Between episodes of the Mandalorian with my girlfriend, I've been taking advantage of access to Disney+ by watching stuff that I haven't seen in a long time, like the Simpsons (mostly the Treehouses of Horror), old Mickey Mouse shorts... and the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
I know: why would I do this to myself? I haven't watched the prequels in their entirety in over a decade - in the case of Episode II (2002) and Episode III (2005), not since I watched them in the theater during their original run. I don't even have any memory of the circumstances in which I watched Episode III - it must have been here in the US, because I didn't leave the country, but I'm not sure if it was here in Palo Alto or in New York, nor do I remember who I saw it with.
Episode II sticks in the mind a little more, but for all the wrong reasons: poorly acted, excessive CGI and scenes that are so truncated that they feel perfunctory, as if George Lucas is using them just to remind us that a specific subplot is happening. There are things approaching interesting storytelling - like when Count Dooku claims to be fighting against the Sith Lord who's taking over the Republic - but they get lost almost immediately and walked back.
I think the thing that got me interested in re-watching these movies is this rundown and ranking of the entire series from the AV Club, written before (just before) The Force Awakens came out and kicked off this latest era for the Star Wars saga. The author is quite generous to George Lucas, while still not giving him a pass for his worst excesses, and if I don't agree with ranking Revenge of the Sith ahead of Return of the Jedi, then I can at least appreciate that there's someone else out there who thought Episode II was even worse than Episode I.
The criticisms still hold up. Episode I: The Phantom Menace is too reliant on CGI and on corny, kid-friendly gags to be actually entertaining to watch. The opening crawl is laughable in its discussion of trade disputes and blockades and the middle section on Tatooine, with the pod race, is overly long and not germane to the story.
What struck me on this re-watch was, again, how bad the performances were, or at least the line-readings, and the fact that the scenes are frustratingly truncated just like in Episode II. One feels a little bad criticizing Jake Lloyd as Anakin, given his later struggles with mental illness, but it's undeniable that he needed fewer lines, and that Lucas needed an editor on his script. And where the characters aren't obnoxious, like Anakin or Jar-Jar, they're just wooden, like... well, like everyone else. Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor - all are respected and talented actors, but you wouldn't know it watching this movie.
And yet... I still have something of a soft spot for this one, flaws and all. It was the first new Star Wars in years, and I got to see it on opening day. Awkward as a lot of it is, it manages to instill that sense of wonder, of a wider universe, that was present in the original trilogy. It sometimes tries too hard, but it manages to look from the outset like it belongs in the same universe as the original films.
Episode II: Attack of the Clones was also much as I remembered it. Hayden Christensen wasn't much of an improvement over Jake Lloyd, and neither was the dynamic between him and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan - master chastises student constantly, not because he's actually irresponsible but because the script demands that we show, in the most ham-handed way possible, the wedge driven between them. And the romance subplot between Christensen and Portman is still pretty unconvincing.
There are a couple of nice things to say about this one, though. Especially on the cloners' world of Camino, Lucas shows a gift for coming up with impressive settings for his alien worlds. The craggy, reddish tint to Geonosis doesn't strike me as much but I can't deny that it makes an impressive contrast.
As mentioned above, there's also the bit where Count Dooku (aka Saruman, aka Christopher Lee) captures Obi-Wan and claims that he's fighting against the Sith. It's undercut by the circumstances - Obi-Wan being held shackled by a forcefield in a prison cell - and walked back immediately, but I remember being so excited when I saw that scene, thinking that Lucas was about to throw us a curveball... but no.
But perhaps the best part of the movie is the depiction of how Palpatine maneuvers events to take power for himself. There's a vogue for seeing harbingers of Donald Trump in all media, but this sequence is genuinely impressive - and I'd actually forgotten it was here, given that Episode III is where the collapse of the Republic really takes off (and was accompanied at the time by right-wingers complaining that George Lucas was getting too political - some things never change, clearly).
Also, I can't deny that seeing Yoda leaping around and kicking ass gave me a thrill, both then and now. Maybe it's because so much of the rest of the film was lackluster, but it was great to see just how great a Jedi he was.
And then there's Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I remembered bits of the movie, from the final fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, to the slaughter of the Jedi Order and the death of Padme, but little else. I'd forgotten that the opening harks back not to the previous movie but to a whole bunch of crap that happened between the episodes - I presume all that is in the Clone Wars movie and TV show, but I haven't seen those yet, so the transition is still jarring to me.
I haven't finished this re-watch, so I won't belabor the point too much, but it seems like the scenes breathe a little more than its two predecessors. However, the dynamic between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman remains as wooden as ever - they talk at cross-purposes, and not to reveal character but to reveal plot. There's less of the cutesy crap, because a whole bunch of good guys are going to die, badly, before the end, but it persists in the droid army and in C3PO and R2D2's time on screen.
It also looks great, the initial fight in space over Coruscant looking really impressive... but then, if anyone knows how to put together a gigantic set-piece it's George Lucas.
Now, to sum up, watching these movies again hasn't changed my mind about them. Some bits are worse than I remembered, others better, but the majority is still as I recall, for better or worse. They go way too far in forcing fan service, like showing C3PO and R2D2 or in calling forward to stuff from the original trilogy. And the storylines are just bad, or at least badly written.
Unlike the AV Club, I can't guess how these movies would have done if they'd been the first we'd ever seen of Star Wars. I take them in relation to a group of movies that I grew up loving, and they can't ever measure up to that - nor to the more recent movies, starting with Force Awakens and ending with Solo. But I can't deny that there are some pleasures to be had with them, even Episode II, my least favorite of the films (so far) and easily in my bottom 5 films ever.
So as I prepare for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, I'm seeing where the saga "began", in the hopes of seeing if it connects to how it "ends". I might not even be too disappointed if they have Hayden Christensen as a Force ghost again, though if JJ Abrams resists that temptation I'll be quite happy.
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