Star Wars Prequel's- Movie Review

   Instead of just picking specific episodes from the prequel trilogy, I rather just address the series as a whole as my opinion is pretty much the same on a of these films. Let me just start of and say that I was a huge Star Wars fan during my early childhood as I would watch one of the three movies every day multiple times and you know, I still think the movies are great to this day because the originals were able to combine multiple film genre 's into one to make it appealing for the masses. Unfortunately, that not the same with the prequel's  as they lacked the sense of fantasy and the idea of adventure that the original films had. I just believe that George Lucas's career just went completely downhill from the release of "The Phantom Menace" as I really didn't think he cared anymore and it was only about shoving as much crap on screen as possible to he could make money off toys. There's also the argument the prequel's were made in order to appeal to the new generation of Star War's fanatics, trying to rekindle to magic that was left back in 1977. Well, it didn't work as I don't think this was a story that necessarily needed to be told because the franchise would lose respect of audiences anyway. It's just a same to see just a great franchise go to waste because of these films so enough of this conversation as I promised to analyze these films.

 So let's look at the first film "Episode I: The Phantom Menace". Like many people, I was excited for the film to be released as I never thought that after twenty or so years, Lucas would start a line of new films. My expectations were high I thought to myself "There's no way Lucas could screw this up!". And then I saw the movie...ouch. When you think of "Star Wars" does a trade federation or space taxes come to mind? Yeah I didn't think so as it's basically the plot of the entire movie. We are introduced to wooden characters such as qui gon jinn and  obi wan Kenobi, two Jedi who have no personality whatsoever and we never really get much of a back story about them. Then we are introduced to the annoying cartoon rabbit JAR JAR BINKS, which pretty much put the nail in the coffin for whatever chance Star Wars had to impressing the audience. I understand that Lucas really wanted to appeal to little kids but he doesn't really make much contribution to the story other than being  comic relief. Every time this character opened his mouth, I wanted to throw my TV remote at the television screen. He just felt completely out of place to the whole feeling of Star Wars and the only thing positive thing is that he would later be ignored in the later films but it still didn't the sequels better. You see, in the original Star Wars films, characters such as "C3-P0" or "Chewbacca" actually served a purpose to the overall story because multiple times, whether direct or indirect, they would save the main protagonist from peril and they weren't annoying. Jar Jar is the exact opposite as he constantly makes an ass out of himself when ever he's on screen which doesn't help the audience establish a connection with the character. I also need to mention the "cookie ucutter" dialogue and delivery by the actor's and actresses, the worst being from Anakin Skywalker when he say something along the line of "Are you an Angel?".  It just support's the idea that Lucas must've finished the script in an hour and decide to direct his attention to the Lightsaber fights and space battles. I could go on and on about how many problems this film has but I'll just sum up the big standouts. The whole idea of Midichlorians took away the fantasy aspect of "Star Wars" and made it science fiction, Ray Park as Darth Maul was only casted for his martial art abilities and not for his acting so we don't get a back story to his character, the amount of direction focus put towards random CGI character takes away from the story as it isn't needed, It just goes on.


So we knew episode I was a disaster but "Episode II: Attack of the Clones" looked promising right? NO! In fact many people argue that the second film is the worst of the series for numerous reasons. One of which is the awkward and forced relationship between the two character's, Anakin and Padme.  It's extremely dull as the dialogue is just horrible between these two, one of them being Anakin's opinion about sand. Do you see the pattern here? With a title like episode II, you think they wouldn't focus the majority of their time on this relationship. I'd also like to mention the amount of CGI back rounds used in this film as I noticed the use of this becomes more frequent throughout the films. It's ok to use computer generated images in you're film but not for the whole movie. It start's to look like a video game and not a movie and it certainly doesn't help the Actors and Actresses. You start to lose a sense of realism with both the actors and the world around them. I guess lucas didn't want to travel all over the place and wanted to just stick to one area. Basically, the film highlights the rise of the Sith and the start of the transformation of Anakin Skywalker to the dark side. None of the problems that were addressed from the first film weren't corrected for the second and it just becomes more of the same. If there was anything positive about film, It would be when the film was over.

Now we get to the final film of the trilogy and at this point, my expectations were extremely low and I pretty much lost all faith within the franchise. Even if it is considered the best of the three films, It didn't feel like Star Wars and unlike the previous films, the movie takes a darker tone and gets a full PG-13 rating. Lucas's is now trying to stray away from his original path of appealing to a new generation of Star Wars fans. Just the change from the annoying Jar Jar Binks from episode I to a  fallen Jedi in episode II who decides to slaughter children feels disjointed. I thought the audience was going to be introduced to a kind hearted character who unfortunately was seduced to the dark side. The problem is we never got that from the first two films as they just made Anakin's character evil from the beginning. You just have no sympathy for him and it unfortunate that the audience wasn't able to connect with a main protagonist because there was never one to begin with. And that's the big problem with all three films, the characters. If one was killed off, you never really cared because there was nothing about them that really stuck out or they were underdeveloped. The cons outdo the pros in these films and I think it really didn't help expand the story but rather hurt it. Even  20 years after the release of the original films, people were still talking about it which showed it stood the test of time. However, the prequels make you want to forget that they were even created.