Addressing prequel revisionism

There’s no avoiding it, the prequels are very popular now. Probably more than the original trilogy. However you feel about this, the most annoying part to me is the amount of straight up falsehoods people spread about the movies, what it was like when they came out, and the reasons why they’re more popular now.

Here are some of the tropes I’ve seen on twitter, youtube, and elsewhere:
*The prequels were never unpopular, that was a small minority of angry fans (virgin basement dweller living with mom stereotype etc.) and the vast majority of people loved them

*Love for the original trilogy is just nostalgia and they’re actually bad

*Various copes about the dialogue’s quality: “Lucas is the king of wooden dialogue”, “not all dialogue needs to be naturalistic, it’s more theatrical”, “it’s like Flash Gordon”, “that’s how real teenagers talk”, “the original trilogy was just as bad”

*Millennials and Gen X hated the movies because they love irony and Marvel humor and there’s no one mugging the camera like Jim from The Office, and Gen Z is here to save us with sincerity

*People that don’t like them just don’t understand them, don’t understand politics, don’t understand Anakin’s character, don’t grasp why XY quality is “genius”

*Posting highlights from Duel of the Fates and the Obi Wan/Anakin duel out of context and saying “I can’t believe people saw this in 1999/2005 and thought it sucked???” as though there’s nothing else in the movies, as engagement bait

A lot of this comes from people that weren’t even alive at the time, or were too young to know what actually happened, lecturing everyone else on events well within living memory. (Star Wars is much less serious but I’ve also experienced this with 9/11.)

Even if you’re a huge prequel fan there’s no reason to be delusional about reality or make things up.

The prequels were considered a joke in pop culture for a good while. People enjoyed the lightsaber duels, Obi Wan, Darth Maul, the podrace, and some of the more toyetic design elements like the ships and costumes, but they despised Jar Jar, kid Anakin, and the Anakin/Padme romance. I remember adults talking about them, I remember making fun of them (even as a kid who really liked them generally), I remember seeing and hearing about it on TV and the radio. I was even reading a manga from that era the other day and the author was cracking jokes about Anakin/Padme in the notes. This was everybody including kids, teens, young adults, married couples, and not some kind of broad incel stereotype.

It was not only childhood nostalgia; people that were adults when the original trilogy came out had similar criticisms across the board, from a filmmaking standpoint. As much as I love the ewoks and I’m fine with them, there was a lot of hate for the ewoks and they were seen as a prelude for what came later with the prequels. The original trilogy’s dialogue was seen as cheesy at times, but the banter between Luke, Han, and Leia was considered excellent and well within the quality standards of what people expected. Not to mention extremely memorable lines from Obi Wan, Yoda, Vader, and Palpatine that are quoted still to this day.

The prequels have a lot of lines that are quoted just as often now, but it’s because they’re memes. Even the supposedly sincerity-loving zoomers see the prequels as a nonstop joke fest filled with Hello Theres (not even sure if they know that’s an OT reference) and Darth Plagueis the Wise and Unlimited Powers and I Hate Sands. They aren’t remembered for being profound, they’re remembered for being silly. It isn’t sincerity, it’s just flopping from “I hate this” to “so bad it’s good” to “it’s good because it’s funny.” It’s the most ironic humor you’ll ever get.

There’s also the context of the Special Editions coming out in 1997 just before. Usually this is addressed with videos smugly going “are the changes reeeeeeally that bad?” and pretending some of the changes don’t exist so they can talk up some of the effects shots. But yes, some of the changes really were that bad, hence why this site exists. The added CG and tampering was unnecessary, which is why the prequels coming out right after gave the feeling that the whole series was some kind of tech demo. If you weren’t alive in 97 or 99, and all you’ve known your entire life is almost completely CG movies of wildly varying quality, there’s no way you could fully understand this and what it meant.

How do you guys address this? Do you just ignore it and move on? Do you have any videos you point people to? I’m guessing most of you probably think it’s a fool’s errand and it’s not important, but for everyone else, what’s your take?

I agree with most of what you said. However, I also think you’re exaggerating a bit. The way you put it makes it sound as though there were virtually no Prequel fans between 2005 and 2018, and everyone who claimed to hate the movies genuinely felt that way. But that’s simply not true. Even between 2005 and 2018, there were plenty of people who enjoyed the Prequels to varying degrees, and not everyone who claimed to hate the movies genuinely hated them. The situation was much more nuanced.

You have to keep in mind that when trashing or making fun of something becomes popular, people tend to jump on the bandwagon, even if their public opinions don’t entirely reflect what they actually think. Teenagers and young adults are especially susceptible to following trends and conforming to the majority opinion. I’ve personally read plenty of comments online from people saying things like, “When I was a teen, I used to trash the movies and talk shit about them, but I didn’t actually dislike them all that much.” I’m not saying these people were the majority, but they certainly existed, and pretending otherwise is just as wrong as pretending the Prequels were universally loved.

Also, I think a lot of the extremism you see among some Prequel fans today is a reaction to the extremism displayed by certain hardcore OT fans back then. I wasn’t around at the time, but I’ve talked to plenty of people who lived through that era, and they’ve all told me that the atmosphere on many online forums and websites was unbearable. If you said anything positive about the Prequels, people would jump down your throat, insist that the movies were garbage and treat the Original Trilogy like it was the second coming of Christ, downplaying its genuine flaws in the process. Obviously, this doesn’t mean everyone who disliked the Prequels was being unreasonable, but there was definitely a toxic side to the discourse that made it difficult to have a balanced discussion about the movies.

So, again, I think the Prequel revisionism you mentioned is, to a significant extent, a reaction to the hostility that dominated much of the online Star Wars community for nearly a decade. Some fans have overcorrected and gone too far in the opposite direction, and I agree that pretending the Prequels were universally beloved from the beginning is inaccurate. But I also think it’s important to understand where this reaction came from. You can’t spend years treating an entire trilogy and its fans as a joke and then act surprised when some of those fans eventually push back against that narrative.

Spartacus01 said:

I agree with most of what you said. However, I also think you’re exaggerating a bit. The way you put it makes it sound as though there were virtually no Prequel fans between 2005 and 2018, and everyone who claimed to hate the movies genuinely felt that way. But that’s simply not true. Even between 2005 and 2018, there were plenty of people who enjoyed the Prequels to varying degrees, and not everyone who claimed to hate the movies genuinely hated them. The situation was much more nuanced.

You have to keep in mind that when trashing or making fun of something becomes popular, people tend to jump on the bandwagon, even if their public opinions don’t entirely reflect what they actually think. Teenagers and young adults are especially susceptible to following trends and conforming to the majority opinion. I’ve personally read plenty of comments online from people saying things like, “When I was a teen, I used to trash the movies and talk shit about them, but I didn’t actually dislike them all that much.” I’m not saying these people were the majority, but they certainly existed, and pretending otherwise is just as wrong as pretending the Prequels were universally loved.

Also, I think a lot of the extremism you see among some Prequel fans today is a reaction to the extremism displayed by certain hardcore OT fans back then. I wasn’t around at the time, but I’ve talked to plenty of people who lived through that era, and they’ve all told me that the atmosphere on many online forums and websites was unbearable. If you said anything positive about the Prequels, people would jump down your throat, insist that the movies were garbage and treat the Original Trilogy like it was the second coming of Christ, downplaying its genuine flaws in the process. Obviously, this doesn’t mean everyone who disliked the Prequels was being unreasonable, but there was definitely a toxic side to the discourse that made it difficult to have a balanced discussion about the movies.

So, again, I think the Prequel revisionism you mentioned is, to a significant extent, a reaction to the hostility that dominated much of the online Star Wars community for nearly a decade. Some fans have overcorrected and gone too far in the opposite direction, and I agree that pretending the Prequels were universally beloved from the beginning is inaccurate. But I also think it’s important to understand where this reaction came from. You can’t spend years treating an entire trilogy and its fans as a joke and then act surprised when some of those fans eventually push back against that narrative.

No there were definitely fans. I was certainly one. I saw Phantom Menace for my birthday and had a blast, I had a lot of toys including Jar Jar ones. I was so hyped for AotC I could barely focus at school that day. I watched episode 3 in theaters maybe 5 or 6 times. Together with the expanded universe stuff it was a significant part of my life. As I got older I started to notice more and more things that annoyed me. And I was never under the impression that they were better than the original trilogy in any way, other than some of the action sequences being more fast paced. I still think the original trilogy is nearly perfect.

And kind of what I was alluding to was that people were more ambivalent than anyone really lets on. Most people really liked certain aspects even though they hated others. Darth Maul being one example of a huge cultural icon, a very unique character design that you would see everywhere on T shirts, in cosplays, in art, etc. The Phantom Edit was basically the consensus, keep most of the movie but discard those little things that ruin it. The problem is that by AotC the entire whiny teen Anakin character (unfairly blamed on Hayden but still there) is baked into the plot so there’s very little you can ignore about it. By episode 3 he was still heavily criticized, but the spectacle and darkness of the movie was so great that people were more forgiving.

Like you said, an overcorrection. But I wouldn’t say that this is a backlash against those people in the early 2000s, because a lot of people weren’t even around for that. Like I mentioned, it’s taking on a weird flavor of generational warfare where young people assert that their Nostalgia is better than someone else’s Nostalgia. Somehow more pure, more earnest, less spiteful, less cynical. Teens and young adults now aren’t pissed off specifically at George W. Bush, or Obama, or the Iraq war, or hipsters, or any of that, even if they would be if they were aware of what was going on during that time. It’s just so far removed from their experience that they can only digest it through “people older than me screwed everything up, and the details don’t matter.”

In any case, all these wars among fans are primarily an American thing. We never really had that kind of thing in Italy, at least not to the same extent. Granted, I was very young back then, so I can’t really say what the situation was like first-hand. But based on the articles and other material from that time that I’ve managed to dig up online, my impression is that the general consensus in Italy was, “Yeah, they’re not as good as the Originals, but they’re still enjoyable,” with a small minority of OT purists who hated the movies. I think the Italian dub definitely helped in that regard, as it did a great job of compensating for many of the shortcomings in the original performances, making some of the dialogue sound more natural and helping certain scenes land better.

I kept hoping the next one would be better. I thought clearly Lucas is rusty and II and III will clearly be better. And like many other people went to see them for the opening week and the spectacle of the lightsaber fights, what is ILM going to do this time. John Williams score. Hayden Christensen as Anakin never quite landed with me. I think his being an unlikable protagonist is a major problem for these movies. With the OT you have Luke.

The unnatural dialogue, the space politics. The Midichlorians. The space politics is what these movies are about why complain about them. Well, I liked the original for being a swashbuckling adventure movie. It’s kind of why I initially liked the force awakens it was in the that style of being. But well later I realized this is just a remake of Star Wars.

Certain aspects of the prequel work I like the idea of the Faustian bargain, the Macbeth if you will. Anakin’s descent into madness trying to cheat the oracle as it were.

The audience remains omniscient while the Jedi walk into a trap and a killing box. Because the plot requires it and they are dumb. So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.

You know I thought of Tolkien when thinking of Anakin trying to change Padmes fate he had in a vision of the future. Turin Turambar. Master of Fate by Fate Mastered.

Does it have to be revisionism? Can’t it just be cope?

The one thing I absolutely loathe the most about the onslaught of prequel revisionism is that it’s all in spite of the sequel trilogy which I find to be entirely hypocritical. They say “The sequels had awful world building,” while turning a blind eye to the dozens upon dozens of idiotic artistic choices Lucas made in the prequels that were either insanely contrived or outright contradictory to the original trilogy. They say the sequels have bad world building but Anakin building c3po, knowing R2 is fine. Kenobi knowing R2 and C3po is fine. Qui gong’s existence, contradicting what Kenobi recollects in ROTJ is fine, Yoda knowing R2 is fine, explaining how force ghost exists in the most haphazard way is fine. Midichlorians are fine. And the list goes on and on. All these idiotic narrative choices ruin the suspension of disbelief, which to me is awful world building because it makes it feel like a silly cartoon.

Also the whole “the sequels suck because they made it up as they went along, there was no plan!” complaint is more hypocrisy LOL. Yes, it was made up… just like the original and prequel trilogies! Look at all the ridiculous retcons from the prequels! Look at Leia being Luke’s sister! It’s arguably just as jarring as the subversions in LJ or Rey now being a palpatine in ROS. “Making it up as we go along” and retconning is a Star Wars tradition!

But the thing i find most insufferable is how prequel fans have been calling these films “masterpieces,” which is just pure insanity. It is fine to like these movies in a schlock popcorn movie sort of way. I like schlock. I like Transformers 1 and 2. I like the Underworld films. But I will never pretend that they are masterpieces. That’s just ridiculous. I don’t think these clowns even understand the implications of calling the prequels masterpieces. A masterpiece is like Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur, Blade Runner, The Good Bad and Ugly. I deal with this by trying to explain the absolute pitfalls in film making that the prequels are guilty of. I try to educate. Especially on the complete lack of blocking, staging, business for actors, and mediocre camera set ups in the prequels. But 99% of the time it’s like talking to an ignorant child that refuses to listen. So I just let them make fools of themselves with a warning: “I advise not to call these films masterpieces out loud in front of serious film buffs. You likely will get laughed out the room or be highly thought of as a fool in the minds of everyone and avoided.” Again, I have no problem with people liking the movies. I enjoy ROTS in a summer popcorn blockbuster movie sort of way. But in no way would I consider it high art.

I have no issue saying that aspects of the movies are masterful. The John Williams score, the sound design, some of the visual design, costuming, and props, some of the sets, some of the choreography, and some of the performances especially Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid.

But people take all of those things out of context and pretend they’re the whole thing. Duel of the Fates isn’t a fart joke or Jar Jar babbling. Palpatine with some nice subtle dialogue isn’t Palpatine with “Unlimited Power” or “Darth Plagueis the Wise was so powerful and so wise.” “You were my brother Anakin, I loved you” isn’t “Chancellor Palpatine is evil!” A cool asteroid chase sequence isn’t Anakin talking about sand or saying very weird stuff to Padme about how she’s in his soul tormenting him. The good CG doesn’t outweigh the amount of weird, blobby, highly noticeable bad CG. And on and on.

Vladius said:

I have no issue saying that aspects of the movies are masterful. The John Williams score, the sound design, some of the visual design, costuming, and props, some of the sets, some of the choreography, and some of the performances especially Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid.

But people take all of those things out of context and pretend they’re the whole thing. Duel of the Fates isn’t a fart joke or Jar Jar babbling. Palpatine with some nice subtle dialogue isn’t Palpatine with “Unlimited Power” or “Darth Plagueis the Wise was so powerful and so wise.” “You were my brother Anakin, I loved you” isn’t “Chancellor Palpatine is evil!” A cool asteroid chase sequence isn’t Anakin talking about sand or saying very weird stuff to Padme about how she’s in his soul tormenting him. The good CG doesn’t outweigh the amount of weird, blobby, highly noticeable bad CG. And on and on.

Personally I think some have, to me, took issue with some things that I don’t have that much of an issue with really myself. Like much of the CGI (which personally while I won’t acclaim the greatness of it in the majority, I think is more than not fine to me, with only a few that I think to be fairly weak for me). Or that Palpatine is evil line or the Plagueis line (which that isn’t the line). And even the sand line, which while I think the line is clunky and awkward, I think the intensity against is a bit aggressive. Anakin’s lines, to me, are really only that much of an issue in the romance scenes, and even then it’s not all of them to me, even if it’s most of them. The rest of his dialogue I think only really isn’t an issue that much to that degree.

Some go against Anakin being a child, for example, but it’s something I think really pulls the overall story together, even going through to the OT. Personally, I think the only effect this works against is his relationship with Padme, whereas I think it benefits all the others. I think Anakin being introduced as a child is apart of the contrast of what he will become as Vader, so I think it’s apart of the story and character journey, as well as him being a child, in connection to his relationship to Qui-Gon who carries the potential of a dad figure that Anakin never gets to have, that Obi takes on responsibility for, and Palpatine ultimately usurps.

And I think taking out him being a child in TPM strips a complete weight framework of a narrative that travels from the PT into the OT, as, to me, it shows Vader being the personal dad he never had in choosing to die to rescue his son, and not only overthrow his longest oppressor in Palpatine, but also reject fully the emotionally manipulative dad figure (his basically abusive dad in this case) that he’d been living with his whole life. The whole story for Luke is in connecting with his dad basically in the OT. By doing what’s done in the PT, I think this adds to that idea, but I do think it could use refining.

So, for this, I think it works to only age up Anakin a little bit, and to close the gap more for him and Padme, age her down only by about a year or so. Close enough to have a buyable romantic crush setup and peer dynamic. I’ve posted a redo for TPM here that I think does those things to refine the story moreso:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Phantom-Menace-Outline-REWRITE/id/142856

JadedSkywalker said:

I kept hoping the next one would be better. I thought clearly Lucas is rusty and II and III will clearly be better. And like many other people went to see them for the opening week and the spectacle of the lightsaber fights, what is ILM going to do this time. John Williams score. Hayden Christensen as Anakin never quite landed with me. I think his being an unlikable protagonist is a major problem for these movies. With the OT you have Luke.

I don’t think Anakin is the central or only protagonist in the PT, so it’s not really a concern for me. But I also think his likability is only an issue for me part of the time.

The unnatural dialogue, the space politics. The Midichlorians. The space politics is what these movies are about why complain about them. Well, I liked the original for being a swashbuckling adventure movie. It’s kind of why I initially liked the force awakens it was in the that style of being. But well later I realized this is just a remake of Star Wars.

The swashbuckling over politics seems maybe to be more a preference issue, to me.

Connor MacLeod said:

The one thing I absolutely loathe the most about the onslaught of prequel revisionism is that it’s all in spite of the sequel trilogy which I find to be entirely hypocritical. They say “The sequels had awful world building,” while turning a blind eye to the dozens upon dozens of idiotic artistic choices Lucas made in the prequels that were either insanely contrived or outright contradictory to the original trilogy. They say the sequels have bad world building but Anakin building c3po, knowing R2 is fine. Kenobi knowing R2 and C3po is fine. Qui gong’s existence, contradicting what Kenobi recollects in ROTJ is fine, Yoda knowing R2 is fine, explaining how force ghost exists in the most haphazard way is fine. Midichlorians are fine. And the list goes on and on. All these idiotic narrative choices ruin the suspension of disbelief, which to me is awful world building because it makes it feel like a silly cartoon.

It’s all in spite of the ST? How can you know that?

I’d also suggest the issues with the PT aren’t necessarily the same in the same way as the ST, so I’d disagree that they’d be automatically have to be grouped together.

C3PO being made by Anakin and C3PO and R2 being so heavily involved in the PT events I do think similarly can be seen as contrived, but I personally hardly think it’s a serious issue with world building. Especially compared to what I think is the ST’s world building of basically very little of weight to the world or story. Some line or two of pointing at war profiteering as existing is about all I think the ST has to offer in that way, for me.

Obi never said he didn’t know R2 and C3PO in the OT. Qui-Gon’s existence doesn’t contradict Obi’s telling of meeting Anakin either. It’s a retcon, don’t get me wrong, not a refined enough one perhaps I think maybe, but in story I think it’s more played as something Obi leaves out. Midichlorians also don’t contradict what’s said in the OT I think. I don’t understand the force ghost thing. The PT never explains really how they exist I think, but I think neither does the OT.

Also the whole “the sequels suck because they made it up as they went along, there was no plan!” complaint is more hypocrisy LOL. Yes, it was made up… just like the original and prequel trilogies! Look at all the ridiculous retcons from the prequels! Look at Leia being Luke’s sister! It’s arguably just as jarring as the subversions in LJ or Rey now being a palpatine in ROS. “Making it up as we go along” and retconning is a Star Wars tradition!

Come on, you’re really gonna compare some things in the movies being built as they went along, with a single guy involved and in control to a multi billion dollar corporation haphhazardly throwing things at the wall every movie with little to no direction?

But the thing i find most insufferable is how prequel fans have been calling these films “masterpieces,” which is just pure insanity. It is fine to like these movies in a schlock popcorn movie sort of way. I like schlock. I like Transformers 1 and 2. I like the Underworld films. But I will never pretend that they are masterpieces. That’s just ridiculous. I don’t think these clowns even understand the implications of calling the prequels masterpieces. A masterpiece is like Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur, Blade Runner, The Good Bad and Ugly. I deal with this by trying to explain the absolute pitfalls in film making that the prequels are guilty of. I try to educate. Especially on the complete lack of blocking, staging, business for actors, and mediocre camera set ups in the prequels. But 99% of the time it’s like talking to an ignorant child that refuses to listen. So I just let them make fools of themselves with a warning: “I advise not to call these films masterpieces out loud in front of serious film buffs. You likely will get laughed out the room or be highly thought of as a fool in the minds of everyone and avoided.” Again, I have no problem with people liking the movies. I enjoy ROTS in a summer popcorn blockbuster movie sort of way. But in no way would I consider it high art.

Why do you take it so personally that they think so highly of these movie? What harm does it do? And you insult people for that? How do you think that you have more to offer than them, by this?

oojason said:

Spartacus01 said:

I think the Italian dub definitely helped in that regard, as it did a great job of compensating for many of the shortcomings in the original performances, making some of the dialogue sound more natural and helping certain scenes land better.

Intriguing point, that.

I do wonder how a good dubbing of a film can enhance or lift said film from the original language - much like the quality of accurate subtitles vs the hilarity of ‘auto-generated’ online subtitles (or lazily executed subtitles from years ago)!

Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese. Turkish etc (and not forgetting the Scandinavian countries)… it’d be interesting to see how the various Star Wars films over the years have fared with those bilingual and multilingual fans who’ve experienced both audio versions (or with more audio options - including those early unofficial audio dubs of yesteryear).
 

Apologies for the derail, Vladius - it was just something that caught the eye and got me thinking re the differing dubs. 👍
 

That’s not a derail at all haha

oojason said:

Spartacus01 said:

I think the Italian dub definitely helped in that regard, as it did a great job of compensating for many of the shortcomings in the original performances, making some of the dialogue sound more natural and helping certain scenes land better.

Intriguing point, that.

I do wonder how a good dubbing of a film can enhance or lift said film from the original language - much like the quality of accurate subtitles vs the hilarity of ‘auto-generated’ online subtitles (or lazily executed subtitles from years ago)!

Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese. Turkish etc (and not forgetting the Scandinavian countries)… it’d be interesting to see how the various Star Wars films over the years have fared with those bilingual and multilingual fans who’ve experienced both audio versions (or with more audio options - including those early unofficial audio dubs of yesteryear).
 

Apologies for the derail, Vladius - it was just something that caught the eye and got me thinking re the differing dubs. 👍
 

Here are some examples of Italian dubbing of the Prequels:

https://youtu.be/vEMXY6mi3NY?si=Q7DMciw7UfmSDz0I

https://youtu.be/FdFzdDO0ncA?si=g_21DigfastyVtsW

https://youtu.be/swJFsQ6MJTY?si=tHOCbKVrZfL0Uvge

https://youtu.be/6XvycOTbaGQ?si=BF5KXst8WpZnghSW

I don’t know you guys, but as an Italian who has seen the movies in both languages, I prefer the Italian version.