u/SpatulaCity1a

A New Hope:

 These movies are basically impossible to talk about. What can anyone add??? Everyone knows the story, and the tropes it set up are in everything-- Harry Potter, Marvel movies, The Matrix, and the copies from the 80s like Spacehunter, Krull, Willow, Space Raiders, and Dragonslayer. Even if you find it dated, its impact on cinema is probably the same as the Beatles’ impact on popular music.

 But even when I tried to push aside its historical importance as well as my own nostalgia and watch this with my critical brain, focusing purely on the story, the characters, and the action… I cannot say that this is not the best Star Wars.  

 This movie is like an act of God. It is so scrappy and so constantly on the verge of falling apart, and yet it holds together perfectly. The score is transcedent, the main trio of Han, Luke and Leia have all the energy in the world and look like they’re having a blast. Harrison Ford’s sarcasm is still funny and Carrie Fisher plays off of him perfectly, and I don’t think Mark Hamill gets enough credit as an actor-- he’s spectacular. Alec Guinness is also just incredible here-- my favorite scene on this rewatch was the twinkle in his eye when he turns to Luke and says ‘you must come to Alderaan’… he makes potentially dying in a war seem like so much fun.  

 I also like this Luke best-- he isn’t the cocky semi-unlikable 20-something of Empire or the kind of blank, cold, powered-up version in Return… he’s a wide-eyed innocent who isn’t angry or hateful after his family is killed and instead is just sad and suddenly determined to make the best out of his life. I love it so much.

So yeah... all I can do is shower praise on this movie, but I have to say that this time I put a lot of thought into how that gross furry eye that pops out of the garbage water is on another level. I think a lot of other movies would just have the python thing move past Luke’s leg before it takes him under, but that eye popping up is part of what makes it so refreshingly wacky and so easy to love.

 To me, this IS Star Wars, and nothing that followed has ever been able to capture its charm. The sequels had more money and though I love them both, they don’t have the same spirit. Disney could never, ever, ever make a movie like this. Even Lucas himself couldn’t make a movie like this after he made it. This movie is an inspiration to aspiring filmmakers. It’s just so special and magical.

 100/10

 

 

The Empire Strikes Back:

 A ‘perfect sequel’ with a bigger budget, and it shows.Right off the bat everything looks more deliberate and more cinematic. It isn’t the scrappy labor of love that was A New Hope at all. I can't say much about it, because it's the freaking Empire Strikes Back-- the vast majority of people in this forum know every single frame of this movie inside out.

I might get crucified for this, but on this rewatch I found myself asking if the whole opening sequence with the Wampa was really necessary. It’s not a bad sequence, and it shows that Luke still needs help from his friends, but it’s sort of just something fun that happens before the real movie starts. A tighter script could have just started with the battle of Hoth and lost nothing. But I suppose it’s a nice way to ease us back into the world.

Also-- and maybe this has an answer-- I thought Han made off with heaps of money in A New Hope and had more than enough to pay off Jabba. So why didn’t he just do that right after the medal ceremony? Did the Rebels make him give the money back? Did he just not get a chance after everyone rushed to Hoth after the battle of Yavin? If he had just taken that money and paid off his debts, maybe he wouldn't have been frozen in this movie!

ESB is where the character development goes into overdrive, and Han and Leia are fantastic together (I can imagine Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford getting along really well in real life), and Mark Hamill makes Luke impetuous and borderline unlikable without being unrelatable… and ends up being punished over and over by this movie.  

This movie definitely has a richer and more deliberate color palette than the first one-- the deep purples have great contrast with the oranges and bright whites, and Vader looks so much blacker and newer in this one.  

I don’t think much else needs to be said. This didn’t top ANH for me on this viewing, but I think it’s probably better character-wise and it’s extremely well-made-- everyone loves it for good reason.   

 10/10

 

Return of the Jedi:

 I was expecting to love this one because it was maybe the second movie I ever saw in a theater and the first Star Wars I ever watched, and at the time I loved it so much that on the car ride home, I asked my parents if we could go see it again. I think it might have been 1984 or 1985 when our family got our first VCR, and the guy who sold it to us was kind enough to hook two VCRs up to each other in his shop and make me a VHS tape of what I was told was Star Wars (WITHOUT COMMERCIALS!). Imagine my surprise when I got that tape home and it ended up being ALL THREE MOVIES!

I don’t think I had seen ROTJ since the theater… and wow was I ever excited. I had all 3 storybooks and the book and record sets, but ROTJ had just come out on video... and now I had my own copy! This was awesome because buying movies was sooo expensive and nobody had 2 VCRs... we had to wait for a movie to come on network TV so we could tape it, and if we were feeling bold, we would use the pause button to try to edit out the commercials in real time (this was always very stressful for me-- they would either have 5 commercials or 6 so on commercial 5 you had to have your finger hovering above the remote/pause button, and sometimes the TV station would forget to run the ‘and now back to the movie’ message so it was incredibly difficult to time it right and I never wanted to make a mistake).

*** 

 ... and so with that blatantly nostalgic introduction, I am going to say that my love for this movie will never die… but watching this with a critical eye, it’s a really flawed movie.

We start with a semi-reference to ANH with the star destroyer seen from the bottom, but this time all that happens is an even blacker and more expensive-looking Darth Vader travels to the incomplete second death star and threatens an officer… and that’s it. That’s all we get.

We then get another ANH repeat with R2 and 3P0 walking through the Tatooine desert. But this time they are taken by Jabba and then put in yet another droid workshop-- worse than the Jawa one because it involves torture.

As this was the despecialized version, it had the original disco tune and not Jedi rocks-- and this time I really noticed the large lady with a skin and fur striped top… she just seemed like a normal lady hanging out with all the freaks and I always wondered what her story was and how she felt when George Lucas said ‘yeah, you belong with all of these freaks’. I also remember I used to think that Jabba actually turned his slave girl INTO the frog thing he ate when he said ‘BOSKA’ and opened the trap door to the rancor. Even when Luke fought the rancor later, I didn’t put it together. Maybe I thought if the rancor ate Luke, he also would have been turned into a frog thing and eaten by Jabba.  

This whole opening sequence actually bothered me this time for how repetitive it was. It’s basically just one character showing up, getting captured, then another, then another, then another. If Chewie hadn’t gone with Leia, I have to wonder if they would have had him come in by himself and offer Jabba some meat or something. I don’t even know why they had Chewie come at all… he doesn’t do much and Jabba could have just killed him immediately.

And I really didn’t like Luke in this movie. He chokes some guards, makes some really dark threats and insults against pretty much everyone-- ‘This is the last mistake you’ll ever make’ and ‘Free us or die’? He doesn’t even kill Jabba in the end… was he just talking tough or did he really want to kill Jabba? I’m not saying Jabba is a good guy or anything, just that it seems like Luke seems kind of violent. Also-- why is he so confident here? He seems to have gone from being beaten up over and over to somehow being the most confident, death-threat hurling person in the room. You’d think he would be having confidence problems after the last movie.  

I think what makes this nonsensical Han rescue work is the creature budget, slave Leia, and that fantastic series of musical cues right before they are to be thrown into the Sarlacc pit. I love how you get this succession of closeups of everyone-- confident and focused Luke, worried and focused Leia, and then Han looking clueless-- it’s funny.

The problem is that after this we get ANOTHER version of the same scene from the beginning of the film, only this time it’s the Emperor arriving and talking to Vader instead of Vader talking to an officer. Why do we need two nearly identical arriving at the Death Star scenes??? They aren’t even interesting… it’s just two guys arriving to the same place on the same exact kind of ship. I think the music is louder for the Emperor’s arrival, though.  

Then we get a scene with Yoda dying in his super cozy-looking hut and another scene with Obi Wan that isn’t much different. I have no idea what Lucas was thinking here. Mark Hamill can do so much better than what he is doing in this movie.

I’m going to say it now-- the Ewoks are NOT the worst thing about this movie. They’re cute, they’re amusing, and the ‘Oh Yo’ chant is a funny thing to do with your friends whenever you're in the presence of greatness. They also give Harrison Ford a good foil for his sarcasm, which he really needs considering how Han is really not great in this movie, because after being rescued all he does is be jealous of Luke and protective of Leia. There’s not much witty banter between Leia and Han here at all… and there are a lot of really awkward scenes that feel like they should have been cut.   

Anyways, after the cool-for-1983 speeder bike setpiece and the C3PO as a god stuff (which isn’t bad), Luke decides it’s time to surrender to Vader and when he is brought before the Emperor, he says soon they’ll all be dead-- why are you so negative now, Luke? Does becoming a Jedi make you kind of an insufferable jerk? All of those people complaining about The Last Jedi really need to watch this movie-- I genuinely think he is less likable here than he was in TLJ, the only difference being he’s also less interesting.

Also-- maybe I missed something, but why did the rebels even need spies to know the location of the shield generator when there are really very, very few options for this? How could it NOT be on the moon with the beautiful trees and breathable atmosphere that is literally right next to the new Death Star?

I’m really getting bogged down with all of these nitpicks at the moment but this movie has never fallen apart for me like it did on this latest rewatch, and I have probably seen this movie over 60 times. I guess that I have never actually thought about what’s actually going on and always just focused on all the crazy creatures and fun action setpieces and how much I love this movie despite all of it.

The space battle in front of the Death Star is impressive, but why don’t the rebels just go into hyperspace when they realize it’s a trap, then come back a few hours later when the shield is down? How are they ‘trapped’ when there’s no up or down in space and the imperial fleet is just a line of Star Destroyers?

Also, the final duel is great and the ending of the saga is fittingly climactic… but why did the Emperor keep telling Luke that he’s happy he’s turning to the dark side? Every single time the Emperor opens his mouth during the duel, Luke has a realization about what’s happening, stops fighting, and turns good again. Even after almost turning to the dark side completely after his rage-out, Palpatine reminds Luke that he’s turning to the dark side and laughs, giving Luke time to think about it and throw his weapon away. Palpy seems to have gotten really bad at turning people to the dark side since the prequels. I’m now convinced Luke would have gone dark if Palpatine had just put his feet up and read a magazine or gone to the can during this duel.  

Meanwhile, back on Endor, I just love the way that random actor delivers the line ‘You rebel scum’. Of all the lines in this movie, this sort of generic insult somehow stood out enough for Rian Johnson to reference it at the climax of Finn’s arc in TLJ. I don’t even know what accent that is-- it sounds Eastern European or something… but it’s so perfect, so contemptuous… they should make a movie about that guy.  

Maybe I was just Star Warsed out at this point, but I think I actually enjoyed The Phantom Menace more than this. I refuse to put any prequel above any original because I’m old and also I’m sure I just liked that I finally understood TPM’s plot, but unclouded by nostalgia goggles, ROTJ was a mess.

7.1/10 (only because I gave TPM a 7 and I can’t rank an OG episode below the prequels)

After a recent prequel rewatch, I thought I'd give a rewrite a shot and just came up with this. I was originally going to try to preserve most of TPM's first act, but I realized there was too much happening at the beginning and tried to create a more straightforward story with Obi Wan as the main protagonist and Darth Maul as the main villain (he is very different here). Not sure what anyone will think or if anyone cares about this kind of thing much anymore, but here it is (just Act One-- I guess if I get a response or some positive feedback, I'll keep going):

ACT 1:

 

SCENE 1: The Invasion Begins

1. A single menacing ship flies through space, then another, then another, until finally revealing the invasion fleet of the trade federation, moving into position around Naboo.

2. On the ground in Naboo, Padme Amidala struggles to contact Senator Palpatine, currently in a Senate session on Coruscant, but her transmission is blocked.

3. Desperate, Padme orders her meager fleet to attempt to pierce the blockade, but all ships are destroyed in the battle. Finally, we see the trade federation mothership emerge from deep space, and it begins sending droid army troops down to the surface of the planet.

4. The invasion commences with brutality, striking the capital first. The Naboo are no match for the droid army and are quickly defeated, the citizens subjugated, and the survivors scatter into the wilderness.

5. When the invasion is complete, a transport ship lands just outside the palace. The ramp opens, and down walks Darth Maul.

 

SCENE 2: The Jedi Temple

1.   Meanwhile, at the Jedi temple on Coruscant, Qui Gon Jinn is training his apprentice, Obi Wan Kenobi, that an equal mixture of restraint and force is needed to be precise in battle. Obi Wan wonders why such advanced battle training is even necessary, as the Republic has been at peace for so long, and the worst they have had to deal with for a century has been some rowdy behavior outside of local bars. Qui Gonn emphasizes readiness and preparedness for all scenarios, as the future is constantly in motion, and can change at any time without warning.

2. The message comes in from Senator Palpatine-- the Chancellor has lost contact with Padme Amidala on Naboo, and they are sending the Jedi to investigate.

3. Qui Gonn volunteers for the assignment, as he has a past relationship with the Naboo, and tells Obi Wan he is ready to accompany him.

 

SCENE 3: Arrival at Naboo 

1. The Jedi arrive at Naboo, and are immediately spotted and attacked by the Trade Federation.

2. They attempt to battle their way through the blockade, but they are hopelessly outnumbered and their ship is struck, sending it spiralling towards the planet surface.

3. Using the Force, Qui Gonn manages to land destroyed ship in the middle of Naboo’s ocean, and they escape it as it sinks to the very bottom.

4. They find themselves stuck in the middle of a vast body of water, with no land in sight and no way to escape.  

 

SCENE 4: Enter GunGuns

1. Treading water, they are approached by a Gungun ship, and the Gunguns aboard recognize the Jedi as protectors of the peace who have helped them in the past.

2. They are taken to the underwater city where they are granted an audience with the GunGun king, who explains that, despite the Jedi protests, they will not help Padme due to their desire to stay out of the conflict, which they believe does not affect them… and that they will delight in Padme’s suffering, as they have, in their eyes, occupied the planet illegally for centuries.  

3. They are given a ship and sent on their way to the palace. Obligatory monster chase/attack scene here.

 

SCENE 5: Dinner with Maul

1. The two Jedi emerge near the palace, where they are immediately surrounded by battle droids. They are disarmed and taken by the droids to the palace.

2. Inside the palace, they meet Darth Maul, the current leader of the Trade Federation. He seems extremely out of place among the lackeys, and the two Jedi are immediately suspicious.   

3. Maul shows them the signed treaty that legalized the invasion, and the Chancellor contacts them and confirms that it is legal, and there’s nothing he can do. They ask about Padme, and Maul is evasive, saying that she fled the castle before he arrived.

4. Maul invites the pair to stay for the night, tells them he has nothing but respect for them... and would love to discuss their religion with them over dinner. Qui Gonn asks about contacting the Jedi council, and Maul tells him that they are running low on power and will be unable to make any more long range transmissions for the day.    

5. Over a tense dinner, Qui Gonn casually mentions that Maul doesn't strike him as a trade federation type, and Maul, acknowledging the absurdity of it, says that he gets that a lot. Maul and the Jedi discuss the light and dark sides, the Jedi and the Sith, and Maul is ‘suspiciously’ defensive of the Sith, believing that the Jedi have unfairly characterized both them and the dark side in a ‘history is always written by the winners’ type speech. He notices Obi Wan listening to it without judgment, as if he hasn’t considered it that way before. Maul smiles, de-escalates the conversation and retires to his bedroom.

 

SCENE 6: Midnight Duel

1. Qui Gonn is awakened in the night by a sudden rush of cold, and realizes his bedroom door is open, with a bright red light shining on the walls of the room at the other end of the hall, and the familiar hum of a lightsaber blade piercing the silence of the night.

2. He approaches the room and finds Maul waiting for him, to no one’s surprise. He tells him he has ordered the battle droids to stand down, and that this will be just the two of them… but that if he loses, Maul plans to take his apprentice and train him in the dark side… sensing that he has not yet been ruined by Jedi dogma.  

3. Maul tells Qui Gonn that he has never killed a Jedi before, and that he has been looking forward to this. He returns Qui Gonn's lightsaber to him, and they fight. The ancient halls of the palace are illuminated by their clashing blades. Qui Gonn strikes Maul several times, but the strikes seem to bounce off of him.   

4. Obi Wan jolts awake, but he is stunned by battle droids upon leaving the room, knocking him unconscious.

5. The fight continues as Maul ambushes Qui Gonn in the palace dungeon, then force pushes him into an open cell and locks it. Qui Gonn hacks at the bars with his lightsaber, but finds they won’t break… and worse than that, they cause his lightsaber to malfunction, the blade inverts, and the hilt is destroyed. Mauls laughs and reveals that the bars are made of a substance that is resistant to the energy of kyber crystals, and shows that under his clothing, he is wearing armor made of the same substance. Qui Gonn composes himself… realizing that he has lost… but before dying, he tells Maul that he will never be able to turn Obi Wan, and he has taught him too well for that. Maul smiles, and throws his saber like a spear into Qui Gonn’s chest, killing him.  

6. Obi Wan is imprisoned in the dungeon, in the cell adjacent to his dead master. Maul seems to revel in Obi Wan's anger and despair, determined to break his spirit and push him into the darkness.

The Phantom Menace:

I’ve put this one dead last on lists before because it adds basically nothing to the overall story, but after this rewatch, I found it to be a LOT better than I remembered. I think because I kept in mind that this is basically supposed to be Flash Gordon/a cartoon for children, not something that is intellectually stimulating or gritty.

What puts this ahead of the other prequels is that it’s a really simple story. There’s an invasion, an evacuation, and then everyone coming together to mount a resistance and reclaim the planet. The trade federation stuff overcomplicates everything upfront, but that's the story.

Some of the dialogue is annoying, but it’s also too lighthearted to really hate on. I tend to be very forgiving of bad dialogue in cartoons. I also think that this one has the best imagery of all the prequels, which some of the haters tend to overlook. It’s all very bright and IMO this is the kind of movie that George Lucas does really well. He rips off the chariot race from Ben Hur and the field battle scenes from Spartacus, which is actually something I support… seeing them together in one movie is actually pretty awesome.

I’d be embarrassed to hate on a kid or a mentally challenged Gungun, so I’m not going to-- they don’t deserve it, and to be honest, I think both of them kind of work here. I also wish JarJar had been in the following films instead of buried like an embarrassment. He was an embarrassment, but he also added something... and actually had a decent arc as an outcast finding acceptance among his people.

The movie's biggest flaw IMO is that it's unnecessarily overcomplicated and uses dialogue to explain things it should be showing instead. It would have been so much easier to just open with a space battle that becomes an invasion because a bad guy wants Naboo for the minerals or something. Nobody who watches these kinds of movies really cares WHY they're invading... they just want to see the bad guys doing bad things before the good guys come in and save the day.

It’s not something I would throw on in the presence of other people, but it's not as bad as I remembered.

7/10

*** 

Attack Of The Clones:

This one was really hard to watch. After the lighthearted, relative simplicity of The Phantom Menace with cringey but still well-intentioned lines like ‘Are you an angel?’, we get Anakin behaving like a creepy psycho who hates women, democracy, his friends and common sense. I guess that ‘fits the character’, but it’s repulsive and I hate him so much, and I don’t like hating him.

Unlike Episode I, the story here goes completely off the rails... it's not as bad as I remembered and I understood a bit more of the WHY things were happening, but it still didn't really work for me.

It was alright at the beginning-- I forgave the stupid bug assassination attempt, the Fifth Element chase ripoff, and the dumb way the assassin dies... but the problem is that the script just gets sloppier from there.

I finally realized just yesterday that protecting Padme is actually Anakin’s first ever job on his own. This is communicated in dialogue that is easy to miss instead of just having a scene of Anakin at the Jedi temple, demonstrating that he is finally ready for it. So really, it makes sense that it's a plum assignment that anyone could handle, even though putting him with Padme after he openly flirts with her in a creepy way in front of everyone is pretty stupid. I always thought the timing of the visions was just a massive, stupid coincidence... but if Palpatine was behind the entire thing-- the sandpeople taking his mother, the visions, etc., and just waiting for a moment when Anakin was finally on his own, it works. This is never explicitly mentioned, but I guess it's implied?

Anakin slaughtering sandpeople and being a dick to Padme (who truly, deeply loves him for it) doesn’t work at all. IMO he should have just not said anything about what he did... maybe not even remember it. The absolute worst writing decision that could have been made at that time was to have a scene of Anakin screaming at her about how he hates them and killed them and how he will be all-powerful one day.

The droid factory sequence was so tonally mismatched after the dead mother slaughter... and what’s with that whole section of the arena scene with no score and weird sound? It was like it wasn't finished or something.

The worst is the Obi Wan plot. He tracks an assassin’s dart to a cloning factory on a deleted planet, where he finds an entire army made of that same assassin, and that army was apparently intended to serve the Republic. The assassin tries to kill him here, and then he follows the assassin directly to the secondary antagonist’s lair. So we have now established that the clone army has a direct link to the main villain of this episode as well as someone who tried to KILL one of the main protagonists... but then the Republic actually uses this exceptionally suspicious army-- not just in the end battle, but for years?? This is the dumbest thing in the full 9 episode run. Surely there was a better way to introduce the clone army.

And then there’s the CGI and endless greenscreen… it looks bad. This is the only Star Wars movie that is actually ugly to look at. The Dooku/Anakin duel is shot in the absolute worst way... weird closeup with lights on their faces-- WHY??

About the only thing that makes this movie not a zero is the battle scenes at the end, and Christopher Lee as Dooku. Everything else is a huge miss.

3.5/10 (because there’s still enough here for it to be watchable, but it's bad)

*** 

Revenge Of The Sith:

So this is the one that everyone loves, because so much happens in it. The Republic falls, Anakin becomes Vader, A New Hope is set up.

Anakin is improved as a character and actually has nice things to say about Obi Wan, and vice versa, which is how it should have been from the beginning… but it still can’t quite escape the shadow of Attack of the Clones. Again, the fatal flaw of the prequel trilogy as a whole is that Lucas can’t write a subtle, gradual corruption… so it ends up being so in-your-face that this guy is off that everyone looks stupid for not seeing it long before ever reaching this point.

Why does Obi Wan trust Anakin so much when he KNOWS that he doesn’t follow instructions and is cozy with Palpatine??? Why do the Jedi not realize it’s all Palpatine long before this point, after seeing him grab more and more power and stay in office much longer than usual? Why let him control the courts and the Senate while saying things like 'dark energy surrounds the Chancellor'? Unlike with Episode I where you can just roll with it because it’s for kids and nothing is pushed too far, the dark and serious tone here makes these things stand out more.

On the plus side, the film looks much, much better than AOTC as the CGI had made huge leaps, but the terrible romance is still there and not making sense… I honestly think they should have just forgotten about it completely and stuck with Anakin turning because of paranoia and his overall shittiness as a person, because it’s just awful seeing them together and Padme has absolutely no reason to love the guy. I also giggled when she seemed shocked that he was supporting fascism and murder after he literally supported fascism and murder right to her face about 5 hours after they reunited as young adults. Saving Padme wasn’t about love so much as possession, and he was a really bad person throughout II and only a little nicer at the beginning of III. The problem wasn't that his turn felt abrupt, it was that everyone around him acted like they couldn't see it when it was so glaringly obvious.

What would have greatly improved this trilogy is if Padme had been the one to start doubting democracy, and then corrupted an apolitical Anakin in II, only to realize she had created a monster and tried to backtrack in III. That would have given them something to bond over, and also given her one single character flaw to overcome instead of zero. She watched the bureaucracy and the Senate essentially allow her planet to be destroyed and her people to be slaughtered, took independent action to save it... and yet she still thinks democracy is good? Missed opportunity.

Overall, it’s definitely an improvement over Attack of the Clones, especially visually... but I surprisingly found it to have more plot holes and bad character decisions than Episode I, which was actually pretty consistent (just badly explained). Of course, the ending is great... which is something that is true of all of these movies, even AOTC.

 6/10

So while I still wouldn't call myself a prequel fan, I did enjoy them more than I have in the past... and can see why they're having a renaissance. Some of it is deserved, some of it is absolutely not. They're really flawed movies... I'm not even sure if I would go as far as 'great story badly told', because the characters are so weak and the emotional growth just isn't there at all... but there are some interesting themes, fantastic visuals and of course, the scores are amazing. I think AOTC messed up the story more than people realize and IMO it never fully recovered, but there was a pretty solid first chapter that could have been fixed with more showing, less telling, and stripping away the weirdness of taxation and trade routes.