PT vs OT

[lPeregrine]

I wouldn't say Coruscant "...lacked sufficient stakes...", but I wish the capital ships had played more of a role in both Coruscant and Endor.

The battle had high stakes in-universe, but it didn't really have much to do with the characters. I mean, half the opening chase though the battle (the only time anyone we care about participates) is wasted on that idiotic gimmick fight with the "tear your ship apart" droids. Contrast that with Endor where, in addition to the grand history of the galaxy scale stuff, all of the characters we care about are directly involved. Lando is fighting on the front lines and Han/Leia/Chewbacca are fighting to give Lando a chance, while the emperor uses Luke's friends (and their likely deaths) to lure him to the dark side. It's a nice spectacle (or at least was back in 1983), but there's a lot more at stake when you're watching it.

[The Romulan Republic]

Certainly it has high stakes for the characters. The execution of Dooku by Anakin is a major step toward becoming Palpatine's Sith apprentice.

But it somehow lacks the strength of the OT.

I think it may boil down to three main things for me:

1. Weak acting.
2. Overload from excessive special effects and action without pause.
3. Mediocre attempts to insert comedy into what probably should have been more dramatic/epic.

[Channel72]

The Battle of Coruscant was an amazing fucking opening, I'll give it that.

But really, that's all it was. It had no build up or anything. The best cinematic battles are slowly built up, clearly explaining the stakes, the objectives, and role that all the characters need to play. A great example is Helm's Deep in LOTR, which was slowly and dramatically built up, so that when the fighting finally starts, you're really invested in it and it's not just mindless action. The Battle of Endor in ROTJ was the same: they clearly explained the stakes and the objectives (infiltrate base using stolen shuttle, take down shield, rebels attack by going through shaft, etc.) They clearly explained the roles of each character, etc.

The Prequels just never had anything like that, unfortunately. Every battle was sort of just a giant spectacle that mostly just came out of nowhere with little or no build-up, and no clear explanation of who was supposed to do what or why.

Ironically, the only exception is in Episode I, where they actually explain the role of Padme and the Gungans, and build up to the final battle. The problem is.... it's you know... Episode I.

It's really hilarious that sometimes it really seems as though, structurally speaking, Episode I is actually the best Prequel, even though it's totally boring as shit.

[lPeregrine]

Certainly it has high stakes for the characters. The execution of Dooku by Anakin is a major step toward becoming Palpatine's Sith apprentice.

Sure, but that doesn't have anything to do with the battle. It's the same scene with the same story impact if you just have the jedi board the ship in deep space without a fight and walk directly up to the bridge. All the exploding ships might look cool* but they're just background scenery.

*Which is subjective. IMO the battle, like the majority of the PT effects work, is a step back from the OT from a purely artistic point of view.

[lPeregrine]

Ironically, the only exception is in Episode I, where they actually explain the role of Padme and the Gungans, and build up to the final battle. The problem is.... it's you know... Episode I.

It's really hilarious that sometimes it really seems as though, structurally speaking, Episode I is actually the best Prequel, even though it's totally boring as shit.

Exactly! The execution is awful, but the setup is actually done right. All of the characters we care about have a part in the battle, it's clear why there's a battle, and it fits into a natural place in the story. If Lucas had just understood that the "relief" part of comic relief is important and toned down the constant awkward "lol we're so funny" moments it could have been a pretty good ending to the movie. And if you just make Anakin older and a better mirror of Luke at Yavin the rest of the awkward humor might even be tolerable.

[Channel72]

Yeah... it's really fucking depressing that more thought and care was put into telling the story of this stupid battle between cartoon robots and dinosaurs/amphibians than actually interesting or important shit like a major assault on Coruscant.

[Joun_Lord]

I think the OT is superior but to echo what others have said, I don't hate the Prequels but quite the opposite infact.

Just the OT was more adventurous and lighthearted fun. Its hard to call a set of films with a body count numbering in the multi-millions, people being burned alive, planets being destroyed, and people being dismembered lighthearted fun but it still is.

The PT had their moments of fun and adventure but overall didn't atleast to me have it continuously like the OT. They were darker too, as they were supposed to be, and despite the OT having a much higher body count the PT had brutal kills pretty close in like the Tuskens, Younglings, the Jedi, and Padme.

I appreciate both film sets though. Probably if I had been a few years younger and my first exposure to Star Wars was the Prequels I might rate them higher but grew up on the OT.

I probably rate Episode 3 as high as Episode 5. Ep 4 is superior to Ep 2 but Ep 1 and Ep 6 I rank as both the worst.

Plus the OT has Stormtroopers. The real and badass boys in body armor. Clonetroopers are cool too and I'm still iffy about the First Order Stormies (their armor seems so needlessly complicated, too much extra shit, someone mentioned the new troopers are supposed to be Stormtrooper designed by Apple but honestly the OT Stormtroopers and Clonetroopers fit that bill better) but the OT Stormtroopers will always be superior to me.

[Batman]

The OT also didn't suffer from everybody knowing how it would end going in. The PT is far from without flaws, but it faced an essentially impossible task-being as good as the OT when everybody knew Palpatine would win in the face of years of hype. At least WRT the OT fans, it was a no-win scenario.

[Channel72]

I don't really like the Prequels too much, but the idea that "we knew how it would end" is really the problem here never really rang true to me. How much money has Star Wars made over the decades leading up to the Prequels? Certainly in the tens of billions, when you take into account international merchandizing and everything. What percent of those billions was actually from first-time movie-goers who didn't know how it would end? I'm sure it's a very small percentage. The idea that "we know how it ends" is some sort of major problem is utterly false. For centuries, especially taking into account Greek or Slavic story-telling traditions - people actually enjoyed stories more when they already knew how it would end. Even today, when we see a hundred-million-dollar super-hero Marvel flick, we pretty much know the good guys win by default - by that doesn't stop us from enjoying it. Indeed, this intuition seems to be scientiifcally confirmed. But really, we don't need much scientific confirmation. Every time the ancient Greeks went to listen to their local bard retell the adventures of Achilles or Hector during the Trojan war, chances are, they already knew the ending. By the same token, modern audiences mostly know that "the good guy wins" is the most likely outcome for any major blockbuster.

So no, I don't think the Prequels necessarily suck because we already knew what would happen. The story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker could have been an amazing classic. But it simply didn't pan out that way - Lucas simply wasn't able to tell the story competently. I can't say I fault him - it's a really hard story to tell - portraying a likeable hero who ultimately (but sympathetically) becomes the villain. I certainly couldn't have done better. But then again, Lucas could have hired any number of talented writers to help him... but he didn't. And so what we have is an extremely mediocre version of the fall of Anakin Skywalker. And I think the reason people get so riled up about it is because of the wasted potential - it could have been such an amazing story, but it turned out to be so mediocre. The Prequels are mostly just a series of meaningless action sequences, designed to get us from point A to B. Ironically, the most hated Prequel, Episode I, is actually the most competently structured story - sadly, the actual plot material is so inconsequential to the saga as a whole that it just doesn't matter. The actual storyline that everyone cares about - Anakin's betrayal of Obi-Wan and turn to the darkside - is so haphazardly executed that the Prequels will simply never be considered "classic" in any sense, and will likely be totally forgotten in the wake of the Disney-era Star Wars flicks.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It wasn't just that we knew Palpatine would win, it's that we knew enough of the details that it made any sense of drama moot, especially in ROTS. For instance, in the two climactic lightsaber duels, we know that all four combatants survive. We know the Republic falls, we know Padme dies and Luke/Leia are separated. We know the Jedi are eliminated.

It's much more than just knowing "the bad guys win."

[The Romulan Republic]

Knowing the outcome doesn't mean the film won't be enjoyable or good. If it did, any Biblical movie, historical movie, reasonably faithful adaptation, etc. would potentially have this problem.

Their are other things that can make a film worth watching. If you're depending on mystery and suspense to make your film watchable, you don't have a very good film.

What you need most of all is actors and dialog that are good enough to make the audience invested even when they know the outcome. To take an example from personal experience, when I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I knew quite a bit of the story (at least partly thanks to this site). I watched anyway, partly because I found some of the characters interesting.

Edit: Unfortunately, while not uniformly bad, the dialog and acting in the Prequels is not uniformly good and more or less never top notch.

[lPeregrine]

It wasn't just that we knew Palpatine would win, it's that we knew enough of the details that it made any sense of drama moot, especially in ROTS. For instance, in the two climactic lightsaber duels, we know that all four combatants survive. We know the Republic falls, we know Padme dies and Luke/Leia are separated. We know the Jedi are eliminated.

It's much more than just knowing "the bad guys win."

Besides the (IMO compelling) argument that knowing the outcome doesn't remove the drama it didn't even have to be like that. If we assume that there's no obligation to follow the EU then we know the following:

1) Anakin falls and becomes Vader.

2) Palpatine takes power and creates the Empire, destroying the jedi in the process.

3) Luke and Leia are born and taken to their separate childhood lives.

4) Any characters from that era who are still alive in the OT era have to survive.

So, how much do those requirements really limit our ability to tell an interesting story?

1) Anakin becomes Vader, but we know absolutely nothing about how it happens. There's still plenty of drama about what will finally bring him to the dark side, how he ends up in the mask, how his former friends will react to his fall, etc. All knowing his eventual fate does is replace "will he fall" with "is this the moment where he falls", which is still drama.

2) Same thing as Vader. We know the very general answer to the question, but we know none of the details. And TBH this is even less important than Anakin/Vader. It has to happen and provides the setting to the story, but it's still kind of in the background. So knowing the outcome of the big-picture events doesn't remove drama any more than knowing the outcome of WWII makes it impossible to have an interesting movie in that setting.

3) This is a really tiny restriction, as demonstrated by the fact that it's handled with a brief scene at the very end of the PT. You can do pretty much anything you want with the Luke/Leia element of the story, and the audience only knows the most superficial of details about your choice before they see it. And Padme doesn't have to die since she's never mentioned in the OT, so you have no reason to be certain about her fate before you see the movie.

4) This is a restriction, but it's one that can be dealt with. For example, we know that Obi-Wan has to survive any fight he's in but that just means that you have to have something besides survival at stake. Maybe you have the final fight with Vader involve Obi-Wan trying to stall him while another character escapes, so even though you know that Obi-Wan survives the fight you don't know if he wins. Or maybe you just have to minimize those characters a bit. If Yoda has to survive then why make him a major element of the story? Let him exist in the background and create some new characters that didn't exist on-screen in the OT. Then you can freely kill off those characters at any time and the audience has no idea what's going to happen with them.

In short, if the PT failed to have a sense of drama it's because the PT was poorly executed, not because a prequel to the OT is inherently lacking in dramatic potential.

[lPeregrine]

Or, to give an OT-only example: imagine that you haven't seen any Star Wars movies, but someone told you that Luke redeems Vader in the end and the Empire is destroyed. That's a pretty big spoiler, but does it make Han's journey from "casually blows away a bounty hunter (shooting first!) and flips the bartender a coin for the cleanup" to "volunteers for the suicide mission at Endor" any less enjoyable? Of course not. You're still going to wonder if he's really going to take his reward and go, and you're still going to cheer when he comes back to save Luke. You're still going to hope that he gets the princess and lives happily ever after. Etc.

And really, if there's no drama left once you know the ending, why do we keep watching the OT over and over again?

[The Romulan Republic]

Surprise is all very well, but it only really matters if the rest of the story is crap, and if it is, why bother watching it at all?

Edit: Don't get me wrong, a love a well-executed shocking surprise. Its just that surprise is only one part of what determines the quality of a work.

[Honorius]

I don't quite get all this nerdrage over the PT. Seriously.

The PT chronicles the Fall of the Republic and the Jedi during a full scale Civil War in which both sides are spamming out Armies fast as they can and punching each other hard till the other side quits. And I say it does a damn good job. We see that the Jedi had become corrupt and complacent, the Republic is utterly deadlocked, and Corporations are amassing Droid Armies legally. That is Episode I.

Episode II. We see the events from Episode I were not resolved and Corporations are breaking away. The Republic is trying to negotiate, but the crisis hits too fast for them to step back and go: Sifo Diyas didn't hire this Army, Dooku under the Alias Darth Tyrannus did, what is really going on here? Unfortunately as the Arena battle showed, the Jedi are not soldiers, they're warriors.

As for the Battle of Geonosis which I notice many threads harp on from using search:

The mission was clear as Yoda briefed Mace in mid flight. Get Dooku and prevent a retreat of the Confed Forces.

Now the only weapons capable of bringing down the TF Core Ships were the SPHA-Ts which were line of sight and had to get close. They could not be air dropped into battle, the Acclamators had to land and deploy them. The Separatists knew this and sent in their droids to hit the assembly areas for the SPHA-Ts.

To protect the SPHA-Ts, the Republic had no choice but to put its infantry out in the open with AT-TEs behind them to hold back the Droid Forces from the SPHA-Ts while they deployed to bring their guns to bear. This was successful. Also the Clones, unlike our troops who many erroneously compare them to out of context, had advanced armor with inbuilt NBC protection and auto targeters feeding directly from their scopes, enabling them to hit accurately in a full out dust storm on a fully nuclear battlefield where Teraton and Kiloton level firepower is getting tossed around, just saw a massive ship weighing a fuckton in mass slam right back into the ground, and these clones are doing this for the first time. At no point did the droids break their cordon to get shots at the SPHA-Ts who were doing the heavy lifting, and when the battle is viewed in light of the Objective, available means to achieve it, and time constraints, it becomes clear the Clone Tactics make complete sense. I ask those disparaging these tactics to please explain how they would have protected the SPHA-Ts differently as they deployed for battle within the timeframe they had to work with?

Episode III: Pretty straight forward, rescue the Chancellor and prevent the escape of the ship holding him. Which was accomplished by boxing in the Separatist Fleet to prevent the Flagship from escaping with the Chancellor.

There is obviously a full scale war going on and the Jedi are looking to assassinate their way out of this war. Sidious is setting up Anakin who is about to be a Father to fall and the Jedi being idiots don't see it coming. In short the Jedi walk into a Xanatos Gambit which was set up in such a way Palpatine wins either way with the Jedi destroyed even if he doesn't live to see it. Even if Anakin failed to stop Windu, the Senate will see the Jedi as having launched an Illegal Coup against a beloved Chancellor and likely order the Army on the Jedi when they attempt to take control of the Senate.

OT: Ragtag Rebels who have to carefully choose their fights against a popular Empire. Hence the planning stages as they absolutely can't afford fuckups like the Empire or Separatists could as they had the resources to slug it out.

The Rebel's accomplishments: Destroyed two Death Stars which as we saw in the PT, were in the planning phase. They killed the Head of State, but the Core of the Empire remains and the Emperor was beloved by many who mattered in the Core Worlds, so the war continues.
Spoiler

Trailers indicate the Death Stars have been built by the New Order in the upcoming trilogy.

[RogueIce]

3) This is a really tiny restriction, as demonstrated by the fact that it's handled with a brief scene at the very end of the PT. You can do pretty much anything you want with the Luke/Leia element of the story, and the audience only knows the most superficial of details about your choice before they see it. And Padme doesn't have to die since she's never mentioned in the OT, so you have no reason to be certain about her fate before you see the movie.

One note: Padme could have even survived, which seemed likely, given the scene where Luke asks Leia about her real mother in ROTJ. But that's a whole topic unto itself.

A few caveats about the above, though: given Vader's obsession with Luke in ESB, it would seem unlikely he's aware that his offspring lived before he finds out in ANH. And in ROTJ it's a revelation to even Vader that he had another child, so he can't know about the twin part. So basically you have to handle Luke/Leia in such a way that he's A) unaware of them being twins and B) unaware his [allegedly sole] offspring survived at all. Which I do think ROTS handled fairly well by showing Padme's funeral with her still having a visible [fake] baby bump, so everyone assumes her child(ren) died with her.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ok, maybe I haven't made myself clear. Yes, knowing the outcome would not be a problem if he acting, dialogue, details etc were compelling enough to make me interested in the story like I was with th OT. Sadly, those were largely lacking in much of the scenes. Don't get me wrong, the PT certainly managed to do exciting action scenes (in fact that's mostly what I watch the PT for these days) but the important, acting-heavy scenes that set up those battles were weak or int he case of the Coruscant battle, outright not present.

So with less character interaction going for it than the OT, the PT has to fall back on the large set-piece action scenes, and this is where the "we know how this ends" comes in. Any sense of drama goes out the window.

For example, when I first saw ROTS, the Windu/Sidious duel was far more compelling to me than the Yoda/Sidious fight was, because I didn't know how it would play out in advance, and in that case you had a genuine feeling of "it all comes down to this." Whereas the duel with Yoda was just "oh they're throwing senate pods at each other, that's cool" with no sense of drama to it.

[Andy Wylde]

WOW! That is some difference in the voting results!

I personally enjoy all the movies. I view it as just one big story. I used to be the type to put the movies in an order. But now I just enjoy them one and the same. I grew up during the run of the OT. Then the PT came along and gave me more SW to love. I know some folks don't care for the PT and that is their business. It is a shame though that they don't, but hey what can you do?

Because Lucas didn't set out to make the PT for it to be the better trilogy or best trilogy ever. It was just a continuation of his story that began all the way back in 1977. I can appreciate that. So I don't look at it "not being as good as the OT" That wasn't the point of it. For me it is just one big amazing story.

[lGrand Anhoop]

I don't quite get all this nerdrage over the PT. Seriously.

The PT chronicles the Fall of the Republic and the Jedi during a full scale Civil War in which both sides are spamming out Armies fast as they can and punching each other hard till the other side quits. And I say it does a damn good job. We see that the Jedi had become corrupt and complacent,

Um, no... you're imprinting a different archetype onto the plot.
The Senate is corrupt, but not necessarily complacent - more like the greedy bastards have taken over the ineffectual good guys.
The Jedi are neither - the archetype that's played out here is that they're worried about the signs of trouble that come up here, but end up making the wrong decisions to prevent it.

Ok, maybe I haven't made myself clear. Yes, knowing the outcome would not be a problem if he acting, dialogue, details etc were compelling enough to make me interested in the story like I was with th OT. Sadly, those were largely lacking in much of the scenes. Don't get me wrong, the PT certainly managed to do exciting action scenes (in fact that's mostly what I watch the PT for these days) but the important, acting-heavy scenes that set up those battles were weak or int he case of the Coruscant battle, outright not present.

So with less character interaction going for it than the OT, the PT has to fall back on the large set-piece action scenes, and this is where the "we know how this ends" comes in. Any sense of drama goes out the window.

For example, when I first saw ROTS, the Windu/Sidious duel was far more compelling to me than the Yoda/Sidious fight was, because I didn't know how it would play out in advance, and in that case you had a genuine feeling of "it all comes down to this." Whereas the duel with Yoda was just "oh they're throwing senate pods at each other, that's cool" with no sense of drama to it.

Weird - I knew in advance that Mace would die and that made it MORE tense.

Regardless, I'm not sure if I can follow your framework there: if the acting is interesting, then it'S interesting; if it's not, it's not.
What does it matter whether there's surprises or it's all playing out like a "Greek tragedy", if it's not interesting?

Why would you care about who dies or not if the actors didn't do the job of making you care about them? That duel in particular does very specific things to create tension - the droning score, the ease with which he defeats the others (apparently through hypnosis), the sadistic face expressios as he does those "stabby moves", and of course the old trick of finally making Mace likeable just in the previous scene.
By contrast, Yoda vs. Sidious has epic choir music playing and certainly doesn't try to create any "tensions" - and if you're not into wrinkly demigods throwing bolts at each other on top of mountains and more into "I hope he doesn't get stabbed" type of scenes, then obviously you're gonna prefer the other one.

Had Mace vs. Palpatine not done any of those things to create tension, and instead been "uninteresting acting-wise", would you still have enjoyed it? Just because you didn't know the outcome? I doubt that.

[Alkaloid]

The senate is arguably corrupt, although that's more to do with Palpatines machination than its 'natural' state. The Jedi are... flabby is the best word. They're like an old prize fighter who's let himself go. The brain still knows what it has to do but the body just can't respond the way it has to. (Most of the order firmly believe they Sith no longer exist, with a few notable exceptions like Obi Wan and Windu they aren't warriors capable of facing them any more because they never really trained to face them)

I think the OT is better because while it's a much simpler story than the PT it's much more complete. The PT tries to make Anakin the protagonist and try to make us like him all the while knowing we know he's going to fall when frankly he's just such an unlikeable character. Then they try to mirror the events in the PT to the events in the OT in a way that thematically doesn't make sense.

The character whose story should mirror Luke should be Obi Wan rather than Anakin. Obi Wan takes off with the Naboo pilots to attack the TF ship, Windu confronts Maul and is killed and his final act is to use the force to ask Obi Wan to train Anakin much the same as Obi Wan contacts Luke years later. The rest of the trilogy plays out similarly, Anakin falls and becomes Vader as planned. That way we get the final duel between Obi Wan and Darth Vader be a tragic mirror to Luke and Vader in VI. We already know Obi Wan wins the fight, so the drama comes from Obi Wan, clearly the superior combatant easily batting away Vaders reckless attacks as he tries desperately to find a way to end the fight that doesn't end in him killing his former friend, a solution that is found by Luke 25 years later.

[lGrand Anhoop]

1) There is nothing about the Jedi that suggests a decline.
1a) They believe that until faced with the evidence to the contrary.
1b) WITTF??! All of them seem to be fighters, there's not a single one that was shown incapable.

2) "Thematically" doesn't make sense how?

3) Nice rewrite, but the idea that Ob1 should be the protagonist mirroring Luke isn't any more valid than Anakin being that.
3a) Why should it be Mace Windu again?? You can still have Qui-Gon, just not as his master (if you wanna preserve the Yoda continuity), or Mace Windu acting like Qui-Gon I suppose... then stern Liam Neeson plays Windu's part lol.
3b) They already could've done that dynamic with nothing else changed.

[Patroklos]

I can't speak for you, but I see a common attitude among fans of various stories that amounts to "Its different so its bad". But a story where nothing changes is one that is at risk of rapidly becoming redundant, pointless, and dull. Change is realistic. Its good.

What I see a lot more of is people using that excuse as a strawman because they can't handle that on a subjective level someone doesn't agree with them.

[Prometheus Unbound]

I don't really like the Prequels too much, but the idea that "we knew how it would end" is really the problem here never really rang true to me. How much money has Star Wars made over the decades leading up to the Prequels? Certainly in the tens of billions, when you take into account international merchandizing and everything. What percent of those billions was actually from first-time movie-goers who didn't know how it would end? I'm sure it's a very small percentage. The idea that "we know how it ends" is some sort of major problem is utterly false. For centuries, especially taking into account Greek or Slavic story-telling traditions - people actually enjoyed stories more when they already knew how it would end. Even today, when we see a hundred-million-dollar super-hero Marvel flick, we pretty much know the good guys win by default - by that doesn't stop us from enjoying it. Indeed, this intuition seems to be scientiifcally confirmed. But really, we don't need much scientific confirmation. Every time the ancient Greeks went to listen to their local bard retell the adventures of Achilles or Hector during the Trojan war, chances are, they already knew the ending. By the same token, modern audiences mostly know that "the good guy wins" is the most likely outcome for any major blockbuster.

So no, I don't think the Prequels necessarily suck because we already knew what would happen. The story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker could have been an amazing classic. But it simply didn't pan out that way - Lucas simply wasn't able to tell the story competently. I can't say I fault him - it's a really hard story to tell - portraying a likeable hero who ultimately (but sympathetically) becomes the villain. I certainly couldn't have done better. But then again, Lucas could have hired any number of talented writers to help him... but he didn't. And so what we have is an extremely mediocre version of the fall of Anakin Skywalker. And I think the reason people get so riled up about it is because of the wasted potential - it could have been such an amazing story, but it turned out to be so mediocre. The Prequels are mostly just a series of meaningless action sequences, designed to get us from point A to B. Ironically, the most hated Prequel, Episode I, is actually the most competently structured story - sadly, the actual plot material is so inconsequential to the saga as a whole that it just doesn't matter. The actual storyline that everyone cares about - Anakin's betrayal of Obi-Wan and turn to the darkside - is so haphazardly executed that the Prequels will simply never be considered "classic" in any sense, and will likely be totally forgotten in the wake of the Disney-era Star Wars flicks.

The Prequels are the Voyager / Enterprise of Star Wars

[lGrand Anhoop]

"The story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker could have been an amazing classic. But it simply didn't pan out that way - Lucas simply wasn't able to tell the story competently. I can't say I fault him - it's a really hard story to tell - portraying a likeable hero who ultimately (but sympathetically) becomes the villain. I certainly couldn't have done better. But then again, Lucas could have hired any number of talented writers to help him... but he didn't. And so what we have is an extremely mediocre version of the fall of Anakin Skywalker."
Now all off that sounnds quite vague, and of course stands and falls with the arguments provided... or the crediibility arising from other arguments.


"The Prequels are mostly just a series of meaningless action sequences, designed to get us from point A to B."
And now the bullshit starts:
1) The action doesn't take even near the running time percentage in order to justify such a claim.
2) The only action sequence that could be called meaningless would be the droid factory.


"Ironically, the most hated Prequel, Episode I, is actually the most competently structured story - sadly,"
Oh how edgy.
No, III is the most competently structured.


"is so haphazardly executed that the Prequels will simply never be considered "classic" in any sense, and will likely be totally forgotten in the wake of the Disney-era Star Wars flicks."
And with the aforementioned credibility gone, this concluding verdict is now justified

[Galvatron]

The Prequels are the Voyager / Enterprise of Star Wars

The height of irony is that this was both a marketing campaign teaser for TPM and a cheap shot at Roland Emmerich's Godzilla...



And then people whine when TPM gets bashed for its plot.