Is this why people hate the Star Wars prequels?!

[veloper]

the originals succeeded at doing shallow, actiony fun

the prequels fail at trying to provide depth

Worst of all is the fall of anakin to the darkside, which should be the main event, but ends up being so mind-numbingly retarded, it even made the sith emperor look pathetic.
Everything in the prequels failed to convince.

 

[William Ossiss]

i watched them for the lightsaber battles. the true battles. not the "hold the saber by your crotch and wussy fight" crap... and indeed, the originals had good story behond them... but they were just lacking in the battles imo.

 

[Loki424]

Han Shooting first is mainly just an example of Lucas not being able to keep his grubby mitts off a finished product that people enjoy. Where there hordes of parents complaining that Han shot a bounty hunter in a bar?

No. No there were not.

Instead of leaving it along, he decided it'd be a great idea to add in a shitty Photoshop effect of Han pulling a "Night at the Roxbury" maneuver and ducking his head out of the way of a laser.

Even if you set aside the fact that every scene with a character provides characterization, the pointless editing is a glaring example of Lucas' general incompetence. I know it's been mentioned before in this thread, but RedLetterMedia (http://www.redlettermedia.com/) has really tackled this already.

The movies were not made for kids (kids love senate hearings, right?), but instead were made to sell toys to kids.

They weren't made for fans of the originals (because they undo everything the originals had already established), but instead capitalize on the fact that fans of the originals are guaranteed to go see them, regardless of quality.

The prequel trilogy was completely bad, even if you ignore the fact that they were Star Wars. They were poorly made movies with exceptionally high budgets.

 

[Grey_Focks]

short answer, No, THAT is only a part of why the prequels were shit.

The horrible writing, bad acting, bad characters, choreographed fight scenes that were devoid of any emotion, pointless scenes that were in there just to show-off CGI, and yes, those goddam midichlorians that took away that fantasy "you can be a jedi by virtue of heart" feeling and replaced it with "your just born that way" are what made the prequels all shit.

Without exception.

 

[Captain Pirate]

I loved the prequls. And I bet if Jar-jar and Midichlorians never happened, and Hayden Christensen was replaced by a better actor, the prequels would've been seen as much better, since those are like, the only things people use as reasons as to why the prequels were bad. That's shallow, IMO, using a few reasons which weren't actually movie-breaking and saying they were. Seems to me like some people are just in denial and making a big deal out of nothing.
If this is incorrect, please, by all means prove me false by stating what other reasons made the films bad.
EDIT: Nvm, just read some posts saying good reasons to why they're bad. Fair points, I guess.
Taking into account that some think the prequels were to appeal to a younger audience, they did their job then.

 

[Mr Cwtchy]

I think 99% of people who put the hate on the prequels either grew up watching the original trilogy and therefore are extremely defensive over it, or are simply jumping on the ever present bandwagon.

As for me, I thought the prequels were pretty decent. I couldn't give a crap about midichlorians, the action scenes were fantastic and the music was epicocity.

On the other hand, Jar Jar did get on my grills after a while.

 

[chenry]

What's wrong with the new trilogy?

In short, EVERYTHING.

The story was a clusterfuck, the characters were all flat, uninteresting caricatures, and the action scenes were bland, special-effects laden bores.

The entire movie is a cookie cutter, assembly-line production devoid of human emotion.

As Plinkett [http://www.blancscreencinema.com/redlettermedia/plinkett.html] said it best, it was like someone dumped five boxes of puzzles on the ground and told you put them all together in an hour or they'd shove you into a fridge full of flesh-eating cockroaches.

 

[Treefingers]

I dislike them... BECAUSE THEY ARE SHIT

 

[TPiddy]

Have to say... Jar Jar was horrible, Hayden Christiansen was horrible, the storyline was convoluded and the 3rd was by far the worst. It was supposed to be a bridge between the second and fourth while telling it's own story, and instead it focuses entirely on Anakin's mommy issues and then tries to wrap up all the loose ends like Luke, Leia and the Death Star in the last 10 minutes of the film.

And it's always amazingly stupid watching just how quickly Anakin goes from "Oh my god, I killed Mace Windu, what have I done?" to "Oh, you want me to kill some children? That's cool. I'll be back in a jiffy!". Without any remorse or thought to it whatsoever.

And what causes this evil change? A promise that Palpatine could teach him an ancient technique to stop death... a technique that took Palpatine himself years to learn, but Anakin will learn it in the 2 months he has before his wife dies. Oh, and it may not even work. That's some far fetched logic there.

Edit: Good parts - Boba Fett, clone battle at the end of Episode 2, Ewan MacGregor, Yoda

 

[solidstatemind]

Obligatory PA reference in 3...2...1... http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/9/22/

See, I think that the real reason the prequels flopped was because of fan expecations.

Seriously, all Star Wars movies gave us the following ingredients:

Land-bound buildup (usually involving a chase scene, but not always)
Lightsaber duel
Epic space battle.
Good guys win by a whisker and we all go home happy.
... all backed by an epic orchestral soundtrack.

Now occassionally, they mixed up that story, or they dropped one element, but that's essentially it... and it's not a bad thing. Why? Because it worked!

No the real problem is that George Lucas, despite his pretentions to such, cannot direct a movie to save his soul! It's not simple coincidence that the most critically acclaimed Star Wars movie was the one he didn't direct.

Now, the prequels might be worthy of additional excoriation given some of the retconning and the blatant attempts to exploit the child market (Jar-Jar), but overall, you have to say that he successfully identified what people liked and made an honest attempt to give it to them.

Ultimately, it really comes down to that people had built the SW stories into a myth-system, and Lucas really saw the plots a merely a framework to offer those experiences he thought would please the audience (since that should in theory be the most profitable-- and if you don't think this was about profits, I suggest you go to a local Toys 'R' Us and check out how much Star Wars merchandise is on the shelves even today), as cynical as that train of thought might be.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Oh, I have a list! Most of my problems with the movies is that they screwed up the storyline the books had taken years to develope. I won't go into detail since I'm sure a lot of people have never read anything that takes place after Return of the Jedi, but needless to say a lot of authors have been scrambling to straighten out their stories. Others have just plain given up.

As for the movies themselves, two major flaws come to mind. First is that a Jedi can be killed by a standard issue battle droid. No. I'm sorry, but just no. Second--and this sums up a lot of problems about the movie script and acting--Hayden has just helped kill one of the leading Jedi and is in tears about it. All Sidious says is "You're fulfilling your destiny" and Hayden goes "Okay, guess I'm evil now. I'm going to go kill little kids." WHAT?! Two seconds ago you were in tears, now you've thrown away everything you stood for?

A thing that made me sad were all the space battle scenes. Remember the awesomeness of the space battle in Return of the Jedi? Random pilots, random ships, random explosions? The new movies could have done that even better, but instead all we get is Anakin and Obi talking in the cockpits. Sigh...

 

[wolf thing]

Besides Episode I, there is nothing fucking wrong with the prequels.

agreed, there not as good as the origenalas but ok.

 

[Baldry]

The prequels are good, but the with the exception of one's explanation of the force!! And Jar Jar Binks....DAMN IT'S A TRAP!

 

[MinishArcticFox]

I liked Episode 1 other than Jar-Jar and that little twerp but Jar-Jar was no worse than the Ewoks and Episode 2 was a little slow but the battle at the end with Yoda made up for it. I had no problems with Episode 3 at all. Sure they probably weren't as good as the first three but they weren't bad.

As for medichlorians what are those? I've never heard of those that's just stupid to think that the Force the most powerful thing in the galaxy is just bacteria in you bloodstream. That's absurd that isn't true. (Yea I did a good job surpressing this part of the movie)

 

[Drakmeire]

episode one was ok attack of the clones was awful, but I think revenge of the sith could possibly be better than the empire strikes back (which is easily the best of the originals) my order of the movies would be

1.revenge of the sith
2.empire strikes back
3.new hope
4.phantom menace
5.return of the jedi (that's right I said it, return was worse than episode 1 in my opinion)
6.attack of the clones

 

[HitsWithStyxx]

Besides Episode I, there is nothing fucking wrong with the prequels.

*cough*[sub]Hayden Christensen[/sub]*cough*

 

[SloLynx]

Heh, while the prequels aren't better, they're still enjoyable to watch

What's wrong with explaining how the force works? I was very pleased with this explanation, it's like saying that humanity sucks now that we figured out how the weather works.

 

[kickyourass]

No Midichlorians are not the only reason the prequels sucked, only one of them. Go to Youtube and look up "Redlettermedia" he says it better then anyone else has.

 

[bloodychimp]

I liked Phantom Menace. It wasn't great by any means, but the plot felt like Star Wars. Episodes II and III just have a bunch of bullshit drama and bad acting that turned one of the most iconic villains of all time into a little *****.