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

I often see others loving the prequels because they grew up with them or because they like the story, the characters, etc., and seeing the same people hating on the sequels because of it’s not what they expected, or because of the bad storyline, etc.

Since most members of this forum were grew up with the originals, I’d like to hear which trilogy you prefer the most (besides the ot).

Just to add my side: I’m 18 now (that means the forum is older than me, lolz), i grew up watching both the OT and PT, and i was a little kid during the ST. For me, the saga feels completed with EP 1-6. I was pretty much disappointed when TROS came out, and after that I weren’t interested in Star Wars until mid-2022. So for me, the Prequels are much better. Also the soundtrack of the PT is wonderful and unique.

Lemme hear your thoughts!

(Since English isn’t my main language, grammas mistakes could happen, sorry for that)

I think there is already a thread on this conversation? In the General Star Wars Discussion forum? Probably in the “Rankings” or “Vs & Similarities” sections?
 

Edit: I found it. Prequels or Sequels; Which do you prefer - and why? (2020 thread, in General Star Wars Discussion)

Ranking the Star Wars films (2016 thread, in General Star Wars Discussion, but likely a good source for reviews after TROS’ release)
 

For me, neither. I don’t like either of the ST or PT.

If it came to a push, I’d probably go for the ST, simply because it had the “Big 3” characters from the OT, and they all had impactful ends in the ST films.

And that the ST didn’t directly contradict what was previously established in the OT (and the EU) in the way the PT flagrantly did. Maybe that the acting performances were stronger in the ST than the PT in general, but I’m not sure what story the ST was even trying to tell.
 

Some really cool fan edits for both the PT and ST make them far more enjoyable than watching the official cuts.

The only Star Wars I dislike are the Holiday & Ewok specials and the two pre-TPM cartoon shows. Beyond that, Star Wars is Star Wars. I may not watch it all, but it’s all valid.

Each trilogy has its positives and negatives.

• The Sequels have the best visual effects, but forgettable music and spotty writing
• The Prequels have the best action and music, but the visuals have aged poorly and the writing’s awful
• The Originals have the best writing and an amazing score, but not having seen the Theatrical versions, I can only judge based on the versions I’ve seen. (I do have the Despecialized Trilogy, but haven’t watched them yet).

Looking over my Letterboxd ranking of the movies, it seems that I enjoy the Sequels, Anthology, and Original Trilogy more.

I will admit, I was disappointed that Luke’s Jedi Order didn’t last and that the New Republic was destroyed so quickly, but I would genuinely prefer this over having no Sequel Era at all. Currently, I’m actually working on my own Sequel Era project that takes the best of Legends and Canon along with my own ideas.

Every movie in the trilogy had something I loved.

• TFA: The Resistance entrance at Takodana, Poe’s kill streak, Han trying Chewie’s bowcaster
• TLJ: Leia’s spacewalk, everything in Snoke’s throne room, the Holdo Maneuver, “Luke” vs. Kylo on Crait
• TROS: Rey attacking Kylo’s fighter, Lightspeed skipping, the galactic everyone fleet, Ben turning good, the voices of the Jedi, Rey Skywalker

I like 7 & 8 more than the prequels. 9 might be the worst of all though, just for how incredibly cowardly it is.

While I actually like both, I much prefer the sequel trilogy. First my thoughts on the Prequels. While I have lots of nostalgia for The Phantom Menace, and I don’t think it’s a bad movie, it’s just way too slow and plodding, the acting ranges from stiff and wooden to almost good, and it does a really bad job of making the galactic politics interesting. However despite that, I do really like Anakin in this film, and the action is really well crafted. Also all of the important dramatic beats such as Anakin saying goodbye to his mom, to Qui Gon Jinn’s death work, all of which help to make this an average movie rather than an outright bad one.

For Attack of the Clones, I’m one of the people that much prefers this film to its predecessor. The pacing is much better and I think the plot is intriguing and keeps my attention all the way through. Again the action beats are all really well done and the final act is really good. However, the issues again threaten to derail the movie. The acting still isn’t all that great and the dialogue is actually worse. The first act does a horrible job of reintroducing us to Anakin and Obi Wan and as such their relationship never really recovers. The romance starts off so bad with Anakin coming across as a creepy stalker, but once we get to Naboo I actually don’t mind the Anakin Padme Romance, despite the awful and cheesy dialogue. Hayden Christensen never really clicks as Anakin here due to the poor script and Lucas’s directing. He mostly comes across as a petulant child rather than a troubled teenager which is a shame cause when the script and direction allow him, such as when he discovers his Mom in the Tusken camp, and in the scenes where Anakin is silent allowing Hayden to act all through facial expressions he’s flawless. While it is a better time than Phantom Menace its issues are still too big for me to fully enjoy the movie.

Revenge of the Sith is the only one of the prequel trilogy that I think is an actually good movie and I think it’s a great film. Sure it still has its issues with regards to the dialogue and acting in a few moments, but I think the film is very entertaining. The opening act, while a bit too long, does a much better job of making Anakin and Obi Wan’s relationship work. It’s here that we finally see them fully trust each other and come across as friends. Once we get into the main conflict of the movie it’s incredibly compelling. The film does a fantastic job of making Anakin’s conflict with Obi Wan and the Jedi Council make sense and feel believable, and I think it handles Anakin’s fall to the dark side really well. I know some people disagree, but I think the execution is really good and I fully believe in the character arc. The final act is fantastic as well. The order 66 sequence is one of the best scenes in Star Wars, Natalie Portman’s Padme get the best line of dialogue in the entire franchise after Palpatine crowns himself Emperor, and the final fight between Anakin and Obi Wan, and Yoda and Sidious are fantastic. Sure there are still some really bad lines of dialogue even in these great scenes, but they don’t negatively affect my enjoyment of the film. If I had any issue with the film, it would be that Padme gets nothing to do because they deleted her subplot from the movie, but other than that I love this movie and it’s definitely one of the reasons why I think lots of people prefer the Prequel Trilogy.

The Force Awakens is a great movie that does an excellent job of setting up the rest of the trilogy. The new leads are extremely compelling and it was nice to finally have great acting back after the performances in the Prequel trilogy were oddly stilted and wooden. While it is a bit too similar to A New Hope I also think structurally it does more than enough to distinguish the film in a way that makes it distinctly unique. While there are times where Rey comes across as being too good at things, her character arc throughout the movie is extremely compelling and her relationship with Han works really well. I also love Finn and it’s a shame what happens with his character arc in the later movies. I don’t have any real issues with the film it’s just great fun all throughout.

The Last Jedi is very divisive amongst the fandom at large, and while I can definitely understand a lot of fans dissatisfaction with certain elements of the movie, Luke’s character arc specifically, it’s my favorite of the sequel trilogy and my second favorite Star Wars film. I really appreciated how it tried to establish some more moral complexity in the series. I loved everyone’s character arcs in this movie and it’s the only one in the ST where I think every main character gets something important and substantial going on with them. I think if there’s one flaw with the movie, other than Canto Bight, it’s that I don’t think it does a good enough job of making its theme and message come across. Also say what you want about the movie, at least it attempted to do something new and fresh with the franchise, unlike its sequel.

The Rise of Skywalker is probably the only Star Wars film I actively hate. When I first watched it in theaters I had a really fun time, but as time has gone on since it’s annoyed me more and more. There’s no tension because they keep fake out killing people, Finn and Poe get nothing to do, and Rey Palpatine is the worst backtracking I’ve ever seen in a major franchise. There are things that I do enjoy about it, I feel like Rey and Kylo Ren’s arcs despite the retcons, and the stuff on the Death Star wreckage is excellent, but ultimately it’s just a video game fetch quest made into a movie. Honestly, I think this is the worst film in the entire franchise specifically because it’s supposed to be the end to not only the sequel trilogy but the entire saga and as that it fails spectacularly. You can’t make the final movie to a trilogy by trying to spend half of the runtime retconning the previous film from existence. There’s a reason why the unmade Duel of the Fates is widely regarded to be how the trilogy should’ve ended, and despite my issues with the script, it at least gives everything something to do.

So despite Rise being awful and Revenge being great, why do I still prefer the Sequel Trilogy. I think it’s that despite the prequel trilogy coming together quite well and as a whole feels way more like a cohesive story, there’s no getting past the fact that I just don’t really love 2 of the 3 movies. I enjoy the prequel movies but I have lots of big problems with them that hamper my ability to fully enjoy them. With the sequels I love the first 2 movies I don’t have any big complaints with them that take me out of the movie. Sure Rise is awful, but the fan edits on this site have salvaged the film for me.

I was coming around to appreciate them more then Lucas attacked the fans again, my hatred of the prequel stems towards his treatment of the originals and refusing to make a sequel trilogy at least in part.

If i could divorce SW from Lucas I’m picking the EU over both the Prequel and sequel, though i have a soft spot for Phantom Menace, and have liked aspects of Last Jedi but not the whole. My Star Wars world is Luke Skywalker his friends, those characters. Its not anchored to Disney or the Prequel.

OFFICIAL Ranking

1. Original Trilogy
2. Revenge of the Sith
3. Phantom Menace
4. Rise of Skywalker
5. Force Awakens
6. Attack of the Clones
7. Last Jedi

Overall prequels take it just for having the best parts of Revenge of the Sith and Phantom Menace. Not coincidentally those are the easiest movies to fix and it’s been done probably a hundred times by different people here and on other sites.

Attack of the Clones is really bad and directly caused pretty much everything I hate about the entire series including in the Expanded Universe, but it doesn’t quite attack the audience itself or the concept of the setting, and it has some fun stuff with Obi Wan. Last Jedi takes the foundation and goes a step further into active hostility toward the other movies and the viewer. It has some neat cinematography but that’s nowhere close to making up for any of it.

Rise of Skywalker is a blast to watch because it’s so ridiculous and insane but it is also the only one of the sequels that actually gives the main characters something to do and it ends on a positive message. Force Awakens would be higher if it weren’t so dependent on having a next installment to answer all the questions, so it’s retroactively worse as a result.

The Prequels and Sequels both suck for entirely different reasons. The Sequels had no singular vision, which resulted in an incoherent mess. The Prequels had a solid concept and singular vision that was implemented in one of the most bafflingly worst ways possible.

Good questions, for another time.

I like Mark Hamill in Last Jedi, I appreciate the performance. When I didn’t like how Luke was written, but I liked the film visually, it’s hard to really nail down what was off with the movie. I still think a good episode 9 would have contributed greatly to making the narrative of episode 8 make sense. Having Luke say he was afraid seems to totally be out of sorts with the story Rian was telling. I think Luke purposefully took himself out of the fight, and cut himself off from the force, wanted the Jedi to end. I don’t think it was fear. He saw the prequel Jedi as colossal failures and arrogant, they let the Emperor rise to power and OBI-Wan created Darth Vader.

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 PT functions better as a trilogy, but each piece sucks. I like TFA and TLJ well enough, they are better than the prequels, but TROS is shoddy conclusion so the ST sucks as a trilogy too. Tough choice.

The Prequels are a good story told poorly. The Sequels are a bad story told well. I like 'em both in their own ways. They each have a really bad episode in them (AotC and TRoS) with two more that are pretty fun.

Why did Luke blame himself and walk away from everything, as Han said?
Why didn’t Luke sense Han’s incoming death and come to his aid?
Is Finn force-sensitive too, and if so, will that get in the way of Rey being the supposed new Jedi messiah?
Is Finn the “backup messiah”? Or is that Kylo, since he will obviously be redeemed?
Is Finn gonna be the new face of the rebels, while Rey is the new face of the Jedi, or is that Poe, since the script decided to leave him alive at the last minute?

Those aren’t mystery boxes, they’re just speculation. Plot holes if you really wanna insist they’re essential. The movie never asks the audience these questions.

Rise of Skywalker is a blast to watch because it’s so ridiculous and insane

I actually agree with this. This has been my stance on the movie since it came out.

Rey Skywalker is insane because it implies anyone can just be that, and yet no-surname no-family FINN doesn’t get closure. Also the movie itself might be watchable as pure spectacle if the visuals at Exogol weren’t wholly nausea inducing. I can only take so much, and basically everything after Kijimi falls apart from a story and action standpoint. Meanwhile the prequels barely work from page one so…

The Exogol battle in Rise of Skywalker is a disgusting mess. And the Prequel battles are mostly just CGI vomit. Somehow, neither the Prequels nor Sequels managed to have a space battle anywhere near as emotionally intense or visually engaging as the Battle of Endor filmed in 1983. And the problem goes well beyond the visual overload in the Prequels and Rise of Skywalker.

The problem is these movies have forgotten how to build up tension and suspense leading up to the battle. There’s rarely like, a briefing room scene, where they go over the objectives, the stakes, etc., so we can follow the action during the battle and have some emotional reaction to the ups and downs, the set-backs and victories. Like with the Battle of Endor, when they realize the deflector shield is still up, we understand how fucked they are, because we know the mission objectives. Then the fleet of Star Destroyers shows up, and then we discover the Death Star superlaser is operational. The Rebels then try to merge their fleet with the Star Destroyer fleet in desperation, just to survive long enough until the shield generator comes down.

But in the Prequels you have stuff like the Battle of Coruscant in ROTS which, while visually stunning occasionally, is mostly just an emotionally empty CGI mess. We don’t know who is winning or losing, nothing that happens really means anything because we don’t know how it affects the overall battle. The battle itself is really just a backdrop against which the main characters try to carry out a rescue operation. That’s fine - but there’s never any other proper space battles with clearly communicated objectives, and action we can get invested in by following the ups and downs, set backs and victories. I mean, in the Death Star attack in A New Hope, pretty much every single X-wing that gets shot down feels significant.

In Force Awakens, they tried to redo the Death Star attack from A New Hope. They even had a briefing scene, but they kind of play it for laughs and meta-jokes. Then the actual battle just feels rushed and emotionally empty. You can’t really follow the action or react emotionally to any ups and downs. There’s no main characters even involved. Then in Rise of Skywalker, they sort of tried to setup some mission objectives for the Exegol battle - I think they had to take out a communications tower or something, but the whole thing makes very little sense. The battle also quickly devolves into a cloud of nonsense, at one point showing horses charging across the surface of a Star Destroyer, and Palpatine electrocuting the entire atmosphere.

I can watch the Phantom Menace and revenge of the Sith. The last Jedi is the only good sequel trilogy movie. However, the last Jedi is far from perfect. It’s just that the direction, the acting and the character relationships are up there with the original trilogy at times. The last Jedi is literally 50% excellent and 50% terrible. That 50% of excellence easily destroys anything in the prequel movies. But if I had to force myself to watch one trilogy, I would pick the prequel because I just loathe JJ Abrams for his lack of creativity

The prequels without question, but I do truly love the sequels as well. If we somehow lived in an alternate universe wherein Rian Johnson had directed all three sequels, perhaps my answer would be different. For a more modern take on Star Wars, TLJ is perfection I feel. But the prequels are maybe my favorite part of Star Wars in general, so maybe I’d still prefer them. Regardless, in the reality we live in I definitely do.

Both were cinematic magic in terms of visuals, both suffered in their plotting and direction.

I appreciate the sequel for using practical sets, shooting on film. The art design, the cinematography and I think the acting is better. No not somehow Palpatine returned, or they fly now.

I also think the sequel has more likable people, no one in the prequel except for Qui-Gon was likable. Maybe Padme and young Ani in Phantom Menace.

So yes, I do put Rey, Finn, Poe ahead of Hayden Anakin in likability. And i would take Jake Skywalker everyday of the week over Hayden Vader.