When looking at how to expand their hand-crafted universes, many storytellers will often look backward in their timeline and attempt to tell the story of how all the pieces came into place. This was George Lucas’ approach to creating the “Prequel Trilogy” of his iconic film series Star Wars, intending to show the rise of Darth Vader, the one-time mentioned “Clone Wars,” and how the Galactic Empire came to control a galaxy far, far away. This idea had a ton of promise, with an abundance of creative freedom for Lucas, but there certainly are some faults in the final product. So, let’s talk about the good and bad aspects of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of The Sith.

Let’s get the easy and obvious thing out of the way; John Williams is one of the greatest living composers of film, and his work on the prequels does not slack. With tracks like Duel of The Fates, Across The Stars, and Battle of Heroes, Williams sonically transports you into these sci-fi worlds. Williams truly is the MVP of the prequels, holding nothing back and pulling out all the stops. The score is so good that even boring scenes of characters sitting or calming walking down hallways can seem like the most critical moments in the trilogy because of the instrumentation being played under them. 

Another vital aspect of the prequels is the casting. Now performances can be very hit or miss, which we will get to, but the actors cast in critical roles are borderline iconic. The most notable has to be Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, who has become a beloved Star Wars icon to the same level, if not more so, than Alec Guinness, the previous actor to portray the character. McGregor brings a whimsical charm and stoic elegance to the role that helps flesh out this soon-to-be mentor of Luke Skywalker. Alongside Kenobi is his padawan Anakin Skywalker played by Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen. Much has been said about Lloyd’s performance as kid Anakin which has been far too harsh, and we will not be relighting that fire. Lloyd was a young kid who has given terrible lines to read. Christensen is the more exciting performer here because he is present in two movies and has much more room to act. Much like his child counterpart, Christensen is given some terrible lines of dialogue to read, such as the “I hate sand” monologue. However, Christensen nails the physical performance here, portraying such anger and menace through stares alone. 

Along with the two lead characters, many others have great casting choices, like Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu and Christopher Lee as Count Dooku. The actor choices helped gives these characters very distinct looks and presentations. Lee’s deep voice makes for an excellent villain; see The Lord of The Rings for more on that, and Jackson always gives off this powerful energy in his body language, making the audience feel like he’s a powerful Jedi. 

The last performance to highlight has to be Ian McDiarmid, who portrays Palpatine, who is revealed to be the future Emperor throughout these three films. McDiarmid’s first two outings are rather stale, with little to do besides say a few lines and look regal, until Revenge of The Sith, where he can full evil, from devilish cackles to monologues filled with menacing imagery and promise of power that only the dark side can provide. McDiarmid is truly in his element by the end, and we, as the audience, get to sit back and watch him chew the scenery to smithereens. 

The final thing to highlight has to be how well the visual effects have aged. Many will agree that the opening space battle over Corsaunt at the beginning of Revenge is still just as breathtaking and exciting now as it was back in 2005! Aside from the significant CGI battles, many beautiful landscapes and exciting creature designs still hold up pretty well compared to modern effects. Others love to talk negatively about this character, but Jar-Jar Binks does look great for 1999, along with the notable stereotype Watto. The only loser in the visual presentation is Phantom Menace Yoda, who was still deciding if he was a muppet or a CGI creature. Aside from CGI, the visual direction of the lightsaber duels also went through a significant improvement, with a larger focus on choreography. Notably, the lightsaber duel at the Phantom is the highest point of this, and unfortunately, no other fight reaches these heights, but we’ll talk more about that later. 

We’ve talked enough about the good; it’s time to discuss the biggest problem with this trilogy, Lucacs’ writing. So, while Lucas was the lead creator of the original trilogy, a lot of credit for why these films were successful must be given to other directors. Co-writers, editors, and actors for bringing more life to Lucas’ mildly dull writing style. Now with all the collaborators gone, Lucas was left to his own devices to craft the narrative of this prequel trilogy. Lucas writes with a very, let’s say, rigid style, where characters talk like machines with mildly elegant accents. This manner of speaking is highly wooden and kills any chance for the actors to perform otherwise. The most notable loser in this regard is Natalie Portman, who, as Padame, is just utterly wasted as a performer, unable to do anything with the extraordinarily uncharismatic and stilted dialogue provided to her by Lucas. Portman’s scenes alongside Christensen where the two must “fall in love” are unbearable to watch and ruin our chance as an audience to care about their relationship. 

While Lucas’ worldbuilding is fascinating, his re-introduction to some characters is far from it. Obi-Wan and Anakin are pretty solid, but Yoda is wholly changed into an inept and oddly stoic Jedi master who lacks all the charm of his original trilogy counterpart. Yoda accomplishes nothing, rarely contributing more than sitting around having a headache most of the time and providing very little sage wisdom or advice. Also, Yoda wielding a lightsaber feels like a betrayal to what his character stood for in Empire, who describes how the true power of the Jedi is in the force, not with a blade. 

Worldbuilding is one thing, but introducing new characters with intrigue during this worldbuilding is not something Lucas could pull off. The best example is the antagonist faction known as The Separatists, which comprises many planets and organizations that seek to separate from The Galactic Republic. This faction is underwritten and has no characters with traits the audience can latch on to. The Trade Federation, a member of the Separatist section and the primary antagonist of Episode 1 has no characteristics or qualities that I can describe in meaningful detail, aside from the Viceroy being extremely goofy and memorable. The audience has a minimal idea of what the Trade Federation wants, how they function, or what they provide for the Separatists. 

Even the Sith, the dark side of the force and secret heads of the Sepertist faction have no well-written characters aside from maybe Palpatine, who only really comes into his own in Episode 3. Darth Maul, Count Dooku, and General Grievous are few characters with few traits and seem only to exist to be fight scene dressing. Dooku feels the most waisted, being played by legendary actor and contender for the coolest person ever to live, Christopher Lee. Dooku is a hollow character and lacks any gravitas as a villain, so much so that audience feels nothing when he is suddenly killed in Episode 3. The same could be said for his fellow Siths, Grevious, and Maul, who sport visually exciting designs but lack any real depth to make them compelling.

Additionally, all of these characters are usually disposed of by the end of the film they are introduced in, except for Dooku, who is barely in two, in contrast to Vader, the antagonist for the entire original trilogy. This allowed Vader to build his presence as a villain through his actions during and between films. Maul and Grevious barely get introduced, fight, then perish, never to be heard from again. 

Ultimately, the weak writing is the killing blow for the prequels in how Lucas writes and writes for the characters. But there is one more thing worth discussing with the prequels: the dumb stuff with prequels. While bad dialogue and character writing are just that, these concepts and writing decisions come off as confusing and frankly poorly thought-out. My favorite example of this is the plot to assassinate Padame, where there is such an extreme level of needless complication designed for such a simple thing. So, to make things as simple as possible, Palpatine hires Dooku to kill Padame, who then hires Jango Fett, who then hires another assassin named Zam Wesell (Yes, I had to google that), who then sends a robot, which then releases poisonous insects into the room to kill the senator hopefully. So many moving parts here feel pointless, making this plot congested with unnecessary details.  An easy way to write this would be to have Wesell attack Padame, the Jedi, stop them and reveal that someone else had hired them. Or, to make it even more straightforward, just have Jango Fett be the one to attempt the assassination. Why even add this additional character? 

Along with overly elaborate plans, some action sequences are overloaded with visual elements. Sometimes scenes have too many CGI elements, like the factory sequence from Attack of The Clones, so the whole thing feels more like a goofy cartoon than an engaging action set piece. Plus, it just looks fake in a not-fun sci-fi way. Remember the previous praise for adding more exciting choreography in the lightsaber duels? Yeah, that starts to get dumb and bloated by Episode 2, where we see CGI Yoda flipping around a stunt-double Christopher Lee that looks just silly. This hits an absolute peak in Revenge, where we get not one, but two extremely over-top, over-choreographed fights, with Obi-Wan vs. Anakin and Yoda vs. the Emperor. 

Yoda vs. the Emperor features yet another stunt double swinging around randomly at a CGI creature, but also features more lightning and throwing objects. The CGI looks solid, but the fight feels bland and lacks excitement. You get to see McDiarmid ham it up some more, which is nice, but you feel nothing by the end of the battle. The duel also ends abruptly, with Yoda leaving after a few moments, which feels dissatisfying. 

The Obi-Wan vs. Anakin fight is usually revered by people as “the ultimate lightsaber duel,” but there’s just too much going on here. Lots of needlessly intricate movements, a ton of CGI mess in the background, and three too many scene changes. There’s one point where the two are, for some reason, climbing a tower and continuing to swing at each other, followed by fighting on floating rafts on a lava river, and then they end up on a lava shore. The two are flipping and swinging their laser swords all over the place like two kids who got lightsabers on Christmas morning. It’s just so over the top; it’s ridiculous. While there are some fun moments here, the fight is too long and lacks the impact that some of the simpler duels from the original had. Lucas and company proved they could make compelling duels between characters back in the ’70s, but here they seem to want to make the most extravagant, insane fights possible. This, in a way, dumbs the fights down from being stake-driven conflicts to elaborate visual spectacles.

The prequel films are an exciting patch of movies to watch. It’s interesting to see Lucas’ approach to expanding his universe with complete creative control, but there are certainly flaws in his writing and directing. If anything, the prequels show that Lucas works best as a creative lead, with a team of creative collaborators who will push back against him so they can develop a more exciting film together. This is not a defamation of George Lucas, as there are still plenty of creatively exciting and enjoyable things about these films. However, we have to come to terms with the prequel trilogy being far from perfect and having many aspects that are good, bad, and dumb.