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I've been saying for years that the second-biggest disappointment of the prequels is that there is an absolutely AMAZING story embedded in the piles of stupid shit. But this article says it much better.
Like the author here, my brother manages to put together a really great concept of what the prequels could have been. And while he and I have talked about many of the points listed in this article (seriously, fuck the Jedi), I particularly like his insight into Padme, which isn't echoed in the article. I was bitching at one point about how her big failure was when he comes back after the death of his mother and announced that he just SLAUGHTERED A VILLAGE OF SAND PEOPLE and she doesn't, you know, seem to notice that this is not so much a red flag as what the red flags are leading up to. And my brother said, "But she's a politician. She wants power. In that moment she sees he has power, and she's going to use it." And suddenly it's an ideological custody battle between her and Palpatine, and that's kind of awesome.
And a lot of other factors, with a bit of tweaking, could be made awesome instead of terrible. Even the goddamn midichlorians could have been a useful point.* That's the real problem. It was so close to being amazing.
And yes, I did say that was the second-biggest disappointment. The first? That the prequels exist at all. The more I think about it the less they need to exist. Vader needs to be shrouded in myth, dammit. I don't want to see his backstory!
*Basically, the Jedi have come to bureaucratically rely on counts of these particles that correlate with Force-sensitivity, rather than paying attention to the person--so they become the Stanford-Binet test of the Force, missing a whole lot of context in favor of one mindless number.
Like the author here, my brother manages to put together a really great concept of what the prequels could have been. And while he and I have talked about many of the points listed in this article (seriously, fuck the Jedi), I particularly like his insight into Padme, which isn't echoed in the article. I was bitching at one point about how her big failure was when he comes back after the death of his mother and announced that he just SLAUGHTERED A VILLAGE OF SAND PEOPLE and she doesn't, you know, seem to notice that this is not so much a red flag as what the red flags are leading up to. And my brother said, "But she's a politician. She wants power. In that moment she sees he has power, and she's going to use it." And suddenly it's an ideological custody battle between her and Palpatine, and that's kind of awesome.
And a lot of other factors, with a bit of tweaking, could be made awesome instead of terrible. Even the goddamn midichlorians could have been a useful point.* That's the real problem. It was so close to being amazing.
And yes, I did say that was the second-biggest disappointment. The first? That the prequels exist at all. The more I think about it the less they need to exist. Vader needs to be shrouded in myth, dammit. I don't want to see his backstory!
*Basically, the Jedi have come to bureaucratically rely on counts of these particles that correlate with Force-sensitivity, rather than paying attention to the person--so they become the Stanford-Binet test of the Force, missing a whole lot of context in favor of one mindless number.
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Date: 2015-12-22 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-23 07:41 pm (UTC)