How do you think the prequels would look if "Phantom Menace" wasn't part of them?

Something I have noticed a lot is when people look back at the prequels, those who dislike them really come down hard on "Phantom Menace" way more than they do the other movies. I mean most who don't like them aren't to fond of "Attack of the Clones" either but it seen more as a bad movie were "Phantom Menace" is seen as a unforgivable dumpster fire.

If you took that out am I the only one who thinks people would look back differently at the other two movies? I mean most people like "Revenge of the Sith" so would basically have one good movie and one bad movie. Maybe not what people would hope for who went in with high hopes but I think it would play better. Also almost no Jar Jar or kid Anakin which would instantly wipe out a huge amount of disgust. Granted you would still have special effects that feel overdone and Hayden Christensen and a romance that doesn't really work but I think those things would mostly be contained in just one of the movie's and would be forgiven a lot easier. In fact that might have even been improved because I asume their would have been a rewrite since "Attack of the Clones" would be the first movie to introduce the characters.

Jason.

 

"Phantom Menace" was a complete waste of time.

On balance, PM was a net negative to the trilogy and franchise. If PM could be erased from history and scrubbed out of our collective memories, we wouldn't be worse off for it.

I am still not sure what the point of the movie was. It seemed to me that the purpose of the PM was for Lucas to show off his cgi. It seemed like every other scene in PM was a cgi fight scene, lots of shoot outs with droids and light saber action by the Jedis. I remember the mindless speeder race and gratuitous light saber battle between Darth Maul and Qui-gon/Obi-wan.

What exactly was the point of Darth Maul anyway? He was the most forgettable villain in the trilogy. It seemed to me that he was inserted into the movie just so there would be the mandatory climatic light saber fight.

Most importantly, no PM would have meant no Jake Lloyd Anakin. Imo, Lucas should have introduced Anakin as a troubled teenager, not as a kid, and go on from there. Without PM, I guess we would be talking about a prequel duology (is that the right word?) instead of a trilogy.

 

I think one issue is that almost nothing in the movie is really needed to be seen for the next two movies to work except the idea of having a young Anakin being seperated from his mom. That is a key moment in Anakin's life and it's something that should be shown. Almost everything else can be explained through exposition or written into "Attack of the Clones.". Liam Neision and Darth Maul and Jar Jar don't matter in the future films. The Trade Federation taking over the Naboo planet doesn't really matter much since the seperatist group basically becomes more important than them.

Jason

 

Since George Lucas saw the six movies as "one movie," The Phantom Menace serves as the prologue. It does all the world building that will serve the subsequent Episodes. Here are a few critical parts to the saga that TPM establishes and gives us:

• The Golden Age before the fall- we get to see the height of the Republic that we've heard about. A time of innocence, peace, and prosperity
• The Jedi Order- what it looked like. How it functioned. How it recruits and trains apprentices. And how it interacts with...
• The Republic- Or rather, the Senate, The Capital "City-planet" or Coruscant, where we see two centers of power: The Senate house, and the Jedi Temple.
• The Origin of Anakin Skywalker and what will be the Skywalker line- We see how a small slave boy, full of innocence, will become a Jedi, who will one day become Vader.
• The establishment of Obi-Wan Kenobi, his POV, personality, and reason's for taking Anakin as an apprentice.
• The Rise of Palpatine- Even though not many people realized at the time that Palpatine was the Emperor, he is established in this film as the Senator from Naboo who will rise to Chancellor in this movie.
• The return of the Sith- Maul represents an unanticipated return of the Sith, whom the Jedi, their age old rivals, had believed to not exist anymore, and had not seen or heard from in a millennia.
• We also see the establishment of Padme, who ties into both Palpatine, Naboo, and Anakin- both now, and in a different way in subsequent films.

It seems to me removing Episode I is a bit short sighted, especially if it's just because someone doesn't like Jar Jar...who himself exists as part of that representation of innocence that I mentioned above. If one is already aware of all these establishments, then I guess they could personally skip the movie, but leaving the movie out leaves a story that is not only incomplete, but has literally no foundation. Even if you completely re-wrote Episode's II & III, it would still be incredibly contrived to try to fit all these things into it. Episode II takes place ten years later-a realistic progression of time from the first.

Imagine "Empire Strike's Back", a film heavily criticized at the time for being "a movie with no beginning or end" being released without "A New Hope." It'd be really confusing, ya?

 

I have to admit, the thought behind this thread has crossed my mind, but for it to actually work, you'd have to pretty much start the whole trilogy over from scratch. Like @Prax said, there really is a lot of significant plot set up and world building in TPM that would make it hard to just scoop it out and leave the other two as is.

 

Almost everything important you need to learn from EP1 is explained again in Episode 2

I don't think it would take much of a rewrite.

 

All of the worldbuilding in TPM that actually mattered was already covered in ANH, and any minor details that weren't were later reintroduced in AOTC.

TPM was ultimately a superfluous movie whose only purpose was to distract from Luke's narrative. That said, I still like it better than AOTC.

 

The highs of TPM are probably the highest of the PT and it looks the best of the three (the animation never gets much better so it is hard to count it against TPM in particular). Unfortunately, it also has some of the lowest lows and offers little of value to the overall story. It is basically the exact opposite of ANH in that instead of using sparse exposition where necessary to establish the world and stakes, it is from its inception a prologue to another story.

The trilogy as presented requires a few lines and moments to make sense(to the extent that it does), but in a version of the trilogy without TPM you could easily cover that up.

 

I think it's the weakest of all the SW films, but it's still a reasonably entertaining movie as it is, but a few tweaks here and there would have improved it no end - first and the most obvious is lose Jar Jar. I've no problem with having a character provide a bit of comic relief, but this guy was just painful. Look at K2S0 in Rogue One to how it's done right in this case. Second, is make Anakin a little older, played by Hayden, (or better still another actor for all three prequels, but that's another debate), having him the age he was cost the movie some emotional, dramatic weight. Have Anakin already pissed at the fact he's a slave, and be conflicted, it would have given the scenes where the Jedi say he's to old to be trained (WTF?) some credibility, in-universe, as well as the space battle at the end. Finally I would have given Maul more to do in the film and not killed him off. Apart from a couple of other minor points like losing the moronic twin-headed 'sports commentators' I'd leave the rest as is and I think it would be a much more solid film as a result.

 

TPM is reasonably entertaining, more so than many films out there, but it still has a lot of little problems that add up to being less enjoyable than AOTC.

I think Obi-Wan gets sidelined way too much for us to have an appreciation for his character. The only reason why he's important is because we know he makes it to ANH. As much as I like Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan really should have had more of a role than arrogant jerk who questions his master's decisions. But, at least we know were Anakin gets it.

The politics presented in this film make no sense and drag the pacing down quite a bit.

As much as I think Naboo is beautiful, I sometimes wonder if it should have been Alderaan so that the planet's destruction has more of an impact in ANH.

So, yes, retooling this film, make Anakin older, so there isn't a ten year gap between I and II and I think you have the foundational work for a good film. Just need to flesh out the characters more.

 

None of these arguments mean shit to me. I am so tired of these suggestions about making these excessive changes to the Prequels so that they can fit into the bashers pre-TPM assumptions. And these changes make the Prequel story seem less complex and ambiguous to me. And less interesting.

 

TPM was better than AOTC. And a lot of ROTS. True.

 

TPM gave us "Duel of the Fates." That alone is worth it.

 

Speak for yourself, I'm not a 'prequel basher' I enjoy them quite a lot, more so than TFA, I rank ROTS very high up on in my list of SW movies, and I'll be the first to discuss how much better Return of the Jedi would have been with a planet full of Wookies instead of the Ewoks. I think the criticisms of TPM thus far in this thread have been constructive and well on the right side of 'bashing'.

Why don't you start a thread of how the originals could be improved if you're so sick of threads like this one? I've even given you a starting point.

 

Yeah, but it could do with a general rewrite

 

Epic bit of music. Even if it has been spoilt by people pointing out that it sounds like the vocals sing 'corn... on the cob'

 

Agreed on this.

 

Partially agree. There's some really good stuff in TPM - the pod race, the lightsaber duel etc, but I found it to be a bit plodding in places, especially the political side of it and some of the other Tatooine stuff, to say nothing about Jar Jar dragging down just about every scene he's in. I really like the look of the movie though.

Clones I found to be a much richer experience, both visually and in terms of plot and pacing. There's only the dumb humour from 3PO that really grates for me, whereas TPM has more problems to my eye. ROTS, whilst not perfect by any means I found to be a much superior movie than both the first two instalments.

 

Since TMP sets everything up for the prequels, I don't see how you can cut it out. Also, given the huge hype around it (and the case that ATOTC is arguably a weaker movie), I suspect that a lot of TMP hate is centered around people's hyped expectations. But that's just me.

 

Considering it was the highest box office grossing Star Wars film before The Force Awakens....yeah it kind of got watched....a lot.