How did the star wars prequels go so wrong? Does Lucas Realise it?

[Bladeneo]

The Xbox Man said:

Bladeneo said:

Personally they receive so much bad press it seems most just jump on the bandwagon nowadays. They aren't THAT bad at all, and in fact, episode three (particularly the final half) is a very good film, and for me at least worthy of being mentioned with the original trilogy. The films had issues of course, but unfortunately Harrison Ford kicks so much ass that he's pretty hard to follow on from. 

I agree Episode 3 is a good film, thats why I never mentioned it by word in the opening post. By prequels I mainly mean The Phantom menace and Attack Of The Clones. They are atrocious films if we look at it objectively, but you have full right to like them as your opinion.

Well that's fair enough. Phantom Menace is saved by virtue of how good the duel with Maul and Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan is, it's very very good, but the rest of it is just...meh. He was definitely going for an Episode 4 approach with a slower paced story, but it just didn't work because the characters weren't as good. Outside of the aforementioned three, really you just had an annoying anakin kid running around. And FUCKING JAR JAR. God. 

Lucas' problem is that he tries to do too much with the films. He tries to make it political, and appealing to kids, while being appealing to the older fans and whatnot, and it just doesn't work. The best films set out to do one thing and they do it exceptionally well, some of them manage to do others by accident, but I don't see Tarantino trying to make Pulp Fiction political/kid-friendly/action-packed etc, it's story and character driven and thats great. 

Lucas needs to go back and really watch Episode 4/5 again. The action in three was perfect, but it again got lost in the Padmé/Anakin rubbish, which the awful writing and sub-par acting from Hayden really couldn't carry. Natalie Portman gets a lot of criticism, but what more could she do with that writing?