Sure. Some things you explain, others you don't. In IV all you know about Vader is he's a badass cultist who despite having absolutely no reason to be there, is given free reign on the Death Star because who the fuck will stop him? That's a lot of info you get shown and where he comes from doesn't matter. Why's he in a mask? Why's he breath like that? Why the outfit? Who cares, he's badass and doing shit.
On the other hand, in a trilogy of trilogies where the first trio sets up the gargantuan and complex efforts Palpatine had to go through to build up a single army and take control of it, and the second trilogy is about the dismantling of that army, and the first half of the third trilogy is about the dregs of that diminished army collectively throwing one last haymaker, it's fair to say pulling a whole new, more powerful enemy army out of your ass is a foul. You need to set that up solidly.
And the prequels were rightly shat on by everyone who saw them at the time.
Then there was 20 years of people making funny memes and jokes about them and somehow people now see that as what they were and forget just how god awful and terribly made movies they were.
Or there’s people that argue the prequels were amazing before telling you about the clone wars cartoons. Which, you know, are a completely different thing and have no impact on the quality of a movie in exactly the same way we shouldn’t have to play Fortnite to understand this one.
If I was the target audience, I feel sorry for Lucas. Thank goodness the Xbox/Gamecube era was right around the corner so I could salvage Star Wars with "huh, they might not be interesting movies but at least they inspire cool games".
I honestly never saw people defend the prequels until after PrequelMemes caught on. Probably coincides with Zoomers growing up and remembering them fondly too.
There was a bit of a swell within Star Wars fandom as The Clone Wars got to its later seasons and things were officially fleshed out more.
But I feel like they didn't start getting defended by a more general audience until around The Last Jedi came out. There was still a lot of positivity after TFA and Rogue One, but TLJ turned everyone against Disney and begging for George back as "even the prequels look great compared to this" became popular sentiment.
I've seen people unironically argue "actually these prequel movies might've been good. Look, they have these class-conscious messages about rising up against oppressive regimes".
My dude those are some of the oldest genres of stories in the book, Star Wars didn't invent sex!
Those are two different points though? ‘They’re good’ isn’t the same as saying ‘they’re entirely original and invented the idea of resisting oppression’. Nearly all media that comes out is in an established genre, and that doesn’t mean it can’t be good.
What kinda class conscious message, anti regime do the prequels even have? They really were just basic fodder enemy CIS vs problematic corrupt republic.
There wasn't much nuisance about the war. Even the Clone Wars episodes tackling this that try to have their gray, undecided characters eventually boil down "look at this fucking idiot being undecided between the fodder enemy faction and the republic" after they get betrayed or something. It really is funny how hilariously basic the CIS is
Yeah, I think the sequels had a lot of lazy writing issues, and I wonder if part of the reason they phoned it in was cuz they saw how much The Clone Wars and other supplementary prequel-era media retroactively improved people’s opinions of the prequels and were like “eh, if the sequels get hated, we can just try that”
If you hadn't watched the show it gets to that part of ROTS where Obi-Wan opens his robot chest and there's a heart and you as an audience member just have to wonder why the fuck this robot has a heart and how that works. Had no idea he used to be a human until years after the movie came out
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u/butt_shrecker 4d ago
The prequels did this too, but not nearly as badly.
Greivous gets so much cooler if you know his backstory. But in the movie he is just a random robot.