Cinemassacre: Are the prequels bad?

[Zone Was Wrong]

I'm a big enough Star Wars fan that I can't say I don't find enjoyment from all of the prequels. In fact Revenge of the Sith is damn good film imo, that opera scene with Palpatine is pretty damn haunting. While I don't particularly care for Episode 1 as a whole I still found I loved the fight scenes, Qui Gon, the music, and Obi Wan. I have my issues with the over use of cgi, the fact the pod racing scene does seem to drag a bit, and of course Jar Jar but I'm too much of a fan to hate it. In fact I'll probably end up using these films as a source for an essay next semester but I'll leave it short(ish)--I enjoyed the prequels and no one can change my mind.

[2coldMack is even more baffled]

1 was bad, but it had decent sections. 2 was dogshit, front to back. 3 is actually a pretty good film, but it suffers from having to live with a lot of the holes and flaws the first two built.

[andrew8798]

Oops a rare screw up by ur andrew

Thats why I shouldn't be on the phone and doing other things on here lol




My original post before I messed up

I say no they not bad

And James getting hate for liking ROTS

[HMARK Center]

I just don't really see the arguments for saying they're any good. Revenge of the Sith being the best of the three still doesn't really say very much; the good parts aren't complimented by a strong enough story leading up to them to give them the appropriate emotional weight, the script is still awful, the direction still bland and stilted, etc.

It's not to say every idea that went into their creation is bad; on the contrary, I thought there was a ton that could be done with the "the Jedi are losing their connection with the Force, and it brings about their own downfall" concept, maybe showing how the Jedi have become too political, or too militaristic, or too dogmatic, too institutional, something like that, and thus couldn't detect Palpatine right in front of them. Would've helped give a better explanation for Anakin falling to the dark side, as he'd have firsthand experience with a Jedi Order that was losing its way.

There's just too much to tear apart, and again, outside of a few moments and ok ideas, they simply do not hold up under any level of scrutiny for me.

[Kevin Hamilton]

Yes. Even watching Rolfe's reasoning, yes..

Sith is ok. That's all.

There are good moments in all three movies, but there are way more bad in all three movies Sith included.

[Jedi-El of Tomorrow]

Phantom Menace and Clones were bad, but Sith was enjoyable. I'd say Clones is worse than Phantom Menace, Clones was killed by one huge thing, and that was the romance subplot. Every time it started to get some momentum because of Obi-Wan's storyline of unraveling the clone conspiracy, the movie went right back to Anakin and Padme. It could have worked if the actors had any chemistry at all, and halfway decent dialog, but we didn't get any of that.

[Nickybojelais]

The prequels are all equally bad to me because I find the lead actors to be abysmal in all of them all. The sub-standard acting by McGregor and Christensen make them almost unwatchable.

[Hit Girl]

Yes.

And I will fight to the death with anyone who claims otherwise.

[Jiren]

Base story is fine (Rise of the Empire & Fall Of the Jedi), and they all have some brilliant set pieces the only problem is Lucas is a terrible writer & Director.

All 3 movies feel like they filmed the first drafts of the scripts (I wouldn't be surprised if they were).

[Hassan bin Sober]

Someone needs to take all 3 of these films and edit them into 1 decent one.

[Red Impact]

There was a lot of potential to tell about the down fall of the Jedi in the whole "Jedi force parents to give up their kids and indoctrinate them into a warrior cult." But they seemed to take the exact opposite route in what would have made an interesting story.

[A Platypus Rave]

Dec 11, 2016 16:54:53 GMT -5 Jiren said:

Base story is fine (Rise of the Empire & Fall Of the Jedi), and they all have some brilliant set pieces the only problem is Lucas is a terrible writer & Director.

All 3 movies feel like they filmed the first drafts of the scripts (I wouldn't be surprised if they were).

Pretty Much.

I do find Sith pretty watchable though not nearly as good as the OT.

But as I have said numerous times, the biggest failure of the Prequel Trilogy is no one stepping up to Lucas and telling him "No" because he is George Lucas and he created Star Wars.

The OT had tons of people there to edit his ideas, from the actors (Allegedely Harrison Ford pretty much rewrote all of Han's lines) to the other directors, and even Lucas's own wife.

[Limity (BLM)]

Having rewatched them during the marathon on TNT, I'm left frustrated, because of what the prequels could have been. It seems the best dynamic for Lucas is to give his ideas to someone else to polish and refine them and bring out the greatness. Much like his ex wife did.

A poster on here mentioned a scene in Rebels, where the clone wars are looked back on and basically exposed as a huge scale manufactured fraud. That is an awesome perspective, really showing how devious Palpatine was, and how the Jedi were really outmatched by him. That should have really been a focus in III.

Edit: Just saw that Platypus posted essentially the same thing. Spoooooooky.

[HMARK Center]

Dec 11, 2016 17:16:49 GMT -5 Red Impact said:

There was a lot of potential to tell about the down fall of the Jedi in the whole "Jedi force parents to give up their kids and indoctrinate them into a warrior cult." But they seemed to take the exact opposite route in what would have made an interesting story.

Yeah, it's hard to tell an interesting story about the fall of the Jedi and why Anakin might be frustrated with them when Lucas kept coming back to essentially saying "the Jedi are awesome and perfect and can do anything and they're never wrong". It's as if he was afraid of showing them to be flawed because it could eat into merchandising or something.

There's a short YouTube video series out there that tries to "rewrite" the prequels and I recall it did a really good job of pitching a new angle on the prequels, like aging Anakin up a bit, removing the whole Christ/messiah subtext, showing more of Anakin and Obi-Wan's friendship, making Dooku more interesting, keeping Maul around as an antagonist, etc. I should rewatch it, I forget some of its details.

[Limity (BLM)]

Dec 11, 2016 18:41:34 GMT -5 HMARK Center said:

Dec 11, 2016 17:16:49 GMT -5 Red Impact said:

There was a lot of potential to tell about the down fall of the Jedi in the whole "Jedi force parents to give up their kids and indoctrinate them into a warrior cult." But they seemed to take the exact opposite route in what would have made an interesting story.

Yeah, it's hard to tell an interesting story about the fall of the Jedi and why Anakin might be frustrated with them when Lucas kept coming back to essentially saying "the Jedi are awesome and perfect and can do anything and they're never wrong". It's as if he was afraid of showing them to be flawed because it could eat into merchandising or something.

There's a short YouTube video series out there that tries to "rewrite" the prequels and I recall it did a really good job of pitching a new angle on the prequels, like aging Anakin up a bit

I definitely think more time needed to have passed between III and IV.

[Deleted]

I think there's a good story there, but the start of the Clone Wars shouldn't haven't began at the end of the AotC, probably should have began at the end of PM, make Skywalker slightly older, cut down on some the podracing stuff, basically combine the first two films into one movie, but save the love story stuff for the second set during the heart of the clone wars and keep the third as is.

[Limity (BLM)]

I would also like to say the prequels did Yoda justice. I watched AOTC in the theater, and when he shows up after Dooku defeats Anakin and Kenobi, an excited hush fell over everyone. I'll bet every person had goosebumps.

["Cane Dewey" Johnson]

While the prequels aren't something I rush to when I want to be entertained for two hours, I do think that the popular opinion of these movies reduces their value to mere entertainment quality, and that common sense evaluation of the prequels in a post-Plinkett world needs to be questioned (or at least pulled apart). As artifacts of American history and popular culture, for example, the prequels are quite interesting, especially given the time period in which they were made. They demonstrate a major concern of the twenty-first century: how crusty old white guys manufacture conflict in order to consolidate power and massively reorganize the apparatuses of government to suit their own ends.

To me, asking if the prequels are bad isn't a very engaging question, because the answer will always be either a subjective yes or no. Asking how and why people think the prequels are bad, how do they get to the point to give a subjective yes or no answer, gives you something to think and talk about.

[Hurbster]

Sith was easily the best. Let's be honest though, that's not saying much.

[Jiren]

I'll be honest this scene always cracks me up, Plus I'll give Lucas credit it was pretty ballsy to put this in



Also I'm kinda bummed we didn't get the Sith Lord Jar Jar that was/is heavily rumored to be in the prequels had Jar Jar not been so hated in Episode 1 (Not that I blame the hatred)