{"id":1873,"date":"2019-02-08T13:48:35","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T21:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/?p=1873"},"modified":"2019-02-18T19:06:42","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T03:06:42","slug":"nostalgic-prequelitis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/nostalgic-prequelitis\/","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgic Prequelitis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Star Wars<\/em> prequels are objectively,\nirredeemably terrible, a blight not just on the beloved franchise but on\nnarrative storytelling itself. This is not an opinion, but a fact that I hope\nyou will comprehend by the time I am finished here. Sadly, there is a misguided\nevolution in the thinking of some otherwise rational adults, a tendency to view\nthe prequels in a more forgiving light in the post-Disney era of Star Wars<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You must resist. Do not be tempted by the Dark Side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s true that many of you were children around the turn\nof the 21st century and had your first exposure to Star Wars<\/em> via the\nprequels. You have fond childhood memories wrapped up in the prequels, and you\nthink older fans, those of us who cut our teeth on the Original Trilogy, are\njust being mean when we mock your love of the prequels. Actually, we\u2019re being\ncruel to be kind, to save you from yourselves. You will thank us later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many things that I loved as a child that I later had to admit were not as good as I remembered, some I would now be embarrassed to admit. Just because something is wrapped in the warm haze of nostalgia does not make it good, and nostalgia is no defense for loving something undeserving of your love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully, by the time I am finished, you will understand why your love of the Star Wars<\/em> prequels is misguided, as misguided as the toxic hatred toward <\/a>The Last Jedi<\/a><\/em>, and why you must leave it behind if you are to grow as a fan of the franchise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Acting and Directing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

These two elements are indelibly intertwined in the prequels. The two Anakins, Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christiansen, get most of the blame here, but that is not deserved. It\u2019s true that neither actor seems comfortable in his role, and their line readings are often cringeworthy. But, to be fair to them, none of the more experienced actors in these films, not Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, nor Natalie Portman, give performances in these films worthy of their career highlight reels. Neither do Ewan MacGregor and Ian McDiarmid, whose performances are far and away the best in the all three films. Ewan comes off best, although he\u2019d probably finish second to McDiarmid if it weren\u2019t for the last act of Revenge of the Sith<\/em>. For two and a half films, McDiarmid\u2019s performance as Palpatine is a master class in subtlety and manipulation, only to go completely off the rails at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t agree with me? Two words: UNLIMITED POWERRRRRRRR!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, we have to cut Hayden Christiansen and Jake Lloyd some slack if none of the more experienced actors were at the top of their games, either. All performances in the prequels, for better or for worse, mostly worse, have one thing in common: working under George Lucas as their director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to The Phantom Menace<\/em>, Lucas had directed only\nthree films. The last one, the original Star Wars<\/em>, was more than\ntwenty years earlier. It would be understandable if there were a little rust on\nhis directorial toolbox during the first of the prequels, but nothing really\ngets better over the course of the next two films. The problem must go deeper\nthan that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His first film, THX-1138<\/em>, was an art house\nscience fiction movie that didn\u2019t require a lot of emoting from its cast.\nAccording to Marc Maron\u2019s podcast interview with Ron Howard, Lucas did not work\nclosely with the cast while shooting his classic American Graffiti<\/em>,\nleaving the actors to function like an improv group and mostly direct\nthemselves. Fortunately, this turned out to be a stroke of genius which worked\nbrilliantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Significantly, according to another rumor, the person who worked\nclosest with the cast during the shooting of the original Star Wars<\/em> in\n1976 was the film\u2019s producer Gary Kurtz, and not George Lucas. Apparently, this\nwas to appease Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness, as the veteran actors were\nexasperated by Lucas\u2019 standoffishness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever Lucas\u2019 merits as a technological and narrative\nvisionary, and they are many, his limited filmography as a director doesn\u2019t\npaint a picture of an \u201cactor\u2019s director.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is most important in the cases of Jake Lloyd and\nHayden Christiansen. If you are going to hang responsibility for your\nblockbuster epic on the shoulders of two young, very inexperienced actors, the\ndirector needs to be there for those actors in a close Master\/Padewan\nrelationship. Leaving neophyte actors to sink or swim on their own in films of\nthis scale is unforgivable directorial malpractice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I personally think that, if ever there was a Star Wars<\/em>\nfilm that Steven Spielberg should have directed, it was The Phantom Menace<\/em>.\nSpielberg is the best in the business when it comes to working with child\nactors, and with him at the helm, Jake Lloyd would have been in much better\nhands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Casting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also possible that Lloyd and Christiansen were just\nwrong for the role. Famously, Lucas cast both actors himself, without the usual\nexhaustive search that a production would normally do for such an important\nrole. It\u2019s impossible to know if, had Lucas allowed the roles to be cast in the\nmore traditional way, the results would have been any different. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t to suggest that Jake or Hayden were necessarily\nbad actors. It\u2019s possible to be a perfectly good actor, but completely wrong\nfor the role. Hayden\u2019s work in Shattered Glass<\/em> suggests that, with the\nright script and competent direction, the kid had chops. Sadly, the prequels\nseem to have irreparably derailed his career, so we may never know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more sadly, his experience in the prequels appear to\nderailed Jake Lloyd\u2019s life, and not just his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would have been worth seeing what these actors could\nhave done with a director who had the right skills for working with his cast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Failing that, it would have been instructive to see what\nhappened after a more exhaustive search to cast the role of Anakin in the three\nprequels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Producers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You could say the big meta-problem with the prequels is\nthat the executive producer made lousy choices when it came to picking the director\nand the screenwriter, both of those also being George Lucas, and you would not\nbe wrong, but George was not the only producer on the prequels to fail\nmiserably at his job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick McCallum was George\u2019s Number Two at LucasFilm at the\ntime of the prequels. In that role, it would his job to counsel his boss away\nfrom bad decisions, because he would be the one person at LucasFilm who could\nsafely speak truth to power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGeorge, this Jar-Jar character might be seen by some as\nracist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGeorge, maybe we could try a less racist accent for the\nTrade Federation guys.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGeorge, maybe we could run your script past a couple more\nscreenwriters. I think we need to tighten the dialog.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGosh, George, maybe we should let the casting department\ndo their job and find us the best Anakin out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s possible that, behind closed doors, McCallum did\nspeak truth to power, and Lucas simply didn\u2019t listen. However, the documentary\nfeatures on the prequel DVDs paint a picture of McCallum as a shameless yes-man\nwith his lips surgically attached to George Lucas\u2019 ass. It\u2019s hard to imagine\nthe person we see on screen standing up to his boss in private.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, if Lucas hired McCallum because<\/em> he was\na yes-man, then that failure is also on Lucas as much as it is on McCallum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Writing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Again, if the DVD documentaries (and other stories) are to\nbe believed, George Lucas shot the prequels largely from his first draft. He\nsat down, hand wrote the script on a legal pad, had someone type it out, and\nshot what he had written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a writer, I can say with both confidence and authority,\nyou never do this<\/em>. Writing is rewriting. Lucas\u2019 failure to rewrite\nhimself or let another screenwriter take a pass at the script shows in the\ncreaky dialog and \u201ctell, not show\u201d storytelling. This is why Star Wars<\/em>\nfans the world over get a case of the giggles anytime anyone mentions the word\n\u201csand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It didn\u2019t have to be that way. Mark Hamill, everyone\u2019s\nfavorite Luke Skywalker, likes to tell the story of his screen test for the\nfirst film, even reciting some of the dialog from memory. That dialog is\nterrible, too, and it sounds just like dialog from the prequels. Of course, the\ndialog we hear in the first film is much tighter than it is in the prequels,\npresumably due to the script taking some extra trips through the typewriter.\nSince George Lucas gets sole writing credit on the original Star Wars<\/em>,\nwe are left to conclude that, when he does rewrite himself, he is perfectly\ncapable of writing good dialog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucas\u2019 failure to do any rewriting on the prequels is\neither down to arrogance, thinking himself too brilliant to need rewriting, or\nlaziness. Neither is forgivable in filmmaking on this scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, I have not parted company with most Star\nWars<\/em> fans who, even if they find things to enjoy about the prequels, are\nwilling to admit their many flaws. To them, these films are great stories,\nbadly told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where I disagree with my fellow fans is that I believe the\nunderlying story that Lucas was telling in the prequels was also irredeemably bad.\nStrip away the bad dialog, dodgy acting, and other flaws, and you are still\nleft with a bad story, badly told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the prequels, the tragic story of Anakin\nSkywalker\u2019s fall and turn to the Dark Side happened because a lovesick young\nman had a bad dream and was worried about his girlfriend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give me a break. What should have been epic is reduced to\nthe level of Grade-Z Young Adult romance, and any self-respecting YA publisher\nwould have seen this nonsense back to George Lucas with a polite rejection form\nletter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More importantly, the cause of Anakin\u2019s downfall, and his\nstory in general, feels disconnected from the larger story of the prequels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe this central flaw is why, at the end of\nprequels, it still felt like there was much less at stake than in the Original\nTrilogy, that the story was ultimately inconsequential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, a man named Dave Filoni told a much better\nstory over the course of an animated television series. For those who don\u2019t\nknow, Filoni oversees animated television over at LucasFilm. His first series, Clone\nWars<\/em>, told the story of Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi between episodes 2 and\n3. It ran for six seasons in the 2000s and, in my opinion, did a lot to\nreinvigorate interest in Star Wars<\/em> after the disappointment of the prequels.\nI can\u2019t be sure, but I also think Clone Wars<\/em> might have helped foster\nthe more charitable view of the prequels we see these days, so it has that to\nanswer for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His second series, Rebels<\/em>, told the story of a\nragtag band fighting the Empire in the years before the original trilogy. One\nof the rebels is a young man named Ezra Bridger, who aspires to be a Jedi. Over\nthe course of the series, Ezra seeks to become more powerful in the Force so he\ncan ultimately defeat the Sith once and for all. In seeking this power, he is\ntempted by the Dark Side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, substitute Anakin\u2019s name for Ezra\u2019s and make that the\noverall story arc of the prequels. Anakin seeks to become the most powerful\nJedi ever to defeat the Sith once and for all. In seeking this power, he becomes\nthe very thing he sought to destroy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me that\u2019s not a thousand times more tragic, and a\nmillion times more epic, than the story we got in the prequels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be no surprise that many Star Wars<\/em>\nfans, and probably many at LucasFilm, view Dave Filoni as the creative\nsuccessor to George Lucas. Kathleen Kennedy may be in charge, but she appears\nto have little interest in guiding the creative direction of Star Wars<\/em>.\nElevating Filoni to have ultimate responsibility over those decisions for Star\nWars<\/em> across all media would be a genius move. I think it would go a long\nway towards curing the minor disarray the franchise finds itself in these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If only Filoni had been in position to whisper in George\nLucas\u2019 ear back when he was originally mapping out the prequel trilogy. Maybe\nthe results would have been very different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we have what we have, and with the same basic story in\nplace, even with better directing, better acting, and better writing, the Star\nWars<\/em> prequels would still have been a missed opportunity and a massive\ncreative failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, I mock your love for the Star Wars prequels, but it’s for your own good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[357],"tags":[343,342,341,193],"class_list":["post-1873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-george-lucas","tag-lucasfilm","tag-prequels","tag-star-wars"],"yoast_head":"\nNostalgic Prequelitis - Paul McElligott Dot Com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/nostalgic-prequelitis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nostalgic Prequelitis - Paul McElligott Dot Com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yes, I mock your love for the Star Wars prequels, but it's for your own good.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/nostalgic-prequelitis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Paul McElligott Dot Com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/paulmcelligott\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-02-08T21:48:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-02-19T03:06:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/prequels.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Paul McElligott\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@PaulMcElligott\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@PaulMcElligott\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Paul McElligott\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/nostalgic-prequelitis\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.paulmcelligott.com\/blog\/post\/nostalgic-prequelitis\/\",\"name\":\"Nostalgic Prequelitis - 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