Least bad "Star Wars" prequel

Phantom Menace was a god-awful movie, but Liam Neeson's character of Quigon-Jin was great.

Attack of the Clones was the best movie of the three.

Revenge of the Sith was not done as well as it should have been, in part because the younger Obi-Wan was miscast.

Maybe one of these days I'll go I to detail why I felt like these movies are all horrible, but I probably won't since nobody cares, and it'll probably come across to you guys as an old guy waving his cane yelling through his gums about whatnot..

Also it's quite a long list of reasons.

And I guess I agree that Liam did okay for the absolute shlock he was given but that's about as far as I'm willing to go in terms of compliments for these horrid atrocities

Sam Whitfield To be fair, I hate the subsequent trashed releases of "Star Wars", "Empire" and "Jedi" (starting in 97, then again in 04, 06, and 12) about as much as I do the fact that no matter how hard I wish them away, or ignore their existence, the prequels will always exist. I'm not sure which one I find more offensive. Almost everything about those special editions is dumb and wrong, and in a lot of cases is a sign of the massive problems to come in the prequels

For example, the scene before the Mos Eisley Cantina in "Star Wars", we see an exterior shot of the city, with modest amount of activity, but in the special editions, they just pack as much unnnecessary crap into every f*cking shot.

That's just one example, but another is the primary colors (especially in the 97 special edition) are all jacked up. The colors all look off, the lightsabers look awful (Vader's is basically pink), and the new CG shots are absolutely ugly and unnecessary. I'm not against use of CG, but the way it was used (that is to say, large parts of this movie were filmed in front of a green screen, as opposed to shooting on location) The result might look crisp, but it also looks sterile and fake, and is really jarring and distracting.

That doesn't even begin to touch the problems with the plot structure, the cardboard, and 1 dimensional characters, godawful dialogue, sloppy and rushed writing, etc (I joked, when the Phantom Menace was in 3D, that this was the only way that anything in that movie would be three dimensional)


The only time I ever sympathize with a character in the prequels is when that robot (whatever its name is, nobody cares) says Padme has lost the will to live.

After being tricked twice into thinking that movies might be good (Phantom Menace & Clones), and coming (because i felt obligated) to Sith, I felt like i lost the will to live, too.

I don't think so, Zach. The first three work well as films, and as part of a trilogy/arc, whereas everything in the prequels really doesn't. (I'll begrudgingly include Jedi, but I do so acknowledging it's the weakest of the three for reasons I'll go into later)

I think we can agree though that George Lucas is the problem, and even though I really wish these next movies didn't exist, getting Lucas out of this was probably the best thing they could have done. I only regret that his decision to sell Lucasfilms came about 20 years too late.

The first three work as both stand-alone-pieces, and as parts of a larger trilogy. They're very much homages to the Saturday morning serials that George grew up watching & loved. They contain a tight and well written story, with snappy and clever dialogue, and a cast of clearly defined characters, with clearly-defined motives. These characters all portray classic archetypes dating back to forever ago.

As for the dialogue being cheesy at points, maybe, but nothing comparable to the absolute crap that made it into the prequels ('I hate sand' 'Anakin you're breaking my heart' "it's only because i'm SO in love with you/so love has blinded you?" Say what you will about the original three, but nothing this embarrassing made it into Star Wars, Empire, or Jedi. What made Star Wars and Empire good was that Lucas had people helping him re-write the scripts constantly, or in the case of Irvin Kershner, interacting with the actors, re-writing whole scenes right on the set. The point is, Lucas wanted to have complete control over his movies again, so he took back over on Jedi, but still allowed for Lawrence Kasdan to re-write parts of the script. I imagine the only reason Jedi is as good as it is, can be attributed to the input that Kasdan had. That being said, little problems that we would see in the prequels (and the horrid special editions) begin to manifest themselves in Jedi, but in a much much less egregious form.

The problem with the prequels is Lucas had nobody there to tell him no, or tell him that his ideas need work, or his script is complete schlock. The result is a sloppily written script that makes absolutely no sense, with wooden, one-dimensional characters, who lack common sense, or the ability to come to conclusions that any non-idiot would come to.


Anyway, this has been a long post, and I know that was very general but I'm more than happy to list my specific grievances with the prequels, because I think pretty much everything in them is wrong.