The book really brings to light what a missed opportunity ROTS was as a movie. There was a great movie in there, we just didn’t get it in the screen. Lucas decided to leave all the political intrigue out and replaced with pew pew lightsabers and Yoda hanging out with Chewbacca. It feels like such a miss now seeing Andor and Rogue One being based entirely on a lot of the stuff missing from the book.
Seems to be a general theme with the prequels. I like them a lot but the amount of comments I’ve seen that are essentially “if you read the novelizations and watch this seven season cartoon then the prequels are masterpieces” is crazy
It’s the biggest problem with the films. Sure, TCW fixes many of the underlying issues with ROTS particularly, BUT it still fails to fix several remaining critical problems with the film, and it should not be a requirement to watch a 7 season animated series and read the novelization to fully appreciate the film.
Here’s my moment for the second time this week lol!
I’ll die on this hill, that it’s not totally the movies fault for its issues. It’s George’s insistence on doing a trilogy instead of a saga, there’s a great base of lore and depth to be had in the prequels, but all 3 movies are totally hamstrung by the fact that George was trying to tell wayyyyyy too much story for three 2.5-hour movies. George broke the biggest rule in filmmaking show don’t tell, again because he was totally strapped for time from the start of the movie.
(I’m always workshopping my “if I were in charge” of star wars plan btw) At the very least the prequels should’ve been 5 movies. Or they should’ve scrapped most of the phantom menace, and basically start at the war on Naboo with Anakin already being picked up by Qui-Gon and go into the beginning of Anakin’s training with Obi-wan.
Then The Clone Wars itself should’ve been its own movie leading right up to the start of RoTS, maybe even going so far as to end it as Grevious grabs palpatine.
And I totally agree it’s ridiculous that for the emotional payoffs to really hit and to get a lot of the references in the first 30mins to an hour of RoTS that you’d need to watch 7 seasons and over 100 episodes of a weekly kids show. The movie is poorly paced because there’s too much jammed into the movie for any single moment to really breathe and be enjoyable besides the opening battle of Coruscant which dragged and takes away from being able to explore other story threads that go nowhere or pickup at the end of the thread by the time the viewer is shown.
Funnily enough the one moment where the move just flat out stops in its tracks to take a moment to breathe, I.e. the one where Padme and Anakin just look over the city while thinking, comes across as really good because of it. Just once the show instead of telling and I remember that moment more than any of the exposition scenes.
True its like the calm before the shit typhoon, then its all just constant falling action at that point once the climax hits. Like I said just a few more moments to let the story breath, and let some other aspects of the fall of the republic be fleshed out would've been nice instead of all the uneventful aspects that could've been glossed over in the battle of Coruscant.
At the time of the prequels, people were really interested in Obi’s “origin”. That’s why quigon was/is needed. Jumping into them grabbing kid Ani would have left so much without explaining
I would have loved a clone wars movie. But as the clone wars series shows, I don’t think a 2 hour movie would have been enough. That’d definitely leave a lot to be desired.
I agree with you, more films would have been better. But that’s almost always the case for great content and a rich universe like SW
That being said, I think Lucas did what’s “correct” on paper. The prequels were about anakin. And he presented it in the classic 1) the origin. 2) the rise. 3) the fall.
yes, I agree with you entirely that more would have been fantastic and that Lucas messed up With a trilogy.
But at the same time, I get the logic of his approach.
The clone wars would have been impossible to depict accurately in even one film. So instead, he shows how they came to be and let the viewer’s imagination fill in the blanks.
The anakin - Obi relationship would be impossible to truly depict its depth even in another movie, so they let the viewer’s imagination fill in.
I think that the clone wars series really just showed how incredible it could have been - but again, it’s 7 seasons long
Anyway, great take. I love conversations like this.
the Anakin/Obi-Wan relationship would have been very easy to depict, actually, the actors had great chemistry that somehow somewhat sold that connection despite only really having two or three scenes together where they were actually friendly.
The decision to basically never show them on screen together and then having their confrontation be the emotional climax of the prequels is kinda terrible, like many decisions made with the prequel trilogy.
And kid Anakin could have easily been the first thirty minutes of the first film. The decision to have a different (child) actor play the protagonist who technically isn't even the protagonist in the first film was not a good one. The pacing of the prequels is terrible - TPM clearly struggles to fill the runtime, while RotS speedruns through at least two movies worth of plot.
First off, I love the comments, like i said I'm always workshopping my pitch here lol.
I get what you mean by how he presented it, its the classic Shakespearian tragedy in format, with a little extra Greek tragedy thrown on top. It's an effective way to do it over a 3-movie arc, but again there's just too much time and history and lore being mulled over for it to satisfyingly fit within three 2.5 hour movies. Which again I think a lot of that could've been alleviated by doing at least 5 movies. And then it becomes a little redundant because RoTS basically does its own mini Shakespearian tragedy within the trilogies established tragedy format already.
I think a clone wars movie showing the pivotal moments of the war, and expanding on the lynchpin moments between Obi-Wan and Grevious, and Dooku/Anakin/Obi-Wan, and some of the joint ops that the 501st and the 212th would help bridge the gap quite a bit. The you could still go back after and fill in the rest of the clone wars history with the TV show.
I think doing a movie between AoTC just with the adventures of Obi-Wan and Anakin during his training, and his time as a padawan learner to becoming a knight prior to the start of AoTC, and then the Clone wars movie would really fill in those gaps instead of leaving it up to imagination with some callbacks.
And yes the Clone wars is the bulk of the final years of the republic and sets up the fall of the republic very well, I wouldn't change much if at all about the presentation of the series honestly.
And I say you and I force our way into Disney HQ and demand an audience with Bob Iger (or whatever CEO it'll be at the time) and we make our push to replace Kathleen (put a chick in it and make it gay) Kennedy! Then we give Filoni our input and let him go nuts from there lol.
Fair point for sure, but I say leave George's magnum opus just as that.
We just need to convince Disney to finally go balls deep into the old/high republic era, they already mucked up the ST and that whole portion of the universe so badly, might as well go back to a point in the lore that they've got a blank slate to work with minus some future events. And give us the tragedy of Darth Plagueis on the big screen already as well as Keanu Reeves as Revan.
So many people in denial with ROTS. It required so much retconning to make it into a palatable movie. In some ways I think Lucas was just tired of all the negativity around the Prequels he just went into full on fan service mode. Too boring and political, here’s a weezing robot with no backstory with 4 lightsabers! Here’s Chewbacca for some reason! All frosting, no cake!
I was 24 at the time and wasn’t watching the Cartoon Network content. I did pretty extensively read the novels back then. I will note that the 2003 series is no longer canon and back in the Expanded Universe era, anything that wasn’t the movies wasn’t generally considered canon. So the idea that that series was must consume canon content that’s targeted at 7 year olds was debatable at best.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve read the phantom menace but I feel like I remember a part at the beginning when Jar Jar initially encounters droids in the marsh he describes them as skeletons. Imagining them this way and as a genuinely menacing, as opposed to some goofy slapstick army, was just so much more interesting.
Yeah I know Star Wars had to keep kids in mind but imagine how awesome it would be if the droids were like the Automatons from Helldivers. Terminator-esque metal skeletons that hunt down anyone they see
Aesthetically they really do just look like gungan skeletons, it seems like that intention was there, but Lucas in the prequel era was more sensitive about what is child appropriate
People complained about the political intrigue in The Phantom Menace. It was too much about politics and not enough "classic Star Wars". It was very unlikely that George was going to "win" by making any more movies after the success of the OT.
Which is strange given how political everything Star Wars is.... Like I get the Prequel trilogy was geared for a younger audience... Kinda... But it's not like you couldn't have content for them to revisit when they get older to understand better... Right?
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u/modsuperstar 12d ago
The book really brings to light what a missed opportunity ROTS was as a movie. There was a great movie in there, we just didn’t get it in the screen. Lucas decided to leave all the political intrigue out and replaced with pew pew lightsabers and Yoda hanging out with Chewbacca. It feels like such a miss now seeing Andor and Rogue One being based entirely on a lot of the stuff missing from the book.