Star Wars Prequals Part 2 - Wanted! Characters for an epic space adventure!

Lets talk about the characters. If the plot of the prequals was an incoherrant mess, the characters are even worse, all of them are either complete morons, horribly miscast, not what they should be or could easily be replaced with card board cut outs. The actions of the characters are perfectly aligned with the mess that the plot is and only serve to add to the confusion. Lets begin with the autopsy of Qui-gon Jinn.

Qui-gon Jinn

Qui-Gon epitoimizes the stupid part of the characters. For the beginning part of the Phantom Menace he is mainly bland, soulless character who sails through the plot on auto-pilot. He reach the true levels of epic stupidity on Tatooien during the mission get parts to repair the ship our heroes are one. First is his party selection, which is R2-D2, admitedly always a smart choice, but why in the world would you want to take Jar-Jar Binks along, what possible use would he have for the rather important mission of getting the parts. Padme I can sort of understand, having her makes the team blend in a bit better by giving them more options for plausible cover story, but Jar Jar Binks is just a walking disaster area who is only going to attract attention.

But where the stupidity real takes over Qui-Gon is when he tries to buy the part, after not having the right currency, falling for the oldest sales trick in the book and even having the Jedi Mind Trick fail him, his next logical step was to make the most elaborate bet in movie history. Here are a couple alternate ways of dealing with the broken ship problem, that don't envolve massive bets on an 8-year old kid winning a F1 Grand Prix.

1) If using the Mind Trick to cheat in a business transaction isn't a problem, why not go to another merchant with your worthless currency, Mind Trick the guy into swapping it into local currency or for something that could be used to barter with Watto who has the part you need.

2) Take Jar Jar back to the ship and lock him into the ships brig. Then get Obi-Wan and the Captain of the Queens Guard to come along, for an epic rescue mission/robbery. Surely 2 Jedi Knights and a battle hardened soldier are more than capable of robbing some parts and rescuing two slaves from an unarmed merchant.

3) If fraud or robbery are too immoral for you, how about just sell the ship and buy a new smaller ship or just hire a transport to take the group back to Coruscant. Hell a ships captain might even take the money that the local junk merchant refused.

4) Or even more simply, just call to the Jedi Temple in Coruscant that you are stranded on Tatooien and need transport/parts to repair your ship. It shouldn't be beyond the means of the Jedi Order to help them out.

5) or while you are calling to the Jedi Temple, how about tell them that slavery is still alive and well on Tatooien and ask them to send a couple of hundred Jedi Knights to end slavery on Tatooien.

That would have actually made a pretty good plot for the prequals, instead of a random blockade of planet we know nothing about and care very little for, have the conflict be about slavery. The movie could like start with a slave revolt the now slaver Trade Federation guys are trying to put down, the Jedi are like coming to help the slaves and we could meet young Anakin who is like a slave fighting for his freedom. This would have something more relatable than some vague issue over taxation of inter-planetary trade. But I digress. What was I talking about, oh yeah Qui-Gon Sucks.

Yoda and all of the Jedi

How do you recognize a Jedi in the prequals? Simple, they are the dudes who run and jump around with a lightsaber. What made Yoda cool in the Empire Strikes Back was the fact that he was Jedi Master and he didn't have a lightsaber. Lightsaber is arguably one of the coolest weapons ever invented for cinema, so how cools is guy that doesn't need one? In Empire Strikes Back Yoda's weapon and tool is the Force, its the Force that makes him powerful, not his lightsaber. It is implied that as a Jedi Master he no longer needs one, with the Force he was found other means of defending himself and overcoming conflicts. It is like Sun-Tzu said "To win without fighting is best". When Yoda teaches Luke its not about the twenty cool lightsaber fencing techniques, its about how to use the Force and use it responsibly. The Jedi are defined by their use of the Force and how they use it to interact with universe at large, not by the weapon they use.

This is why every scene where Yoda bounces around like a pinball with a lightsaber is so god awful. Not only is the idea of Yoda fighting a bit odd, but if you had to give him a weapon and fight scene atleast give him a weapon that makes some God damn sense. The fight between count Dooku and Yoda is just stupid, because of the massive reach advantage that Dooku has, there is virtually no chance that Yoda is going to be able to land a blow on Dooku. Its sort of boring to watch a fight where one side has no chance to hurt the other. A much better weapon for Yoda would have one of those shurikens that the Predators had in Aliens versus Predator, with it he could overcome his size disadvantage and make the most of his Force powered telekinetic abilities.

Count Dooku and Mace Windu

These two characters fall to the horribly miscast category. Samuel L. Jackson plays Mace Windu, a character that is really difficult to talk about because he is just a bland character that is separated from the rest of the bland mass of the Jedi by the colour of his lightsaber. The fact that Windu, a calm and collected Jedi Master, is played by a guy who is at his best when playing angry and passionate characters only highlights his blandness. Similary Christopher Lee wasn't really a good choice to play the villain of the films. He does ok playing the evil aristocrat, who according to the dialogue is a political idealist(we never actual see any idealism in him because the plot is void of anything resembling an ideal), but he is still just a bad guy version of a bland Jedi, who is separated from the mass by having a different type of a lightsaber.

Both characters could have been saved with minor changes to the characters and by swapping the actors. Samuel L. Jackson would have made a great Sith. Make Jackson's Dooku a fanatical idealist, with a political ideology that we can either despise, like Fascism or totalitarianism, or have him take an ideology that we can identify with to an extreme, like taking freedom to anarchism. Also make him angry, Jackson would have been the perfect guy to play a Sith Lord, who is driven by anger and hate, derived from his idealism. In the same way Lee would have made for an excellent Jedi Master, just throw some Jedi robes on him, give him some wise Jedi stuff to say and you are done, or even better have him debate Jedi philosophy with Yoda. That would have given the film a perfect opportunity for some exposition about the Jedi and the Jedi philosophy, you know to add to our knowledge of who and what the Jedi are. It is amazing that even with 3 new films featuring Jedis heavily, most of what we know about them still comes from Luke's training scenes in Empire Strikes Back.

Anakin and Padme - it's a love story

Anakin Skywalker is the character that was possibly the one that Lucas messed up the worst. The original backstory for Anakin was that he was a good man who was seduced by the dark side. Anakin in the prequals was anything but a good man. He was a narcissist with strong homicidal and megalomanic tendencies. Most of what he does and says reinforce this image. Most of what Anakin says in the films is either about how awesome he is or bitching about Obi-Wan. Most of what he does in the films, he does to further his own ambitions and needs. As far as I am conserned, he was on the Dark Side when he started the Sand People Massacre.

You could argue that his love for Padme and the extreme's he goes to save her would make him a good guy, but I would argue against it. You see Anakin isn't really in love with Padme, he is in love with the idea of having her. He isn't saving Padme because he cares for her well-being but rather because he can't bare the idea of her leaving him. Her dying is just incidental, he would have reacted equally badly if say she fell in love with someone else or as happened at the end of Revenge of the Sith her leaving him.

What Anakin should have been, instead of the egotistical asshole we got, was someone like Luke Skywalker, a likeable selfless hero, and his story should have mirrored Luke's internal struggle in the Original Trilogy, except that instead of overcoming his inner darkness he was tragically seduced by it.

Padme was also tragically misplaced character. She fills the same spot as Leia did in the original trilogy, except that it was executed poorly. Her main point in the plot is to give Anakin a love interest and insert the mandatory love story into the plot to get the female demographic something interesting. Except that the love story here is executed badly. To make full sense of just how awful the story of Padme and Anakin is, you have to compare it to the story of Han and Leia in the Original films.

Leia and Han's story is probably the most interesting romantic subplot in any film I have seen, it is executed beautifully. The acting and chemistry between Harrison Ford and Carrie Fischer is great. The progression of the romance is well balanced, starting from the intial snarky comments at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back, to the moment of passion in the bowls of the Millenium Falcon, the constant nagging that Han receive's from Leia during the chase scene's and to the final declaration of love moments before Han is frozen. It's increadibly satisfying to see them finaly admit that they are in love after seeing them overcome the adversities imposed by the environment and their own egos.

This sort of thing is pretty much completely absent from the Padme and Anakin story. The only things that tell us that there is a love story going on, is that there is romantic music playing and two pretty people are walking around in spectacular scenery. The dialogue is god awful and acting isn't that better either. Most of the time Anakin looks like he is going to rape Padme in a few minutes, which is sort of understandable when you look at the revealing outfits that Padme is wearing.

To make the story better would have been to rework Padme from a badly done Leia clone into a seductive Femme Fatale type who slowly seduces the good and pure Anakin into abandoning his ideals as a Jedi Knight. She could have even been secretly working for Palpatine with the expresse intention of expaditing Anakin's fall to the Dark Side. And right after Anakin finally falls for Padme, the love story could have ended with Obi-Wan being directly involved with her death in the fight against Palpatine and his plots. How tragic would have it been if Obi-Wan, Anakin's best friend, had unknowingly killed the love of Anakin's life? Then it wouldn't have been very difficult for Palpatine, who might have engineered the whole thing in the first place, to manipulate Anakin into hating Obi-Wan and the Jedi, thus completing a journey into the darkness that innocently began with a love affair.

The Rest

The rest of the characters like Palpatine, Obi-Wan or General Grieveous I really don't have much to say. Some of these characters were basically ok even with some minor issues, but whose big problems have more to do with the overall assness of the plot rather than on the characters themselves. I thought Palpatine, inspite of some moments of unintetional silliness, worked well as the maste mind villain and Evan McGregors Obi-Wan wasn't that much of disappointment, inspite of momentary lapses into Qui-Gon like stupidity. He is in fact the only character in the films I remember having emotions that I could relate to. The rest of them were so bland, unmemorable and boring that I can't really comment on them except to say that they were bland, unmemorable and boring. Darth Maul and General Griveous fall into this category.

In the next part we will discuss CGI, special effects, lightsaber duels and the reasons why the prequals turned out into such a bloody mess.

Star Wars Prequals Part 1 - War without cause or consequence

There isn't much that can be said about the Star Wars prequals that hasn't been said by other critics about these films, but here are some of the big issues that I have with these films. If you want to view a funny indepth percpective of these I suggest watching Red Letter Media's reviews on these, just google "Red Letter Media Star Wars" and they should pop up. I have three big problems with these films, the plot which doesn't make sense and you can't get emotionally involved in, the characters that are blank, boring and unrelatable and the special effects that are surprisingly inferior to the original trilogy. Lets begin by diving into the plot, or as I like to call it "The War without cause or consequence"

The overall backstory of the prequals is the Clone Wars. Right of the bat, starting with the first scene of Phantom Menace, the causes of the war are shrouded in mystery. Phantom Menace starts of with an organization called the Trade Federation blockading the planet Naboo. Beyond a vague reference to inter-planetary trade and taxation, there is no explanation why? I have been thinking about this more than I probably should and I still have no ideal, if you have, please share it. What is even more confusing is that an organization made of traders, people who make money by buying goods and services from point A and transporting them to point B and selling them there for a profit, supports a blockade. If a group of merchants wants to prevent a planet from receiving supplies the simplest way to accomplish this is by not selling the said supplies to them and buying those supplies from the market so that it is harder for the planet to buy them from someone else.

While the causes of this remain shrouded in mystery, the consequence of the blockade and the subsequent invasion aren't felt by the viewer either, since the only people we ever get to see on Naboo are the Gungans, about 20 pilots and a bunch politicians. There are no forced labour camps, summary executions, bombed out buildings, refugees or looting and pillaging, everything seems ok in droid occupied Naboo. Beyond vague dialogue by the main characters about Naboo being in danger, there isn't really anything invested in this conflict.

The lack of clear military or political objectives is even more glaring in Attack of the Clones. In this film we see Count Dooku having a meeting with a collection of interstellar bad guys, but again there is no explanation why these guys want to go against the Republic. Clausewitz said that "War is a continuation of politics by other means" so what are the political objectives for the Separitist, what is the Republic doing to these people that would make them want to start a war and how is the life in the Galaxy going to change if they win? We need to know these things in order to care about the battle scene's on the screen. This is in complete contrast to the original trilogy, where the Rebel Alliance is fighting for freedom against the oppressive tyranny of the Galatic Empire. Its a political goal that most people on this planet understand and can relate to. The intensity of the battle scenes is greater since we care about what the heroes and villains are trying to accomplish.

While Attack of the Clones illustrates the lack of causes to the Clone Wars, the Revenge of the Shit (Wait there is something wrong with that title, nah, I'll look into it later.) illustrates the complete lack of consequence for the war. The movie starts of with a big space battle of Coruscant, the capital world of the Republic. The Separatists went down to the planet and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, while we could dwell into all the assness related to this plot, what really bugs me about this scene is that NOTHING happens to Coruscant. The Separitist fleet got to the orbit over their opponents CAPITAL world, with big juicy targets, like the Senate building, The Jedi Temple and the massive support facilities for the clones we saw at the end of the previous films. WHY for fucks sake didn't bomb the everliving shit out of those targets? That would have probably been far more damaging to the Republics war efforts than kidnapping of Palpatine. The Coruscant after the initial battle of Revenge of the Sith looks the same as before the battle. There are no ruined skyscrapers, wounded or dead civilians, refugees, no protests over how the Separatists could get so close to the planet, no anger, fear or any other emotion. Its just business as usual.

This lack of clear and relatable consequence isn't limited to just this one battle. Presumably this war has been going on for sometime now, but we never hear any eulogies for fallen comrades, we never see the anger, fear, horror and sadness that wars generate in humans and other emotional beings. The economic and social consequences are equally lacking, we never see the billions of refugees that flee the fighting, we never see buildings falling into delapitation or be destroyed in the fighting, we don't see people suffer under the heavy taxation needed to fund the war effort. Even the fall of the Republic and the Rise of Empire is largely void of consequences, beyond the destruction of the Jedi, life continues as normal for most of the people of the Republic.

This is again in complete contrast to the original trilogy, in which the consequence of nearly every battle are tangible and relatable. If the rebels failed to destroy the Death Star in New Hope or Return of the Jedi, then the Rebel base would be destroyed, as well as any other planet that dared to challenge the Emperor's rule and all hope for defeating the Tyranny of the Empire would be lost and billions of people would be in danger of loosing their lives and freedom. What could be a greater stake than that. This complete lack of relatable causes, objectives and consequences, makes the plot boring, vague, pointless and the only purpouse it serves is to transport the main characters from one pointless CGI battle scene to the next.

The more finer points of the plot will be examined in the next part which will deal with the characters.