What Ruined the Star Wars Prequels? (If you didn't like them?)

[ACman]

Now I wrote that outline in a 4 hours. And it makes sense overall I think. There may be little inconsistencies that need to be ironed out or improvements that could be made But 4 hours!!!!

Jorge had fucking years to sort the continuity problems and plot bullshit out. He didn't. He chose to write the script at the last minute.

He had millions of dollars to build sets. He fucked that off and spent it all on crap green screen bullshit.

He had hundreds of people who around him that could have moderated his bullshit but he contrived a situation where everybody was afraid to say no to him.

It's so fucking irritating. It's space fantasy. It's so fucking easy to write and so nobody takes it seriously. Jorge writes some of the most retarded screenplays of all time and they get made because he was a producer on the originals. I want to strangle that fucktard. Ugh!!!

 

[Saviordd1]

The over-choreographed lightsaber duels didn't help. I know that they're super powerful Jedi/Sith, but the bouncing around, ten minute fights didn't have much suspense and felt like they could go on forever. In the origional three, the fights could go either way and wasn't all about who could jump higher or swing a lightsaber faster but a battle of wits.

But I suppose it's up to personal opinion...

Pretty much this. I don't mind faster battles, but I didn't even feel like they were trying to kill each other. Darth Maul should have been rage fueled and angry since he's a sith. Came off more like a light based dance.

Otherwise its the overuse of CGI and the general mehness of the story. Oh and anakin sucked as a character.

 

[Sean Steele]

What ruined them was the fact that George Lucas was never a very good writer or director in the first place.

I promise I am not saying this to troll. This is my honest answer.

This is pretty accurate did you know that C3P0 was originally meant to be personality wise very much like Waddo and Gary Kurtz (Producer of A New Hope) Had to oversee a number of script re-writes and perform a lot of cinematography for the film himself. (Both Directorial Jobs)

Then Empire was directed by Irvin Kershner

And Jedi directed by Richard Marquand

Lucas is a pretty solid idea person... but he is not good with minutia.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

I could run through an itemized list of everything that made the prequels awful.
But if I were to condense the biggest flaw down to it's basest form it would come down to two basic problems.

I'll give an example of each.

#1. None of the characters act in a manner consistent with their established personalities or motives.

Example: Damn near everything Anakin Skywalker does.
His entire fall to the dark side is bland and lacks any clear motivation. All of his actions paint him less as a tortured hero being manipulated into giving into his anger and fear and more like a petulant teenager lashing out at the world.

Entire plot points are introduced that make absolutely no sense but are used to drive the entire narrative. OR Seem important but are never introduced again.

Example: The Clones and by extension the Clone Wars.
Why are the Jedi and the Republic at large so damn willing to just accept the fact that Palpatine pulled a fully armed clone army out of his ass? An army commissioned by a dead Jedi that nobody bothers to question the existence of? An army cloned from a Bounty Hunter shown to be working for the Separatists!



At the end of the day these are just incompetently made films.

 

[revjor]

Midichlorians. The force is the force not a fucking STD.

As a kid i was enjoying the Phantom Menace a lot until that scene. It all died with me right there.

 

[sindremaster]

The bad attempts at humor, like jar jar, and Lucas' need to explain everything, like midichlorians

 

[revjor]

also... I get that you can't go buy your Mom's freedom on Tatooine because it's like sooo not Jedi to spend time carin about yo momma. BUUUUT When you already have a secret forbidden girlfriend who is an impossibly rich queen of a lush planet. Hows about at some point between 9 and 16 when she asks what you want for your b-day say umm I don't know "My mom?"


This also shows Amidala's total lameness as a gf. You'd think she would have taken it upon herself at some point... right? If they ended up raising Luke and Leia wouldn't one of them eventually have a kids say the darnedest things moment?

"Daddy where's YOUR parents?"
"My mom is dead, killed by dirty sand raiders. My dad is ummm... Bacterias"
"Why didn't you save her?"
"Couldn't. Too busy learnin Jedi shits"
*turns to mom*
"why didn't YOU save her?"
"Umm too busy runnin' for Senate. Stop bothering me and go play with surrogate grandpa Jimmy Smitts Organa"

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The absence of people saying "No" to Lucas.

Darth Vader's story didn't need to be told, and it certainly didn't need to be strung out through three films.

Breaching Rebel Ship: Explosion : White Cloud : Black suited figure : "Tear this ship apart" - That's Vader summarised in a nutshell.

 

[Foxpack1]

The simple innocence of this question gives me cause to believe you've never seen Mr. Plinkett's reviews. Check them out, if you've got a few hours to kill. www.redlettermedia.com

Short answer: everything.

Whils't I disagree with you being a 90's kid and thus raised on them, I agree that Plinkett is God.

WHATS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?!

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Welcome to the Escapist, the home of band-wagon kids who say they hate something to act cool to the other kids on the playground/forum.

It really irks me that you might actually believe that. Moreso that, in itself, is a bandwagon started to legitimize ignorance.

Yeah I liked the prequels. I also liked Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

It's fine to like them. But can you detail anything good about the films other than "I liked them"? Because that's the total lack of evidence I'm seeing from the "likers" side.

I also think George Lucas owns his property, unlike all these "fanboys" (they call themselves fans, they're also the biggest haters in the franchise) who somehow think they were handed the rights of the IP when they bought a movieticket (or downloaded it online, more likely).

You're right. Lucas does own his property.

That doesn't include Empire (different director), Return (different director), most of the dialogue, most of the performances, any of the spin-offs, the rights to keeping the originals from the hands of the public and many other things that he has claimed to have.

Now, how about you come back and show why the prequels are better than the sequels with reference to actual evidence other than "Well, I liked it".

Because otherwise, you're automatically ranking Twilight and Transformers above films like The Deer Hunter,The Godfather and Casablanca.

Not due to any measure of artistic merit, ability, long-lasting resonance, summation of the times, soundtrack, acting, directing, effects, emotional performance - but purely due to "Well, I liked them - You're all just haters".

And you hopefully can see why that would be - at best - irritating, and - at worse - rampant bigotry.

 

[Pebkio]

For me: The story. Plain and simple (as in, not so much). Listen, I was a Star Wars geek, and I spent a lot of my life reading the Expanded Universe books. Those books had set up a history involving the Empire, the clone wars, the Deathstar, certain movements of Sith and their general activities. It was moving, complicated, and really hinted at something clev...

George Lucas basically threw that all out the window so that he could write a really crappy cash-in.

---
The Deathstar was NOT invented by bugs on a desert planet fighting a fake war. It was designed, tested, and partly built at the Maw Installation.. One year before Luke blew it up.

Speaking of the Jedi, it was established that there's only one Sith Lord, commonly known as Darth, at any one time. This is described in an several original essentials guides and a comic, neither or which have a Wiki article. Read up dammit.

The Clone War happened, something like, thirty years before the Rebellion. So far that's pretty similar.. BUT... it's also hinted that the Empire was already established and that there was more going on then "a war in which one side used clones". The premise of the clone war, more than anything else, was ruined so thoroughly that it can't be fixed, even if the prequels were to be classified as non-cannon.

Luke and Leia knew their mother for more than the first ten minutes of their lives. In fact, their mother was more than a DAMNED HOUSEWIFE and came from somewhere better than a decadent planet with racist rabbit-people.
---

These, and several other (even more geeky), examples show that Lucas cared not for all the effort and money that went into a large, complicated... and somewhat expanded... universe. Worse yet, he forced his limited, one-dimensional, views onto that very same universe. He threw around the word "Darth" until it lost all meaning, completely changed what it means to be a Jedi and how the force is used, retconned things from his original work, and forced everyone and everything to have met and known each other just to force-feed already-used merchandise to a new generation.

I really hope I never see him touch this franchise again...

 

[ToMegaTherion]

"Daddy where's YOUR parents?"
"My mom is dead, killed by dirty sand raiders. My dad is ummm... Bacterias"
"Why didn't you save her?"
"Couldn't. Too busy learnin Jedi shits"
*turns to mom*
"why didn't YOU save her?"
"Umm too busy runnin' for Senate. Stop bothering me and go play with surrogate grandpa Jimmy Smitts Organa"

Made my day.
On Topic: It was made so fucking long after the original triology and was made mostly for kids, but also for the older fans. It made ep 1 feel bipolar. Also to much shit going on without focus and incredibly bad direction

 

[gigastrike]

Both of Anakin's actors. I feel like they could have made his story more beleivable if they got someone who wasn't as annoying/could have sold it better.

 

[Jingle Fett]

I think TMI was the main problem with the prequels. Too Much Information. It's fine to explain how things happen and all that but it's not necessary to explain everything, especially when it doesn't have a direct impact on the plot. Perfect example would be the midichlorian thing. It didn't bother me much personally, but it's one of the best examples I can think of. Did it advance the plot? No. Did we need that information? No. So why give it to us?

Furthermore, the execution of the information was on the sloppy side. Again, the midichlorian example. Rather than having a buildup, having midichlorians mentioned in several of the movies, that sort of thing, they tell us point blank 'the force is midichlorians'. No buildup, no mystery, just teh fors is midichloriens. Likely reason for this? George Lucas aiming squarely at the instant-gratification simplified views of children where subtlety is a foreign concept.

I enjoyed the prequels, and I don't hate on them. I even love some aspects of them (especially the sequences like the pod race, Battle of Geonosis and Battle of Coruscant). But they're definitely not as well made as the original trilogy.

Oh, and General Grievous was awesome in the original Clone Wars cartoon. He sucked ass in the movie.

 

[scorptatious]

I admit, I haven't seen the prequels in a long time. So who knows, maybe they were crap. Although from what I remember ep. 3 was fucking awesome. (I will agree that Anakin was kind of a whiny ***** though.) Plus the pod-racing sequence in ep 1. was fun to watch.

Still, the prequels are the kinds of movies that should only be watched if you have seen the original trilogy first. To me, the big reveal near the end of ep. 5 has a lot more impact if you haven't seen the prequels.

Also I don't really see why everyone hates Jar Jar so much. I thought he was alright.