So now I’ll get to the last set of complaints.  These almost solely center on Lucas’s decision making skills as writer/producer/director.  Again, these aren’t simple inconsistencies that one would expect as a result of a 20 to 25 year vacation from one particular story.  These are inconsistencies and problems that have occurred as a direct result of Lucas not paying the attention he needs to detail.  Either that, or he just plain didn’t care. 

The first set of problems that I’d like to address come from Lucas’s decision to use computer-generated graphics almost exclusively. Nothing, I mean nothing, looks real.  It’s all too clean and shiny.  The original trilogy films were dirty and visceral, which is what made them so realistic.  Ships didn’t have a shine to them.  They had dirt on them and damage from firefights.  The natural environments added a certain amount of depth absent from any of the prequel films.  It’s blatantly apparent that everything was created on a computer.  Shadows don’t look quite right and move awkwardly over backdrops, gazes from live action characters sometimes don’t quite meet the gazes from non-live characters.  The list could go on. 

I don’t mean to suggest that Lucas should have foregone computer imaging entirely.  I actually like a few of the changes he made to the original trilogy films when he re-released them, such as cleaning up bad rendering, smoothing out the edges of some of the old special effects, etc.  He could have gone without adding the Jabba scene into A New Hope and I could have done without the extended celebration scene at the end of Return of the Jedi (or Hayden Christensen inserted into the end).  But that use of computer graphics, working in tandem with real life sets, made for great viewing.  The opening of Revenge of the Sith looks less like a movie and more like a video game.

Now to the writing.  Apparently, everyone forgot how to wield a lightsaber in the 20 years between the trilogies, because compared with the folks in the prequel trilogy they suck in IV, V, and VI.  The best lightsaber duel of the original trilogy is without a doubt the duel at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, what with Vader using the force to just throw a bunch of shit at Luke while he pathetically waves his lightsaber around like an ineffectual phallus.  But in the prequel trilogy we get Darth Maul.  We get the bad-ass fight-o-rama in the coliseum.  We get the emperor and Yoda and Count Dooku and Yoda.  We get some ridiculous craziness to enjoy.

Now, one could make the argument that, since Luke Skywalker is the only Jedi in the entire universe, we can’t really expect too much from him in terms of showy lightsaber wielding craftsmanship.  And of course, technology changed quite a bit between the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy.  But I would argue that Lucas should have written the prequel trilogy with those constraints in mind.  I’m not about to tell an artist what’s best for his or her own art, but every once in a while you’ve got to throw the consumers of your art a bone.  Lucas will one day die and not have to look at his own art any longer.  His art will live forever (maybe).

Read part V here.