If you haven't seen them already, Plinkett has reviews of all three of the original Star Wars movie, each of which is over an hour long. They are fantastic, and pretty much pinpoint how terrible everything is and why, but in an entertaining and comedic manner.
I'll be honest, a lot of what he says seems like nitpicking. He glosses over flaws in the original trilogy, I think largely due to nostalgia, but focuses like a laser on the prequels.
He also makes a lot of assumptions that take Lucas' role of writer/director completely out of the equation.
I mean look, Star Wars
is Lucas' story. All of the films at least. There isn't an episode of Star Wars that he didn't write and have final say / creative control over. So to say, well fuck him entirely, is essentially saying, fuck Star Wars. It's
his dream, he's just sharing it with the rest of us.
And in saying that, I totally understand gripes about the direction, editing, dialogue, and acting of the prequels. I agree with all of those points. They are more than fair, and there's nothing wrong with critical analysis of film.
But when we get to the point where people are complaining about the actual narrative of the story, and that Lucas shouldn't have done this or that with his own dream so fuck him and his ideas, I just can't get with that.
No one would tell a musician,
"dude, you're doing this wrong because I don't like it, do it like this and me and my friends will dig it."
It's like when Star Trek fans shit on Gene Roddenberry; I'm like, c'mon,
relax.
I think people forget that Lucas really wanted these movies to appeal to children, hence Ewoks, Jar Jar, young Anakin, Hayden being cast as such a young man. The story didn't use older actors in the leads to appeal to younger audiences.
So when folks say, fuck that, it's not Star Wars; well, yeah man, it kinda is.
My final point on all this is that George Lucas is a pretty awful director, but a damn good storyteller. The only reason the prequels are watchable is because of how well Lucas can craft a vision, at least with broadstrokes. The problem is narrowing that vision into a film that makes sense, and that's the point in which he consistently fails.
I think he gets a lot of shit, some deserved and some isn't. But, I guess that's all over and done with now.
