Revisiting the Star Wars Prequels
“At the eventual conclusion, the son’s love will redeem the father. Anakin’s prophetic fulfillment as “the Chosen One” will occur in Episode VI, where Palpatine is cast down into a reactor core just as Maul plummeted at the start. Everything comes back into balance and peace is restored in the galaxy.
The two trilogies are ingeniously reverse-engineered, now able to be played backward and forward in harmony. They are cleverly mirrored and full of interesting allusions. […] Lucas layered these final chapters with great care and they impressively solidify his myth. Time and again, I’ve seen the young fans who pore over them much more in tune with the work than film reviewers and their cursory reactions. Looking back at my own youth, Star Wars functioned as a kind of early art school. It’s unfortunate that the hyperbolic echo chamber of the internet has done so much damage in thwarting this kind of thing. For ten years now, these six films have been available to analyze as a unified whole but they remain largely unstudied.
Until his recent retirement, George Lucas also oversaw the production of a terrific animated television series, The Clone Wars (2008-2013) that further deepened the prequel era and is now beloved by a whole new generation… Disney is doing themselves a disservice by distancing themselves from all this and catering to the snark that pervades the internet. The prequel generation is now coming of age and I’m encouraged to see new voices defend the films every year and tell their stories.
In a world of generic, cookie-cutter blockbusters, Lucas’ work stands out as singular and weighty. There is a lot to enjoy and admire in the prequel trilogy and it deserves a much closer look.”
#i love so many things about lucas’ sw films #one of those things is that they’re the complete opposite of generic and cookie-cutter blockbusters # i respect lucas for having a creative vision and following that # instead of catering to a certain segment of fans (via)