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Star Wars Fandom Has Finally Got Over The Prequels - Thanks To Disney
The Star Wars prequels, long the ultimate mar on the franchise, are getting a reevaluation - and a lot of it is thanks to Disney. Or, rather, how fans have reacted to the post-acquisition output of Lucasfilm.
Star Wars has always courted strong reactions, but recently things have gone into hyperspeed. Star Wars: The Last Jedi split the fanbase right down the middle, with some embracing Rian Johnson's unexpected deconstruction of the monomyth while other found the handling of Luke Skywalker - among others - an affront to the decades-long wait. And then Solo: A Star Wars Story became the first bonafide box office failure in the series' history, with a director change and expensive reshoots leading to a good movie yet making it impossible to turn a profit. Now the discussion heading towards Star Wars 9 is less how the sequel trilogy will wrap up and more what the long-term sustainability of Star Wars really is.
In all this forward-thinking discussion, however, there's been one fundamental aspect of Star Wars that's being at worst ignored, at best reevaluated: the prequel trilogy. Whereas ten years ago Episodes I-III were treated as the nadir, now the handling is docile. Part of this will come from the ongoing adventures of the Skywalker clan (and broom boys beyond) meaning Darth Vader's protracted "No" at the end of Revenge of the Sith (or The Clone Wars' Ziro the Hutt) is no longer the final cinematic word from the galaxy far, far away and further that a whole generation of fans who grew up with Anakin instead of Luke and Boba Fett a Kiwi clone are now of age, but in the light of the Disney Star Wars controversies, there appears to be something deeper going on here.
WHY ARE THE STAR WARS PREQUELS SO HATED IN THE FIRST PLACE?
That the Star Wars prequels were so decried so intensely for so long feels almost surreal twenty years on, and that really has little to do with anything that's subsequently happened with Disney.
The prequels were promised almost as long as there was Star Wars. George Lucas had written what was then the single movie as part of a longer serial, and by 1978 he was overtly teasing what came before (including how the Emperor manipulated his way to power and a duel between Vader and Obi-Wan on a lava planet). When the movie known just as Star Wars became Episode IV: A New Hope (a retitle in 1981), Episodes I-III became tangible. And so, for over twenty years, they existed as immensely hyped, near-mythic possibilities. The best modern comparison is, well, Star Wars Episode VII.
Of course, the prequels did not live up to the promise or quality of the original Star Wars trilogy. They were at once immensely divergent - Darth Vader was a whiny child and politics not hope dictated the war - and peculiarly reliant on what had come before - Lucas himself said The Phantom Menace was "like poetry", and the films are full of tight-knit establishment and references to the point that Anakin's fall, the Vader suit, the Empire's rise, Luke & Leia's birth, Padme's death, the Jedi purge, and the end of the Clone Wars all occur in the space of a long weekend. These counter-intuitive aspects prove challenging regardless of quality, and the films are notoriously creaky, with Lucas' wooden dialogue and over-reliance on CGI starting a snowball of weak creative choices.
Yet, despite this well-trodden ground, there are a lot of strong ideas and fewer-but-not-insignificant executions. The story of the prequels - which, again, had been mapped out before the original trilogy was even decided - is immensely powerful, a tale of parallel corruptions that inverts the well-worn hero's journey and Chosen One myths to add depth to the altruism of the original movie, and while Lucas' scripts hide a lot of it (that the Jedi are a useless organization isn't a criticism, it's the point), the performances (think Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine or Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi) and visuals still convey that. With that bedrock, what's strong stands tall: blistering action (the opening space battle of Revenge of the Sith, Duel of the Fates); striking iconography (Order 66, the proto-stormtrooper clones); genuinely impressive special effects (the model-work on The Phantom Menace, Mustafar).
All of which is to say, the prequels are mixed bag. They run the gamut of quality and have some woefully low moments, yet how is that any worse than other reviled follow-ups like The Hobbit? What undid the prequels was that they were only average under the weight of the then almost-infallible Star Wars brand. Episodes I-III are undeniable disappointing, and in the decade following The Phantom Menace, the justification for that became all-consuming dislike; initial reactions were positive, but slowly the rot set in and by the time the iconoclast Mr. Plinkett reviews ran in the late-2000s, the horse was dead.
The key here, though, is that so much of the backlash comes from self-perpetuation rather than analysis. Take midichlorians. The most reviled aspect of the prequels for an entire generation, these microscopic, Force-giving lifeforms are blamed for ruining the mystique of the Force. But do they? A high midichlorian count is, in practice, not that far beyond being "strong with the Force" in the original trilogy, it's just a scientific application. That's not to say they're necessary, but anything claiming they're ruinous within the mythology divorces itself from the material. Much of the backlash works in this form - and that's what Disney's corrected.
DISNEY STAR WARS NEVER LOST SIGHT OF THE PREQUELS
When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and began work on the sequel trilogy alongside a selection of original-centric spinoffs, it felt like the prequels were being consciously swept aside. This was only seven years after Revenge of the Sith wrapped up the decade-long enterprise, and while The Clone Wars and advancing Expanded Universe material (including Legacy of the Force, a story centered on Han and Leia's son turning to the dark side) had moved the narrative beyond Anakin Skywalker, they were still the dominant aspect of Star Wars discourse in a near-unanimously negative light. Why would Disney even glance with this? The expectation was that the era was dead.
But it wasn't. Disney hasn't gone that far back in any of the movies, but they've certainly incorporated elements: The Force Awakens references a Clone army; Rogue One brings in Mustafar and Jimmy Smitts' Bail Organa; The Last Jedi has Luke Skywalker's exile motivated by discovering of the Jedi's ills from Episodes I-III, even citing Darth Sidious (a name first given in The Phantom Menace). Beyond, though, they've been as important as something sixty years before the current crop of movies could be: Star Wars Rebels evolved into a sequel to The Clone Wars, Forces of Destiny is trilogy-agnostic, and Star Wars Battlefront II marketed itself on a skirmish between Battle Droids and Clone Troopers on Naboo.
The methodology seemed to be to keep the prequels present, if not overly integrated, maintaining a section of the brand that prevailed for over a decade and provided an entire generation with an entrance into Star Wars. As time has gone by, they've taken bigger steps, and it's landed mostly well: the announcement Battlefront II is adding Clone Wars content met a mostly positive reaction.
The latest step has certainly the most audacious, with Darth Maul having a small-but-impactful cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story. While in canon that is, of course, as much a TV appearance as it is a character from the movies, to most audiences he's primarily known for (and hitherto assumed dead following) The Phantom Menace. That he can appear and any backlash against it comes from greater concerns says a lot about how perception has shifted.
Indeed, it's often overlooked how much of the prequel-only aspects have been accepted. That the Jedi wear Tatooine robes is so ingrained that it's now a little-cited plot hole, while fans want a kiwi Boba Fett and Ewan McGregor to reprise his role in the Kenobi movie as if they are Star Wars firmament - because they are. Of course, all of this played into a bigger picture, and that's where the change gets interesting.
DISNEY STAR WARS DISCUSSION MUST BE AWARE OF THE PREQUELS
The Disney Star Wars era is becoming more and more peculiar. Each movie has, at least on an aesthetic level, successfully captured some form of what Star Wars is, yet each new release has nevertheless proven divisive based on how it fits the beholder's view of what the franchise is: there are equal numbers of reviews comparing Solo to Rogue One as the best and worst of the new era with complete conviction. The confusion - and, indeed, why making the movies has proven so complicated, with more directors hired and fired than have seen a film to completion - comes from Star Wars being so hard to fundamentally define.
What this usually means is that, if you're going to mount a case for or against some new Star Wars, it needs to be contextualized against what's came before. This only ever hurt the prequels given that the three movies before them were classics, and likewise can be swiftly used to dismiss the sequels - there's no way the lines will be as quotable or the music as hummable after months compared to decades. However, for the new era, if you're going to criticise a sequel or anthology film, your argument must at least take consideration of the prequels.
This is where going negative on the movies becomes difficult: ignorance is forgiving in its own way; but to mount a proper case against what Disney is doing with the franchise in any form requires admitting how things were viewed a little of ten years ago under George Lucas.
WHAT THE STAR WARS PREQUELS DID THAT THE SEQUELS DON'T
Disney Star Wars is, on a technical level, much more competent than Lucas' work on the prequels. The production design, the practical sets, the CGI, the sound-mixing et al are a step above, while the new characters have (mostly) resonated in a manner far beyond previous additions. Of course, there are still pervasive criticisms, chiefly that the films are too familiar and repetitive or too flippant and veer far from expectations. Above all, though, the key issues stem from the story's reliance on the past; The Force Awakens' plot mirrors A New Hope and, while The Last Jedi upended theories, it still concluded by returning to an original trilogy-esque status quo (to the point the characters flip to calling the Resistance "Rebels" halfway through). Add in a general lack of forward-planning, and for all the deft thematic exploration, there's a distinct absence of narrative purpose.
In contrast, the prequels were fresh and had a clear vision. Above all, they were different: Anakin's fall does in many ways mirror Luke's rise but it's more than just contrast; and the world was backward engineered, but in a way that felt detached and alien, highlighting a different ruling era. For all the filmmaking hiccups, the Star Wars prequels are very much the product of a singular auteur. In an environment where popular culture is riddled with studio-compromised films - from Justice League to Solo - that speaks parsecs.
It's not about which is better, it's that the two trilogies get different things right and it's through comparison that this can be truly grasped; because the qualities that have divided the fanbase on the sequels aren't simple craft, they force everybody to assess what exactly was "wrong" with the prequels and challenge those long-held views. As a recent controversial movie taught, if Star Wars fandom is to have a rational take on the present, it must consider the past.
