Why the Star Wars Prequel Disappointed - rudyjuly2's Blog

rudyjuly2's Blog

Why the Star Wars Prequel Disappointed

Posted on December 19, 2008 at 08:46 AM.

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I saw all six movies of the Star Wars series in the theatre. I loved the original trilogy as a kid and still enjoy watching those movies today although I really didn�t like the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. The new trilogy is another story. I never loved any of these movies. I went and saw all of them in the theatre and largely came away disappointed every time. Some fans really do enjoy the new trilogy but I�m not one of them and will outline four areas where the new movies failed in comparison to the older ones.

1) The Characters were Boring.
In the original movie, we all grew to love Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan, Yoda and Darth Vader (love to hate anyways). Even the droids were great. Humour was mixed in well and the relationship between Han and Leia was light years better than the relationship between Annikan and Padme.

The new trilogy really lacked in this area. The story largely centers on Annakin and Obi-Wan but I felt that Ewan McGregor was lousy as Kanobi and Hayden Christenson was horrible as Annikan. Ewan plays more of a smart-*** version of Obi-Wan and I never liked it. Hayden�s performance in Episode II makes it very difficult for me to watch that movie and might be the worst acting performance in the history of film. Lucas� scripts deserve some blame for this though.

The only real characters I liked in the new trilogy were from the Phantom Menace. Liam Neeson was really good as Qui Gon Jin and I did like little Annikan a lot in the movie. Darth Maul was one of the coolest bad guys out there. Too bad he didn�t live longer.

2) Simple story: Good vs. Evil.
The original trilogy had a simple goal. Defeat the evil empire. Darth Vader was one of the best villains ever created and it was fun to root for the little guy. The new trilogy was an overly complicated political affair that lacked the black and white, good vs. evil story line. The ending in episode one wasn�t an exhilarating destruction of the Death Star like the original Star Wars had. It was the defeat of a trade agreement gone bad. Wow! Doesn�t that sound exciting! I preferred the real battles in space vs. the political bickering in the Galactic Senate. There was a reason Lucas started making the movies with episode four � it�s because they were more interesting.

3) Too Much CGI.
The new movies have tremendous battles scenes and a ton of different ships. But there is too much of this at times. And the texture and quality of the model ships used in the original actually outshine some of the new CGI. Of course seeing a model X-Wing Fighter get blown up by a tiny piece of dynamite was fairly obvious but the detail of these ships was great. The original scene in Episode IV had a fly over by a destroyer. That ship still looks great today and better than any ship in the original battle scene in Episode III. Lucas spent too much time on the CGI and not enough time on the story. Having a million ships on the screen at the same time wasn�t necessary to make the original movies great and they did nothing to make the new ones great either.

4) Predicted vs. Unpredicted Outcome.
The original trilogy was actually original! We didn�t know where the story was going and the revelation that Vader was Luke�s father was arguably the highlight of the Series. The new trilogy was writing to and end that we already knew. In fact, the entire interest most Star Wars fans had in the prequels was to see how Annikan turned into Darth Vader. We all wondered as kids why Annakin turned bad. How did it happen? Our imaginations ran wild. Unfortunately, the turn of Annakin to the dark side was done poorly and didn�t come close to our own imaginations as to what really happened. It was like opening a Christmas gift to find socks inside. Sure I could use some new socks but it was certainly disappointing when unwrapped.

Comments

# 1 Pete1210 @ Dec 19

I liked the third one.

# 2 moose1619 @ Dec 19

I agree, episode II is by far the worst star wars movie ever. Natalie Portman didn't help any of the movies either. If Lucas would have stayed simple in a lot of the fights and CGI scenes it would have been better. The prequals also had a cookie cutter feel to them. Introduce characters, fight, chase scene, fight some bad dude dies.

# 3 rudyjuly2 @ Dec 19

I did like Natalie Portman but you can only do so much with those scripts. She looked good in Episode II anyways. Lucas should have called that the Clone Wars in the first place. Attack of the Clones was dumb.