"13 views and 0 replies"
Ha.
Okay I can think of a few things:
-Some of the designs and visual effects are very spectacular and awe-inspirint. Some of them are dumb and unconvincing, but the prequels have a visual scope that very few films have, and their particular combination of elements is very unique. As a visualist, it's hard not to appreciate watching certain parts just for the sheer visual splendor.
-John Williams has some pretty good scores. Not his best work, but it's generally very good stuff. Not sure if TPM or ROTS is better, but ROTS seems to be more nuanced as well as more bombastic, and I think it also has more actual musical themes in it.
Also, I enjoyed some of the performances. Liam Neeson alternates between having a sense of quiet dignity and looking like he is bored to death, but overall I liked his character. Ewan McGregor in the second two films is the anchor of the films, he's great to watch in every scene he is in, and Ian McDiarmid gives a very nuanced performance that is the only one that comes across as 100% appropriate for the subject matter, probably because he's a Shakespearian actor and knows how to deliver dialogue that other people might characterise as stiff. I especially loved him Episode III, although his character of Sidious in that film was so over the top it was awful. Pernilla August in Episode I was also an underrated part. The older actors all seem to have been able to handle the material, because they had the experience and training (and possibly the talent) to work with it, and they were also very experienced in theatre; the young stars don't know how to self-direct or work with stiff dialogue, so they are dead in the water in a George Lucas film. I also thought Andrew Sacombe as Watto was amazing and really brought credible life to that character--the only example I can think of in the prequels where an exotic all-CG character seemed real and acted well. His one scene in Episode II has a moment where he isn't sure if he recognizes Anakin and its a real moment of CG artistry like you would find with Gollum in LOTR.
Also, I enjoy the way there are a lot of clues in Episodes I and II to future events, and because they aren't spelt out or portrayed very clearly you do have to think about the plots and the subtext quite a bit, which can be a bit frustrating at times but also kind of fun. Its unclear how much is intentional and how much is just poor directorial skill--gushers will say its all the former, bashers will say its all the latter, but I think the truth is in the middle. The films have no emotional core, but at least there is some kernal of intellectualism in them. Unfortuantely, most of the Episode I and II set-ups don't pay off in Episode III (Sifo who?).
However, I do enjoy Episode III. I enjoy its sense of paranoia in its first half and its sense of operatic grandeur in its second half. And pretty good action scenes throughout. I also thought the characters were usually pretty well done--for instance, the opening sequence I find very fun, and it's entirely because of the chemistry between McGregor and Christensen, which was non-existant in the previous film. There a number of scenes in the film that I think are really classic as well, such as the sequence around "the turn" where Anakin and Padme are looking at each other from across the city; the cross-cutting that follows really works to drive the tension, and the whole scene I thought was great until the whole knighting business occurs, which is a bit ridiculous in retrospect. However, while some people bash the whole "Darth Vader goes to the dark side out of love" I thought this was the most believable or at least poetic part of the film in an overall sense, and the most pleasantly surprising.
So there, that's more gushing than I've done all year. :p