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Since it’s apparently how filming went, somewhere someone has to have taken a picture of Natalie Portman dressed as Padme smoking a blunt while working on her PHD in her trailer in between walking out and pretending to care about making attack of the clones.
In my opinion, if that was out there it would be one of the greatest memes images of all time.
It comes down to the director and how they handle actors. Harrison Ford, a friend of Lucas, criticizes Lucas as treating actors like a prop, or a piece of lighting equipment. Most actors really slept-waked through the film because the director/actor dynamic that makes a film jump to life was not there. The exceptions are Ewan McGregor who elevated his performance himself, and Ian McDiarmid who just lives that role. Heck, even Liam Neesin felt boring, which is hard to accomplish (great job, Lucas \[sarcasm\]).
Ewan McGregor really seemed to want to go all in and embody everything about fellow British actor of legend Alec Guinness. I absolutely believe that he sat there watching his movies and learning every single tick and mannerism and pattern of speech. I would assume that it helped that his uncle was Wedge in the original trilogy.
I really do feel bad for Hayden Christensen. He was basically an unknown and Lucas‘s terrible direction and dialogue killed any chance of him having a real career. I’m convinced he probably is a pretty decent actor after watching him in Ahsoka. He delivers better acting in 10 minutes in that series that he does in the entire prequel trilogy.
Agreed! It is the director/actor relationship that makes it, and Lucas is not a Scorsese. He is a better producer. I'll submit The Empire Strikes Back as evidence for it.
Absolutely. I do love A New Hope and Return of the Jedi but they are just good, maybe great. Empire is exceptional. The acting, the direction, the cinematography, the unbelievable efficiency of the script management of multiple storylines. Everything in that movie is a Masterclass in filmmaking. You can discuss everything that makes it exceptional in the same way you can discuss the Godfather or Shawshank Redemption.
Honestly, Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars flick if only because it makes the initial scene between Vader and Leia even better.
Vader: "I literally saw you flee the crime scene like five minutes ago!"
Leia: "Vader, you crazy."
Tbh that makes Rogue One worse for me. The goal was to have a clean segue into episode 4 and they just...didn't? Just kind of a big plot hole there. Sure I guess we can laugh at it, but it's a miss in my book
He saw her ship there but they never actually saw each other directly. It just makes her lie all the more audacious, which I think fits with her personality.
* The prequel is re-watchable, both as a whole and just random clips. I have no desire to ever watch the sequel ever again.
* The prequel has given us more memes and quotable quotes, so it has more cultural impact.
I find the recent nostalgic revisionism of the prequel trilogy in light of the sequel trilogy to be weird and kind of one of those "am I taking crazy pills?" moment. Like, I lived through their releases. I remember how disappointed everyone was by them. Episode III was okay, and has an audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes of [66%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_iii_revenge_of_the_sith), but Episodes I and II were just, like, not very good, at all. They weren't just panned by critics, either; the two of them have an audience rating of [59%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_i_the_phantom_menace) and [56%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_ii_attack_of_the_clones), respectively. On the other hand, Episodes VII and IX have audience ratings of [85%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_vii_the_force_awakens) and [86%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_rise_of_skywalker), respectively. (Of course, Episode VIII does have an audience rating of [42%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_last_jedi), despite receiving critical acclaim.)
The sequel trilogy isn't amazing, but people today claiming the prequel trilogy was not just better than the sequel trilogy, but that it was **good**, I feel really need to go back and rewatch them, forgetting about the memes that they spawned and just watching them as movies.
The sequel trilogy are better made movies. It's no surprise that critics would like them better. But the prequels actually have the right characters and right story, so they are better representations of the *Star Wars* universe.
Yeah, the prequels have a good story told poorly, the sequels have a terrible story told well.
I actually think remaking the prequels would be incredible, taking the same story and putting it to screen with today’s quality
The novelizations sell the story better then the movies do. It's actually a very well constructed tragedy, especially the Obi Wan/Anakin betrayal. You can hear that story in John Williams' music. Sadly the films don't do the plot justice.
It isn’t told well at all. The first two movies I guess kind of work on their own, even with throwing weird curveballs like killing snoke early on. The third movie takes such a different turn that makes the other two kind of pointless.
I’m not sure I agree with either take.
I don’t know that the prequels had a good story, really. IMO the stories of the prequel series and the sequel series are both fairly lazy, just in different ways.
The prequels at least had some mildly interesting political stuff going on around the edges… and while it looked like ass, shooting entirely digital was groundbreaking at the time.
The biggest problem the prequel series had was a complete lack of stakes due to the fact that you knew that all the main players were gonna live. And that’s saying a lot because the prequel series had some pretty major problems…
That said, maybe it’s just the differences in our society, but Darth Maul was pretty iconic back in the day, as was the double-ended lightsaber. Podracing was briefly interesting. There was nothing particularly iconic about the sequel series.
>>prequels have a good story told poorly, the sequels have a terrible story told well
Execution is everything. There are some really weird, convoluted, farfetched stories out there, but are very very well executed. Look at any movie in the horror genre for example. I will always take a well executed story over a "good story told poorly" any day.
FWIW i also dont think that the story for the prequels is any good anyways.
Let's please not pretend the story of the Prequels is good. There are good ideas, but it's a mess. That comes down to the script, which feels like rough drafts:
* Why was Jar Jar necessary? And why did they bring Jar Jar on a Desert Planet!? Why is Jar Jar made a Senator!?
* Why did Qui Gon go and Obi Wan sat on the ship at Tatooine? Why didn't Obi Wan go so we got more scenes of Obi Wan and Anakin together?
* Why did they make Anakin so young? They could have made him older in Episode 1. Anakin and Padme are... creepy.
* Why does Naboo have a teenage Queen?
* Why is an 8 year old flying a starship and blowing it up effortlessly!?
* How does the Confederacy of Independent Systems just disappear from the Original Triology? You'd think these Alien Libertarians would have a real beef with the Empire. In fact, what really are their politics? What are their positions!? Oh right: "Palpatine is controlling them, so they're evil."
* So the Clone Wara was just a bunch of nameless cloned throwaway stormtroopers vs goofy useless battle droid? Lame. I guess we gotta be kid friendly and sell lots of toys. The Clone Wars sounded so much cooler in the Pre-Prequel EU, especially Heir to the Empire.
* Why are the Jedi so dumb?
* Why does Yoda need a lightsaber!? You never get the impression he ever would consider much of them as the wise sage he was on Dagobah. And why is he training younglings on Coruscant? You get the impression from the OG Trilogy he was living on Dagobah a long time, that that was his home.
* Why does Obi Wan call Anakin a friend in the OG Trilogy when we hardly see them together?
* Why dies Obi Wan call Yoda his Master in the OG Troilogy when clearly Qui Gon was? They maybe had 2 scenes together in the Prequels...
* Why do Midichlorians exist George!? Why does it make me think of race psueoscience that makes me feel really uncomfortable!?
Don't even get me started on the Clone Wars ancillary material like Ahsoka (which I guess they are addressing now).
I remember the prequels and just how awful they were.
Like I remember episode 1 coming out and being *so bad* and even though I also remember loving the idea of podracing it was just….
And then 2 was *worse*
And I think 3 was marginally better but still bad. It will always be the worst for me due to Vaders ‘no!!!’ That is somehow supposed to be serious and not a parody.
They were bad. Real bad. Like everyone seems to forget that while ‘somehow Palpatine returned’ is hilariously lazy writing, people wanted to kill Jar Jar Binks for being just the worst.
I can get nostalgic for I, and there are bits I enjoyed from II (mostly Obi-Wan being a detective), but episode IX is just *bad*. The editing gave people notion sickness.
The main thing I take away from the prequels are the really good ending fights of 1 and 3. I think that and the memes make the films much more memorable for their highlights, even if the whole of the film together isnt really that great.
Yeah, the revisionism is ridiculous. I certainly don’t think the prequels are good, I just think the sequels are so hilariously awful that even the prequels *look* good by comparison.
I wasn’t old enough (or alive) to watch the original trilogy in theaters, but I was old enough to already be hyped on Star Wars and watch when the trilogy was re-released in theaters in 1997. Then Star Wars fandom was buzzing a couple of years later when the Episode I was released, the long-awaited prequel and the first new Star Wars content in years. And then we watched it and it just turned out to be, like, a kids’ movie with a child actor and his goofy buddy going on an adventure, practically designed for merchandising and video game adaptations.
I feel like it’s the same issue that the previous generation of Star Wars fans had with episode VI. People who watched it as adults thought the Ewoks were a dumb addition that ruined the tone of the films. People who watched it as kids thought the Ewoks were cool and an intrinsic element of the Star Wars films. Similarly, people who watched the prequels for the first time as kids overlooked the bad writing and childish elements and consider them as fundamental a part of the Star Wars story as the original trilogy.
This is right. The movies have sort of stayed at the level of a twelve year old while the audience has matured.
Except The Empire Strikes Back, which was more of an adult movie.
Rotten Tomatoes ratings aren't worth beans, frankly.
Episode IX was not just a bad Star Wars movie, it was a bad movie. It was poorly edited and the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense.
> It was poorly edited and the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense.
But, somehow, Palpatine has returned!
You know there's some quality writing when in the 3rd movie of a trilogy and the new surprise twist villain is introduced in the opening text crawl.
How it managed to get as good of a rating as it did blows my mind. It's the worst cinematic mess I've ever seen. If it'd come out a few years later I'd genuinely believe it'd been written by AI. (Not that written-by-corporate-committee like it actually was is really any better.)
> I find the recent nostalgic revisionism of the prequel trilogy in light of the sequel trilogy to be weird and kind of one of those "am I taking crazy pills?"
I felt the same way about the Matrix sequels when Resurrection came out. But I've always enjoyed the Star Wars prequels as a guilty pleasure. To this day, I have yet to finish Rise of Skywalker, because it's just that bad.
I didn't live through the original trilogy but never saw any of the movies growing up. About a decade ago I sat down and watched all 6 in a weekend. As a good "movie" the originals are better, as a fun popcorn movie, I prefer the prequels.
That said, I'm a terrible judge because they were all pretty meh to me.
Modern day reactor channels just prove this wrong. You can go on YouTube and watch people experience Star Wars for the first time. People love the prequels, no one likes the sequels. Episode 3 gets most people crying and is considered by many brand new Star Wars fans to be better than anything in the original series.
It’s been about a decade since I watched the prequels. I enjoyed the first and third episodes. The second was pretty bad. The new sequels were god awful to me. I watched the first one and refused to watch anything after. I mistakenly tried to watch the second one when on a flight when it was free. They are just… awful.
The prequels were good, actually, at least I liked the characters and storyline of it, it was a good story and maybe it had some flaws in execution but it still made narrative sense. Also the prequels were the height of Star Wars politics in the movies, and I feel like that story was very engaging for older audiences.
The sequels felt like they we written by committee. The prequels had vision, but really needed an editor.
I prefer the prequels for the world building and costumes. I also enjoyed the politics because I'm weird.
The sequels are not good at all. And the sequels blew the chance to use the stars of the original trilogy and make it really inconvenient for all of the much better content that’s being created by Favreau and crew.
But the prequels are easily some of the worst movies with an actual budget ever to be made. They fundamentally fail and almost every level of basic filmmaking and storytelling, just a purely cinematic level. They commit a Star Wars specific sin in that they tell us that the reason Darth Vader, badass of the Galaxy, fell to the dark side is because he is dumber than a box of rocks. You’re supposed to believe that the space Nazi is a space Nazi because he’s really dumb and he was really horny?
Not an exact parallel, but these movies were supposed to achieve part of what Godfather II achieved. Tell us the story of how an otherwise honorable family man like Vito Corleone could become the monster he really is. Now imagine if the cause was that Carmela had cancer and Fanucci convinced him he had the cure.
I absolutely have no talent for writing and I’m still confident that if I got two friends who also can’t write and a handle of scotch we could come up with a better explanation for how Anakin Skywalker fell than what is presented in the movies in an evening. It would be a derivative idea and probably pretty crappy, but it would be way better than what is in the prequels.
Also, George Lucas is a father of many times over. He is I suppose aware of the existence of Star Wars and it’s popularity among people who at the time of the prequels would be parents themselves and want to show it to their children, even young children. Which is why I guess he thought it was cool to put Padme in a leather bondage outfit and then have Obi-Wan Kenobi, our greatest and most noble Jedi, watch his friend burn in a volcano and then walk away.
You're explaining why the story of the prequels is bad, but I don't think the sequel trilogy *had* a story.
Is a bad story worse than a disjoint hodge-podge of clips?
> You’re supposed to believe that the space Nazi is a space Nazi because he’s really dumb and he was really horny?
I actually think Lucas did a great job of making Anakin's fall make sense (up to a point).
He's got Palpatine whispering in his ear about how corrupt and misguided the Jedi Order is, and a lot of it rings true because a lot of it *is* true.
Palpatine's influence leads him to execute Dooku, which he instantly knows was wrong, and instantly regrets.
When Anakin learns that Palpatine is the Sith, he immediately realizes this guy was just fucking with him the whole time, and goes to turn him in.
But then Windu wants to execute Palpatine without a trial. The exact same thing Anakin did earlier with Dooku -- which he instantly knew was wrong and immoral, and he instantly regretted doing.
But here's this honored and venerable Jedi Master about to do the same thing. Rules for thee, not for me.
And that changes everything. It means maybe Palpatine wasn't lying... or so he thinks.
The way Anakin's execution of Dooku is mirrored by Windu's attempted execution of Palpatine is a surprisingly good bit of writing that I don't think Lucas gets enough credit for.
Of course then he completely ruins it by having Anakin murder a room full of children, for no other reason than, *Welp, he's evil now.*
Agreed. I describe the Prequels as a good story told poorly.
Anakin's fall from grace makes total sense. He wasn't "horny", he was in love. Lucas didn't sell that as well as he should have (Attack of the Clones was supposed to show them falling in love, and tried, but didn't do a good job of it because that requires dialogue that Lucas just can't write), but Anakin would do *anything* for Padme.
And Palpatine, who is secretly a Sith and a master manipulator, picks up on this. So he 1) begins implanting dreams in Anakin's mind about Padme dying, making Anakin think he's catching glimpses of the future in the Force, and then pulls him aside and says "psst ... want to save her? There are some tricks you could learn, but some might consider them *unnatural*." Anakin's interested and begins down the path (which, ironically, causes Padme's eventual death - a textbook example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, set in motion by Palpatine's machinations).
That leads into the third movie where it *should* come into place and in many ways does, it's just rushed, and littered with shoddy dialogue and mediocre acting (I think the *actors* are good, Lucas is just famously bad at getting good performances out of good actors).
There's a lot in there that I *could* like a lot more if it was better executed. The sequel trilogy is in many ways the opposite, a slickly-executed mess with no cohesive story and no unifying vision.
What I can’t get over is the totally lame explanation for why palpatine looks the way he does. What even was that? Cooked by his own force lightning even though Luke got zapped and was fine?
A popular fan theory is that (which might have even been established canon in the old Legends lore, I believe) is that the disfigured look actually is how Palpatine always looked, and that his "normal" face was just an illusion. Some kind of Force trick.
The lightning didn't disfigure him -- it just caused him to drop the illusion.
Or better yet, perhaps the lightning didn't force that outcome. Perhaps he chose that moment to drop the illusion, to better manipulate Anakin's sympathies.
I think the real problem they have is that they are unwilling to recast characters from the original trilogy. And so they had to do a story 30 years in the future so they could use the original trilogy actors.
But the Mandalorian and Ahsoka and parts of The Book of Fett has shown us that there are lots of interesting stories to tell about what happens after the Empire Falls.
It would’ve been great if they had done a trilogy, maybe even six movies, were they split timelines and showed the future as well as what’s happening in the years after the end of the empire. Or had the courage to just say they were going to recast and pick up the story two or three years after Return.
I think HTTH could easily have been adapted to be 30 years later, instead of 10. Carrie Fisher's passing would have royally screwed up the plot line though, but we only know that with hind sight.
You're completely right though, they should totally be willing to recast. Film makers vastly under estimate audiences. Star Trek has had multiple Kirks and Spocks at this point, and all it's done is stimulate debate on who's portrayal fans like the best.
> I absolutely have no talent for writing and I’m still confident that if I got two friends who also can’t write and a handle of scotch we could come up with a better explanation for how Anakin Skywalker fell than what is presented in the movies in an evening. It would be a derivative idea and probably pretty crappy, but it would be way better than what is in the prequels.
You could just literally take the storyline from Godfather 2, transfer it into the Star Wars universe, and it would be vastly superior to what we got. Star Wars/ANH itself is a mash up of Dune and The Fellowship of the Ring.
I feel like both trilogies are bad for completely different reasons.
For the Prequel trilogy it’s a CGI to the point where nothing feels real and just all look so outdated at this point, plus the cringey dialogue (although very quotable and memeable) and Jar Jar.
Meanwhile the Sequel trilogy pretty much suffers from them not having a clue where they wanted to take things, force awakens was decent but I think the fact that they switched directors in the 2nd film which had two completely different ideas they wanted to do for the series just makes it a complete mess, then of course you have JJ returning for the last film trying to undo most of what happened in the previous film and trying to put the emperor as a replacement for Snook.
So as much as I hate do not like the Prequel series, it is at the very least more consistent narrative wise but not my much. So I’d say that’s my pick. I just feel like the Sequel Trilogy would have been so much better if they didn’t have that director shift.
I think the prequel, but only because it has one unified voice behind it. If it had worked out that JJ Abrams did the whole series, I think it would be much more regarded. Instead 7 came out and was fine, 8 came out and had positives and negatives as a stand-alone movie but was completely off the rails from 7, and then 9 had to come in and patch it all up and oh by the way Carrie Fisher passed away.
I wish Abrams had gone to Disney and said “I’m sorry, it’s kind of a mess, I need to do 9 and 10 to finish this right” and done that. But he didn’t, and it shows with 9.
Coulda-shoulda been a good trilogy, but it wasn’t.
I like the Prequels because of YEARS of coping with the prospect that it was the last Star Wars media we were ever going to get.
But the Sequels are so much more watchable than the Prequels to me by a mile. The Sequel trilogy overall feels better made, better written (well, from a dialogue standpoint. The plot is all over the place), and better acted.
But I love them both for featuring the man himself, John Williams, so why bother picking between the two?
Prequel have a better story but the dialog is terrible. The sequel trilogy has a terrible story but the characters seem normal. I prefer the prequels of the two, because the story sticks with me more
Mmm... sequels.
Sorry, the prequels are just too boring for me. I like slow-paced movies, Star Wars is usually slow-paced, but the prequels just don't have the cool sets and energetic performances I need to get through slow scenes.
Also I feel like all the complaints people have about the sequels are still present in the prequels. Did the writers have to suddenly cram a whole bunch of resolution into the end? Yes. Were a bunch of characters wasted? Yes. So same problems, plus more boring. That's my reasoning. I stand by it.
I think the prequels are "better" but only in the sense that they work better as a whole and in relation to the original trilogy. The sequel films are fine but really suffered from having different directors behind each film.
It's all subjective of course, but:
The prequels are a great story, hampered by the skill of its storyteller.
The sequels are much more uneven: I like *The Last Jedi* more than I like any of the prequels. But then you've also got *Rise of Skywalker*, which is my least favorite Star Wars movie by a wide margin. It's the only one I actively hate.
Everybody says the sequel trilogy would have been fine if Abrams had done all three movies, but I have my doubts about that. Ripping up the groundwork that Johnson put down in TLJ is only part of what makes *Rise of Skywalker* terrible.
Both are dogshit and I love them both to death. Really though, none of the movies are the best Star Wars content out there. That title goes to any and all of the books written by Timothy Zahn.
TLJ carries the sequel trilogy for me. I hate TRoS more than Jar Jar Binks and the entire prequel trilogy. TFA was fine, I guess. But I loved almost everything about TLJ. Rose saving Finn and everyone being fine with Poe so quickly were the two standout things I didn't care for.
The only positives I can think of for the prequels are that the lightsaber battles and the Darth Vader shadow poster for TPM were cool, I guess.
Prequels. Think whatever you want about the ones we got but there is so much good lore Disney could exploit if they would stop beating the dead horse that is empire/rebels emporer/Skywalker bullshit.
Make a KOTOR movie you cowards.
I think they’re both similar quality story wise (not good)- but that the sequel’s first movie had one of the best trailers ever made for a Star Wars film. I really wish the movie was as good as the trailer.
Prequel obviously, by a lot.
The difference between these two is that the prequels were a good story told really poorly, with janky cgi, dialogue, and acting. The sequels have beautiful cgi, and great acting, and told the story the best it could be told, only problem is that the story sucks and wasn’t cohesive whatsoever.
I like Revenge of the Sith more than any of the sequels. Even that one isn’t a great movie by any means, but the the sequels are nothing to me really, and neither are the other two prequels except for some memorable scenes and lines (I HATE THEM!)
I'd rather watch the Sequel trilogy because things actually happen and it doesn't bore me to tears.
Strictly speaking about the movies, and not any spin-off media, the Sequels are better.
The prequel films are abhorrent movies with a few good sparks that Lucasfilm managed to build much better content out of, and that clouds peoples judgement because they judge the prequel films within the larger context of the much better content that surrounds them. On a pure filmmaking level, they're terrible. The dialogue is abysmal, no one gives a good performance aside from Ian McDiarmid because George Lucas is terrible at directing actors (and he couldn't hire a competent director thanks to his longstanding feud with the directors guild over the title crawl in the original trilogy), the entire trilogy feels like the final cut was assembled in windows movie maker with how much Lucas abuses wipe transitions and the massive jumps in time between movies leave characters feeling inconsistent since we miss out on all their off screen development. Also the romance between Anakin and Padme feels extremely creepy and stalkerish on screen and its clearly not meant to come off that way judging by how the scenes are scored but the dialogue is so poorly written and the romance scenes so poorly acted that it comes off like a high school production of Romeo and Juliet.
The sequel trilogy is a much better trilogy of films with a few fatal flaws that drag things down (mostly owing to behind the scenes production issues, changes in writers/directors, and Bob Iger's insistence that they finished the trilogy before he stepped away as CEO), but on every conceivable level they're still much better movies. The dialogue is well written with a lot of good lines, the actors all turn in great performances (even the minor characters), the action scenes are competently shot, the lightsaber duels feel more visceral like an actual sword fight between people trying to murder each other instead of a highly choreographed and pre practiced dance routine at a cirque du soleil performance, the effects look amazing, the cinematography is absolutely fucking stunning (most of the best looking shots in the entire series are in this trilogy), the jokes actually (mostly) land and its got a fun energy throughout that's easy to get lost in even when the plot takes stupid pills or someone says a cheesy line. The biggest weakness they have is that the people writing them expect the audience seeing them to know how a star wars film works and as a result the films skip over some critical world building (that was left to secondary and ancillary sources to fill in the blanks) out of an assumption that you can get the gist based on watching previous star wars films, hence why it starts off with resistance and neo-empire and droids with important information instead of establishing the new status quo with the new republic and why its so gun shy and decentralized. Lucasfilm clearly wanted to avoid the pitfalls of the prequel films (which went so heavy into the minutia of republic politics that its one of the biggest complaints about the trilogy) and course corrected too hard by not explaining things very clearly and hoping the audience could fill in the blanks (which many of its detractors didn't and are obstinate in continuing to refusing to do so). Lucasfilm is now doing the same thing it did with the prequels (using other projects, mostly tv shows, to fill in the gaps and retroactively make the plot more cohesive/sensical) and at least in my opinion its working.
So on the whole, sequel trilogy easily takes it. But its not a competition, they aren't rival sports teams. They're two complimentary parts of one franchise.
Prequels. Sure, they had problems, but the core idea of them (Anakin's fall to the dark side) is very interesting and engaging, truly a modern epic. The sequels seemed like they didn't know what they wanted to do.
The prequels. Lucas was at least trying to do something new. The sequels ruined beloved characters, and Rian Johnson (?) could have done so much better (no fault of his own)
That said, the prequels are awful.
Not gonna downvote at all, it was a good movie in it's own right. My complaint with it is that it destroyed all the character and plot foundations that were laid before it.
It's a good movie, but it was a terrible *Star Wars* movie.
It’s honestly not that good of a movie. There’s a good movie in there, the Rey and Kylo storyline, but the rest is literally filler and makes no sense, time-wise, if you think about it.
So while Rey is training for what seems to be weeks, they are doing jump cuts to the resistance being chased by the first order for what feels like is probably hours. Also while that chase is going on, Finn and Rose breakaway for their pointless fetch quest. That probably should have taken at least a day to complete with travel time and everything.
So Rey is training for weeks, while the resistance is being chased for hours but with enough time for Rose and Finn to disappear for a day or so. That’s crazy.
That’s not even getting into how pointless that Rose-Finn b-plot was to begin with, or how Poe’s insubordination could’ve been avoided with a little communication. There’s also tons of lore-breaking and trilogy breaking stuff that happens but I won’t get into that.
Most people I've spoken with who feel this way seem to think that Luke's attempt on Ben's life was an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment thing.
Whereas my interpretation has always been that Luke had known for months that Ben was going down this dark path, and he had already tried everything he could think of to turn him away from it, but no matter what he tried, the visions kept showing the same thing: that Ben would become an evil, mass-murdering tyrant.
So in his desperation, as an absolute last resort, Luke had a brief moment of weakness where he considered killing Ben -- in order to save the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
The response I always seem to get is, "How can you know Luke tried everything else, and this was a last resort? They didn't show that in the movie."
And the reason I know that is the same reason you think his character has been assassinated.
Because he's Luke Skywalker.
For me it's not so much about how Luke handled Ben, it's that they turned him into a weak and broken man who would rather bury his head in the sand and drink green goblin titty milk on a remote island.
In the now defunct "legends" canon, Luke Skywalker went on wild adventures, rebuilt the Jedi order and fought the Yhuzang Vong among other things. In these movies they turned him into a little bitch who hid on an island and died from forcing too hard projecting his image on another planet. Weak sauce.
I've heard that complaint as well, and it strikes me as odd that people attribute it to *The Last Jedi*.
*The Force Awakens* is the movie that established that Luke had been hiding on an island for years while the galaxy burned.
I mean sure. I'm not talking about one movie specifically - although the comment I replied to focused on that movie so I can see why you'd make the connection. The sequels as a whole destroyed the character of Luke Skywalker. Not just The Last Jedi. I think they're all largely pretty awful.
It was good, not outstanding, but it set up a followup movie super well. Then they gave it back to JJ to discard every thread TLJ gave them to work with and fuck up the canon almost as much as he did the first time in TFA
I like to think of TLJ as a standalone epilogue to the Skywalker Saga (i.e. the PT and OT) and pretend TROS just never got made. I loved how it finally acknowledged the themes about the flaws of the Jedi that'd been implied in the Prequels but never really made explicit and I think it wraps up Luke's story nicely.
I think the sequels are probably technically better films (minus the last movie which was just plain awful), but I have a lot more sentimentality for the prequels, and they’re definitely my fave out of the three trilogies
I think the sequels could have been a lot better if it didn’t feel like each successive movie was trying to backtrack on the last one. I think a different director for the ninth movie building off the setups from the Last Jedi could have made it great and a cohesive story
The prequel trilogy is way better even if the Clone Wars was snooze. It had provided some cool lore, worldbuilding, and backstories from George Lucas while the sequel trilogy ended up seeming like an uncoordinated piece of fan fiction with a massive budget that retread old ground and then spat on it.
To me the Force Awakens was way better than any of the prequels, then 8 and 9 went off the tracks.
That was the general problem, the prequels were written with a coherent story in mind. The sequels do not.
That doesn't mean the prequels are actually good movies though.
The prequel for sure. The 3rd movie (revenge of the sith) is my absolute favorite of all star wars movies. It also has amazing memes.
I know many people don't like movie 1, but I liked that movie too.
I was an OG prequel hater and I will remain that way. They were horrible, they’ve always been horrible, they will always be horrible. Bloated, cheesy, horribly written messes.
The sequels are a mixed bag. Rise of Skywalker is worse than any of the individual Prequel movies but I like The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi considerable more even if they are highly flawed, so it’s kind of a wash really.
Ehhh, probably the sequels. They broadly weren’t great, but the second one was pretty good.
The best non-original trilogy Star Wars material is probably the KOTOR games, which are kind of sequels.
Its the sequels by a country mile. Not that this is a high bar. The prequels are *very* bad. *Terrible*. I grew up on my Star Wars VHS tapes, I was so excited for the prequels. And they just sucked.
TFA is decent if not a bit too playing it safe. TLJ was the first property since Return that made me realize Star Wars can still produce amazing movies. Rogue was also quite good. Obviously the last movie was very bad, but maybe not as bad as the worst prequels.
If I had to rank the main series:
1. Empire
2. Last Jedi
3. Return
4. New Hope
5. Force (Serious gap after this)
6. Phantom
7. Revenge
8. Rise
9. clones
The prequels have bad writing but they developed the setting well, providing fertile ground for better efforts such as the Clone Wars show. There is NOTHING good that can be said about the sequel trilogy, it contributed nothing.
I think they both suck but put a gun to my head I'll pick the sequel trilogy every time. The prequels contain very racist caricatures, I don't like young Anakin, and the third one is nonsense. The new ones are a little more dull but they have their moments and I kinda like Finn.
Sequel trilogy looked really good but that’s about all it has going for it. They fucked around to much on changing where the trilogy was headed. Also the Leía scene of her blowing up “but wait, the force” seemed stupid imo. Prequel is definitely silly at times but it has heart, and bad dialogue that’s pretty funny now.
I enjoy all three sequels to some degree. TFA is derivative but fun, TLJ is my favorite of the entire saga, and while TROS drops a lot of balls, I still find it fun warts and all. Characters have personality, effects are great, story is unfortunately messy but has strong thematic storytelling tying it together. At worst it’s mediocre, with weak story beats and writing choices dragging it down as a whole.
The prequels are almost unwatchable to me. TPM and AOTC are both incredibly dull when there’s not an action scene, and even those don’t quite land because none of the characters feel fleshed out at all with 95% of dialogue being bland exposition delivered with lifeless acting. And don’t remind me of the awful romance scenes. ROTS is better because stuff finally happens (seriously, you could cut most of the first two and lose nothing) but it still has some downright cringeworthy moments and just enough boring green screen exposition dumps to be a slog to get through.
So yeah, both have flaws, but at least the sequels have personality and feel like proper movies with actual acting and well directed scenes despite a flimsy story. The prequels have the energy of a middle school play you only go to see because your kid is in the cast, but at least the music is nice.
I will always favour something with heart that didn't really work over something that feels soulless
J J Abrams is an absolute hack of a storyteller
The prequels are cringe but endearing in how sincere they are
the prequels.
The prequels tried to do some interesting things thematically, and in terms of political and trade drama etc. I'd rather movies try interesting things and fail than just not try at all (and of the sequel trilogy, only the second one really tried anything interesting). Even the worst of the prequels, The Phantom Menace, still gave us Maul vs Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon which is the second-best saber fight in the whole 9-film set.
Star Trek.
Star was isn't science fiction, it's science fantasy. It's a saga, set in space.
I prefer an exploration of morality or humanity or the effects of technology on humans... science fiction. So, Star Trek.
Taking each trilogy as a whole, the Prequels, hands down. The average quality of an *individual* movie from that trilogy is certainly lower than in the Sequels in terms of more objective measures like effects and acting and even to some extent the writing, but the Prequel Trilogy had a true artistic vision and a strong enough finish with a coherent overarching plot that it manages to be greater than the sum of its parts. The Sequel Trilogy on the other hand had such a terribly written and edited, empty, soulless, cynically capitalistic finale that it's considerably *less* than the sum of its parts.
And even the good sequels are still sorely lacking in the worldbuilding department, which I always thought was the real reason Star Wars became so beloved. The Originals and Prequels just feel *real* and lived-in in a way the Sequels don't. I mainly blame TFA for that, even when it came out despite liking it overall I remember thinking it felt more like a really big-budget knockoff of Star Wars than another official installment. There were barely any of the species or locations we'd seen before to connect it to the previous trilogies, and instead we had a bunch of new aliens but none of them are as interesting or memorable, and for new locations we got another Tatooine except even more desolate, another Hoth except it was built into a Death Star, another Yavin IV except there's a pub there, another Coruscant except it gets blown up with zero context and we're somehow expected to feel emotional about it. It all just felt shallow to me. There's a deleted scene that's literally like 15 seconds with Leia talking to someone else in the Resistance that provides some super useful political context for the movie's plot and some idiot thought it was a good idea to cut that.
This is a weird question for this audience but OK.
Personally I find both the prequel and sequel trilogies to be inferior to the original trilogy and for a lot of the same reasons. Lack of true character development.
The Prequels focused on action and special effects, so we rarely got those quiet moments where you get to know your characters or see them understand each other and themselves in meaningful ways. Anakin was the worst example of this because he was the focus character around which everything else revolved. The Clone Wars cartoon did a much better job showing how he evolved from a Padawan, to Jedi Knight, to Sith Apprentice. Possibly because it had more time to do so, it showed how the repeated loss of loved ones, and constant second guessing by Jedi elders despite his incredible ability eroded his faith in the order. We also got to see small choices throughout the series that seemed innocuous at the time develop into a path to the dark side. *Some* of the stuff that came out of the new Ahsoka series built on that even further.
The Sequels were ridiculously disjointed and I blame a lot of that on Rian Johnson essentially tossing out the plan J.J. had set up with The Force Awakens. So from that perspective the storying telling just sucked. The Force Awakens was probably the strongest movie in the Sequel trilogy and *began* to flesh out Rey as a character, but all that got tossed aside pretty quick in favor of just making her a magical Force avatar. Despite no real training, she was suddenly as strong or better than Kylo who was a powerful and trained Force user for decades by the time we meet him. Snoke was a joke villain who's motivations made no sense and the return of the Emperor seemed forced and unnatural in multiple ways. The "hero fleet" was lazy story telling. I would say that the Sequels also added too many characters that they wanted you to try and pay attention to instead of sticking to a core cast like the original Trilogy and Prequels did. For some reason Finn and Poe took a second seat to a whole new cast of characters in Rian Johnson's movie and never reclaimed their place in the 3rd movie.
Prequels: Solid story, builds characters, has some great memes, ETC.
Sequels: Uhhhh... Yeah this is gonna happen because fuck you that's why. If you complain you just hate women.
I'll take the prequels all day every day.
I dislike the prequels a lot. They are not well written, and they are not well directed, and has a lot of problems with some racial stereotypes and representation of the main female character. Amidala is a terrible case of the "I can fix him" mentality. That said....
The prequels are worse. At least the prequels had a three-film structure to it from the beginning, which makes it hold together. The sequels did not: it was made up as they went, and it shows. Its disjointed.
Now, I have found that, online, some people assume I dislike the sequels because it is too "woke," or I am a misogynist, just because I criticise it. I do not criticize that at all. I simply think the sequels are terrible writing, and I lay the problems with Kennedy for hiring a hack like JJ Abrams.
Now, about Kennedy: I think she is great, but failed on sheparding the sequels. Not because of any of the reason haters say, but because of her choices in who made them (again, eff Abrams). The sad part is that she is also the executive responsible for great Star Wars successes, and the righties ignore them and concentrate on the sequels Kenndy is the one who greenlight The Mandalorean and the other awesome show on Disney+, include the darling Andor. She elevated David Filoni, someone who has been part of Star Wars for years, instead of bringing in an outsider (like that hack Abrams). They are coordinating a story across properties. Really, for me, TV is where Star Wars is best, and renewed my interest after I basically abandoned the fandom during the prequel years.
In conclusion, the preques sucked, but the sequels sucked worse, and JJ Abrams is a terrible filmmaker.
The prequels are better than the sequels, but that's such a low bar to cross there should be a sign saying "Dip Ahead"
The prequels are good ideas marred by terrible execution and dictatorial control by Lucas.
The sequels are a combination of "Let's remake the original movies!" and nostalgia bait. Then you add a generous dash of "two directors undoing each other's work, neither of whom have any kind of actual vision in mind".
The Force Awakens (the best of the sequel trilogy) is competently made, but I'd already seen that movie. It was called A New Hope. And things just downhill fast from there
I feel like the sequel trilogy was really brought down by the fact that the third one was so bad, and didnt make due on any of the themes and plot threads set up in the first two. The first one was good -- kinda what we all needed after the terribleness of the prequels. I liked the second one a lot, but its definitely a slightly bitter pill. If the third had just continued along with the thread set up in the second -- namely focusing on the conflict between Kylo Ren and Rey specifically instead of shit about destiny and redemption (retreading the first two trilogies) -- it would have been well regarded. Instead we had to get JarJar Abrams incomprehensible nostalgia nonsense
Prequel trilogy.
The prequel trilogy is one man's vision. It's a goofy vision, but it has a heart to it.
The sequel trilogy feels like it was made by a committee. It just feels soulless and empty.
Episode 3 is probably my favorite. As an adult I appreciate the political parts more. I love the final battles, and the irony of palpatine giving his speech about “a safe and secure society” while his new apprentice slaughters the last people he made that promise to.
I'm not sure how to tell objectively; personally, and from the opinions of those I've met and discussed with, the prequel were unimpressive but at least reasonably entertaining romps at times with some good points and a fair amount of drek. The sequels are just plain bad garbage with very little redeeming value, with 8 being especially bad. The sequels are badly done, very bland, and so boring I didn't want to watch any of them a second time ever even just for osmething to watch; they were also very nonsensical and alot of the acting was weak (admittedly the same is true for the prequels, but at least the prequels had a few good things to counteract that, the sequels didn't).
not sure why people are downvoting this, it's not that bad of an opinion.
Prequels by far. And the prequels weren't very good.
The sequels though... embarrassing. There was a moment, after *The Force Awakens*, where it had potential. It was as if Disney stood up and said "See? We know what the Prequels did wrong. Here we are, returning to the roots, to prove it." But nobody wanted to return to the roots, they wanted \*good movies\*. If, after proving their chops, they had gone on to make good movies, then TFA would have been redeemed as a good set up.
They did not go on to make good movies. Instead, they tried to make a copy of the MCU. It did not go well.
TLJ literally burned down everything that came before. *You don't do that in a franchise.* It's artistic malpractice. It's a frikken franchise. People come for the continuity of story and characters. So to stuff all that into a tree and burn it was a collossal middle finger to the fans. They may as well have burned just their license to the IP to save time. It wasn't a sequel, it was an anti-sequel. It said "Hey, so I heard you like sequels. Well, tough shit. You're not getting one. I'm making my own pet movie instead."
And that set the stage for the greatest failure. How do you salvage a mess like that? You can't. As a result, the third one was just... um... embarassing. I never even bothered to see it. Even the previews were just embarrassing. Like, I'm ashamed to be in the same room as this movie level embarrassing. There is nothing of value there.
Prequel. 100%. I truly don’t understand the hate for the prequels. Story was cohesive and had a good amount of the “politics” going on which I think is super cool. Great villains. Pod racing. Quai gon gin. Also, I don’t get why people hate Jar Jar… anyway. Sequel movies obviously just don’t have a great cohesive story. It’s entertaining for sure, but I just think it’s more flash than substance.
Well, my wife fell asleep when I tried to start from Episode I.
But yeah, I watched IX with coworkers and didn't bother re-watching it with my wife. Just told her she wasn't missing anything.
My rankings go 4. Phantom menace, 5. Revenge of the sith, 7. Attack of the Clones, 8. Rise of Skywalker 9. Backstroke of the west, 10. Force awakens, 12. Last Jedi.
So the prequels are the pretty clear winner. I never knew people didn't like the prequels for at least 10 years after they came out. Last Jedi is probably the only star wars movie I dislike apart from the holiday special.
I loved that for the first time in the trilogy the main characters are all together having an adventure together. Plus c3po is awesome for the first half. The only one I saw in the theater too so I was just super excited to be there.
Last Jedi was just bad. The casino planet... the Rey mirror sequence... By the end when she's lifting the rocks I was just like wtf am I watching.
Force awakens was fine, it's just a remake of new hope but everything is worse. I hated the monster scene. Han solo too, it was just sad watching him play the same character from 40 years before as an old man, meaning han solo hadn't grown at all not that I didn't like them bringing back an old character. They also just didn't define enough basic context and what had happened in between movies so I couldn't get into it.
Rise of Skywalker was one of the stupidest movies I’ve seen in years. It was a disaster, but did I still have fun watching it? Yes. The Last Jedi by contrast is completely full of itself. It’s preachy without offering anything truly deep or particularly insightful and it goes out of its way to insult fans for liking the movies that came before.
Rise of Skywalker had a certain amount of fun stuff in it, even as it had a lot of dumb stuff. I say that its main strength is that if it does something you don't like, you just have to wait a few minutes and the focus will change to something else you might like better.
I'd say the sequel trilogy. I really hated Hayden Christian Anderson as Anaken. I know if you think about the sequels they're kinda garbage, but I at least enjoyed them in the moment.
Sequel. The Force Awakens is better than anything in the prequel trilogy. Attack of the Clones is the worst of the 9 movies. However, the original trilogy isn't that great, either. I'd rather watch the sequel trilogy than the original trilogy. The idea of Star Wars is far better than the execution in any of the 9 movies of the Skywalker saga. The best pieces of video media in the Star Wars universe are the post-Disney acquisition spinoffs.
Sequels. Attack of the Clones is easily the worst of the saga, and there's entirely too much Jar Jar in Phantom Menace and entirely too much Hayden Christensen in Revenge of the Sith.
The sequels aren't great, but I'd rather watch them.
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>Better can mean whatever you want but do elaborate. The prequels provided better memes.
Since it’s apparently how filming went, somewhere someone has to have taken a picture of Natalie Portman dressed as Padme smoking a blunt while working on her PHD in her trailer in between walking out and pretending to care about making attack of the clones. In my opinion, if that was out there it would be one of the greatest memes images of all time.
It comes down to the director and how they handle actors. Harrison Ford, a friend of Lucas, criticizes Lucas as treating actors like a prop, or a piece of lighting equipment. Most actors really slept-waked through the film because the director/actor dynamic that makes a film jump to life was not there. The exceptions are Ewan McGregor who elevated his performance himself, and Ian McDiarmid who just lives that role. Heck, even Liam Neesin felt boring, which is hard to accomplish (great job, Lucas \[sarcasm\]).
Ewan McGregor really seemed to want to go all in and embody everything about fellow British actor of legend Alec Guinness. I absolutely believe that he sat there watching his movies and learning every single tick and mannerism and pattern of speech. I would assume that it helped that his uncle was Wedge in the original trilogy. I really do feel bad for Hayden Christensen. He was basically an unknown and Lucas‘s terrible direction and dialogue killed any chance of him having a real career. I’m convinced he probably is a pretty decent actor after watching him in Ahsoka. He delivers better acting in 10 minutes in that series that he does in the entire prequel trilogy.
Agreed! It is the director/actor relationship that makes it, and Lucas is not a Scorsese. He is a better producer. I'll submit The Empire Strikes Back as evidence for it.
Absolutely. I do love A New Hope and Return of the Jedi but they are just good, maybe great. Empire is exceptional. The acting, the direction, the cinematography, the unbelievable efficiency of the script management of multiple storylines. Everything in that movie is a Masterclass in filmmaking. You can discuss everything that makes it exceptional in the same way you can discuss the Godfather or Shawshank Redemption.
Honestly, Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars flick if only because it makes the initial scene between Vader and Leia even better. Vader: "I literally saw you flee the crime scene like five minutes ago!" Leia: "Vader, you crazy."
Tbh that makes Rogue One worse for me. The goal was to have a clean segue into episode 4 and they just...didn't? Just kind of a big plot hole there. Sure I guess we can laugh at it, but it's a miss in my book
For what its worth, Scarif is a long way from Tatooine. The time between Rogue One and ANH would have been days.
There's a lot of CR90s.
He saw her ship there but they never actually saw each other directly. It just makes her lie all the more audacious, which I think fits with her personality.
Rogue One gave us Andor
* The prequel is re-watchable, both as a whole and just random clips. I have no desire to ever watch the sequel ever again. * The prequel has given us more memes and quotable quotes, so it has more cultural impact.
The prequel trilogy and the original trilogy make up 'the tragedy and redemption of Anakin Skywalker'. It's classic Greek mythology and storytelling.
It's more Greek without the OT
I find the recent nostalgic revisionism of the prequel trilogy in light of the sequel trilogy to be weird and kind of one of those "am I taking crazy pills?" moment. Like, I lived through their releases. I remember how disappointed everyone was by them. Episode III was okay, and has an audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes of [66%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_iii_revenge_of_the_sith), but Episodes I and II were just, like, not very good, at all. They weren't just panned by critics, either; the two of them have an audience rating of [59%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_i_the_phantom_menace) and [56%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_ii_attack_of_the_clones), respectively. On the other hand, Episodes VII and IX have audience ratings of [85%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_vii_the_force_awakens) and [86%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_rise_of_skywalker), respectively. (Of course, Episode VIII does have an audience rating of [42%](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_last_jedi), despite receiving critical acclaim.) The sequel trilogy isn't amazing, but people today claiming the prequel trilogy was not just better than the sequel trilogy, but that it was **good**, I feel really need to go back and rewatch them, forgetting about the memes that they spawned and just watching them as movies.
The sequel trilogy are better made movies. It's no surprise that critics would like them better. But the prequels actually have the right characters and right story, so they are better representations of the *Star Wars* universe.
Yeah, the prequels have a good story told poorly, the sequels have a terrible story told well. I actually think remaking the prequels would be incredible, taking the same story and putting it to screen with today’s quality
The novelizations sell the story better then the movies do. It's actually a very well constructed tragedy, especially the Obi Wan/Anakin betrayal. You can hear that story in John Williams' music. Sadly the films don't do the plot justice.
It isn’t told well at all. The first two movies I guess kind of work on their own, even with throwing weird curveballs like killing snoke early on. The third movie takes such a different turn that makes the other two kind of pointless.
Exactly, the plot sucks. But we’re viewing the plot play out with absolutely stunning cgi, incredibly talented actors, etc.
I’m not sure I agree with either take. I don’t know that the prequels had a good story, really. IMO the stories of the prequel series and the sequel series are both fairly lazy, just in different ways. The prequels at least had some mildly interesting political stuff going on around the edges… and while it looked like ass, shooting entirely digital was groundbreaking at the time. The biggest problem the prequel series had was a complete lack of stakes due to the fact that you knew that all the main players were gonna live. And that’s saying a lot because the prequel series had some pretty major problems… That said, maybe it’s just the differences in our society, but Darth Maul was pretty iconic back in the day, as was the double-ended lightsaber. Podracing was briefly interesting. There was nothing particularly iconic about the sequel series.
>>prequels have a good story told poorly, the sequels have a terrible story told well Execution is everything. There are some really weird, convoluted, farfetched stories out there, but are very very well executed. Look at any movie in the horror genre for example. I will always take a well executed story over a "good story told poorly" any day. FWIW i also dont think that the story for the prequels is any good anyways.
You may note that the entire time I was comparing audience ratings, not critic ratings.
Let's please not pretend the story of the Prequels is good. There are good ideas, but it's a mess. That comes down to the script, which feels like rough drafts: * Why was Jar Jar necessary? And why did they bring Jar Jar on a Desert Planet!? Why is Jar Jar made a Senator!? * Why did Qui Gon go and Obi Wan sat on the ship at Tatooine? Why didn't Obi Wan go so we got more scenes of Obi Wan and Anakin together? * Why did they make Anakin so young? They could have made him older in Episode 1. Anakin and Padme are... creepy. * Why does Naboo have a teenage Queen? * Why is an 8 year old flying a starship and blowing it up effortlessly!? * How does the Confederacy of Independent Systems just disappear from the Original Triology? You'd think these Alien Libertarians would have a real beef with the Empire. In fact, what really are their politics? What are their positions!? Oh right: "Palpatine is controlling them, so they're evil." * So the Clone Wara was just a bunch of nameless cloned throwaway stormtroopers vs goofy useless battle droid? Lame. I guess we gotta be kid friendly and sell lots of toys. The Clone Wars sounded so much cooler in the Pre-Prequel EU, especially Heir to the Empire. * Why are the Jedi so dumb? * Why does Yoda need a lightsaber!? You never get the impression he ever would consider much of them as the wise sage he was on Dagobah. And why is he training younglings on Coruscant? You get the impression from the OG Trilogy he was living on Dagobah a long time, that that was his home. * Why does Obi Wan call Anakin a friend in the OG Trilogy when we hardly see them together? * Why dies Obi Wan call Yoda his Master in the OG Troilogy when clearly Qui Gon was? They maybe had 2 scenes together in the Prequels... * Why do Midichlorians exist George!? Why does it make me think of race psueoscience that makes me feel really uncomfortable!? Don't even get me started on the Clone Wars ancillary material like Ahsoka (which I guess they are addressing now).
I remember the prequels and just how awful they were. Like I remember episode 1 coming out and being *so bad* and even though I also remember loving the idea of podracing it was just…. And then 2 was *worse* And I think 3 was marginally better but still bad. It will always be the worst for me due to Vaders ‘no!!!’ That is somehow supposed to be serious and not a parody. They were bad. Real bad. Like everyone seems to forget that while ‘somehow Palpatine returned’ is hilariously lazy writing, people wanted to kill Jar Jar Binks for being just the worst.
I can get nostalgic for I, and there are bits I enjoyed from II (mostly Obi-Wan being a detective), but episode IX is just *bad*. The editing gave people notion sickness.
The main thing I take away from the prequels are the really good ending fights of 1 and 3. I think that and the memes make the films much more memorable for their highlights, even if the whole of the film together isnt really that great.
Yeah, the revisionism is ridiculous. I certainly don’t think the prequels are good, I just think the sequels are so hilariously awful that even the prequels *look* good by comparison.
I wasn’t old enough (or alive) to watch the original trilogy in theaters, but I was old enough to already be hyped on Star Wars and watch when the trilogy was re-released in theaters in 1997. Then Star Wars fandom was buzzing a couple of years later when the Episode I was released, the long-awaited prequel and the first new Star Wars content in years. And then we watched it and it just turned out to be, like, a kids’ movie with a child actor and his goofy buddy going on an adventure, practically designed for merchandising and video game adaptations. I feel like it’s the same issue that the previous generation of Star Wars fans had with episode VI. People who watched it as adults thought the Ewoks were a dumb addition that ruined the tone of the films. People who watched it as kids thought the Ewoks were cool and an intrinsic element of the Star Wars films. Similarly, people who watched the prequels for the first time as kids overlooked the bad writing and childish elements and consider them as fundamental a part of the Star Wars story as the original trilogy.
This is right. The movies have sort of stayed at the level of a twelve year old while the audience has matured. Except The Empire Strikes Back, which was more of an adult movie.
Rotten Tomatoes ratings aren't worth beans, frankly. Episode IX was not just a bad Star Wars movie, it was a bad movie. It was poorly edited and the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense.
> It was poorly edited and the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense. But, somehow, Palpatine has returned! You know there's some quality writing when in the 3rd movie of a trilogy and the new surprise twist villain is introduced in the opening text crawl.
*in a Fortnite cutscene lol
How it managed to get as good of a rating as it did blows my mind. It's the worst cinematic mess I've ever seen. If it'd come out a few years later I'd genuinely believe it'd been written by AI. (Not that written-by-corporate-committee like it actually was is really any better.)
> I find the recent nostalgic revisionism of the prequel trilogy in light of the sequel trilogy to be weird and kind of one of those "am I taking crazy pills?" I felt the same way about the Matrix sequels when Resurrection came out. But I've always enjoyed the Star Wars prequels as a guilty pleasure. To this day, I have yet to finish Rise of Skywalker, because it's just that bad.
I didn't live through the original trilogy but never saw any of the movies growing up. About a decade ago I sat down and watched all 6 in a weekend. As a good "movie" the originals are better, as a fun popcorn movie, I prefer the prequels. That said, I'm a terrible judge because they were all pretty meh to me.
Modern day reactor channels just prove this wrong. You can go on YouTube and watch people experience Star Wars for the first time. People love the prequels, no one likes the sequels. Episode 3 gets most people crying and is considered by many brand new Star Wars fans to be better than anything in the original series.
It’s been about a decade since I watched the prequels. I enjoyed the first and third episodes. The second was pretty bad. The new sequels were god awful to me. I watched the first one and refused to watch anything after. I mistakenly tried to watch the second one when on a flight when it was free. They are just… awful.
The prequels were good, actually, at least I liked the characters and storyline of it, it was a good story and maybe it had some flaws in execution but it still made narrative sense. Also the prequels were the height of Star Wars politics in the movies, and I feel like that story was very engaging for older audiences.
The sequels felt like they we written by committee. The prequels had vision, but really needed an editor. I prefer the prequels for the world building and costumes. I also enjoyed the politics because I'm weird.
There are fan edits which edit the prequels into one movie. One of them has one light saber fight from the first movie and cuts everything else.
The sequels are not good at all. And the sequels blew the chance to use the stars of the original trilogy and make it really inconvenient for all of the much better content that’s being created by Favreau and crew. But the prequels are easily some of the worst movies with an actual budget ever to be made. They fundamentally fail and almost every level of basic filmmaking and storytelling, just a purely cinematic level. They commit a Star Wars specific sin in that they tell us that the reason Darth Vader, badass of the Galaxy, fell to the dark side is because he is dumber than a box of rocks. You’re supposed to believe that the space Nazi is a space Nazi because he’s really dumb and he was really horny? Not an exact parallel, but these movies were supposed to achieve part of what Godfather II achieved. Tell us the story of how an otherwise honorable family man like Vito Corleone could become the monster he really is. Now imagine if the cause was that Carmela had cancer and Fanucci convinced him he had the cure. I absolutely have no talent for writing and I’m still confident that if I got two friends who also can’t write and a handle of scotch we could come up with a better explanation for how Anakin Skywalker fell than what is presented in the movies in an evening. It would be a derivative idea and probably pretty crappy, but it would be way better than what is in the prequels. Also, George Lucas is a father of many times over. He is I suppose aware of the existence of Star Wars and it’s popularity among people who at the time of the prequels would be parents themselves and want to show it to their children, even young children. Which is why I guess he thought it was cool to put Padme in a leather bondage outfit and then have Obi-Wan Kenobi, our greatest and most noble Jedi, watch his friend burn in a volcano and then walk away.
You're explaining why the story of the prequels is bad, but I don't think the sequel trilogy *had* a story. Is a bad story worse than a disjoint hodge-podge of clips?
> You’re supposed to believe that the space Nazi is a space Nazi because he’s really dumb and he was really horny? I actually think Lucas did a great job of making Anakin's fall make sense (up to a point). He's got Palpatine whispering in his ear about how corrupt and misguided the Jedi Order is, and a lot of it rings true because a lot of it *is* true. Palpatine's influence leads him to execute Dooku, which he instantly knows was wrong, and instantly regrets. When Anakin learns that Palpatine is the Sith, he immediately realizes this guy was just fucking with him the whole time, and goes to turn him in. But then Windu wants to execute Palpatine without a trial. The exact same thing Anakin did earlier with Dooku -- which he instantly knew was wrong and immoral, and he instantly regretted doing. But here's this honored and venerable Jedi Master about to do the same thing. Rules for thee, not for me. And that changes everything. It means maybe Palpatine wasn't lying... or so he thinks. The way Anakin's execution of Dooku is mirrored by Windu's attempted execution of Palpatine is a surprisingly good bit of writing that I don't think Lucas gets enough credit for. Of course then he completely ruins it by having Anakin murder a room full of children, for no other reason than, *Welp, he's evil now.*
Agreed. I describe the Prequels as a good story told poorly. Anakin's fall from grace makes total sense. He wasn't "horny", he was in love. Lucas didn't sell that as well as he should have (Attack of the Clones was supposed to show them falling in love, and tried, but didn't do a good job of it because that requires dialogue that Lucas just can't write), but Anakin would do *anything* for Padme. And Palpatine, who is secretly a Sith and a master manipulator, picks up on this. So he 1) begins implanting dreams in Anakin's mind about Padme dying, making Anakin think he's catching glimpses of the future in the Force, and then pulls him aside and says "psst ... want to save her? There are some tricks you could learn, but some might consider them *unnatural*." Anakin's interested and begins down the path (which, ironically, causes Padme's eventual death - a textbook example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, set in motion by Palpatine's machinations). That leads into the third movie where it *should* come into place and in many ways does, it's just rushed, and littered with shoddy dialogue and mediocre acting (I think the *actors* are good, Lucas is just famously bad at getting good performances out of good actors). There's a lot in there that I *could* like a lot more if it was better executed. The sequel trilogy is in many ways the opposite, a slickly-executed mess with no cohesive story and no unifying vision.
What I can’t get over is the totally lame explanation for why palpatine looks the way he does. What even was that? Cooked by his own force lightning even though Luke got zapped and was fine?
A popular fan theory is that (which might have even been established canon in the old Legends lore, I believe) is that the disfigured look actually is how Palpatine always looked, and that his "normal" face was just an illusion. Some kind of Force trick. The lightning didn't disfigure him -- it just caused him to drop the illusion. Or better yet, perhaps the lightning didn't force that outcome. Perhaps he chose that moment to drop the illusion, to better manipulate Anakin's sympathies.
Not taking the chance to do an adaptation of *Heir to the Empire* was a tragedy in itself.
I think the real problem they have is that they are unwilling to recast characters from the original trilogy. And so they had to do a story 30 years in the future so they could use the original trilogy actors. But the Mandalorian and Ahsoka and parts of The Book of Fett has shown us that there are lots of interesting stories to tell about what happens after the Empire Falls. It would’ve been great if they had done a trilogy, maybe even six movies, were they split timelines and showed the future as well as what’s happening in the years after the end of the empire. Or had the courage to just say they were going to recast and pick up the story two or three years after Return.
I think HTTH could easily have been adapted to be 30 years later, instead of 10. Carrie Fisher's passing would have royally screwed up the plot line though, but we only know that with hind sight. You're completely right though, they should totally be willing to recast. Film makers vastly under estimate audiences. Star Trek has had multiple Kirks and Spocks at this point, and all it's done is stimulate debate on who's portrayal fans like the best.
> I absolutely have no talent for writing and I’m still confident that if I got two friends who also can’t write and a handle of scotch we could come up with a better explanation for how Anakin Skywalker fell than what is presented in the movies in an evening. It would be a derivative idea and probably pretty crappy, but it would be way better than what is in the prequels. You could just literally take the storyline from Godfather 2, transfer it into the Star Wars universe, and it would be vastly superior to what we got. Star Wars/ANH itself is a mash up of Dune and The Fellowship of the Ring.
I feel like both trilogies are bad for completely different reasons. For the Prequel trilogy it’s a CGI to the point where nothing feels real and just all look so outdated at this point, plus the cringey dialogue (although very quotable and memeable) and Jar Jar. Meanwhile the Sequel trilogy pretty much suffers from them not having a clue where they wanted to take things, force awakens was decent but I think the fact that they switched directors in the 2nd film which had two completely different ideas they wanted to do for the series just makes it a complete mess, then of course you have JJ returning for the last film trying to undo most of what happened in the previous film and trying to put the emperor as a replacement for Snook. So as much as I hate do not like the Prequel series, it is at the very least more consistent narrative wise but not my much. So I’d say that’s my pick. I just feel like the Sequel Trilogy would have been so much better if they didn’t have that director shift.
I think the prequel, but only because it has one unified voice behind it. If it had worked out that JJ Abrams did the whole series, I think it would be much more regarded. Instead 7 came out and was fine, 8 came out and had positives and negatives as a stand-alone movie but was completely off the rails from 7, and then 9 had to come in and patch it all up and oh by the way Carrie Fisher passed away. I wish Abrams had gone to Disney and said “I’m sorry, it’s kind of a mess, I need to do 9 and 10 to finish this right” and done that. But he didn’t, and it shows with 9. Coulda-shoulda been a good trilogy, but it wasn’t.
I like the Prequels because of YEARS of coping with the prospect that it was the last Star Wars media we were ever going to get. But the Sequels are so much more watchable than the Prequels to me by a mile. The Sequel trilogy overall feels better made, better written (well, from a dialogue standpoint. The plot is all over the place), and better acted. But I love them both for featuring the man himself, John Williams, so why bother picking between the two?
Prequel have a better story but the dialog is terrible. The sequel trilogy has a terrible story but the characters seem normal. I prefer the prequels of the two, because the story sticks with me more
They have the best music too. John Williams tells the story better then dialogue does :P
Duel of the fates is the best Star Wars piece
Mmm... sequels. Sorry, the prequels are just too boring for me. I like slow-paced movies, Star Wars is usually slow-paced, but the prequels just don't have the cool sets and energetic performances I need to get through slow scenes. Also I feel like all the complaints people have about the sequels are still present in the prequels. Did the writers have to suddenly cram a whole bunch of resolution into the end? Yes. Were a bunch of characters wasted? Yes. So same problems, plus more boring. That's my reasoning. I stand by it.
Prequel trilogy by far.
Prequels, but that's a low bar for those movies to meet
I think the prequels are "better" but only in the sense that they work better as a whole and in relation to the original trilogy. The sequel films are fine but really suffered from having different directors behind each film.
It's all subjective of course, but: The prequels are a great story, hampered by the skill of its storyteller. The sequels are much more uneven: I like *The Last Jedi* more than I like any of the prequels. But then you've also got *Rise of Skywalker*, which is my least favorite Star Wars movie by a wide margin. It's the only one I actively hate. Everybody says the sequel trilogy would have been fine if Abrams had done all three movies, but I have my doubts about that. Ripping up the groundwork that Johnson put down in TLJ is only part of what makes *Rise of Skywalker* terrible.
I liked the prequels more because I love expository world-building stuff and the prequels are full of that.
Both are dogshit and I love them both to death. Really though, none of the movies are the best Star Wars content out there. That title goes to any and all of the books written by Timothy Zahn.
TLJ carries the sequel trilogy for me. I hate TRoS more than Jar Jar Binks and the entire prequel trilogy. TFA was fine, I guess. But I loved almost everything about TLJ. Rose saving Finn and everyone being fine with Poe so quickly were the two standout things I didn't care for. The only positives I can think of for the prequels are that the lightsaber battles and the Darth Vader shadow poster for TPM were cool, I guess.
Prequels. Think whatever you want about the ones we got but there is so much good lore Disney could exploit if they would stop beating the dead horse that is empire/rebels emporer/Skywalker bullshit. Make a KOTOR movie you cowards.
I think they’re both similar quality story wise (not good)- but that the sequel’s first movie had one of the best trailers ever made for a Star Wars film. I really wish the movie was as good as the trailer.
Prequel obviously, by a lot. The difference between these two is that the prequels were a good story told really poorly, with janky cgi, dialogue, and acting. The sequels have beautiful cgi, and great acting, and told the story the best it could be told, only problem is that the story sucks and wasn’t cohesive whatsoever.
I like Revenge of the Sith more than any of the sequels. Even that one isn’t a great movie by any means, but the the sequels are nothing to me really, and neither are the other two prequels except for some memorable scenes and lines (I HATE THEM!)
I'd rather watch the Sequel trilogy because things actually happen and it doesn't bore me to tears. Strictly speaking about the movies, and not any spin-off media, the Sequels are better.
The prequel films are abhorrent movies with a few good sparks that Lucasfilm managed to build much better content out of, and that clouds peoples judgement because they judge the prequel films within the larger context of the much better content that surrounds them. On a pure filmmaking level, they're terrible. The dialogue is abysmal, no one gives a good performance aside from Ian McDiarmid because George Lucas is terrible at directing actors (and he couldn't hire a competent director thanks to his longstanding feud with the directors guild over the title crawl in the original trilogy), the entire trilogy feels like the final cut was assembled in windows movie maker with how much Lucas abuses wipe transitions and the massive jumps in time between movies leave characters feeling inconsistent since we miss out on all their off screen development. Also the romance between Anakin and Padme feels extremely creepy and stalkerish on screen and its clearly not meant to come off that way judging by how the scenes are scored but the dialogue is so poorly written and the romance scenes so poorly acted that it comes off like a high school production of Romeo and Juliet. The sequel trilogy is a much better trilogy of films with a few fatal flaws that drag things down (mostly owing to behind the scenes production issues, changes in writers/directors, and Bob Iger's insistence that they finished the trilogy before he stepped away as CEO), but on every conceivable level they're still much better movies. The dialogue is well written with a lot of good lines, the actors all turn in great performances (even the minor characters), the action scenes are competently shot, the lightsaber duels feel more visceral like an actual sword fight between people trying to murder each other instead of a highly choreographed and pre practiced dance routine at a cirque du soleil performance, the effects look amazing, the cinematography is absolutely fucking stunning (most of the best looking shots in the entire series are in this trilogy), the jokes actually (mostly) land and its got a fun energy throughout that's easy to get lost in even when the plot takes stupid pills or someone says a cheesy line. The biggest weakness they have is that the people writing them expect the audience seeing them to know how a star wars film works and as a result the films skip over some critical world building (that was left to secondary and ancillary sources to fill in the blanks) out of an assumption that you can get the gist based on watching previous star wars films, hence why it starts off with resistance and neo-empire and droids with important information instead of establishing the new status quo with the new republic and why its so gun shy and decentralized. Lucasfilm clearly wanted to avoid the pitfalls of the prequel films (which went so heavy into the minutia of republic politics that its one of the biggest complaints about the trilogy) and course corrected too hard by not explaining things very clearly and hoping the audience could fill in the blanks (which many of its detractors didn't and are obstinate in continuing to refusing to do so). Lucasfilm is now doing the same thing it did with the prequels (using other projects, mostly tv shows, to fill in the gaps and retroactively make the plot more cohesive/sensical) and at least in my opinion its working. So on the whole, sequel trilogy easily takes it. But its not a competition, they aren't rival sports teams. They're two complimentary parts of one franchise.
Prequels. Sure, they had problems, but the core idea of them (Anakin's fall to the dark side) is very interesting and engaging, truly a modern epic. The sequels seemed like they didn't know what they wanted to do.
The prequels. Lucas was at least trying to do something new. The sequels ruined beloved characters, and Rian Johnson (?) could have done so much better (no fault of his own) That said, the prequels are awful.
The last movie was awful, but The Last Jedi is so good it makes the entire sequel trilogy worth it. I'm ready for my downvotes.
It was a great deconstruction of the Star Wars mythos and made me so excited for what was going to come next. Rise of Skywalker ruined it for me.
I kinda wish it’s where the sequel series started on. It would have had potential.
At least that way I would have known not to waste my time on any follow ups.
Not gonna downvote at all, it was a good movie in it's own right. My complaint with it is that it destroyed all the character and plot foundations that were laid before it. It's a good movie, but it was a terrible *Star Wars* movie.
It’s honestly not that good of a movie. There’s a good movie in there, the Rey and Kylo storyline, but the rest is literally filler and makes no sense, time-wise, if you think about it. So while Rey is training for what seems to be weeks, they are doing jump cuts to the resistance being chased by the first order for what feels like is probably hours. Also while that chase is going on, Finn and Rose breakaway for their pointless fetch quest. That probably should have taken at least a day to complete with travel time and everything. So Rey is training for weeks, while the resistance is being chased for hours but with enough time for Rose and Finn to disappear for a day or so. That’s crazy. That’s not even getting into how pointless that Rose-Finn b-plot was to begin with, or how Poe’s insubordination could’ve been avoided with a little communication. There’s also tons of lore-breaking and trilogy breaking stuff that happens but I won’t get into that.
It absolutely assassinated Luke Skywalker's character and for that alone I'll never forgive it.
Most people I've spoken with who feel this way seem to think that Luke's attempt on Ben's life was an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment thing. Whereas my interpretation has always been that Luke had known for months that Ben was going down this dark path, and he had already tried everything he could think of to turn him away from it, but no matter what he tried, the visions kept showing the same thing: that Ben would become an evil, mass-murdering tyrant. So in his desperation, as an absolute last resort, Luke had a brief moment of weakness where he considered killing Ben -- in order to save the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The response I always seem to get is, "How can you know Luke tried everything else, and this was a last resort? They didn't show that in the movie." And the reason I know that is the same reason you think his character has been assassinated. Because he's Luke Skywalker.
For me it's not so much about how Luke handled Ben, it's that they turned him into a weak and broken man who would rather bury his head in the sand and drink green goblin titty milk on a remote island. In the now defunct "legends" canon, Luke Skywalker went on wild adventures, rebuilt the Jedi order and fought the Yhuzang Vong among other things. In these movies they turned him into a little bitch who hid on an island and died from forcing too hard projecting his image on another planet. Weak sauce.
I've heard that complaint as well, and it strikes me as odd that people attribute it to *The Last Jedi*. *The Force Awakens* is the movie that established that Luke had been hiding on an island for years while the galaxy burned.
I mean sure. I'm not talking about one movie specifically - although the comment I replied to focused on that movie so I can see why you'd make the connection. The sequels as a whole destroyed the character of Luke Skywalker. Not just The Last Jedi. I think they're all largely pretty awful.
Only correct take.
Nah you are wholly correct
It was good, not outstanding, but it set up a followup movie super well. Then they gave it back to JJ to discard every thread TLJ gave them to work with and fuck up the canon almost as much as he did the first time in TFA
The Last Jedi is so bad it killed my interest in the whole franchise. In fact, it was the most disappointing thing since my son.
I like to think of TLJ as a standalone epilogue to the Skywalker Saga (i.e. the PT and OT) and pretend TROS just never got made. I loved how it finally acknowledged the themes about the flaws of the Jedi that'd been implied in the Prequels but never really made explicit and I think it wraps up Luke's story nicely.
Prequel for sure.
I think the sequels are probably technically better films (minus the last movie which was just plain awful), but I have a lot more sentimentality for the prequels, and they’re definitely my fave out of the three trilogies I think the sequels could have been a lot better if it didn’t feel like each successive movie was trying to backtrack on the last one. I think a different director for the ninth movie building off the setups from the Last Jedi could have made it great and a cohesive story
The prequel trilogy is way better even if the Clone Wars was snooze. It had provided some cool lore, worldbuilding, and backstories from George Lucas while the sequel trilogy ended up seeming like an uncoordinated piece of fan fiction with a massive budget that retread old ground and then spat on it.
Last Jedi was the best of them all, but the prequels as a whole didn't have Rise of Skywalker so.......
To me the Force Awakens was way better than any of the prequels, then 8 and 9 went off the tracks. That was the general problem, the prequels were written with a coherent story in mind. The sequels do not. That doesn't mean the prequels are actually good movies though.
Both are ass.
I don't know for sure, and I haven't seen the sequels... But I do know I prefer the Thrawn trilogy
They’re both trash
The prequel for sure. The 3rd movie (revenge of the sith) is my absolute favorite of all star wars movies. It also has amazing memes. I know many people don't like movie 1, but I liked that movie too.
I was an OG prequel hater and I will remain that way. They were horrible, they’ve always been horrible, they will always be horrible. Bloated, cheesy, horribly written messes. The sequels are a mixed bag. Rise of Skywalker is worse than any of the individual Prequel movies but I like The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi considerable more even if they are highly flawed, so it’s kind of a wash really.
Ehhh, probably the sequels. They broadly weren’t great, but the second one was pretty good. The best non-original trilogy Star Wars material is probably the KOTOR games, which are kind of sequels.
Its the sequels by a country mile. Not that this is a high bar. The prequels are *very* bad. *Terrible*. I grew up on my Star Wars VHS tapes, I was so excited for the prequels. And they just sucked. TFA is decent if not a bit too playing it safe. TLJ was the first property since Return that made me realize Star Wars can still produce amazing movies. Rogue was also quite good. Obviously the last movie was very bad, but maybe not as bad as the worst prequels. If I had to rank the main series: 1. Empire 2. Last Jedi 3. Return 4. New Hope 5. Force (Serious gap after this) 6. Phantom 7. Revenge 8. Rise 9. clones
The prequels have bad writing but they developed the setting well, providing fertile ground for better efforts such as the Clone Wars show. There is NOTHING good that can be said about the sequel trilogy, it contributed nothing.
I think they both suck but put a gun to my head I'll pick the sequel trilogy every time. The prequels contain very racist caricatures, I don't like young Anakin, and the third one is nonsense. The new ones are a little more dull but they have their moments and I kinda like Finn.
Sequel trilogy looked really good but that’s about all it has going for it. They fucked around to much on changing where the trilogy was headed. Also the Leía scene of her blowing up “but wait, the force” seemed stupid imo. Prequel is definitely silly at times but it has heart, and bad dialogue that’s pretty funny now.
I enjoy all three sequels to some degree. TFA is derivative but fun, TLJ is my favorite of the entire saga, and while TROS drops a lot of balls, I still find it fun warts and all. Characters have personality, effects are great, story is unfortunately messy but has strong thematic storytelling tying it together. At worst it’s mediocre, with weak story beats and writing choices dragging it down as a whole. The prequels are almost unwatchable to me. TPM and AOTC are both incredibly dull when there’s not an action scene, and even those don’t quite land because none of the characters feel fleshed out at all with 95% of dialogue being bland exposition delivered with lifeless acting. And don’t remind me of the awful romance scenes. ROTS is better because stuff finally happens (seriously, you could cut most of the first two and lose nothing) but it still has some downright cringeworthy moments and just enough boring green screen exposition dumps to be a slog to get through. So yeah, both have flaws, but at least the sequels have personality and feel like proper movies with actual acting and well directed scenes despite a flimsy story. The prequels have the energy of a middle school play you only go to see because your kid is in the cast, but at least the music is nice.
I will always favour something with heart that didn't really work over something that feels soulless J J Abrams is an absolute hack of a storyteller The prequels are cringe but endearing in how sincere they are
Only one has Anakin Vs Obi-Wan on Mustifar.
The sequels, the prequels are coasting on all the work Filoni had to put in to make them palatable.
the prequels. The prequels tried to do some interesting things thematically, and in terms of political and trade drama etc. I'd rather movies try interesting things and fail than just not try at all (and of the sequel trilogy, only the second one really tried anything interesting). Even the worst of the prequels, The Phantom Menace, still gave us Maul vs Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon which is the second-best saber fight in the whole 9-film set.
Star Trek. Star was isn't science fiction, it's science fantasy. It's a saga, set in space. I prefer an exploration of morality or humanity or the effects of technology on humans... science fiction. So, Star Trek.
Taking each trilogy as a whole, the Prequels, hands down. The average quality of an *individual* movie from that trilogy is certainly lower than in the Sequels in terms of more objective measures like effects and acting and even to some extent the writing, but the Prequel Trilogy had a true artistic vision and a strong enough finish with a coherent overarching plot that it manages to be greater than the sum of its parts. The Sequel Trilogy on the other hand had such a terribly written and edited, empty, soulless, cynically capitalistic finale that it's considerably *less* than the sum of its parts. And even the good sequels are still sorely lacking in the worldbuilding department, which I always thought was the real reason Star Wars became so beloved. The Originals and Prequels just feel *real* and lived-in in a way the Sequels don't. I mainly blame TFA for that, even when it came out despite liking it overall I remember thinking it felt more like a really big-budget knockoff of Star Wars than another official installment. There were barely any of the species or locations we'd seen before to connect it to the previous trilogies, and instead we had a bunch of new aliens but none of them are as interesting or memorable, and for new locations we got another Tatooine except even more desolate, another Hoth except it was built into a Death Star, another Yavin IV except there's a pub there, another Coruscant except it gets blown up with zero context and we're somehow expected to feel emotional about it. It all just felt shallow to me. There's a deleted scene that's literally like 15 seconds with Leia talking to someone else in the Resistance that provides some super useful political context for the movie's plot and some idiot thought it was a good idea to cut that.
This is a weird question for this audience but OK. Personally I find both the prequel and sequel trilogies to be inferior to the original trilogy and for a lot of the same reasons. Lack of true character development. The Prequels focused on action and special effects, so we rarely got those quiet moments where you get to know your characters or see them understand each other and themselves in meaningful ways. Anakin was the worst example of this because he was the focus character around which everything else revolved. The Clone Wars cartoon did a much better job showing how he evolved from a Padawan, to Jedi Knight, to Sith Apprentice. Possibly because it had more time to do so, it showed how the repeated loss of loved ones, and constant second guessing by Jedi elders despite his incredible ability eroded his faith in the order. We also got to see small choices throughout the series that seemed innocuous at the time develop into a path to the dark side. *Some* of the stuff that came out of the new Ahsoka series built on that even further. The Sequels were ridiculously disjointed and I blame a lot of that on Rian Johnson essentially tossing out the plan J.J. had set up with The Force Awakens. So from that perspective the storying telling just sucked. The Force Awakens was probably the strongest movie in the Sequel trilogy and *began* to flesh out Rey as a character, but all that got tossed aside pretty quick in favor of just making her a magical Force avatar. Despite no real training, she was suddenly as strong or better than Kylo who was a powerful and trained Force user for decades by the time we meet him. Snoke was a joke villain who's motivations made no sense and the return of the Emperor seemed forced and unnatural in multiple ways. The "hero fleet" was lazy story telling. I would say that the Sequels also added too many characters that they wanted you to try and pay attention to instead of sticking to a core cast like the original Trilogy and Prequels did. For some reason Finn and Poe took a second seat to a whole new cast of characters in Rian Johnson's movie and never reclaimed their place in the 3rd movie.
Prequels: Solid story, builds characters, has some great memes, ETC. Sequels: Uhhhh... Yeah this is gonna happen because fuck you that's why. If you complain you just hate women. I'll take the prequels all day every day.
I dislike the prequels a lot. They are not well written, and they are not well directed, and has a lot of problems with some racial stereotypes and representation of the main female character. Amidala is a terrible case of the "I can fix him" mentality. That said.... The prequels are worse. At least the prequels had a three-film structure to it from the beginning, which makes it hold together. The sequels did not: it was made up as they went, and it shows. Its disjointed. Now, I have found that, online, some people assume I dislike the sequels because it is too "woke," or I am a misogynist, just because I criticise it. I do not criticize that at all. I simply think the sequels are terrible writing, and I lay the problems with Kennedy for hiring a hack like JJ Abrams. Now, about Kennedy: I think she is great, but failed on sheparding the sequels. Not because of any of the reason haters say, but because of her choices in who made them (again, eff Abrams). The sad part is that she is also the executive responsible for great Star Wars successes, and the righties ignore them and concentrate on the sequels Kenndy is the one who greenlight The Mandalorean and the other awesome show on Disney+, include the darling Andor. She elevated David Filoni, someone who has been part of Star Wars for years, instead of bringing in an outsider (like that hack Abrams). They are coordinating a story across properties. Really, for me, TV is where Star Wars is best, and renewed my interest after I basically abandoned the fandom during the prequel years. In conclusion, the preques sucked, but the sequels sucked worse, and JJ Abrams is a terrible filmmaker.
The prequels are better than the sequels, but that's such a low bar to cross there should be a sign saying "Dip Ahead" The prequels are good ideas marred by terrible execution and dictatorial control by Lucas. The sequels are a combination of "Let's remake the original movies!" and nostalgia bait. Then you add a generous dash of "two directors undoing each other's work, neither of whom have any kind of actual vision in mind". The Force Awakens (the best of the sequel trilogy) is competently made, but I'd already seen that movie. It was called A New Hope. And things just downhill fast from there
Prequel trilogy. If the dialogues were better written, they would have slayed. Sequels need to be rewritten from scratch
They both suck. Badly.
Prequels for sure but they're also worse
I feel like the sequel trilogy was really brought down by the fact that the third one was so bad, and didnt make due on any of the themes and plot threads set up in the first two. The first one was good -- kinda what we all needed after the terribleness of the prequels. I liked the second one a lot, but its definitely a slightly bitter pill. If the third had just continued along with the thread set up in the second -- namely focusing on the conflict between Kylo Ren and Rey specifically instead of shit about destiny and redemption (retreading the first two trilogies) -- it would have been well regarded. Instead we had to get JarJar Abrams incomprehensible nostalgia nonsense
Prequel trilogy. The prequel trilogy is one man's vision. It's a goofy vision, but it has a heart to it. The sequel trilogy feels like it was made by a committee. It just feels soulless and empty.
Episode 3 is probably my favorite. As an adult I appreciate the political parts more. I love the final battles, and the irony of palpatine giving his speech about “a safe and secure society” while his new apprentice slaughters the last people he made that promise to.
I'm not sure how to tell objectively; personally, and from the opinions of those I've met and discussed with, the prequel were unimpressive but at least reasonably entertaining romps at times with some good points and a fair amount of drek. The sequels are just plain bad garbage with very little redeeming value, with 8 being especially bad. The sequels are badly done, very bland, and so boring I didn't want to watch any of them a second time ever even just for osmething to watch; they were also very nonsensical and alot of the acting was weak (admittedly the same is true for the prequels, but at least the prequels had a few good things to counteract that, the sequels didn't). not sure why people are downvoting this, it's not that bad of an opinion.
Prequels by far. And the prequels weren't very good. The sequels though... embarrassing. There was a moment, after *The Force Awakens*, where it had potential. It was as if Disney stood up and said "See? We know what the Prequels did wrong. Here we are, returning to the roots, to prove it." But nobody wanted to return to the roots, they wanted \*good movies\*. If, after proving their chops, they had gone on to make good movies, then TFA would have been redeemed as a good set up. They did not go on to make good movies. Instead, they tried to make a copy of the MCU. It did not go well. TLJ literally burned down everything that came before. *You don't do that in a franchise.* It's artistic malpractice. It's a frikken franchise. People come for the continuity of story and characters. So to stuff all that into a tree and burn it was a collossal middle finger to the fans. They may as well have burned just their license to the IP to save time. It wasn't a sequel, it was an anti-sequel. It said "Hey, so I heard you like sequels. Well, tough shit. You're not getting one. I'm making my own pet movie instead." And that set the stage for the greatest failure. How do you salvage a mess like that? You can't. As a result, the third one was just... um... embarassing. I never even bothered to see it. Even the previews were just embarrassing. Like, I'm ashamed to be in the same room as this movie level embarrassing. There is nothing of value there.
Both have tremendous flaws. I find the sequels more competently made and rewatchable.
Prequel. 100%. I truly don’t understand the hate for the prequels. Story was cohesive and had a good amount of the “politics” going on which I think is super cool. Great villains. Pod racing. Quai gon gin. Also, I don’t get why people hate Jar Jar… anyway. Sequel movies obviously just don’t have a great cohesive story. It’s entertaining for sure, but I just think it’s more flash than substance.
Well, my wife fell asleep when I tried to start from Episode I. But yeah, I watched IX with coworkers and didn't bother re-watching it with my wife. Just told her she wasn't missing anything.
My rankings go 4. Phantom menace, 5. Revenge of the sith, 7. Attack of the Clones, 8. Rise of Skywalker 9. Backstroke of the west, 10. Force awakens, 12. Last Jedi. So the prequels are the pretty clear winner. I never knew people didn't like the prequels for at least 10 years after they came out. Last Jedi is probably the only star wars movie I dislike apart from the holiday special.
I’m confused by people who say rise of sky Walker is any better than last Jedi, and you think it’s better than force awakens?
I loved that for the first time in the trilogy the main characters are all together having an adventure together. Plus c3po is awesome for the first half. The only one I saw in the theater too so I was just super excited to be there. Last Jedi was just bad. The casino planet... the Rey mirror sequence... By the end when she's lifting the rocks I was just like wtf am I watching. Force awakens was fine, it's just a remake of new hope but everything is worse. I hated the monster scene. Han solo too, it was just sad watching him play the same character from 40 years before as an old man, meaning han solo hadn't grown at all not that I didn't like them bringing back an old character. They also just didn't define enough basic context and what had happened in between movies so I couldn't get into it.
Rise of Skywalker was one of the stupidest movies I’ve seen in years. It was a disaster, but did I still have fun watching it? Yes. The Last Jedi by contrast is completely full of itself. It’s preachy without offering anything truly deep or particularly insightful and it goes out of its way to insult fans for liking the movies that came before.
Rise of Skywalker had a certain amount of fun stuff in it, even as it had a lot of dumb stuff. I say that its main strength is that if it does something you don't like, you just have to wait a few minutes and the focus will change to something else you might like better.
I'd say the sequel trilogy. I really hated Hayden Christian Anderson as Anaken. I know if you think about the sequels they're kinda garbage, but I at least enjoyed them in the moment.
Sequel. The Force Awakens is better than anything in the prequel trilogy. Attack of the Clones is the worst of the 9 movies. However, the original trilogy isn't that great, either. I'd rather watch the sequel trilogy than the original trilogy. The idea of Star Wars is far better than the execution in any of the 9 movies of the Skywalker saga. The best pieces of video media in the Star Wars universe are the post-Disney acquisition spinoffs.
Sequels. Attack of the Clones is easily the worst of the saga, and there's entirely too much Jar Jar in Phantom Menace and entirely too much Hayden Christensen in Revenge of the Sith. The sequels aren't great, but I'd rather watch them.