Why do you think the Star Wars Prequel Movies are dislike and made fun of?

[T.D.]

Agree with pretty much everything in this thread.

I think if the "Star Wars" prequels were not "Star Wars" films-- if they were an original sci-fi trilogy without the accompanying baggage and expectations and devoted fanbase-- they would be seen as uniformly terrible by virtually everyone.

[alex]

I forgot something else.
After Anakin brutally murders a village full of sandpeople, we get a screen wipe as a transition. Something the original Star Wars did, but was mostly used by cartoons in the last 30 or so years.

[T.D.]

I forgot something else.
After Anakin brutally murders a village full of sandpeople, we get a screen wipe as a transition. Something the original Star Wars did, but was mostly used by cartoons in the last 30 or so years.

Yeah, that was one of many tonally-inappropriate editing/directing decisions.

[Cel]

I felt that Lucas was right in starting with Episode IV. Episodes IV-VI was a straightforward story--a rebellion against an evil empire. But Episodes I-III were nowhere near as straightforward with convoluted politics and convoluted secret plans. Both trilogies dealt with young men facing their destinies, but whereas Luke Skywalker was someone we could get behind, Anakin Skywalker was not, IMO.

I like the prequel trilogy, I think the action sequences (particularly the lightsaber battles) are generally superior to that of the original trilogy and I do think they served their purpose in showing how the Old Republic succumbed to the Galactic Empire. But I do think it might have been better if Anakin was already a young Jedi and the romance between him and Padme could have been developed over all three films. I also don't think it was really necessary to show him as a little boy as his childhood on Tatooine really could have been touched upon in dialogue.

[simbob4000]

Yeah, that was one of many tonally-inappropriate editing/directing decisions.

Only screen wipes are a big serial thing, as well as something Akira Kurosawa did.

[Sean Whitmore]

Well, everything that's already been said, for one. But more problematic to me (because a couple bad stories can just be ignored) is their depiction of the Jedi, which now has to inform every other appearance of them. They're this sexless cult of proto-Vulcans who induct toddlers and almost immediately start teaching them to sword-fight (we may be "luminous beings" but they were super quick to train that crude flesh to fight). They're laid back, unobservant, and reactive to the point of carelessness, making them laughably incompetent at best and dangerously arrogant at worst.

[Internet-man]

I think it's kinda dumb TBH. The worst movie of the six is episode one to be sure, so maybe because they were off to a bad start. But, it's not like the original trilogy was much better. I think the Ewoks were as bad as Jarjar, Mark Hamil's acting in episode 4 was NO better than Hayden's in episode two. The idea that you could blow up the death star by shooting down that little hole was just plain stupid. That's like the biggest plot hole in the entire series, like the empire wouldn't have had that thing better guarded and wouldn't have had a little bend in the exhaust tube so a torpedo couldn't go strait in like that? Please. I could easily go on.
People just don't hold the original to the same standard as the more recent movies is because they're wearing rose colored glasses.
Personally, I love them both.

[Biff Pow!]

The main reason is they weren't very good. The second reason is adults expecting a kids movie to be aimed at them. The third is reason is it's Star Wars, so people still constantly talk about it, while most mediocre films would be long forgotten.

[clayholio]

I thought the prequels got better as they went along. By the third film, it was pretty decent.

But the biggest issue (aside from the previously mentioned that they weren't great films to begin with) was that everyone had built them up so far in their imaginations that literally nothing would have been good enough. If you're going to wait as long as they did between batches of films, there's a lot of time for expectations to build.

Whichever one batch you grew up with is probably going to be your favorite. It's tough to compete with nostalgia's haze.

[bloodyarts]

I think it's kinda dumb TBH. The worst movie of the six is episode one to be sure, so maybe because they were off to a bad start. But, it's not like the original trilogy was much better. I think the Ewoks were as bad as Jarjar, Mark Hamil's acting in episode 4 was NO better than Hayden's in episode two. The idea that you could blow up the death star by shooting down that little hole was just plain stupid. That's like the biggest plot hole in the entire series, like the empire wouldn't have had that thing better guarded and wouldn't have had a little bend in the exhaust tube so a torpedo couldn't go strait in like that? Please. I could easily go on.
People just don't hold the original to the same standard as the more recent movies is because they're wearing rose colored glasses.
Personally, I love them both.

All of this is true.

Episodes I-III contain some foolishness (and honestly, some are completely blown out of proportion by the fandom), but honestly, so did the original trilogy.

But the one thing you can say about the OT is that everything was fresh. We hadn't seen sci fi done this well on the screen before 1977. Effects were revolutionary. Sets were groundbreaking. Concepts only imagined in print beforehand were realized faithfully onscreen. So the story is a bit flimsy and predictable... who cares?? Star Wars Episodes IV-VI consistently set new benchmarks in sci fi effects, sets and concepts. The characters were interesting enough. If not for DARTH VADER, perhaps the greatest sci fi character ever created, they would be largely interchangeable. It was the closest thing to a comic book movie done right.

We were taken in by what we saw on the screen, not so much by the complexity of the story. It's your basic good vs. evil/save the princess/David vs. Goliath tale. The characters are your standard types used since the beginning of fiction. They were not deep. The twists ("I am your father!" and "you have a sibling") are also common fiction devices. The complexities were realized later as fans began to flesh out the Lucas-verse. The beginnings of the Empire. The origins of the Jedi. Defining The Force... we were happier NOT knowing any of that.

The prequels were ambitious. Besides the obvious money-grubbing, I do believe Lucas' heart was in the right place. He wanted to go deeper. The fans wanted to know more. Speculations and fanfiction were fine, but until word came down from the mountain, none of it really mattered. And where he broke ground with practical space effects by using props, models and other creative techniques, he went the other way; CGI. And why not? This is the new millenium, and effects have progressed passed obvious miniatures and puppets. One look at Jurassic Park (which utilizes CGI AND puppets/props) is all the convincing you need.

Except Lucas went too far. Everything is overblown; the story, characters, effects... all of it. The score is the lone beacon of purity in the Prequel Trilogy. While the prequels got better with each succession (I really loved Revenge of the Sith as much as The Empire Strikes Back), the damage was already done. This is not quite what we expected. With the original trilogy, audiences had never seen anything like it. With the Prequel Trilogy. They had seen it; and seen it done better.

[Gaelforce]

Just a friendly heads up.

Please don't just jump into a thread (this or any other) and proclaim 'it's bad' or 'it sucks,that's why!'

That's not constructive discussion. The OP is asking why people are so critical of them, so please give actual reasons in your replies.

Thanks

[Gaelforce]

That being said:

1. Jar Jar was just too goofy a character
2. The romance was written very poorly. I remember every time a romantic scene hit the screen, people who get up to get popcorn or hit the bathroom.
3. Zero chemistry between Anakin and Amidala. That she first confesses her love for him after he murders a bunch of sand people didn't help.
4. Robot violence reminded me of the addition of Seven Zark Seven in the old G-Force cartoon. If you're going to have a war, have a war. Limbs were hacked off, bad guys were shot and strangled in the first three movies, but making the violence so 'vanilla' that it didn't feel it had any impact on anyone was just wrong.
5. The first movie was 'awww, look at cute little Ani!', but there was no transition shown - he starts off the second movie as a totally unlikable character and so his transition into darkness came off as a natural progression rather than any kind of struggle or betrayal.
6. The ridiculous addition of midichlorians taking the Jedi from mystical warriors for justice to scientific anomalies was a bad move and took the magic out of the films.

That's just a few off the top of my head. I'm a huge fan of the original trilogy (saw SW in the theater 37 times when I was a kid), but it just felt like the entire prequel trilogy was being dumbed down for the masses.

[General Nerditry]

Oh, man, there are so many reasons as others have detailed. The dialog was cringeworthy, some of the silliness was over the top, plotting and pacing issues...others have covered most of that in detail, so I will instead focus on one particular and, IMO, most grievous (ahem) failing.

The prequels were supposed to be the tragic story of an honorable man who grudgingly is corrupted and succumbs to the dark side. He has good intentions, he does it for love, but he just falls into darkness. He sells his soul and loses all in the end. And frankly? They weren't about that. Anakin's fall wasn't the climax and focal point of building tension throughout the films. It was nearly an afterthought. It would have been better received if the love story between Anakin and Padme felt remotely believable, and the many other script failings obviously contribute to this, but he basically goes from an angsty teenager to murdering toddlers in the blink of an eye. The seduction and fall to the dark side was WAY rushed, and I think Anakin's arc was poorly handled, and to me this is the fundamental fatal flaw of the prequels.

Having said that, the last 45 minutes of Episode 2 are arguably some of the best in the entire series. What an action sequence.

The original idea instead of Ewoks was a planet of enslaved Wookies that the rebels would free and who would help.

That....that would have been amazing. Oh, why didn't that happen??? Sigh.

[Michael P]

They're not very good.

Edit: Right. Well, I think the biggest problem with them is Lucas didn't have anybody filtering his vision into something, y'know, watchable. Lucas is a great effects man, but his storytelling strategy is basically "crib stuff from what I loved as a kid and use very basic archetypes without really delving into them." Thinking about the originals, all of the really creative stuff came from somebody else. The biggest ideas in the prequels were "Here's a villain who looks pretty badass who you'll see in a few scenes, never really get to know anything about, and then he dies. And here's another. And another. Thank you for the billion dollars."

And then there's the green screen problem. It's a useful device in moderation, but Lucas uses it to replace sets, characters, atmosphere... y'know, all the stuff that makes a movie a movie. The fact that the new movies are actually shooting on location is one of the things that gives me guarded optimism about them.

Don't get me started on his dialogue. It's not even very good in the originals, but the dreck coming out of Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman's mouths in Attack of the Clones could be used to torture terrorists.

[wjowski]

Heck, I'd argue that the only reason the prequels receive any regard at all is because of the Star Wars brand. If not for that there wouldn't even be a debate. I-III'd be regarded as the sci-fi equivalent of Delgo.