doubleofive said:
There can be no "prequel person" response to this. You cannot defend a movie without a protagonist, introduction, plot, or sense. As weird as some of the off topic wanderings, you can't ignore that every point he made was right on the money, though maybe could have been put more eloquently.
Except it really isn't "right on the money" at all. The protagonist clearly is Anakin, whom might I add, being 10 at the time of release I identified quite nicely with- he is not an unlikable character, and honestly I think people who dislike him simply hate kids and won't admit they're a bunch of old cranks. But even without him you can quickly make out from the beginning that Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are the characters we are following and that it is their adventure. And this actually follows the structure of ANH quite closely by introducing us to the world and the other characters through the two characters who ultimately ends up being probably the least important to the narrative.
That's 3x protagonism right there. 4 if you count Padmé.
And I wouldn't call it plotless either. Maybe you slept through the opening crawl, but it's being made clear that there is a trade dispute, and that the trade federation is quite upset with this and want to force something they want with a blockade. We really don't need to know more than this to understand the story. And considering the rest of the Prequels I'm actually surprised we don't get every detail scrutinously painted out. The important bits is that it's all a plot by the sith. And this leads me to one of the real problems with the movie. There's a lot of accusations about Jar Jar Binks and weak story and blah blah blah floating around. These really aren't the problems the film has. The real problems is that it spends an ungodly amount of time on... well, nothing at all really. There's maybe one or two scenes in the whole movie that are actually relevant to anything we should know. The real problem is that fundamentally it's not a story that takes place within the same continuity as the OT. The script may or may not have at one point. But ultimately it turned into something else. Much like the OT's scripts turned into what they are I suppose. I don't understand why people drone on and on about Jar Jar Binks and Hayden Christensen and all that jazz and almost never touch upon these things. RedLetterMedia is no less guilty.
You may argue that it is senseless in a lot of places. But hey, this is STAR WARS. The ultimate in space opera cheese. It never really made any sense. It's a blind collection of stereotyped plot devices thrown together in a big tasty, cheesy pot. ANH itself doesn't make too much sense most of the time. But that's part of the fun.
And ultimately as a movie it's quite enjoyable, between the pod race and the very well put together finale sequence there's a couple of good popcorn hours to be found inthere. Narrative genius? Perhaps not. But certainly narratively accomplished.
Also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJJKMmwvo7Y
Hats off to Pernilla August for that performance.