The Prequels, Episodes I-III. What did you like about them?

Maxperson said:

Wow. I never saw that, but it's pretty cool. Then we got a whiny Anakin and it just went downhill.

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To be fair, Luke is pretty whiny too.

MechaPilot said:

To be fair, Luke is pretty whiny too.

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That's true, but Anakin was worse I think.

Morrus said:

The fight at the end of Ep VI may not have been ballet, but it was captivating watching. Full of raw emotion.

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I cue'ed in on the soundtrack for that scene. I had expected a montage of themes: when Luke is winning, hear the Opening Anthem; when Vader has the edge, hear the Imperial March.
Instead, the whole way through we heard the Emperor's moaning chorus: this duel - whatever the outcome - WORKS THE EMPEROR'S WILL. I about fell out of my chair when I realized that.

MechaPilot said:

To be fair, Luke is pretty whiny too.

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"Luke whines" is one of the most dangerous rules of the Star Wars Drinking Game.

Thought I would add something after seeing Eps VII - at least the prequels were original. There were some parallels built in to the OT, but the material was new. Poorly executed, but new.

As much as I loved Eps VII, its a remake.

Maxperson said:

That's true, but Anakin was worse I think.

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I think the Anakin character comes off worse in general, but I'm not sure how much of that I'd attribute to whining. Between Lucas' writing (Harrison Ford told Lucas during the original trilogy, "George, you can type this but you sure as hell can't say it") and the direction we definitely didn't get good performances out of many of the actors.

Also, my opinion of the portrayal of the Anakin character is skewed due to the fact that most child actors tend to not be very good actors, and the child Anakin was our first glimpse of the character. Hayden was better (which isn't a difficult bar to reach), but George just can't write a believable romance to save his life, and our first glimpse of a more adult Anakin came during the movie where the romance was absolutely pivotal to the development of the characters and their motivations in the following film. Even the more believable Leia and Han romance was aided by actors altering the script; for example Ford ad libbed the "I know" response to Leia's "I love you."

For me, it's just a chain reaction of bad writing, bad direction, the use of poop and fart jokes, the racist stereotype aliens (of which Jar Jar is the best example of how bad they are), not so great child-acting as Anakin's introduction, more bad writing and bad direction when Christensen got involved, and actors unwilling to stand up to the then quite powerful Lucas (as compared to how he was when the first trilogy was made).

amerigoV said:

Thought I would add something after seeing Eps VII - at least the prequels were original. There were some parallels built in to the OT, but the material was new. Poorly executed, but new.

As much as I loved Eps VII, its a remake.

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I agree. As far as originality is concerned, I thought the Hateful Eight was far superior to Ep VII.

MechaPilot said:

I agree. As far as originality is concerned, I thought the Hateful Eight was far superior to Ep VII.

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Episode VII was a remake of A New Hope, but it was done well and provides a strong platform for moving off into new directions. If they Turn VIII and IX into remakes of V and VI, I will be very disappointed.

Maxperson said:

Episode VII was a remake of A New Hope, but it was done well and provides a strong platform for moving off into new directions. If they Turn VIII and IX into remakes of V and VI, I will be very disappointed.

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Gah. It wasn't a remake. At worst it was an homage.

Ovinomancer said:

Gah. It wasn't a remake. At worst it was an homage.

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It wasn't technically a remake, but it felt to me like far more than just an homage.