The recent re-release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith has kicked off a renewed debate about the quality of the entire prequel trilogy. In certain quarters, wannabe edgelords are claiming the films have found strange new respect in light of the franchise’s subsequent dumpster fire..
As much as I wish it were so, this is not in fact true. The prequels are still terrible, just not as terrible as what came after. We’re in root canal vs coloscopy territory, death by fire or ice. There is no good choice.
A Lackluster Genre Film
I’ve written quite a bit about the Star Wars prequels over the years, and even penned a moderately popular series of novels (the Man of Destiny series) that addresses their problems. I’ve no interest in revisiting that, but instead want to break this down to the most basic level. The core issue is that while the prequels may look nice, they remain terrible films.
Yes, Star Wars is now a genre, and that means people are grading it on a very generous curve. This is an open admission that they suck. The original films were compared with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Logan’s Run, The Forbidden Planet, etc. In addition to awards for truly ground-breaking special effects, Star Wars was also lauded for acting and editing – that is the entire craft of filmmaking. They were not just good space films, they were good films, period, and that is why they so thoroughly captured popular culture.
They also made George Lucas a major player in Hollywood, thereby enabling Raiders of the Lost Ark (but also Howard the Duck). The profusion of ‘space’ movies that followed – including Alien – kicked off a golden age of space fantasy and sci-fi.
The prequels, by contrast, unleashed nothing. They wrecked a lot of the lore and required extensive retconning of the previous films (which were dutifully given the Orwell treatment), but other than some independent animated projects and facilitating the subsequently abandoned Knights of the Old Republic console games, their legacy is unremarkable.
Again, fans will contrast this with the subsequent annihilation of the fandom, but again, we’re not measuring degrees of greatness but instead celebrating less severe levels of failure. That’s loser thinking. Don’t be a loser.
The truth is that if you leave the genre ghetto and reach out to other sequels, it still gets crushed. Is it better than Return of the King? Aliens? Wrath of Khan? Top Gun: Maverick? Can anyone remember Episode III dialog that isn’t used derogatively? Dello fellagates, I have the high ground.
The Curse of CGI
George Lucas is justly acclaimed as an innovator, but not all of his innovations are positive developments. Yes, he fully exploited emergent CGI to create breath-taking visuals but this was badly abused in his films. What is more, it has subsequently sucked the dramatic feel out of every movie that relies on it. The strength of the original films was that they created a “lived-in” idea of space, with worn, dirty crew compartments and the various environments were familiar and relatable. Yes, Bespin had an otherworldly feel to it, but that was precisely because other environments – desert, snow, swamp and later a forest – were real and interactive.
Each prequel pushed the envelope and enabled even more absurdly complex (and lengthy) action sequences, draining them of any dramatic impact. I’ve talked about the lightsabers before, but when you combine it with totally unnecessary jumping and climbing, it looks more like a demo reel than actual action. Is there really any thing dramatic in watching a CGI Yoda come to a draw against a CGI-enhanced Christopher Lee?
The prequels created the template for endless, epic and inconclusive fight sequences where buildings, cities, even planets are annihilated without any real emotional impact on the audience.
The Original Sin of Retconning
I’ve written quite a bit about the perils of prequels and have actually gotten readers to request an account of the Deimos War mentioned in my Man of Destiny series. I don’t want to do it because it would feel fake and contrived, just a crass money grab.
The truth is that you shouldn’t map out every element of a setting, or provide a detailed biography of every character. It is almost always better to let the audience come up with their own theories of how things came about, and happily discuss them with fellow fans.
The prequel trilogy broke canon, and then Lucas had the chutzpa (and influence) to retcon the originals, making them stupid and incoherent. These discontinuities and contradictions were mapped out in real time when they hit the theaters, and raised again when people could dig into the DVDs.
The truth is that Lucas wasn’t filling out the story he always wanted to tell, he was excising the work of his ex-wife Marcia and settling scores with studio executives who vetoed his preferences 40 years ago. Despite his best efforts, the films were financially successful, and this in turn led other Hollywood types to conclude that it was a viable marketing strategy.
The was the Patient Zero, the origin point of everything that is wrong with Marvel, DC and Disney. Just produce the content and the fans will slurp it up and demand more content.
Can We Go Back?
The re-release of Episode III leads many of us to hope that there will finally be a remastered commercial version of the original trilogy’s theatrical release. I own the metal box set of the original trilogy, which included the Special Edition as well as the original release as a bonus disk. Star Wars is badly washed out, The Empire Strikes Back is a bit better and Return of the Jedi is the best of the three, but it’s still like watching them on a VHS tape. Lucas has resisted this and it’s unclear if Disney has the ability do to it, but this would be one of the most basic and obvious ways to print hundreds of millions of dollars that it is incredible that it has not yet happened.
Then again, these are the same people who think sexual assault and girls kissing – something that was dated more than 20 years ago – are now groundbreaking ways to get fans to watch Andor. Seriously Disney: the 1990s actually happened. My surmise is that the box office haul was largely an exercise in nostalgia – not just for the film, but for a time when there was still hope that Star Wars could amount to something. Darth Vader may have been reduced to an insecure murderous punk, but at least he wasn’t sucking teat milk or getting sucker-punched.
At least we had that, which is nice.
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