First of all, in my opinion, people are too hard on the prequels. Yes, the script could have been better. The story seemed inept, convoluted, rushed, and they could have done better. But I think what George Lucas made is not complete garbage. Making a back story in the league of the original star wars trilogy is not an easy feat.

Take the Yoda fight for example. Most fans hated that, but how would you get around it? I mean really, from what we learn of the jedi knights from the first trilogy, how plausible could it really be?

So apparently jedi can do almost anything they want with the force. Since that is true how do you make that plausible without being ridiculous? Yoda's got to fight with a light saber, there's no way around it. How can he be all knowledgeable and powerful with the force and not be able to fight somebody with a light saber? You can't just have human beings fight and the rest of the creatures that are inadequately fit not fight, just because they look inadequate to fight with a light saber. Because Yoda says, size matters not. That can also be interpreted as body type, matters not. But I won't get into any more of that because redlettermedia so eloquently explained that in their review of Attack of the Clones.

People complained about the CGI. CGI was still in its infacy at the time and frankly, I found TPM to have the best CGI which is odd because you'd think it would look better as they went along.

Another thing, people complained about the plots going too much into politics. While I would agree, you do have to admit that a lot had to be setup in the way the galaxy's government operates in order to keep the story flowing. I find it odd how similar they made their government sound from ours. Courts, Senate, Chancellor, Viceroy, I know the original trilogy borrowed a lot of words we use in our governments, but it didn't come off as sounding so derived like in the prequels.

I felt like George was torn between making a film for children or a serious movie for grown-ups all through the making of the prequels. Jar Jar Binks, probably the most unanimously hated character ever to grace the screens of cinema. It's been a long time since I've seen TPM, but my memory is that he was a very creative character and kind of fills the shoes of Chewbacca or C3PO from the original trilogy. You have to admit that he was very memorable. Hell, he's probably up there with the most memorable cinema characters not only in Star Wars, but movies in general. I found him to work well as comic relief and he did play an integral role in the story of TPM. Something you can't really say about a lot of the other supporting characters in the PT like "Count Dooku" and "General Grevious." They're basically just there because, they want an old guy and a robotic guy in there.

Even though the prequels did come up flat, I do think that George did develop a good foundation to work with in TPM. I thought Liam Neison's character was really good in it and it was cool seeing everything established in the first movie. I don't think having Anakin as a young child was a bad idea. I don't even think Jake Lloyd's acting was that bad. Maybe I should go back and review it but I didn't see a problem with it last time I watched the movie.

After typing this, I'm not sure if I am defending or criticizing the prequels, the more I think about them the less I like them. That's about all I have to say. Redlettermedia did a great job critiquing the movies and I look forward to his episode 3 review.

http://www.redlettermedia.com/