Coming out of the Star Wars Prequel Closet

[ER]

I like the prequels. In fact I prefer them over the original trilogy by about the same proportion I like the originals over the hapless sequels

There, glad to finally admit that truth at last. And I know somewhere there have to be others who feel the same way. Maybe we can have a convention....in an elevator.

[indianasmith]

I don't like them better than the original trilogy, but I think they are way better than most folks seem to realize.
I enjoyed them all!

[Trevor]

I came out of the closet in 2003....... oops, wrong thread and subject matter 😳😊😉🐢

I have never seen any of the Star Wars prequels.

[Alex]

I don't care for them myself. I thought Ewan McGregor's acting was fine, but the effects often grated on me and seemed out of place compared with the older movies.

If someone else likes them, then fair enough though.

[Gabriel Knight]

My favorite STAR WARS movie is EPISODE I, it's actually the first one I saw in the cinema. And I believe the best one is EPISODE III. So don't feel bad ER, you're not alone. Think it this way: the more awful movies Disney puts out, the better people will look up to the prequels.

I don't usually get the complaints about the prequels to be honest. I mean, Jar Jar Binks is silly? What about the ewoks taking down an army with sticks, or the annoying C3PO talking like an idiot?
Yes, Anakin and Padme romance is lame, but Leia and Solo was equally crappy and cliche. The only thing that salvaged it was the cool dialog delivered by Harrison Ford, otherwise it would've been just as boring. At least Anakin's had a point in the story.
I usually hear that the plot of EPISODE I is confusing and all over the place. Yes, because EPISODE IV was quite the original story. It wasn't even planned to have sequels, so all the talk about the Force is pure randomness, only later was fleshed out.

[Morpheus, the unwoke.]

The prequels were good, and the first taste of SW we'd had in a long while. They could not be as truly wonderful as the first movies because the first movies were totally new to audiences. No follow-up movies had thst sense of new to them that made star wars a cinema legend.

As for the effects, at least the lightsaber effects interacted with the environment now, they lit things up, reflected off shiny things, etc. The fx of the originals didn't allow that.

I think all the follow-up sw movies suffered from too high expectations, star wars was a legend, other novies just could never live up to what it created by being a totally new movie. You can'rlt re-do new.

[ralfy]

I think Lucas wanted to make the series more serious so that viewers would see his story as important, but something went wrong with the writing such that the whole thing came out as banal and tedious.

Similar is probably taking place for works like Andor, Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan, but Rogue One was rescued by its last act, and Mandalorian did very well by mining from very good Westerns and samurai flicks.

Which is similar to what happened to the first few movies.

[FatFreddysCat]

I only saw Phantom Menace, and was so disappointed by it that I never even bothered with Episodes II and III.

Sometimes I think about re-visiting P.M. and seeing if my opinion would be different now after so many years, but I haven't gotten round to it yet.

[Dr. Whom]

I only saw Phantom Menace, and was so disappointed by it that I never even bothered with Episodes II and III.

Sometimes I think about re-visiting P.M. and seeing if my opinion would be different now after so many years, but I haven't gotten round to it yet.

I am much of the same opinion. What I have seen of the prequels doesn't really motivate me to go out and see them. But I do agree that they are made out to be worse than they are.

[ralfy]

I remember Pop pointing out after watching the early movies that they look familiar. Later, I found out that Lucas was borrowing heavily from pirate movies, samurai flicks, Westerns, war movies, etc., so when I told Pop he said, "So, that explains it. Dambusters!"

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Given that, maybe Lucas wanted to show something original and at the same time more adult. I guess it didn't work.

[Cult_Moody_Movies]

Worst movies of all time? No. Did they live up to the hype? No. It was clear George Lucas had nobody to tell him no after not directing for over 22 years.

[ER]

I remember Pop pointing out after watching the early movies that they look familiar. Later, I found out that Lucas was borrowing heavily from pirate movies, samurai flicks, Westerns, war movies, etc., so when I told Pop he said, "So, that explains it. Dambusters!"

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Given that, maybe Lucas wanted to show something original and at the same time more adult. I guess it didn't work.

"Borrowing" or touching on similar tropes? (Or a homage?)  Remember, according to that great sage Stephen King, all storytelling is going down one of seven paths.

[ralfy]

"Borrowing" or touching on similar tropes? (Or a homage?)  Remember, according to that great sage Stephen King, all storytelling is going down one of seven paths.

It's similar with Mandalorian, which borrows heavily from westerns (including spaghetti westerns) and samurai flicks and movies. One can see things like Lone Wolf and Cub, The Seven Samurai, etc. Similar to Star Wars and Hidden Fortress, among others. Finally, there's also Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, etc.

However, there's also Bloom's "anxiety of influence, where new artists want to break away from their predecessors. This might explain the last part of my post:

Given that, maybe Lucas wanted to show something original and at the same time more adult. I guess it didn't work.