Say goodbye to drama

Rating: Null/10 (16 December 2002)

One could post a billion gripes with George Lucas' latest installments in the Star Wars series, but I'm gonna mention just one.
In Episode V -- That The Empire Strikes Back -- the biggest dramatic moment of the film, and in fact, the entire original trilogy, occurs when Darth Vader says to a badly beaten Luke Skywalker, "No, I am your father." In that moment, everything changes. Much of what Luke has known or believed in dissolves, and we as an audience learn about the link between the primary protagonist and the primary antagonist. THAT is drama. We were right there with Luke, thinking, "No, that can't be! That's impossible!"

If, for some reason, you were to watch the Star Wars films in numerical order -- not the order they were released, mind you -- then what would happen? By Episode III, you would learn that Annakin Skywalker (Luke's father) will turns to the darkside, and becomes Darth Vader. This bit of vital knowledge SPOILS the most dramatic moment of Luke Skywalker trilogy. On top of that, if we are to learn that Annakin Skywalker and Padme Amidalla are the parents of twins, the surprise of Luke and Leia being related will be nullified. Imagine this moment between the ghost of Obi- Wan and Yoda. "That boy is our last hope." "No... there is another." We'd be sitting around thinking, "Duh. Of course there's another, Darth Vader had twins, we know that Luke and a chick -- probably Leia, are his kids." Really frickin' dramatic.
For this reason, I believe that these "Prequel" movies not only fail as individual films (the plots are convoluted, the acting is unconvincing, the stories lack human emotion), but they fail as part of the Star Wars universe because they actually subvert episodes IV through VI. If everyone were forced to watch the movies in their original release order, perhaps the prequels wouldn't be as detrimental, but they'd still blow. They serve more as a history lesson of the Republic and its politics than as stories. Perhaps George Lucas really wanted to make a documentary about the events leading up to formation of the Galactic Empire, since he obviously isn't concerned with telling a moving story, involving interesting characters.
Whatever.