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This was the moment I checked out of the prequels. Vader, as a child, built C-3PO? I’m supposed to continue suspending my disbelief, now? Impossible.
That’s what you’re supposed to do, though. They’re fun space cowboy movies. Anybody who gets upset about the prequels being cheesy or having plot holes is just remembering the originals through rose-colored lenses.
Revolutionary for the time, sure, but the fact that some of it didn’t work in spite of the level of ambition is (for me, at least) part of the charm.
Hold on hold on. You trying to argue that the prequels are the same quality as the originals, that’s just batshit crazy. The revisionism these last years about the prequels because all the kids who were born right around then and grew up watching them is wild. They are not good movies. Sure there’s stuff to like and anyone can find enjoyment in nostalgia, but to say the originals are just as bad and it’s only rose colored glasses is just wrong.
Not just as bad, but bad in a lot of the same ways.
IDK, I kind of agree with them. As a 90s kid, the originals didn’t really impress 12-year-old me. The acting was amateurish and cheesy, the “special effects” were cheesy, the story was extremely cliche by that point, the writing was 18-month aged Parmesan cheesy. To 12-year-old-me, the prequels had slightly better acting, better special effects, a much more compelling and interesting story, and the writing was still pretty cheesy. Maybe the dark, brooding main character really did it for my 12-year-old emo self, I dunno. But yeah, I don’t think it’s that crazy to prefer the prequels to the original trilogy. Like, looking back, neither trilogies really hold up, but the originals are very much propped up pretty much just because they were “revolutionary” nearly fifty years ago.
As another 90s kid that watched the prequels in theatres as they came out: I enjoyed the originals, even though I was only about half your age at the time. Probably worth noting that my mum made sure that I watched the original trilogy before Phantom Menace. And I’m sorry but the acting in the PT is supposed to be better than in the OT? What? No. Nothing against the actors because a lot of it was due to writing (especially for Anakin and Padmé’s shared scenes, especially especially in II where Anakin is such a fucking creep) and direction, but no.
Revenge of the Sith was the only one I found worth watching.
I liked the last two but that was the best of the bunch.
I remember being so bored watching Ep 2 that I started to notice that every time a scene changes, Padmé has a different outfit on her. The most suspenseful part was when a scene ended with her tied to a pole in an arena. Surely she won’t be able to change now, right? Well, turns out that right as the action switched back to her, she got slashed across her back by a monster and took the opportunity to tear up her long white dress into a different set of clothes.
I haven’t seen them in nearly 20 years. It’s embarrassing how Star Wars obsessed I was as a teenager. Like, holy shit embarrassing. I “photoshopped” images of myself with light sabers and everything.
Fuck it. I’ll show you guys. Man. I shouldn’t.
I thought the one was gone forever, but my sister wasn’t going to let that happen. She said when I posted it to MySpace she knew I’d be embarrassed one day and delete it so she printed it off. Haha. What a dick.
Damn. Here goes.
Beautiful
Looool.
You’re right that the OT are just fun movies that are much less impressive than when they came out.
The prequels are hot steaming piles of shit in comparison though. Maybe you need to remove your rose tinted glasses?
The sequels are worse movies than the prequels.
If that’s how you feel, ok. I’d love to hear your reasoning for why any of the prequels are better than FA.
If absolutely nothing else, none of the prequels are just a blatant, shittier retread of Episode IV. They all at least have their own identities, even if the identities of Episodes I and II are shit. When not taking Episode IV into account, Episode III is still absolutely better than FA even though it’s just like a 7/10.
Even though Episode I and II are actually agonizing for me to sit through, I would still put them above FA because they’re not just shallowly copying someone else’s homework to make a nostalgia-addicted fanbase collectively shit their pants.
Drag likes movies that explore how an opportunistic politician can subvert democracy to create a fascist dictatorship with thunderous applause from the people who are about to be oppressed.
Pointing out that the prequels have the slightest hint of an interesting story does not change that they are garbage movies. All you’ve done is summarize the plot in vague terms that are only slightly more vague than the movies themselves. They do not “explore how an opportunistic politician can subvert democracy to create a fascist dictatorship”, they barely even dip their toes in the attempt.
The prequels do not do an adequate job of establishing why the republic is vulnerable to being hijacked by a fascist dictator. They do not adequately establish how Palpatine is able to seize power. Germany was reeling from WW2 and was thus vulnerable to a charismatic dictator like Hitler. Hitler successfully used the hate and anger of german citiziens, caused by the very real suffering they were experiencing post WW1.
What the fuck happened in the prequels? There was a trade dispute, whatever that means, (it’s never explained in the slightest), and so Palpatine gets appointed supreme leader or something? No suffering of average people is asserted, no populist rhetoric that gains momentum because of real suffering. Just, there’s a war so we need a supreme leader and it has to be Palpatine.
The plot is completely nonsensical and I challenge you to outline Palpatines rise to power in detail. Every single character acts like a complete idiot and does nothing as Palpatine blatantly seizes power.
Not to mention the dog shit dialogue, stiff delivery, boring characters, racist caricatures, and blatant and obnoxious pandering to children.
The prequels are absolute awful movies in basically every way imaginable. Pretending they are some sort of intellectual piece of work just exposes you as an idiot or someone who hasn’t watched the movies since they were 8 years old.
Sorry to be a dick but those movies are seriously fucking bad and I have issues.
The Republic’s democracy is not functioning. The senators are corrupt and only care about laws that benefit the 1%. We see the streets of Coruscant outside of the Senate and Temple, and it’s a shithole. There’s rampant poverty and drug use.
The Trade Federation are a symbol of bourgeois corruption in the minds of the people. The Trade Federation impose unreasonable tariffs and fines on the people, contributing to poverty. That’s what they’re doing to Naboo. The people sympathise with Naboo because Naboo is being oppressed the same way they are. And when Naboo stands up to the bullies, they get blockaded and subject to an illegal invasion.
The Republic does not have an army, a command structure, or a political mechanism for dealing with war. This is silly, but bear with drag. The Senate has to vote to go to war with the Trade Federation. But the Senators can’t agree on how, and they’d much rather be voting on corrupt issues like giving themselves raises or giving tax breaks to trillionaires.
Palpatine offers to take over all the messy business of controlling the political wartime strategy. The Senators support this idea because they don’t give a shit and just want the problem to go away. The people support this idea because they’re tired of the Senators never getting anything important done, and the see Naboo as a symbol of their own problems. Palpatine promises to bring the Trade Federation down a few notches and make life easier for everyone.
Palpatine gains complete control over the Republic’s military policy, and then proceeds to keep the Republic in a forever war that increases poverty and destruction, while promising everyone that the answer to the problem is to just give him more power. Like George Bush.
Definitely one of my least favorite aspects of them. Everyone must get a backstory, and they must all be interrelated. The galaxy’s a small place apparently.
Why was Tattooine featured SO MUCH in a galaxy of planets?
Because Star Wars was based on Dune
Story takes place in a whole-ass galaxy. Everyone winds up back on Tatooine for some stupid reason; the planet with barely one ecosystem, practically zero vegetation, no economy that matters, yet populated with two (?) cities. Other planets also have exactly one ecosystem, culture, and one optional urban center1. There’s also only 12 or so planets that matter, yet half of everyone you meet are from all the other ones. You may not like what you see, but this is peak sci-fi writing performance, right here. /s
This story could take place in a diverse corner of a single Earth-like planet and it wouldn’t be all that different.
1 - Meanwhile planet Coruscant is an urban center where the ecosystem can best be described as “traffic” and the culture is “city folk that inexplicably eat at 1950’s-style diners”.
Single-biome planet is a quite common trope in “science fiction” (tvtropes warning)…
I don’t think he’s supposed to have designed it or anything. I think it’s an existing model, and he just scrounged for scrap to put him together. It’s basically the thing he’s known for as a child. His pod racer seems a little more unbelievable, right?
Not that he couldn’t have put together a droid, but that he put this very specific, very integral-to-later-events one together himself. It’s ludicrously coincidental.
it’s very synchronous rather than causal. i don’t think the rhetoric and messaging of the original star wars was for you. if you’re familiar with the concepts and ideas that went into star wars in the first place then, at least imo, it’s a very natural plot turn that threepio was himself built by vader. yes, the story revolves around anakin in this grandiose and cosmic way. that’s a feature, not a bug.
Hence why star wars is a chosen one, hero’s quest, prophetised fantasy. Not a Sci fi.
When you and your kin are all prophetised to do important shit, there is no coincidence. it’s all part of a bigger divine plan of fate. Or it’s the midi-chlorians or something I dunno, I slept through the prequels.
Not when, in a universe known to contain non-organic beings able to perform tasks like smuggling plans, a gunnery officer decided to save lasers (as though they were apparently a precious resource) and not fire on an escape pod with no life signs? I feel like that would be the most appropriate moment to stop taking Star Wars seriously.
You need to treat the empire like a corporation. They do tons of dumb shit lol
Maybe C3PO was a kit. Like a gay robot Lego set for ages 5-12. Those Jawas can sell practically anything.
He built it out of junk. Most of internal components were prolly cherry picked and then maaaybe fixed up a bit. Sheesh. Like, kiddo may have been good at soldering, so he fixed a few electronic parts.
Yea I wonder if that was ever addressed? I don’t remember the movies much and I never read the books but Vader must have seen, like, security footage or something and been like hey wait a fucking a second.
There are plenty of 3P and R2 series robots running around. There’s no reason to believe he thought he knew them.
Further, there’s a comic where he sees C-3PO’s blasted body and has a flashback. So even though they didn’t share the screen, Vader did share a moment.
My actual biggest issue is that Vader stood in front of Leia and didn’t seem to have any idea that she could use the force or that she was his daughter.
