I do have a complicated relationship with the Star Wars
franchise. I really, really loved the original trilogy (today’s Episode 4 - 6)
when I was a teenager and I read my way through most of the EU before it was
canned by Disney (well, long before it was canned). There’s still a few things
I would love back in the EU which will not happen (such as Mara Jade, one of
the most interesting characters in my humble opinion). I really, really wanted
to love the prequels, but I couldn’t. I’m still sure George Lucas owes me 10
minutes of my life for that pod race in Episode 1 and is at fault for my tooth
problems because of that horribly sugary-sweet romance in Episode 2. Episode 3
was bearable, but not something I want to watch over and over again. Because of
that, I have so far kept my distance from Episodes 7 and 8 (and from “Rogue One”).
This was the fan’s view of the franchise so far. Now for the
author’s. (Note, from here onwards, stuff in brackets is pretty much my
commentary, so feel free to skip it, if you only want the author’s opinion.)
There can be no doubt that the prequels were bad. They did a
bad job at characters and at story-telling, putting far too much emphasize on
effects instead. Don’t get me wrong - effects have always been important for
the franchise, Industrial Lights and Magic was, after all, founded for Star
Wars (today Episode 4, “A New Hope”). But if you spent more time playing around
with what the computer can do than with developing your story, your characters,
and their relationships, you end up with something like the prequels.
By today’s standards, the original trilogy is slow. It is,
by the standards of 2015 and counting, but not by the standards of 1977 to
1983. What it did do better than the prequels, however, was develop its
characters and its universe. Politics lingered at the back, when we learned
right at the beginning of “A New Hope” that the senate was down, which
apparently meant the Galactic Republic was over. We learned the Galaxy Far, Far
Away was now an empire, even before we met the Emperor (who first shows up in
Episode 5, “The Empire Strikes Back”). It makes a lot of sense to have a
resistance there, the Rebellion which will, of course, play a major role in the
trilogy. After all, directly or indirectly, all our major players (except for
the villains, of course) are working for the Rebellion and they are the Good
Guys.
And that is where politics stayed in the original trilogy:
in the back. From the beginning, we knew there was some kind of central
government, the same government which sent out its troops in Star Destroyers (which,
to be nit-picking, can’t destroy a star). We knew this government was composed
of the Bad Guys.
Speaking of villains: Darth Vader was a lot cooler before we
saw Anakin Skywalker for the first time… He was literally someone behind a
mask, someone nobody could really ‘face’ off. The black mask and helmet, the
black robes, the obvious technology, the breathing noises, everything about
that guy was threatening. Including the voice, of course, which was why they
had one actor providing the voice and another (a professional bodybuilder no
less) providing the body. Even when his face was finally uncovered, it was a
face which kept the viewer a little uneasy.
Cue the prequels and whiny kid Anakin who was conceived by
the Force (something I still don’t believe, his mum was just making it up for
some reason). What was wrong with the idea of Anakin just being someone - a
normal boy in Jedi training, perhaps a little younger than Obi-Wan, perhaps the
same age? Why start off with a kid who was both a slave (can we dig deeper into
the melodrama, really?) and conceived through some kind of celestial force (in
the real sense of the word Force, of course)? Why build the whole prequels
around the fact that he wasn’t wanted as a Jedi and people made his life harder
than necessary from the beginning (and feeding us that ‘Chosen One’ stuff)? Why
spin it so Qui-Gon basically had to push him into training by making it part of
his legacy? (I bet Yoda gave him quite some gripe about it after he died
himself.)
And it didn’t exactly get better from there. Yes, the
original trilogy not only established that Luke is good with everything which
flies, but that the same goes for his father. What real use does the pod race
in Episode 1 serve? It’s not part of an action sequence like some stunts Anakin
pulls off in Episode 2 or 3. It’s just 10 minutes we spent watching a race
where the outcome is pretty clear from the start. Of course Anakin will win,
gaining his freedom and that drive for our heroes.
We are talking about the queen of a planet and two members of
a galaxy-wide order. Each of them should have access to enough money to buy
that drive (and, if absolutely necessary, both Anakin and his mum - Padme could
make good use of another maid, I’m sure) from its current owner. So the main
currency of the galaxy is not used on the planet (which is illogical by itself
- a central government would guarantee a strong currency, which is important in
every economy)? Go to the Hutts (who clearly are present on the planet) and
exchange it. Their crime empire runs through most of the galaxy - they’ll find
use for it, I’ll guarantee that. Even if that is not an option, that spaceship
has a lot of luxury items the Hutts would pay top prices for.
But any of those solutions would, of course, rob us of those
10 minutes which George still owes me. We have that flight sequence in the end
to establish Anakin is a piloting genius (and that would have been more impressive,
hadn’t we seen him pilot before), so the pod race serves no real purpose in
establishing his character, except of flooding the already over-filled prequels
with more characters we’ll never see again.
Cue Episode 2, which is set a staggering ten years after the
first one. That made me wonder why they had to make that jump - but the answer
to that is obvious: for the love story that made my teeth hurt. By cutting out
all of that ‘Chosen One’ tripe from the first movie, there could have been (I
don’t know) two years between the two movies, because Anakin would have been
older in the first episode. Two years would have been somewhat similar to the
first trilogy. For me, Episode 2 is totally overshadowed by the romance, which
is not why I watch a Star Wars movie. There’s loads of romance movies around,
if I want one (and usually I want a romance movie about as much as a root canal
treatment without anaesthetics). Underlying romance is fine, the original
trilogy had Han and Leia (clearly a bad pairing, as we can see now in the new
trilogy - something I learned even without watching the movies). But Episode 2
and, as a result, Episode 3 as well latch so much onto the emotional problems
of Anakin that one wonders why they did actually boost the political background
for the prequels in the first place (but, of course, the senate scenes bring in
even more characters for a trilogy which needs them like a fish needs a
mountain bike). Nothing bad in Episode 3 would happen without this ‘forbidden
love’ romance and marriage situation. And with giving Anakin a normal
upbringing instead of the whole ‘Chosen One’ tripe. (Which is now apparently
making people annoyed that the central character of the new trilogy doesn’t
seem to be related to anyone ‘important’ in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.)
But then, that’s all necessary for the trilogy to work,
right? No, it’s not … and that is where it becomes annoying. If you put more
politics in, make those count. Yes, we know the Republic will be dismantled
over the next 20 or so years, because Vader touts its demise when he catches
Leia at the beginning of Episode 4. Or pull out the politics completely and
focus more on the demise of the Jedi and on the Clone Wars - which are
mentioned in the original trilogy, so already established as something which
happened. That will create lots of action and lots of drama. The Emperor doesn’t
need a target as big as Anakin’s emotional problem with being left by people he
loves to manipulate him. Give that man some credit for his abilities in
intrigue and manipulation, honestly - in
addition to being a Sith Lord, he’s also a consummate politician. A
first-year Slytherin could do something with Anakin’s problems (wrong fandom, I
know).
Another problem I have with the prequels? They did their
best (or, rather, their worst) to bring in everyone and their mother from the
original trilogy which were alive already when the prequels happened. They have
Greedo in the prequels as a kid, for heaven’s sake! His only job in the original
trilogy was to be shot by Han Solo about ten minutes into the first-ever made
movie (and Han shot first). They have a younger (but not really slimmer) Jabba
the Hutt. They made Anakin the creator of C3PO (who is introduced as a regular
protocol droid model in the original trilogy). While I give R2 a pass (there’s lots
of astromech droids in the movies, quite some with a higher production number
than his), there was no real need to bring in Chewbacca, too. All those
characters are just taking time for development from the characters the
prequels should be focusing on, such as Anakin, Padme, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine.
Then there’s jumping Yoda, which is one of the worst things
which the prequels did. You have two elderly people (Count Dokuu isn’t that
spry, either) and make them duel like they were 20 (or 200 in Yoda’s case).
Both of them should have the experience to get at each other through tactics
and not bouncing. Even if we accept that medical treatments in the Galaxy Far,
Far Away and the Force give the elderly so much energy, it’s simply not
befitting either of them. It’s not the way they are portrayed before. The
prequels spend ages building up Yoda as the calm thinker and Mace Windu as the
badass doer. They show us Dokuu as a tactician who commands others to do the actual
work. That duel basically undoes the whole setup for both characters in one
bouncy jump. Sure, Yoda’s ‘I’m a harmless, elderly alien with a walking stick’
spiel is fun, but still…
I get it that the prequels have the problem that everyone
knows what will happen in the end: the Republic will become a democracy in name
only, Anakin Skywalker will end up as more machine than man behind a mask, and
his children will be split up and raised on two different planets. But the way
there could have been a lot more enjoyable and that’s why I hate the prequels.
Not because the ending was predictable - that’s pretty much the point about
prequels. But because the way to that ending was so unbalanced and badly told.
I could come up
with better stories for all three movies, if you gave me a piece of paper, a
pencil, and ten minutes. Someone who created the whole universe this is set in
should be able to do better than that in about 20 years.
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