What went wrong with the Star Wars prequels?

Tipsy McSwagger · 14-04-2012 10:02am #1

Well first off its a lot more than Jar Jar Binks? The Phantom Menace is a kids film but confuses kids with a plot about trade taxes and embargoes. I watched TPM a week ago and it's boring and cringeworthy. Dart Vader was once called Anny and said yippeee every time he got excited, the robots were useless in a fight, everything looked so fake. I ain't a Star Wars nerd but do appreciate the original trilogy as being some very good films. The best thing about TPM is John Williams 'Duel of the Fates' that is played in the highly choreographed Jedi v Darth Maul fight. That piece of music is probably the best in the entire SW series. AOTC has the worst romance in film history and I barely remember the last film. I think the main problem was nobody had the balls to stand up to Lucas.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar · 14-04-2012 10:09am

does it actually confuse kids? don't kids love it and it's original star wars fans that hate it?

personally I think the prequels are only a little bit worse than the originals, it's just star wars fans don't have the added benefit of nostalgic love to paper over the cracks when they watch them so the full force of "wtf is this ****" is hitting them in the face

speedboatchase · 14-04-2012 10:34am

No one had the heart or power to step in and run quality control on George Lucas' ideas because they were so grateful that he was returning to the franchise. Ditto the Matrix sequels where the Wachowskis didn't have anywhere reining in their ideas

Turtyturd · 14-04-2012 10:59am

They covered the wrong time period, I didn't care about Anakin as a kid and what was spread out over the course of the first movie could have been condensed down if they had to include it, it also made the love story kinda creepy by showing Anakin and Amidala at that age. They did get better as they went on though and the third one is a fairly decent movie for the most part, but I feel that would have been a better story for the second movie and for the third movie to cover the period between the end of the prequels and begining of the original trilogy.

The acting is also terrible, Natalie Portman, especially in The Phantom Menace talks in the most mundane way possible before Hayden Christensen takes over for the second two parts. And Ewan McGregor's Obi Wan is ridiculously wooden and one dimensional.

Plus they killed Darth Maul, who actually isn't in it that much and replaced him with an old bloke and a wheezing robot.

FlashD · 14-04-2012 11:26am

Here a few things in my opinion.

1. Darth Vader is Star Wars, without him a Star Wars film is nothing. After all the waiting the audience only ever gets to see him at the end of the last prequel...pathetic! They could have just squeezed all 3 prequels into the first and given us 2 dark action packed prequels with Vader.

2. Too much BAD CGI

3. Badly scripted, too many boring political monologues about nothing. I'm sure the kids were really digging that BS.

4. Wooden acting...brutal at times, comes from the actors working with nothing! I love Ewan Mcgregor's explaination on the Johnathan Ross show. 'Look at the moons, look at the moons' funny sh*t.

Starts 7:15 minutes in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlc01vH8kLU

Paparazzo · 14-04-2012 11:32am

This review is funny, but sums up what's wrong nicely too.

http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/star-wars-episode-1-the-phantom-menace/

johnny_ultimate · 14-04-2012 11:39am

Because they were ****?

Also: fan nostalgia of the original trilogy distorts sensible criticism of what are, in many ways, bad films that have the ability to appeal to children's wildest adventure fantasies.

Also: computers.

Sad Professor · 14-04-2012 1:33pm

The main thing that went wrong is that Lucas isn't a good writer and wasn't able to hire a decent one due to burning his bridges with the WGA years ago and not trusting anyone he didn't know to do it. In fairness to him, he tried to get Kasdan and Darabont to help him but they both turned him down.

Mickeroo · 14-04-2012 1:39pm

Sad Professor wrote: »

The main thing that went wrong is that Lucas isn't a good writer and wasn't able to hire a decent one due to burning his bridges with the WGA years ago and not trusting anyone he didn't know to do it. In fairness to him, he tried to get Kasdan and Darabont to help him but they both turned him down.

This. That was pretty much the problem, Lucas is a great ideas man but his writing has always been poor. Also Phantom Menac and Aettck of the Clones(up until the **** hits the fan towards the end) have very dull storylines that ddn't need to be told.

I don't agree with people saying the original trilogy were bad movies either, they had their flaws for sure but Empire Strikes Back is a classic and with good reason.

icarus86 · 14-04-2012 1:39pm

Expectations were always going to be way too high for those films, and the storylines were just not good enough. Plus Darth Maul was criminally underused in these, he should have been involved right up until Revenge of the Sith.

kitakyushu · 14-04-2012 1:43pm

Ironically there is nothing 'wrong' with the prequels insofar that they are closer to the directors vision than the original series was. In fact if you were to ask Lucas himself he'd tell you that he considers the prequels superior to the movies he made in the 70s/80s.. Whilst I respect Lucas as a creator of characters and ideas I'm of the opinion that original trilogy are great almost in spite of Lucas rather than because of him. For instance it's well known that despite them being 'his' movies he didn't actually direct two of the original three movies but less known is that ANH was heavily re-edited after the pedestrian cut he created tested badly among his peers.

However, for me personally tho as a fan I the prequels fail because they don't past the first simple test of any blockbuster movie. That test is that you have to ask yourself are you onside with the hero characters? Are they interesting, cool or fun enough for you to root for them and hope they get thru the situation and save the day? In the case of the Star Wars prequels the simple answer is 'no'. Everything after that his just incidental.

Stercus Accidit · 14-04-2012 1:45pm

There is no protagonist in the first film (episode one), and none of the characters are memorable or even describable bar their outward appearance.

Luke Skywalker is a clear protagonist, we can describe the personalities of Han Solo, princess Leia, C3PO etc.

Try to do the same with qui gon jin, padme, young obi wan kenobi, you cant. The prequels are substantially inferior films in their own right, let alone the comparison to the fantastic original trilogy.

This whole argument is covered by a youtube movie reviewer who explained the above very succinctly, I can't remember his name, I will have a look.
Edit: Redlettermedia, as linked to in the second post on the thread...

SirDelboy18 · 14-04-2012 2:33pm

Incoherent political ramblings and permutations.
Awful, horrendously developed characters.
Clunky dialogue.
Midichlorians.
Drawn out Lightsaber battles with no emotion.
Villains with unclear motives.

jf852003 · 14-04-2012 3:23pm

For me the issue was that Lucas took a story (the origin of Darth Vader) and tried to stretch it out over 3 movies with consequently a lot of filler. I mean Christ, the galactic trade federation?? Who cares that much?

Origin stories can be great but really one film, say a 3 hour epic would have told the whole story. I read recently that Topher Grace, he of 70's shows and spiderman fame has been learning editing and has edited the 3 films into 1 movie with some great reviews from his "Hollywood pals" . Must find the article

Here it is:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/topher-grace-edited-all-the-star-wars-prequels-int,70527/

Goldstein · 14-04-2012 4:58pm

The woeful plot / script / screenplay / writing
The clueless director and all his spineless yes men and yes women
The miscast cast & lifeless personality-bereft characters
The focus of the films being on largely irrelevant periods of time / events
The overkill of sub-par visual effects & green/blue screens / i.e. laziness
The boring & tedious cinematography
The complete absense of any true emotion / suspense / worth

Apart from that they're awesome.

senordingdong · 14-04-2012 7:24pm

Nothing really 'went' wrong with them.
I have never really found the original three to be of any superior quality.

If people would take off the rose tinted glasses and dissected the original three the way they do the later, they would find little left of the originals worth talking about.

johnnycnandy · 14-04-2012 8:45pm

Honestly, I feel Lucas started too early. Anakin as an annoying 9 year old was too much. I think the whole saga would have been better off if Episode 1 had started off around where Episode 2 did. I think TPM was horrible for a number of reasons. AOTC is a decent movie, has an unfairly bad reputation. ROTS is a fantastic movie that people write off cos its a prequel.

iguana · 14-04-2012 9:03pm

jf852003 wrote: »

For me the issue was that Lucas took a story (the origin of Darth Vader) and tried to stretch it out over 3 movies with consequently a lot of filler. I mean Christ, the galactic trade federation?? Who cares that much?

There didn't even need to be so much filler though. It's so bloody weird, AotC ends with the beginning of the Clone War and RotS starts with the end of the Clone War. Why couldn't we see the fuçking Clone War? It would have been more interesting than most of what we did see in those movies. He also relied way too heavily on CGI, crap like the pod race and the car chase around Coruscant at the start of AotC go on for too long and get really boring, really fast as they aren't climactic scenes and you either know from the start how they will end or don't give a crap.

The 'love story' was atrocious. Wtf was with that scene of Portman and Christiansen running about on a hill holding hands? It was like a really bad parody. And Lucas didn't even bother to stick to the few facts about what we did know of that time period, or else he left out that real ultimate Jedi in the galaxy was Leai because getting such a strong emotional impression of her mother in the 2 and a half seconds she is with her before she dies is bloody impressive for a 2 and a half second old.

Tipsy McSwagger · 14-04-2012 9:13pm

The original trilogy is endlessly quotable but when I think of the prequels all I hear is 'iz a peeple gonna die' and 'how wude'.

kitakyushu · 14-04-2012 9:20pm

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

The original trilogy is endlessly quotable but when I think of the prequels all I hear is 'iz a peeple gonna die' and 'how wude'.

"I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth. "
- Anakin Skywalker

Tipsy McSwagger · 14-04-2012 9:24pm

kitakyushu wrote: »

"I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth. "
- Anakin Skywalker

Are you sure that's not Oscar Wilde?

kitakyushu · 14-04-2012 9:27pm

I don't like snow. It's cold and wet and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is cool and breezy. "
- Darth Vader upon arrival at Cloud City

krudler · 14-04-2012 9:33pm

Lucas can't write, he's great at coming up with concepts for movies but as a writer he's diabolical. its like Episode 1 had one draft of a screenplay banged out over a weekend, its full of completely pointless characters and scenes.

Galvasean · 14-04-2012 9:51pm

And to think the whole war kicked off because the IMF couldn't get Naboo to pay their space taxes... or something.

kitakyushu · 14-04-2012 10:03pm

Galvasean wrote: »

And to think the whole war kicked off because the IMF couldn't get Naboo to pay their space taxes... or something.

And it escalated when that good guy / bad guy Darth Tyranus / Count Dooku got involved with his plan to help / hinder the republic /empire. (delete where appropriate)

Yep, great storytelling there.

Galvasean · 14-04-2012 10:05pm

Darth Tyrannus should have looked like this:

bnt · 14-04-2012 11:51pm

Those films have "old-fashioned" styles of direction and editing that annoy me. It might be deliberate, to evoke that 1950s TV serial feel, but I think it's more likely to be just rushed or lazy editing. Watch the camera during dialogue scenes for an example of what I mean. They always show the person talking at that moment:
Camera on person 1. Person 1 speaks.
Camera on person 2. Person 2 speaks.
Camera on person 3. Person 3 speaks.
Cutaway: finger pushes a button.
Camera on person 1. Person 1 speaks.
Camera on person 3. Person 3 speaks.
Camera on person 2. Person 2 speaks.

Compare this to a more "modern" film, where you have action and dialogue overlapping, and we can see reactions - which can be more interesting than what is being said. The Lucas way is just clunky, I think.

Rubber_Soul · 15-04-2012 12:09am

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

does it actually confuse kids? don't kids love it and it's original star wars fans that hate it?

It's just anecdotal but what I've found is that kids did love the prequels when they were intially released. As they've gotten older though they see the flaws with them. The originals popularity has endured and imo that's down to the difference in quality.

What went wrong with the Star Wars prequels?

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