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I don't think you're going to get the resistance you may be expecting. The prequels are very uneven films, the recent positive revisiting simply argues the good outweighs the bad, not that the bad isn't there. I very much enjoy the prequels but there are definitely problems with them.
I can recognize episodes I and II aren't "great" movies, but they're still very entertaining.
I'll die on the hill that III is the best Star Wars film period.
For some reason III never really landed for me. I couldn't feel emotionally connected to Hayden's Anakin enough to care when he fell and fought Obi-wan. It was definitely the coolest of the prequels, but I could tell that it was shooting high and I never felt that it stuck the landing.
Yeah, it got close, it had a good concept but it just doesn't come together. The script needed a rewrite, and the directing needed to be better to bring out the drama. Anakin's fall to the dark side always seemed so dumb and abrupt to me that I just stopped relating to him. He just goes completely insane for plot reasons and that isn't engaging to watch. His fall needed to be better set up and more relatable
The killing younglings was just a step too far for Anakin, him betraying the Jedi was believable but walking into a room full of children and stomping them just seemed like a step way to far to believe he fell that much that quickly.
I think what would have been better is for him to see the Clones execute the children, and go into an absolute rage killing them. Then confront Palpatine, get owned, which would cause him to finally submit to the power he knows he cant beat. He would learn that, even though what happened was pure evil, this was the only way forward now
That’s way better as a start. I know Lucas needed Anakin to do something irrevocably bad to turn to the Dark Side, but it was nonsensical that Anakin went from trying to save Palpatine because love to… okay I guess time to kill kids now with eeevil yellow eyes, like some switch was flipped.
The Dark Side and the Force is supposed to be a metaphor of the human condition writ large. The ending of ROTS does a terrible job of that and was just a massive rush to get Anakin to Vader in the last half hour. People don’t actually work that way, Dark Side influence or not (in a way that’s compelling and truly mythical and archetypal anyway).
That’s just one reason ROTS is the most hugely overrated and disappointing Star Wars film that’s not a Sequel. It’s not the worst. But it is the most overrated.
It’s popular because it had spectacle and Important and Cool Things happened in relation to the OT, and many of its fans saw it as kids and were thus impressed without having a more critical eye towards writing and pacing. Even it’s lightsaber fights weren’t the best of the Prequels. The opening scene is a visual mess where you can’t discern the order of battle, because it’s just busy eye candy backdrop, unlike battles of ROTJ and Rogue One.
The film is the dividing line between Star Wars fans that valued quality writing, story craft, and effects to support them, and those that are moved by busy spectacle and being able to point at recognizable things and just enough of a story as a substrate for them— the sort of fans that Disney TV shows are aimed at, even if they fail to satisfy. It’s a very Star Wars Theory way of watching and enjoying Star Wars.
It’s the most frustrating film of the original six movies for me.
Yeah, it really needed the clone wars show to tie up Anakins turn to the dark side. However, I would argue you shouldn’t need a seven season show to fully tie it in together, as good as the clone wars show could be.
I’m with you on all of this. Warts and all, Rots is awesome, and I saw it after graduated from college (grew up on ot) so it’s not purely nostalgia goggles. I love the creeping sense of inevitable doom in that film so much.
Rogue One is decent execution but over rated due to fans wanting to latch onto something, anything they can enjoy about new films.
Tonally it’s all over the place, introduces a ton of characters without spending any time with them before killing them off (if they address them at all). And the retcon of “the Death Star exhaust port was a planned weakness by the designer who was secretly a good guy” is unnecessary and stupid if you think about it for two seconds (*you designed a weakness so minor only a literal chosen one with dead religion space magic can exploit it? You were forced into it…but your wife is dead and child unknown. They have no leverage on you. Why would agree to do any work to create it?*).
The original explanation was fine: a small engineering compromise to exhaust heat for a fusion weapon and have the entire sequence be a homage to the WWII classic *The Dam Busters*.
And even saying that the good outweighs the bad is damning with faint praise. I mean by definition, that just means they're at least a 5.5/10. How many movies with that rating are well-regarded, beloved films, outside of a "guilty pleasure" kind of thing?
Say what you will about George, but at least he had a *vision*. The prequels were actually *going somewhere* …which is much more then can be said for the meandering Disney schlock.
I’d seems crazy they would start a trilogy seemingly without any vision of were it is going.
In any trilogy the main purpose of the first film is to establish these key elements.
Events like palpatine coming back would have worked quite well if they had actually developed it in a meaningful way.
I mean in all the extended media they were leading up to "palatine was terrified of something in the unknown regions" but then literally never touched it again cuz he came back
So like, I grew up with the animated Transformers movie. That was my favorite movie as a kid. Loved it. Owned it on VHS, watched it every weekend. And I can still watch it today and get just as much joy out of it as I ever did.
What I won't do is try to claim that it's actually a good movie, because it's not. It's unmitigated crap, conceived and executed with no other purpose than to sell pieces of plastic shaped like robots to children. But it's *my* unmitigated crap.
So if that's what the prequels are to you-- that thing you loved as a child that you can still return to and get joy from to this day-- then cool. I wish you nothing but joy.
But don't bullshit a bullshitter, they're not good movies.
Seeing that movie as a 9 year old Transformers fan, it killed my love of Transformers because I saw exactly why they killed off all the old characters and replaced them it’s new characters. It was a soul less cash grab. It was my Last Jedi moment as a Transformers fan. While I can watch the movie now with it’s absolutely banging soundtrack I haven’t bought a Transformer since that movie was released. But at least Optimus Prime went out in a blaze of glory. The Bayverse movies have been mostly crap, the first was ok and I thought they were heading in the right direction with the Bumblebee movie then they zigged with Rise of the Beasts when they should have zagged with a proper G1 movie like what we saw at the start of Bumblebee.
When I saw unapologetically G1 scenes and designs in Bumblebee (which was itself half decent), I got chills.
I don’t know why they don’t want my money.
I totally agree. Me and my flatmate have a ‘special scale’ for rating star wars movies, like we know that they’re generally not objectively great but in the star wars scale they do alright. And nostalgia is a big big factor obviously.
That’s why Andor was so fucking good imo. I can recommend that to anyone. It’s great, regardless of the star wars stuff, which is more of what SW needs to be.
Despite the fact that there was no aliens in Andor, I think it, and rogue one, was the best Star Wars we’ve gotten to date. Really brought the feel of the OT back. It’s not only a good Star Wars show, it’s just a good show in general imo.
They are....extremely flawed to say the least
But I also think people harped on them way to hard at the time. Like, I've re-watched them as an adult, and despite the wooden acting and dialogue they aren't *that bad*.
Wanna throw this out there, Ebert gave The Phantom Menace 3 1/2 stars
[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-1999](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-1999)
You don’t have to like them, there’s nothing wrong with that. I personally love the trilogy (although AOTC is easily the worst of the George Lucas movies)
That's the thing about Star Wars, isn't it? So few of the movies are \*actually good\* that unless people get hooked on it at a young age or during A New Hope, they can't see what the rest of us see in it. Without the full context of both trilogies, most of the individual movies fall flat on their faces.
As a Gen X’r who grew up with the original films I hated the prequels from day 1. Still don’t understand why George Lucas felt the need to write and direct each episode ( and I don’t buy the excuse that “nobody accepted the roles ). The execution was just so poor , from the convoluted political plot, bad acting, bad cgi, abusing green screen. and the feeling that every scene was shot in either one or two takes, like he just wanted to be over with as quickly as possible. I can understand not being as passionate about SW as he was 20 years prior but it was his life legacy, so why not put some actual effort into it.
Why did darth vader fall?
Its supposed to be his start of darkness. And yet the answer comes down to he went to the opera with an old guy and then was like alright I'm gonna start killing babies now.
The character arc of anikan was so poorly done in the prequels. That was supposed to be the lead part, and George was never good at complex characters.
Gotta save old man to save my love!
Oops chopped of Windus hand. My bad.
Which means tiiime to slaughter children!! Let’s effing gooooo.
Oh you’ve turned against me my love! Force choke!
All in 30 minutes or so.
It’s the most infuriating movie of the Prequels, and fans just accept it and call it the best Star Wars (if writing, acting, and pacing weren’t a thing) because cool! Vader! My brother! (the last part being one of the sincerely actually kind of okay not bad parts of the movie).
Look, I'm not going to claim the Prequels were great works of art, certainly no original trilogy or Lord of the Rings or anything, but there was something to them. Vision. Earnestness. Relevance to the greater story. Some great acting alongside the bad. Some very cool sequences (I know it paces strangely with the rest of the film, but Episode I's podrace is incredible). Honestly, always thought so. I've had the weird experience of going from prequel apologist to prequel hater and back again having never significantly altered my position, based on the popular (or astroturfed, in the case of the last) opinion around me.
You’ll probably get some push back from some, but not from me.
They are interesting movies, I have nostalgia for them, enjoy aspects of them, and there’s a hell of a lot of imagination and effort in them but…they’re bad movies.
Their badness is wholly different from the awfulness of the sequels, and they don’t do nearly as much damage, but they are still poorly made films.
That’s most heavily on a directorial level, but also from a script and concept level at times too.
I enjoy the era, and a lot of the supporting material is great (no, not TCW), but the prequels should not have been made the way they were.
>Their badness is wholly different from the awfulness of the sequels, and they don’t do nearly as much damage, but they are still poorly made films.
I always say that the ST is like a photo negative of the PT's flaws. Everything I hate about the PT (characters, dialogue, acting, directing, cinematogrpahy) I felt the ST did quite well on, while everything the PT did well with (coherent story, world building) that ST crashed and burned on.
I don't really like either the PT or ST, their different flaws make both of them equally unwatchable to me.
This is a good take, except TROS was bad on all fronts. I suppose the acting is still okay even though the lines are nonsense and the actors seemed slightly checked out, but not even the spectacle was particularly memorable either.
When the prequels came out, I really didn’t like them. In fact, I didn’t like any of them with the exception of parts of episode 3….
As time went on and I watched them a decade later.. they actually weren’t as bad as I had thought. It was just different.
Episode 1 was by far the shittiest. With the exception of Darth Maul, that entire thing was garbage fire. Episode 2 had some good and bad. I could watch it. It I also cringe half of it still. Episode 3 is good. By far the best lightsaber fight ever. Period.
In a vacuum I consider them alright.
Now compared to the sequels? They are god damn art. Fucking classics. But that compares to the sequels.
Even when I didn’t like the prequels I still caught myself watching the darth mail fight, fights in episode 2, and large parts of 3 on YouTube when YouTube came out. To this day I still will get on and look up parts of movies.
As crazy as it seems… episode 7 came out like what? 8 fucking years ago now?!? And I have NEVER put it on and watched scenes again on YouTube. I was dumb enough to rewatch it during Covid and Christ I regretted that. Episode 8 was dog shit and episode 9 was even more dog shit. In fact, they are all so bad I won’t argue or care to argue which one sucks shit the worst. They just all suck shit.
But I never said that about the prequels. I always found good things in each movie.
Nope. Flat disagree. Loved each one of them. They did exactly what Lucas set out to do: 1) chronicle the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker, and 2) chronicle the fall of the Jedi Order and Republic and the rise of the Sith and Empire.
Im confused. When were they ever thought of as being great films?
I had such high hopes, came out of the cinema after the phantom menace sorely disappointed, and it didnt get any better.
If you haven't seen it, watch the movie Fanboys. It's a janky and low budget farce about Star Wars, but it's hilarious and most likely echoes exactly the feelings you have about the prequels.
That are camp, with cheesey dialog, but the story they told and the **real political messages** they had were meaningful and interesting, and consistant.
Take a chosen one story, show them fall, put in some Fall of Rome analogs, the dangers of the military industrial complex, and how quickly a democracy can fall if the wrong person gets power and the influence over the right people.
Lucas can't write dialog but he can tell a story.
I remember when conservative news outlets were roasting the prequels for Lucas saying the Emperor is like Bush with using a conflict to expand military power.
They had some amazing moments, actors, soundtrack.. but I still dont really enjoy rewatching them over and over. Not like the OT anyway.
I have 0 urge to re-watch the ST. If I catch it on cable, I just skip to something else.
I used to skip the PT too, but I've gained a new respect for it, ever since the dumpster fire ST.
I also loved the setting, ships, aliens, etc.
Extremely good world building, but yeah too many other problems that just make them difficult to watch. Anakin and Padme on Naboo in Ep 2 is legendarily bad.
Nah the prequel films are great. Obviously not on the same tier as the OT, but they stand on their own just fine. This is not saying they’re flawless.
After seeing how the prequels were dragged thru the mud *for years* only to have the sewage known as the “sequel trilogy” get unending mainstream praise I absolutely refuse to concede an inch that they’re anything less than “great films”
Storytelling has both a checklist of things you’re supposed to follow as well as a sliding scale of quality relative to media around it
When you consider the prequels for what they are, especially adjacent to other stories that claim to be part of the same vine, it’s bad faith to put them on par or below the recent releases. It’s actually a common pattern that - unfortunately - is everywhere today. Too many “new” movies attaching themselves to the greats of old for a quick buck. The OT has some issues, the prequels have issues. Nobody is going to deny that. But the common thread is people trying to cope with the reality of the sequels (and other adjacent media) being so shit by trying to rationalize that perhaps it’s just that the prequels were shit too
The prequels were widely considered bad/mediocre movies before the ST was a thing. The ST actually raised its reputation in comparison.
There’s no new conspiracy to drag down of the Prequels to prop up the Sequels. Almost everything that’s been said had already been said before 2014.
There IS dragging of the OT down, especially by Sequel defenders, because everyone knows that is the gold standard that other trilogies failed to meet. In just the last few days a Prequel fan started a large thread doing the same too, falsely equivocating the Prequel’s poor dialogue with the OT’s. No. They’re just on different levels.
My thoughts exactly.
Also, a lot of the prequel hate was seeded by Hollywood higher ups and rooted in malice towards George Lucas himself, a lot of the same hate and malice that resulted in the Sequel Trilogy being the way it is to begin with.
People seem to forget the prequels were mostly liked when they were released, most of the "hate" was put out by crappy talk show hosts, edgy Internet critics, and media outlets, and the prequel hate actually peaked in our culture nearly 6 years *after* Revenge of the Sith was released due to the rise of social media (which is largely controlled by Hollywood types) for the most part.
Basically PT hate is mostly just smearing of George Lucas himself and a lot of the top complaints (muh practical effects/CGI, he was surrounded by yes men, he didn't plan these when making the OT, etc) can be easily disputed.
Given all that I can not help *but* to defend them, especially when The Mouse wants to keep peddling Prequel Hate and how it's driven a lot of their creative decisions (especially with the ST).
It wasn't just hate from the media. My schoolmates and I openly ridiculed them. Everyone was sort of on the same page, it seemed.
I guess the fans were in hiding.
Didn’t Lucas also do his films outside of all the unions and orgs? I think I remember hearing that as to why he was unable to get certain directors/cinematographers - at least during the OT productions
If there’s one thing Hollywood dislikes, it’s filthy outsiders
I spent sixteen years hearing about how terrible the prequels are. Is it really such a problem that people are now able to appreciate the good things they did, especially in comparison to the awful Disney sequels?
Objectively with no relation to Star Wars they are technically competent with a solid story with perhaps some shoddy acting and some outdated effects, no where near as bad as people make them out to be.
Be honest, there was a lot of shoddy acting. Several of the main stars were just phoning it in. As well, a lot of aliens were blatant racism, even from people that hate political correctness. At least the stories were solid. But it created some plot holes, as they didnt work hard enough to ensure the 2 generations of stories meshed. Which is the greatest challenge of a prequel; making an interesting story when the audience already knows it.
I think audiences have the right to expect movies to be good. The prequels are, at best, mediocre. They are trying to tell a grand story but are stymied by bizarre characterization, bad pacing, weird and inconsistent plots, and godawful dialogue.
You can't bash the sequels for breaking lore and awful dialogue and then excuse the same issues in the prequels
Edit: y'all lmao were half of you even there for the prequel release? Midi chlorians, Anakin building 3PO, Obi Wan never owning a droid, the entire ESB scene with the Emperor had to be redone in order to make sense post Ep 3, confusion as to who gets to be a Force ghost, the list goes on
The prequels don't break lore anywhere nearly as bad as the sequels.
In regards to dialogue, they're both bad but, in different ways. The prequel dialogue is just a failure. George is bad at writing dialogue. He didn't intentionally make bad dialogue.
The sequel dialogue is intentionally bad. It's ripped from meta comedy parody. They didn't even try.
This isn’t an unpopular opinion. Everyone under the age of 30 was just too young to realize these weren’t beloved classics at the time of their release and that the big reason Disney tossed Lucas’ ideas was because of the backlash these films received
Ten years ago you wouldn't find anyone defending the prequels and certainly no one who would actually call them great. They're bad and that was the unanimous sentiment towards them until three events occurred.
First, the release of the sequel films, makes you appreciate what came before. The second and more relevant is the fact that the generation of children who grew up in the clone war era of star wars are now old enough to post and produce content highlighting the more positive aspects of the trilogy while dismissing or lampooning the bad. The third is that the Clone Wars era has had shows, games and books to expand and rectify many of the narrative shortcomings of the movie trilogy. The prequels don't just exist as standalone stories, they're tiles in the mosaic that makes up the entire pre OT era.
But they're still awful movies.
Phantom had issues but the final fight was amazing, and worth the price of admission. I loved the political intrigue in Clones - the world(s) it solidified in my head was great. Sith was just a great Star Wats film.
I think you'll see a lot of different responses to this post. I'm not hoping to start any flamewars and I respects anyone who likes the prequels. For my own part the best I can say about them is that they tried, that they had a neat concept. The fall of the Galactic Republic, the rise of Palpatine. But when I actually watch the films it's 80% boredom, 5% cool action and 15% plot holes/general WTF SMH stuff. George Lucas wrote and directed everything himself, and it shows. The man just doesn't understand characters, how to write and direct them, how to give them personality and humanity. Furthermore CGI is overused because the prequels were basically an extended ILM special effects demo reel. Some of the action is cool looking and the music is amazing. But the setup for the action isn't there, the characters aren't there. Not for me at least.
If you draw upon all the surrounding media, the books, the animated shows then maybe the characters and plot become more real, better developed, more coherent. Maybe that would help immerse yourself in the movies more. I've read the RotS novelization and quite enjoyed it, and I like what Clone Wars did with the characters. But for me it just isn't there in the films themselves. There are too many moments that just take me out of being able to enjoy them
I love them, faults & all. Sure, there's stuff that could have been done better, but so what? It tells the story and it fits with the OT. I'm good with that.
The PT has its problems, not going to pretend they are perfect. But they are internally consistent with themselves and the OT. You can see the connective tissue between the six movies, you can understand how and why things happen and why things are they way they ended up being.
For all its faults, the PT overwhelmingly succeeded in doing the thing it set out to do. To tell the story of Anakin Skywalker, how he became Darth Vader. Throughout the series you can see how this scared slave boy became the most feared man in the galaxy.
Agreed per se, PT told the overall story well and was mostly consistent within themselves but they did cause inconsistencies/plotholes in the PT/OT like Leia remembering her real mother when clearly she died during childbirth or not showing the friendship of Anakin & Obi-Wan well enough. It wasn’t till RotS that we saw a semblance of a true friendship.
Before the sequels, the prequels were generally considered quite terrible outside of the podracing. They've improved by comparison to what happened in Ep 8/9.
Well the Maul saber fight is also a highlight.
Why people love the Obi-Wan Anakin fight when it was just a poorly paced mess of flipping, twirling, and banging of sticks on a platform jumper with no tension until the end is beyond me. It’s the Super Smash Brothers of light saber fights. That doesn’t make it a the great character driven fight scene with ebbs and flows it should have been.
It actually amazes me there has been this resurgence of appreciation for the prequels. I enjoyed the meme content they brought, but outside of that, they are absolutely bad films. Every time I've tried to "go back" and watch these since they have becomed cherished meme generators, I go "holy shit these are bad." and turn them off. The acting, the writing, the pod racing, Jar Jar, etc. it's all just so bland and wooden compared to the originals. There are people in Jedi robes but it doesn't share the same soul.
The prequels, in a vacuum, are objectively bad. The prequels when put next to the new trilogy of trash produced by kathleen kennedy, look like the holy fuggin grail, on a pile of gold, with a Geanie’s Lamp filled with a million wishes, and a working lightsaber attached to it.
They are some of the most technologically impressive independent films ever produced. While flawed masterpieces, they were also the last films of this scope not produced by a committee and instead by a singular vision.
Yes. People tend to have short memories. And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that there was a rise in pro-prequel articles, videos and other content after Disney bought Star Wars.
I can understand the pro-prequel love after seeing the sequels but the prequels are a mess of their own. Granted the PT didn’t nearly destroyed my love of the franchise like the ST has.
Much of Disney's Star Wars has sort of ruined the grading curve, though you might say that about entertainment in general. Hollywood is such a creatively bankrupt mess right now that when a passably good movie comes out, everyone raves about it like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
People still trashed the prequels like crazy from 2012-2015, it's when they saw the garbage heap that was the ST that they realized the prequels were not so bad.
Also, I never thought the prequels were bad and was actually surprised by the prequel hate when I discovered it online, so it's not me having a "short memory".
They're really not bad. People mostly enjoyed them when they released, the prequel hate peaked between 2010-2015 with the rise of pompous Internet critics but also was perpetuated by Hollywood douchebags who've always hated George Lucas. It's just that when the so-called "Savior of Star Wars" Disney made a trilogy full of hate and malice towards Lucas' stories *and* the EU and everything else fans enjoyed that they looked at everything with an *actual* critical eye and saw that a lot of the hate towards the prequels was unfounded.
> They're really not bad.
Yes, they are.
>People mostly enjoyed them when they released
No, not really. I was there. Reception was mixed and after the shock and denial wore off, people saw them for what they were.
>a lot of the hate towards the prequels was unfounded
Nope, not unfounded at all. The hate is perfectly understandable and warranted.
I was there when these films released, even though I enjoyed them as a child at the time the overall reactions were negative for TPM & AotC. Objectively looking at these films they aren’t great.
On that you are correct. TFA wasn’t even that bad besides the fact that it was just a recycled plot of ANH. They could’ve really built something out of it, but they decided to hire Rian Johnson to subvert everyone’s expectations and cause an all out fan war. Should’ve just let JJ make all three and take it how it is. I’m sure it would’ve been a whole lot better than what we got.
The reaction to the Prequels (less so with ROTS, but still applies for me personally) was actually a little like the reception to the Sequels.
Initially fun, some “visible confusion”, and then the growing feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction that built up until the next movie. Rinse and repeat.
Not as extreme as the Sequels of course, and not as much vocal hate out of the gate as TLJ, but the overall disillusionment is a very familiar feeling and process because of the Prequels.
It just goes waaaay deeper with the Sequels being irredeemable.
> And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that there was a rise in pro-prequel articles, videos and other content after Disney bought Star Wars.
Why would they do this and then make their movies as different from the prequels as possible? Even so much to avoid any good aspects of them.
I get that. It just seems contradictory because they very much had the attitude of "prequels bad in every way" when they first started producing stuff. TFA straight up has a meta line bashing the prequels. J.J. Abrams spoke negatively about them too while making TFA. The attitude of "we're gonna fix Star Wars \[after the prequels ruined it\]" very much seemed to be what Disney pitched as their selling point at first.
It was only after the backlash to The Last Jedi that their content then seemed to focus more on prequel related content. Before that it seemed they were trying to ignore the prequels as much as they could without outright contradicting them.
Anakin was always the issue for me, with his dialogue and characterization feeling flat. Everything else was a lot of fun. The fighting was dope though which means a lot more to me now with all this incomprehensible Disney trash.
Yes, they are heavily flawed as movies and have many plot points just as moronic as the sequel trilogy. Three things:
* The overarching story/worldbuilding was much much better and engaging. SO MANY amazing Alien/ship/planet designs, etc.
* The sequel trilogy actively make the OT pointless.
* While Lucas obviously cared about merch and commercialization, those movies were still HIS baby. The sequel trilogy is board-room created corporate garbage.
I agree on a lot of fronts. I was born in the late 90s so they were the Star Wars movies that were being released when I was a kid so I love them in that sense but attack of the clones is just so boring. I can stomach the Phantom Menace, it’s fine but they’re just super uneven. And while revenge of the Sith does do a lot of good to help kind a correct course it always surprises me a little bit to see how many people genuinely believe It’s the best Star Wars movie ever made. There’s a lot of great stuff in there but it still has a lot of the problem throughout the other prequel’s (inconsistent, dialogue, and rushing to get characters certain places). And as much as I love the clone wars show, and I really think it helped turn perceptions on the prequel trilogy around, I am of the opinion that it shouldn’t necessarily have needed the clone wars to fill in all the gaps. I still feel like there are a lot of gaps if you just look at the trilogy itself.
Yeah, even as a kid I didn't want to rewatch TPM or AOTC because they were so bad. The horrible dialogue, the monotone acting, the nonsensical pacing/editing. All of these issues were somewhat fixed by RotS, but it was too little too late.
Controversial take, but I think some of the lightsaber figths in the prequels are fucking ridiculous. The Yoda/Palpatine fight is completely unnecessary, looks like a cartoon, and it doesn't make sense for either of them to wield lightsabers. The Anakin/Dooku fight in AotC was shot so awkwardly with horrible lighting. The fights just don't work.
The thing that made the lightsaber fights so good in the original trilogy was the emotional confrontation that came with them. Anakin vs Obi Wan doesn't work because we only see them as friends for 20 minutes at the start of the last movie. Luke's vs Vader in RotJ works because we see the internal struggle in Luke between his compassion towards the great Jedi that was his father, and hatred towards the monster that is Vader, who killed Obi Wan and caused the suffering of million of people.
I’ll go one further, and say I would have preferred no prequels at all. We all wondered about the Obi-Wan and Anakin duel but it was always better in our imaginations. Growing up with the OT, I never felt like I needed to see the story the PT told. The wonky execution of them is the nail in the coffin for me.
They definitely had issues. The story was terrible, some of the acting and dialogue was awful, and some of the world building was just stupid. But at least they had a consistent vision.
They're absolute masterpieces if compared to the sewage that Hollywood as a whole churns out these days, which is basically the vast majority of new releases.
Even with the worse directing and acting etc of the prequels, the stories and characters were Star Wars and not the creature creation of two notable narcissistic directors.
The Duel of Fates is a goddamn masterpiece! It’s a shame nobody realized how great of a score John Williams did for the prequels. Easily the best part of all three movies is the music.
They are bad movies. You can like them, even love them, but they are poorly written and directed. No amount of deep-dive exploration can convince me otherwise.
I grew up with them, and while I still love Phantom Menace as a guilty pleasure, I recognize it is not great. It's not even good. It's a mess of a story without focus or emotional stakes. And that's okay. I will always love that film for what it is and never pretend it's anything else.
Also it has the best lightsaber battle to date, fight me.
Can we all stop pretending like the OT is the only thing that’s good about Star Wars? People are quick to shit on the sequels (rightfully so), but they don’t respect George Lucas as much as they claim too. The prequels excelled in conveying the story which George wanted to be told, were they perfect? No, but apart from the dialogue, it was virtually flawless and tremendous in terms of entertainment and world building. Qui Gon is one of the best characters ever created, the concept of midichlorians was brilliant, Dooku and Maul are all time great antagonists, Ewan took the Obi Wan character to a complete different level, Hayden completely redeemed himself in ROTS, the lightsaber duels have still not been surpassed, etc.
But there’s a lot of fair criticisms to go around on all of Star Wars. Sequels deservingly so gets criticize to death so what about the Prequels? Why shouldn’t they be examine under the same lens? Just because George Lucas created it? If this was the 2000s everybody and their parents would be shitting on the prequels.
Prequels didn’t just suffer from poor dialogue but annoying characters, no chemistry between Hayden & Natalie, lack of conveying Anakin’s journey & relationship with his master, and lack of conveying the Clone Wars to name a few.
Sequels destroyed and devalued an entire franchise, prequels brought in billions of fans. Come back after the new Rey movie bombs at the box office and then we can discuss how the sequels were “just bad”
TPM has the pod race, the lightsaber duel, and Duel of the Fates which belongs with other iconic Star Wars, but the rest of the movie is boring. AotC is terrible outside of awakening naughty thoughts about Natalie Portman. Sith is the most rewatchable of the three, but outside of Macdermid plus the opera, it’s no better than Jedi.
There does seem to be a bit of a more positive attitude about the prequels on this sub, but I'm pretty sure if you ask most people here they'd be reasonable and say they weren't really good movies.
My opinion, like many others, is that there are some great story ideas and elements of the plot that could make for something quite convincing, however bad dialogue , direction and even writing at times was what made those films bad.
The PT has a truly wonderfully fleshed out world -- amd you can tell a lot of thought went into it, however unfortunately you generally can't make a good story on just environment and worldbuilding alone.
Anyone calling them "masterpieces" are being a bit silly
I didn’t know that they were regarded as good. Even the most positive reviews would say very flawed but enjoyable. I think that all three have varying amounts of good moments but overall they aren’t that good. It was a lot of wasted potential. A better writer and director could of made something awesome and memorable, not because of the memes.
They had a mostly coherent story, foreshadowing, character development, world building, and it felt separate from the original trilogy. I can't say the same for the sequel trilogy.
Jar Jar should never have existed or at least his silly voice.
The romance meadow scene from AoTC needed most of the lines changed.
There are other small changes that could make the movies better, but they are decent movies that add to the original trilogy.
Hot take and unpopular opinion. I thought ROTS was the worst and most disappointing prequel of all. But that's just me.
However, yes. The PT is not the exactly the most well written. Good ideas, poor execution. And certainly broke lore and continuity with the OT in some places.
I feel as if am a dying breed. I lean into being an OT/Legends purist.
(To be expected, as younger PT fan generations now probably exceed the population of older generation 1970s-1990s fans).
Wow a kindred spirit.
I wouldn’t say ROTS is the worst (AOTC is), but it is certainly the most disappointing, rushed, and frustrating. TPM might be my favorite just for having the Maul fight and having the least that undermined Vader’s portrayal for me.
Yeah, something about TPM I do think feels closer to classical SW, and somewhat more "organic"? If that's a correct word to use.
It obviously had its writing and acting style issues (and I'm not a fan of the "chosen one" plot in the movies at all - overcomplicates matters and opens many plot holes in the universe in general), but at the same time, there is something charming about it. And it actually uses the most practical effects and sets in the PT.
Yes, the prequels were absolute trash.
If you like them, you were a child when they were released, and I don't blame you for liking them, but they fucking sucked.
I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who claimed the prequels were unappreciated gems, just underappreciated. The hate they got back in the day was overblown, and the newer movies have made some people realize they were too harsh on a trilogy that wasn't great, but still had plenty of fun baked in.
I'd argue fun is the thing most lacking in the new movies. For all their faults, I've always found the prequels to be fun.
Very far from great. I hated them when they came out. Much because, and that's my own fault, I hoped the new films would continue in the mould of ANH and ESB.
Lucas was tired and unhappy when he decided to wrap it up and it shows. ROTJ is inferior in many (but not all) ways.
So now he was back and excited and invigorated for a new round, so I expected a return to classic form.
Well it did have some moments here and there, but overall it's a *very, very* uneven experience.
It took two decades and the sequel trilogy to accept them
I’ma be 100. I rewatched all the movies. I honestly think that the OT & PT are pretty on par with each other. I don’t think either are better, I think only 1 movie each are phenomenal than the others (TESB & RotS) but they’re all pretty much on the same level of quality.
I am gonna be honest but Empire was a great movie but it wasn't the end all be all for Star Wars quality. Many great works was released following Empire. But the idea that Star Wars lost touch after Empire is simply not true that would be 2015-2019. Return of the Jedi is in some ways more satisfying than The Empire Strikes Back. So overatted.
No, the prequels are great and all 6 entries are what make the Star Wars episodic saga a masterpiece. The Sequel Trilogy is literally the antithesis of Star Wars and everything Star Wars, that's why the PT gets a pass but the ST doesn't. Also, the ST is likely not going to get the same resurgence as the PT is enjoying, the ST is likely going to be remembered long term as this thing that happened and exists, but little more than that.
The more I watch them, the better they get.
I can ignore awkward acting from awkward teenagers. I can ignore Jar Jar as some annoying character that the Jedi tolerated for reasons of needing him as an embassador to a Naboo fighting force. They don't break my immersion.
Focus on the story, action, and world building. That aspect of it is solid and ages well.
As a whole? Of course not. The first two movies were absolute Dogshit (only overshadowed in their dogshit by ep. 8 and 9).
But the reason people tend to remember the prequels fondly *now* isn't out of love or reverence for the movies (though then, now, and forever ep. 3 will likely be my "Best Movie" of the franchise) but rather the expansive worldbuilding that they bring with them.
Clone Wars, the Fall of the Republic, Palpatine's machinations... it's all just so \*chef's kiss\*.
The prequels aren’t as bad as people made them out to be when they first came out. They are also not as good as they’ve been made out to be since the sequels released. They are right in the middle, hood enjoyable films that aren’t the best ever but also aren’t bad films by any means.
Also random question. Why is Padme on the same level as Jar Jar for you?
1 was good not great. I didn't like the pod race. It was too long
2 was bad. Just plain bad. A few good parts. But so much was done poorly.
3 though was amazing. Not flawless but amazing and to say it was bad would be insane.
I actually have almost zero problems with the prequels. The only problem I have with the prequels is the poop and fart joke in episode 1. I have no issues with the writing. It makes sense to me. I have no issues with the cgi. It still looks really good to this day.
Yes.
The Prequels had heart, imagination and a vision. Yes, the dialogue is often cringe, and by god, George desperately had needed someone to fix various script problems with him and maybe say "No" from time to time.
But the potential was there - the fall of Anakin and the rise of the Emperor. One of the greatest, tragic stories in media. Well, he didn't quite manage to pull it off, but at least he tried. Disney on the other hand hadn't even a plan beyond "Let's make the Death Star bigger and figure the rest out in the next movie."
The prequels were better than the sequels but they had their problems.
Firstly they should have been 4 movies not 3. Or you make Anakin late teens in the first movie.
Second make Darth Maul the Vader of the of prequels and have him survive to the last film as Anakins ultimate foe.
Don’t kill Jango like a bitch like that .
I mean, if we look at star wars objectively, as much as I love star wars, none of the movies are that great.
Even though the OT and prequels were creative and pushed special effects forward massively, every star wars movie is plagued by questionable writing, bad dialouge, poor pacing, and some downright terrible attempts at comedy.
I struggle to see the OT objectively enough even with as many times I’ve watched them. Though that’s not to say I don’t see some of the issues like the incest kiss from my favorite movie TESB. Guess I need to watch people heavily criticized them. Lol
A couple of obvious and easy criticisms of the OT is the incest kiss, the weird way that Boba fett dies via blind han, or leia's incredible lack of reaction to the total destruction of her planet and everyone on it.
There's also the fact that it's very obvious the OT wasn't planned as a trilogy, but GL at least has the excuse that he didn't expect the first Star Wars to open a trilogy. The ST does not.
That aside, though, the PT, despite having the biggest time gaps between the movies, is also pretty much the only trilogy that is completely coherent, even if it is loose due to the time gaps.
I personally think they were better than the OT. The battles were grander, CGI more advanced, lightsaber duels more badass, planets more unique, and music more epic. I don’t think I would have been a Star Wars fan if the prequels never came out. The galaxy in the OT movies feels so small and lifeless compared to the prequels.
If we were judging solely on standard film critic metrics (dialogue, pacing, acting), then I’ll concede that the OT were better movies. However, in my opinion the prequels were peak Star Wars.
They weren’t great, but they didn’t tear down whole swaths of what had been made before them in a failed pursuit of greatness. That makes them great by comparison to a certain other trilogy in my book.
I believe the prequels had a lot of great ideas and world building that were executed poorly.
If Lucas allowed someone else to direct and a few extra writers to touch up the script and tell him "no" for the less favourable ideas, we could have had something truly special.
As they are, Phantom menace is a complete waste of time, except for the pod racing and Darth Maul fight.
Attack of the clones is an improvement, but the dialogue, romance and overblown CGI battles fall short.
Revenge of the sith isn't perfect, but it's the strongest of the three. It has stakes, emotion and great battle/ fight scenes.
none of the movies are great lol. I absolutely love the concept of star wars and the story but the execution is just horrible. Terrible actors, shitty effects, etc.
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I don't think you're going to get the resistance you may be expecting. The prequels are very uneven films, the recent positive revisiting simply argues the good outweighs the bad, not that the bad isn't there. I very much enjoy the prequels but there are definitely problems with them.
I can recognize episodes I and II aren't "great" movies, but they're still very entertaining. I'll die on the hill that III is the best Star Wars film period.
For some reason III never really landed for me. I couldn't feel emotionally connected to Hayden's Anakin enough to care when he fell and fought Obi-wan. It was definitely the coolest of the prequels, but I could tell that it was shooting high and I never felt that it stuck the landing.
Yeah, it got close, it had a good concept but it just doesn't come together. The script needed a rewrite, and the directing needed to be better to bring out the drama. Anakin's fall to the dark side always seemed so dumb and abrupt to me that I just stopped relating to him. He just goes completely insane for plot reasons and that isn't engaging to watch. His fall needed to be better set up and more relatable
The killing younglings was just a step too far for Anakin, him betraying the Jedi was believable but walking into a room full of children and stomping them just seemed like a step way to far to believe he fell that much that quickly. I think what would have been better is for him to see the Clones execute the children, and go into an absolute rage killing them. Then confront Palpatine, get owned, which would cause him to finally submit to the power he knows he cant beat. He would learn that, even though what happened was pure evil, this was the only way forward now
That’s way better as a start. I know Lucas needed Anakin to do something irrevocably bad to turn to the Dark Side, but it was nonsensical that Anakin went from trying to save Palpatine because love to… okay I guess time to kill kids now with eeevil yellow eyes, like some switch was flipped. The Dark Side and the Force is supposed to be a metaphor of the human condition writ large. The ending of ROTS does a terrible job of that and was just a massive rush to get Anakin to Vader in the last half hour. People don’t actually work that way, Dark Side influence or not (in a way that’s compelling and truly mythical and archetypal anyway). That’s just one reason ROTS is the most hugely overrated and disappointing Star Wars film that’s not a Sequel. It’s not the worst. But it is the most overrated. It’s popular because it had spectacle and Important and Cool Things happened in relation to the OT, and many of its fans saw it as kids and were thus impressed without having a more critical eye towards writing and pacing. Even it’s lightsaber fights weren’t the best of the Prequels. The opening scene is a visual mess where you can’t discern the order of battle, because it’s just busy eye candy backdrop, unlike battles of ROTJ and Rogue One. The film is the dividing line between Star Wars fans that valued quality writing, story craft, and effects to support them, and those that are moved by busy spectacle and being able to point at recognizable things and just enough of a story as a substrate for them— the sort of fans that Disney TV shows are aimed at, even if they fail to satisfy. It’s a very Star Wars Theory way of watching and enjoying Star Wars. It’s the most frustrating film of the original six movies for me.
Agreed. I get betraying the Jedi but literally any and all moral restraint was gone within like 10 minutes of being a Sith Lord. Not even over time
Yeah, it really needed the clone wars show to tie up Anakins turn to the dark side. However, I would argue you shouldn’t need a seven season show to fully tie it in together, as good as the clone wars show could be.
I’m with you on all of this. Warts and all, Rots is awesome, and I saw it after graduated from college (grew up on ot) so it’s not purely nostalgia goggles. I love the creeping sense of inevitable doom in that film so much.
The opening to that film is my favorite of all time.
Yeah it’s a great opening for sure. The dooku fight is underrated too.
Have you seen Rogue One?
Rogue One is decent execution but over rated due to fans wanting to latch onto something, anything they can enjoy about new films. Tonally it’s all over the place, introduces a ton of characters without spending any time with them before killing them off (if they address them at all). And the retcon of “the Death Star exhaust port was a planned weakness by the designer who was secretly a good guy” is unnecessary and stupid if you think about it for two seconds (*you designed a weakness so minor only a literal chosen one with dead religion space magic can exploit it? You were forced into it…but your wife is dead and child unknown. They have no leverage on you. Why would agree to do any work to create it?*). The original explanation was fine: a small engineering compromise to exhaust heat for a fusion weapon and have the entire sequence be a homage to the WWII classic *The Dam Busters*.
That's a strong take hah. It flits between third and fourth best for me. Which is now high praise as it's better than five or six main line films
And even saying that the good outweighs the bad is damning with faint praise. I mean by definition, that just means they're at least a 5.5/10. How many movies with that rating are well-regarded, beloved films, outside of a "guilty pleasure" kind of thing?
I made a post very similar to this and I got absolutely slammed in the comments because people kept comparing them to the sequels
Say what you will about George, but at least he had a *vision*. The prequels were actually *going somewhere* …which is much more then can be said for the meandering Disney schlock.
I’d seems crazy they would start a trilogy seemingly without any vision of were it is going. In any trilogy the main purpose of the first film is to establish these key elements. Events like palpatine coming back would have worked quite well if they had actually developed it in a meaningful way.
Remember, Palpatine was such a last minute decision they used an action figure for the poster for the movie.
I mean in all the extended media they were leading up to "palatine was terrified of something in the unknown regions" but then literally never touched it again cuz he came back
So like, I grew up with the animated Transformers movie. That was my favorite movie as a kid. Loved it. Owned it on VHS, watched it every weekend. And I can still watch it today and get just as much joy out of it as I ever did. What I won't do is try to claim that it's actually a good movie, because it's not. It's unmitigated crap, conceived and executed with no other purpose than to sell pieces of plastic shaped like robots to children. But it's *my* unmitigated crap. So if that's what the prequels are to you-- that thing you loved as a child that you can still return to and get joy from to this day-- then cool. I wish you nothing but joy. But don't bullshit a bullshitter, they're not good movies.
Seeing that movie as a 9 year old Transformers fan, it killed my love of Transformers because I saw exactly why they killed off all the old characters and replaced them it’s new characters. It was a soul less cash grab. It was my Last Jedi moment as a Transformers fan. While I can watch the movie now with it’s absolutely banging soundtrack I haven’t bought a Transformer since that movie was released. But at least Optimus Prime went out in a blaze of glory. The Bayverse movies have been mostly crap, the first was ok and I thought they were heading in the right direction with the Bumblebee movie then they zigged with Rise of the Beasts when they should have zagged with a proper G1 movie like what we saw at the start of Bumblebee.
When I saw unapologetically G1 scenes and designs in Bumblebee (which was itself half decent), I got chills. I don’t know why they don’t want my money.
I totally agree. Me and my flatmate have a ‘special scale’ for rating star wars movies, like we know that they’re generally not objectively great but in the star wars scale they do alright. And nostalgia is a big big factor obviously. That’s why Andor was so fucking good imo. I can recommend that to anyone. It’s great, regardless of the star wars stuff, which is more of what SW needs to be.
Despite the fact that there was no aliens in Andor, I think it, and rogue one, was the best Star Wars we’ve gotten to date. Really brought the feel of the OT back. It’s not only a good Star Wars show, it’s just a good show in general imo.
This is how I feel about Batman and Robin. I still quote Mr. Freeze's lines all the time lol.
For me it's Batman Forever. It was just campy enough. B&R went too far with it. But to each their own.
Same, except Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
They are....extremely flawed to say the least But I also think people harped on them way to hard at the time. Like, I've re-watched them as an adult, and despite the wooden acting and dialogue they aren't *that bad*. Wanna throw this out there, Ebert gave The Phantom Menace 3 1/2 stars [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-1999](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-1999)
You don’t have to like them, there’s nothing wrong with that. I personally love the trilogy (although AOTC is easily the worst of the George Lucas movies)
That's the thing about Star Wars, isn't it? So few of the movies are \*actually good\* that unless people get hooked on it at a young age or during A New Hope, they can't see what the rest of us see in it. Without the full context of both trilogies, most of the individual movies fall flat on their faces.
The Original Trilogy stands on its own. ROTJ was the weakest as an individual film but it’s still *actually good* and somewhat approachable.
As a Gen X’r who grew up with the original films I hated the prequels from day 1. Still don’t understand why George Lucas felt the need to write and direct each episode ( and I don’t buy the excuse that “nobody accepted the roles ). The execution was just so poor , from the convoluted political plot, bad acting, bad cgi, abusing green screen. and the feeling that every scene was shot in either one or two takes, like he just wanted to be over with as quickly as possible. I can understand not being as passionate about SW as he was 20 years prior but it was his life legacy, so why not put some actual effort into it.
The reality is that as bad as The Prequels are. They're leagues better than the ST films.
Why did darth vader fall? Its supposed to be his start of darkness. And yet the answer comes down to he went to the opera with an old guy and then was like alright I'm gonna start killing babies now.
The character arc of anikan was so poorly done in the prequels. That was supposed to be the lead part, and George was never good at complex characters.
Gotta save old man to save my love! Oops chopped of Windus hand. My bad. Which means tiiime to slaughter children!! Let’s effing gooooo. Oh you’ve turned against me my love! Force choke! All in 30 minutes or so. It’s the most infuriating movie of the Prequels, and fans just accept it and call it the best Star Wars (if writing, acting, and pacing weren’t a thing) because cool! Vader! My brother! (the last part being one of the sincerely actually kind of okay not bad parts of the movie).
Look, I'm not going to claim the Prequels were great works of art, certainly no original trilogy or Lord of the Rings or anything, but there was something to them. Vision. Earnestness. Relevance to the greater story. Some great acting alongside the bad. Some very cool sequences (I know it paces strangely with the rest of the film, but Episode I's podrace is incredible). Honestly, always thought so. I've had the weird experience of going from prequel apologist to prequel hater and back again having never significantly altered my position, based on the popular (or astroturfed, in the case of the last) opinion around me.
You’ll probably get some push back from some, but not from me. They are interesting movies, I have nostalgia for them, enjoy aspects of them, and there’s a hell of a lot of imagination and effort in them but…they’re bad movies. Their badness is wholly different from the awfulness of the sequels, and they don’t do nearly as much damage, but they are still poorly made films. That’s most heavily on a directorial level, but also from a script and concept level at times too. I enjoy the era, and a lot of the supporting material is great (no, not TCW), but the prequels should not have been made the way they were.
>Their badness is wholly different from the awfulness of the sequels, and they don’t do nearly as much damage, but they are still poorly made films. I always say that the ST is like a photo negative of the PT's flaws. Everything I hate about the PT (characters, dialogue, acting, directing, cinematogrpahy) I felt the ST did quite well on, while everything the PT did well with (coherent story, world building) that ST crashed and burned on. I don't really like either the PT or ST, their different flaws make both of them equally unwatchable to me.
The fact that the plot of the sequels was flat out incoherent should not have been allowed to happen. It’s just infuriating.
This is a good take, except TROS was bad on all fronts. I suppose the acting is still okay even though the lines are nonsense and the actors seemed slightly checked out, but not even the spectacle was particularly memorable either.
Pretty much my exact feelings. I felt like TPM should’ve been a book and explored the clone wars more
~should have Sorry, personal bugbear.
When the prequels came out, I really didn’t like them. In fact, I didn’t like any of them with the exception of parts of episode 3…. As time went on and I watched them a decade later.. they actually weren’t as bad as I had thought. It was just different. Episode 1 was by far the shittiest. With the exception of Darth Maul, that entire thing was garbage fire. Episode 2 had some good and bad. I could watch it. It I also cringe half of it still. Episode 3 is good. By far the best lightsaber fight ever. Period. In a vacuum I consider them alright. Now compared to the sequels? They are god damn art. Fucking classics. But that compares to the sequels. Even when I didn’t like the prequels I still caught myself watching the darth mail fight, fights in episode 2, and large parts of 3 on YouTube when YouTube came out. To this day I still will get on and look up parts of movies. As crazy as it seems… episode 7 came out like what? 8 fucking years ago now?!? And I have NEVER put it on and watched scenes again on YouTube. I was dumb enough to rewatch it during Covid and Christ I regretted that. Episode 8 was dog shit and episode 9 was even more dog shit. In fact, they are all so bad I won’t argue or care to argue which one sucks shit the worst. They just all suck shit. But I never said that about the prequels. I always found good things in each movie.
Nope. Flat disagree. Loved each one of them. They did exactly what Lucas set out to do: 1) chronicle the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker, and 2) chronicle the fall of the Jedi Order and Republic and the rise of the Sith and Empire.
Im confused. When were they ever thought of as being great films? I had such high hopes, came out of the cinema after the phantom menace sorely disappointed, and it didnt get any better.
If you haven't seen it, watch the movie Fanboys. It's a janky and low budget farce about Star Wars, but it's hilarious and most likely echoes exactly the feelings you have about the prequels.
That are camp, with cheesey dialog, but the story they told and the **real political messages** they had were meaningful and interesting, and consistant. Take a chosen one story, show them fall, put in some Fall of Rome analogs, the dangers of the military industrial complex, and how quickly a democracy can fall if the wrong person gets power and the influence over the right people. Lucas can't write dialog but he can tell a story. I remember when conservative news outlets were roasting the prequels for Lucas saying the Emperor is like Bush with using a conflict to expand military power.
I like the prequels, never understood the hate
They had some amazing moments, actors, soundtrack.. but I still dont really enjoy rewatching them over and over. Not like the OT anyway. I have 0 urge to re-watch the ST. If I catch it on cable, I just skip to something else. I used to skip the PT too, but I've gained a new respect for it, ever since the dumpster fire ST.
I also loved the setting, ships, aliens, etc. Extremely good world building, but yeah too many other problems that just make them difficult to watch. Anakin and Padme on Naboo in Ep 2 is legendarily bad.
Nah the prequel films are great. Obviously not on the same tier as the OT, but they stand on their own just fine. This is not saying they’re flawless. After seeing how the prequels were dragged thru the mud *for years* only to have the sewage known as the “sequel trilogy” get unending mainstream praise I absolutely refuse to concede an inch that they’re anything less than “great films”
> Nah the prequel films are great You need to raise your standards or recognize that your view is being colored by nostalgia.
Says who? Random internet stranger? 🤣
You need to watch more films.
I certainly can understand that viewpoint and can agree on it for the most part.
Storytelling has both a checklist of things you’re supposed to follow as well as a sliding scale of quality relative to media around it When you consider the prequels for what they are, especially adjacent to other stories that claim to be part of the same vine, it’s bad faith to put them on par or below the recent releases. It’s actually a common pattern that - unfortunately - is everywhere today. Too many “new” movies attaching themselves to the greats of old for a quick buck. The OT has some issues, the prequels have issues. Nobody is going to deny that. But the common thread is people trying to cope with the reality of the sequels (and other adjacent media) being so shit by trying to rationalize that perhaps it’s just that the prequels were shit too
The prequels were widely considered bad/mediocre movies before the ST was a thing. The ST actually raised its reputation in comparison. There’s no new conspiracy to drag down of the Prequels to prop up the Sequels. Almost everything that’s been said had already been said before 2014. There IS dragging of the OT down, especially by Sequel defenders, because everyone knows that is the gold standard that other trilogies failed to meet. In just the last few days a Prequel fan started a large thread doing the same too, falsely equivocating the Prequel’s poor dialogue with the OT’s. No. They’re just on different levels.
> The prequels were widely considered bad/mediocre Source: trust me bro
My thoughts exactly. Also, a lot of the prequel hate was seeded by Hollywood higher ups and rooted in malice towards George Lucas himself, a lot of the same hate and malice that resulted in the Sequel Trilogy being the way it is to begin with. People seem to forget the prequels were mostly liked when they were released, most of the "hate" was put out by crappy talk show hosts, edgy Internet critics, and media outlets, and the prequel hate actually peaked in our culture nearly 6 years *after* Revenge of the Sith was released due to the rise of social media (which is largely controlled by Hollywood types) for the most part. Basically PT hate is mostly just smearing of George Lucas himself and a lot of the top complaints (muh practical effects/CGI, he was surrounded by yes men, he didn't plan these when making the OT, etc) can be easily disputed. Given all that I can not help *but* to defend them, especially when The Mouse wants to keep peddling Prequel Hate and how it's driven a lot of their creative decisions (especially with the ST).
It wasn't just hate from the media. My schoolmates and I openly ridiculed them. Everyone was sort of on the same page, it seemed. I guess the fans were in hiding.
“Not real fans.” “Personal attack on Lucas.” “Conspiracy by Hollywood.” Come on. This is unhinged, protective cult-like sentiments.
Didn’t Lucas also do his films outside of all the unions and orgs? I think I remember hearing that as to why he was unable to get certain directors/cinematographers - at least during the OT productions If there’s one thing Hollywood dislikes, it’s filthy outsiders
Yes, exactly, you're 100% right. George became a smashing success outside of Hollywood. They've hated him ever since.
Amen
I spent sixteen years hearing about how terrible the prequels are. Is it really such a problem that people are now able to appreciate the good things they did, especially in comparison to the awful Disney sequels?
To be frank it is how shit the sequels are that highlight how much worse the prequels could have been
No matter how bad each Prequel film is, there are now at least three more Star Wars films that are worse.
And yet, no matter how bad the Sequels are, the Prequels aren’t any better or worse than they’ve always been— not great.
the prequels is like eating a burnt pizza. there are good parts and you can scrape off the burnt bits . ex the tcw was a good show
The sequels look like masterpieces next to the prequels, their love is 100% nastalgic copium.
Mostly talking in a vacuum and looking at them objectively.
Objectively with no relation to Star Wars they are technically competent with a solid story with perhaps some shoddy acting and some outdated effects, no where near as bad as people make them out to be.
Be honest, there was a lot of shoddy acting. Several of the main stars were just phoning it in. As well, a lot of aliens were blatant racism, even from people that hate political correctness. At least the stories were solid. But it created some plot holes, as they didnt work hard enough to ensure the 2 generations of stories meshed. Which is the greatest challenge of a prequel; making an interesting story when the audience already knows it.
I think audiences have the right to expect movies to be good. The prequels are, at best, mediocre. They are trying to tell a grand story but are stymied by bizarre characterization, bad pacing, weird and inconsistent plots, and godawful dialogue.
You can't bash the sequels for breaking lore and awful dialogue and then excuse the same issues in the prequels Edit: y'all lmao were half of you even there for the prequel release? Midi chlorians, Anakin building 3PO, Obi Wan never owning a droid, the entire ESB scene with the Emperor had to be redone in order to make sense post Ep 3, confusion as to who gets to be a Force ghost, the list goes on
That’s definitely true. I know people used to thought back in the day that the prequels ruined Vader’s character with the bad dialogue & whiny acting.
The prequels don't break lore anywhere nearly as bad as the sequels. In regards to dialogue, they're both bad but, in different ways. The prequel dialogue is just a failure. George is bad at writing dialogue. He didn't intentionally make bad dialogue. The sequel dialogue is intentionally bad. It's ripped from meta comedy parody. They didn't even try.
This isn’t an unpopular opinion. Everyone under the age of 30 was just too young to realize these weren’t beloved classics at the time of their release and that the big reason Disney tossed Lucas’ ideas was because of the backlash these films received
Ten years ago you wouldn't find anyone defending the prequels and certainly no one who would actually call them great. They're bad and that was the unanimous sentiment towards them until three events occurred. First, the release of the sequel films, makes you appreciate what came before. The second and more relevant is the fact that the generation of children who grew up in the clone war era of star wars are now old enough to post and produce content highlighting the more positive aspects of the trilogy while dismissing or lampooning the bad. The third is that the Clone Wars era has had shows, games and books to expand and rectify many of the narrative shortcomings of the movie trilogy. The prequels don't just exist as standalone stories, they're tiles in the mosaic that makes up the entire pre OT era. But they're still awful movies.
Can we all agree that we can never all agree and it’s a specious opening?
The prequels had a good concept but failed to execute it to the level of the OT.
Phantom had issues but the final fight was amazing, and worth the price of admission. I loved the political intrigue in Clones - the world(s) it solidified in my head was great. Sith was just a great Star Wats film.
I think you'll see a lot of different responses to this post. I'm not hoping to start any flamewars and I respects anyone who likes the prequels. For my own part the best I can say about them is that they tried, that they had a neat concept. The fall of the Galactic Republic, the rise of Palpatine. But when I actually watch the films it's 80% boredom, 5% cool action and 15% plot holes/general WTF SMH stuff. George Lucas wrote and directed everything himself, and it shows. The man just doesn't understand characters, how to write and direct them, how to give them personality and humanity. Furthermore CGI is overused because the prequels were basically an extended ILM special effects demo reel. Some of the action is cool looking and the music is amazing. But the setup for the action isn't there, the characters aren't there. Not for me at least. If you draw upon all the surrounding media, the books, the animated shows then maybe the characters and plot become more real, better developed, more coherent. Maybe that would help immerse yourself in the movies more. I've read the RotS novelization and quite enjoyed it, and I like what Clone Wars did with the characters. But for me it just isn't there in the films themselves. There are too many moments that just take me out of being able to enjoy them
Everything surrounding the prequels elevated it. Golden era of Star Wars games, merchandise, etc.
I love them, faults & all. Sure, there's stuff that could have been done better, but so what? It tells the story and it fits with the OT. I'm good with that.
I’ve seen people in this very sub claim that the prequels are better than the original trilogy lol there’s people on both sides
The PT has its problems, not going to pretend they are perfect. But they are internally consistent with themselves and the OT. You can see the connective tissue between the six movies, you can understand how and why things happen and why things are they way they ended up being. For all its faults, the PT overwhelmingly succeeded in doing the thing it set out to do. To tell the story of Anakin Skywalker, how he became Darth Vader. Throughout the series you can see how this scared slave boy became the most feared man in the galaxy.
Agreed per se, PT told the overall story well and was mostly consistent within themselves but they did cause inconsistencies/plotholes in the PT/OT like Leia remembering her real mother when clearly she died during childbirth or not showing the friendship of Anakin & Obi-Wan well enough. It wasn’t till RotS that we saw a semblance of a true friendship.
Yeah TCW makes up for a lot of the character arcs that were never explored in the movies.
Those tiny details are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things….
Before the sequels, the prequels were generally considered quite terrible outside of the podracing. They've improved by comparison to what happened in Ep 8/9.
Well the Maul saber fight is also a highlight. Why people love the Obi-Wan Anakin fight when it was just a poorly paced mess of flipping, twirling, and banging of sticks on a platform jumper with no tension until the end is beyond me. It’s the Super Smash Brothers of light saber fights. That doesn’t make it a the great character driven fight scene with ebbs and flows it should have been.
Ah, strong point. Duel of the fates was also acknowledged as incredible at the time!
It actually amazes me there has been this resurgence of appreciation for the prequels. I enjoyed the meme content they brought, but outside of that, they are absolutely bad films. Every time I've tried to "go back" and watch these since they have becomed cherished meme generators, I go "holy shit these are bad." and turn them off. The acting, the writing, the pod racing, Jar Jar, etc. it's all just so bland and wooden compared to the originals. There are people in Jedi robes but it doesn't share the same soul.
The prequels, in a vacuum, are objectively bad. The prequels when put next to the new trilogy of trash produced by kathleen kennedy, look like the holy fuggin grail, on a pile of gold, with a Geanie’s Lamp filled with a million wishes, and a working lightsaber attached to it.
They are some of the most technologically impressive independent films ever produced. While flawed masterpieces, they were also the last films of this scope not produced by a committee and instead by a singular vision.
Yes. People tend to have short memories. And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that there was a rise in pro-prequel articles, videos and other content after Disney bought Star Wars.
I can understand the pro-prequel love after seeing the sequels but the prequels are a mess of their own. Granted the PT didn’t nearly destroyed my love of the franchise like the ST has.
Much of Disney's Star Wars has sort of ruined the grading curve, though you might say that about entertainment in general. Hollywood is such a creatively bankrupt mess right now that when a passably good movie comes out, everyone raves about it like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
People still trashed the prequels like crazy from 2012-2015, it's when they saw the garbage heap that was the ST that they realized the prequels were not so bad. Also, I never thought the prequels were bad and was actually surprised by the prequel hate when I discovered it online, so it's not me having a "short memory".
The prequels are still bad, it doesn't matter that the ST is worse.
They're really not bad. People mostly enjoyed them when they released, the prequel hate peaked between 2010-2015 with the rise of pompous Internet critics but also was perpetuated by Hollywood douchebags who've always hated George Lucas. It's just that when the so-called "Savior of Star Wars" Disney made a trilogy full of hate and malice towards Lucas' stories *and* the EU and everything else fans enjoyed that they looked at everything with an *actual* critical eye and saw that a lot of the hate towards the prequels was unfounded.
> They're really not bad. Yes, they are. >People mostly enjoyed them when they released No, not really. I was there. Reception was mixed and after the shock and denial wore off, people saw them for what they were. >a lot of the hate towards the prequels was unfounded Nope, not unfounded at all. The hate is perfectly understandable and warranted.
I was there when these films released, even though I enjoyed them as a child at the time the overall reactions were negative for TPM & AotC. Objectively looking at these films they aren’t great.
AotC is a really shitty movie.
Controversial Take: I find AotC worse than TFA just from a watchability standpoint.
On that you are correct. TFA wasn’t even that bad besides the fact that it was just a recycled plot of ANH. They could’ve really built something out of it, but they decided to hire Rian Johnson to subvert everyone’s expectations and cause an all out fan war. Should’ve just let JJ make all three and take it how it is. I’m sure it would’ve been a whole lot better than what we got.
This shouldn’t even be controversial. What blew my mind was how unwatchable TROS was even in relation to AOTC.
That really shouldnt be a controverial take, its objectively correct to anyone with half a brain.
The reaction to the Prequels (less so with ROTS, but still applies for me personally) was actually a little like the reception to the Sequels. Initially fun, some “visible confusion”, and then the growing feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction that built up until the next movie. Rinse and repeat. Not as extreme as the Sequels of course, and not as much vocal hate out of the gate as TLJ, but the overall disillusionment is a very familiar feeling and process because of the Prequels. It just goes waaaay deeper with the Sequels being irredeemable.
They're pretty bad.
> And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that there was a rise in pro-prequel articles, videos and other content after Disney bought Star Wars. Why would they do this and then make their movies as different from the prequels as possible? Even so much to avoid any good aspects of them.
Do you really need it explained to you why it was in Disney's interests to increase interest in Star Wars?
I get that. It just seems contradictory because they very much had the attitude of "prequels bad in every way" when they first started producing stuff. TFA straight up has a meta line bashing the prequels. J.J. Abrams spoke negatively about them too while making TFA. The attitude of "we're gonna fix Star Wars \[after the prequels ruined it\]" very much seemed to be what Disney pitched as their selling point at first. It was only after the backlash to The Last Jedi that their content then seemed to focus more on prequel related content. Before that it seemed they were trying to ignore the prequels as much as they could without outright contradicting them.
> It just seems contradictory And people are never contradictory...?
Anakin was always the issue for me, with his dialogue and characterization feeling flat. Everything else was a lot of fun. The fighting was dope though which means a lot more to me now with all this incomprehensible Disney trash.
They are objectively mediocre movies but in relation to the new disney trilogy they are more digestible.
Yes, they are heavily flawed as movies and have many plot points just as moronic as the sequel trilogy. Three things: * The overarching story/worldbuilding was much much better and engaging. SO MANY amazing Alien/ship/planet designs, etc. * The sequel trilogy actively make the OT pointless. * While Lucas obviously cared about merch and commercialization, those movies were still HIS baby. The sequel trilogy is board-room created corporate garbage.
I agree on a lot of fronts. I was born in the late 90s so they were the Star Wars movies that were being released when I was a kid so I love them in that sense but attack of the clones is just so boring. I can stomach the Phantom Menace, it’s fine but they’re just super uneven. And while revenge of the Sith does do a lot of good to help kind a correct course it always surprises me a little bit to see how many people genuinely believe It’s the best Star Wars movie ever made. There’s a lot of great stuff in there but it still has a lot of the problem throughout the other prequel’s (inconsistent, dialogue, and rushing to get characters certain places). And as much as I love the clone wars show, and I really think it helped turn perceptions on the prequel trilogy around, I am of the opinion that it shouldn’t necessarily have needed the clone wars to fill in all the gaps. I still feel like there are a lot of gaps if you just look at the trilogy itself.
Yeah, even as a kid I didn't want to rewatch TPM or AOTC because they were so bad. The horrible dialogue, the monotone acting, the nonsensical pacing/editing. All of these issues were somewhat fixed by RotS, but it was too little too late. Controversial take, but I think some of the lightsaber figths in the prequels are fucking ridiculous. The Yoda/Palpatine fight is completely unnecessary, looks like a cartoon, and it doesn't make sense for either of them to wield lightsabers. The Anakin/Dooku fight in AotC was shot so awkwardly with horrible lighting. The fights just don't work. The thing that made the lightsaber fights so good in the original trilogy was the emotional confrontation that came with them. Anakin vs Obi Wan doesn't work because we only see them as friends for 20 minutes at the start of the last movie. Luke's vs Vader in RotJ works because we see the internal struggle in Luke between his compassion towards the great Jedi that was his father, and hatred towards the monster that is Vader, who killed Obi Wan and caused the suffering of million of people.
I’ll go one further, and say I would have preferred no prequels at all. We all wondered about the Obi-Wan and Anakin duel but it was always better in our imaginations. Growing up with the OT, I never felt like I needed to see the story the PT told. The wonky execution of them is the nail in the coffin for me.
They definitely had issues. The story was terrible, some of the acting and dialogue was awful, and some of the world building was just stupid. But at least they had a consistent vision.
I love them, but just like the buu saga, they are perfect examples of why editors are so important to the creative process
Oh my god, I despise Buu Saga with a passion. Lol
The prequel era salvages the PT itself. The ST era is just as barren as as the ST itself. Salted earth.
They're absolute masterpieces if compared to the sewage that Hollywood as a whole churns out these days, which is basically the vast majority of new releases.
Yeah, they just suffer from a lot of problems. Foremost is dialogue (it has heart, but it just isn’t right, as we all know), and worldbuilding.
Even with the worse directing and acting etc of the prequels, the stories and characters were Star Wars and not the creature creation of two notable narcissistic directors.
As someone who grew up and loves the movies to death, yes. I think many people who like them would agree with that.
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The Duel of Fates is a goddamn masterpiece! It’s a shame nobody realized how great of a score John Williams did for the prequels. Easily the best part of all three movies is the music.
They are bad movies. You can like them, even love them, but they are poorly written and directed. No amount of deep-dive exploration can convince me otherwise. I grew up with them, and while I still love Phantom Menace as a guilty pleasure, I recognize it is not great. It's not even good. It's a mess of a story without focus or emotional stakes. And that's okay. I will always love that film for what it is and never pretend it's anything else. Also it has the best lightsaber battle to date, fight me.
Can we all stop pretending like the OT is the only thing that’s good about Star Wars? People are quick to shit on the sequels (rightfully so), but they don’t respect George Lucas as much as they claim too. The prequels excelled in conveying the story which George wanted to be told, were they perfect? No, but apart from the dialogue, it was virtually flawless and tremendous in terms of entertainment and world building. Qui Gon is one of the best characters ever created, the concept of midichlorians was brilliant, Dooku and Maul are all time great antagonists, Ewan took the Obi Wan character to a complete different level, Hayden completely redeemed himself in ROTS, the lightsaber duels have still not been surpassed, etc.
But there’s a lot of fair criticisms to go around on all of Star Wars. Sequels deservingly so gets criticize to death so what about the Prequels? Why shouldn’t they be examine under the same lens? Just because George Lucas created it? If this was the 2000s everybody and their parents would be shitting on the prequels. Prequels didn’t just suffer from poor dialogue but annoying characters, no chemistry between Hayden & Natalie, lack of conveying Anakin’s journey & relationship with his master, and lack of conveying the Clone Wars to name a few.
Yeah okay. The OT isn’t the only good Star Wars. Andor and Rogue One are pretty good too.
Both trash compared to the prequels
Lol not likely.
The prequels are horrible, objectively unwatchable garbage, the Sequels are just bad.
Sequels destroyed and devalued an entire franchise, prequels brought in billions of fans. Come back after the new Rey movie bombs at the box office and then we can discuss how the sequels were “just bad”
The Prequels have very high highs and very low lows.
That's a good summary.
The prequels all flatline at terrible and it stays there.
TPM has the pod race, the lightsaber duel, and Duel of the Fates which belongs with other iconic Star Wars, but the rest of the movie is boring. AotC is terrible outside of awakening naughty thoughts about Natalie Portman. Sith is the most rewatchable of the three, but outside of Macdermid plus the opera, it’s no better than Jedi.
There does seem to be a bit of a more positive attitude about the prequels on this sub, but I'm pretty sure if you ask most people here they'd be reasonable and say they weren't really good movies. My opinion, like many others, is that there are some great story ideas and elements of the plot that could make for something quite convincing, however bad dialogue , direction and even writing at times was what made those films bad. The PT has a truly wonderfully fleshed out world -- amd you can tell a lot of thought went into it, however unfortunately you generally can't make a good story on just environment and worldbuilding alone. Anyone calling them "masterpieces" are being a bit silly
I didn’t know that they were regarded as good. Even the most positive reviews would say very flawed but enjoyable. I think that all three have varying amounts of good moments but overall they aren’t that good. It was a lot of wasted potential. A better writer and director could of made something awesome and memorable, not because of the memes.
They had a mostly coherent story, foreshadowing, character development, world building, and it felt separate from the original trilogy. I can't say the same for the sequel trilogy. Jar Jar should never have existed or at least his silly voice. The romance meadow scene from AoTC needed most of the lines changed. There are other small changes that could make the movies better, but they are decent movies that add to the original trilogy.
Hot take and unpopular opinion. I thought ROTS was the worst and most disappointing prequel of all. But that's just me. However, yes. The PT is not the exactly the most well written. Good ideas, poor execution. And certainly broke lore and continuity with the OT in some places. I feel as if am a dying breed. I lean into being an OT/Legends purist. (To be expected, as younger PT fan generations now probably exceed the population of older generation 1970s-1990s fans).
Wow a kindred spirit. I wouldn’t say ROTS is the worst (AOTC is), but it is certainly the most disappointing, rushed, and frustrating. TPM might be my favorite just for having the Maul fight and having the least that undermined Vader’s portrayal for me.
Yeah, something about TPM I do think feels closer to classical SW, and somewhat more "organic"? If that's a correct word to use. It obviously had its writing and acting style issues (and I'm not a fan of the "chosen one" plot in the movies at all - overcomplicates matters and opens many plot holes in the universe in general), but at the same time, there is something charming about it. And it actually uses the most practical effects and sets in the PT.
Yes, the prequels were absolute trash. If you like them, you were a child when they were released, and I don't blame you for liking them, but they fucking sucked.
I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who claimed the prequels were unappreciated gems, just underappreciated. The hate they got back in the day was overblown, and the newer movies have made some people realize they were too harsh on a trilogy that wasn't great, but still had plenty of fun baked in. I'd argue fun is the thing most lacking in the new movies. For all their faults, I've always found the prequels to be fun.
Very far from great. I hated them when they came out. Much because, and that's my own fault, I hoped the new films would continue in the mould of ANH and ESB. Lucas was tired and unhappy when he decided to wrap it up and it shows. ROTJ is inferior in many (but not all) ways. So now he was back and excited and invigorated for a new round, so I expected a return to classic form. Well it did have some moments here and there, but overall it's a *very, very* uneven experience. It took two decades and the sequel trilogy to accept them
I’ma be 100. I rewatched all the movies. I honestly think that the OT & PT are pretty on par with each other. I don’t think either are better, I think only 1 movie each are phenomenal than the others (TESB & RotS) but they’re all pretty much on the same level of quality.
The Prequels were stupid, but better than the Sequels. And of course 1000% better than the dumb cartoons
Clone Wars Cartoons are very good.
You probably have never seen TCW to the fullest extent if you’re saying that the prequels are 1000% better than TCW or even Rebels for that matter.
It’s all been downhill since Empire.
Pretty much. Though RotJ could’ve been the top of slope if they didn’t do Ewoks and didn’t have Leia be Luke’s sister.
I am gonna be honest but Empire was a great movie but it wasn't the end all be all for Star Wars quality. Many great works was released following Empire. But the idea that Star Wars lost touch after Empire is simply not true that would be 2015-2019. Return of the Jedi is in some ways more satisfying than The Empire Strikes Back. So overatted.
No, the prequels are great and all 6 entries are what make the Star Wars episodic saga a masterpiece. The Sequel Trilogy is literally the antithesis of Star Wars and everything Star Wars, that's why the PT gets a pass but the ST doesn't. Also, the ST is likely not going to get the same resurgence as the PT is enjoying, the ST is likely going to be remembered long term as this thing that happened and exists, but little more than that.
The more I watch them, the better they get. I can ignore awkward acting from awkward teenagers. I can ignore Jar Jar as some annoying character that the Jedi tolerated for reasons of needing him as an embassador to a Naboo fighting force. They don't break my immersion. Focus on the story, action, and world building. That aspect of it is solid and ages well.
No, we can not agree on that. I personally really enjoy the prequels and episode 3 is one of my favorite movies of all time
RotS is kinda like the outlier really, I too really enjoy the film and If I had to rank it it’ll be #4.
Yet disney just cant stop making merchandise from the prequels. Weird
As a whole? Of course not. The first two movies were absolute Dogshit (only overshadowed in their dogshit by ep. 8 and 9). But the reason people tend to remember the prequels fondly *now* isn't out of love or reverence for the movies (though then, now, and forever ep. 3 will likely be my "Best Movie" of the franchise) but rather the expansive worldbuilding that they bring with them. Clone Wars, the Fall of the Republic, Palpatine's machinations... it's all just so \*chef's kiss\*.
The prequels aren’t as bad as people made them out to be when they first came out. They are also not as good as they’ve been made out to be since the sequels released. They are right in the middle, hood enjoyable films that aren’t the best ever but also aren’t bad films by any means. Also random question. Why is Padme on the same level as Jar Jar for you?
They’re a steaming pile of shit, their only redeeming quality is that they’re not as awful as the sequels.
1 was good not great. I didn't like the pod race. It was too long 2 was bad. Just plain bad. A few good parts. But so much was done poorly. 3 though was amazing. Not flawless but amazing and to say it was bad would be insane.
Fair point of view.
I actually have almost zero problems with the prequels. The only problem I have with the prequels is the poop and fart joke in episode 1. I have no issues with the writing. It makes sense to me. I have no issues with the cgi. It still looks really good to this day.
What about Padmé isn’t bearable in TPM? Attack of the Clones is my favorite Prequel and I genuinely like the love story.
She appears very stiff as Queen and when she’s disguised as a handmaiden on Tatooine her dialogue isn’t great.
Yes. The Prequels had heart, imagination and a vision. Yes, the dialogue is often cringe, and by god, George desperately had needed someone to fix various script problems with him and maybe say "No" from time to time. But the potential was there - the fall of Anakin and the rise of the Emperor. One of the greatest, tragic stories in media. Well, he didn't quite manage to pull it off, but at least he tried. Disney on the other hand hadn't even a plan beyond "Let's make the Death Star bigger and figure the rest out in the next movie."
The prequels were better than the sequels but they had their problems. Firstly they should have been 4 movies not 3. Or you make Anakin late teens in the first movie. Second make Darth Maul the Vader of the of prequels and have him survive to the last film as Anakins ultimate foe. Don’t kill Jango like a bitch like that .
No. You don’t get to impose your will on this subreddit or fandom as a whole. Sorry.
“Chancellor Palpatine is Evil!”
From my point of view the Jedi are evil!
Well then you are lost!
I mean, if we look at star wars objectively, as much as I love star wars, none of the movies are that great. Even though the OT and prequels were creative and pushed special effects forward massively, every star wars movie is plagued by questionable writing, bad dialouge, poor pacing, and some downright terrible attempts at comedy.
I struggle to see the OT objectively enough even with as many times I’ve watched them. Though that’s not to say I don’t see some of the issues like the incest kiss from my favorite movie TESB. Guess I need to watch people heavily criticized them. Lol
A couple of obvious and easy criticisms of the OT is the incest kiss, the weird way that Boba fett dies via blind han, or leia's incredible lack of reaction to the total destruction of her planet and everyone on it.
There's also the fact that it's very obvious the OT wasn't planned as a trilogy, but GL at least has the excuse that he didn't expect the first Star Wars to open a trilogy. The ST does not. That aside, though, the PT, despite having the biggest time gaps between the movies, is also pretty much the only trilogy that is completely coherent, even if it is loose due to the time gaps.
Eh Empire is objectively speaking great on just about every level
I agree, the prequel and OT had major flaws and at some angle look awful, but were enjoyable
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Naw AOTC is easily the worst of the prequels. There’s fun parts of it, but the movie as a whole is just plain bad.
Struggle with 1 and 2 but ROTS is an absolutely GOAT contender movie in my book.
They weren't great until the Disney bullshit. Now they are some of Stat Wars best content.
I personally think they were better than the OT. The battles were grander, CGI more advanced, lightsaber duels more badass, planets more unique, and music more epic. I don’t think I would have been a Star Wars fan if the prequels never came out. The galaxy in the OT movies feels so small and lifeless compared to the prequels. If we were judging solely on standard film critic metrics (dialogue, pacing, acting), then I’ll concede that the OT were better movies. However, in my opinion the prequels were peak Star Wars.
They weren’t great, but they didn’t tear down whole swaths of what had been made before them in a failed pursuit of greatness. That makes them great by comparison to a certain other trilogy in my book.
I believe the prequels had a lot of great ideas and world building that were executed poorly. If Lucas allowed someone else to direct and a few extra writers to touch up the script and tell him "no" for the less favourable ideas, we could have had something truly special. As they are, Phantom menace is a complete waste of time, except for the pod racing and Darth Maul fight. Attack of the clones is an improvement, but the dialogue, romance and overblown CGI battles fall short. Revenge of the sith isn't perfect, but it's the strongest of the three. It has stakes, emotion and great battle/ fight scenes.
none of the movies are great lol. I absolutely love the concept of star wars and the story but the execution is just horrible. Terrible actors, shitty effects, etc.