Star Wars: Prequel Trilogy

[sophia_sol]

OKAY I'VE WATCHED THE STAR WARS PREQUELS. It only took me a month from beginning to end! Now, let's see if I still remember the formal logic I learned in long-ago philosophy classes:

Premise A: the prequels are kinda terrible movies
Premise B: I did not enjoy watching the prequels
Conclusion: I am now a prequels fan.

That...... doesn't look right.

I don't know what happened, but I now have so many feelings about the prequel era and prequel characters EVEN THOUGH I kinda hate the movies and had to struggle through watching them. So: everyone's right, between the people who told me not to subject myself to these movies and the people who told me there's some good stuff in them! The movies are terrible, yes, but also they are worth watching if you are me.

Although is it just me or is the third movie noticeably better than the first two? Or did I just get inured to the ways in which they're kind of crap?

ANYWAYS.

My main take-away from these movies is that I'm so mad that Anakin Skywalker seems to now be the Star Wars character I have the most feels about, across all trilogies. Like......no. Why. Why did this happen to me. I disapprove. Anakin's terrible. And yet I care so much!

I livetweeted my watching of the three movies because it was the only way to get through them. I will reproduce the highlights of my tweets below, followed by my other thoughts.


My tweets:

attempting to watch The Phantom Menace and whyyyyy does Jar-Jar have to exist

Kid Anakin: also annoying. tbh at this point I'm watching for only two things: Queen Amidala, and Qui-Gon's excellent hair.

okay tiny serious-faced hyper-competent pilot is a good look on kid Anakin, I actually genuinely enjoyed the podrace

but the character I have the most feels about is 100% Shmi Skywalker.

Padme remains the best, the death scene was surprisingly touching, and yay return of pilot!Anakin

I am pre-emptively mad about Shmi's death next movie though

wow Anakin is sure quick on the draw to be super creepy in Attack of the Clones. "I don't think she liked me watching her." YA THINK?

once again I like Anakin much better when he's doing pilot things. But mostly I'm enjoying seeing lots of Coruscant in this high-speed chase

I like Anakin in fanfic but he's just SO HARD TO WATCH in the movie

Padme remains the best though! I appreciate her instances of not taking Anakin's shit. I can't believe Padme/Anakin is the endgame ship

Padme's interest in Anakin is SO UNCONVINCING I'm just like, Padme you're allowed to leave him! please leave him! you'll be much happier!

BOOOM first arrival of the Imperial March I'm so pleased. I mean I'm not pleased about Shmi's death but the music in this movie is great

WAIT R2D2 HAS LITTLE JETS AND DOESN'T ACTUALLY REQUIRE FLAT SURFACES TO GET PLACES? my entire conception of the character has changed!

I do think one of my fave things about these movies is the way they have lots of alien languages spoken w/o feeling any need to translate

my other fave thing though is Padme whenever she's doing anything except romancing Anakin. eg calmly picking her locks in the arena GO PADME

oh...no.......I've started Revenge of the Sith and I CARE TOO MUCH AND THIS IS STRESSFUL. Nothing's even happened yet! AND YET.

In cheerier news: Anakin's hair in this movie has improved his appearance dramatically. He no longer looks crushingly awkward!

Anakin and Padme are the actual worst at having a secret relationship. Kissing in public spaces is not secret!

okay real talk Anakin will ALWAYS look crushingly awkward because he is the awkwardest human, no matter what his hair's doing

I am impressed by HOW MUCH this movie is making me hate Palpatine. And I hated him plenty already!

according to plot summaries I'm at the cusp of everything going HORRIBLY WRONG in Revenge of the Sith. Can I manage to watch it???

star wars update: still super mad at Palpatine, still only like halfway through this dang movie, fuck

I AM SO EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED BY ORDER 66 ETC

Padme, Anakin's interest in ruling the galaxy SHOULD NOT BE A SURPRISE given the political opinions he espoused when you were dating!

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, MOVIE DONE, I HAVE SO MANY FEELS.

There's SO MUCH I could talk about with respect to the prequels because there's so much going on, but let me focus on a few things.

I think my favourite thing about these movies is the way that they gave the viewer a sense of the broader galaxy - we saw bits and pieces at least of lots of different planets, lots of different species and all that. It made the whole thing feel more real and lived-in and huge than just the bits of the Outer Rim we saw in the original trilogy.

My least favourite thing about these movies is the knowledge of IMPENDING DOOM AND EVERYTHING GOING TO SHIT, ugh, sadface forever. I just want the people of the galaxy to have nice things and be able to live in peace for a change! New trilogy, GET ON IT.

The transition effects throughout these movies are so much of an era, omg. These actual professional movies actually used the clock transition and similarly hilarious effects!

There was definitely some really terrible acting (which I understand the blame for which can be placed directly at the feet of George Lucas for being a terrible director), and everything about the Anakin/Padme romance was handled in such a way that I have no idea how anybody could ever look at them and go "ah yes what a tragic romantic story" but apparently people do.

I loved Padme though! At least, when the movies actually allowed her to do things, which was not as often as one might hope. But I loved the whole identity-switching business with her and her handmaidens while she was queen in the first movie. And she got to do a surprising amount in the second movie and I was ALL OVER THAT. The third movie she mostly got to make sad faces at Anakin, and then die of a broken heart, all of which was really disappointing. I like Padme so much! I wanted more of her!

I had seen pictures of Padme in that crop-top outfit from the second movie before and had assumed it was a deliberate clothing choice she'd made. And like, that would have been a weird decision for her but whatever. But I'm so mad that it's actually because her fully-covering outfit was "accidentally" artfully ripped that way in a fight? UGH. Like, they'd designed a character who WOULDN'T make that clothing choice and then found an excuse to get her in revealing clothing anyway. DISAPPROVE. Definitely the worst costuming choice for Padme in all three movies. Although the handmaids got some pretty terrible outfits too (can't remember whether we saw Padme in the particularly bad outfits I'm thinking of or not, I was so bad at keeping track of when she was being a handmaiden and when she was being queen). But I loved the queen's extremely elaborate outfits!

The Jedi's amazingly over-the-top clothing choices will never not be hilarious to me, though. Those voluminous robes are so impractical and look so deliberately dramatic that every time we saw full-screen shots of Jedi doing anything in those robes I couldn't take them seriously at all. It was amazing. Sorry, Jedi!

Speaking of the Jedi, I was totally expecting the Jedi council to be a bunch of white human men, and...they weren't. Not one white human man in the bunch. The only human I saw on the council was Mace Windu and he's black! Go go Jedi council diversity? Though I mean some of the aliens definitely were white-men-but-aliens.

Now.....to Anakin. Anakin has a MASSIVE sense of entitlement and also MASSIVE insecurities and the combination is really unattractive on him. His hair in the second movie makes him look ridiculous, and his entire self in all the movies is ridiculously awkward. He seems permanently incapable of making good life choices, and is way too over-intense about everything. He's pro-authoritarianism, he's a creeper over Padme, he falls to the dark side remarkably easily, and given what we see of who he is prior to his fall it's kind of not surprising at all that he did fall. There's nothing I can see about him that should make me like him. EXPLAIN TO ME WHY I CARE SO MUCH. Sigh.

I've been reading a bunch of prequels-era fanfic over the last month, in between attempts to get through these movies, and it's interesting to think about what I've read now in the context of having seen all the movies.

First, I've read a number of fics now that were written in the year or two after Phantom Menace came out before either of the other movies came out and it's SO INTERESTING to see all the choices and assumptions they made that no longer work when you have the information from the remaining two movies. Those fics feel very out of sync with the Star Wars universe. Though that doesn't mean they're not worth reading!

Second, my goodness do I ever understand the neverending desire to write time-travel fanfic where some future version of Obi-Wan goes to some point in the past to FIX EVERYTHING GODDAMNIT. I will happily read every single fic with this trope ever. I have come across a few fics that send other characters in the past to attempt to fix things (and I'll also happily read all those too!) but Obi-Wan's by far the most popular. Which makes sense, I think!

I'm....unconvinced by the Obi-Wan/Anakin romance that so many fic writers seem to be super into. I mean yes they were delightfully snarky with each other in the opening scenes of the third movie, and yes Obi-Wan directly tells Anakin he loves him at the end, but.....Anakin is so ridiculously single-mindedly obsessed with Padme that I literally cannot imagine him willingly being in any kind of romantic or sexual relationship with anyone else. (Not that this'll stop me reading Obi-Wan/Anakin, because it's a lot of what's out there.)

Has anybody written Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon set in the era between the two trilogies, with Qui-Gon's force ghost? Because there were all those Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon fics written after The Phantom Menace so people are clearly into the ship, and it seems like such a great premise! Though given that the fic archive for the ship was called "Master/Apprentice" I think probably fic about both of them as mature and equal adults isn't what appealed to most of the ship's fans......

On that note though: any Star Wars prequel-era fanfic or vid recs in general? Any ship or no ship, I'm good with it all! I will also take any original trilogy era recs (no incest please). I am doing a lot of trawling through fic myself to find stuff to read but pointers towards the stuff it's worth spending time on is always appreciated! And I don't even know where to start with vids.

In conclusion, I wish I was better at watching movies (it takes me so long and is always so stressful) because I now kind of feel the need to rewatch the Original Trilogy with all my star wars feels in place, since when I last watched them I didn't yet know how to properly appreciate what I was watching. STAR WARS IS SO GREAT AND I LOVE EVERYTHING THE END.

Comments

[the_rck]

I strongly recommend watching The Clone Wars TV show. Some of the episodes are irritating (anything droid centric is likely to be iffy because it's all played for laughs), but most of the show develops Anakin and Obi Wan and a ton of other characters, including a bunch of clones. It's all set between the second and third prequel and is complicated and dark.

[sophia_sol]

I really want to watch Clone Wars because I've heard such good things about it! But I have such major stress issues when watching most visual media that it takes me forever and is not actually particularly fun - me taking a month to watch the three prequel movies is not at all an exaggeration, and that was me attempting to watch them as quickly as possible. I'm much happier when not attempting to watch visual media. So I don't think I'll ever watch the Clone Wars, unfortunately :(

[the_rck]

Ah. I can definitely sympathize with that. I can generally only watch things if I'm watching them with someone else or going in 5-10 minute bits, but I'm at home, alone, a lot, so I keep trying. I also have trouble reading long things because I get anxious. I treasure the handful of authors whose work I can usually read and finish.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, I hear that. I do personally find reading to be a lot easier than watching things, because I can skim past awkward/uncomfortable/stressful bits - but sometimes I still have trouble. There's a book on my to-read pile that I've been stuck halfway through for almost two years because I'm so anxious about what's going to happen next....

[the_rck]

I've been reading a lot of middle grades fantasy and science fiction over the last several years. I'm more likely to be able to finish such things than I am stuff aimed at adults. I keep reading reviews of current books and thinking that they sound fascinating but completely like things I wouldn't get thirty pages into. I keep trying romances and mysteries in hopes that the genre conventions will carry me through, but it rarely works.

I have books that have been on my to-be-read shelves for about eight years without me picking them up to go on with them. I'm kind of thinking that I may need to accept that what I can read has changed in a major way.

Non-fiction generally works better for me than fiction does right now, and I've had some luck with graphic novels because I tend to get through them fast enough that I don't have time to get upset.

[musesfool]

My main take-away from these movies is that I'm so mad that Anakin Skywalker seems to now be the Star Wars character I have the most feels about, across all trilogies. Like......no. Why. Why did this happen to me. I disapprove. Anakin's terrible. And yet I care so much!

I'm actually kind of amazed this happened via the prequels, which really are pretty awful movies, and not in a fun, entertaining way for the most part. I only started caring about him because of The Clone Wars, where you get to see a lot of his friendship with Obi-Wan and his mentoring of Ahsoka. And also Padme gets to do lots of things unrelated to the terrible romance. But I do care about him a lot now, which I am very conflicted about.

[sophia_sol]

Well, I mean, it happened via a combination of both watching the prequels and reading people's fanfic about him (which I gather often draws on the Clone Wars). I don't think either alone would have done it but in combination apparently I'm gone. I'm glad I'm not alone in the conflictedness of caring about him!

[seekingferret]

Yay! I recognize that the Prequels are terrible, but I have many feels for them anyway. Star Wars was my big fandom for all of my teenage years- I was in a massive play by post Star Wars rpg from age 13 to 18. Fifteen year old me wrote bad Chancellor Valorum fanfic (I don't even know. Probably I'd just read the Federalist Papers and watched the Phantom Menace the same week?)!

I don't know if 3 is better than 1 and 2. I do know that it flows exceptionally well into 4, and I found 3 really emotionally satisfying for that reason. In my recent rewatch before TFA came out, I found myself enjoying 1 the most of the prequels, which is the first time that happened for me, and I was really surprised by that. But it's largely because of the sense of impending doom, I think. I found the idea of a phantom menace really fascinating in my recent rewatch, the idea that there's the direct, obvious antagonism of the Trade Federation but there's this sense that there's some other lurking menace beneath it all and nobody knows what it is- it could be Darth Maul, it could be Darth Sidious, it might be little innocent Anakin, it could even be (per the crazy fan theory) Jar Jar Binks. Also, TPM doesn't have quite the same lull in action that AotC and RotS have in the middle... well, they do, it's the podrace, but as you say, the podrace scene is pretty fun.

When I was a teenager I had a VHS of the Phantom Menace and I used to rewatch TPM by manually fastforwarding to the podrace scene, then manually fastforwarding to the Duel of the Fates. I still think Duel of the Fates is one of the greatest Star Wars scenes.

[carmarthen]

Hah....yeah. That's kind of how I feel despite not caring about Anakin at all (I haven't watched the second Clone Wars series because I loathe 3D animation and I also really don't think the Anakin we see in the movies ever had a padawan, but I did watch the first 2D Clone Wars miniseries that no one ever remembers, which was fairly delightful). But I loved the Clone Wars comics, and there were some good spin-off novels and such. I felt like the prequels set up some good characters and interesting possibilities that the EU ran with (where with the OT I mostly feel like the EU doesn't measure up to the movies, especially with the way writers tended to handle the main characters).

Padme's interest in Anakin is SO UNCONVINCING I'm just like, Padme you're allowed to leave him! please leave him! you'll be much happier!

RIGHT? It's baffling. I get what he creepily sees in her. I don't get the reverse.

The transition effects throughout these movies are so much of an era, omg. These actual professional movies actually used the clock transition and similarly hilarious effects!

Yeah, it was a deliberate throwback to the OT - Lucas wanted to keep things feeling nostalgic...if only he hadn't embraced unconvincing CGI at the same time...

The Jedi's amazingly over-the-top clothing choices will never not be hilarious to me, though. Those voluminous robes are so impractical and look so deliberately dramatic that every time we saw full-screen shots of Jedi doing anything in those robes I couldn't take them seriously at all. It was amazing. Sorry, Jedi!

I was actually sort of disappointed when all the Prequel Jedi dressed like Tatooine waste-dwellers. Like, originally I assumed Obi-Wan dressed like that because it's sort of practical for desert life? It never occurred to me that Jedi had a uniform, much less one that makes so little sense for urban city-dwellers in space.

Though I mean some of the aliens definitely were white-men-but-aliens.

Of the ones who look more recognizably human-based, Eeth Koth and Saesee Tiin were both played by multiple actors over the course of the movie, and most of those actors were non-white. And apparently the actor who played Ki-Adi-Mundi is half British Indian, so...apparently if there are any white men on the Jedi Council, they're completely covered with prosthetics. Huh. /googling

Yeah, TFA brought more diversity to the leads, which I am super glad for and it's HUGE, but since a lot of fandom is all "oh, the prequels don't exist lol" people brush aside that they actually did a pretty decent job with background diversity (the queens after Amidala are played by Maori and Indian actresses, for example).

TPM was like...the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, its own distinct self-contained fandom that then kind of went poof! when more movies came along! (This is one of the reasons I can't write TFA fic...I got burned too badly by POTC 2 and my inability to finish WIPs once canon has jossed them.)

Has anybody written Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon set in the era between the two trilogies, with Qui-Gon's force ghost? Because there were all those Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon fics written after The Phantom Menace so people are clearly into the ship, and it seems like such a great premise! Though given that the fic archive for the ship was called "Master/Apprentice" I think probably fic about both of them as mature and equal adults isn't what appealed to most of the ship's fans......

I suspect so? But I wasn't ever into the pairing so I don't know where it would be found (I mean, I READ a lot of it, I'd just gotten into slash, but I don't remember any of it). I vaguely recall that it wasn't all about the power inequality kink - I think for some people there was a lot of "look, they're emotional equals even though they have this formal relationship," and there were certainly loads of AUs where Qui-Gon lives and Obi-Wan becomes a knight.

Vid recs: this is hands-down one of my favorite vids of all time, by jmtorres (OT): https://archiveofourown.org/works/357256 You have to download it, but it's worth it - just a beautiful celebration of the OT.

Fic: I don't have much on Pinboard because I'm lazy and haven't been poking around for Star Wars fic a lot lately, but here's what I have bookmarked so far. Not sure how well Fernwithy's stuff holds up as I haven't reread it recently: https://pinboard.in/u:carmarthen/t:fandom:star.wars/

I AM SO GLAD YOU LOVE STAR WARS BECAUSE I ALSO LOVE IT AND IT'S SO JOYOUSLY FUN.

[melannen]

>>There's nothing I can see about him that should make me like him. EXPLAIN TO ME WHY I CARE SO MUCH. Sigh.
>>I've been reading a bunch of prequels-era fanfic over the last month,

I think you may have answered your own question. :P

But, no, there's a really interesting saga and a lot of nice worldbuilding buried there among all the inexplicable directorial choices, overbearing special effects, and bad storytelling. Somewhere. It's hard to watch them and not get at least a little bit invested in the really interesting Anakin story that they should have been.

A lot of the fandom stuff draws heavily on the extended universe stuff that tries valiantly (and often succeeds at least somewhat) in foregrounding that good story.

[sylvaine]

I am completely delighted by your formal logic. :D

[avanti-90.livejournal.com]

Have my old list of fic recs (most of these are prequel-era):

http://avanti-90.livejournal.com/55540.html