The Star Wars Prequels are better than the Star Wars Original Trilogy

Thank you for that round. I will provide an analysis from my side of the debate. Story: A couple things fall under the category of story: plot and character development. Character Development: This section is going to be long, so here we go. In the Phantom Menace, character development was not a thing. The main antagonist, Darth Maul, was more shallow than a puddle of water three days after a rain. I mean, basically his character is a guy who was supposed to kill a couple guys I guess? And he was sort of barely not even there in the attack on Naboo except for as a sort of intimidation factor. The other antagonists who weren't the antagonists in the climax yet still had way more screen time, were basically portrayed as a couple of bumbling idiots under the thumb of Chancellor Palpatine. They had next to no depth and exactly zero development. The protagonists weren't all that deep either. Anakin's development in the first movie is a few verses of the song amazing grace. Here's where the character development really failed with him though. In the later movies, he's basically portrayed as a hormonal young adult with an attachment disorder. No one gets as obsessive as he did unless they have a disorder. That is totally okay, as long as you utilize that character. In other words, they made it look like he was just a normal boy turning into a Jedi, but his character under analysis was very disordered and emotionally insane. It was possibly the biggest waste of turning a protagonist into an antagonist ever. The love story thing wasn't believable unless they exploited the disorder, and George Lucas's cash grabbing hands didn't think to let that happen. Obi Wan was okay, and as a character I generally liked him, especially since his character develops kind of slowly and doesn't take any ridiculous twists as he goes from episode 1 to episode 4. However, his character developed too slow in Episode 1 to consider it good development (it was like that one scene where Qui Gon dies, and Obi Wan becomes more determined). Overall, the rest of the story in the prequels goes like this. The characters are always underused. The antagonists in Attack of the Clones were just as shallow. They're just cut-and-dry, cliche characters. Nothing really happens. They're just all psychopathic, power hungry war-mongers. And Padme probably should've ended the relationship with Anakin when he was talking about how he slaughtered women and children out of rage. Sorry about your mom, but that's a huge red flag. It was like any depth the characters had were just completely ignored and brought back to the surface. Especially with Anakin. Such a wasted character. The original trilogy was good though. Luke's development overall was great. He was a very reasonable character who brought hope just like he was supposed to. Even when he was screwing up, he was still almost doing the right thing. Going from one event to the next, the plot made sense. I mean, maybe he didn't react enough when his adopted parents died, but you can't just drag that out and saturate the plot with self-pity. Besides, it makes sense that he would sort of get detached as he's traveling around the galaxy. Han Solo's character was solid. He was put together exactly how you'd expect that character to be put together in real life. He's self-interested but still kind of a nice guy to the right people. Not really any complaints with his character at all. Princess Leia was a good feminist icon. She was strong and independent but not annoyingly so. Her scenes were occasionally funny, and she portrayed the proper idea of what a futuristic princess might be like. As for the villains, the two main villains, Darth Vader and the Emperor, were perfect. They developed over three movies as opposed to being killed off after three minutes of screen time. You were able to see the internal struggle of Darth Vader having Luke as his son, and you see how that conflict leads to overthrowing the Emperor. The conflict between love and hate made sense when it sort of drove Luke into his rage state, but he ended up still being the hero by refusing to kill his father. That is probably the best example of a realistic character. I mean, the fact that he started out a sort of farm boy ties into that, because he used to live a sort of gentle life. Tying the climax to the beginning is the best thing a plot can do, because otherwise the story doesn't make sense. That leads me to plot: As far as plot goes, the prequels were too ambiguous. Episode 3 was okay. The other two were awful as far as the plot went. Anakin's storyline was entirely character driven, and like stated above, Anakin's character was a great idea that never even became a good character. His scenes came across as the wrong kind of creepy, unrealistically emotional, and very loosely tied from one point to the next. That's true even in episode 3, but at least the overall events in episode 3 sort of distracted from that. However, episode 1, the plot is sort of just to stop an invasion that no one really talks about unless they're in the senate or it's happening. Episode 2 was way too long to introduce the idea that the Jedi are fighting now. Even the fight scenes in these two weren't really exciting, but I'll explain later. Episode 3 had an actual plot, but that doesn't make up for the first two movies. The original trilogy had a solid story based off of real world events carrying across three episodes. In case you never caught it, the Empire was based off of Nazi Germany. Hitler had storm troopers. The Emperor had storm troopers. The Empire was attempting to take control of the whole galaxy with its literal war machines. Hitler did the same thing to Earth. This constant plot allowed for the main characters to go into side stories, because there wasn't too much happening. That's why the characters could develop, and the whole thing made sense througout the story. Acting: I agree that George Lucas was the main thing that screwed up the overall performance in the prequels. Most of those actors are at least somewhat good actors. However, performance in the prequels from pretty much everyone but Ewan Mcgregor and Ian MicDiarmid (Obi Wan and Palpatine). However, in the original trilogy you get oustanding performances from Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Clive Revil, and Billy Dee Williams. All of these guys were great, and they did a perfect job portraying the characters. Star Wars would've never gotten as big as it did without their involvement. Action: I will concede that the fights in episode 3 were the best by far; however, the fights in episodes 1 and 2 were basically awful. In episode 1 the fights were either silly or nonlethal. If you look at the fight scene against Darth Maul, you can tell they're just trying to hit each other's lightsabers, not actually kill each other until the very end. In episode 2, the fights were either extremely dry or you can tell that the actors were actually actors. For example, when Anakin gets his hand cut off, he just sort of sits there with his arms spread for a few seconds before Dooku cuts it off. This guy is supposed to be great, and he literlly sucks. Aside from that, you can tell what's CGI in all of these, and it takes away from the feeling of death in the fights. In the original trilogy, most of the good fights were the group fights, especially in space or between armies. These fights were choreographed very well, and it's easy to believe them. The fight between Luke and Vader in 5 may have been long, but it was still better than 1 and 2. Environment: The prequels looked fake. The CGI was not good back then. It was okay, but it wasn't believable. So the sets were grossly unrealistic. The original trilogy looked real becaue it all was real. The design was more beautiful because of that, especially in space scenes or inside ships. It looked like you could actually go there. Thank you.