Thirteen Things I Hate About the Star Wars Prequels

(Boba Fett says: I pity da fool who likes the Prequel Trilogy!)
People who were around for the thirteen reasons I hate the Star Wars Special Editions probably know what they are in for. It is SO MUCH FUN to rant on topics about which one is knowledgeable. And, well. I know Star Wars. Oh, I know Star Wars. I know it to a degree that induces strangers to suggest that I need to go out of doors more often. So believe me when I say that all the hate I am about to dispense, I dispense out of love. Pardon me if I begin to foam at the mouth in a geekly frenzy. And when you are finished, go down to the post below and tell Jolee Bindo he is pretty. Thank you. With that said, here goes:

1. Jar Jar Binks. You knew it was coming, so let's just get that one over with and move on to the real meat of the hate.

2. How Padme died of a broken heart and lost the will to live. Oh come on. Seriously? Seriously? The woman was married to Darth Vader. One would think Lucas could come up with something more interesting and less... Victorian... than dying in childbirth of a broken heart.

3. Padme. A feminist deconstruction of Padme follows: She sucks. She is a decorative yawn of a useless female character who doesn't do anything. Really, you have to wonder where her daughter got her spunk from, 'cause damn.

4. The dialogue was lame. Especially the cringe-inducing "romance" dialogue in Attack of the Clones.

5. Continuity errors. "Do you remember your mother? Your real mother?" Luke asks Leia in Return of the Jedi. And then you have her die in childbirth. Oh sure, people try to hedge around it and come up with wacky theories (she remembers because they spoke in the womb using the Force, Leia thought Luke meant her mother on Alderaan, blah blah), but let's just admit what it really is: it's a huge glaring hole in the story that didn't have to happen.

6. One of my favorite aspects of settings like the original Star Wars and the Firefly 'verse is the lived-in rusted-out look. Lucas wanted it that way originally, because it made space different and fresh and real. Why he gave it up I do not know. The problem with CGI is if you use the right amount, impossible things come to life before the viewers' eyes. Use too much of it, everything looks fake. The prequels look fake to me.

7. There is a poop joke in The Phantom Menace. I think this is one of those things I'll never get over.

8. That creature with the lips in Jabba's Palace! I hate that thing!... Oh, fine, you got me, that was in the Special Edition. I am raving. I admit it. But I hate that thing with the diamond shaped head in the pod race. I hate that thing too, and it also lives on Tattooine, so #8 on my 13 has not been completely wasted.

9. Why did we even need to have Anakin as a little kid? Lord, that was annoying. Can we say marketing gimmick? Can we say merchandising? ("Moychandising! Moychandising! They put the picture's name on everything! Spaceballs the Lunch Box! Spaceballs the Breakfast Cereal!") But here's the little secret Lucas and his crew must have missed. News flash: I was five when I saw Star Wars for the first time. I still remember it. I loved it at first sight. Were there any kids in the original Star Wars? No, there were not. But ask my generation and the Gen Xers whether it mattered to them.

10. Pandering to the fans. They liked Boba Fett? Put him in! They liked C3PO and R2? Put them in! They liked Chewbacca? Put him in! Never mind that this is all highly, highly implausible in terms of plot.

11. Oh! Speaking of which (geez, get me going and off I go! I'm on a roll!), if Anakin Skywalker built 3PO and he and Artoo tagged around with the main characters for the ENTIRETY OF THE PREQUELS, why would Ben Kenobi not recognize them in Star Wars?

12. It didn't feel like Star Wars to me. To borrow a term from writers' workshops, it didn't "work." Nobody's motivations "worked" for me because we never got more than a superficial feel for the characters. Especially Anakin. He came across as more of a whiny teenager than a real villain. It was disappointing. It could have been so much more. This really came home to me in November, when I started playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. How come a video game felt more like classic Star Wars to me than the prequel trilogy? It seems like sacrilege. But they just got the atmosphere spot-on. The prequel trilogies, and the Clone Wars plot in general, felt like the sort of plot I would come up with when I was tired and out of ideas, patched together from a bunch of crap in my head, that I would edit the hell out of later, when I felt more inspired, because the story was lame and lacked spice.

13. Crap. No more space in the 13 and so much hate left to dispense! Yet, I feel benevolent tonight, so I will now dispense some love. I love Aayla Secura. Love. Her. And she was in the prequels. So there. If only we'd had more hot blue Twi'lek Jedi and less Jar Jar, it would all have been shiny.


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