The "new" Star Wars trilogy: An appreciation

The Star Wars prequel movies George Lucas produced and directed in the late 1990s and early 2000s were massive money-makers but were also unevenly received by fans and critics. Many of the die-hard fans thought Lucas had monkeyed too much with his own premises and depended too heavily on CGI effects. Then there was the "wacky," universally hated and vaguely racist Jar-Jar Binks. What's clear enough, especially given how Lucas has also used CGI and other advanced digital effects to "enhance" the video releases of his earlier films, is that Lucas's "vision" has never been exactly what fans thought it was. He was hampered by the limitations of earlier film technology and didn't seem to realize how much those limitations helped him. 

The "new" films were entertaining, though. I still find myself tuning in for a while when they're on TV, which is often because of Disney's current ownership, I suppose. Here are some things (aspects of the films) I think make them worth watching. 

What's Good about the "Prequel" Trilogy:

1. Ewan McGregor

2. That weird rainy outpost where the clones are being created.

3. Yoda's fighting, especially his duel with Christopher Lee. Just watching Yoda in action is great. This is CGI at its best.

4. When Darth Vader kills the young Jedis and when he executes Count Dooku. Good work establishing Vader as especially evil. (It's always been hard to buy Lucas's retrofitted theory that the whole overarching story is about Vader's redemption, but especially after he kills the young Jedis. Sheesh, there's no coming back from that.)

5. Count Dooku generally; also his little mopedish land cruiser bike.

6. Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor. It's also cool that he's been around, more or less, for so much of the saga. 

7. Natalie Portman; even the goofy outfits have a certain bizarre charm. 

8. Samuel L. Jackson and Liam Neeson. Jackson is underused, but they both bring gravitas to the films and take their roles seriously. Of course this is the job of actors, but it must be especially difficult when you're acting with muppets and green screen so much of the time. 

9. Kiera Knightley as Amidala's double and handmaiden, because really, they do look strikingly similar. How many viewers didn't even realize the ruse when watching the first time?

10. Anakin being struck down by Obi Wan, before his scenes of transformation, which are pretty ridiculous (he looks too short, and the scene where he screams "No!" looks like it was created for the purposes of parody). His actual near-death scene, though, is pretty dramatic and gruesome and about how I imagined it as a 9-year-old. (Somehow, we were already passing around stories about Vader's prequel story, which had been fleshed out in some novel or magazine article or maybe just in Lucas's notes about the alleged nine-film saga that somehow got out to the general public.) I think as a kid I always imagined it as more of an actual volcano, but this was all pretty close.    

My with my toy Death Star, 1978. I dislike this photo, but it's a royalty-free image, and the only one related to Star Wars I could find.