Roundtable: Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy

The Most Anticipated and Reviled Films of All Time

Anton: Let’s talk about a series of three movies from the turn of the millenium. They are a strange and special set of blockbusters, widely derided today but very popular at the box office and generally well-received by critics upon their release. The renowned filmmaker behind them, who emerged during the New Hollywood Renaissance, had finally returned to directing with the biggest independent, auteur-driven productions ever made. In spite of their huge budgets and lavish special effects, the controlling director took risks reflecting his personal whimsy and particular storytelling interests. The movies also pioneered important advancements in digital filmmaking, marketing, and distribution. They remain immensely significant films, both culturally and aesthetically. 

I’m talking, of course, about the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.  

Part of what each of us has tried to do in our reviews of the prequels, I think, has been to encourage a reevaluation of each episode, not only by pushing back against specific complaints, but also, and more importantly, by calling attention to features of the films (verifiably evident in the texts) that seem seldom recognized and discussed. 

Anders: It’s still commonplace when I talk about my Star Wars fandom and note that I hold the prequels in high regard—higher than the Disney films—that people are generally surprised if not outright baffled. Thus, the temptation when discussing these films is to become extremely defensive. I think we’ve resisted fairly well letting the popular criticisms of these films guide our analysis and evaluation of these films—

Anton: I hope so.

Anders: —But this roundtable is a good moment to respond to some more of the popular arguments as well as flesh out some of our differing interpretations and feelings about the films. 

I’d also note that, while we brothers have held consistently positive views of these films for the last two decades since their release, there has been more generally a movement of rehabilitation and reassessment of the prequels. Some of this is among younger generations who grew up with the films from the time they were small children, and thus didn’t hold any of the prejudices against them that fans from the first wave of Star Wars in the late-seventies and early-eighties did. Theirs is likewise a nostalgia for their childhoods.

Aren: Ding ding! I was only eight when I saw The Phantom Menace for the first time, so I never really distinguished between my love of the Original Trilogy and my love of the Prequel Trilogy. They were both the Star Wars films of my childhood.

Anders: I was in high school when The Phantom Menace came out, so I’m somewhere between first wave and second wave fans. 

But interestingly there is also a significant group of serious film buffs, most often people who are more interested in experimental or off-beat cinema, who are championing these films. I mean, Mubi, for instance, ran a roundtable discussion a couple years ago which was quite positive in their assessment of the prequels.

Aren: Note that these critics are often deeply appreciative of foreign language films, which means that they are open to cadences and styles that are not familiar in North American cinema. If someone can understand the off-kilter acting and goofy comedy of a Chinese blockbuster, for instance, they seem to be a little more open-minded about the arch performances and complex plotting of the prequels.

Anders: So, I think we are not quite alone in noting the importance of the prequels among those who take cinema, and not just popular entertainment, seriously.

Anton: These are big, important, yet misunderstood films.

The Politics

Anton: I know more than a few fans of the Original Trilogy who dislike the foregrounding of politics in the prequel films. The opening of Episode I, which talks about the taxation of trade routes, is widely mocked. But to me, not only is the political story important to the Original Trilogy, particularly Episode IV, but the Fall of the Republic is one of the most important, interesting, and compelling stories that the Prequel Trilogy tells. And I think it does so in a very historically-conscious and intelligent way.

Aren: I think a dislike of the political bent of the Prequel Trilogy is usually wedded to an ignorance about just how political the Original Trilogy is. The dissolution of the Senate and the introduction of Imperial regional governors are key elements of the worldbuilding in A New Hope. The presence of the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi recalls the jungle battles of Vietnam. The heroes are rebel insurgents and the whole trilogy is about a civil war. The central narrative conflict is political! So you can’t just ignore that element of the Original Trilogy when complaining about the prevalence of politics in the Prequel Trilogy.

Anders: Absolutely. I think one of the reasons why the Original Trilogy is successful is that it incorporates a political message, though it is one that is absorbed through its generic influences. For instance, Westerns are almost always political in a sense that they are about questions of social structure, justice, and the establishment of order vs. freedom. Also, as you note above, Star Wars has the civil war frame like Westerns, which are almost always set in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War.

Aren: That comes up in The Mandalorian, which situates the Galactic Civil War exactly as a Western positions the American Civil War. But we’ll tackle the Disney stuff in a later roundtable.

Anders: Aren, you note in your Revenge of the Sith piece that George Lucas remains a fairly classic West Coast liberal in his politics, something that influenced his writing of the Original Trilogy in the wake of his initial drafts of Apocalypse Now and the disillusionment with politics in America in the 1970s in the wake of Nixon.

Lucas never abandoned that sense that popular art could speak to the problems in society more generally, but in the prequels that social analysis is foregrounded and rooted in telling a story about a set of characters who are at the centre of a massive political transformation. The politics and the personal intertwine in a fascinating way that I think is true to life, in that our personal actions either uphold or betray our stated beliefs and values and vice versa.

Aren: In the prequels, the political focus is not just important to the plot, but is also a key way of understanding the machinations of this world. It’s interesting to contrast the new Disney films, with their incoherent political worldbuilding, with the prequels, because the comparison shows just how good of a job Lucas is doing at worldbuilding in the Prequel Trilogy and just how much Abrams and Johnson and company have bungled the politics of the new films. 

For instance, in the prequels, we understand the governance of the Republic, we understand the Jedi’s relationship to the Republic, and we understand how Palpatine ascends to the throne by a manipulation of emergency resolutions. Very little about how this universe functions is left to speculation, which is remarkable, considering how many moving parts there are. But in the Disney Trilogy, we don’t even know how the Republic relates to the Resistance, or whether the First Order has any political control over star systems, which are big questions about why this world is the way it is. The new films try to be more relevant in certain ways, but the political angle is not one of them.

Anton: I think that that’s a great point, Aren. There are a lot of complaints about the Disney films, particularly The Last Jedi, being too “political.” But it’s important to distinguish what we mean by this. Essentially, people are complaining about a certain progressive political messaging that comes strongly through the Disney movies. But, as you so rightly point out, a comprehensive and clear understanding of the politics and government structure of the Disney universe is not present. (We’ll talk more about this when we get to the Disney films.)

There’s a glaring contrast between the careful plotting that relates the Fall of the Republic and the totally vague and incoherent exposition about the rise of the First Order and creation of the Resistance.

Anders: You’re both spot on. It’s absolutely one of the biggest flaws of the Disney films that in an effort to be more diverse and representative of gender they sacrifice any kind of structural analysis of power and what it means (of course, achieving the first is in no way exclusive of the second). As you note, it’s not clear at all what the relationships between the various factions—Resistance, Empire, First Order, New Republic—are. The conflicts between them are somewhat superficial and simplistic. They are simply “bad guys” because they oppose the heroes. In contrast, Anton showed how Anakin’s lived experience shapes his understanding of political power in Attack of the Clones, and his identity as a young man, in a system that grants him massive amounts of power, but no emotional outlets, shapes the fate of the galaxy.

Anton: It’s also worth noting that critics have lauded the political messaging of the Disney Trilogy, while basically forgetting that Lucas himself offered more effective political critique in his Prequel Trilogy. How come we don’t applaud the Prequel Trilogy’s politics, especially the War on Terror allegory, as “relevance,” as we do with so many other films?

Aren: I have no idea, but it wouldn’t be the first time critics are hypocritical in their approach to filmmaking. Perhaps it would’ve been a different story if the prequels had come out a decade later, when critics became obsessed with political relevance in films, because during the release of the prequels, from 1999-2005, most of American culture was pretty firmly on the side of the status quo. Only by the time of the release of Revenge of the Sith did mainstream cultural commentators start turning on Bush and company, but most critics seemed to focus on other elements of the film—mostly its comparison to its two predecessors—instead of its comprehensive allegory for the War on Terror and the death of democracy in general.

Anton: I would push back a bit against your reading of the prequels as a “comprehensive allegory for the War on Terror.” 

Aren: But I never actually say the whole trilogy is a comprehensive allegory in my review of Revenge of the Sith. I say that Revenge of the Sith in particular is using Palpatine’s plotline to critique current political movements in America. Don’t overstate my phrasing.

Anton: I think most of the examples you point out in your review are accurate, but I think we cannot forget that Lucas is also drawing on a larger historical understanding of how democracies throughout history become empires and tyrannies. I think Lucas includes lines and events that are allegorical commentaries on the context of the films’ release, namely the War on Terror of the early 2000s and events such as Bush’s line about the Western world either being “with us [America] or against us.” 

More broadly and more importantly, however, Lucas is making a statement about how democracies tend to fall apart from the inside out. How external threats are used by the executive branch to gather power. This is how Caesar became a dictator, and how Rome became an Empire. There are also parallels to the rise of the Nazis in Germany. And we have seen growing executive power in both Canada and the US, not just under Bush but also under Obama and Trump, and in Canada under both Harper and Trudeau. This is a reason, I think, why these film’s speak so potently not just to the US in the early 2000s but to the twenty-first century more generally. Just as Lucas consciously draws on myth to deepen his space operas, he also draws on history, both ancient and modern.

Anders: Yes, Lucas is taking the long view and even drawing on classical sources. I mean, the Clone Wars, in the way that personal relationships and larger political forces are intertwined, remind me of something like The Iliad.

I will note that the other thing that the prequels anticipated as far as political relevance that is more pointed today is Anakin as a kind of post-Columbine angry young man, who has a lot of potential but whose fear, loneliness, and lack of socialization leads him to sociopathic and violent behaviour. This was something that one of our readers on Twitter noted stood out strongly to them upon their rewatch after reading our pieces, and I think that reading strongly complements Anton’s analysis of Anakin’s characterization as someone with delusions of grandeur. I’ll hold onto something else I want to say about this reading of Anakin when we discuss the question of the Balance of the Force in a moment, but I think it ties the political and the mythical, or even spiritual value, of these films together.

The Acting

Aren: The popular take on these films is that they’re full of bad acting among their other myriad problems, but as our reviews have made clear, we think the popular wisdom about the prequels is obscenely wrong. But I don’t want to simply dismiss the notion that the films have bad acting and move on. I think it’s actually worth investigating whether the acting truly is good or bad in the prequels.

I, for one, think the acting is very good, especially Hayden Christensen’s performance as Anakin. Both Christensen and Jake Lloyd take the main brunt of the complaints about acting, with Natalie Portman getting flak for her work alongside Christensen as well. However, I’ve never understood the notion of Christensen being a bad actor, here or elsewhere. He was a celebrated young actor when he was cast, having received a Golden Globe nomination for his work in Life as a House—good performance, bad movie. So it’s not like Lucas hired a bad actor in the first place.

Anton: He’s also excellent in Shattered Glass (2003).

Aren: So what is it about Christensen’s performance that draws so much scorn? The line about “sand”? His leering at Padmé? The bizarre verbiage of the romantic scenes? None of these have anything to do with Christensen as a performer. As Anton posits in his review of Attack of the Clones, what if these elements of the character are meant to be awkward? What if we’re not supposed to be swept up in the romance between Anakin and Padme, but skeptical of it? What if his use of romantic language is clumsy and unconvincing, as if he’s playing a part? What if that’s the whole point?

Anton: I think we are also forgetting about the style of acting in the Prequel Trilogy. It’s not typical of our times. Go watch some classical Hollywood, particularly the romance plots, and you start to see that the hokey awkwardness of much of the prequels is not a mistake, and is fairly in line with acting and romance in Hollywood before 1960. It’s just a different kind of acting.

Aren: You’re reminding me that a lot of people nowadays have the gall to say that classical Hollywood performers were bad actors. Absurd!

Misperceptions of acting directly relates to the performance of Christensen, as he does so many things that are invisible and hugely effective. Anton, you pointed out how he holds his robe around himself, as if he wants to disappear into its folds, and it’s an insightful comment about Christensen’s approach to the performance. I also can’t praise highly enough his work in Revenge of the Sith. The scene that I breakdown in my review, where Anakin and Padmé are looking out the windows at each other, is heartbreaking, and that’s mostly because Christensen seems so tormented as he gazes out the window. And think about his absolute fury later in the film, once he has embraced the Dark Side. One of the lines that always sticks out to me is his spitting “I hate you!” at Obi-Wan after he’s been defeated in the lightsaber duel. It’s pure venom. Christensen is good here. Perhaps the popular take is not only wrong, but mistaking dislike of Anakin as a character for dislike of Christensen as an actor.

Anton: I’ve always thought that Christensen was clearly channeling the over-the-top melodrama of James Dean. Go back and watch Rebel Without a Cause, and he’s super whiny and overwrought. It’s a great performance, but it’s not “realistic” in the manner of today. And that also connects Christensen’s performance to Anders’ comment about Anakin as an antisocial young man.

Anders: You both raise really good points that I co-sign as far as the style of acting and the merits of Christensen’s performance. But it also strikes me how often people ignore other great performances in these films. 

Ewan McGregor is a treasure and consistently funny and warm in these films. He is one of the actors who has been able to enter the world of Star Wars incredibly effectively. And he had a very difficult role in that he was taking up a character previously played by one of cinema’s most famous actors, Sir Alec Guinness! Yet, he pulled it off. I don’t know why, but the actors from the UK seemed to have gotten less of a bad rap in these films. Perhaps it’s because the UK has a stronger and older stage tradition that doesn’t automatically default to so-called naturalism in acting.

Also, Ian McDiarmid is perhaps the trilogy’s secret weapon. What a fun set of performances to watch. You can just see him revelling in playing Palpatine/Sideous as the most evil guy ever. But it’s not all scenery chewing. I’m of the opinion that the “Opera” scene in Revenge of the Sith is the best scene in all of the prequels, and he is restrained, subtly manipulating Anakin, while delivering a fairly long monologue about an old Sith story.

Anton: To briefly touch on Jar Jar, whom hatred of has attained a level we should really classify as a kind of social derangement—I mean, that much hatred for the character after 20 years!—it’s important to remember that no other character likes him, but Anakin, and that he’s ultimately used by those around him, from Qui-Gon to Palpatine.

I actually felt pretty bad for both Jar Jar and Anakin as characters while watching The Phantom Menace again.

Anders: Yes, I think it’s important to note that Jar Jar’s storyworld reputation is fairly similar to his reputation in real life. But I also think that, whatever one’s opinion of Jar Jar, it’s worth appreciating Ahmed Best’s performance and what he’s done. I know he’s noted in interviews how hurt he has been over the years by people’s reactions to Jar Jar, but it’s a landmark motion capture performance, without which I’m not sure we would have gotten something like Andy Serkis’s Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. He plays it big, drawing on the silent film tradition (particular Buster Keaton), but also showing Best’s background in the stage production Stomp!. 

The Action

Aren: There should be no argument about the quality of action filmmaking in the Prequel Trilogy: it’s superb. The lightsaber duels, in particular, are stunning. What other movies have as elegant sword fights? Aside from Rob Roy, you’d have to go back to Errol Flynn pictures to have as much fun with a cinematic sword fight.

Even people who dislike the prequels often begrudgingly admit that the Duel of the Fates is a remarkable fight scene. It’s shot in such an elegant manner, favouring wide shots, rhythmic editing, and a clear colour scheme. I like how each duelist has his own lightsaber colour, and how they all operate in separate parts of the frame, but work in balance. It’s like watching a dance. 

However, many of these same people who begrudgingly admire the action in the prequels still bafflingly stick to the assumption that the Original Trilogy has better lightsaber fights. That’s a preposterous notion! It shouldn’t even be a matter of opinion. The action choreography is better in the prequels.

Anders: I honestly don’t know what to say to someone who thinks that the Original Trilogy has better lightsaber battles. I can only assume that they are dismissing the technical brilliance and saying that they are “emotionally more satisfying” or some other justification.

Aren: The fight between Vader and Luke aboard the Second Death Star is the best duel in the Original Trilogy, but even it pales in comparison to the saber fights in all three of the prequels. The best is Duel of the Fates, but I’d put the fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin on Mustafar a close second. I also greatly admire the fight between Mace Windu and Palpatine, the battle with Dooku at the end of Attack of the Clones and the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, and Darth Maul’s brief assault on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace. Seriously, these lightsaber duels kick ass.

Anton: More so than the Original Trilogy, there are poetic moments in the prequels’ action. In the Naboo hangar, we get a shot of Obi-Wan’s blade slashing left through a battle-droid. Cut to him slashing right. Cut to a kick. This isn’t realism and it’s not trying to show everything, but it’s also not shaky cam. Also think about the duel of colour in the dark in the final lightsaber fight of Attack of the Clones.

As well, some people complain that the characters are not “fighting through,” that it’s too choreographed, and while one is welcome to suggest that certain styles are better than others, I think the fights make sense if read within the martial arts tradition, more than medieval sword fighting.

Aren: Yes, there’s a huge martial arts influence here. Remember, Ray Park who plays Darth Maul was a wushu world champion and Maul’s fighting style resembles many bo (staff) moves within wushu. The entire trilogy takes a cue from Maul and relies on more Asian-style movements. Thus, the action sequences play like Hong Kong fight sequences, especially considering that characters in both are capable of incredible feats. Also, the idea that characters don’t “fight through” is completely false when it comes to the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin. That whole fight is vicious, with both characters giving it their all to gain the upper hand. It’s exhausting to watch.

Anders: OK, here’s one potential line of critique, but one that I think I addressed in my The Phantom Menace review obliquely, which is that the drastic contrast in styles between the Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy seems to lack continuity. One can make the argument that in the Original Trilogy we’re just seeing old men and an untrained apprentice fight, while in the prequels we get Jedi at their full power, but realistically I think that one just has to accept different styles and modes of filmmaking over time. That’s like the silliness of expecting Lucas not to use computer special effects when making the films, simply to match them up better.

The Balance of the Force

Aren: One thing that is never definitely resolved in the Prequel Trilogy is the understanding of the Balance of the Force. I might be completely talking out of my ass with my assertions in my Revenge of the Sith review, but I really do think the film’s meaning hinges on the strange wording in the opening crawl—“heroes on both sides”—and its implications for the Balance of the Force.

Anton: I don’t know if I read the Balance of the Force that way, but I think you make a good argument.

Aren: I think that’s what Yoda is implying in his warning about misreading the prophecy. And Palpatine is clearly weaponizing the Jedi view, which is the Balance of the Force means eliminating the Sith. He talks so much about the Jedi and the Sith being equals and Lucas is constantly paralleling the Jedi and Sith efforts to manipulate Anakin—think of how Obi-Wan’s request of Anakin is essentially the same as Palpatine’s: they want him to spy for them. Also, there’s Mace and Palpatine’s entreaties to Anakin during their fight: “He’s a traitor, Anakin!” “No, he is the traitor!”

I don’t think the film is arguing that Palpatine’s understanding is the definitive understanding of the prophecy of the Jedi hero. But I do think the film shows that the Jedi are clearly wrong in their interpretation. It’s actually a very clever subversion of our own expectations as viewers, and our understanding of what the chosen one is meant to be.

Anders: I agree, but I understand why Anton is hesitant about this reading.

I’m still more of the opinion that Anakin does bring “Balance” by eliminating the Sith, but that he doesn’t do it until the end of Return of the Jedi. I’ve always pointed out that, while Luke is essential, it is Anakin who ultimately throws the Emperor down the reactor shaft and kills him, completing his redemption.

Aren: Until the inevitable retconning in The Rise of Skywalker, of course.

Anders: Don’t remind me.

Additionally, I think that act of redemption is really essential when we read Anakin, as I hinted at above, as a maladjusted, antisocial kind of young man, full of pride, etc. If we want to read parallels to Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side and school shooters, “incels,” or other present-day fears of young, white men, then Anakin also shows the role that love, rejection of violence as a solution—in this case by his son, Luke—plays in bringing about redemption. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it does add even more weight to the emotional redemption you described in your Return of the Jedi review, Aren.

Aren: I am not trying to be conclusive on a reading of the Balance of the Force. I’m just trying to sort out the ways that Lucas is playing with this central prophecy. My review is basically me thinking aloud and trying to sort it all out. You bring up good points. And I don’t want to say that Anakin is definitively “not” the chosen one. I think the complexity of the prequels is that he’s the chosen one in more ways than one, for both the Light Side and the Dark. He both balances the Force between Jedi and Sith in Revenge of the Sith, and also eliminates the Sith in Return of the Jedi. He fulfills both the prophecy and Palpatine’s subversion of that prophecy, just not in the order or way we expect.

Anton: I don’t have much to add because frankly I’m still working out, after all these years, what exactly certain cryptic phrases in the prequels mean. What is a “vergence” in the Force, and what does it have to do with the Balance of the Force? With human binocular vision, our two eyes “converge” on an object, and we see one object, not two, even though each eye looks from its own point of view. That, somehow, seems to be how Anakin functions in regards to the Force. The distinct perspectives of both the Light and the Dark converge on Anakin, who holds them in balance. But at what point that single object emerges is unclear. Is it that the operations of the Dark and Light, both pursuing their own goals using Anakin, use him to achieve that balance between the two? I don’t really know, but it’s something I want to explore, and I’m curious whether Episode IX will address it.

But, like Aren said, I could also be talking nonsense.

Anders: I think it’s also worth noting that prophecies have a tendency to be self-fulfilling. But it’s also a bit of Macbeth in there, that the prophecy is about manipulating the one who believes it.

I think the prequels are fascinating for so many reasons as we’ve outlined here and in our individual reviews. In many ways, it’s the old adage that interpretations tell us as much or more about the interpreter than the thing being interpreted; people will see in them what they want to see. But I do think it’s fair to say that in general people have not given these films a fair shake.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999, USA)

Written and directed by George Lucas; starring Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Jake Lloyd, Ahmed Best, Terrence Stamp, Pernilla August. 

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002, USA)

Directed by George Lucas; screenplay by George Lucas and Jonathan Hales from a story by George Lucas; starring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, Temuera Morrison, Kenny Baker, and Frank Oz.

Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005, USA)

Written and directed by George Lucas; starring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Frank Oz.