The Star Wars Prequels

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I just took some time to re watch the Star Wars Prequels.


I watched because i wanted to see how the story telling or entertainment value aged. What surprised me, was that i liked the video look over the Anamorphic film look of episode 1.
 
There was only one scene, that i think the Sony video cameras lacked in, and that was the romantic day exteriors in Episode 2.
 
The audio and visual were more entertaining than the originals.

Edit because i initially said “Overall, the prequels are more entertaining than the originals.” Which is not true.”overall” is too vague and subjective. Too many factors. Watching the prequels on OLED, the colours are so vibrant, and the pacing and worlds are huge in the prequels because everything is CGI. Obi Wan rides a big lizard. What would a psychologists say? And the sound design was very good in the prequels. The music had huge scope from romantic to intense.

The pod race scene holds up pretty well, especially compared to the forest bikers in the originals. The pod racing scene is probably the most underrated “car chase” sort of scene in cinema. Feels expertly paced. And the sensation of speed is fantastic. Still works.
 
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when the prequels came out, it looked like bad sfx and clean soap opera digital....


Now clean digital is normal, and even preferred. I did a camera test, and a director friend complained about noise at iso 12,800.

And now that the movie is “old”, i am willing to overlook imperfections in the CGI that i was critical of at the time.

So, what is left is a fast moving color fest. And while verging on cartoony, i am ok with that.
 
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I like Star Wars but I don’t think I’m enthusiastic enough to consider myself a fanboy, but I’ve always found the prequels terrible. I rewatched a couple years ago and just thought it looked like an amateur high school production with too much budget. Weird camera angles that look like video, not cinema. Tons of lame lighting choices. Awful acting. And mostly boring execution.

Now, the story itself is masterful. That’s always where Lucas shined IMO. I mean, the story skeleton itself is just fantastic. The screenplay and execution ruins it. I would have loved to see what the prequels would have been in the hands of a different team, with Lucas on story and world advisory.
 
What do you mean the anamorphic film look of episode 1? Do you mean episode 4? Episode 1 is a prequel. Personally, I love the anamorphic film look of that film. It's epic and gritty.

Generally, I think the prequels are pretty but I'm not a fan of the smooth and shiny CGI spaceships. Give me the miniature models of the original trilogy any day.

I agree that the screenplay and execution of the prequels suck. Lucas is a great story writer. That's part of the reason the Empire Strikes Back is the best film - he wrote the story but not the screenplay and he didn't direct. He co-wrote the screenplay for Return of the Jedi. And he wrote and directed a New Hope. He should have stuck to just writing the stories.

But I think the new trilogy is garbage. I was so mad after I saw the Force Awakens. It was a fricking remake of a New Hope! Exact same arc (desert planet nobody finds out she has inherited mystical powers and signs up to destroy a death star.) Disney cash grab. Abrams wrecked the storyline to reunite the favorite characters and spaceships of the originals instead of advancing the story organically. And they ruined Han and Leia's happily-ever-after for me! That was an important part of my childhood! It also made me appreciate how even though the prequels were bad, at least they created new worlds and spaceships, which was a Lucas theme for every movie.

So after I saw Force Awakens I decided not to see any more of the new trilogy because I have more to lose than to gain. And I'm a dyed in the wool fanboy. But I saw Solo and I want to see Rogue One and the Mandalorian because I don't think they'll ruin the originals for me like Force Awakens did.
 
The prequels are a reprehensible crime against cinema.

As for Lucas's genius, and the shiny vs gritty look, and why the prequels suck so very badly in every imaginable way vs the belovedness of the original trilogy, there's an utterly fascinating website that discusses the complexity and layering that Lucas attempted to bring out, called Star Wars Ring Theory. If you take the time to read through all that, you will gain a new appreciation of the genius behind the mad genius, the extents he went to to make his two trilogies, why The Force Awakens was always destined to be a clone of Episode IV, and why we hate the prequels so very much (hint -- it's precisely because we love the original trilogy, that we are supposed to hate the prequel trilogy...)
 
ahalpert said:
What do you mean the anamorphic film look of episode 1? Do you mean episode 4? Episode 1 is a prequel. Personally, I love the anamorphic film look of that film. It's epic and gritty.
Click to expand...

Watch EP1
 
Barry_Green said:
...and why we hate the prequels so very much (hint -- it's precisely because we love the original trilogy, that we are supposed to hate the prequel trilogy...)
Click to expand...

The force is strong.
 
Barry_Green said:
The prequels are a reprehensible crime against cinema.

As for Lucas's genius, and the shiny vs gritty look, and why the prequels suck so very badly in every imaginable way vs the belovedness of the original trilogy, there's an utterly fascinating website that discusses the complexity and layering that Lucas attempted to bring out, called Star Wars Ring Theory. If you take the time to read through all that, you will gain a new appreciation of the genius behind the mad genius, the extents he went to to make his two trilogies, why The Force Awakens was always destined to be a clone of Episode IV, and why we hate the prequels so very much (hint -- it's precisely because we love the original trilogy, that we are supposed to hate the prequel trilogy...)
Click to expand...

QFT.

Prequels suck.
 
How do you tell if something was shot anamorpic if the transfer to video has been done? Surely it's only anamorphic up to the editor?
 
paulears said:
How do you tell if something was shot anamorpic if the transfer to video has been done? Surely it's only anamorphic up to the editor?
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If it's shot with anamorphic lenses, the out of focus areas stretch vertically, also creating oval shaped bokeh on light sources which is one of anamorphic's signatures. Also, you can see distortions on the edges sometimes if the camera pans L or R, things squeeze and unsqueeze. According to American Cinematographer, AOTC was shot 16:9 on spherical lenses and then cropped to 2.35.
 
The key thing to understand about Star Wars is there never was 9 parts. I'm not even sure there was more than one.

As Lucas imagined 'A new hope', I'm sure it was useful to create—in this mind—a world larger than what effectively ended up in Ep IV, but nothing more than fragments or extended imagination/intuition.

Ep V and VI was the natural continuation of the success of Ep IV, and there were a lot of story arcs that could be extended and concluded in a very natural way.

I would be utterly amazed if there is a single person out there who believes that ANYTHING from ANY of the prequels, or ANYTHING from ANY of the recent movies existed as even a fragment in Lucas' mind back in '76, or whenever he was writing it.

OF COURSE the official narrative from Lucas will be different. He can say whatever he wants and no one can go against him, really. But the proof is in the pudding.

The general healthiness of all the after-the-fact "explainations", are just a testament to people's willingness to subject themselves to any idea that support their own world view and set of ideals.

It's called show business for a reason. Suspension of disbelief extends beyond the silver screen.

PS. And by the way: I'm not saying Lucas is trying to deceive people, or that people who believe some of the explainations are fools. Lucas is offering up his narrative for people who are willing to subscribe to it, and who then just feel better about the whole thing as a result. There's no real negative impact for those of us who see through it*

*= well, apart from that mild but gnawing irritation of missing out on what might have been.
 
I was just reminded that, in 1977, the opening crawl to Episode IV - A New Hope did not say "Episode IV - A New Hope." It was added in a reissue of the film, in either 1978 or 1981. Most say it happened in 1981, after the release of the Empire Strikes Back, which surprised audiences when it said "Episode V" instead of "Part II".

I mean, you're partially right, in that George's plans were nebulous. His very first idea was simply to adapt Flash Gordon, and it was to be a series. But he could not get the rights. So he wrote his own story. He batted around different ideas for the total number. First it was just an infinite series. Then it was 12. By the time I became very interested in filmmaking, around 1990, I read biographies of many directors, including Lucas, and I remember reading about it being a trilogy of trilogies. So I think by then the plan had solidified. But even then he did not have 6 more screenplays ready to shoot or even 6 synopses.
 
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