I totally think Star Wars could’ve pulled off a more political plot – I actually even think it could’ve been just as good for a popcorn flick as the OT and far better for the people who want deep, complex, meaningful lore while enhancing the OT. Palpatine’s plan to instigate a war and play both sides, to me, is the actually perfect Palpatine backstory. Anakin’s backstory in the (very) broad strokes is extremely compelling too, and Obi-Wan was overall fantastic. Problem is that George completely fucked up the writing, Anakin’s character development and his relationship with Padmé, a lot of the acting, etc., and squandered so much of the potential the premise had.
This new wave of prequel apologia, that, imo, was catalyzed by the influx of memes, is pointing at criticisms of the prequels from like 15 years ago while totally ignoring the more nuanced, well-argued, and – I think – damning criticisms of the modern day. It’s basically strawmanning when the criticisms are so old and so dead.
Agree with your comment mostly, but I think the prequel apologia is catalyzed by all the kids who watched when they were less than 10 years old becoming adults a decade ago, and remembering them through the rose-tinted lens of nostalgia.
In the prequel heyday Lucasfilm absolutely deluged the world with toys and cross-marketed products, those kids were surrounded by it and of course watched the films, saw the cool parts, and didn’t understand enough to see that the films were very flawed from an adult perspective.
I agree, and i think it’s more than just nostaliga. All the additional media/shows added so much extra context, which makes the movies seem better then they actually are, because it tends to get blended together in people’s minds growing up.
Characters like Anakin or Darth Maul, who are wrtten absolutely terribly in the movies are much more liked because of shows like Clone Wars, which influenced the way people remember the movies additionally to the nostalgia.
Yeah that’s a great point. Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars did an amazing job expanding and legitimizing the plots and characters introduced in the prequels.
I’ve not seen the clone wars, but I found the prequel to be more engaging. Tho I didn’t really watch much star wars growing up. I caught up as an adult.
I’d always thought it was catalyzed by the widespread shitposts which were then seen by kids who’d never watched or been exposed to the prequels before. The kids, in my interpretation, took the tongue-in-cheek love for the prequels and the way the meme community would twist the prequels’ flaws into strengths (under 7 layers of irony) and adopted it as an unironic love for them.
In my own personal opinion, there are at least two major things that bring the prequels down:
The pacing sucks. They tried to cram too much shit into three movies, and the Episode 1 was kind of a wash for character development because they spend the entire movie simply introducing us to the main characters for the next two films. If they had either spread it out over more films or narrowed their scope a little more, it would have been a much more enjoyable viewing experience.
The dialogue is bad. The wooden acting, flat delivery of the lines, and lame slapstick I attribute to George being high off his own supply - both fans and the creative team puffing him up and telling him what a genius he is when what he really needed was someone in the room to step in and write and direct for him when he was clearly having issues with both late into production. Just in general he needed someone to tell him “No” from time to time.
There are probably more things than that, but just taking the prequels in a vacuum and not considering their greater impact on the lore, those are the two most glaring issues with them. Supplemental media spends a lot of time trying to plug plot holes and lore inconsistencies that were created by the prequels.
Overall I think they are decent but flawed films. I never thought that the political intrigues were bad, but they could have shown us more and told us less to really drive the point across.
I totally think Star Wars could’ve pulled off a more political plot – I actually even think it could’ve been just as good for a popcorn flick as the OT and far better for the people who want deep, complex, meaningful lore while enhancing the OT. Palpatine’s plan to instigate a war and play both sides, to me, is the actually perfect Palpatine backstory. Anakin’s backstory in the (very) broad strokes is extremely compelling too, and Obi-Wan was overall fantastic. Problem is that George completely fucked up the writing, Anakin’s character development and his relationship with Padmé, a lot of the acting, etc., and squandered so much of the potential the premise had.
This new wave of prequel apologia, that, imo, was catalyzed by the influx of memes, is pointing at criticisms of the prequels from like 15 years ago while totally ignoring the more nuanced, well-argued, and – I think – damning criticisms of the modern day. It’s basically strawmanning when the criticisms are so old and so dead.
Agree with your comment mostly, but I think the prequel apologia is catalyzed by all the kids who watched when they were less than 10 years old becoming adults a decade ago, and remembering them through the rose-tinted lens of nostalgia.
In the prequel heyday Lucasfilm absolutely deluged the world with toys and cross-marketed products, those kids were surrounded by it and of course watched the films, saw the cool parts, and didn’t understand enough to see that the films were very flawed from an adult perspective.
I blame Weird Al, personally. I can’t listen to The Saga Begins without legitimately wanting to watch that movie at least a little.
I agree, and i think it’s more than just nostaliga. All the additional media/shows added so much extra context, which makes the movies seem better then they actually are, because it tends to get blended together in people’s minds growing up.
Characters like Anakin or Darth Maul, who are wrtten absolutely terribly in the movies are much more liked because of shows like Clone Wars, which influenced the way people remember the movies additionally to the nostalgia.
Yeah that’s a great point. Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars did an amazing job expanding and legitimizing the plots and characters introduced in the prequels.
I’ve not seen the clone wars, but I found the prequel to be more engaging. Tho I didn’t really watch much star wars growing up. I caught up as an adult.
I’d always thought it was catalyzed by the widespread shitposts which were then seen by kids who’d never watched or been exposed to the prequels before. The kids, in my interpretation, took the tongue-in-cheek love for the prequels and the way the meme community would twist the prequels’ flaws into strengths (under 7 layers of irony) and adopted it as an unironic love for them.
In my own personal opinion, there are at least two major things that bring the prequels down:
The pacing sucks. They tried to cram too much shit into three movies, and the Episode 1 was kind of a wash for character development because they spend the entire movie simply introducing us to the main characters for the next two films. If they had either spread it out over more films or narrowed their scope a little more, it would have been a much more enjoyable viewing experience.
The dialogue is bad. The wooden acting, flat delivery of the lines, and lame slapstick I attribute to George being high off his own supply - both fans and the creative team puffing him up and telling him what a genius he is when what he really needed was someone in the room to step in and write and direct for him when he was clearly having issues with both late into production. Just in general he needed someone to tell him “No” from time to time.
There are probably more things than that, but just taking the prequels in a vacuum and not considering their greater impact on the lore, those are the two most glaring issues with them. Supplemental media spends a lot of time trying to plug plot holes and lore inconsistencies that were created by the prequels.
Overall I think they are decent but flawed films. I never thought that the political intrigues were bad, but they could have shown us more and told us less to really drive the point across.