The Star Wars Prequels: Overhated, Overrated, and Overprotected

we need to have a serious talk about the prequel trilogy the Star Wars prequels are perhaps the most highly debated films of all time you have a lot of people who love them and will defend them to their last breath some people who absolutely hate them and will point out every last flaw within them and then you have some people like me who are right in the middle and has somehow managed to be called a prequel hater and a Mindless prequel defense just tracking the history of the prequels when fenom Menace first dropped in 1999 I'd say the fans were pretty accepting of it and that they were just happy to have new Star Wars finally it was really only after the fact once we had time to kind of process and analyze the trilogy that most of the general public seemed to accept that the trilogy was subpar but now that the sequel Trilogy has come and gone and Disney plus continues to turn out a mixed bag of Star Wars content it seems that in New Era of prequel Defenders have risen is it Justified are the prequels overhated are the prequels overrated are they actually iconic or did the sequel Trilogy just make us nostalgic for simpler times well the complicated truth is that there's partial validity to all of the questions I just posed so let's get into it before I start to break the prequel down though I just want to establish that I'm a massive Star Wars fan even before the Clone Wars first came out I was a plun kund d and kid Fisto Stan couldn't really tell you why but I messed with them heavily I grew up on this and I loved it so I'm not trying to be labeled a prequel hater it's possible to enjoy or like something but still analyze or acknowledge that it has flaws to like something doesn't mean it's perfect and I previously made a video on the beauty of the prequel trilogy where I broke down some of the things I thought the trilogy did well primarily in how the trilogy presents both Anakin and Obi-Wan with the temptation of the dark side and uses their clash as a beautiful parallel to the greater Eternal clash of the Sith and Jedi and I still think that at the core of these movies the premise of Anakin's fall to the dark side is intrinsically interesting and was an untold story from the original trilogy that deserved to be fleshed out now that being said the first two movies especially attack on the Clones are not that great great there's moments here and there like The Duel of the Fates fight that are entertaining and well done but for the most part these movies are a little convoluted and don't do too much to actually Advance Anakin's fall to the dark side in a compelling way and I think the biggest culprit of these issues is that George Lucas just isn't a good screenwriter he's great at coming up with lore and World building and he's a solid director but when it comes to actually writing dialogue and the finer details of a script He's Just Not That Guy even episode 3 the one that most people praise still has bad script writing I mean the dialogue is literally so laughable that the internet has lived on memes of it for well over a decade I mean if we had better dialogue and better acting for the scene where Anakin tells Padme about killing the sand people that could have been a really chilling and great scene but instead it's become a meme so I can kind of see both sides of the fence on the prequels they're definitely flawed and I understand why someone could watch them and think they're trash but as someone who grew up on them and appreciates the additional lore that they brought to Star Wars I can also appreciate them and understand why some people defend them with such ferocity I think the lore that the prequels brought to the franchise is underrated by some and the movies themselves are overrated by others because of this but I think a lot of the ferocity that fans have when defending this Trilogy actually comes from the sequel Trilogy the sequel Trilogy while aesthetically having enough money behind them to look the part I mean the CGI set designs and props were all amazing they just lack interesting lore for fans to grasp on to a majority of the story lines here feel like retreads or lazy Nostalgia bait and the abrupt tone shift from film to film made it very clear to fans that there was no overarching plan going in and this is what really started giving prequel Defenders better footing I think think prequel Defenders have felt how they feel for many years but only having the original trilogy to compare yourself to was always going to be a losing battle but the soulless sequel Trilogy now that's something that you can compare favorably to no longer did the prequels have to serve as the punching bag for All Star Wars fans we now had two films in Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker that are debatably the two worst Star Wars films ever made and I think prequel fans after years of seeing people completely on movies they love took the opportunity to flip the script and take out their penup aggression on the sequel Trilogy and I don't think they were wrong for doing it I think if Disney didn't want people to crap on the sequel Trilogy then they should have given us better more inspired films but I've seen some of the things that prequel fans have been saying and some of it is kind of crazy like the sequel Trilogy being bad doesn't magically make attack of the Clones good the romance between Anakin and Padme is still horribly written and super awkward the rise of Skywalker being an incoherent horribly paced mess doesn't eradicate or change that however I do think it's fair to be a fan of the prequels and accept that while they're flawed they also represent one man's vision and I Le set out to tell an interesting story of the chosen ones fall to the dark side which is a story we all wanted to see it's not just a cash grab there's heart to it and it had purpose the sequels did not they just didn't they were made because it gave Disney the chance to make a ton of money and narratively well they tried to figure it out as they went along and they never did and I think this is something that we should be vocally negative towards to a certain degree Studios have to listen to fans as we are the ones who put money in their pockets so when they put forth a lackluster effort we shouldn't be afraid to Proclaim it but at the same time I don't think the prequels are the Star Wars content that we should be championing the most as the example of what Disney should give us the original trilogy the later seasons of The Clone Wars some of the comic story lines like the son of damir Knights of the Old Republic these are the things that we should really be championing I mean we're getting a tales of the Sith series and it's not adapting the son of damir or dark disciple who the hell made that decision but anyways the larger point I'm trying to make is that yes the prequels introduced a great new into the Star Wars franchise arguably its best content comes from the prequel era but the prequels themselves didn't actually capitalize on most of this like what we see in the movies especially episodes 1 and two is not the best stuff from this time period the Clone Wars and Comics really had to come in and tell all of these great stories in between and after the movies to really get the most out of the lore from this era and you could argue that's just down to not having enough screen time in a movie to cover it all and this is partially the case but there's absolutely no reason that we should have a first movie where Anakin and Obi-Wan barely interact and Then followed up with a sequel where they're separated for half the film there's just a lot of wasted runtime on things that aren't all that integral to the main plot of slowly turning Anakin to the dark side and we really only get told how good of friends Anakin and Obi-Wan are we rarely actually get to see it on screen I mean George had three entire movies to show us Anakin's fall and it somehow felt a little rushed and a bit out of place when it actually happened it's a coherent story unlike the sequels but it's a story that could have been clearer and better done that doesn't mean it's not okay to like or even love them still I love a lot of films that I think are objectively average and have issues X-Men apocalypse is objectively a pretty meh film but I really enjoyed it Magneto was one of my favorite Comic characters of all time and I really enjoyed his screen time in that film film is it a well- written film absolutely not is it a great film absolutely not but did I enjoy it absolutely and that's really the point I'm trying to make with the prequels it's okay to like them hell it's okay to love them but that doesn't mean you have to leave a paragraph comment responding to someone who doesn't it's okay to accept something as flawed or not liked by everyone but still enjoy it anyways even my favorite film the Sha Shank Redemption which is widely accepted aced to be a great film is not perfect no film is ever going to be so I think it's time to stop calling people haters if they don't like the prequels not saying that prequel haters don't exist they definitely do I mean I've seen people try to claim that the Duel of the Fates fight is one of the worst lightsaber fights and is lame due to being over choreographed now that that is a hater who just wants to take credit away from the trilogy entirely but if someone mentions that the romance story line with pad was poorly executed that's not a hater that's just someone explaining an issue they have with the movies and it's a legitimate gripe to have not everything has to be a vicious attack against or in favor of the quality of these films all in all I just wanted to make this video because I've kind of noticed two extremes when it comes to the prequels either you really love and defend every aspect of them even the bad parts or you should on them completely even the good parts I mean literally a few days ago I referenced a prequel meme to one of my co-workers and they accused me of being a prequel hater because of the tone of my voice hell I even saw some of this back and forth in the comment sections of my beauty of the prequel trilogy and beauty of Darth Maul Story videos so I wanted to a explain why I think prequel Defenders are so protective B explain why I think it's okay to defend the trilogy and see establish that maybe we should tone down the ferocity of our prequel defense because not every critique is in bad faith or incorrect remember just because you love something doesn't mean it's beyond criticism if you made it this far thank you for watching and if you enjoyed I'd really appreciate if you liked or subscribed or even checked out some of my other Star Wars content and remember this is just my opinion so if you agree disagree or just have General thoughts on anything I said as always I love to hear you in the comments

Channel: Screened Stories

Views: 1,637

Keywords: Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith, Attack of the Clones, Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker

Id: SOJ1kxOyfiw

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024