What went wrong with the new trilogy?

[MKSheppard]

The only scene actually really memorable in the entire new trilogy was the final Anakin vs Obi Wan Showdown set along the backdrop of lava; as well as Obi wan's tearful "I loved you anakin!" line after he's cutty chopped his apprentice into a limbless mass.

Yet, when we go to the Orriginal trilogy, we have so many memorable scenes.

"Hope they don't have blasters"

------

"I'm a wanted man in twelve systems."

"I'll be careful."

"You'll be dead!"

---------

"Everything is transpiring as I have foreseen."

---------

"This fully armed and operational battlestation is now the ultimate power in the universe!"

---------

Apology Accepted, Captain Needa"

---------

"Strike him down, and complete your journey to the dark side!"

------

"So be it, JEDI" *zappity zaPPITY*

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"No distengrations."

---------

And so on. What made the OT so rich in memorable scenes, while the PT was pretty bland?

Sorry if this has been mentioned beforehand.

[Bounty]

And so on. What made the OT so rich in memorable scenes, while the PT was pretty bland?

I think Lucas was trying too hard to make it epic, rather than letting his story flow naturally from good characters. In the OT, all the galaxy-spanning drama was a backdrop for half a dozen interesting characters (cliché, but interesting); in the PT, half a dozen dull characters were the excuse to show MASSIVE ARMIES.

And I can even find a way to blame CGI for this. Getting a believable performance out of actors standing in front of a greenscreen as opposed to an actual set with actual puppets and guys in suits is just asking for cardboard performances.

Also, Lucas got full of himself. It's that je-ne-sais-quoi feeling you get when watching the PT: it feels like he was just trying to throw little bits and pieces he liked in a blender without thinking how they combined to make a good movie. Same with the quotes.

And the story sucked donkey balls.

[Old Plympto]

I remember Lucas saying that the advanced technology of the SW universe was just a backdrop - I think it was either during Classic Creatures Special or Making of a Saga. So you get to see the fancy stuff onscreen because the story takes us there and it just happens to be in the background, or the characters need to use them.

However in the prequels, the camera seems to move in on a whole bunch of fancy stuff even if the story doesn't warrant it.

For example:

When we think of the AT-AT in ESB, we know that it is something the characters did not want to face as the were packing up to leave, but to hold them off we see Luke and Wedge combat the vehicles spectacularly using fast, agile but more fragile snowspeeders as a counterpoint to the massive lumbering hulks the walkers represented.

However, what do you think of when you recall the Juggernauts on Kashyyyk? They were just things that were moving and shooting which did not really involve the characters or the audience effectively. And then, they make a good 2-page spread on the ICS.

That's the difference between the two trilogies that got to me the most.

[VT-16]

Getting a believable performance out of actors standing in front of a greenscreen

And yet, stage actors like Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee managed just fine.

[Bounty]

Getting a believable performance out of actors standing in front of a greenscreen

And yet, stage actors like Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee managed just fine.

Oh, I'm not saying it's *impossible*, or that the actors who couldn't pull it off are somehow less capable. Just that it seems far more natural to interact with a standing set and a guy in a suit than it would be with a green curtain and a guy with pinpongballs glued to his nipples.

[Knife]

The major problem with the PT's were that they were rushed. For what ever reason, Lucas took two hours out of six to show Anakin Skywalker as a 9 year old boy. And while I don't have too much of a problem with the basic story line of TPM, the fact that the next movie was ten years later stole away any chance of build up for the characters.

So that by the time of the actual clone wars, they had four hours left to tell the tale of Anakin's rise and fall concurent with the Republics/Jedi's. The simple fact that as viewers, we see the first and then the last battle of this supposedly epic war just screams it was rushed.

If we could have seen the first battle of the war in TPM and then maybe the last battle in AotC's or RotS at the begining, it would have made the war seem more epic and given time for the characters to grow and in some cases change.

[Lord Pounder]

Well the NT was aimed at kids and it shows. The entire existance of Jar Jar proves it. Having Anakin start off as a 8 year old, he should atleast have been a young man.

But mostly it comes down to originality. When SW came out no-one had seen anything like it and it blew people away. Millions of sci-fi movies have been made since which have improved on what SW invented, but the OT retained a lot of nostalgia for the people. The new trilogy offered nothing new and had no nostalgia to prop it up.

[Patrick Degan]

Partly that Lucas waited so damn long to make the prequel trilogy in the first place (wasting time on bullshit films like Howard The Duck instead) and partly that the first two films were decidely kiddified for mass-marketing purposes.

Most of the truly memorable scenes in this lot come from the third and last entry ROTS: the opera scene as Palpatine continues his subtle manipulation of Anakin, Order 66 and the downfall of the Jedi, Mace Windu's death, the Palpatine/Yoda duel in the Senate chamber, and of course the tragic last fight between Obi Wan and Anakin on Mustafar.

[VT-16]

If Lucas is being truthful about having 20% of episode 1, 20% of episode 2 and 60% of episode 3 written back in the 70s, and with the rest he just "winged it", it's not surprising his 20+ year gap brought some weird stuff.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Getting a believable performance out of actors standing in front of a greenscreen

And yet, stage actors like Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee managed just fine.

Right.

1. "Movie stars" not "actors."
Samuel L Jackson, Natalie Portman, and perhaps Hayden Christensen severely damaged the acting. British, classically-trained actors like Liam Neeson, Christopher Lee, Ian McDiarmid, and even Ewan McGregor did just fine. The U.S. doesn't know how to turn out actors; the Brits still do.

2. No continuity.
The OT readied us for "the dark times", Obi-Wan as Anakin's master, the two as generals of the "Clone Wars", Anakin discovered as "a great pilot", and "hunting down and destroying the Jedi Knights."

3. Naive political/technical concepts; no one telling Georgie "no."
How does ANH open? The seemingly endless lumbering Imperial Star Destroyer chasing the hapless Tantive IV. Beautiful cinematography, brilliant art design. What do we get instead for TPM? Bumbling battle droids that don't take themselves seriously, the slimy and uncompelling Trade Federation with its shitty doughnut ships. TPM should've opened the way ROTS did, bringing us into the the Clone Wars with a bang, and with Obi-Wan aboard a troopship escorted by Star Destroyers ready to disembark troops and have an epic battle. Or if it was too soon for war, begin with the epicness of Coruscant, jewel of the galaxy.

Back in the day they hired Joe Johnson and Ralph McQuarrie to head up art direction. The latter I understand it had an engineering education, and it shows. Instead unfortunately we got Doug Chiang, a Lucas bootlicker who wanted "artistic themes" instead of futurist realism and combined with no one around to tell Lucas his ideas were dumb we got melee weapons and catapults versus raygun-armed robots and tanks, we got tanks that couldn't shoot half their weapons, we got totally unfrightening starships, we got the Gungan race as a whole, we got the N-1 with the droid-socket that fits-no-droid. At least the MF was the result of rushing; the incompetence of art design in the PT is consistent and recurring.

4. No one around to fix George's writing.
Until ROTS, no one helped direct, design, or write. Lucas is not the best writer for his own baby, and giving the master complete control of his baby is what got us from TOS to TNG with Roddenberry. Just the same, we got the PT from Lucas once he rode the success of the OT.

[Elfdart]

I don't think there was much wrong with the prequels. Aside from A New Hope, Revenge of the Sith was by far the best of the bunch.

My only problems with the prequels are the complete miscasting of Natalie Portman. She looks all of 14 in The Phantom Menace. In Attack of the Clones she looks all of fourteen-and-a-half. By Revenge of the Sith she passes for a 17-18 year old. I read somewhere that they electronically altered her voice to make it sound lower because she sounded like a little girl. It must not have worked. They went with an older actor for Anakin between Episodes 1 and 2; they should have done it with Padme as well.

The editing in the first two sucked. You don't need two and a half hours. It's Star Wars! I saw the IMAX edit for Episode 2 (the weakest of the prequels) and cutting 20 minutes did wonders for that movie. It felt more like a Star Wars movie.

Other than that, I think the movies were great and the main reason people slam them is because of unrealistic expectations.

[Jim Raynor]

I think Padme was supposed to be 14 anyway in TPM. I don't know whether the character's age or Natalie Portman's casting came first, but I think they made it that way so that there wouldn't be such a huge age difference between her and Anakin. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have made either of them so young. Lots of people complained about Jar Jar, but I thought kiddie-Anakin was the bigger problem. Although I suppose the innocent, exuberant kid contrasts better with Darth Vader than a more mature teen or young adult would.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

For me, the worst part of the PT was Natalie Portman's acting. It was so god damned awful. Even in Episode 2's corny romantic scenes, at least Hayden Christensen acted like a whiny teenager. Natalie's acting was colder than fundie sex. By the time ROTS came around, her acting improved considerably but was still not anywhere close to the acting performance of the rest of the characters.

[Darth Ruinus]

i still dont get something though, how come Amidala was still the same age in all three prequels? why didnt she age? is it cuz her race doesnt age or something? or was it the Force that kept her young?

[Jaevric]

Imagine if, instead, the first movie took place just prior to the Clone War breaking out--with Anakin Skywalker as an 18 year old fighter pilot in the Naboo planetary militia.

The Trade Federation fleet arrives and blockades the planet. We see Queen Amidala order the planetary militia to stand down rather than throw their lives away against the vastly superior TF fleet's numbers, and a brash young pilot about the Queen's age--Skywalker--protests out of turn, drawing the Queen's attention and earning him a rebuke from his Captain.

Qui-Gon and the recently-promoted-to-Knighthood Kenobi arrive and the scene on the TF ship takes place. The two of them cut their way out and escape to the planetary surface, where they infiltrate the palace--nothing involving Gungans, thank you VERY much--and meet with the Queen and her advisors.

After due consideration, it's decided that the only option is to get Queen Amidala off the planet--but the planet's being blockaded by the Trade Federation, and Queen Amidala refuses to throw away the lives of the planetary militia to fight her way out.

Her chief of security or a militia commander says there's another option--there's a planetary defense center nearby with a squadron of starfighters. The TF is relying on starfighters to maintain the blockade--they don't have enough cruisers available to cover all the possible escape routes, so fighter patrols are being used instead. However, if something distracts the fighters in orbit, the Queen's ship may be able to get through. It's going to be rough on the "distraction," though.

Skywalker's commanding officer volunteers his squadron as the distraction, including Skywalker. If they manage to break through, the squadron and the Queen's ship will hyperspace out to Coruscant, but it is absolutely imperative that the royal yacht escapes even if the entire squadron is destroyed.

Cut to a scene where the Jedi, the Queen, and some security troops attempt a breakout. At one point, young Skywalker turns and blows away a couple of battle droids *before* the trained infantry or he consciously notices them. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were occupied with the main group of droids at the time, but they noticed what happened and trade a Meaningful Look.

After the Queen makes it to her yacht, and the pilots make it to their fighters, the security troops disobey orders to board the yacht, instead fighting a valiant rearguard action to buy the Queen's yacht time to escape. The security troops die but the yacht blows out of the hangar and heads for orbit with most of a squadron of Naboo fighters flying escort.

The Naboo fighters slam into the Trade Federation's Combat Space Patrol and a brutal dogfight ensues, in which Skywalker demonstrates literally inhuman reflexes and situational awareness. Qui-Gon mutters something about "The Force is strong with that one--how did we miss him as a youth?" and Obi-Wan just shrugs and shakes his head.

The Queen's yacht finishes computing the jump to Coruscant and it and the few remaining fighters hyperspace out moments before reinforcements arrive from the Trade Federation cruisers.

Once on Coruscant, Queen Amidala is in her apartments and distraught over the deaths of her soldiers and some of her staff. Skywalker shows up to the apartments on an errand, sees her crying, and starts to comfort her. Teenage hormones and combat reaction take over and the two of them are kissing when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan knock on the door. They break apart quickly and the two Jedi are too preoccupied with the political situation and concerns about Skywalker's ability as a Force user to notice the tension. Obi-Wan accompanies the Queen to a meeting with members of the parliament while Qui-Gon grabs Anakin and takes him to meet the Jedi Council, there to argue that Anakin is too potentially strong a Force user *not* to be trained.

The Council isn't happy about it, but--reluctantly--concedes that Qui-Gon has the right to choose his own apprentice, and if he absolutely insists on training Skywalker, on his head be it.

Queen Amidala insists on returning to Naboo with Republic troops to break the blockade, and does so, along with Skywalker and what's left of the planetary militia squadron, filled out with volunteers from Coruscant. Qui-Gon wants Skywalker to go with him, Obi-Wan and the Queen, but Skywalker argues, insisting (rightfully) that he'd be more useful in a fighter cockpit. This proves to be correct as during the fighting around the planet Skywalker breaks through the defenses of the TF command ship and puts a pair of proton torpedos into the bridge, crippling the ship long enough for a concentrated volley from the Republic's lighter starships to finish the job.

At the same time, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are accompanying the Queen to the planetary surface, where they run into Darth Maul. That fight takes place as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan draw Maul off, leaving the Republic troops to deal with the droid soldiers, and Qui-Gon dies the same way as in the original movie.

Obi-Wan is upset by his former Master's death, and vows to train Anakin himself. The Jedi Council is *very* upset about this, as the two of them are about the same age and Obi-Wan was only recently made a Knight himself, but political pressure from the Queen and Senator Palpatine force the Council to agree to let Anakin train.

***

There we go. Now we have proof that Anakin is a kickass combat fighter pilot, and of a reasonable initial attraction between him and Queen Amidala, as well as early involvement of Palpatine in guiding Skywalker's destiny.

[VT-16]

No continuity.

All of the things you listed, happened. Maybe you're complaining about the execution, which I can agree with. Podracer pilot is still different from starfighter pilot, even if both craft fly.

[Elfdart]

Getting a believable performance out of actors standing in front of a greenscreen

And yet, stage actors like Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee managed just fine.

Right.

1. "Movie stars" not "actors."
Samuel L Jackson, Natalie Portman, and perhaps Hayden Christensen severely damaged the acting. British, classically-trained actors like Liam Neeson, Christopher Lee, Ian McDiarmid, and even Ewan McGregor did just fine. The U.S. doesn't know how to turn out actors; the Brits still do.

Christensen is Canadian. Portman is from Israel. This reflects on American acting how, exactly?

2. No continuity.
The OT readied us for "the dark times", Obi-Wan as Anakin's master, the two as generals of the "Clone Wars", Anakin discovered as "a great pilot", and "hunting down and destroying the Jedi Knights."

No, no and no again. You assumed that the prequels would show the "dark times" and that Anakin was a general. If you thought Lucas was going to wrap his story around your brain bugs, that's your problem. Anakin is shown as a great pilot, whether a pod, speeder or fighter. You also misquote the line from ANH. Obi-Wan says Vader helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights -not that he did it all himself.

3. Naive political/technical concepts; no one telling Georgie "no."
How does ANH open? The seemingly endless lumbering Imperial Star Destroyer chasing the hapless Tantive IV. Beautiful cinematography, brilliant art design. What do we get instead for TPM?

You get the planet Naboo, which was about the most amazing thing I'd ever seen on a movie screen. Too bad a number of fanboys, convinced that they were going to get sci-fi like something out of Heavy Metal magazine, were already convinced Lucas was out to rape their childhoods and chose to ignore it. I give Lucas and ILM credit for trying something new that also worked.

Bumbling battle droids that don't take themselves seriously,

Unlike the stormtroopers who walk into doors.

the slimy and uncompelling Trade Federation

Who said they're supposed to be "compelling"? They're patsies, nothing more.

with its shitty doughnut ships.

You're right -cargo haulers should look kewl.

TPM should've opened the way ROTS did, bringing us into the the Clone Wars with a bang, and with Obi-Wan aboard a troopship escorted by Star Destroyers ready to disembark troops and have an epic battle. Or if it was too soon for war, begin with the epicness of Coruscant, jewel of the galaxy.

Newsflash: These movies aren't about star destroyers, the battles or any of that stuff. It's about the Skywalker family, their friends and enemies -against the backdrop of galactic scale wars -just as Gone With the Wind wasn't about the Civil War, but rather Scarlett O'Hara, her family, friends and their predicaments. Sure the ships and battles look cool, but so did the burning of Atlanta (about the only part of that movie that holds up now that I thin about it).

Back in the day they hired Joe Johnson and Ralph McQuarrie to head up art direction. The latter I understand it had an engineering education, and it shows. Instead unfortunately we got Doug Chiang, a Lucas bootlicker who wanted "artistic themes" instead of futurist realism and combined with no one around to tell Lucas his ideas were dumb

You will of course provide evidence that Johnston or McQuarrie told Lucas his ideas were dumb and Chiang didn't, right?

we got melee weapons and catapults versus raygun-armed robots and tanks,

The Gungans were supposed to be backwards and pitiful. Does the Tuskens' use of gaffi sticks prove that Johnston and McQuarrie were telling Lucas "No"?

we got tanks that couldn't shoot half their weapons, we got totally unfrightening starships,

Again, you're putting the props and sets ahead of the story and characters. The Trade Federation is supposed to be the flunkies used to stir up trouble, not Teh Uber \/illunz!

we got the Gungan race as a whole, we got the N-1 with the droid-socket that fits-no-droid. At least the MF was the result of rushing; the incompetence of art design in the PT is consistent and recurring.

The art design is exactly what Lucas wanted. He wanted to show and in fact DID show the Galactic Republic as being in a hunky-dory golden age that gets completely fucked up thanks to the flaws in some of the characters.

4. No one around to fix George's writing.

The only Star Wars movie to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay was ANH, which Lucas himself wrote. He was also responsible for most of the scripts in TESB and ROTJ, with Lawrence Kasdan doing last minute polishes on both.

Until ROTS, no one helped direct, design, or write.

Evidence?

Lucas is not the best writer for his own baby,

The facts notwithstanding

and giving the master complete control of his baby is what got us from TOS to TNG with Roddenberry. Just the same, we got the PT from Lucas once he rode the success of the OT.

Lucas wasn't "given" anything. He created the story and the characters and paid for the movies himself (most of the development costs of ANH were paid for out of Lucas' profits from American Grafitti), so the idea that someone would "let" him do anything is moronic, as is the notion of someone telling him "No". As far as Trek is concerned, whatever faults anyone might have with what Roddenberry did with TNG, it was still OK, which is more than we can say for the clown act it became under Berman.

[VT-16]

TPM should've opened the way ROTS did, bringing us into the the Clone Wars with a bang

I've heard people complain that the prequels should never have shown the CW at all, because they thought they should be much older conflicts, than what we saw.

Does the Tuskens' use of gaffi sticks prove that Johnston and McQuarrie were telling Lucas "No"?

I fail to see this dilemma from the beginning, since concept artists work for the directors and producers, not the other way around. McQuarrie got hired by Lucas to produce concept art that could sell the SW concept to the studios, he wasn't an intricate part in shaping the initial storyline for the film.

[Sam Or I]

The biggest problem... there are no characters the audience can really relate to.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Christensen is Canadian. Portman is from Israel. This reflects on American acting how, exactly?

They're American movie stars. Particularly Portman. Not exactly grooming for the better acting - the British stage actors are better. You disputing this? McDiarmid and Neeson may be the strongest actors of the entire PT.

No, no and no again. You assumed that the prequels would show the "dark times" and that Anakin was a general. If you thought Lucas was going to wrap his story around your brain bugs, that's your problem.

Excuse me? I assumed? "Before the dark times; before the Empire." Or how about, "My father didn't fight in the Clone Wars, he was a navigator aboard a spice freighter." "That's what your uncle taught you." Or "You fought in the Clone Wars?" "Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father." "When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot, and I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi."

None of this squares away without awkwardness with the PT, and Anakin as a hotshot pilot is a lot more compelling that a nerdy kid with a cliche personality. I'm discussing how the PT was weak, and how it could be made better, not that I expected GL to do what was in my head. So stuff the stawman. Cliche nine year olds make poorer characters than young men with character continuity to their older self.

Anakin is shown as a great pilot, whether a pod, speeder or fighter.

Which is WANK and stupid. I know people who can race riced up cars; can they pilot fighter jets BETTER THAN TRAINED pilots? TPM was wrapped up with wank deus ex machina and it blows cock.

You also misquote the line from ANH. Obi-Wan says Vader helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights -not that he did it all himself.

Okay, whatever. And I know that, but there wasn't much hunting down and destroying, was there? Anyhow, this is my point of least concern.

Anakin-as-a-nine-year-old is a shitty character and a poor way to start the PT. Its a weakness, and starting the trilogy off with a more AOTC-ish Anakin, before being discovered would've made for a better character. And the nine-year-old ricer being able to pilot spacecraft is just obscene wank. You know it, and everyone knows it. If you want to dispute this, whatever - if you like the taste of shit, there's no logical argument.

You get the planet Naboo, which was about the most amazing thing I'd ever seen on a movie screen. Too bad a number of fanboys, convinced that they were going to get sci-fi like something out of Heavy Metal magazine, were already convinced Lucas was out to rape their childhoods and chose to ignore it. I give Lucas and ILM credit for trying something new that also worked.

Whatever. The majority of everyone, even the people I know who never saw SW before, saw the OT afterward, or never did, and never cared too much for SW, didn't care for TPM and found it the weakest of the films they saw.

I'm not talking about GL making the worst movie in history. I'm not talking about GL rehashing the OT. I'm talking about weaknesses and how they could've been done better.

Unlike the stormtroopers who walk into doors.

Once in the entire series. At least you had the Rebels you sympathized with in OT. No one gives a fuck about the robotic clones and the bumbling droids.

Who said they're supposed to be "compelling"? They're patsies, nothing more.

And the patsies can't be scary or impressive in their own right? Darth Vader embodied evil until ROTJ we see he's really just a lapdog and enabler for the real evil: Palpatine.

I suppose he should've just been a fucking bafoon from the start?

You're right -cargo haulers should look kewl.

Warships should. McQuarrie, an engineer, produced the ISD. Doug Chiang, creator of the N-1 artpiece that looks like it ought to fall apart, made the flying saucers of doom.

I don't understand why you're being such a colossal asshole about what comes down to aesthetic preferences.

Newsflash: These movies aren't about star destroyers, the battles or any of that stuff. It's about the Skywalker family, their friends and enemies -against the backdrop of galactic scale wars -just as Gone With the Wind wasn't about the Civil War, but rather Scarlett O'Hara, her family, friends and their predicaments. Sure the ships and battles look cool, but so did the burning of Atlanta (about the only part of that movie that holds up now that I thin about it).

1. It is the start of all popcorn movies, and popcorn movies should have cool battles, not regal you with bureacratic bumbling and "tax disputes."

2. That'd be nice but Skywalker's mom is an ice queen with no personality or tits and is underage, and his dad is an obsessive sociopathic creep. And he's introduced as an annoying wankfest kid. This is neither good drama, NOR is it good popcorn movie. Pick or try to mix between the two, but don't fail at both.

You will of course provide evidence that Johnston or McQuarrie told Lucas his ideas were dumb and Chiang didn't, right?

McQuarrie was simply a better educated and more intelligent art director than Chiang, their mistakes speaking to that.

But Gary Kurtz did tell Lucas "no" and eventually left over their differences (which is why ROTJ was weaker than ANH or TESB), and he had to compromise with other talents and personalities, as well as the studio. Same thing with Roddenberry and TOS; collaborations produce good stuff, "the true intent" produces TNG and the PT.

The Gungans were supposed to be backwards and pitiful. Does the Tuskens' use of gaffi sticks prove that Johnston and McQuarrie were telling Lucas "No"?

Did they fight field armies?

Again, you're putting the props and sets ahead of the story and characters. The Trade Federation is supposed to be the flunkies used to stir up trouble, not Teh Uber \/illunz!

Just because I said the art direction could've been better and used better talent and the villians could've been more dangerous and compelling to drive better suspense doesn't mean I don't think the bigger problem is that the actors sucked or didn't act their best. In fact, I think I listed it No. 1, didn't I?

The art design is exactly what Lucas wanted. He wanted to show and in fact DID show the Galactic Republic as being in a hunky-dory golden age that gets completely fucked up thanks to the flaws in some of the characters.

The Galactic Republic's ships were supposed to be geometrically impossible in order to show its decadence? GL describes vague shapes, artists draw them, and in the PT they managed to make every fighter in the entire series not fit R2.

The only Star Wars movie to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay was ANH, which Lucas himself wrote. He was also responsible for most of the scripts in TESB and ROTJ, with Lawrence Kasdan doing last minute polishes on both.

And that's exactly my point. Kasdan, Kurtz, and Kershner helped him out and it shows.

Evidence?

What are you talking about? Its plain public evidence that he had co-producers, writers, and directors in the OT, and in the PT he did everything by himself, except ROTS, where he got playwright Tom Stoppard to polish the dialogue and ghost re-write the script.

The facts notwithstanding

Everyone has poorly concieved ideas. GL is the lynchpin without which there is no SW. But that doesn't mean he doesn't need collaborators and other talented people to give him harsh advice sometimes. Groupthink is a poor substitute for constructive criticism. And this time there were no Kasdan, Kurtz, and Kershner to help - and his conflict with the latter two is a matter of public record, and why they both didn't return for ROTJ (and why ROTJ is weaker than ANH or TESB).

Lucas wasn't "given" anything. He created the story and the characters and paid for the movies himself (most of the development costs of ANH were paid for out of Lucas' profits from American Grafitti), so the idea that someone would "let" him do anything is moronic, as is the notion of someone telling him "No". As far as Trek is concerned, whatever faults anyone might have with what Roddenberry did with TNG, it was still OK, which is more than we can say for the clown act it became under Berman.

I just said Lucas gained from his collaborators' help in ANH and TESB, like
Kasdan, Kurtz, and Kershner, despite any disagreements he may've had with them. This time around, it was almost entirely his show without much outside talent, with notable exception of Tom Stoppard and ROTS is accordingly by far the strongest of the PT.

[Edward Yee]

The biggest problem... there are no characters the audience can really relate to.

While I'm not certain about this overall, I'd definitely say that Episode I could have (in addition to other issues with it) have used a better BBEG than Darth Maul in this regard. Now that I think about it, something that stands out here is that in the OT Vader and Palpatine indisputably were the compelling linchpins, but I'd say now that Darth Maul was somewhat having the BBEG be a lackey. (As for the fight choreography... hmm.)

[Jim Raynor]

i still dont get something though, how come Amidala was still the same age in all three prequels? why didnt she age? is it cuz her race doesnt age or something? or was it the Force that kept her young?

She's not the same age, and she's a normal human. The real life reason she doesn't look all that much older is because that much time didn't pass between the filming of the movies, and she was already a couple years older than her character's age of 14 when she made TPM.

[xerex]

My 3 cents.

Movie I should have been--
The events of TPM squashed into a 20 min prologue, and then we start off with AOTC.

Movie II :Clone Wars , show the relationship of Padme and Anikin with a cliff hanger ending of Grevious attacking Coruscant and Palps being kidnapped. (I havent seen the cartoon yet)

Movie III Revenge of the Sith. with the ghost of Qui Gon included.

[xerex]

After all what where the important events of TPM......only Qui Gons death and Sidious' manipulations.

Whether Padme and Ani meet at age 14 or 19 doesnt matter.

Ani's past as a slave can always be explained later through dialogue

[Darth Wong]

You're all overthinking this. Yes, one could do major reworking of the entire prequel trilogy, but the basic framework as-is could have been fine if there was somebody second-guessing Lucas along the way. There are plenty of scenes which didn't work at all, but which could have worked with a bit of tweaking. Instead of saying that those things needed to be dropped completely, one could just as easily argue that they should have been polished.

In other words, the problem was the lack of conflict. Nobody there to tell Mr. Lucas something like "this scene needs a dialogue re-write" or "that joke totally ruins the gravitas of the scene" or "I'm not seeing much sense of emotional impact here."