It’s really not that bad
Sure it’s not as good as the OT but it’s far better than the worthless garbage Disney is putting out
shareI mean.. if you compare it to THAT sure it ain't that bad.
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MovieChat Forums > Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) Discussion > It’s really not that bad
Say what you want about the prequels but at least they added significant lore and expanded Star Wars and didn't just Shamelessly and sloppily piggyback off the original trilogy like what's happening now
shareIn my opinion, most of what the prequels added worsened Star Wars. Midi chlorians are pretty universally derided, for instance. But, the way the Jedi council operated and the rules of the Jedi order were, for me, pretty pathetic (I think this was unintentional, not a political commentary). I was underwhelmed by the Clone Wars (the prequels never bother to unpack the ramifications of clone armies, they just wind up being uninteresting shock troops like every other vague army for hero fodder in Star Wars). Podracing? The scene was serviceable action, but it didn't world-build in a way I care.
I dislike the prequels as poorly written, poorly structured, and they make the world feel worse.
The Disney films have been pretty bad, too. I thought The Force Awakens was fun, but it handles the plot continuation really badly.
OT for the win.
That's interesting because while there are certainly a number of people who dislike the prequels I've rarely seen people complain that it actually hurt the lore of Star Wars. Even prequel haters tend to concede the excellent world building of the PT. I'll always appreciate the interesting new worlds, aliens, ships & the many other aesthetics introduced to the Star Wars universe through the PT era. I was never a big fan of midiclorians but never hated them, considering they rarely got mentioned. TFA I found to be entirely worthless cash grab. It added nothing to the franchise. Cardboard cut out characters, no interesting new storylines, just a cheap, poorly executed copy and paste job of OT Star Wars. Simply atrocious. TLJ never stood a chance.
I love the OT and the cultural impact can't be denied but I'm starting to see what people are saying about them being put on an unrealistic pedestal.
You might find this strange, too, then, but I never heard the PT praised for worldbuilding until very recently. I don't think the PT monumentally hurt the lore of Star Wars, but I think it wounded it slightly, with the plot holes it opens up, the characterizations that suddenly feel wrong, and a twenty-year gap which becomes somewhat baffling.
Ultimately, the PT's problem is its characters and story: both are subpar at best (in my opinion) and so all the worldbuilding is like eating straight-up butter. Without the toast, it's just straight-up awful.
But the worldbuilding itself is, to me, lackluster. What did it add? Jango Fett? Darth Maul? I'm not being sarcastic, I would like to hear from you what the PT brings to the table, because none of it is interesting to me.
There has been a recent trend which has people crying their love for the prequels. I have two explanations for it:
1. The people who grew up with the PT are now defending it: it's a "nostalgia brigade".
2. The people defending it are doing just to throw down the sequels.
I think the latter is a small percentage of people who hate the Disney Star Wars movies so much that the PT looks great in comparison (to them).
I think the other explanation is more likely. Which kinda disturbs and amuses me. See, if nostalgia is buoying these films up, it's possible that my love of the OT is nothing more than a nostalgic mist. It also means, hilariously, this cycle is almost definitely going to repeat itself, damning Star Wars to a cycle of fans who accept and cherish what they grew up on while declaiming any new material. In four or five years the Rian Johnson SW Trilogy will come out (or whatever) and people will start saying, "You know, the OT, PT, and ST are all great, but this new stuff is rubbish."
It was years before I came to appreciate the direction in which Lucas further developed his world. But then I had spent my whole life growing up imagining my own Star Wars universe before any further films or EU was ever introduced.
shareBelieve it or not there are plenty of us who always liked and defended the prequels. That doesn't mean I was blind to "some" of the fair criticism. I was born between the OT and the PT so while I was a very casual fan of the OT films as a kid. The OT wasn't all that culturally significant to me growing up because they had already come and gone. The PT actually made me a bigger Star Wars fan and actually enhanced my enjoyment of the OT over the years. The new living, breathing worlds, aliens, their politics *gasps*, & deeper exploration of the Jedi made me a lot more interested in Star Wars beyond just the films.
I had a "bad feeling" about Di$ney buying the franchise but I was cautiously optimistic. My worst fears were realized however & I honestly can't think of how TFA could have been a bigger dumpster fire.
I grew up with the OT, so that's my exposure there. The PT I saw in theatres and they were exciting, but soon lost their shine. They also beat me down enough that I waited until DVD to watch Revenge of the Sith.
I do know that there were always people who enjoyed the PT from the word "go". That just wasn't a popular opinion until recently, and I think it's all the people who grew up with them starting to speak out a bit. I just think this cycle will repeat itself.
I don't like what the PT did with the Jedi at all. It mostly seems unclear and doesn't make sense to me. It feels slapdash. I'm not saying Lucas didn't put a tonne of thought into it (or that he did), I'm just saying it feels rushed and like he didn't think it through. Yoda, in particular, makes me wince.
The Force Awakens is really unoriginal, but it's done with care by Abrams and it's done to the hilt. I hate how it handled the gap between movies, though. I recognise what Rian Johnson was trying to do with The Last Jedi, but it just misfires so much that it winds up being a really bungled mess.
There was always a contingent of fans who enjoyed the PT. It's not something new. Opinions have been mixed by about the PT for years.
Personally I never had an issue with how the Jedi were presented in the PT. that complaint is mostly new to me. You think the Jedi in the PT are "slapdash" but that Abram's copy and paste job was done "with care" by regressing the entire series by soft rebooting the state of the universe back to ANH , largely copying those story beats, & effectively undoing the accomplishments of our heroes in the OT?
Not only did it completely reboot/rip off OT while posing as a ST but it did so in such a clunky and disjointed manner, relying on empty mystery boxes to help move to plot forward, effectingly setting TLJ up for failure.
I haven't encountered a lot of people who dislike how the Jedi were handled in the PT; I know I'm pretty much alone here.
1. They seem like they are a political or military force in terms of operation. The council seems like a government, they lead troops, etc. This problem is compounded by a lack of clarity regarding their relationship to the senate, the army, and so forth. This is one way I would say things are "slapdash". It never feels like Lucas knows what the relationship is between the council and the government.
2. They operate like a military/government/police force, but they have the character of monks. This makes them seems superficially spiritual. It looks like somebody wrote a lot of "Hmm...yes, my son...this is a course of action which is in the universe..." type dialogue without knowing/caring about creating actual philosophers. They looks like cookie cutter gurus. This is another reason I say "slapdash"
3. The rules are never clear and seem random or arbitrary to me. Why can't they marry? Can they feel emotion or not? It seems like they're allowed to be happy, but not feel emotion...? Another "slapdash" reason here: it feels like (and, again, I don't know what Lucas actually did or didn't do, I just know what comes across to me) Lucas made up some rules to arbitrarily make the plot harder for characters. It never feels like there's a real ethos here, just that Lucas knows monks don't have sex, so he made them not do that. But if they're monks, why do they lead armies? Why are they generals? None of it feels thought-through.
I don't like Abrams' mystery boxes and I don't like what he did with the thirty-year gap between Jedi and TFA. The care I was referring to here was Abrams' meticulousness in his goal: exciting movie that pleases fans. It might not be your cup of tea, but the movie largely does that.
From the films alone I found it fairly straightforward to surmise that the Jedi were an independent order of vaguely religious monk like "spiritual" warriors who serve the Republic, and help maintain the peace in all of Republic space. The dynamics of the Jedi are explained pretty thoroughly in the EU but naturally it can't be expected for them to bog the films down too much by over explaining everything about how the Jedi operate with their internal politics.
I don't think marriage was ever stated to be strictly forbidden but intense love and romance was definitely discouraged as it was explained those were things tied to strong emotions which can lead to the dark side & the Jedi are all about avoiding things that can stir up emotions to lead down that paths. I can understand questioning the logic of the established Jedi rules (maybe they're not supposed to be perfect?) but I personally don't see how that particularly hurts the films.
The main things I believe Abrams successfully accomplished was completely undermining the OT by hitting the reset button button back to ANH with a sloppy hodgepodge of empty mystery box bs, rehashed OT story beats & fan service callbacks but more loud, fast paced and explodey. A total clusterf*ck with no narrative vision moving forward which we now see the results of. Initially this was largely overlooked & carried by unprecedented hype for the first Star Wars film in a decade, arguably the most popular film franchise of all time, hyped even further by a contingent of a particular brand of fans preemptively desperate to love and praise it as 'vindication' for the prequels in their minds.
I knew they were warrior-monks with some relationship to the Republic, but it was really unclear whether they were warriors first (General Yoda) or monks first. It wasn't clear how they were serving the Republic, either. They seem to have a lot of power, but how much power?
As far as the EU goes, that's cool, and I've heard good things about some of those books. The movies are the source material, though, and they need to stand on their own. I don't want the movies bogged down with (more) boring dialogue and exposition, but things can be explained or shown without saying almost anything. This is why I think Lucas put this together slapdash. If he had meticulous worked all this out, he could have found an artful way to communicate a tonne of information about the Jedi order without saying anything expository.
The notion that emotion is wrong is weird. I don't understand that. How much emotion? Because plenty of Jedi display plenty of emotion. The OT never references this kind of Vulcan-like stoicism, either. So, I assume some is okay? But not others? Why not love? That's pretty much universally acknowledged as the best emotion. Jealousy might be bad, which can be connected to love, but that requires an admonition against jealousy, not love. The clarity is here is necessary to the plot and understanding characters' motivations, and it's so murky that you and I watched the same movies and got different messages about being allowed to marry.
We're just gonna have to disagree on The Force Awakens. I think he made an exciting action film that you hated.
I was hoping for prequel vindication on that one, and I will say that I didn't get it. TFA did make me appreciate one aspect of the prequels: Lucas was trying to explore new worlds and be original. I happen to think he failed at every turn. Hence, my original statement that the worldbuilding was bad. He did try, though, so points there.
Through showing and not over explaining through exposition it was established right off of the bat that the Jedi had a diplomacy first approach and that being warriors came secondary to that when diplomacy failed. This is just one example of how I thought Lucas did a perfectly fine job conveying the dynamic of the Jedi without over explaining through forced exposition which we seem to agree would have bogged things down. This extends to the dynamic between the Jedi and the Republic. I felt we were certainly shown enough of the relationship there without the details having to be spelled out. I was never lost or confused about the general state of things unlike with the ST.
Like I said it's certainly arguable that the Jedi code & philosophy is not perfect or intended to be, as it can be argued these flaws played a part in Anakin's fall. It's an interesting thing for the audience to contemplate & as I see it, in fact enhances the narrative.
Indeed I think Abrams made a copy & paste, hodgepodge abomination that you managed to get some entertainment out of. Fair enough. Enjoyment is subjective so you can't be wrong and you're right there is no real choice but to agree to disagree on that front.
I enjoyed & the prequels & grew to appreciate them even more over time but as I said I'm not blind to some of the valid criticisms of certain aspects of the execution so someone not liking the prequels is perfectly fine. I thought the prequels told a great & most importantly coherent overarching narrative, with some great new ideas, technologies and locations. It's still a very unique & curious opinion about Lucas' world building in the PT being bad. That's like one of the few things even the most hardened critics of the PT will concede on giving Lucas credit for. That being said, I do still lament the missed opportunity of ROTS not giving us more of the wookie homeland Kashyykk and especially Alderaan.
Diplomacy-first is obvious, yes. But then when Lucas wants Obi-Wan to admonish Anakin, "This weapon is your life." The rules are often contradictory and seem piecemeal to me. He threw some vaguely wise-sounding statements into a mix of things that made his plotting more convenient. It doesn't feel like he built the Jedi and then told stories about them. It feels like he just threw in some random stuff and hoped it worked.
The inverse is Tolkien - master worldbuilder. I know that he invented his stuff just as Lucas did, but when I read Lord of the Rings it feels like Tolkien invented the civilizations and histories and philosophies of his world and then told his story, building on a firm foundation. Lucas seems to have built the structure, dug down a bit, and tried to prop it up with concrete blocks, putting the foundation in after the fact.
It never seemed to be presenting these as a critique to me. If Lucas was attempting to show that the Jedi were bad at their jobs, like some Watchman-like deconstruction of our perceptions of our heroes (Rian Johnson...?) I didn't see it that way, and it certainly didn't hit hard enough for that to be effective.
I'm not sure what's so curious about Lucas' worldbuilding being bad. His plots, characters, tone, pacing, and dialogue were bad. Why not the worldbuilding? I think he aimed high and missed big with the PT. Again, I do know that not many people bring this up or rip into it and that I'm one of the few here. But I still see it as largely ineffective, or at times even weakening the wonderful world of the original films.
Ironically the pod racing plot element reminded me of the early 70s Disney movies where the main characters had to win a dune buggy or snowmobile race to earn enough money to save the day.
shareThe prequel stories are fantastic, its just tgat lucas went a bit OTT in some areas , i cant stand jar jar , midiclorians , whiney anakin , and sam jackson , its a shame because it could of been better than the OT
shareThe love story scenes are horrible; the rest is pretty good.
shareIt's the best prequel and better than any of the Disney Star Wars movies so far....
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