Thursday, December 14, 2017

What if I Were to Tell You I Now Like the STAR WARS Prequels?

by Adam Riske
Will these feelings be everlasting?

Last week, I watched all three of the Star Wars prequels in a single day for the first time. After finishing The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, I intended to continue the night chronologically with Rogue One. I turned off Rogue One after about twenty minutes, not because I was tired, but because I was still carrying the prequel trilogy with me. I wasn’t mad. I was moved. How the hell did this happen? I’m supposed to dislike the prequels. In fact, except for Sith, I did dislike the prequels up until this most recent viewing. What changed was when I watched them back-to-back-to-back, the Anakin Skywalker saga came together nicely.
The Phantom Menace played worse for me this time than it ever has. That doesn’t even feel like a movie. It’s as if George Lucas forgot everything about directing in between A New Hope and The Phantom Menace. The special effects date terribly, the acting is off (to be polite), and it is so boring! I enjoyed Attack of the Clones more than before, but I will not say that it’s good. It’s just that I was removed from the disappointment factor in 2017. Star Wars (due to the sheer quantity of output from the IP nowadays) doesn’t feel as precious anymore. Not as much is riding on any single entry and I think that benefits Attack of the Clones in a way. Prior to last week, I don’t think I had seen Attack of the Clones since 2003, so this time out I was enjoying just how goofy the whole movie is more than anything. For example, I forgot that Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) goes to the Jedi Archives and asks a Jedi librarian for help with research like it’s a teen horror film. I forgot he also goes to a diner and gets a hot lead from a CGI short-order cook. I forgot the scene on the conveyer belt in the third act where Padme (Natalie Portman) falls into a bowl like one they have for a guacamole making station at a restaurant and has to avoid a spigot pouring hot Chile con queso. There’s a lot to enjoy here if you’re in the “fuck it” kind of mood. I liked the gladiator battle, even though it looked fake. I thought for the first time how I would love to vacation (and fall in love) by a lake on Naboo. It turns out in the ensuing fifteen years, I’ve grown to have a lot of affection for Attack of the Clones. I’m as surprised as you are. When compared to a 2017 blockbuster, a 2002 blockbuster looks kind of good. Plus, it made me super nostalgic about a time in my life where I would go with friends to the megaplex to see a new blockbuster on opening night, followed by late night breakfast at IHOP. Now I couldn’t pay my friends to meet me at IHOP at 11pm and it makes me want to take a depression nap. BTW, I’m pretty sure I witnessed the “go ahead” for a mob hit one time at an IHOP, but that’s a story for another day.
Even riding that Clones high (a statement that has never been written down before now), I was worried about revisiting Revenge of the Sith. The Phantom Menace was still bad (not a surprise) and Attack of the Clones ended up being fool’s gold, but Revenge of the Sith was the one I always liked since the first time I saw it back on opening day in 2005. I’m not saying all people did this, but I think there’s a lot of revisionist bashing of Revenge of the Sith, where people lump it in with the Phantom Menace and Clones and rule it a failure. Wasn’t Sith (especially the final hour) sort of liked initially? Am I misremembering that? I still think Revenge of the Sith is a success. I’m sort of in awe that it lands with the emotional resonance it does while still hampered by the aftertaste of two previous underwhelming movies. I am very aware of the film’s problems, namely some of the acting, dialogue and overreliance on CGI (which is much improved since The Phantom Menace), but the last hour of this movie is a fucking emotional powerhouse for me. When Obi-Wan is chastising Anakin for turning to evil after their great lightsaber battle on Mustafar, I can feel the betrayal, devastation, sadness and tragedy. I think Revenge of the Sith really does works a great tragedy in the way George Lucas envisioned. It’s almost enhanced in a weird way by how much of a turn it is from these characters in The Phantom Menace. You think of young Anakin (Jake Lloyd) yelling “Yippee!” and then cut to him almost burning to death yelling “I hate you!” to his mentor.

You think of Padme as a very young queen and senator and then cut to her lying dead in a coffin at a Naboo funeral because she gave up her will to live. The desperation of Anakin’s actions that leads to his aligning with Emperor Palpatine is worthy of pity. How close Anakin was to sticking to the right path and turning Palpatine over to the Jedi Council is agonizing. It’s really sad shit! The score by John Williams near the end when Yoda and Obi-Wan are marooning themselves into isolation because they lost everything they stand for is heartbreaking. Revenge of the Sith is a good action movie filled with emotional weight. I don’t know why it hits me so hard, but it does.
I’m not sure what I intend to accomplish with this column. It’s not to tell detractors of the prequel trilogy that they’re wrong or be a contrarian. Maybe it’s like when Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) says in You’ve Got Mail that she (I’m paraphrasing) just wants to send these thoughts out into the void. As I revisit all the live-action Star Wars films before The Last Jedi, I expected to grit my teeth and bear the prequels and I’m shocked that I ended up having two-thirds of the trilogy click for me more than ever before.

Note: I also secretly enjoy the acting stylings of Hayden Christensen (he has a unique energy all to himself, like Steely Dan) but there’s only so much I’m willing to cautiously champion in this article.

19 comments:

  1. I’ve disliked the prequels as much as anybody else for a while. But for the last couple of years, i found myself defending them. Not for the same reasons as you thought. I do think some scenes are better than i thought. Probably forgeting they existed because i didn’t like the whole movie, at first. And i still don’t see any of them being classified as better than any other movies in the series, but i’m sure somebody will make the argument at some point

    That being said, Star Wars day is today for me. In 13 hours i’ll be watching it

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  2. The prequels are so much better in concept than in execution. Just try explaining the plots of Clones and Sith out loud to someone who's never seen them. They sound like awesome movies, and there's a lot of iconography that really works. I can see warming up to them in the future.

    The Phantom Menace is still a nightmare, though.

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  3. Welcome to the dark side, Adam. It’s nice here haha

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  4. Really enjoyed reading this. I once heard someone say look at the prequels as an album. Sure there are some tracks you don’t like, but there are some really good tracks mixed in there. I like to look at the prequels that way. Next up I expect a similar dissertation on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!

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    1. It'll be a cold day in hell before I like KOTCS.

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  5. I tip my cap to anyone who says, unironically and (as you say) not with the intention of being a contrarian, positive things about the Prequels. They're such easy targets. So many reviews of TFA defended the rehashing of the ANH plot by saying "JJ needed to reset the trilogy to get people back on track from the prequels." Personally, I say that rehashing the ANH plot shows how bold Lucas was in making a prequel trilogy that is so starkly different from the original trilogy. Lucas could have gone softball and given us Anakin's journey and have it mirror Luke's. But he didn't. He gave us something weird and unique. It changed filmmaking (for better or worse) with digital backgrounds and extensive green screening and the first fully digital character. The prequels are amazingly uneven. What they are not are derivative of the original trilogy.

    Fingers crossed that The Last Jedi manages to do the same.

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    1. Thanks for commenting although if you want to bash The Force Awakens, I'm not the sympathetic ear you're looking for :-)

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    2. TFA wasn't my cup of tea (TEA?), but I don't fault it for being someone else's.

      I just think you are right about revisionist bashing of the prequels, and I think TFA became a cudgel for that. I don't love the prequels, and usually feel awkward (if not disingenuous) defending them, but it's bizarre that they are so thoroughly denigrated and their influence ignored.

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    3. Sorry, make that "I don't fault anyone for it being theirs". That makes much more sense.

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  6. "No, that's not possible! The Jedi would be aware it!"

    I also like the Star Wars prequels - even Episode I

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  7. i also strongly recommend the CGI animated show, Star Wars The Clone Wars. it really expand on the universe of the prequel movies and is more adult than you'd think. not Rated R adult, but still some dark stuff happening. the first season is a bit uneven, but it gets way better for the other seasons, with only a few episodes that could be considered bad.

    and the 2D animated series (made before the CGI one), by Genndy Tarkakovsky is pure fun.

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  8. In rewatching the prequels last week, I've come to appreciate the Sith mystery as presented in Episodes 1 and 2, but 3 is still hard for me to appreciate for some reason.

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  9. About that "Jedi in the arena" scene from Episode II, that scene has always struck me as follows. The "coolness" of Jedi action scenes in a Star Wars movie has an inverse relationship to the number of Jedi on screen at a given time. Once the number gets above three, the fight/action choreography gets sloppy, the silliness of bringing swords to a gunfight passes a tipping point, and you have a lot of characters on screen who look like extras in a fan film.

    Also, it looks like Disney is buying 20th Century Fox, so we'll finally get that dream Aliens vs. Parent Trap movie.

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  10. Due to time and my limited access to the movies, I did my rewatch in the weirdest order possible, but I agree about the prequels. It should be said that two weeks ago I watched Rogue One, and Force Awakens, and enjoyed both of them more than I previously had.

    This week I watched III, V, VI, I, II, and IV in that order. I have nothing new to say about the originals except that the special edition for VI is the worst.

    I always liked III, and fortunately nothing really changed about that this time around. My experience with I and II mirrored what you wrote about before. I grew up actually enjoying Phantom Menace because I was young, and it was one of the few VHS I owned for a time. Today was my first time seeing in on Blu-ray, and it sucked. I owned the dvd, but HD really shows how much reliance on bad CG really hurt this movie. Some of the scenes feel more akin to Tron than even the original trilogy.

    Clones was a pleasant surprise for me, but I don’t think I can watch the Naboo love montage again. Are those scenes really taking place in real time alongside Obi-Wan on Kamino? It feels like it should be a year of their lives with the creepily rapid progression of their relationship, and number of costume changes. The rest of the movie worked for me better this time than ever before though. Adam, I think I liked the gladiator scene more than you simply because I was still so jaded from Phantom Menace’s CG.

    In the end, I don’t think I will recommend skipping the prequels as much as I used to.

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  11. If it ever were possible for an entire trilogy of mostly underwhelming and disappointing movies to be entirely redeemed and justified by a single line reading in the closing moments of the third installment, it is the prequel trilogy, and it is "You were the chosen one!"

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  12. I grew up with the originals, but have always loved the prequels too. It might have to do with during the time the prequels came out, I wasn't super into movies. I didn't really have any expectations, and was more like "oh, cool, more star wars". And so they sneakily found a place in my heart, before I had a chance to think much about it. I just accept this as a positive.

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  13. My worthless thoughts: The key story points of the prequels work. The scripts, directing and casting of the characters Anakin and Padme were very bad. Also, Ian McDiarmid went far too big with Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith and should have been reigned in. Fart jokes? No. Jar Jar? No. C3PO becoming a Looney Toons character? No. Darth Vader crying out "Noooooo"? No. Where the hell were the friends/colleagues with good taste and the balls to stand up to George Lucas and say no, these are bad ideas?

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    1. Have you ever seen the 1961 Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life"?

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