What the Prequels Got Right

There is, among Star Wars fans, a generational divide that almost always accurately predicts how the fan in question feels about the prequels.  For fans over 30, the prequels were a huge disappointment, a betrayal of their very childhoods.  For fans under 30, the prequels are simply Star Wars movies, and while they may not love them, they see no clear demarcation between perfect originals and awful prequels.

But as time passes, and as the Disneyfication of Star Wars takes shape, certain truths about Star Wars have occured to me.  First, the originals are not perfect.  Second, the prequels got some things right.

The things the prequels got decidedly wrong are in no short supply.  10-year old Anakin.  Awful. A whiny, hairless Ewok. Every line of dialogue spoken between Anakin and Padme.  Unbearable.  Just really, deeply, profoundly terrible.

 Killing Darth Maul in Episode 1.  Idiotic.  Imagine how different the prequels would have been if Darth Maul had survived and stalked Obi-Wan and Anakin for two more movies.  Imagine the tension that would have built over the arc of the story.  Instead, Darth Maul was replaced with this guy:

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  And, of course...

The official end of my childhood.

But there are many things, in retrospect, that the prequels got right.  Here they are in no particular order:

1)  Politics.  The story-line of how the Emperor (probably the best character in the prequels) came to power was very well done.  The manipulation, the intrigue, the misdirection, were very compelling.  It was House of Card in space, and it added heft and depth to the backstory, making episodes 4 through 6 even better than they already were.

2)  Scenery.  While the prequels are often derided as relying too much on CGI, which is a fair assessment, they are still beautiful to look at.  They bring the universe to life and add exotic and wildly original flair to the setting of the saga.  All lovers of The Empire Strikes back, of which I am absolutely one, should remember that the original version of Cloud City's interior look like it was filmed in the bowels of a sports stadium.  While the CGI scenery of the prequels did not make the movies good, it absolutely made them better than they otherwise would have been.

3)  Originality.  Episodes 1 through 3 are the only 3 consecutive movies in the saga without a Death Star, which should serve as further proof that episodes 4 through 6 were far from perfect and that episode 7 was, without a doubt, the least original film in the franchise by FAR.  (Let's all just stipulate that Starkiller Base was Death Star 3)

4)  Music.  Episode 1, as disappointing as it was, managed to do at least 2 really remarkable things.  The first was introducing a bad guy perhaps as terrifying as Darth Vader.  And again, imagine how much more terror and suspense could have been added had Darth Maul stalked the Jedi throughout 3 movies rather than just 1.  Inversely, imagine the original trilogy if Luke killed Vader in episode 4. 

The second one was introducing a piece of music perhaps as evocative and memorable as any score from the originals, which boasted some of the best scores in movie history.

So while the prequels remain disappointing overall compared to the original trilogy, true fans should reconcile with three truths:  The originals are not perfect.  The prequels are not entirely without merit.  And if Episode 8 ends up being the same paint-by-numbers bore-fest as Episode 7, the prequels will continue to retroactively look better and better.