- PREVIOUS POST
- « REVIEW: Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny
- NEXT POST
- SF Signal Welcomes Pete Tzinski »
Star Wars, episodes one, two, and three. The prequels. Oh man. I mean, every joke that could be made about them has already been made, right? At this point, all you have to do is say "Star Wars prequels" to get a smirk out of most people.
But what would you say if I offered up the view that, really, the prequels weren't so bad? And what would you say if I volunteered the idea that, actually, they were completely equal to the original three Star Wars movies? Well, I know what you'd say. You'd probably come around to my house and blow up my mail box with a shotgun, that's what. Fortunately, I don't have a mail box outside my house, so we can talk about the matter a little further...
The complaints against the Star Wars prequels - The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith for those of you just coming out of a bomb shelter and having no idea what I'm talking about - are numerous. Sometimes, they're cynical and sardonic and funny. Sometimes, they're honestly angry and hurt and offended. Sometimes, they're just dismissive. A few times, I've heard some rationalizations. I'd like to offer a defense of the prequels. And I hope you'll bear with me.
All the varied complaints come down to this: they aren't as good as the original ones. That's the core of the problem in so many ways, and that's where we'll start.
When the original Star Wars movies came out, they were a pretty big deal. They were things that the world had never quite seen before. It wasn't that they were necessarily the first movies to use the sort of technology and graphics that they used...it was that they were the first movies to apply these technologies functionally. That is to say, the technologies in the original trilogy served the movies and the progression, rather than running away with the film. (A fatal example of this can be seen in the first Star Trek movie which is, leave us face it, "Captain Kirk & Co. Watch Windows Screensavers"). In Star Wars, the ships zoomed, the lightsabers crackled and flashed, the robots moved and talked and were terribly good fun. Stations exploded. It looked damn pretty.
It seems like such a dumb thing to say, but before the Star Wars movies came around, it was a world that existed without Star Wars. Obviously, right? It's easy to forget, in that we've spent quite a lot of years living in a post-Star Wars world, and in that world, a lot has changed. One might argue that the measure of great art is not necessarily the internal literary merits of the piece, but the affect it has on the rest of the world and the time that follows; it is not necessarily the beauty of the stone, but how big a boulder it is and how much it diverts the stream. Star Wars was a pretty good-sized chunk of rock.
And as the world moved on, Star Wars only built. Not because more movies were made, but because generations that had seen it grew up with visions of X-Wings and TIE Fighters dancing in their heads. If you were eleven years old when Star Wars came out, then you had picked a pretty astonishing time to be eleven years old. No matter your age, if these movies worked for you, then everything they contained grew and expanded in your mind. The AT-AT Walkers, big as a movie screen, took up residence in the back of your head and soon they were hundreds of feet tall, lumbering with great thudding steps across a vast and frigid Hoth, all of it existing only in the imagination. In the places were super-heroes soar, there are creatures under the bed too terrible to imagine, and true love conquers all. The deep places, the places where mythologies are born and grow into great and amazing things. The place of true stories, if you like.
And then, a whole bunch of years later, hell, it seems like a lifetime and a whole world later...there are new Star Wars movies coming. A new trilogy of them, set before the original ones. And they're going to be bigger and flashier and more action-packed. You are going to see Jedi Knights striding the galaxy, and great armies, and the Clone Wars. You are going to see the fall of Anikan Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader. You are going to see all of the background to those original movies, and it's going to play out using the amazing effects and terrific movie-making feats of today!
So what happens?
What happens is that the new movies, the prequels, are no longer competing to be as-good-as (or better-than) the original trilogy. No, what they are now competing with are those towering and impossibly-scaled images and moments filling up the back of your head, in a hyper-kinetic drawer of your imagination hastily labeled Star Wars. It's a powerful spot in your mind, and it has perhaps made you turn on a flashlight in a dark room and go Vrrrum, Wummm, vrummm. The new movies are competing against that place: not against other films, but against a golden idol.
And of course they don't measure up.
The odds are stacked against them. They are coming into a world that is post-Star Wars. Before, nothing like this had ever been seen before! But now? Well, we saw that, years back. It isn't jaw-dropping now. And somehow, it's all only movie-screen-sized.
To put it another way...it's the same thing as coming back to the town you grew up in and moved away from. You come back with your wife and kids, and you take them to see the towering haunted house on the corner, surrounded by fortress walls of dark and knotted trees, the house the more fearsome thing ever, and everyone knew someone had died in there and never been taken away...and then you go there, all grown up, and find that actually, it's just a tatty older house, not that big, with one overgrown oak tree in the yard. And a nice old lady out front, calling for her cat. Put still another way: it's going back to your childhood house and wondering why everything seems to have gotten shorter now.
Therefore, one must examine the prequels and the original movies entirely separate from the golden idol in one's mind. And that is not to say that you should tear down the Star Wars idol that lives in your mind. You shouldn't empty the drawer and light the contents on fire. Far from it. But you should merely examine for a little bit.
Let's look closer at the prequels themselves.
If we take the prequel movies and break them down into their components, we actually find more to like about them than to dislike.
- The environments: In the prequel Star Wars movies, building atop the originals in this regard, and wholly unlike quite a lot of science fiction film work in the past few decades, there was a wealth of beautiful, unique, and well-thought-out environments. And I'm not just talking about beautiful set-pieces, such as any of the locations for the lightsaber duels. What I'm talking about is the widely-varied planets which we visit. Look how very different Naboo is from Geonosis. Look how amazing Courascant is, and furthermore, look at all the different areas of Courascant which we get to see (from the upper levels of the Senate, to the Jedi Temple, to the lower reaches where Dex's diner is, to the far-out desolate areas were Dooku and Sidious meet). Compare Kashyyk to Tatooine. And on all of those planets, we see variations of weather and landscapes. This is uncommon. And is an amazing attention to detail. The planets are all logical and work well with the races that live on them.
- The sound effects: it's not exactly a surprise, when you've got the full power of not only Skywalker Sound but THX as well, but if you go through the prequel movies and really pay attention to all of the sound effects, the variety and depth is astonishing. And sometimes, it's the most astonishing thing in the scene. Consider the fascinating sounds that the creatures made, in the arena, in the second prequel. Consider the sound of Jango Fett's pistols, that strange hollow-tube sound. Or, my personal favorite (and how many movies do you have personal-favorite sound effects in?) that really astonishing sound you get when those seismic charges explode in the asteroid field. The moment of absolute silence, and then the guitar-overdrive-like noise.
- The alien species: Even just on the Jedi Council, there is a huge diversity of looks to the aliens. And more than was ever possible in the original trilogy, we see a huge range of alien creatures that go far, far beyond the typical science fiction joke of all the aliens just having styrofoam on their foreheads. Alien species diversity was always an amazing hallmark of the Star Wars movies, and it only expanded and grew more impressive in the prequel trilogy. It is a well-populated galaxy. And all of the alien races act in different fashions. Moreover, they rarely speak the same languages (and if they do, they speak in broken dialects, rather than perfect English).
- The soundtrack: I consider this completely different from the above-mentioned sound effects, and of course you do too. As famous as THX is, John Williams is a whole other level of amazing. Any movie theme that you can whistle, he probably wrote. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T., Superman, Harry Potter, thank you, good night. The man is astonishing. And if you sit down and listen to the prequel soundtracks, they are gorgeous pieces of music that take all the greatness of the original trilogy's breathtaking music and build atop it. Duel of the Fates, from the first prequel, is awe-inspiring music, even without a movie playing along with it. In the second prequel, the haunting and fragile Across the Stars was another one that was just a gorgeous piece of work. But the whole soundtracks were amazing. And subtle. There were so many places where John Williams quietly played something that was close to, but not exactly like, Darth Vader's theme. Or the Imperial March. Subtle little touches for you to notice. And then, in the second prequel, when we see the full clone army boarding ships at the very end and the Imperial March plays (in a new rendition, no less), it is still spine-tingling.
- The fight scenes: I think that anyone who grew up post-Star-Wars probably lined up his toy soldiers at some point and decided that instead of little green united states army men, they were actually stormtroopers. Big fight scenes sprawl out in the back of my mind, certainly, from the original Star Wars movies. And mostly, they didn't exist. I enjoyed them no end, in the prequels. In the second and third prequels, we saw some fantastic fight scenes. The huge battle between the Droid Army and the Clone Army, in the second prequel...well, it was beautiful. Big and epic and violent and it was, in some ways, leading us to awe-inspiring scenes in other films, like the fight scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies, all of the subsequent copy-catters we got after that.
- The graphics: Although I can see some of the argument, on this point, about how the prequels were too computer generated...I would pointed out, humbly, that they merely take full advantage of the technology of their time. Just as the original Star Wars movies did. And if even those effects weren't as pervasive in the original Star Wars films, I would argue that those films had something which the prequels did not: budget constraints. Lucasfilm was not yet printing money. And since we're talking graphics, I suppose I should deal with one big point people brought up about the wretchedness of the prequels, which was Jar Jar Binks. And in reply, I say only: Ewoks. All right?
In the next article, I want to either apologize for, or defend, some of the actual lousy points of the prequels. Because I figure if I'm going to dig myself a hole, it may as well be the full six feet down. (And probably have a stone up top with the words Star Wars Apologist etched into it.)
Comments (14)
| PermaLink
| Category: Star Wars
Posted by Peter Damien at Monday March 09, 2009 at 12:25 AM
© 2009 SF Signal
OK Mr. Tzinski,
I'm going to withold judgment on this until part II, but you should know, I was nine in 1977...
I'll just stay here gnashing my teeth and flexing my zyfoid process. And I have an extra-large zyfoid process...
Posted by Lucien E. G. Spelman on Monday March 09, 2009 at 2:19 PM
I agree 100 percent with this post. I can't wait to read the next one.
From the subtle tones of the Darth Vader theme, a point I actually had to point out to a friend that saw it with me. To the fact that the technology seemed more advanced in the prequals, an issue of the movies that bothered me until I went back and watched the original trilogy and remembered how strapped for cash and mobile the rebellion had to be to survive. Not to mention the choke hold the empire had on the entire galaxy.
In my opinion the prequels met every demand I had laid out for them except one. That would be the speed in which the films moved. I felt that they had to move way to fast to get to the beginning of New Hope. There is so much more background story to cover between Revenge of the Sith and New Hope; I would have really like them to cover more territory. I know the authors of the expanded universe have that covered though. Still I would have loved to see it all on screen.
Posted by Clinton Ausmus on Monday March 09, 2009 at 4:01 PM
All of the prequels suck. They suck big time. They suck small time. They suck in infinite, recursively looping, transfinite time.
It's got nothing to do with the eye candy, sounds, or cool monsters. Not to diminish the hard work and creativity of all the SFX teams, but great eye candy is as common as dirt nowadays.
It's got everything to do with the traditional craft of storytelling. Suspense, pacing, intrigue. Characters you really care about and root for, or against. Subtlety, ambiguity, intelligence. Clever, inventive dialog, or at least convincing dialog. A sense of wonder and discovery.
Maybe the first two Star Wars films didn't have all of that, but they had enough. Enough to make the movies sing. The rest of them don't sing, they just pontificate, nag and hector. Not fun.
Eye candy is nice, eye candy can be cool, but it doesn't make a sense of wonder without a great script. You can get a sense of wonder from a well written story acted out on a bare stage.
Posted by Matte Lozenge on Monday March 09, 2009 at 5:07 PM
The acting was very poor, and that was the major problem and ruined all of the good things you mentioned.
Also, the story somehow became "racist" because the force is something you have to be born with rather than train for. That was a heinous touch.
Posted by TheAdlerian on Monday March 09, 2009 at 5:20 PM
The prequels hopped from one boring political showdown to another, and none of the characters had any charisma so I didn't care what they were up to. The dialog was about as appealing as a whiny kid chasing a candy fix.
The scene where they went all Super-Mario leapy jumpy ducky on a conveyor belt through the factory was a particularly low point. Compare this to the tension of the garbage compactor in Star Wars, where you had a Jaws-like underwater menace and the slow creep of certain death in those moving walls.
I know people defend the prequels, but I'll happily watch the original trilogy whereas I can't stomach the more recent movies.
Posted by Simon Haynes on Monday March 09, 2009 at 6:00 PM
Of course they're good. I'm haven't heard any substantive criticisms of them that couldn't be applied to any hollywood movie, for better or worse. They have their weaknesses, but the dersion levelled at them seems to come from bitter geeks who can't abide any thing other than their own vision, but aren't making their own movies. Thanks for defending them. And by the way, I was 9 in '77 as well, and enjoy all six movies. (Jar Jar is a little annoying though).
Posted by labert on Monday March 09, 2009 at 7:44 PM
Happily I've lived in the bliss of never having seen a single prequel, and intend to take said bliss to the grave.
Posted by Kristine on Monday March 09, 2009 at 9:27 PM
Finally, someone defending the Prequels. Nothing could ever stand up to the mythological monster that is the original trilogy...but I thought they were well thought out, full of action, and fit into the Star Wars mythos very well.
Posted by steve on Tuesday March 10, 2009 at 5:57 PM
Of course the special effects are better in the prequels for all the reasons you mentioned. What's worse though is the writing. My specific problem is the mediocre character of Padme. That whole seen where she thought she might lose her job due to her pregnancy? Can you picture Princess Leia saying that?
Posted by Lisa on Thursday March 12, 2009 at 1:19 PM
The real problem with the prequels is that I don't care about any of the characters. It's not just poor writing on the part of George Lucas (ie. "I don't like sand," etc.), it's also the fault of the actors for not objecting to their completely wooden performances. Throughout the entire trilogy, the only character I could say I felt anything for was Darth Maul, unless you count the hate inspired by Jar Jar. Ray Park's scowling was easily the best acting in any of the three films. Perhaps he's also more likeable as a character because he speaks so little of the Lucas lingo.
Here, more or less chronologically, are all the things we don't (or shouldn't) care about:
- Episode I Nobody cares about a robot army that looks like it was designed for a Three Stooges movie, unless we're watching a Three Stooges movie. Nobody cares about the Gungans. Nobody cares about Watto, Sebulba, or Gardulla the Hutt. Nobody cares about the pathetic Trade Federation. Nobody cares about a "Gee whiz" kid blowing up a space station. Nobody cares when Qui-Gon dies like a doofus.
- Episode II Nobody cares about Hayden Christensen's wet dream. Nobody cares about that CG diner cook... what's his name? Nobody cares about Kaminoans because they're boring set pieces. Nobody cares about Jango Fett because he's just a third-rate Boba. Nobody cares about the clones, not even as potential henchmen. Nobody cares about Anakin's mother dying because she could be replaced with a rock and no one would notice. Nobody cares about Anakin massacring Sand People because... well... they've got it coming. Nobody cares about the Geonosians. Nobody cares about romance so preposterous that Danielle Steel claws her eyes out. Nobody cares about Count Dooku because he came out of nowhere. Nobody cares about Count Dooku because all he does is stand around or run off. Nobody cares about Samuel L. Jackson because he doesn't have any cool lines that we can quote over and over again. Nobody cares about the other Jedi because all they do is wave light sticks around, and maybe die. Nobody cares about Yoda because he sounds like the Sphinx from Mystery Men, except it isn't funny. Nobody cares about Yoda because he looks like a bad CG mogwai got it on with a gremlin. Nobody cares about Yoda because he's supposed to be so damn powerful, but he can't multi-task. Nobody cares that you did that thing with Anakin's hand... we saw that once already and it was better the first time.
- Episode III Nobody cares about General Grievous, although I might have if there was a cool back story (Let's say he's what's left of Darth Maul! They've both got yellow eyes! Anybody?). Nobody cares about General Grievous coughing. Nobody cares about losing hands anymore, because if anybody else loses a hand we're starting a drinking game. Nobody cares about Dooku dying because we didn't care about him in the first place. Nobody cares about the Jedi because all they do is die. Nobody cares when the Emperor turns out to be evil, because there was no internal conflict. Nobody cares when Padme dies of a "broken heart." Nobody cares when Darth Vader laments because it's silly enough to spawn Spaceballs 2. Nobody cares about Spaceballs 2 because it would be like shooting fish in a barrel... very, very unfunny fish.
The only things people care about in the prequels are lightsaber battles, cameos of canon characters, and laughing at the over-cooked robot comedy to keep from crying. Admittedly, I enjoyed seeing Hayden Christensen get his limbs cut off, but that pleasure is more on the sadistic side.
The worst crime of the prequels is that their very existence taints the experience of watching the original trilogy. It doesn't help that Lucas edited Hayden Christensen into Return of the Jedi. I will never own that version of the film. In fact, I'll likely burn any copy I come across.
One day, I imagine that I will show the original, unspecialized trilogy to my children. I will show it to them, and I will be saddened that I can never show them the origin story of Darth Vader. I can never share that story with them - in its current form - because it sucks a fat Sith choad.
If you prefer a more entertaining guide to the suck: http://www.theshiznit.co.uk/feature/why-i-hate-the-star-wars-prequels.php
Posted by DJ on Tuesday July 28, 2009 at 5:05 PM
The key word to the Star Wars prequels would be "disappointing" and the only word someone needs to see to say that they suck. While all the prequels are good, many will just hold it to the degree of it failing to compare with The Originals which isn't true. The prequels showed a great job at expanding that universe far, far away but it's character depth for some of the main characters wasn't as what it could've been. It portrayed quite well how much the galaxy was in turmoil before the Empire happened and did quite of wanting people to see how bad those times were in the Clone Wars when it was mentioned in Episode IV.
The aliens (most of them), scenery, music, and great fight scenes still really can't compete against the Originals because everything in them (Originals) was near flawless to begin with. While the prequels were good (and Episode 3 great), they just faltered in a few too many areas to be considered as a awesome trilogy that it's predesscor was. The character un-depth for some of the major roles, Jar Jar Binks (isn't the scum of the earth bad but isn't good comedic relief), and not as good as it could've been dialouge. Practically every other category Star Wars excelled in, but with it's too many flaws the prequels can't be held up to the same standard as the originals but they're certainly good and it's still a great story.
Posted by Lee Mehr on Friday August 14, 2009 at 1:23 PM
I think a lot of the criticism is unfounded. oooh the dialogue is bad. the dialogue is bad in ALL of the films,t hats what makes them good,t hats why they are classics the corniness of the dialogue.
Imagine if Start Trek was serious and they tried to make the dialogue real, it would be even worse than it is.
Furthermore, the prequels set up the whole original trilogy, and they are important. The only bad thing about the prequels was Jar Jar and he didnt even bother me that much. There were only two moments in those prequels that made me cringe, but Ive cringed int he originals too.
People just decide to hate htings that are new because they cant live up to the expectations of the old stuff. They have nostalgia, and it doesnt wear fast.
I will say I dislike Hayden Christensen being edited into return of the Jedi, but thats my onlu sore point
I loved the prequels, and I cant stand all the criticism it gets.
Posted by Anthony on Tuesday January 19, 2010 at 7:35 PM
In the original trilogy, or any movie for that matter, a film is good for two reasons more than anything else:
1) The Story (Plot)
2) The Characters (Character Development)
The orignials had great stories and great characters that just happened to take place in the galaxy far far away with the special effects, creatures and settings it had.
Posted by Phil on Friday February 26, 2010 at 4:36 PM
Phil has hit the nail on the head, a huge part of the problem with the prequels is that 1) the plots don't make much sense (if any) 2) I hesitate to use the word characters to describe the talking, walking plot hooks that inhabbit the prequels.
As for the argument that the Prequels would rule if only the Original trilogy didn't exist (which is basically what your openning argument boils down to) is just bizzare, whats your next blog going to be? Garbage tastes great, its just that our taste buds have been spoiled by all this tasty food we eat?
Yes you do have a point that Starwars set a very high bar, but Empire Strikes back managed to equal it and Return wasn't that far behind (certainly not enough to disappoint). However the prequels completely failed because they tried to hard without aspiring enough, Lucas came at them with the idea of cramming as much cgi and fx on the screen as possible for as much of the movies as possible without any thought to how it would actually look, how it would engage the audience, wether it actually made any sense or not.... Take Yoda as an example of how it went wrong, in Empire he was this little green alien that spoke weirdly and didn't do much had a certain coolness that still inspires people to imitate, then in the prequels he is this green rubber ball bouncing around with a lightsaber *YAWN*, getting Yoda to fight was a bad idea (imo) but to have him do all this 'cool' cgi bouncing and flipping around just looked naff.
If you compare the openning sequence of Starwars with 1st Leia's ship going overhead looking like a large ship being attacked by something behind then you see the Star Destroyer start to appear overhead and it keeps coming and coming and coming and then what looks like its end but is actually a bay then more ship and more ship.... when I saw that as a kid I was just flabberghasted trying to work out how big the Star Destroyer was, it blew my mind. It was relatively simple fx done using models and drawn in laser bolts, but it was awesome. Now you could say that I had never seen anything like it before and I agree i hadn't, but even now that openning scene still blows my mind.
Now lets look at Revenge of the Sith, we open to a massive space battle, but what do we get to see? What visual tricks are used to blow our minds? How does Lucas try to astound us... We get to see Anakin flying around in a fighter, cool, but then he gets attacked by these shitty little robots that try and cut his fighter up WTF! WHAT? HUH? WHY? Rather than giving us anything to show the scale of the battle we are sucked into a close up pointless fight that distracts us from the big picture, the scene that should be leaving us in awe doesn't. Nevermind the mind boggling concept of anyone developing such a pathetic pointless weapon, let alone building or trying to use them.... Why not jsut pack each robot with explosives, get it latch on a fighter and go boom...
Posted by Andy W on Saturday February 27, 2010 at 5:51 AM