A Criticism of the Prequel Trilogy That Kinda Bugs Me

[CrypticMirror]

Yes but that race felt like it had stakes.

The speederbike chase had conflict in it too. What would have happened if Anakin had lost the podrace? Well Qui Gon would have just found a way to steal a ship or the stuff they needed and there would be a mild delay. The podrace always felt more like a tie in for a videogame, sort of a "this is the racing level" type of vibe. It could be salvaged with some strategic edits to tighten it up, though. Maybe they can do that in the next special edition, make it feel less maclunkey?

[Thebestoftherest]

Yes but that race felt like it had stakes.

The speederbike chase had conflict in it too. What would have happened if Anakin had lost the podrace? Well Qui Gon would have just found a way to steal a ship or the stuff they needed and there would be a mild delay. The podrace always felt more like a tie in for a videogame, sort of a "this is the racing level" type of vibe. It could be salvaged with some strategic edits to tighten it up, though. Maybe they can do that in the next special edition, make it feel less maclunkey?

IT also annoying, we get to know very little about Darth Maul in that movie even though it was suppose to be his death, and yet we have time for a overly long race. I feel it should have been one lap just a little longer than before.

[Makeshift Python]

And hey, I love stakes! Especially medium rare.

As for Darth Maul, I think he's perfectly fine was he was. He's just the heavy, the henchman that the protagonists have to fight. Like Oddjob from the James Bond film. Bringing him back from the dead is one of the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

[CrypticMirror]

Maul suffered from the marketing, he was painted as being this big Vader like badguy that was gonna carry the franchise and of course he never lived up to that. People had even more unrealistic expectations of him than they did the rest of the movie. I blame Timothy Zahn for that though, he drove expectations sky high in his OG Thrawn books. That was a lightning in a bottle thing though, even Zahn couldn't pull it off twice.

I disagree that bringing him back was a bad move though, I think both cartoon series he was in worked better with him in it.

[Makeshift Python]

Maul suffered from the marketing, he was painted as being this big Vader like badguy that was gonna carry the franchise and of course he never lived up to that. People had even more unrealistic expectations of him than they did the rest of the movie. I blame Timothy Zahn for that though, he drove expectations sky high in his OG Thrawn books. That was a lightning in a bottle thing though, even Zahn couldn't pull it off twice.

That sounds more of a “you had to be there in 1999” problem.

I disagree that bringing him back was a bad move though, I think both cartoon series he was in worked better with him in it.

Good for the kiddies, I don’t care for the cartoons. I certainly don’t like it with Boba Fett in THE MANDALORIAN.

[McAvoy]

Prequels to me has its issues. We all know that. Me personally I have a hard time believing the Anakin we saw in the movies become Darth Vader we see in the Original Trilogy.

In the prequels, Anakin is whiny and his motivations to go to the Dark Side is thin. Visions? Not buying it. I'd rather see Anakin as this badass confident fighter who is tempted by the Dark Side alot due to his pride and ego. Whereas that temptation is tempered by his wife and his love for her. I'd would have wanted to see a full realization of that personally.

May I suggest watching the clone war cartoon it a lot closer to what you want.

I have watched it. It definitely fleshed out Anakin far better than the prequel trilogy. Also watched Rebels too.

[Thebestoftherest]

Prequels to me has its issues. We all know that. Me personally I have a hard time believing the Anakin we saw in the movies become Darth Vader we see in the Original Trilogy.

In the prequels, Anakin is whiny and his motivations to go to the Dark Side is thin. Visions? Not buying it. I'd rather see Anakin as this badass confident fighter who is tempted by the Dark Side alot due to his pride and ego. Whereas that temptation is tempered by his wife and his love for her. I'd would have wanted to see a full realization of that personally.

May I suggest watching the clone war cartoon it a lot closer to what you want.

I have watched it. It definitely fleshed out Anakin far better than the prequel trilogy. Also watched Rebels too.

Yeah, it probably because Lucas took a back seat to that.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

TDST says that as long as someone has a sad background then their horrible actions are justified and that you should put all they've done aside for them because you can fix them. I've said this before, I've had to deal with people like this in the real world and I do not like how TDST and TLJ in particularly, promote this line of thinking. I didn't cut 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight any slack on this I'm not giving Star Wars any special treatment just because it's Star Wars.

This sounds kind of like a more broad issue you have with relationships portrayed any media.

The relationship is consistent with the themes of Star Wars I feel like. Star Wars romance is consistent with themes of high fantasy as far as I can tell. And the romance in fantasy/SW is hyperbolic by terms of real social dynamics, but it is nonetheless dark as other romantic genre pieces like Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey.

I'm sure there's structured criticism on this type of portrayal on the internet, in which Star Wars is more of an example than a conceptual spawning point or champion of such romantic portrayals.

[Winter]

TDST says that as long as someone has a sad background then their horrible actions are justified and that you should put all they've done aside for them because you can fix them. I've said this before, I've had to deal with people like this in the real world and I do not like how TDST and TLJ in particularly, promote this line of thinking. I didn't cut 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight any slack on this I'm not giving Star Wars any special treatment just because it's Star Wars.

This sounds kind of like a more broad issue you have with relationships portrayed any media.

The relationship is consistent with the themes of Star Wars I feel like. Star Wars romance is consistent with themes of high fantasy as far as I can tell. And the romance in fantasy/SW is hyperbolic by terms of real social dynamics, but it is nonetheless dark as other romantic genre pieces like Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey.

I'm sure there's structured criticism on this type of portrayal on the internet, in which Star Wars is more of an example than a conceptual spawning point or champion of such romantic portrayals.

That's not an unfair assessment but the issue I have is there is no reason for Rey to even give Kylo the benefit of a doubt. He murdered Han for reasons even Kylo admitted were petty and did so while Han was offering him the hand of friendship, put Finn in a coma and tried to mind rape Rey and were told by both Luke and Kylo that when Ben turned on to the Dark Side he slaughtered every student that wouldn't join him. Then, 3 scenes with him later later, Rey is suddenly ready to not only to try and redeem Kylo but she attacks Luke because he MIGHT have tried to kill Ben.

Please note that at that point all Rey had to go on was Kylo's word that he was the victim in all this and she is so angry at Kylo for what he did she basically holds Luke at Lightsaber point to get him to tell her what he did.

Luke was told what a good person Anakin was before he fell to the Dark Side, Adora knew Catra since they were kids and Piccolo had proven himself to be honorable enough that Goku believed he could be trusted to not repeat his father's mistakes. All of these characters have solid reasons to want to redeem or honor their enemies be it love or respect.

Rey has no reason to buy what Kylo is selling and her reasons for falling for him is, for me, no different then when Bella fell for Edward or Ana fell for Christen. They fall for their BS because they say they have a tragic backstory.

To go back to She-Ra, Adora and Catra are obviously in love with each other and have been for as long as either of them can remember but when Catra opened the Portal just to spite Adora, Adora stopped trying to redeem her. Even though she still loves her, she knew now that Catra couldn't be saved if she didn't allow herself to be saved. Adora had to bottle up her love for Catra because Catra had gone to far and needed to treat her as her enemy.

But when Catra willingly sacrificed herself to save Glimmer and said she was sorry for all she had done all that love came rushing out and Adora struggles with her feelings for Catra throughout a whole episode before deciding to go and try and save Catra. Rey needed a 10 minute conversation to decide that Kylo was worth redeeming on the grounds that he said so.

She has little to no history with him, she has heard NOTHING good about Ben Solo and the first time she heard that name was when Kylo killed Han and when they have their first Force chat Kylo tries to mind trick Rey which suggests that he sees her as weak minded because the Mind Trick ONLY works on the weak minded.

If you like it more power to you and I mean that sincerely but this sort of relationship always feels contrived at best for me.

[McAvoy]

TDST says that as long as someone has a sad background then their horrible actions are justified and that you should put all they've done aside for them because you can fix them. I've said this before, I've had to deal with people like this in the real world and I do not like how TDST and TLJ in particularly, promote this line of thinking. I didn't cut 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight any slack on this I'm not giving Star Wars any special treatment just because it's Star Wars.

This sounds kind of like a more broad issue you have with relationships portrayed any media.

The relationship is consistent with the themes of Star Wars I feel like. Star Wars romance is consistent with themes of high fantasy as far as I can tell. And the romance in fantasy/SW is hyperbolic by terms of real social dynamics, but it is nonetheless dark as other romantic genre pieces like Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey.

I'm sure there's structured criticism on this type of portrayal on the internet, in which Star Wars is more of an example than a conceptual spawning point or champion of such romantic portrayals.

That's not an unfair assessment but the issue I have is there is no reason for Rey to even give Kylo the benefit of a doubt. He murdered Han for reasons even Kylo admitted were petty and did so while Han was offering him the hand of friendship, put Finn in a coma and tried to mind rape Rey and were told by both Luke and Kylo that when Ben turned on to the Dark Side he slaughtered every student that wouldn't join him. Then, 3 scenes with him later later, Rey is suddenly ready to not only to try and redeem Kylo but she attacks Luke because he MIGHT have tried to kill Ben.

Please note that at that point all Rey had to go on was Kylo's word that he was the victim in all this and she is so angry at Kylo for what he did she basically holds Luke at Lightsaber point to get him to tell her what he did.

Luke was told what a good person Anakin was before he fell to the Dark Side, Adora knew Catra since they were kids and Piccolo had proven himself to be honorable enough that Goku believed he could be trusted to not repeat his father's mistakes. All of these characters have solid reasons to want to redeem or honor their enemies be it love or respect.

Rey has no reason to buy what Kylo is selling and her reasons for falling for him is, for me, no different then when Bella fell for Edward or Ana fell for Christen. They fall for their BS because they say they have a tragic backstory.

To go back to She-Ra, Adora and Catra are obviously in love with each other and have been for as long as either of them can remember but when Catra opened the Portal just to spite Adora, Adora stopped trying to redeem her. Even though she still loves her, she knew now that Catra couldn't be saved if she didn't allow herself to be saved. Adora had to bottle up her love for Catra because Catra had gone to far and needed to treat her as her enemy.

But when Catra willingly sacrificed herself to save Glimmer and said she was sorry for all she had done all that love came rushing out and Adora struggles with her feelings for Catra throughout a whole episode before deciding to go and try and save Catra. Rey needed a 10 minute conversation to decide that Kylo was worth redeeming on the grounds that he said so.

She has little to no history with him, she has heard NOTHING good about Ben Solo and the first time she heard that name was when Kylo killed Han and when they have their first Force chat Kylo tries to mind trick Rey which suggests that he sees her as weak minded because the Mind Trick ONLY works on the weak minded.

If you like it more power to you and I mean that sincerely but this sort of relationship always feels contrived at best for me.

You really like She-Ra.

The Sequel Trilogy's biggest flaw is the incoherent storyline from one movie to the other. The PT and OT at least has that. And the thing it's not like each movie in those two trilogies are deeply connected to each other.