It’s okay to hate the Star Wars prequels. Many people do, clearly. I did too. However — I use the past-tense “did” because I marathoned the three of them recently, and rather than sitting there and keeping a running list of everything they seem to get wrong, I watched them as the backstory they’re meant to be, rather than watching and expecting to fall in love with the characters and narrative, and that seems to have made a difference. The thing is, they are official Star Wars canon, and that probably isn’t going to change any time soon. Everyone is certainly entitled to establish their own personal canon based on anything they want, and for many fans the prequels simply never happened, and that was me for a long time, but The Force Awakens made me hungry for more Star Wars . . . anything . . . so I’ve been reading the comics and novels, and that led me to want to give the prequels another try. And I’m glad I did.
Everyone has a story about their experience seeing The Phantom Menace for the first time. That movie complicated my life when it came out because I didn’t like it, but because it was an official Star Wars movie, I thought I was the problem, not the movie. Clearly there was something wrong with me because this is a Star Wars movie and I wasn’t in love with it. So I went to see it a second time, and then a third. I paid to see a movie I didn’t like three times just to make sure I really didn’t like it. And then I bought the DVD because I felt it deserved another shot. And I still didn’t like it, for all the same reasons that have been addressed ad nauseam since its release.
Shortly after The Force Awakens opened, I was discussing the movie with some people where I work, and I made the usual condescending comparison with the prequels we’ve all heard before. “It wasn’t as good as Empire, but it was way better than the prequels.” What blew my mind was how they jumped to the defense of the prequels, saying those were the Star Wars movies they grew up with and they loved them, and that they connected with that Prequel Trilogy much more than the Original Trilogy. I didn’t even know such a thing was possible. Mind blown.
So when I sat down to watch these movies again, I went in with an attitude of acceptance and curiosity, rather than the usual cynicism. The movies didn’t get any better (the wooden acting is still there, lord knows), but what I realized this time through is that there are good movies in there, but the whole thing feels like a first draft that went to production, rather than a polished, finished script and story. You really have to look for the good stuff, but it’s there.
I recently read Darth Plagueis, the now non-canon novel that chronicles Palpatine’s own Sith Master, the titular Darth Plagueis, and Palpatine’s introduction to the world of political ambition. Parts of the novel overlap with The Phantom Menace, and reading this novel set me up to pay closer attention to Palpatine’s rise to political dominance when watching the movies, and, for me, that is now the best part of the prequels, not Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace, which is the story we all bought our tickets to see and the character we all expected to fall in love with but didn’t. Anakin’s story is what the big payoff at the end of Revenge of the Sith is all about, which ended up being a frustrating experience for many fans because it failed to meet expectations. I found if I place less emphasis on that aspect and more on Palpatine, the experience was . . . less frustrating. Admittedly, it took my reading Darth Plagueis to better understand Palpatine; it does a good job of filling in some gaps in ways the movie doesn’t or can’t. So I’m not sure I’d be as willing to give the movies another try if I hadn’t read that book. But here we are.
It’s been said that the Star Wars movies are all about family, specifically the story of the Skywalker family, but I really think that they’re just as much about the rise of Palpatine and his transformation into Darth Sidious/The Emperor, and that’s what’s kinda cool about the prequels — you can watch them with whichever focus you want. They ultimately boil down to Anakin and Palpatine, so the two stories serve as a sort of a double helix — one story chronicles a rise, the other a fall, but they work together symbiotically. It’s actually pretty cool.
When I started collecting the Black Series, my only rule was “no prequel characters.” And I held to this to an extent. I allowed myself Darth Maul because he deserved better than he got in the movies, so I let him slide onto my shelf. I also picked up an Obi-Wan, but I promptly slapped an eBay robe on him and put the hood up so he could pass for “old Ben” in some weak way. And that was it. No Clones, no Anakin, no interest in prequel anything. But in light of my recent coming around, I picked up a Jango Fett and have my eye on a Commander Cody. Egads. And I find myself now open to the idea of adding more prequel characters to the shelf: Padme, Qui-Gon, Mace, Palpatine, etc. I’m in.
Now, I’m not saying anyone isn’t justified in disavowing the prequels. I get it. I do. But I’m a fan of them now, and if I was able to come around and find something to like about them, then it’s not impossible for anyone else to do the same. Give them another shot.