Prequel Theory - Star Wars

Ah, Star Wars. When I was a kid, a wee tike under 10 years old, we had the box set of A New Hope (George Lucas), The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner), and Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand) on VHS. It was almost a daily routine to watch all three while my mom was at work; leaving me, for a while, incapable of seeing the movies as individual films. To me, they were the perfection of story telling and no matter how terrible my day was I knew Luke and Han were saving the day in a galaxy far, far away.

Then Phantom Menace (George Lucas) released in 1999. As a boy the age of Anakin Skywalker (Jake Loyd), I was amazed at the spectacle of the movie. The lightsabers, Gungans, podraces, and flashy CGI were candies for my brain. At the time, I wasn't even bothered by Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best). There was a good amount of fun to the film, but something still stood out to me. When Anakin piloted a Naboo Starfighter without training, accidentally blowing up the control ship of the enemy's robotic Droid Army and not getting blown out of the sky like the inexperienced child he was. That small sequence of events gave me the first feeling of being cheated by a storyteller. Before that moment, I had thought that George Lucas was a prophet, come down from on high to impart the New Gospel. I was disillusioned and the world was bared raw.

Jump to 2002. I'm still a young boy and The Clone Wars (George Lucas) comes to theaters with promises of more Jedi battles, epic clone warfare, and a chance to dive into back story of the original trilogy. When I left the theaters, I had as learned as much about the rich universe of Star Wars as I had from the trailer. The Clone Wars, which is largely forgettable, introduces Count Duku (Christopher Lee) and then kills him by the end. Like Darth Maul (Ray Park) in the previous film, the Jedi face the “big bad” and defeat him handily. By the end of the film, we had learned of the Clone Army and how the Clone Wars mentioned in A New Hope weren't wars but one-sided skirmishes, and that now 19 year old Padme (Natalie Portman) was in an abusive relationship with 14 year old Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen).

Finally, Lucas wraps up his trail of trainwrecks in 2004 with Revenge of the Sith. At least we were given some plot and backstory this time. Anakin, now an angstier teenager, gets his first on screen kill when he fight the one-that-got-away Count Dooku. Since the villain dies in the opening sequence, we are left with a decrepit robot named General Grievous (Matthew Wood) to be frightened of. Well, at least until Obi-Wan kills him halfway through the movie. What we are left with is the mysterious senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) who too quickly builds up into The Emperor. Padme is still in an abusive relationship with Anakin, who force chokes her when she comes to help him. Before Anakin commits assault and battery, he had killed all of the children in the Jedi Academy because Palpatine says it will save Padme and is for the greater good. At the end, we have the battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin, the birth of Luke (Mark Hamill) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) Skywalker, and the transformation of Anakin in the black-clad Darth Vader (James Earl Jones).

It was ambitious of Lucas to create and entire trilogy to prequel the original films, but that's all. He fell short on the scorecard, stretching out bland character development over three movies, introducing characters and then killing them off quickly, and not providing any challenge or growth. Only six characters live on after the end of Revenge of the Sith, the remaining Jedi go into hiding, and the Empire takes over. So how does this new story live up to the original? It doesn't. Darth Vader is now a whiny brat that beat his wife, Obi-Wan loses his title as wise mentor, and nothing feels connected to the originals. Fans wanted backstory. We wanted to see how vile and ruthless Darth Vader was. We wanted to feel the sorrow and joy of a rich universe of meaningful characters. We didn't want Jar Jar Binks to be the reason the Empire formed. Heck, we didn't want to see him after Phantom Menace. This all boils down to the fact that Lucas saw that CGI had become pretty advanced and he knew he could use it to sell more toys. We saw many Jedi throught the films, but the only new ones who said or did anything, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), died for dramatic effect. The drama was another missed mark. There was no emotion in the films except for anger; even Anakin's lust for Padme was seething with rage. Love, joy, sorrow, envy, greed, pity, loathing, regret. Lucas will try to tell you they are there but it's all anger. I wish I could say that it's all on another level, that Lucas planned it this way, but it isn't. Each screenplay was started and finished after the previous film had been released.. Going from one episode to the next, he gave himself less direction than the actors who were standing on a green screen the entire time. But it's ok. We can buy an action figure of every minor, throwaway character and pretend they meant something to us.