Rogue Squadron - Reevaluating the Prequels

Before The Force Awakens came out last December, we showed our son the original trilogy. I made the decision to avoid the prequels and just focus on the good movies. He enjoyed them and suddenly the superheroes he often played were now teaming up with Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon.

Then Christmas came and we ended up getting the Disney Infinity game for the Xbox. Included in the starter set are Anakin and Ashoka, two definitively not Original Trilogy characters. I figured this might be a good transition into watching The Clone Wars but the kid had other ideas. He latched onto the idea of Anakin becoming Darth Vader and really wanted to see the movie where that happens. So I relented and we began our drive through the Star Wars prequels movies.

Having now watched them for the first time in probably eight+ years, and this being the first time I’ve watched them since seeing The Clone Wars cartoon I was able to view the movies in a new light. Were they still as bad as we all imagine them to be? Well, yeah, kind of. The acting is still wooden, the special effects are still overwhelming and the dialogue is still facepalm inducing.

But all of that aside there are some worthwhile things contained within these movies.

The Phantom Menace

Long decried as the worst movie in the set this movie is the poster child for why the prequels suck. Sixteen years later it still really sucks. But there is a good movie buried underneath all the garbage.

First, while the movie gets decried for all its talk about politics and taxing of trade routes I don’t think any of that was actually a problem. The movie really doesn’t spend that much time talking about it. That stuff really is just set up for a conflict and to show that the Jedi are at the prime of their strength. If anything, it could have spent a little bit more time explaining the conflict so it’s a bit more clear what the Trade Federation is hoping to gain from all this and what their dispute with the Naboo actually is.

Additionally, the idea that Palpatine is using an artificially created conflict to engineer a rise to power is a great introduction to his character. He’s manipulative and cunning. A perfect foil to the in-your-face Jedi and the menacing Darth Vader. Vader is great for enforcing the Empire’s will but he never would have been able to create the Empire.

Second, the idea of Anakin being older before he starts his Jedi training is actually a good idea. Yoda did not want to train Luke because he was too old. This was the perfect opportunity to show why that might be. The movie screws up in that he starts out being too young. He really should have been much closer to Luke’s age.

Now, I don’t have any problem with Jake Lloyd’s performance The poor guy has had his life ruined by this movie and I don’t think any of it can be placed on his shoulders. He didn’t ruin the movie. The movie ruined itself by making the character a kid.

Had Anakin been a teenager then his fall to the Dark Side would be more tragic as Luke was a teenager and didn’t. You also could have established the relationship with Padme right from the beginning and not make it weird. Then the rest of the movies would have a nice groundwork to build from.

And, most importantly, you wouldn’t have needed a ten year gap between movies. This first movie could have been the start of the Clone Wars, even if the Clones weren’t yet introduced. The Jedi save Naboo but fighting has now started and the Republic is starting to crumble.

Other things that are good if you just polish them up a bit are Jar-Jar Binks and the battle droids. Jar-Jar as presented is just terrible. There’s no getting around it. But the idea of two species living on the same planet who don’t trust each other but need to come together is a good idea. Remove the silly antics of Jar-Jar and most of his lines and it’s not bad. (One of my SW campaigns featured a Gungan soldier as a companion NPC. I dropped the accent and the players loved the character and the species).

Likewise, the battle droids are a good idea. Ready built armies of cold, merciless killing machines. Unfortunately, instead of Terminator, we got the Three Stooges in mechanical form. But they really aren’t hard to fix. Just remove the dialogue from the audio track and the droids work just fine.

Even the idea of the droid control ship blowing up and shutting down the droid army is good. It perfectly explains the value of the Clone army being created. If droids need to be centrally controlled to be an effective fighting force then Clones that can fight independently is a perfect counter force.

Additionally, the movie did create a lot of great visuals. Naboo is beautiful. The N-1 starfighter is also pretty cool looking. Especially the fact that it shoots green lasers and the “bad guy” droid army shoots red, the complete opposite of the TIEs vs X-wings in the original series. I’d enjoy seeing this on the X-wing table.

So really, to make the movie decent you only need to trim a few things out (droid dialogue and Jar-Jar “humor”) and replace Anakin with an older character. And not kill Darth Maul. Have him kill Qui-Gon and then just walk away from Obi-wan.

Attack of the Clones

Originally, I liked this one better than Episode 1. It’s the first one with lots of Jedi on the screen. A nice big battle. We also get to see Slave-1 fly and look cool.

But sadly, now I’ve come to the conclusion that AOTC is the worst movie in the series. None of it makes any sense. There’s a Clone army, created by some Jedi we’ve never heard of. It’s paid for somehow? It’s just given to the Jedi and no one really asks about that. The template for the Clones is one of the bad guys and no one finds that weird.

Unlike Episode 1 I don’t think this one can be redeemed without a complete rewrite. There’s just to much wrong with it. It did reduce Jar-Jar’s presence which was nice. But that’s really all it has going for it.

What would have been good? Well, the actual Clone Wars. Had Anakin been older in Episode 1, we could have picked up just a few years later. More and more groups are breaking from the Republic and starting to challenge the Jedi’s authority. War is breaking out.

Instead of a bad murder mystery that somehow leads to finding an army ready right when they need it, the movie opens with a conflict within the Jedi about creating a Clone army. Some Jedi want to create a Clone army to oppose the droids as they will fight better than droids. They will also save lives as real people won’t have to fight and die. Others are opposed, viewing this as slavery. Anakin and Obi-wan are caught in the middle.

Darth Maul pops back up, somewhere, tempting Obi-wan to touch the Dark Side and get revenge. Anakin saves Obi-wan from going to the Dark Side and killing Maul. But then Maul kills Anakin’s mother or threatens Padme and Anakin goes full revenge, helping to create the Clone army, and doing some morally questionable things to win some battle at the movies conclusion.

Revenge of the Sith

After having watched The Clone Wars this movie has improved dramatically. We got to see some corruption of the Jedi, we saw Anakin evolve as a character. It’s just too bad we couldn’t get Ahsoka in the movies. She was a great character and really helped to develop Anakin, especially since she turned her back on the Jedi which helped build his dissatisfaction with them.

Watching ROTS now it is definitely the strongest of the three prequels. You can see some actual conflict in Anakin as the Jedi are not shining beacons of light and Palpatine isn’t clearly evil, at least from Anakin’s perspective. You can feel some greater grief from Obi-Wan. Anakin’s relationship with Padme feels like it has some substance (though their dialogue is still pretty bad).

Like TPM, this one could use a few edits and tweaks to make it a good movie but not really all that many. Again, the battle droid dialogue needs to be removed. Mindless Terminators. That’s what they need to be.

Grievous needed to be introduced in AOTC. Having seen him in The Clone Wars and have him kill some Jedi makes his defeat more important. But without that he was a pretty pointless character.

Anakin’s Force vision of Padme’s death needed to either involve Darth Maul returning to kill her, prompting him to want to gain any advantage he could to defeat Maul, or some kind of disease that only Sith Force training could cure. His need for Sith power was too nebulous as presented. It needed to be more clear why he needed more power. And also, her dying from a broken heart, gag. She died from being Force choked by Anakin/Vader. Just a few dialogue changes and that’s fixed.

Anakin and Mace Windu’s conflict needed to be more well developed. Was Mace right in deciding to kill Palpatine? That central question needed to be more important. And Anakin’s decision to kill Mace needed to be based more on hatred then opportunity. Anakin needed to hate Mace. There’s traces of it but had there been some more conflict between them Anakin’s conflict at turning in his friend, Palpatine, as a threat would be more poignant. And then when Mace decides to kill an unarmed Palpatine, a decision that is at odds with the Jedi Code but probably the smart move given the Sith’s power, Anakin could kill him both out of hatred and because Mace is in the wrong.

The scene with the Younglings either needed to just not happen or needed to play out differently. Anakin still is doing all of this to preserve the life of his wife and unborn child. Killing unarmed kids for no reason is too far of a step to be believable. But, if they die off screen as part of the Clones storming the Temple, sure. Or if he decides to spare them but the kids rebel and start attacking the Clones, they are Force users after all, then he kills them, it makes sense.

But aside from those relatively small changes the movie still works. Especially after watching The Clone Wars. Which only reinforces that AOTC sucks and needed to essentially be about what The Clone Wars cartoon was.

As for visuals, the planets were once again cool to visit and some of the ships would be great to see on the X-wing table. The Jedi Eta-2 Interceptor is a cool looking fighter and would be great to fly. The ARC-170 also looks good but the S-foils are pointless. And a Venator Star Destroyer would be worth adding to the Armada game.

So there we have it. Some of the prequels aren’t quite as bad as we remember. Some are much worse. Overall, I would recommend doing a modified machete order. Episode IV, V, The Clone Wars, Episode III, Episode VI. That should all work together and tell a good story.