STAR WARS PREQUELS - a love/hate relationship

[Kegg]

Still you remember Darth Maul, which says a lot more about then most of the other villains.

I remember Dooku, Palpatine and Grevious. Dooku mostly banked on being Christopher Lee but the scheme where he raises the spectre of a Sith very close to the Jedi is - as a villain - more interesting then Darth Maul. Grevious was indeed something of a filler nemesis, but Emperor Palpatine's needlessly baroque machinations and melodramatic turn in the third film made him the most memorable of the preqeul trilogy's villains (and in all honesty pretty faithful to the character in ROTJ).

As for Lucas-arts Technology, I am not bashing it, Lucas is a brilliant businessman and has done quite well developing new technology for making of his films, then for a fee having others use his technology to make movies.

I probably feel this inaccurately, but I usually got the impression The Phantom Menace was at the forefront of a building focus on CGI effects in films that only metasized over the course of the next decade.

First Jar-Jar, but then Gollum and finally the Na'vi, is this mental line of reasoning.

I remember it being commented on that the film had more special effects shots per scene then any other film, surpassing Titantic. The Phantom Menace on first blush was quite an impressive visual experience, quite frankly.

 

[Dar70]

Outside of Jar-Jar binks the prequals are not BAD per say, but so many fans have ignored the issues with the original three. That, and killing off the best bad guy in the first movie didn't help. Have to remember, a lot of the prequals was to prove new Lucas-arts technology to be sold or leased to other studios.

I have to agree there. I dont see any of the amount of hate that the prequels get from fans, applied to especially RETURN OF THE JEDI. THAT was the worst of all the Star Wars films. Which is why I like the prequels. None of them got as bad as ROTJ. PHANTOM got close. AOTC and ROTS are on par with the first two sequels IMO.

 

[Set Harth]

I don't understand how Vader could even make the connection that Luke is his son since he didn't even know he was born.

The name Skywalker probably had a lot to do with it, along with "the Force is strong in this one" and Force-related intuition.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I also suspect that, given the contents of a report he must have seen at some point, from the detachment he had sent down to recover the Death Star plans, regarding the incident at the Lars homestead, Darth Vader was eventually able to add one and one.

 

[DarKush]

Yeah, but if you watch the prequels I don't think you even get the lovelorn character in the suit thing. I mean with the backstory we've seen in the prequels I don't understand how Vader could even make the connection that Luke is his son since he didn't even know he was born. I could see splitting up the kids keeping knowledge of Leia from him, but clearly he somehow already knew that he had a son which I had always figured was in the back story somewhere, though now it's not. And hiding his son on his old planet? I don't know what to say about that.

I agree that it seems like a big leap for Vader to make the connection of Luke being his son, as opposed to a long lost cousin. But the Force stands in as a ready made excuse. Perhaps Vader sensed it in the Force. Before his grief over Padme's death, his guilt over it, and his rage against the Jedi perhaps blinded him to sensing Luke and Leia before, or sensing their connection to him. Because he was pretty oblivious about Leia being his daughter in ANH. All throughout Star Wars we've seen how inconsistent the Force is in terms of its ability to sense things.

Giving him knowlege of either Luke or Leia before ANH/ESB wouldn't work. I can't see Vader, or the Emperor, allowing a potential powerful Force user, someone that could be a true threat to them, or a tool for them, alone. They would tear up the galaxy for them.

I guess they could've done something that had Vader secreting Luke away from the Emperor, from a sense of guilt over Padme; with him not wanting the Emperor to get his clutches on him, and corrupt him as Anakin had become seduced. That might've been interesting to see.

 

[Set Harth]

What I wanted was backstory that made sense, and I wanted to feel like the PT was showing me things alluded to in the actual OT. The PT failed on both these accounts.

Not really, though it did not explicitly show everything mentioned in the OT ( such as Anakin supposedly being the best starpilot in the galaxy ). One of the ROTS trailers juxtaposes Alec's dialogue from ANH with corresponding PT scenes.

 

[Kegg]

Not really, though it did not explicitly show everything mentioned in the OT

It pretty much spelled out the guts of the original trilogy's history lessons. The odd hand wave was needed (Yoda was Obi-Wan's master? Er, in the sense he studied under him as a tyke) but the guts of the story more or less fits.

It could have had more dramatic weight, mind. Here are the Jedi, Knights of a Round Table, the guardians of the more civilized age Alec Guinness wistfully recalls... and they're mostly a dull lot who sit around in councils droning minuatie at each other, with a half-dozen silent yet weird Jedi sitting around in the background.

It's difficult to get worked up about the Republic, which is mired in bureaucratic corruption (even if Phantom Menace conveys this is an almost incomprehensible 'trade routes' plot) before the curtain rises, but the Jedi should have felt a bit more like a noble order we'd care about, which have failings that only help destroy them.

...but of course, 'be more dramatic' isn't quite the same thing as 'there's some stones left unturned.'

( such as Anakin supposedly being the best starpilot in the galaxy )

There's a pretty transparent reason that line is in the movie, though.

Hey, Luke's father was a really skilled pilot!

Now, what does the climax of the movie involve Luke doing?

 

[Broccoli]

I don't understand how Vader could even make the connection that Luke is his son since he didn't even know he was born.

Vader probably read the script to Empire, and, afterward, said "Holy fuck! I'm his father?!"

 

[Sean Aaron]

I don't understand how Vader could even make the connection that Luke is his son since he didn't even know he was born.

Vader probably read the script to Empire, and, afterward, said "Holy fuck! I'm his father?!"

That's pretty much what happened in reality with Lucas not wanting David Prowse to ham things up and giving him different dialogue. According to the documentary on the DVD he was a bit ticked to be left in the dark about what dialogue would be dubbed over his actions. You know if Lucas really wanted to fix things from the original trilogy he should have sorted some of the dialogue mis-timings with Vader's actions from those films; especially A New Hope. I think swapping out David Prowse with a digtal Vader with flashing laser-beam eyes would have been spectacular!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Not really, though it did not explicitly show everything mentioned in the OT

It pretty much spelled out the guts of the original trilogy's history lessons. The odd hand wave was needed (Yoda was Obi-Wan's master? Er, in the sense he studied under him as a tyke) but the guts of the story more or less fits.

What I wanted was backstory that made sense, and I wanted to feel like the PT was showing me things alluded to in the actual OT. The PT failed on both these accounts.

Not really, though it did not explicitly show everything mentioned in the OT ( such as Anakin supposedly being the best starpilot in the galaxy ). One of the ROTS trailers juxtaposes Alec's dialogue from ANH with corresponding PT scenes.

Actually, yes really. You know, in the 34 years since it was released, I've probably seen the original Star Wars (ANH) over one thousand times. When there is no film for almost two decades in a series that you love, you kinda get really familiar with the films that are there.

By the way, the use of my adjective "actual" is meant to imply that the PT cannot fit, without retconning the OT. Of course, the PT fits generally. But in the specifics, not so much.

The following is a brief list of issues, and not a comprehensive one.

A thousand generations versus a thousand years. (Plinkett wasn't the first to notice this.)

Yoda wasn't really Ben's Master?! Yeah, this was because Qui-Gon was an afterthought.

In the name "the Clone Wars", stated in ANH, use of the plural term wars really suggests a sequence of two or more wars punctuated by periods of peace. But in the PT, there was only one continuous war in which the Clone Army participated, that began when the Clone Army rescued Ben, Anakin, and Padmé, and ended with the defeat of the Separatist Movement, without any periods of peace in between. More accurate names would have been "Clone Campaigns" in the plural, or "Clone War" or "Separatist War" in the singular. In addition, without any historical context, the term "Clone Wars" suggests possibly that clone armies were used by both sides, and it also suggests possibly that there were wars fought over the issue of cloning. But rather than cloning being a factor with some bearing on the lead-in to the conflict, the Clone Army is reduced to a mere deus ex machina to deal with a completely different issue, the Separatist Movement. What a total fucking let down!

There is also no evidence or especially mention in the OT of a massive droid army having ever existed. The problem here really is that the level of droid technology shown in the PT is much greater than the level shown in the OT. That didn't make sense. It would have made more sense for there to have been no droid army at all. It's as if Lucas created a tangential spin-off from a retconned version of the universe depicted in the OT.

Above it was said, why hide Luke on Tatooine? That's pretty fucking stupid. What, the Galaxy isn't big enough to find a hiding place with fewer connections to Anakin Skywalker? Gosh, there's no chance of that hiding place not working out, is there?! For example, wouldn't it have been a risk to Luke's safety if Vader had decided to visit the grave of Anakin's mother?

Another way of looking at this issue is that it's pretty fucking stupid for Anakin himself to have been from Tatooine in the first place. Given that the OT came first, the burden is on the PT to lead in appropriately to the OT. If this means that it makes no sense for Anakin to have been born and raised on Tatooine, which it doesn't, given the way the OT played out, then Anakin has to have been born and raised somewhere else.

That being said, I can think of no reason for the PT to visit Tatooine at all, until the end of SWIII, to hide Luke. Lars could have just been someone that Ben and Qui-Gon knew before picking up Anakin. Or, to be really slick, SWI could have begun on Tatooine with Ben and Qui-Gon ending some business with Lars, before getting called away to Naboo. There is no pressing reason for the Lars to have a familial bond with the Skywalker bloodline, by way of Shmi.
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Fixing each of these issues requires some degree of hand waiving. The point of what I said in the fist place:

What I wanted was backstory that made sense, and I wanted to feel like the PT was showing me things alluded to in the actual OT. The PT failed on both these accounts.

was simply that the PT and the OT don't mesh without quite a bit of hand waiving. It's a fair point.

 

[DarKush]

^
I liked the old speculation, pre-PT, that Obi Wan and Owen Lars were brothers. It makes more sense to me than having Anakin be born on Tatoonine (not mentioning building CP-30). And then having Obi take baby Luke back to Anakin's home planet and for the Lars to accept him using the last name Skywalker, not the best way to hide him. Though Luke Skywalker sounds better than Luke Lars.

Of course if it had been Obi born on Tatoonine, you would still have the 'problem' of Obi using his surname, of Vader probably knowing where Obi came from and having people constantly looking out for him who would pick up on an old man Kenobi living on the planet, etc. But those problems could be avoided by either having Anakin not know where Obi came from, having Obi destroy any records of his home planet, or just having Vader assume that Obi wouldn't be so stupid to return to his home planet.

 

[Mach5]

Anakin be born on Tatoonine

He wasn't born on Tatooine. He said he was three when he first got there (TPM).

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Whether Anakin was actually born on Tatooine is presently unclear in the Star Wars universe. From http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anakin_Skywalker#Early_life_.2842_BBY.E2.80.9332_BBY.29:

Anakin Skywalker was born in 41.9 BBY. According to the seminal historical work of Voren Na'al, the planet of his birth was Tatooine, but Skywalker himself may have implied that he was only raised on the arid planet from around the age of three.[2]
...
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 In The New Essential Chronology, it is implied that Anakin was indeed born on Tatooine. However the shooting script for The Phantom Menace includes dialogue where Anakin clarifies that he arrived on the planet at the age of three (which would equate to around the year 39 BBY).

Unless it can be substantiated by other means, dialog dropped on the editing floor, or changed before shooting, doesn't count to close a case.

As it stands in the film, the line "How long have you been here?" could mean either "How long have you been on Tatooine?", or "How long have you been working in the shop?"

Whatever the case, it's irrelevant to the points I made.

 

[JarodRussell]

Anakin be born on Tatoonine

He wasn't born on Tatooine. He said he was three when he first got there (TPM).

Splitting hairs.

 

[Mach5]

Anakin be born on Tatoonine

He wasn't born on Tatooine. He said he was three when he first got there (TPM).

Splitting hairs.

Plinkett taught me. :P

 

[Kegg]

Plinkett shouldn't have to teach you to split hairs, damn it. You're a Trekkie, the capacity to quibble over the minutiae of space opera films is your birthright.

Fixing each of these issues requires some degree of hand waiving.

But none of them really go against the guts of the backstory, which was my point. There was a Republic, some Jedi Knights, they fought in a war involving clones, Vader betrayed the order, the Jedi are 'all but extinct' as the film dawns, reduced to this old man in a forgotten desert planet and a frog on an even more obscure bog world.

The details that don't match up - offhand comments about dates (which are given no weight in either the original or the prequel trilogy beyond an agreed sense of 'a really really long time'), semantics about the nature of the conflict aren't really the big issues here.

Droid technology is an argument well, I don't entirely buy. In the Original Trilogy, the prescence of sapient droids is ubiquituous - to the point lean moisture farmers can purchase run down robots from scavengers in the ass-end of space and not blink an eyelid when they're confronted with a droid who can speak a few thousand languages.

Using droids for combat purposes isn't beyond question, either - there's a droid bouny hunter in Empire Strikes back, which implies not just a bit of brute force, but the capacity to track down and locate and apprehend potentially dangerous targets... a level of sophistication beyond what the Trade Federation's armies could provide.

The big difference is really the use of droids in the military, which we see as footsoliders but also sapient fighter craft... which are a dismal failure. Clones prove demonstratably better, and the clone army of the Republic annihilates the corporation responsible for mass producting such cheap and incompetent robots.

The robots also seem to be dependent on control centers from out of space to operate as an army - dropping dead when it's disabled - which suggests further difficultes for, for example, people trying to take advantage of whatever remnants of the Trade Federation forces remained at the end of the war.

The big and very obvious difference is that the Prequel Trilogy is far, far shinier. The special effects are more abundant, the locales are most ostentatious, everything is bigger and bigger and bigger. Not all of that sheen necessarily suggests a more advanced technology than the Empire period.

 

[Set Harth]

Unless it can be substantiated by other means, dialog dropped on the editing floor, or changed before shooting, doesn't count to close a case.

That citation of the shooting script sounds like it could just as easily be a reference to what was said in the film as opposed to dialogue left on the cutting room floor or changed before shooting. in any event it was substantiated by other means.

Actually, yes really.

The backstory in the PT made sense, and the PT showed things alluded to in the actual OT. So, no, not really.

There is also no evidence or especially mention in the OT of a massive droid army having ever existed.

So what? That's not a case of the PT failing to show something alluded to by the actual OT. It's the PT showing something not alluded to by the actual OT. Now the PT can only do things shown in the OT in order to be considered acceptable?

A thousand generations versus a thousand years.

A Republic that has been around for a thousand generations has also stood for a thousand years. In the EU this supposed discrepancy was addressed by the Ruusan Reformations.

Above it was said, why hide Luke on Tatooine? That's pretty fucking stupid. What, the Galaxy isn't big enough to find a hiding place with fewer connections to Anakin

Since that one is the fault of the actual OT, how exactly does it serve as a PT criticism? I thought the idea was that the PT and OT should match up. Luke ending up someplace other than Tatooine would be the exact opposite of matching up with the OT.

Another way of looking at this issue is that it's pretty fucking stupid for Anakin himself to have been from Tatooine in the first place. Given that the OT came first, the burden is on the PT to lead in appropriately to the OT. If this means that it makes no sense for Anakin to have been born and raised on Tatooine, which it doesn't, given the way the OT played out, then Anakin has to have been born and raised somewhere else.

Your knowledge of the actual OT turns out to be seriously lacking. ANH established that Anakin was from Tatooine. That means that it makes sense for Anakin to have been from Tatooine. You don't seem to approve of the idea that Vader was from the same place as Luke, but that's the OT's fault. When the PT backed this up, it was doing exactly what you say you wanted it to do, maintaining consistency with the OT, yet you still disapprove. Curious.

When there is no film for almost two decades in a series that you love, you kinda get really familiar with the films that are there.

...or not.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

It pretty much spelled out the guts of the original trilogy's history lessons. The odd hand wave was needed (Yoda was Obi-Wan's master? Er, in the sense he studied under him as a tyke) but the guts of the story more or less fits.

I see that as just Obi-Wan streamlining his own history for Luke's benefit. Why bother mentioning any of the other Jedi who helped train him when Yoda is the only one still alive. Besides, we already know Obi-Wan has a tendency to massage the truth anyway.

The bit that fits less well is Yoda & Obi-Wan both describing young Obi-Wan as being reckless. That description better fits Qui-Gon. Young Obi-Wan was a frikkin' boy scout.

 

[Set Harth]

Obi-Wan did almost fall into the Theed melting pit after skirting the edge of the dark side.

Going by the films alone, it would still be possible for Yoda to have been Obi-Wan's Master before Qui-Gon. It is not inconceivable that a padawan might change masters along the way. However, it is commonly believed that "Yoda trains the younglings" was Lucas' way of addressing the TESB line.

 

[HAL.9000]

Looking over some of the great alternative stories members have posted here, all I can say is that George Lucas is just dumb. He could have had a killer story line from any capable and imaginative writer(s) instead of taking it on himself.

"A New Hope" and "Empire" will always be remembered as the best ones...before it all slowly went to shit.