Yeah, I've always thought the prequels had a lot of promise ruined by poor execution and a lot of foolish indulgence on Lucas' part.

I never understood the complaints from some quarters about Palpatine's plans making no sense. It was very clear to me that he was setting up multiple routes to power between the militarization of the Republic, his secret programming of the Clones, and his guidance of the Separatists. If for whatever reason the Republic had balked at abandoning liberty in favor of security and making him Emperor, he had both the Clone and Droid armies with which to conquer it by force. Though obviously the plan to have the Republic willingly hand him the reins of power was the one that would put him most securely in control. And by forcing the Jedi to be soldiers rather than peacekeepers, he caused them to be off-balance and vulnerable when it came time to betray them.

Revenge of the Sith is definitely better than AotC, but it still suffers from many of the same problems. No scene that contains dialogue is filmed in a way to give it any narrative weight, which means your mind assumes that the effect-laden action scenes are supposed to be the most important bits. They aren't. If I listen to the dialogue and pretend it's a book, it's pretty good! But man is it poorly crafted. This could have been an amazing movie. Instead, it's a kind of okay one.

The sheer ridiculousness of the spectacle also takes away from the emotional weight of the action. Watching the History of the Lightsaber thing that Mark Hamill recently hosted, I was shocked out how much more brutal and well-choreographed Anakin and Obi-Wan's duel was when I was watching the scenes of the actors fighting on the sound stage before all the effects were put in. With all the effects it just becomes a wall of noise and CGI lava that drowns out what's actually happening with the characters.

I think it's still a pretty effective scene, but then it's all undercut with Padme's death of a broken heart and Darth Vader's epic "Nooooo!"

HBO's Dune is the greatest of ideas.

wibble

WANT

(But I want Ron Moore to make it, so we'll have to wait until he finishes Outlander.)

I think it's still a pretty effective scene, but then it's all undercut with Padme's death of a broken heart and Darth Vader's epic "Nooooo!"

I saw a fan theory that Padme dies because Palpatine drains her life into keeping Anakin alive until he can be properly Vader-fied, which redeems that aspect somewhat.

There's no help for the "Noooo!", unfortunately.

At least it appears that James Earl Jones didn't make a new recording of Vader's voice for that specific moment: [link]

So if anybody else is inspired to rewatch the prequels for some reason, I can't speak highly enough of watching the fanedited versions created by Hal 9000 (details available on fanedit.org here: [link] ).

Getting hold of them is a bit tricky, but e-mail me and I can talk you through what I did.

He makes many small cuts and edits that, together, alleviate some of the worst continuity problems between the prequels and the original trilogy (Why doesn't Obi-Wan recognize R2-D2? Why does Leia remember even images of her mother?) as well as reducing the cheesiness-factor many-fold (much less Jar Jar hijinks, making him seem semi-competent. No inane dialogue from the battle droids. The incredibly bad Naboo picnic scene is only about 1 minute long, which actually makes their falling in love more believable, Yoda doesn't use a lightsaber at all in the big Dooku battle)

It can't make the acting any better, or the CGI look any more real, and the horrendous epic Nooooooooooo! is definitely still there, but it is a vast improvement over the original series.

Huh. But I like the Yoda/Dooku light saber battle for its sheer over-the-topness.

Which set, Gris? Newer or older?

Re George Lucas's comments: He has the nerve to claim to have done something new? Star Wars was one of the most derivative series ever. There is zero in it you can't find in 50's space opera books. For that matter most of what was in it could have been found in the old Sci-Fi serials - Buck Rodgers, Flash Gordon - minus the Star Wars big budget. Filmed Science Fiction was undergoing a period of breaking away from the cliches. It is hard to believe that one year after the release of The Man Who Fell to Earth, we saw the release of Star Wars - damaged Tinker Toys and Legos in Space, with added Action heroes. Star Wars has its charms. But *originality*? Please.