Star Wars: The Phantom Menace turns 25 this month – leaving many fans (including yours truly) feeling older than Master Yoda. But more than that, Phantom Menace‘s anniversary has re-opened the wider debate about the Star Wars prequels: namely, whether they’re bad or not.
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This discourse is partly a generational thing. For older fans who grew up on the original Star Wars trilogy, the prequel trilogy is where the saga really lost its way (Return of the Jedi‘s Ewoks being an early warning sign). Yet for younger fans, the prequels are as much “true” Star Wars as the films that came before them – maybe even more so. Indeed, the initial backlash against The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith has done a complete 360. Once, these flicks were accused of betraying the saga. Now they’re held up as the bar the sequel trilogy failed to reach.
Me, I’m somewhere in the middle. I grew up with the original trilogy on VHS (and eventually, on the big screen, via the Special Edition re-release). The Phantom Menace was my first “proper” Star Wars theatrical experience, and at just the right age (I was 11). I loved it, and the other prequels too. Yet as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to accept the prequel trilogy is bad – but I’ll never stop apologizing for it.
What’s Wrong With the Star Wars Prequels?
What’s to apologize for, you ask? After all, the Star Wars prequels boast striking visuals, stirring musical motifs, and (best of all) stellar lightsaber fight choreography. But positives such as these are heavily outweighed by the prequel trilogy’s many, many shortcomings. For one thing, The Phantom Menace starts the entire saga off too early. It’s also sluggishly paced and massively misfires with “comic” sidekick Jar Jar Binks. Attack of the Clones doesn’t fare much better. Its main mystery narrative goes largely unresolved (on screen, at least), while the Anakin/Padmé romantic subplot is peak cringe.
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Even Revenge of the Sith – widely and rightly regarded as the best of the bunch – has some pretty major problems. Chiefly, it’s a tonal mess; a cartoonish adventure for its first half, a grown-up(ish) space opera for its second. Anakin and Padmé’s interactions are also as clunky as ever, and the resolution of the latter’s arc lands somewhere between baffling and insulting. Across all three movies, the performances vary wildly, the surfeit of CGI is suffocating, and the dialogue painful. And that’s only scratching the surface of what’s wrong with the prequels.
George Lucas’ Singular Vision Powers the Prequels
So, why do I stand by the prequel trilogy? For two reasons, really – and the first is Star Wars creator George Lucas’ vision. Even when Lucas was making stuff up on the fly (and he did, often), it still felt like he was drawing from a carefully orchestrated masterplan, not a few notes scribbled in a binder (which he was). Because he was the ultimate decider, any storytelling inconsistencies or outright failures were filtered through his singular sensibilities. The prequels felt cohesive, even when they weren’t. Incidentally, this is where the sequel trilogy arguably comes unstuck: there are too many competing visions – of filmmakers and studio execs alike – for the films to gel.
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Lucas also took some big creative swings with the Star Wars prequels. Providing a scientific explanation for the Force. Introducing a full-blown comedic character. Putting a noir-lite sheen over the middle installment. These are all risky moves for a franchise steeped in nostalgia. And on that point: Lucas recycled Star Wars‘ established lore strategically, balancing it out with dazzling new creatures and worlds in all three prequels. As much as he deliberately called back to the original trilogy, he brought a bunch of new stuff to the table, too. His successors? Not so much. So, it’s easy to pine for the prequels’ freshness, if nothing else.
The Prequels Didn’t Kill Star Wars – They Saved It
The second reason for my prequel-positive stance is that they gave my generation Star Wars. Sure, the Special Edition rekindled our enthusiasm for the franchise, but without new movies of our own, it would’ve fizzled out. The Phantom Menace stopped this from happening – big time. Seriously: the pre-release hype for that film was like nothing I’ve experienced, before or since. That’s partly an age thing (36-year-olds get less excited than 11-year-olds, sadly), but love it or hate it, The Phantom Menace was a milestone moment in cinema history. And I did love it. More than that, I was hooked for life. I’m sure plenty of other folks would say the same.
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Besides, as I noted above, it’s not just Millennials whose abiding appreciation of Star Wars is rooted in the prequels, either. For Gen Z, those are the films they came up on, together with the likes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. The sequel trilogy and other Disney-era projects may have reinforced their fandom – and a sincere, Anakin-esque “yippee” for that – but The Phantom Menace and its direct sequels is where it started. Far from killing Star Wars as many people believed in the mid-2000s, the prequels saved it, ensuring that it’s still around for us all to enjoy – and fight about – today. So, bad or not, how could I ever truly hate the Star Wars prequels?
All three Star Wars prequels are currently streaming on Disney+, as part of the platform’s Star Wars collection.
