For people who disliked the Prequels, consider this:

I absolutely agree. I’m not saying there was nothing new about TFA. There was a pretty decent amount. All of which were my favorite moments . . . except for the rathtars. That was inexcusably bad.

Yeah, it was a big story at the time because a lot of people took it out of context and thought he was saying the two would be similar in story, not relevance.

Ha ha ha. It was a stand-alone story. The events probably won’t have much relevance for the future saga films. That’s all I meant.

Well yeah. Same here. I’d rather that not be the status quo though. I’d like to have both which is certainly possible. Fingers crossed here too.

 

1. As for Anakin, I think Lucas mistake was the time jump that led to casting 2 different Anakin's.

He is the key to the whole Trilogy and by waiting for Episode 2 to see the real actor who was going to play Anakin was a huge risk.

Anakin should have been 20 years old in Episode 1 and played by the same actor all 3 movies so we could grow with him. Look at Rey and how we're all on board with Episode 8 because she resonated with the fans. Rian Johnson doesn't even worry about that so he can delve right in Rey & Ren's characters without worry of reintroducing them. Lucas had to waste time in Episode 2 cause he had to reintroduce essentially a new Anakin to everyone.

2. As for Jar Jar, the biggest problem is not him but his humor is forced. Humor has to subtle as that's when it works best. When everyone is boarding the falcon in ANH and C3P0 says to Han, "Hello sir!". Han gives this look and rolls his eyes. It's subtle but funny cause it shows he has no respect for droids as all C3PO was just trying to be nice.

 

Or at least make him closer to Portman's age. Knowing these 9 and 18 year olds were going to be eventual love interests was always weird for me.

 

And him saying in Episode 2 that he's thought about her everyday since he was 10 years old? I know I wasn't thinking about girls yet when I was 10!

 

I was 13 when I saw TPM, and it was immediately weird. I figured she would have been a Sophomore or Junior in H.S., and he'd be in Fifth grade. Fifth grade.

It was hard to shake after that, especially with Anakin's creeping on her in AOTC......ugh.

 

Completely agree with that thought. Always had a hard time wrapping my head around that.

 

I don't find the age different a problem, but Anakins behavior toward her in AotC certainly is creepy and you have to wonder why Obi-wan didn't do something about, and why he let Anakin go off alone with her.

 

we already know what we would have got if George Lucas had remained in charge; Star Wars meets the Twilight saga.

it would have been awful beyond belief.

 

What? WHere did Star Wars/Twilight thing come from?

 

They do, but in very different flaivahs

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Twilight is voluptuous

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"Related to Star Wars, but different from it" is how I'd put it - some elements/moments feel further removed from it than others.

AOTC, especially early on, feels the most different and alienating - mainly because, while the other two are "straight ahead epic fantasy", this one is mainly a spy/conspiracy plot, with the stylization/music/etc. further underscoring the difference.

In a way, ESB used SW as a template to tell that different story - I wonder how many people are aware of that, actually.

 

I think I get where Lucas was coming from with his deliberate departure in the PT. Ep1 is 30 years before Ep4. It stands to reason there would be cultural and aesthetic differences. He also wanted those movies to have a unique personality all their own. It was never supposed to feel like the ‘Star Wars’ we had known. It makes perfect sense on paper. How it was ultimately materialized though, for me, simply wasn’t engaging. It just fell flat and I had a hard time investing.

ESB, in my observation, took what was so amazing about the spectacle aspect of ANH and told it instead at a more intimate level. Planets aren’t being blown up. The fate of the entire Rebellion isn’t at stake. It’s about our leads and the personal journeys they each take. The obstacles they encounter are largely immediate, interpersonal, and internal. It’s an evolution of what came before and stands as its own thing by reducing the scope of the narrative and presenting a more impactful resonance.

 

I totally get where he was coming from with it too.
The problem was, there was so little in common with the OT that it felt disconnected.
It felt more technologically advanced that the OT, which I get with the new toys Lucas had in the 90s he wanted to play with them but it didn't translate to the world building. I think part of the problem was it made the Star Wars world in ANH feel TOO devolved from the society in the PT....were the 20 years between ANH and ROTS that harsh that almost all existing technology went to the pooper and became crap?
If it were, it would have behooved Lucas to show us that...

 

This - thugh if the story is disconnected why shouldnt the universe be?

plus he didn't give the timeline itself enough thought. He needed to move the PT further a head in time, and have Anakin be older when he turns to the dark side, and Obi-wan older when he goes into hiding.

 

The excuse of 'techno-regression' was cute, but never really held any water for me. That’s something that tends to happen over generations when everyone who knows how to manufacture and maintain the technology have died out without transferring the knowledge. The Empire was only around for 20 years. That means most of the people that were alive before that period were probably still alive after that period. So the people that knew how to make and fix ‘touchscreens’ and ‘heads up displays’ were likely still around. That stuff wouldn’t just disappear. Meh, whatever.

EDIT: Unless they’ve become one with the Force and are now more powerful than we can possibly imagine!!!!!

 

Exactly. And even then, they'd have to assume that no one learned the trades because of BETTER technology, not poorer technology.

It really just made no sense. I'd get it if the rebellion was using PT-era equipment or older, but the Empire was using similarly designed stuff, and they would have the finest quality of everything.

And like you said, it would take GENERATIONS of this. Not just one or two decades. Hundreds of years more than likely.

 

100% agree. Disney managed to make two modern films with 70s era looking technology. Why couldn't Lucas do it with the prequels? This was something which always made me to make a definite difference between the OT and the PT. The OT technology with its "touchable" and gritty realism made Star Wars what it is.
The PT feels like a clean product designed in a sterile enviroment. Oh... maybe becasuse it is.

 

And this is where I get conflicted. Two stories that take place decades apart, logically, should look different. Lucas had a good goal in mind, IMO. You can sort of even see his thought process at work. There’s a lot of the PT that has a neo-retro vibe to it. It’s a reimagining of what pulp artists from the 50s thought the future would look like.

Viewed from that angle, even that horrible diner scene in AOTC makes a perverse kind of sense. Like so many other things in the prequels, it was a valid idea that got bungled in the execution. Although damned if I can think of way it could have actually worked

Yeah, the guy that pioneered the ‘used universe’ decided to drop that idea altogether. A movie set 30 years in the past looks like it took place 30 years in the future. PROGRESS!!

Truth.

 

While I agree with this and also appreciate the idea, I still think it didnt pay out. Continuity wise and atmosphere wise the PT feels like watching an entirely different franchise.
Can you image the PT made in the same way as Rogue One? I think R1 somehow managed to make the PT even worse on a certain level. It now feels like to me as the biggest missed oportunity in th history of filmmaking...

 

I've no idea how it's "horrible", actually - people constantly go around saying 'well needless to say, we all agree that 50s diner scene was a complete disaster LOL, that goes without saying my friend" and I've no idea what they're talking about.

The idea that "the PT is clean" is actually kind of a myth - clean looking settings simply take up more running time in these 3, and the dirtier ones aren't emphasized as strongly due to the kind of glowy color grading or whatever that is.

How much more "technologically advanced" it is, is also debatable - the only thing that really looks more advanced, is all the battle droids in comparison to any other droids (and OT only had "other droids"). The rest is just roughly the same kind of stuff with "slicker" movements.

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Most of the ANH plot is similarly "intimate", there's not much difference in that regard - I was rather talking about the similarity in some of the scenarios.

 

I couldn’t possibly disagree with you more.

Which scenarios in particular?