Just quoting from the AEW thread where I started a brief derail when I saw a Star Wars commercial during one of the breaks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whatthejish
I feel you. Most of the new stuff is great, highly recommend. The prequels are terrible but have astonishingly good worldbuilding.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffRas22
My Star Wars feature film rankings
Empire Strikes Back
A New Hope
Rogue One
Revenge of the Sith
Return of the Jedi
The Force Awakens
A Phantom Menace
The Rise of Skywalker
Attack of the Clones
Solo
The Last Jedi
I give TROS a mini-pass since J.J. Abrams had to salvage what Rian Johnson did in TLJ. It's actually sort of shocking watching Knives Out, which is one of the best films in the last decade, after watching Johnson basically dismantle a franchise with one movie.
The prequels have, somehow, become underrated. Attack of the Clones is the worst bc Hayden Christiensen is at his greenest, so what comes out is the worst of him and his character. Also, he and Natalie Portman have very little chemistry which is the majority of his arc in the movie. Do I need to mention his cringe-worthy take on sand?
With that being said, as the poster above alluded to, Lucas does a tremendous job of building and developing the universe he created in the '80s. You could argue Anakin's complete arc in the prequels is more engaging and interesting than Luke's arc in the OT. They do a great job with the effects without going overboard. There are multiple incredibly awesome and memorable lightsaber scenes. Lastly, and this is very intangible and completely subjective, but, despite their weaknesses, the prequels feel much more like Star Wars movies than 7-9 do, especially TLJ/TROS.
Rogue One is fantastic. It has an argument for the best Star Wars film from start to finish ever made. Unfortunately, ESB & ANH are close enough that I give them the bump due to their superior importance to the overarching story.
Solo is largely forgettable.
/derail
Rewatched Phantom Menace for the first time in over 20 years. Basically all I remembered was: (1) the main mid-movie pod race; and (2) Jar Jar Binks being ****ing annoying. I also wasn't fresh on the original trilogy when I watched. Also I watched it with my dormmate who was among the most irritating and absurd human beings I've ever known.
Anyway, I liked it much more than I remember liking it back then. Definitely feel like it helped to be fresh off a recent rewatch of Episodes IV through VI, so I'm better entrenched in the franchise's universe. I'll speak with full spoilers since I doubt anyone's dodging old Star Wars spoilers at this point.
I named the things above that I remember, which is to say that I really didn't even know during this watch that Qui-Gon was going to kick the bucket. I figured it was likely based on how the plot developed (obviously as well as the knowledge that he had to be written out at some point in the prequel trilogy), but I was still hoping that he disappeared as a result of Episode II or III so that we could have him a bit longer. Neeson was a very solid anchor for this thing.
I was, uhh, not wrong about Jar Jar being annoying. I had a greater appreciation for the value of having a role of his kind in the story, but I can't forgive the choice of "make this ****er as annoying as possible." I watched with subtitles on and was still left with little idea of WTF he was talking about a lot of the time, so that speaks volumes. It's like the "ride ze shoopuf?" character from FFX got his own feature film. It is what it is; I was probably a little less annoyed this time just because I saw the value of what his character provided to the plot.
I actually was ready to rate it even better, but for the fact that the climax really didn't do it for me. I'm just really tough to please with large-scale battle scenes though. I love The Two Towers, and my reaction to the Battle at Helm's Deep is still, "Yeah, could you just skip ahead and tell me the key results?" I do not care about such sequences. The individual light saber battles were cool though.
I enjoyed the experience enough that I'm surely in for a watch of at least the rest of the prequel trilogy now. Only having seen Episodes IV, V, VI, and I, I'll be into fully uncharted territory going forward.