Which one do you like more? The Prequels or the Sequels? And why? — Page 2

It’s so hard to say which is better or worse. They both suck in very different ways. They both damage Star Wars in very different ways.

But to focus on the positives, the Prequels were at least unique and earnest, and added a ton of new imagery, locations and lore to the Star Wars mythos. But the Sequels had Adam Driver, who delivered a fantastic performance - something that was sorely lacking in the Prequels. The Sequels had isolated moments of great chemistry thanks to the actors, like the beginning of Force Awakens where Finn and Poe escape a Star Destroyer together.

Overall, as an experience - I prefer watching the Prequels. Of course, the cringey acting and CGI vomit is hard to stomach. But the Sequels (especially The Last Jedi) are just really depressing to watch.

When watching the Prequels, at worst I experience a feeling of frustration, because I lament how such a compelling story could be implemented so badly, and I also feel second-hand embarrassment over some of the dialogue and acting. With the Sequels, at worst I experience malaise, disappointment and even sadness over the missed opportunity.

To me personally, the two best movies out of the six are The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
Other movies I simply can not count.

ouroboros1995 said:

To me personally, the two best movies out of the six are The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
Other movies I simply can not count.

Interesting…you cannot count original Star Wars '77?

The space politics of the prequels and clone wars are boring. The Sequel has zero world building, just removing the boring politics does not make it way better. We literally get no explanation about what happened to the Empire or the New Republic nor do we ever understand why the first order and the new rebellion aka resistance exists.

We don’t know why the Jedi order collapsed except for a BS flashback which is poor storytelling.

The need Lucasfilm had for books and comics and other things to fill these in does not absolve them of making a poor series of good-looking movies with some fun moments.

You want me to do homework, play every game, read every comic, and novel to understand your terrible movie, you failed.

The movies should not have been an empty husk to be filled in later. Or need people to headcanon things just so it makes sense.

Superweapon VII said:

JadedSkywalker said:

You want me to do homework, play every game, read every comic, and novel to understand your terrible movie, you failed.

Their goal is to make you consume product. From that perspective, they’ve succeeded.

Not if he didn’t buy any of the product. 😁

Superweapon VII said:

JadedSkywalker said:

You want me to do homework, play every game, read every comic, and novel to understand your terrible movie, you failed.

Their goal is to make you consume product. From that perspective, they’ve succeeded.

You aren’t wrong I dropped like a hundred bucks on Force Awakens tickets. None on the other two films. Boycotted Last Jedi had a free ticket for Rise of Skywalker.

I bought a couple of books and I bought some 4K discs. But I’m not the audience they have people who drop hundreds per month on Disney SW. Comics, video games, toys, posters, shows, conventions. I have done none of those. I have probably given them a paltry few hundred dollars of my money at best on Lucasfilm products in 10 years. Most of that on 4K Blu-ray and comics. Most of it to Star Wars legends. Even there i just buy Omnibus books for titles I like.

On the quote unquote Disney canon I have the novelizations and Shadow of the Sith and that is it, and the comic adaptations of the story of and films that they made. Only Shadow of the Sith I paid full price for.

Few of them would I keep most of it is dumpster worthy. I guess I could put them in the goodwill bin but I would be giving away trash.

Marvelzing Star Wars and making it one canon was a total mistake its basically ruined the franchise, it really should be movies only matter.

I like that the Last Jedi novelization of the movie, and I like Shadow of the Sith. Only because they make Luke and Leia actual characters, the movie handled the original crew abominably. In fact I would probably love the sequel for the new characters had they any depth if Luke, Han and Leia were written with love.

Because I really like Rey, Finn, Poe and Rose. and in the prequel I really didn’t like anyone after Episode I The Phantom Menace.

Superweapon VII said:

Fan_edit_fan said:

Superweapon VII said:

JadedSkywalker said:

You want me to do homework, play every game, read every comic, and novel to understand your terrible movie, you failed.

Their goal is to make you consume product. From that perspective, they’ve succeeded.

Not if he didn’t buy any of the product. 😁

I was using the generic you, y’know. 😛

The “Royal” we.

I think Last Jedi is mostly a good film and any problem I have with it is because of Mark Hamill saying he was Jake Skywalker, the anticipation of expecting a Luke like the Expanded Universe version, and Rise of Skywalker not sticking the landing. If Leia did not die in episode 9 I would not feel like Luke died in vain.

There are problems though the Casino side quest is stupid and could be completely cut. Luke should have trained Rey. Lukes’s fall and redemption should have been more clearly defined.

Rey being drawn to and in love with Kylo makes no sense though based on him killing Han in Force Awakens. I never understood Reylo.

Luke’s astral projection should have been his green lightsaber form. He lost his father’s lightsaber on cloud city.

JadedSkywalker said:

Luke’s astral projection should have been his green lightsaber form. He lost his father’s lightsaber on cloud city.

That bothered me a lot as well. Kylo Ren himself witnessed his grandfather’s lightsaber being torn in half moments earlier, so seeing his uncle wielding it should have tipped him off, and I also think the green lightsaber would have unsettled him a lot more since that’s the last image he has of his uncle.

I think it all boils down to Anakin’s lightsaber being more iconic.

Lest we forget, the movies absolutely didn’t BOTHER to tell us how the hell that lightsaber was found and brought back into the plot 30 years later. Remember that awful idea they had for the opening of TFA where after the crawl you’d think you were seeing a giant spaceship, but it turns into a force perspective gag where it would reveal its Luke’s lightsaber from ESB…floating through space for 30 years with Luke’s severed hand still on it. Then it hits Jakkus atmosphere and the hand disintegrates but the lightsaber falls to the ground. And someone immediately picks it up. Just so dumb and awkward.

Who would have thought soo many of these directors would be so completely out of touch with making further stories and films?? Abrams talked about loving SW OT for years before there was a sequel trilogy and his work on Star Trek showed that he’d rather be making SW films. How could he have started Episode 7 like that? Now when directors get on an IP and mention being “huge fans” it makes me worry.

The problem with mystery boxes is the fan theories are more interesting than what we end up with. Or you know they can suck like the Snoke theory about being Plagueis. I actually agree with Rian on that your snoke theory sucks.
I rather liked the idea of the lightsaber calling to Rey because she was Luke’s kid but that was just fan made theory.

Hearing JJ intended her to be a Kenobi sounds like crap I like Rey nobody over that.

Rey Palpatine self adopted Skywalker is meeting fans halfway but nobody was pleased.

Some fans liked Force Awakens and some liked Last Jedi, and but quite a few of both disliked Rise of Skywalker.

As for JJ i don’t think he any passion for Star Wars or Star Trek for that matter he is a guy they hire to direct these things who makes corporate product. I don’t think he made anything with genuine passion since maybe Super 8 or even the Bad Robot tv years before he was directing movies. JJ is not alone even Michael Bay makes passionless corporate assembly line junk like Transformers. Probably dozens of other directors I can’t think of off the top of my head have done the same for Marvel studios.

I think George had genuine passion for some aspects of the prequel and even Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it makes you wonder if fans are just beyond pleasing when it comes to these things. and that was before hate watching was a thing and people went to something, so they review bomb the hell out of it on Rotten Tomatoes. I’ve never done that but I’m kind of bored of the same film criticism anyways.

Even though I’ll admit they have some minor problems (and the originals do as well), I still love the prequels. I grew up with the UOT on VHS as a kid, and I was 16 when the Special Editions came out. Regarding George’s films, I’m no purist, so I was able to accept both the changed versions and the prequels on their own merits. When I first saw “The Phantom Menace”, I loved it, and I still think its a lot of fun. All three of those movies are worthy companion pieces to the originals, in my opinion.

The sequels, however, are a very different story. I enjoyed most of “The Force Awakens”, but upon viewing “The Last Jedi” I was stunned into silence, and not in a good way. It took me a short while to gather my thoughts, and after that all I could think was “My God, they did it. They actually managed to eff up a Star Wars movie.” Luke being a depressed hermit was completely wrong, along with Snoke being turned from a potential threat to an idiot so clueless that his own apprentice literally slices him in half. Rey became vastly overpowered, Finn & Poe became almost redundant, Captain Phasma was treated like trash, and don’t get me started on Holdo - her sacrifice had no impact on me at all. And then of course, there’s the “Leia Poppins” moment, which I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at or groan about. The entire movie just flat-out sucked. I never saw “The Rise of Skywalker” all the way through, but from the clips I’ve seen the general tone seemed more in line with “The Force Awakens”. Still, bringing Palpatine back was a dumbass choice, and lazy as well. I really blame Kathleen Kennedy for the bulk of this; she promised George Lucas that she would respect his characters and the legacy that he had created. But once she had control of his company, she turned right around and stabbed him in the back.

Your story still sounds better than a Jacen Solo ripoff given the name of Luke Skywalker’s son Ben. Who also wore a Darth Revan style helmet. Whose Dark Side name came from Kybo Ren and the Droids cartoon.

And who had a bigger more dangerous lightsaber than Vader and a bigger death star called Starkiller base.

I mean you can’t make this stuff up.

philraid said:

Superweapon VII said:

The worst fanfiction is written by the biggest fans. In 1997, I wrote sequels where the Rebels had to fight a Darth Vader imposter – really Luke & Leia’s hitherto unknown younger brother – who commanded four Death Stars. Sometimes these fans grow up to realize how bad their fanfics were. But hacks like Jar Jar Abrams never grow up.

As a kid my vision of an Episode VII was Anakin getting resurrected and living with Luke in a castle where they occasionally fight off stormtroopers, so you’re not the only one with awful ideas, lol.

Granted, both of these probably still would have been better than Rise of Skywalker.

If you had some more characters and a compelling boss for the stormtroopers this could be really good.

fmalover said:

JadedSkywalker said:

Luke’s astral projection should have been his green lightsaber form. He lost his father’s lightsaber on cloud city.

That bothered me a lot as well. Kylo Ren himself witnessed his grandfather’s lightsaber being torn in half moments earlier, so seeing his uncle wielding it should have tipped him off, and I also think the green lightsaber would have unsettled him a lot more since that’s the last image he has of his uncle.

I think it all boils down to Anakin’s lightsaber being more iconic.

It’s the blue saber for two reasons: 1.) it’s the one Luke rejected earlier on and is now taking up again, and 2.) it is the one Kylo has wanted for the past two films. (He probably wouldn’t know it is broken, being knocked out in the blast and not seeing the aftermath)

I like the green one though, so I’d have preferred it.

ElJosero said:

Of the two I much prefer the Prequels to the Sequels. I would say that Force Awakens is really a remake of A New Hope, it follows a near identical plot path aside from the occasional tease that Finn is force-sensitive. Last Jedi tried a little too hard to be shocking and wasted what I think was a truly great story for Luke by bogging it down in so much other nonsense like fuel gauges and space Las Vegas. Rise of Skywalker, while visually appealing, is such an utter mess story wise that it really ruined the entire Sequel trilogy for me. Really there was absolutely no need to shoehorn Palpatine nor his lineage into the last movie. I also didn’t appreciate the continued too-subtle hints to Finn’s force sensitivity. Really he had so much wasted potential. He could have gone down a Jedi path, he could have easily become Sith or, perhaps most tantalizingly, he could have been a “grey” Jedi, not fully succumbed to the dark side but not purely light either. Unfortunately he was mostly relegated to the background.

I suppose I should point out the things I did like in the sequels and I will say I actually quite enjoyed Last Jedi before they tried too hard to course correct it. For those who say it wasn’t in Luke’s character to hide and be a hermit seem to forget that his two Jedi mentors were both hermits in hiding themselves when Luke met them. Han Solo in Force Awakens was pretty great, even though Harrison Ford looked to be in slow motion when he was running from the Rathtars.

As for the Prequels, I really enjoyed all 3. There are definite gripes, sure. Really the big one is you could argue that Phantom Menace is actually fairly irrelevant to the overall story and we could have just started with Attack of the Clones and split Revenge of the Sith in to two films. That said, I’m one of the strange individuals that actually really likes Phantom Menace. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for the amazing lightsaber work they did, or perhaps I didn’t find Jar Jar half as irritating as everyone else did. Far as I’m concerned he’s nowhere near as bad as the commentary accompanying the podrace.

The Phantom Menace is despite its reputation the last Lucas Star Wars film(one that he had control over the story for) that was still using a lot of practical effects, more than the original trilogy even and by that I mean all three of those films. Much like The Lord of the Rings, Titanic and the original Jurassic Park trilogy it is a good mesh of practical effects and CGI which has become more and more rare.

It is also the only prequel film that from what I remember does not contradict the Thrawn trilogy. You could say that the Phantom Menace is more 90’s Star Wars than any of the other films.

The PT, I think moreso, is the only one between the two trilogies to actually have much of a story or a real point story and character wise. Flawed? LORD willing, yes. Technically messy? Yeah I think so. But I think that’s more than I can say for a mostly surface level ST. Where even when the movies pretend to say something, I think it basically has little to do with anything and just kinda hangs there and what they talk about is moreso empty, either it’s banter or it’s just there with not much else going on.

Jesus is Lord! Love and worship God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit!

I can’t accept what Disney did with the Star Wars Sequel trilogy. Worldbuilding was nonexistent, they did a reset and remade the original trilogy. they were requels. I may like the new characters. Rey, Finn, Poe and Rose. I don’t condone what they did to Leia making her a military General instead of Chancellor of the New Republic. Han reverting to being a smuggler instead of a general. And Luke most of all wasn’t even Luke. Terrible writing. When even Mark Hamill is still grousing about it ten years later, it’s never going to be good. If he hated it, just what do you think legacy fans thought. I’ve mostly said my piece on it. But I will never accept that Jake Skywalker is a thing.

Though I mostly respect Rian Johnson outside of Star Wars. Respect Kathleen Kennedy for most of her producer career/ except Lucasfilm. Though I do thank her for Andor and Star Wars original getting restored

For JJ I have no ill will but I wish he would direct something that wasn’t a remake or remix of someone else idea. This era of movies is the worst all. All they do is remake films from the 1980s. I have no desire to see my childhood repurposed for the young people of today, they deserve a new story. New characters, new movies. Fresh ideas. Not a simulacrum or simulation of the past. Disney is the worst they are stuck in nostalgia. Making the same comic book movies in 12 different ways.

The Star Wars universe was vast and had a planned-out story and timeline that was something like 40 thousand years. The Disney timeline is crap. And inferior in every way. But oh well, they bought the IP, so they get to determine and rewrite canon. They want to make the most lazy and unimaginative derivative work from the decades of already existing lore.

I just watched Episode I and I hated it. I wonder if II and III hold up. I have these rose colored glasses, memories of seeing the prequel. I didn’t remember the movie being the Jedi standing around boringly talking space politics. I remembered the duel of the fates and the podrace.

I mostly enjoyed it the last time I watched it. Because well, I watched it after watching the first 3 movies in a marathon and was in a good mood. The Phantom Menace is terrible as a standalone film. I have to draw upon my nostalgia and love of the first three films to even draw connections between these movies, IF Johnny didn’t put it all in his music.

I have had people recommend several fanedits. But Lucas should have done a better job on dialogue and making Anakin likable IN II and III. Nobody talks like people in the prequels, in the originals they feel like real people not cardboard. Even whiny Luke in Star Wars I wanna go get some power convertors sounds like your typical teenager who wants to soup up his hotrod. His wanting adventure away from the mundane and boring is a clearly defined character.

The Last Jedi has the only bits of the sequel trilogy I like and they are mostly nostalgia pieces if not Luke talking about the force being bigger than the Jedi and Sith conflict. The balance is bigger. In the prequels and Clone Wars I liked the aspect of the living force and the cosmic force. If not liking midichlorians and not understanding anything about the whills. I didn’t understand mortis either. equal light and equal darkness yin and yang.

That is what I liked about the original the force is energy field that exists in all living things, It binds the galaxy together. Yoda said to feel the force around you. it exists in what I can only say is the land, the rocks and the trees. That kind of spiritual connection with ones conscious self and the world around them. The natural world not machines. Luke goes into a deep trance like a quasi-dreamlike state and can move rocks with his mind. Then Yoda says forget that lift the ship. And Luke says it is too big. Yoda says Its only too big in your mind.

I also like that IN TESB. what’s in the cave, only what you take with you. Luke brings all his hatred and fear and his weapons. fights his shadow self in the form of Darth Vader wearing his own face. The face of his enemy is his own. This is powerful and much more so when at the duel in Bespin. Vader tells Luke the truth that Kenobi hid from him. And the film ends with Luke receiving a robot hand just like Vader. Then in ROTJ he is clothed all in black like his father. Using the dark side against Gammoreans. He taps into it again when he fights and defeats his father on the Death Star II. He nearly kills him and only stops when he looks at his robotic hand and realizes he is becoming Vader. Plus Palpatine’s gloating brings Luke out of his trance if you will.

What it really comes down to is, if given the choice, which would I watch again?

It’s the sequels and it isn’t even close. I know that on the internet that is taboo to say, but it is insane to me that there are people who call Revenge of the Sith the best one.

I strongly disagree with the most common critiques of the sequels, especially around “world building”. I feel like those who say that have no understand of what world building actually is in film, and that “lore” is secondary to storytelling.

The prequels have a consistent vision and style, yes. But that style absolutely sucks. The discussion has been done to death, and I could literally talk for hours about the problems the prequels have. They’re terrible films, and terrible additions to Star Wars. The only thing they’re good for is memes. I watched the internet collectively transform from ironic love to genuine praise as if they’re actually good pieces of cinema.

The sequels have their faults. They’re not perfect. But they capture the spirit of the original trilogy. Real sets, on-location shoots, practical effects, adventure films first and foremost. They feel more like Star Wars to me than the prequels do. And in spite of all of their flaws, I still think that films with ups and downs are much better than films that are consistently shit. This is a contraversial take, but even though ROS is bad, I still think it is a more competently made film than Revenge of the Sith on a basic level. Revenge of the Sith is the best prequel in a technical sense but it’s not hard to improve on absolute dogwater.

The Last Jedi has many issues, but overall I think it’s a decent film. I still like the broad-strokes story. This is another film where the discussion has been done to death, but I think it’s positives outweigh the negatives.

Rise of Skywalker is not a great movie. However there is still a lot to like in it, and I don’t think it’s terrible. In fact I think outside of some pretty bad editing decisions, it’s a mostly okay movie. The cinematography rips the prequels. The production design rips the prequels. And yes, even though there are some questionable bits of dialogue, the script is better than what we got in the prequels. A few bits of bad dialogue < Almost every bit of dialogue being trash. It’s just that “Okay” isn’t good enough for films that were once the pinnacle of cinematic entertainment.

I still love The Force Awakens, it’s just diminished a lot because of where the trilogy ended up. Yes it was derivative, but it was a movie about Star Wars on a meta level, and on a thematic level it was about history repeating itself. And at least they’re not making more changes to the sequel trilogy to accommodate it. The prequel trilogy negatively affected the preservation of the originals and meant we could never get the 77 or 97 releases in better formats, to the point where now I feel no excitement when a friend wants to watch Star Wars for the first time.

If anybody has digital upscaled versions of the 1997 special edition so I can make my definitive cut that’d be dope. It’s been a dream project of mine for years.