welcometothelightside

[welcometothelightside]

E1: The Glory of the Star Wars Prequels

An article doing a deep look into the positive side of the Star Wars Prequels.

SPOILERS FOR STAR WARS PREQUELS AND THE CLONE WARS TV SHOW

Let me preface this with the simple fact that there is good in everything.  With this fact in mind, I implore you to look at the light side. It’s a whole lot brighter, the grass greener, the air fresher. Take a seat, look up at the stars. They shine for you. 

I am undoubtedly a Prequels kid, which means just like Originals kids and Sequels kids, there’s a bias. A huge example of this being, I don’t care much for the Originals. I was born in 1998, a generation long past the cutting edge CGI that Skywalker Sound and Lucasfilms had brought to the world before my time. 

I know, I know. I just made a couple enemies. Unfortunately, Star Wars fans have quite the reputation for being downright nasty to one another, which I think is quite the shame. After all, we're supposed to be looking at the light side!

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate that the Originals exist and what they stand for. They are foundation blocks in the science fantasy genre, CGI, and sound design. They simply follow a script and style to me that’s a time I’m not a part of. An era where villains are evil, because the protagonist said so. This I feel, led into the 80’s love for heavy action flics. Chasing the high that epic space battles and being a hero inspired in people. 

After all, there were a whole lot of people who got a nice long look at Arnold Swartzenagger’s ass in 1984 and loved it. Rambo in 1982 decimated a whole lot of people’s lives, and the audience drank it up and stayed on his side. Such was the way with villains being 2-dimensional static creatures. 

I feel Vader was a missed opportunity of his era, one that George Lucas later rectified in the production of the Prequels. As a creative, and a writer I find that it can never only be the protagonist that tells a story, the antagonist is also a massive key in making sure a plot is more than a simple one line narrative. 

If you compare villains from the late 1970s and 80s, you could count their lines on a single hand. They didn’t speak, these universal dark figures. They were tall (the actor for Vader being 6’6”), overbearing, dressed in black, intimidating figures with the personality of a cardboard cut out. 

Now look at, say, the movie Joker from 2019, a movie focusing entirely on the bad guy. Our interpretation from then to now of what a villain is has drastically changed. Anakin is a fantastic representation of what I feel a villain should be. He’s a massive reason why I favor the Prequels above both the Originals and Sequels. 

So let’s start with him, shall we? Anakin Skywalker has one of the most fleshed out villain arcs I’ve ever had the privilege to witness. My favorite thing about it being that it’s not rushed. His fall takes place over a total of 6 hours and 56 minutes including credits. That’s a good deal of time for a trilogy, considering he is for the most part the main character throughout.

There are no doubt hoards of angry fans out there that swear that Hayden Christensen was an absolute idiot through every scene. After all, his character has more memes than any other in Star Wars. His hatred for sand is well known. What those fans don’t seem to want to realize is that Christensen did everything exactly as George Lucus asked him too. The Prequels were a love product of Lucas’s mind, and as a creator to me that's a beautiful thing.

Hayden was supposed to be cringy and awkward. You were supposed to wince when all Anakin can think to say is “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.” But this is a 19 year old boy, who has basically never talked to a beautiful woman in his life. I mean let's take a moment to appreciate this outfit:

 That boy that has no doubt used Padme as his spank bank material for the last several years of adolescence. How could you not with her looking as gorgeous as that? She ‘s confident, regal, and smiles at him, and every chemical in his body is no doubt screaming at him to make a move. 

Anakin is a Jedi, prohibited from emotion expression. He has no practice, no training, and absolutely no confidence outside of an overcompensating bravado. This is his attempt at sharing a part of his life with her, a way of opening up when he doesn’t know how. I certainly would not like to look back on how I flirted at 19. Anakin’s inability to talk in a straight sentence makes perfect sense and Hayden and Jake's portrayals were brilliant from start to end. We live in a society where shitty pick-up lines about angels exist.

Also, an extra shout out to the fantastic acting from Jake Lloyd. The community really let him down. 

There’s also The Clone Wars animated series to consider, another brilliant series which is beloved by a portion of the community and dismissed by the other.  Matt Lanter does just as good of a job with Anakin as his other actors. He brings a playfulness to the character that doesn’t always get shown in the films. 

We get a chance to see Anakin in his element, excelling in Force abilities and dealing with a variety of challenges that only further explain how he becomes Darth Vader. His arrogance, anger, and struggle to become what people want him to be, was and remains incredibly relatable to me. He will likely remain one of my favorite characters forever. 

However, as a child it wasn’t Anakin that drew my interest. I wasn’t a very boy crazy kid. I was a little kid who wanted to go into the Marine Corp to be like my father. This made the Jedi as a whole incredibly interesting to me. So as a young nine year old I had the Jedi Code memorized, and would say it like a mantra all the time. Yoda was my internal mentor, and I thought of little else but this escapism.

Some kids wanted to be firefighters and rockstars when they grew up, I wanted to be a Jedi. Though there was a time when I wanted to be a rockstar too. I loved Star Wars in the midst of my father’s alcohol addiction, and my mother’s codependency; with an older brother who wanted nothing to do with me, all while grappling with the fact I would someday become transgender. 

Not that I knew it at the time of course, it was much easier to pretend I was some alien where gender norms and bad parenting didn’t exist. A place where I was the important hero, I think we all have fandoms like this. The ones that saved and damned us.  Coming to eventually accept that watching the Phantom Menace over and over again wasn’t going to have Yoda appearing at my door was devastating. 

Such a disappointment in fact, I forsook Star Wars for a good decade. I hated it, I despised it. Such was the power it had over me, I came to hate sci-fi as a genre. Aliens were despicable, and sci-fi was dumb. Teenage angst gripped me, and I forgot about my childhood whispering the Jedi Code and writing Star Wars fanfiction in notebooks. 

Then in 2019, my husband convinced me to watch the first two Sequels films because he wanted to see episode 9 in theaters with me. I begrudgingly, mostly through my love for him, agreed. I watched episode 7, like a critic. I found everything wrong with it, and hated Rey with a passion. But then I watched the next one, and then we went to theaters to see the last. 

Somewhere in that process the ice around my heart for a series I had adored long ago melted away. I fell into it hard, consuming the Prequels again for the first time as an adult. Those feelings, that love I had before, came back. For over a year it consumed me. We got a cat, I named her Rey. I wrote over a hundred thousand word fanfiction, that I am now in the work of rewriting. We watched The Clone Wars TV show. I listened to a song that reminded me of Anakin, some 180 times or so Spotify told me. 

One of the most exciting parts of watching the Prequels again was Obi-Wan, a character I dismissed as a little boy. I figure he fell into that silly category, such as little girls love Legolas and women love Aragorn. He was a complete sleeper character for me, and it was a blast to actually figure him out. 

Watching them again after all that time, was a lot like watching them for the first time. How I didn’t adore Kenobi before I have no clue. This was especially prevalent when watching The Clone Wars TV series. Satine gave him such a beautiful dimension, and I adore that he so completely captures what a heroic tragedy is. 

I also found him relatable, his loyalty to a wretched fault is something that I myself have had to learn from -- time and time again. And damn can Ewan Mcgregor wield a lightsaber. It amuses me to no end that they were forced to slow footage of his fight with Maul down, because the two of them were too fast for the camera. This dorky guy from Scotland received accolades from a martial artist with years of experience. 

That’s another thing that I heavily prefer compared to the Originals, the lightsabers and their combat. Granted there was a very valid reason for the format in the Originals, I adore the faster pace they were able to pull off later on. Same as I’ve continued to enjoy the fact that more and more colors have gotten to come out and play. Blue, green, yellow, white, purple, red. The list goes on and on, each one with their own meaning. Though, despite blue being my least favorite color, it is likely the color I myself would end up with as a Jedi. I’ve always had quite the Hero Complex. 

Another sleeper character for me, mostly because he falls under that tall, intimidating cardboard cut out character type I mentioned before is Maul. His epic combat sequence and double saber, was well received. But he’s quickly sliced in half in the name of Obi-Wan’s character development. Though let’s be honest that’s what you get when you fuck with the kid who has always been picked last. 

The Clone Wars TV show really brought Maul’s character to life for the first time. For one he was given dialogue, which Sam Whitwer kicked ass at (though I will admit I have a bias toward the man himself, he’s so delightful in just about everything). Love a good “Kenobi” scream. Not only was his voice perfect, his character design was top notch. The way his legs slowly evolve with his character, really showcased his development for the audience. 

Then of course add in his revenge by murdering Obi-Wan’s only significant other, he’s a fan favorite. And if all of that didn’t sell you, there was his fight with Ashoka. A utterly majestically animated combat sequence that had us all on the edge of our seats. 

As a kid another set of well beloved characters flew under the radar for me. The Clones. What as a kid was a bunch of dudes chilling in white armor became tear jerking characters that I mourned for during Order 66. Rex became such a figurehead to sacrifice and duty, the Bad Batch a lovely representation of commitment to a cause that only looked down to them for what were in all technicality, disabilities. Making them A+ models for kids with disabilities, and those that never fit in. 

I sat in silence when clone 99 sacrificed himself for his fellow brothers. Needless to say I no longer see them as just a bunch of white suits. And I just love that Anakin, even as Vader kept his troopers by him with Vader’s Fist. 

I’m not one for war stories, or much action in general to be honest. I am at my core a romantic in love with the supernatural and fantastical. Yet the Clone Wars is the closest I ever came to loving a war story, because that really was what it was. Tales from battlefields, the rise and fall of two sides in a war. 

It ended up a goddamn perfect story. 

And if you are not yet aware of my incredible bias, let me tell you some of my favorite parts. Little bits, I came to adore in my life. Small moments that stick with me as excellent examples of everything I love about Star Wars, this story that helped raise me. 

Every scene that takes place between Anakin and Padme on Naboo. Perhaps to others the quote, “You are in my very soul, tormenting me.” Would be considered terribly embarrassing. To me it was a gradual slide into the grand romantic gestures I would crave and write about in my own works. 

The talk between Padme and Obi-Wan as they both realize every way the universe has come to fail them. Padme mourning a life of lies and disappointments, Obi-Wan finally admitting that he’s failed Anakin. The flex of John Williams as the words “I’m sorry,” leave Obi-Wan’s mouth. 

Followed by the duel on Mustafar, the fall of Anakin and the death of everything Obi-Wan Kenobi ever stood for. A showstopping piece of set design, color theory, and rabid emotion. 

Several scenes in the Clone Wars TV series particularly captured me, left me longing and breathless. Wishing desperately that I could someday make something like that, envy turning me green. The entirety of the slave arc, with both Anakin and Obi-Wan. Such a perfect representation of who their characters are. 

The Umbara arc, a look into the Clones, the way the universe sees them as expendable and useless. Rex’s weariness for battle, the tragedy of the many made individual. 

Satine’s death, the memorable way Obi-Wan leans over her. The mourning of everything he never got to have. Sacrificing himself for an Order that was nothing it marketed itself to be. A pacifist made soldier. 

The scene between  Clovis and Anakin. Nothing made me cackle quite like the way he threw his saber aside to beat the shit out of Clovis bare handed. All that anger, all that love. A showcase of how unhealthy his marriage actually was. 

The duel as I mentioned before between Ashoka and Maul, and her battle scene during order 66. I especially adored the way she used both her sabers to cut a hole in the floor to escape blaster fire. So many scenes, so many moments. It feels good to gush about a series that has become so close to my soul. 

Thank you so much for listening in on this topic. I hope you got a little taste of the Light Side.

Royce signing off.