I made the mistake of clicking on a link on Facebook because the title immediately pissed me off. It was "10 Things That Were Great About the Star Wars Prequels."
Before clicking on the link, I could think of one great thing about the Star Wars prequels: eventually, they ended. So even though I knew I would regret it, I followed the link and it was one of these sites that's hardly even a site. Just a collection of advertisements covering every inch with a slideshow-style article. So, I really don't even have much confidence that the "writer" who "wrote" this gave a good crap about any of it, yet the argument is so just plain undeniably wrong to me that I have to write a response, right now. Even though I got up early to get more overtime, I don't care. I need to respond to this right now. Because it's wrong. And I have to respond to its wrongness point-by-empty-point.
10. Darth Maul.
The great, red mute of the The Phantom Menace is the first "great" thing the article lists, and I suppose I would agree if I suffered from some kind of chronic memory loss. Yes, Maul certainly seemed like he would be one of the great things about the Prequels back before we all actually saw the movie. In the trailers and the TV spots, his make-up was bad-ass and that double-lightsaber looked even badder-asser, and the shots from the three-way duel between Maul, Obi-wan, and Qui-Gon looked freaking awesome.
And then he said, like, one thing the entire movie. And he died right away.
Not so great.
9. The Scale
The article calls the environments of the first films "restrictive sets," And in comparison calls the settings of the Prequels "large and immersive."
I could disagree more, but only if I obtusely decided to just disagree with basic things like the writer's use of vowels and whether or not you call sets "sets" or "breadsticks." Just to be a dick.
One of the first teasers for Revenge of the Sith featured shots from all the films - prequel and originals alike - and upon first seeing that teaser, it really struck me what bothered me about these "large and immersive" settings Lucas' CGI was creating in the prequels.
There was a shot from A New Hope of Luke looking at the two suns of Tatooine. Not long after, there was a shot of Annakin from Attack of the Clones either right before or right after slaughtering the village of Sand People, racing over the sands of Tattooine with the two suns off in the distance.
It occurred to me then that, yes, the CGI of the Prequels was slicker, prettier, and certainly created the large scale the writer of the answer.com's article refers to.
But the shot from A New Hope looked like a guy looking at two suns. Which is what it was supposed to be. And the shot from Attack of the Clones looked like an asshole in a cartoon or a video game. It may have looked pretty, but it didn't look real. It didn't make me believe in it.
8. Qui Gon Jinn
The article rightly points out that Qui Gon Jinn was one of the best parts of the prequels. I would add that he was one of the most complex jedi characters in the films, one who actually struggled with the dogma of the system he was a part of, rather than the slogan machines characters like Yoda and the older Kenobi were.
Which is why, of course, Lucas killed him right away.
Spoilers.
7. Kenobi's Mount, the Varactyl
The article lists the lizard Kenobi rode in Revenge of the Sith as one of the great things about the prequels.
Really? Didn't it die after, like, five minutes? Who cares?
6. Jar Jar Binks is silent in Episode III
I don't really see how this counts as a great thing about the prequels. Minimizing something that was awful in previous films doesn't make it great. It makes it barely tolerable.
5. The High Ground
This references the moment which made no sense in Revenge of the Sith, in which Kenobi defeated Annakin because he was, like, a few inches above him.
4. Ewan MacGregor's Lightsaber noises
The article points out that, apparently, during filming MacGregor made his own lightsaber noises during fight scenes.
Yeahthat'scuteidontgiveashit
3. Count Dooku
They actually counted this as one of the great things about the prequels. Count Dooku. The Sith whose name sounds something a toddler calls shit.
2. Saber Duels
Granted, the fight between Qui Gon, Obi-wan, and Maul in The Phantom Menace was awesome. It made the fight between Obi-wan and Vader in A New Hope look like one of the lawn rake fights between Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon in those Grumpy Old Men movies.
But it was the only saber duel in the prequels I was particularly impressed with. In particular, the final battle between Annakin and Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith was, I thought, disappointingly uninspired and unsurprising.
I'd also say that while that Phantom Menace duel was great, my favorite remains the Luke/Vader fight in Empire Strikes Back. The Phantom Menace fight is great precisely because it is so slick and carefully choreographed, whereas the duel in Empire seems much more desperate and heated and that much more engaging.
1. Darth Sidious
I will grant you that Ian McDiarmid was brilliant in his role. Though the character was not written with any kind of subtlety and it remains a mystery to me how anyone could be fooled by his "manipulations." And his "No! NO!" moment in Revenge of the Sith right before he snuffs Mace Windu was so horribly done that it was one of the two moments in the theater that the entire audience laughed out loud (the other being Vader's final, unconvincing "Nooooooo" at the end of the film).
Okay, now I have to go to work. I lost OT to slap around an article saying nice things about movies. And yet I feel it was justified.
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