Whats so bad about the Star Wars Prequels?

[Atmos Duality]

I wasn't angry with Episode I, just kind of confused and disappointed.
Episode II was a pain to sit through. That film was all kinds of grating.
Episode III...I left the theater laughing my ass off.

Nothing in particular stuck out at me for "why" I disliked them until rewatching them.
The chief problems:

1) Tonal inconsistency (These movies feel like an imitation of Star Wars)
Lucas mistakes "dark" for "dull", "levity" for "whacky" (Jar-Jar et al caricatures), and "action" for "tension".
He obviously sat down and watched the originals over and over again.
There are all sorts of nods to the originals in the cinematography, the editing, the score, even the orchestra stings...but the effort feels fake.

2) Overwhelming amount of superfluous, badly developed elements (characters, set pieces, entire plot lines even) put into the films solely to churn out merchandise. It was eye-opening going to any sort of shopping mall or market the week after Episode II and Episode III happened.

General Grievous and Kashyakk stick out in my mind for Ep III. Both were (just going by the films) a complete waste of time. Grievous doesn't develop as a character beyond a bullseye for the Jedi to hit, and Kashyakk was completely useless to the plot.
The prequels are FULL of shit like this, especially Ep II and III.

And since this is a Star Wars topic...
-Take a shot every time someone recommends Plinkett or RedLetterMedia.
\+Take another if they recommend Plinkett/RLM without providing any argument of their own beyond that.

EDIT: 11 shots so far.

 

[King Billi]

There's alot of stupid things in the Star Wars Prequels for sure, though in my opinion nothing worth getting so pissed about when you consider the kinds of films they are and what they ultimately wanted to offer their audience.

It does seems true that the younger generations seem to enjoy the prequels more while the older fans are certainly much less forgiving and from my point of view Star Wars as a brand actually seems more prominent and widespread now then it has ever been in the past and alot of its popular iconography nowadays seems drawn from the prequel trilogy moreso than the originals so it certainly must have struck a chord with some people... Just saying.

Also when I was a kid I remember watching "The Empire Strikes Back" over and over again just to watch that awesome sequence in beginning with the AT ATs on Hoth and while I've certainly come to appreciate more about that film as I got older I haven't forgotten the simple appeal of fun and spectacle which the prequels do have in abundance.

 

[Callate]

I think many people could make many pages of essay or hours of video about this, and in fact, I know that people have, so I'll try to be brief and focus on one thing with the recognition that there are others.

Darth Vader is one of the greatest villains in motion pictures; indeed, one of the most recognizable figures in the world. His presence always implied a back story of grandeur and tragedy, a back story many viewers filled in within their own minds, giving him an additional emotional resonance.

The prequels are all about Darth Vader, filling those spaces of implication and imagination with existing dialogue and action. And by and large, the imaginary resonance that viewers filled in for themselves is replaced with something far inferior.

If you take episode I as nothing but young viewer wish-fulfillment, then, yeah, it works for that, I guess. The little boy does what soldiers, officers, and Jedi with decades of training can't; okay (sigh), fine. But even for the relatively undemanding role of "youth audience 'your face here' cypher", Jake Lloyd does a terrible job. I'm sorry, I know he's a kid, and it may not be fair, but he really is pretty terrible. He's flat, vacant, uninterested and uninteresting to a point that makes one long for MacCaulay Culkin in his prime. I understand that he was possibly the best in a legion of terrible auditions, but the fact that two years later Harry Potter was able to pull an entire cast of decent-to-excellent child actors is enough to make one wonder how there could be such a disparity.

Not helping is the script that hits plot points that feel more like obligatory stepping stones than some kind of destiny falling into place. Why is the nine-year-old hitting on Natalie Portman? How did a slave get the resources and knowledge to build a sophisticated protocol droid? And of course he's the best racer on Tatooine, and a pilot capable of single-handedly destroying an enemy force more or less by accident... Because we're supposed to expect Luke Skywalker's father would have those talents from preadolescence, I guess. Why does he have them? Because he's Space Jesus, in effect. (Apologies for the irreverence, but it's a pretty accurate description.)

That latter point is what gets worse and worse as the story goes on in the later movies. There's no cleverness in moving the pieces into place, just inevitability. Anakin is a sucker when he's required to be, he's out of control of his emotions when the plot requires him to be. Padme falls for him because if she doesn't they can't have babies, and we're supposed to believe their love because they say they love each other a lot even though they display virtually zero chemistry. (As a reader on Ain't It Cool News commented upon hearing Lucas was holding up the new Indiana Jones movie because he had problems with the script: "George 'You killed all those women and children, that's so hot' Lucas has a PROBLEM with the SCRIPT?!") Hundreds of Jedi who are supposed to be so atuned to the future that they can block beams of light with their weapons fail to pick up that they're about to get shot in the back. ("The dark side clouds everything"? Yeah, whatever- midichlorians back atcha, bub.)

In short- I was going to be short, right?- they took the most inherently ominous, fascinating, and recognizable presences in film and made him not cool.

I'm willing to admit, for all its faults, the movies have their moments. Qui-Gon Jinn actually seems to be a sort of interesting character, for all his limited screen time. So does Darth Maul. There are individual moments and performances that aren't half bad. But as a whole, it was disappointing; as a follow-up to such a remarkable figure, it was disgraceful.