I remember enjoying the movies at the time (I was just finishing high school when TPM came out), while recognizing a lot of the flaws. Watching them later, the flaws seem to overpower a lot of the good scenes. But here are the things that I thought worked and still hold up:
TPM – I thought the pod race was fun; I liked Boss Nass’s underwater city (though his army was ridiculous); Qui Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan were great, even with clunky dialogue; the final lightsaber fight was very cool; and that’s about it. Both the final space battle and the ground battle were totally ridiculous, I thought.
AotC – I enjoyed the bounty-hunter sequence; the clone-troopers and Jango Fett were pretty cool, as was the dogfight in the asteroid field; the battle in the arena was cool, especially when all those Jedi appeared (I loved it when all the lightsabers lit up); and Yoda’s lightsaber fight was fun (if a bit silly).
RotS – The opening space battle and the death of Dooku were okay; the opera scene was very good and perhaps the only good dramatic scene in the whole prequel trilogy; the reveal of Sidious alternated silliness with coolness, I thought (Windu was alternately powerful enough to handle Sidious with effort, but was so easily dispatched when Anakin turned on him – or was it a trap by Sidious?); Obi-Wan’s fight with Grievous was fun, and the Order 66 sequence was well done; Yoda’s fight with Palpatine was cool; and Obi-Wan and Vader’s final fight was very well done (except for the “higher ground” silliness).
RotS was by far the best, and perhaps the only one that was overall still a good movie, I think. TPM was overwhelmed by Jar Jar’s ridiculousness, and baby Anakin’s pointlessness, while AotC was overwhelmed by the awfully written love story and dialogue. RotS still had a lot of weaknesses, but I don’t think they took over the movie like the other two.
I have long felt you could have improved the prequels with three changes that would be fairly minor in the grand scheme of things:
Use Hayden Christensen for all three movies instead of two. Anakin is not interesting as a 9 year old. Plus it solves the creepy factor where Padme is much older than Anakin. For that matter make Padme a twenty-something but keep Portman as the actor.
Drop Jar-Jar. Comic relief is fine, slapstick is not.
Have someone else write the romantic dialog for Anakin and Padme.
Visually, they were great. One thing that I really liked was that the state of the art in CG during the stretch when the movies were released allowed for a lot more, and a lot more visually impressive space battles and scenes than in the original 3, where they had to use a bunch of models and clever visual effects. To use an example from TPM, how would they have done the Trade Federations’ droid army had they tried to do it in say… 1980? “Jason and the Argonauts” style stop-motion animation? Men in droid suits?
There’s another post on the boards where they’re asking for the Worst actor in a Great movie. IF any of the SW prequels were great Hayden would win as worst actor hands down. If acting talent was reason all actors got a job Hayden would still be in the unemployment line.
BUT - getting back to the OP here, “Duel of the Fates” for the soundtrack in The Phantom Menace was …well, awesome! How good is it? It challenges The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) for one of the best soundtrack pieces ever.
Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman are both good actors. And the rest of the cast was mostly world-class. They all pretty much came off shitty because of the bad script and abysmal directing.
The whole pod-racing thing, even if it is logically absurd.
Darth Maul, and the entire duel scene
Obi Wan screaming at Anakin: “You were supposed to be the chosen one!” It’s a great moment, and probably the most genuine drama of the entire prequel trilogy.
But as others have observed, the stupidity largely outweighs any momentary goodness.
This has been my belief, as well. Going into AotC, Christensen had received acclaim for his work in “Life as a House”, and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and a SAG award for it. Portman has done well in dramatic work, and won an Oscar for “Black Swan”. Samuel L. Jackson, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Lee, Ian McDiarmid, Liam Neeson, Pernilla August – all very good actors.
The prequels had horrible, stilted dialog (the romantic dialogue in AotC being a particularly egregious offender). Even going back to ANH, Lucas was well-known for not being strong at direction (or, at least, at giving useful direction to actors). And, you had actors trying to perform while in front of a green screen, against another “actor” who would later be added in via CGI. Given all that, it’s no wonder that even great actors looked like crap in it.
I can honestly say this was pretty much the only moment in the entire prequel trilogy I thought had any worth or value.
It was, for the first time in damn near nine hours of film, the first time I found myself emotionally involved in the films. It meant something. Finally, a character I sort of cared about was believably expressing an emotion that was a logical result of the things that had happened leading up to that moment.
And that’s pretty much it.
[QUOTE=kenobi 65]
Given all that, it’s no wonder that even great actors looked like crap in it.
[/QUOTE]
It’s perhaps instructive to note that the actors did a pretty good job in “Star Wars,” even though it’s Lucas directing. The thing is
While the dialogue is simplistic, it makes sense. The characters behave in a logical fashion.
They’re actually CHARACTERS. They have distinctive personalities, and
Yeah, they’re acting against each other, not green screens.
The dialogue and story in “The Force Awakens” is no better than in “Star Wars,” really. But the actors are given actual characters, with distinctive personalities, so they do great.
I think that Ian McDiarmid was the only actor in the whole set of prequels who looked like he really knew what kind of movies he was in (bad, cheesy scifi) and appeared to be enjoying himself.
In Phantom, I found the race to be a low point, not something good at all. Very generic and predictable while not moving the story forward.
This was the only one of the three I saw. Looking at the plot summary, etc., nothing pops up. But Dominic West did play a Naboo guard, that’s something. McNutty still working in the protection biz.
Episode III is underrated. I like it. It is at least as good as Return of the Jedi. The Order 66 Scene is one of the best sequences in any of the movies. I also love how the end comes full circle into the original Star Wars. I remember I went to see it in a late night showing when it first came out and when I came home around midnight I put Star Wars on because I felt like I had to watch it after that ending.
I like the overall story of Palatine’s rise. The details are where the problems are but the idea of a Democracy that dies under its own weight and rot from within is a good idea for a story.
Coruscant in Episode II is beautiful and was a very different setting for Star Wars up to that point.
The Arena fight in Episode II has a fun Ray Harryhausen vibe, in fact it looks to me some of the effects purposely have the herky jerky stop motion look as an homage to it.
Episode I? Umm…well I am sure the crafts services on set was amazing.
I liked the light saber duels, especially the Darth Maul duel. I also liked watching Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine especially in Revenge of the Sith. Those were the only parts that I enjoyed watching.
I agree with most of the OP’s points. I thought Ep. III was an OK movie - not amazing, but not a piece of crap like the first two. You put it well - all three had a few good points, but the third was the only one where the bad stuff didn’t completely overwhelm the good.
Lucas specifically waited to make TPM until CGI caught up to his vision of what the movie should be.
I saw TPM in the theater on a massive screen with a pumping sound system, and the pod race was great. My heart was racing and I was fully invested. Since then I’ve seen it on a home entertainment system a few times, and it fails to impress me. It’s probably a combination of things that explain the difference for me - watching with a crowd of people cheering throughout, CGI that was amazing at the time but commonplace now, pod engine sound effects that made your chest shake. I guess I can understand both reactions to it, but of the people who aren’t impressed, I wonder how many people saw it first in a nice theater.
