It’s fascinating how they were able to blockade something in 3d space with something that looked a lot like a 2d structure. Must be some Liu Cixin kind of shit going on there.
I don’t think they have the concept of orbits in Star Wars. Damaged ships just happen to fall into planets all the time.
They usually come out of hyperspace just above the planet so they won’t have orbital velocity.
Why not?
The polarity of the Khyber crystals or something.
I mean it really looks like they exit at a speed of some sort and the rest is imagination, usually when a science hole is found in the space opera it is pretty huge
It exists but isn’t really shown for the same reason reasonable battle tactics are a super power in Warhammer 40k, rule of cool.
A lot of sci-fi suffers from space ships hanging in the air in exactly the way that bricks don’t. Trek does it too.
the prequels politics were really interesting. it was most things else about them that sucked
Love that they went deeper into the politics in the prequels. Wish the trade route blockade bit had been more fleshed out.
I want to see more Star Wars plotlines that aren’t JUST about the heroes. Of course I haven’t seen the more recent shows or played too many of the games. I think S1 or S2 of The Mandalorian is the newest thing I’ve seen. Haven’t had the time to keep up and maybe there’s lovely new Star Wars content that’s perfect for me and I just haven’t seen it yet.
I’d really love to see something in the lower levels of Coruscant. Like the cancelled game Star Wars 1313. I’d love to know more about the politics of different eras.
There’s an interesting universe, interesting planets, interesting species and people. But most stories are about a select few heroes and villains (thankfully more than just the Skywalker and Palpatine lineages now). There’s so much more that could be done without being repetitive. It’s like a money printing machine that they’re just not using.
You would like Andor if you haven’t tried it already.
I have not, but I’ve heard good things. I’ll see about adding it to my server.
It’s about the inner works of the start of the rebellion, there are “heroes” yes, but it very down to earth and refreshing. One of top points of the series after Rogue One.
He’s still on the hook for the special editions which were a worse crime than any of the prequels
I’d take Obi-Wan vs. Anakin over Jedi Rocks any day
Got a little to far into the K pile one new years and spent multiple hours trying to figure out if I was hallucinating or watching the remastered versions. I’m still not sure
Footage of Vance during the negotiations:
This made me go look it up out of curiosity, and apparently Star Wars kid is 38, Vance is 41. Close enough.
That’s wild and kind of makes me want to see him do “Star Wars middle age man.”
Dude has to get up for work tomorrow, he doesn’t need the shoulder and back pain just for your entertainment.
Source: similar age, sore shoulder from randomly sleeping on it “odd”
But maybe if somebody would place a nice stick or broom near him he couldn’t resist.
Ha, that’s fair and very considerate of you!
I miss the days when the scariest part about sleep was just nightmares…
he was busy surveying the persian couches in iran.
Star Wars Kid deserves better than to be compared to the VP
Star Wars Kid was so ahead of his time. Nowadays, that video would just be the first in a series called “can I train to be a Jedi in 30 days using only household objects?”
I totally think Star Wars could’ve pulled off a more political plot – I actually even think it could’ve been just as good for a popcorn flick as the OT and far better for the people who want deep, complex, meaningful lore while enhancing the OT. Palpatine’s plan to instigate a war and play both sides, to me, is the actually perfect Palpatine backstory. Anakin’s backstory in the (very) broad strokes is extremely compelling too, and Obi-Wan was overall fantastic. Problem is that George completely fucked up the writing, Anakin’s character development and his relationship with Padmé, a lot of the acting, etc., and squanders so much of the potential the premise had.
This new wave of prequel apologia, that, imo, was catalyzed by the influx of memes, is pointing at criticisms of the prequels from like 15 years ago while totally ignoring the more nuanced, well-argued, and – I think – damning criticisms of the modern day. It’s basically strawmanning when the criticisms are so old and so dead.
One of the scenes that bothers me the most is where Anakin states that from his perspective, the Jedi are evil, and then gives zero reasons. But it would be trivial to explain himself.
The Jedi are a religious organization that wields great authoritarian political power, often unilaterally, including later as we observed, political assassinations. They’re obsessed with finding people who are chosen at birth and have a policy of rejecting anyone who is too old to be fully indoctrinated.
They’re basically fascists. If you ever eliminated the sith, the next thing you’d want to eliminate are the Jedi.
How much more interesting would it be if they actually presented the Jedi, including their inherent flaws?
That’s arguably true, albeit a rather uncharitable interpretation of canon, but I don’t think Anakin is capable of articulating it at that point.
I mean, that’s a calm and logical argument about the flaws in the Jedi Order.
The trouble is, Anakin has gone full Sith at that point and is running off emotion - “the Jedi are evil because they treated me like shit, they killed my mother, they want to kill my wife and child, and they’re trying to overthrow and execute the one person who ever treated me like a human being”.
As bad as the dialogue in that scene is, it would be worse if Anakin stopped to debate philosophy in the middle of his rage-fueled murder attempt.
Agree with your comment mostly, but I think the prequel apologia is catalyzed by all the kids who watched when they were less than 10 years old becoming adults a decade ago, and remembering them through the rose-tinted lens of nostalgia.
In the prequel heyday Lucasfilm absolutely deluged the world with toys and cross-marketed products, those kids were surrounded by it and of course watched the films, saw the cool parts, and didn’t understand enough to see that the films were very flawed from an adult perspective.
I blame Weird Al, personally. I can’t listen to The Saga Begins without legitimately wanting to watch that movie at least a little.
I’d always thought it was catalyzed by the widespread shitposts which were then seen by kids who’d never watched or been exposed to the prequels before. The kids, in my interpretation, took the tongue-in-cheek love for the prequels and the way the meme community would twist the prequels’ flaws into strengths (under 7 layers of irony) and adopted it as an unironic love for them.
I agree, and i think it’s more than just nostaliga. All the additional media/shows added so much extra context, which makes the movies seem better then they actually are, because it tends to get blended together in people’s minds growing up.
Characters like Anakin or Darth Maul, who are wrtten absolutely terribly in the movies are much more liked because of shows like Clone Wars, which influenced the way people remember the movies additionally to the nostalgia.
Yeah that’s a great point. Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars did an amazing job expanding and legitimizing the plots and characters introduced in the prequels.
I’ve not seen the clone wars, but I found the prequel to be more engaging. Tho I didn’t really watch much star wars growing up. I caught up as an adult.
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As a late millennial who was less than 10 when the (first two) prequels came out, and has now been an adult for roughly decade, I still maintain that the prequels are completely okay and I will die on that hill.
Yeah, Anakin was a whiny kid. So was Luke, so that’s another thing they share in common. And his emotional instability set the stage for his turn to the dark side.
Could some things have been done better? Sure. But the prequels were still a really good political thriller/tragedy. Arguably even a masterpiece.
The ideas in the prequels gave us a lot of really good supplemental content. It’s a shame the movies themselves weren’t better made.
I’ve always defended the prequels. The OT was an existential fight for survival under the oppression of a tyrannical government. The prequels were a grand political thriller that utilized tragedy to set the stage for the OT. Attempting to view them as within the same sub-genre has always been a mistake.
But tracing the plot from:
“trade guild doesn’t want to pay taxes” -> “blockades a peaceful planet” -> “republic sends knight-diplomats to negotiate” -> “they discover a plot to invade, and an attempt is made on their lives” -> “they escape to the planet, warn some people (and rescue captive government” -> “escape, have an engine failure, wind up in the middle of nowhere where they coincidentally encounter the chosen one and free him from his bondage” -> “trade guild forms full-blown separatist union” -> “chosen one grows up in an apprenticeship as the order or knight-diplomats attempt to manage the situation” -> “both sides secretly build an army, and eventually a clash ignites a full-scale war” -> “war culminates in the destruction of the separatists, albeit at the expense of liberty throughout the republic, which is then declared an empire, as the knight-diplomats are treacherously betrayed and destroyed”
It couldn’t have been any better, in my opinion.
Especially when you trace the thread of Palpatine as:
“senator of blockaded nation (secretly orchestrating the blockade)” -> “Ousts sitting chancellor and takes his place” -> “Secretly orchestrates separatist movement building an army” -> “Uses ensuing war to claim emergency powers” -> “Gradually consolidates power throughout the war until he becomes a de facto dictator” -> “Subtly manipulates the chosen one to gain his loyalty and plague him with fears about his loved-one” -> “Use his emotions to turn him to the dark side, reveals himself as a Sith lord, and orchestrates the betrayal and destruction of the Jedi Order” -> “Declares himself emperor” -> “Secretly builds a weapon of mass destruction” -> “Uses it to rule through fear and eventually dissolves the senate.”
Scrutinizing the screenwriting and acting is fair, but I think it misses the point. Monet wasn’t famous for his brush strokes. If you go to an art museum, and examine his paintings under a magnifying glass (you might get yelled at to stand behind the invisible line), you’ll probably wonder why he’s so famous. Back up a few paces, and look at the whole painting, and suddenly you’ll get it.
For me, the prequels aren’t about the acting. They’re about the plot. And I find it expertly crafted.
Idk if you can just ignore the acting in a movie, but I’ll also always defend the prequels to some degree. Yes, George Lucas missed in terms of the tone, but as you said at it’s core there is a compelling story. Unlike the sequels that have some great visuals, but completely fail in terms of story.
I mean they would certainly have been better with better acting, but my point was that if you look at the big picture, it holds up. You just might have to squint a little to blur out some of the finer details…
But yes, I think we can all agree that the sequels were criminally shit. High production costs ≠ good movies…
I agree that the prequels could have been great movies they just got hampered by the fact that George Lucas did not have a co-director who is allowed to tell him no
His first wife saved Star Wars in the editing bay. He was wise to let others direct Empire and Jedi.
In my own personal opinion, there are at least two major things that bring the prequels down:
-
The pacing sucks. They tried to cram too much shit into three movies, and the Episode 1 was kind of a wash for character development because they spend the entire movie simply introducing us to the main characters for the next two films. If they had either spread it out over more films or narrowed their scope a little more, it would have been a much more enjoyable viewing experience.
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The dialogue is bad. The wooden acting, flat delivery of the lines, and lame slapstick I attribute to George being high off his own supply - both fans and the creative team puffing him up and telling him what a genius he is when what he really needed was someone in the room to step in and write and direct for him when he was clearly having issues with both late into production. Just in general he needed someone to tell him “No” from time to time.
There are probably more things than that, but just taking the prequels in a vacuum and not considering their greater impact on the lore, those are the two most glaring issues with them. Supplemental media spends a lot of time trying to plug plot holes and lore inconsistencies that were created by the prequels.
Overall I think they are decent but flawed films. I never thought that the political intrigues were bad, but they could have shown us more and told us less to really drive the point across.
I’ve long said that EpII should have been two films, with the first part being “Episode I” of the saga (basically ignore The Phantom Menace entirely). End with us seeing both the beginning of the Clone Wars and dealing with Anakin having a dark side when he murders the Tuskens. Second part is full-on clone wars, Anakin’s growing relationship with both Padme and Palpatine. It ends with Anakin’s turn to the dark side (“rhyming” with the dark cliff-hanger ending of Empire). Final film is Anakin hunting down and killing Jedi, with Obi-Wan on his tail.
Attack of the Clones crams way too much into its run-time and Revenge of the Sith presents Anakin’s turn to the dark side as something way too sudden. Plus it completely undercuts Obi-Wan’s dialogue in A New Hope about Vader being the one who hunts down and kills the Jedi.
This all being said, having watched the whole thing in “Machete Order” a few times in recent years with my kids, I have to say that Phantom Menace is probably the best prequel film. The use of practical effects is more frequent, the story is a bit tighter, the score is truly phenomenal, and Qui-Gon Jinn is just the best.
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Like so many other franchises, fanfic has often done a better job than canon. Maybe not fair, as the canon usually happened first, but the start of the prequels could indeed have been better.
Soon I will have a new apprentice this one far more racist and moronic!
I also don’t want it to happen and I want it to end and I want to get off this wild ride. Bit like Ep1.
And it’s like we sent Jar Jar Binks to negotiate for us.
Sigh. An administration both evil and incompetent. I swear, the U.S. has had such bad luck with its recent government you’d think we’d built the nation on an ancient Indian burial ground or something…
Is JD Vance a secret Sith Lord? Stay tuned to find out!
its pronounced Shitlord
Oh well that’s already well established.
…yeah. About that…
Jar Jar is a fine diplomat in universe. JD is unironically worse than Jar Jar is in canon.
He was supposed to be a sith lord which makes this comparison even funnier
That’s just a fan theory, but I never bought into it. I just don’t find it convincing. Was it ever confirmed?
Lucas chickened out. He’s the only director I know to makes multiple changes to a film post release.
With Jar Jar there’s an interview soon after the first prequel where he heavily implies and says Jar Jar will be important
Implying “Jar Jar will be important” is not the same as declaring him a Sith lord.
He was important, because he nominated Palpatine to be chancellor. He was key to the plot, unbeknownst to himself. That’s because he was silly and gullible, not evil…
It was a skill that Jar Jar had to learn. One of several, in fact. Watching the Clone Wars, he goes from being an incompetent clown to a competent one.
the blockade was the least offensive thing about TPM.
TPM
(I thought you meant me for a second)
If I enable you in my motherboard, Windows 11 is gonna get installed automatically 😔
That’s a heavy burden to carry
You’re gonna carry that weight…
… A long time
Oooh, that’s why I don’t get this reference. It’s from one of the first three “episodes”.
Nope, I’ll never get those 20 minutes back from the senate scene
Come on man, “Meesa call for a vote of no confidence” is the height of political drama. Sorkin and Penn Warren got nothin on Jar Jar.
There was a star wars movie with this in the plotline at some point? He lost me after New Hope, and upon re-watching New Hope I realize that was because I got older than 7.
you know what’s fun? i’ve spent the last sixteen years slowly taking in every star wars property with my wife. because she loves star wars and i love science fiction. the stuff for adults, the stuff for kids, the
wookiee pornchristmas special, all of it. why? because cinema doesn’t have to just be for smelling your own farts. it can be for enjoying and analyzing.we’re excited for the maul series coming out, just because we love maul and the actor who plays him. we have high hopes!
Its amusing that people need to defend star wars in a political meme community. Its a joke on a joke. A hat on a hat.
Like whatever you want, you guys take it way too seriously.
So edgy. Almost as edgy as a fucking sphere. Piss off.
About as edgy as the Death Star if you count that trench as an edge.
Thats at least 4 more edges then this emo has
You really get that triggered that I continued the joke that is in the meme in the Political Memes community?
And you call me edgy?
Someone has a different opinion and that is “edgy” to you? You kissing Lucas ass for a reason?
I really did like it when it came out, and then it was downhill from there. Re-watching as an adult, does not hold up well.
It’s not the opinion that’s edgy, it’s the context. Imagine you’re at a casual gathering and someone made this joke and everyone started joking about star wars.
Does it help the conversation or anyone’s enjoyment to jump in with a “oh, I didn’t like those at all. They’re pretty dumb.” ?
Star Wars fans are the worst.
Context? Seriously?
I didn’t reply to any comment, I commented on the post, which is in Political Memes.
If this were a Star Wars community it would be inappropriate, but here?
Joke to me is Lucas actually got one thing right. Finally. Couldn’t write dialog to save his life, which is why his wife did it.
I didn’t reply to any comment, I commented on the post, which is in Political Memes.
Yes, it’s a star wars joke in political memes.
And while everyone else is joking around, having a good time you decided that a worthwhile contribution would be to announce that you don’t like Star Wars because you aren’t a child?
Maybe you really don’t get social cues. Or you’ve decided to be unpleasant for no reason. I dunno, it seems like you came in, wanted to pick a fight and then whine when people point it out. It’s weird way to decide to be and more than a little sad, especially for a grown ass adult.
not liking something is the opposite of a personality. grow up.
and for your question: the phantom menace
Just because it exists doesn’t mean it makes a great story.
The Phantom Menace is worse than every other Star Wars movie to date.
I think it is on par with Rise of Skywalker
Phantom is much better than that piece of shit. So is the Holiday Special though.
The problems leading to Episode 1 were good, just it was handled poorly.
Sure the prequels were bad but there was a blockade so we have to apologize… cuz reasons?
How does a blockade make up for Jar Jar Binks?
Lol…this is all nonsense
I’m not apologizing, pointing out that the overall problem would make a good story, Episode 1 is a shoddily done piece of shit with a racist character.
Lol. I feel like not depicting characters that speak broken English would be racist. They represent like 5% of the population.
You must have been seething after watching Inglorious Basterds.
I like how you spelled basterds correctly but got inglourious wrong.
Seething for what reason exactly?
“piece of shit with a racist character”
There’s a difference between a character being a racist and characterization being racist.
What’s the difference?
I want to see Iranian Jedi negotiators…
I feel like star wars could have gone more into politics and philosophy, maybe flesh out the main story a bit more (aka not spinoff shows). They could have done so much more but of course story and consistency are clearly secondary to magic space wizards swinging around spicy glow sticks.
Fuck.
Has there been a Special Edition made of The Phantom Menace and I’ve just missed it?
George Lucas had a missed opportunity to unintentionally radicalize Star Wars fans against capitalism. Seriously.
Then it would be more like Dune 1984. Far more political. I know you said not including spinoffs, but Andor has everything you mentioned in spades minus space wizards and glowing swords.
I would watch andor but I hear the politics are shallow
They are what they are for the universe they’re in, and they are relevant to the OG trilogy as well as 1/2/3. Star Wars is about politics with a hefty dose of Sword and Planet.
Farm boy’s life is upended by brutally authoritarian political entity so he becomes a rebel. Andor, and Rogue One, are what happens behind the scenes that leads up to the big space battle everyone knows in ANH.
People might call Andor shallow because it directly deals with fascism openly and plainly. Maybe the “shallow” commenters prefer not to be reminded of that or that fascism= bad considering modern events. But characters, set design, acting, directing, and story are excellent. A top-tier series regardless of whether or not someone likes Star Wars.
Bad Batch is a great one too
Might pirate it, I don’t have Disney Plus
Arr, matey.
