I don't h8 The Prequels anymore (Part 1).

Previously with Star Wars...

• I Love Star Wars.
• Happy sixth observed Star Wars day.
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi poster!
• Star Wars Anthology Trilogy update 2.

Previously with THIS series...

I don't h8 the 90's anymore.

• Part 1 (Cartoons part 1)
• Part 1.5 (Cartoons part 1.5)
• Part 2 (Movies part 1)
• Part 2.5 (Movies part 1.5)
• Part 3 (Movies part 2)
• Part 3.5 (Movies part 2.5)
• Part 4 (Regular-ass TV)
• Part 5 (Cable TV part 1)
• Part 5.5 (Cable TV part 1.5)
• Part 5.75 (Cable TV part 1.75)
• Part 6 (Novels)
• Part 7 (Magazines/Comics)
• Part 8 (Music/Games/Internet)
• Part 9 (Trips/Treasures/Treats)

I don't "meh", the 00's anymore.

Part 1 (Summer Of Dune!!)


Okay, let's just do this thing...


I waited for these things for a long fucking time.
I heard rumors of the prequels as early as 1992, when the Thrawn books came out.

Kept hearing about them, and hearing about them, with no concrete date.

Then, all of a sudden, they were supposed to come in 1996, Frank Darabont was supposed to direct, and he was supposed to write them from plotlines written by Lucas.
And, Kenneth Branagh was supposed to be Obi-Wan.
I dearly wish I could go to an alternate timeline, and see that version.

But nope, 1996 rolled around, and Lucas decided to do the Special Editions instead for 1997.
Then we had to wait another two fucking years after that.

I learned the hard way from "Freddy vs Jason", and the prequels, don't believe Jack shit until they start fucking shooting.
They can even have it casted, and have production sketches, and costume tests, like "Superman Lives", did.
Nope, they need to aim the cameras at actors, and say "action!!", or it's fucking nothing.

I pass that wisdom on to you, kiddies.

Crow remake? Avatar sequels? Shazam movie? Booster Gold/Blue Beetle buddy cop movie?
Believe it when they tweet pics of production happening.
Until then, tell 'em "go fuck yourselves".

Anyway, two thirds of the trilogy were 00's, but I count it as a 90's memory, because of the Development Hell.
Here we go!!


The Phantom Menace (1999)

What's good.

Qui-Gon.
Obi-Wan.
Darth Maul.
Sideous/Palpatine.
Saber fights.
Pod race.
"Dual Of The Fates".

What's still bad.

Amidala (Queen persona).
Jar-Jar.
Trade Federation.
Boring senate scenes.
Lucas's self-congratulating art-house pretenses.

General notes.

Y'know what I didn't include in there?
Midi-chlorians.
I don't give a fuck about them.
I get why people don't like them, never understood why people lost their fucking minds over them. You people know there are real problems going on in the world, right?
War, starvation, genital mutilation, Harvey Weinstein, pedo priests, that Republicans even still exist after...pretty much Watergate onward.
Midi-chlorians rocked some people's worlds like a replicant giving birth.
I think they thought they supplant the force instead of supplementing it.
People are fucking blockheads.

Y'know what else I didn't hate on?
Jake Lloyd. His life is destroyed, leave the poor little bastard alone.

Third thing I won't rag on anymore.
"Too much CGI!".
Mothafucka, everything uses as much if not more CG than the prequels now, and all CG from that period is looking dated now. It is what it is. Like the puppets and models of the old ones.
Time to finally let it go.

Overall re-assessment.

Still the weakest prequel, and weakest Star Wars entry overall.
I would still watch this over a REAL bad movie, like "Battlefield Earth", or "Showgirls", or fucking "Gummo".
People who act like this is one of the worst movies ever haven't watched enough fucking movies.
You fuckers don't know what bad is, you pampered little poodles.

Oh, I still wouldn't randomly choose to watch it either.
I need an excuse, like a marathon before a new Star Wars movie, or something.

I think I get what Lucas was going for.
A children's story that gradually gets more adult and more dark as it goes along.
That's why you've got Jar-Jar, that's why you've got little kid Anakin, that's why you've got Saturday morning cartoon villains like the Trade Federation.
The Harry Potter series pulled this transition/evolution off way better.
Lucas could have done this better if he'd gotten help, but his ego wouldn't allow it.
A shame. With just little tweaks, these films could have been beloved.
Harry Potter is the proof.


Attack Of The Clones (2002)

What's good.

Obi-Wan.
The whole Clone mystery thread with Obi-Wan and Jango-Fett.
Jango-Fett's gadgets.
Jango-Fett's ship.
Yoda.
Dooku.
Sideous/Palpatine.
Saber fights.
Continuity links to Classic Trilogy starting to form.

What's still bad.

Anakin.
Amidala (period).
Cringe-worthy romance thread. (this drags the score way down for most people)
50's diner. (seriously, WTF?)
Droid factory hi-jinks.
CGI Threepio inconsistent with how he moves as man-in-suit.
Flying Artoo.

General notes.

Same notes as "Phantom", with the CGI.

Also, Anakin on Tatooine....it's a roller-coaster of good and bad, I can't give it a solid score.

Overall re-assessment.

God, trim out or fix the romance shit, and this could almost be decent.
A lot of people even consider this worse than "Phantom Menace", because of that.

If I just blot out the shitty romance dialog, then the saber fight stuff, and the clone mystery, and Jar-Jar  becoming an unwitting instrument of evil easily make this better than "Phantom".

That Dooku turned before "Phantom", and the clones were building up right after "Phantom", kinda almost fixes "Phantom", by ret-con.
Almost.


Revenge Of The Sith (2005)

What's good.

Obi-Wan.
Sideous/Palpatine.
Yoda.
Palpatine/Anakin opera scene.
Anakin's final fall and transformation.
The rise of the Empire.
The fall of the Jedi.
Literal destruction of the senate.
Saber fights.
Bail Organa (what little we get of him)
The cautionary tale of the rise of Fascism that becomes more relevant every fucking day.
Everything that hooks right up to "A New Hope".

What's still bad.

Residual cartoony goofiness at the beginning.
Residual cringe-y love dialogue.
Amidala (Portman had totally checked out by then)
Residual cringe on Hayden's performance, but that's Lucas's directing.
Jar-Jar doesn't die.

General notes.

Same notes on the CG as the other two.

On Portman checking out, there were some scenes that made her character better, but they were cut.
One in particular, at the end, she's NOT naive and retarded as she comes off in the final film, she KNOWS Anakin is bad, and goes to KILL him, and brings a knife to Mustafar to sneak up on him and do it, but she finds she can't bring herself to, and drops the knife, and THAT'S what makes Anakin flip out at her. God, that would've been so much better! But, alas. *Sigh*

Also, there's a cut scene that's in the DVD of Amidala, Bail, and Mon Mothma creating the rebellion.
The Mon Mothma actress from that scene came back for "Rogue One".

Overall re-assessment.

Best of the prequels.

I marathon-ed this and "A New Hope", together before going to see "Rogue One".
It was great.
I'd have no problem watching all three of those as a trilogy now.
We'll see how it goes with "Solo".

Overall re-assessment of the whole trilogy.

Palpatine's arc throughout, Ian McDiarmid's performance as Palpatine (should've got an Oscar nod for "Sith"),  Ewan McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan, and the whole rise of the Empire arc are worth watching for.

There's good Star Wars lore in there, and a good overall message there (keep your eye on the Nazis!), even if individual performances can be cringe-y.

I think everyone wanted "Revenge Of The Sith", to be the whole trilogy, but Lucas gave us prequels to the prequels, and crammed all the stuff the fans wanted into "Sith".

That could be forgivable if this were a novel, because novels can do the slow build thing, but these are movies, dammit.
In two-hour self contained chunks, you've got to give people a fucking show.
If you wanna do slow-burn, there's Netflix binge-watching.
Ask "Iron Man 2", and "Batman v Superman",  how people take to movies dedicated to world-building.
They get antsy, then cranky.

People got way out of joint over these not meeting expectations, more than any other franchise, because 1. the "raped my childhood", aspect, and 2. "Sith", was going to be the last one forever.
The last word on Star Wars. The Disney sequels/interquels fix that second one.

As for "raped my childhood", go fuck yourselves.
I covered this on the lead-up to Ghostbusters:ATC.

"Sith", being the end sat badly with me, that I can empathize with.

I think once "The Last Jedi", comes out, and is good, thus we have three good new ones to counter-balance the prequels, wounds will heal, and people will be much more forgiving.

Plus, I hear Episode 9 will tie up the continuity of all 9 films including the prequels, and I hope that's true.

Residual gripes.

1. The good guys being idiots, and not being able to see Palpatine for what he was, even with the force.
2. Again, the cringe-y romance shit.

Canon fixes.

1. One of the novels says the Jedi Temple was built on top of an old Sith Temple, and Palpatine excavated that temple, and used its power to exponentially magnify his own, and cloaked himself in the force, and made the Jedi stupid with mind-clouding in the vicinity of that cloak. We see Palpy perform spells in this temple room in "Clone Wars", so this is canon.
This should theoretically render him invincible, but clearly, he got cocky, and left Coruscant, thus his power source, in "Return Of The Jedi", and hence why Luke and Vader finally got the drop on him.
The Sith taint on Coruscant may also be why The New Republic finally moved their capital to the Hosnian system by the time of "The Force Awakens".
It all adds up!

2. The semi-canon comic book miniseries "Tag & Bink Are Dead", has two comedic characters, the titular Tag & Bink, stumbling around in the periphery of all the Star Wars movies as stormtroopers, or pilots, or guards, and causing or aiding along major events in the films, and retroactively explaining away old nitpicks of the films.
In the prequel era, they help Anakin court Amidala just off-screen, like Cyrano, and their bad advice explains his terrible dialogue.
Ron Howard is sneaking Tag & Bink into "Solo", so you can totally accept this as canon if you like.

Also, Palpatine could have manipulated them together in the first place with the force to use Amidala as a chess piece towards Anakin's turn later, and foreseen himself doing it.
This would explain her being a daft blinded idiot.
Anakin I can see, but the mother of Leia should be smarter.

I mean, Palps DID say in "Jedi", "everything that has transpired has done so according to my design!".

I got no fix for Jar-Jar.
Sorry.
Even the novels don't want to kill him.

Aaanyhooo...

Summing the prequels up as films.

As part of the Star Wars legacy, weak, to passable.
As sci-fi films if you never knew about Star Wars, you could do far worse.
The Alien franchise finds itself in much worse shape these days.

Summing up their place in the franchise.

If it weren't for the pounding the prequels took, Lucas wouldn't have sold out to Disney, and we wouldn't have "Force Awakens", "Rogue One", and "The Last Jedi".

So, it's all good!!

It all worked out!!

Hooray!!


And that's finally the end!!!!!

Up next, compilation!!
And, maybe some after thoughts....