generations. I’m thinking of stuff like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wizard Of Oz - movies that came out ages ago but have still been widely viewed by children of subsequent generations. I guess the OT is another example of this. But I do think that living through the release and hype of a movie as a child at least increases the chance of fondly recalling the movie later in life, even if not everyone falls into this particular pattern.

Clearly, this is a multi-variable thing. A lot of the movies that came out when I was a child are now considered universal classics - like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, etc. I love these movies - perhaps partially because of the nostalgia, but I also love modern “classics” that came out when I was older, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Prequels are a strange case of films that have mass appeal, but nonetheless remain universally “controversial” because of their widely-perceived flaws. It’s like tons of people love them, but they’re never good enough to break through into a universal “classic”. One way to explain this is to hypothesize that their appeal is mostly concentrated among a certain age demographic who saw these films as kids.

Oh yeah there are plenty of timeless classics and all time faves that have wide appeal. But when it comes to say The Wizard of Oz it’s the opposite for me. Like I didn’t care for it before, but today I’d say that’s a great movie. I’d like to say this was the case for the prequels, but nope.

NeverarGreat said:

Perhaps the prequels are uniquely suited to appealing to kids, which is why they are getting more love these days from people who grew up with them, as well as kids today who are seeing them for the first time. If that’s true, then perhaps the only cohort who can’t widely appreciate them are those who were already too old when the films premiered.

Yeah, and if TPM was some standalone children’s movie, nobody would bother criticizing it.
But the tonal shift of TPM towards a more explicitly juvenile tone was really jarring I think to many OT fans. To quote from an early 1999 review of TPM from Eli Roth:

“There are so many other glaring problems with [Phantom Menace] that I don’t even know where to begin. You should understand when you go to see it that this is truly a movie for kids. I remember suffering through Hook thinking, ‘Man, Spielberg’s really lost it. He had kids, and it completely fucked him up. He’s afraid to kill anybody–bad guys included.’ I think Lucas is going through something similar right now, having kids of his own.”

I think this was a really alienating experience for OT fans. It was for me, at least. Of course, in retrospect, the juvenile tone of Phantom Menace was barely even the biggest problem, and some people even argue that TPM has aged the best among all the Prequels, since it’s the only Prequel with the narrative structure of a “normal movie” and it predates the switch to 100% digital film-making.

Regardless, even in 1999 when TPM was released, before I had any ability to judge it in a wider context, I already had this subconscious realization that this new version of Star Wars just wasn’t made for me.

I grew up with the prequels. I think I was 6 when I saw AoTC in theaters and it blew my mind. I had all of the toys, lego sets, pajamas, and DVDs.

Eventually I got to a point where I felt like I “outgrew” Star Wars. I still played the video games, talked about it with friends, and considered myself a Star Wars fan. It was only in 2014 when TFA was announced that I realized that really I had just outgrown the prequels. I went back and watched all of the films and was astounded by how little I enjoyed the prequels, but once I got to the OT everything clicked back into place for me. I remembered why I loved Star Wars.

All these years later and my fandom is at an all-time high, but it doesn’t mean I like everything Star Wars. For instance I refuse to sit through the prequels and the cartoons again. The Original Trilogy (not the special editions), the first 2 sequels (Last Jedi is peak and I’ll never pretend it’s not), and Rogue One/Andor are what Star Wars is to me.

Just to add something, I’ve been to quite a few fan gatherings around the world at this point, I’m very lucky and privileged to have lived in the United States, in Europe and in Latin America, and it was very interesting to notice how reaction around the prequels was so different in the US vs abroad (much, MUCH better received abroad). I think it’s about when you read the dialogue subtitled, even if you’re able to judge the original line on some level (and speak fluent English), it’s the sentiment that it gives off that ends up mattering more than the line itself - and the subject of most lines in the prequels is good, it’s just sometimes a bit of a rough line. And when the dialogue isn’t the most important part, when the emotion it’s supposed to give off comes across through other cinematic context and clues that supersede the dialogue, it’s apparently true that the movies tell a far more effective story.

With that said, it’s also worth noting that of all the big franchise IPs, Star Wars is much stronger in the United States than elsewhere comparatively, especially when you look at like Harry Potter or Marvel numbers (abroad vs US), you really see just how strong Star Wars is domestically, even if weaker elsewhere, which is to say, US reaction to Star Wars does have a lot of weight.

JoyOfEditing said:

G&G-Fan said:

Are the 2011 Blu-rays a good source for the Prequels? I know they’re definitely not for the OT from all I’ve learned about OT restoration (thank goodness for oohteedee’s D+77/80/83). But they’re the highest quality versions of the Prequels I currently own and I want to know if they’re good to use for sources for edits or if I should get something else.

It depends on how you want to approach it. If you want the closest to the original theatrical color, then the HDTV versions are to my knowledge the best, until the folks doing 4K99 restore 35mm prints of the Prequels.

Just as a PSA, 35mm prints of all three prequels have been found, scanned and released.

I reread every available screenplay for Attack of the Clones. and the dialog is so bad, shockingly bad and inept. And no one talks like that. What happened to the somewhat better dialog of the original trilogy. Characters talk much more naturally. If have to read my lady one more time. The stilted insipid dialog. Even Palpatine’s speeches are enough to make you want to either vomit or fall asleep. Boring politics. If anything, the actors are to be commended the screenplay is worse than the movie.

There is no gravitas to anything on the page. Christopher Lee makes much of very little or nothing given to him. And poor Frank Oz, he had to pretty much create a performance from nothing. The script is no more than a guide.

It’s worse written than Phantom Menace.

I wonder what i would think of reread the Revenge of the Sith screenplay, it has to be better right?

The films from what I gather are completely driven by their visuals and John Williams score. The soundtrack is what gives the films any sense of drama or life. Because nothing works on the page.

This is where the prequels have to be appreciated as a silent film comes from.