I read somewhere that shiny stormtrooper’s shiny armor in The Force Awakens was supposed to have been made from hull material from that ship.
Is there a shortage of chrome in their galaxy?
I think the fact that the Jedi clearly don’t care about slavery adds a gray area that Lucas didn’t really intend. They’re supposed to be Truth and Justice warriors who’ve lost their way a little bit, but they aren’t phased at all by slavery and seem completely surprised (in the later prequels) that Anakin would want to come back and free his mother. They don’t really give off a vibe of ‘well, they’re not in the republic and we’re on a mission so we can’t do much’, they really seem to think it’s no big deal with an attitude of ‘why would you even care about that’.
It’s especially weird since Lucas makes Amidalia an elected queen in an apparent attempt to make Naboo look more like a modern democracy, when people are usually fine with royalty in fantasy. Elected royalty is actually a historical thing (the Holy Roman Empire worked by elections for centuries, for example) but I don’t think he was drawing on that.
Also raises the question of why Vader never reacted when the droid he made as a kid kept turning up with the rebels. Just one of those bad decisions that doesn’t really add to the story, is confusing, and opens holes.
I think if Jar Jar was a minor comic relief character he could have worked, with a lot less screen time and the audience not being pushed to respect him as a protagonist he’d be somewhere between amusing and forgettable. With him as a major character who gets lots of screen time, though, his flaws become unignorable.
It was a good lightsaber scene surrounded by crap. And even that was marred by the stupidity of how slow Darth Maul was to react to getting sliced in half. Oh, and those force fields that Obi-Wan got caught behind so he couldn’t help Qui-Gon? It would’ve been nice if he remembered he could “force run” really fast, like when they escaped the droidekas.
Or that he could just use the force to pulp Maul’s heart or break his neck. What, are the Jedi above pulling an Indiana Jones?
That force run early in the movie was stupid. It’s almost like R2D2 using those little leg rockets to fly in AotC. Lucas just thinks of stuff that helps in the moment without thinking of consequences.
Speed-running would help a ton if they had that ability.
But for all of his posturing, Maul is basically written as a dunce, who is only effective when the plot says he is. Even leaving aside what he’s actually trying to achieve - and if, as Palpatine instructs, he’s to “wipe them out” he’s pretty seriously off-task - the first we see of him in action is when he tries to stage an ambush by riding up behind Qui-Gon in the desert on a noisy space motorcycle. Admittedly Qui-Gon’s finely tuned senses have been apparently been turned off, but that’s not how you wipe people out. I’d have used a rocket launcher on the big shiny parked spaceship, personally.
That’s what I thought was hysterical at the end of Revenge of the Sith; after a lightsaber duel that ranged over a landing pad, conference room, catwalks that were twisting, falling, and floating on lava, it ended with “I win, I am slightly uphill from you!”
Unpopular opinion: the Lightsaber duel isn’t even that good. It looks like a dance more than a fight. No one looks to be in real danger or actually fighting. The choreography is way to obvious.
Canonically, 32 years, but close enough. 
I think they should’ve done a little more to tie the planets together; more emotional investment for the audience:
In Episode I, Naboo should’ve been Alderaan. We see this peaceful planet with beautiful architecture. We come to identify with the queen and its inhabitants, and successors like Leia… all they while knowing the planet is doomed.
In the latest Episode VII, the planet destroyed by the starkiller laser should’ve been Coruscant. What better way to show the First Order meant business than to destroy the city planet so prominent in the prequels?
C-3PO should’ve been the fussy aristocratic protocol droid of QUEEN Amidala.
R2-D2 everyone’s favorite scrappy robot, should’ve been built from spare parts.
Well, Palpatine obviously learnt from his mistakes: “Memo to future acolytes of evil: when I say ‘wipe them out’, I mean more throat-crushing and less twirly kicks”
My fanwank for that (which I have posted on the SDMB many times) is that Obi-Wan is saying something stupid, knowing it’s stupid, because he’s (successfully) taunting Annakin into a fatal error. He’s basically saying “well, I’m uphill now. No way you’re going to win, because the only way to win is to jump all the way over me, and no WAY you’re a strong enough Jedi to do that, right?” while meanwhile thinking “please don’t realize that you can just float downstream and just hop off”…
I like the fanwank that he did a flip-over-a-guy-who-thought-the-fight-was-over bit out of desperation on the spur of the moment – and later brooded to himself, wow, that only worked because he didn’t see it coming; if he had, he could’ve just placed a laser sword in my path. I keep picturing it, over and over: I’d have been like a damn egg, thrown at a stone wall – if he’d realized I was the kind of guy who’d cinematically throw myself from Point A to Point C, and put the lopper at Point B.
For years he dwelled on it, envisioning just how easily he’d have been severed from various limbs if that predictable arc had been anticipated; at times, he could almost see his entrails and testicles hitting the ground with a slight bounce; at times, he pictured himself standing up there as a Sith obligingly leaped bladeward, which was plenty more comforting but no less conclusive. And when he saw Anakin glaring up at him, he realized, oh, man; I’ve been thinking about this exact situation for over a decade, and this is not going to end well for him.
I fell asleep both times I tried watching The Phantom Menace, so that tells you how well it worked with me.
IMHO, the world would not be the least bit worse off if the prequel trilogy had never been made.
This.
And especially this! Absofuckinglutely brilliant.
Pretty sure Lucas actually talked about that. The Jedi Order had grown stagnant, smug, and complacent. They and the Sith represented two extremes at this point in history. Anakin came and basically exterminated the currently existing Jedi Order, and also extinguished the Sith. Luke, who was trained in a different, less dogmatic way, would be free to start a new, improved Jedi order.
Even in the prequels, in the original movies, protocol droids are pretty common, and their voices aren’t all that different from C-3PO. I mean, even in ANH, 3PO wasn’t even the only protocol droid on the ship on which we first meet him. Think of a type of droid like a breed of dog. You might have a beloved dog for a time, but, does the dog really look different from others of his or her breed? Now, add twenty years of being away from said dog. Add in this case the fact that everything and anything to do with “Anakin Skywalker” no longer meant anything to Vader. Anakin Skywalker was dead to Vader, and was an identity he sought to bury, which he only associated with failure.
Other protocol droids:
ANH:
Empire:
TPM:
There’s probably millions upon millions of them in the Galaxy; And I doubt C-3PO is the only gold one.
He talked about a lot of things. But the Jedi order doesn’t come across as stangant, smug, and complacent, they come across as having no problem at all with slavery and perplexed that anyone would want to free their own mother from it. If they gave an ‘if only the rim would accept our jurisdiction we could fix this’ vibe, and at least acknowledged that someone might object to their own mother being a slave, they could come off as just smug. But that’s not what happened.
Sure, we can think of a droid like a breed of dog. But it’s not just a random dog; it’s a dog you genetically engineered from spare dog parts and uniquely named Spot-DGO. Also he wasn’t just a background pet, he was directly involved in your escape from slavery and victory in a major battle, and you gave him as a present to the only chick you ever made it with in your life. And he was the only one you did this with, it’s not like you reassembled and sold dogs for fun. And when you encountered him later he wasn’t just hanging around with a bunch of other dogs, he’s the dog who fetched the plans for a super-battlestation from you and you sent troops to track down. And who your troops later captured and partially disassembled while you were laying a trap at Cloud City.
No, it just doesn’t make sense that he completely forgot all that. Giving someone in a prequel a deep past connection to a character they don’t recognize in the ‘future’ movies is just bad writing.
I think they come off pretty smug and complacent in the prequels with the exception of Obi-Wan and Jinn. And Jinn’s rebellious nature is stated as a reason why he’s denied a seat on the Council. I think that that’s the point - the Jedi had become blinded to the problems of the universe in any real way, and they kind of needed to die. My point being, I don’t think we’re *supposed *to like the Jedi in the prequels. The prequels are different from the originals in that there is moral ambiguity. You can see why someone weak…someone more human, if you will, would fall away from their Order. They’re portrayed as cold, stale, sexless; a cult that adopts and indoctrinates children from a young age. People who show the slightest bit of disagreement or break from what’s orthodox - such as Jinn, and Anakin - are held back from power. Even Palpatine speaks to the dogmatic, narrow nature of the Jedi in III.
But the thing is, by the time ANH happens, 3-PO is visually indistinguishable from any other protocol droid. I mean look at the other ones I posted pictures of. He’s gold. That’s literally the only difference in appearance. The Droid Anakin built, with all his spare parts showing, looks quite different from how 3PO ended up looking.
You have to remember though, Vader only has one on-screen scene with him in the original trilogy - In Cloud City when Han is frozen. He knows a “protocol droid and astromech” droid have the Death Star Plans in ANH, but that’s a very vague description.
I mean if you really want to read into flaws in both trilogies, why isn’t Vader able to sense that Luke and Leia are his children in A New Hope? Luke’s ability to shield his mind isn’t all that built up in ANH - he basically knows nothing of how to properly use the Force yet - why wasn’t Vader able to sense him in the way he was able to sense Obi-Wan? Why did he detect nothing from Leia, who never had any Jedi training? He didn’t even sense that she was a force sensitive, much less his family.
Even beyond that, why wasn’t Luke able to sense anything about Leia? He had no clue she was his sister until he was blatantly told. He was never able to sense there was something about her? And Leia saying in ROTJ she “always knew” Luke was her brother - well, why the hell did she French him then?
Let’s be honest, both trilogies are riddled with massive plotholes due to Lucas retconning things on the fly.
How is it relevant that he can’t shield his mind in ANH? He doesn’t look at Vader and think hey, that’s my dad. Likewise, what good would reading Leia’s mind do if she doesn’t know she’s his kid? Vader presumably spends most of his time surrounded by folks who don’t think they’re his kids; none of them need to shield it, either.
I figured that was because he basically knows nothing of how to properly use the Force yet. Maybe he gets there by the time he’s flying the bombing run, and maybe that’s why Vader says the Force is strong with him then – but so what?
Maybe he did. Er, the former, not the latter. He knows she was she able to make it through the interrogation; I can imagine Vader saying, well, it looks she’s got some untrained raw talent in the Force; some folks do. That doesn’t mean he’d then realize she’s the kid he didn’t know he had, and that she didn’t know she was.
As for Luke not knowing, you know my answer. As for Leia saying that? Canonically, she’s a lying liar who lies; it’s probably damn near a reflex, and it apparently comes in handy for someone in her position.