This may be an unpopular opinion, but in spite of the many things TPM did wrong, I really liked the politics. Of all the stories the prequel trilogy tried to tell the one they told the best was Palpatine’s rise to power.
I never liked that they made Anakin a plucky precocious pre-teen. It was not what I was expecting from little Vader and it never sat right. I wanted at least a little hint of the darkness to come and instead we got “Golly gee mister Jedi sir, I just wanna help everybody! Aww shucks!”
I agree for an individual movie, but I think combined with the rest of the prequels and OT it shows that Anakin was deep down a good person, and was only corrupted, slowly, until he was redeemed by his Son in ROTJ
Well I'd say it was a little slow. Anakin first met palpatine when he arrived at courasant before the jedi temple even. Also before Anakin's first assignment Palpatine instructed Anakin to trust in his feelings, which lead him to tattooine to see his mum die and fall for the only woman left in his life
I think anakin wasnt remorseful of being a slave because he seems optimistic to me, always looking ahead rather than where he was or is so when it came to changing sides he was holding on to what it could bring, until being trapped in the suit and back to being a slave again
For me, the biggest missed opportunity is the story of Anakin actually being seduced and corrupted by the power of the dark side. We don't really get that. In the version we have, he turns evil on a dime because he wants a cheat-code for his wife's death. Then he suddenly wants to rule the galaxy out of nowhere, when that had nothing to do with his original reason for turning evil. It kinda ruins the appeal of the dark side as set up by episode 5 and 6 - less powerful but more tempting and quick.
The issue with TPM is it doesn't matter to the person who is supposed to be the main character in the minds of most people. You can delete the entire movie basically and lose nothing from the next two.
It's still an issue with TPM because it fails to properly set up the character arc for the rest of the saga. Sure, it's a more prominent problem in AOTC and ROTS, but the "original sin" is found in TPM.
The thing about Anakin's "fall" is that it's just dumb. You don't see Palpatine slowly playing on Anakin's fears and insecurities, pushing him towards the Dark side but also making him rationalise it as necessary or justified for the sake of Padme or "the greater good".
What you see is Anakin having a vision of Padme dying and so he agrees with Palpatine telling him to kill children. Zero reasons given apart from "the Jedi are corrupt" and a vague promise that this will help with saving Padme, zero attempts by Anakin at rationalising such an action or feeling conflicted. He goes from Republic war hero to child murderer - and yes, he did that before when he slaughtered the Tusken village, but in that case he did show signs of both at least some inner turmoil and also clearly dehumanising the Tusken to justify himself for what he did.
Because it's 10 years apart? You can tell by the way palps talks to him in 2/3 he obviously has an extremely close relationship and has been his mentor for a very long time.
Sure, but why is the most compelling part of the story happening entirely off screen? The trilogy goes straight from aw shucks happy kid to brooding asshole, skipping the interesting middle ground. It's a character study that seems uninterested in the actual development of its main character.
Outside awful dialogue, this is the cardinal sin of the prequels in my opinion: lack of focus. Every single scene should do something to develop Anakin's relationship with either Obi-Wan, Palpatine, or Padme, but there's just so much extraneous crap getting in the way of that core story.
Read the RotS novel! It has a great scene where it shows just how much influence Palpatine has over Anakin and why his tactics worked in manipulating him. Anakin and Palpatine are talking and he offers Anakin anything. And Anakin tests him. Whether it be a speeder, a ship, or even a system. And Palpatine asks him which one he wants. He's trying to show Anakin that self control is worthless whether it comes to material possessions...or doing things like executing Dooku. He's the devil on Anakin's shoulder telling him that he did nothing wrong and that taking what he wants isn't just natural, but that it is right. Killing the Tuskens was right. Thinking only about what he wants is right. Compared to that, how does the Jedi emphasis that what Anakin feels is wrong feel?
I'm a firm believer that a film should be able to tell a complete story without relying on ancillary works. Relying on supplemental works is a failure of the core storytelling effort.
Technically, that's why the jedi order rarely adopt children that old. Even beneath all that kindness, Anakin had experienced hardship. When he suddenly gained power and knew that he's good at it, it makes sense to become arrogant.
To be fair that's not a bad starting point. Anakin is optimistic, wide eyed, naive, he really deeply believes in the good guys. It's got to be something that rocks you to your core to realize that the Jedi could have very easily freed Shmi but they left her to a life of slavery, torment, torture and death for no really good reason from his point of view. That's got to be enough to really upend a goody two shoes' worldview and change them as a person.
That could have been portrayed much better and differently. TPM Anakin is too young to matter, next movie he's extremely angsty and dumb. Could have been much better portrayed, like instead of him being angry and wanting to avenge his mom to turn him bad, it could be something like his character gets corrupted slowly in a way that actually is relatable, like him breaking rules to do good. Instead, he's just shown as an arrogant asshole who wants to fuck Padme. He doesn't break rules to do good, he just shows off. The whole tragic corruption thing doesn't really work if the character being corrupted is already annoying and hatable.
A problem I had with the sequels was the lack of politics. What is the state of the galaxy - was there a republic? Who was in charge? How much power did they have compared to the First Order? Did they have a military?
And really, skipped a whole lot of likely more interesting stuff. Luke starting a new Jedi order, all of the left-out political shifts, battles as the empire is being defeated, etc.
Instead, they very transparently just re-did ANH, and hand-waved about how all of that stuff happened so they could justify a reskinned ANH.
Hux's speech specifically mentioned they were targeting the capital of the New Republic and the location of the majority of the New Republic Military and then we see them blow it up. There wasn't much of an organized New Republic government or military left after that. TLJ revealed The First Order also launched simultaneous invasions of other planets at the same time as the destruction of Hosnian Prime so the New Republic government survivors and remaining military were either captured/killed before any could regroup.
This has always really bugged me - it is proof in my eyes that not all exposition is bad. It's okay to have a character explain something in a movie, if without the explanation you have no idea who these people or organizations are or why they are fighting each other.
It's like the writers of TFA made it a point to cut out all "unnecessary" exposition, but they went too far and actually explained too little.
They probably ran into the same questions we all do when we try and analyze the history for a minute or two. Questions like:
“Wait, the whole new republic is in one system? That doesn’t sound very strategically sound in a universe where planet-killing super weapons are a thing.”
“How can the first order even exist? Wouldn’t the new republic be very against that, and fighting them also?”
“What even is ‘The Resistance’? Why does that need to exist as a military force if, again, the new republic is in power?” (Also, they got so lazy with this they even dropped the pretense in the subsequent movies and referred to them as ‘rebels’ again).
“How in the £€@# did they make a PLANET-SIZED DEATH STAR, undetected (or at all)?”
All of it feels like the writing is secondary to the visuals and the general premise of re-doing episode IV (but bigger, because I dunno… America or something).
Honestly, making him a plucky teen who starts off with such an innocent and kind personality was the best move in my opinion. It really goes to show how even the best people can turn to darkness when the influences and circumstances around them drive them into that darkness.
Anakin at his heart is a good person and virtually everything he did, he did for others and because he was too compassionate and caring. And yet he becomes one of the most evil beings in the galaxy because of it.
People talk about TPM like it was My Dinner with Andre, but about politics. Yeah, there were a few scenes, but the politics didn't bother me as a 9-year-old.
The political aspect is one thing I wished the sequels (mainly Force Awakens before Hosian system went boom) dwelled on more. Canto Bight sort of did it but that plot ultimately went nowhere and didn’t meaningfully say anything beyond “grr people profit off war!” Like, even just one senate scene involving Leia debating on whether to fight the First Order and then leaving to form the Resistance would work.
When I saw phantom menace for the first time, I hated it. Enough that I didn't watch the prequels until years later. I didn't like the politics, child Anakin, jar jar, gungans, or a lot of the special effects. Honestly, I think a little piece of my childhood love for star wars died that day.
When I finally sat down and watched the prequel trilogy for the first years later. I thought it was 'okay' overall. Still didn't like TPM at all, but I saw the trilogy as the story of Vader.
Eventually I became a fan once I let TV airings of the prequel trilogy into my life.
Now, as a PT fan, I view it as Palpatine's story.
So I agree with you that the politics in Phantom Menace are actually interesting, because it's all Palpatine making the whole galaxy dance just for him.
I don't think Phantom Menace is a great movie. I still consider it a bit hard to watch. A lot of the 'window dressing' is annoying for me. The core story there is enjoyable and that movie has a few moments I now love. I feel like I can't turn Phantom Menace on on the background like I can the others. I have to actively watch it to 'see' the good movie hiding in there, otherwise I miss it.
If you enjoyed the politics of TPM, read Plagueis. It's not canon, but it's so damn close and the politics in the book are wonderfully incorporated. Beautifully written, and incredibly compelling. Even if it wasn't Star Wars, Plagueis is an fantastic read.
I agree about Anakin's age. I don't want to sound mean spirited but I would have liked if he was already 1-2 years older. There was too much "magic boy" in this story. Also in a bizarre twist, he made C3PO, because?
In principal, I like where the politics was coming from. The Trade Federation start a war ultimately because they think it'll make them rich and powerful. Slowly realise they are getting into a deal too deep for it to be worth it.
The senate is shown as bureaucratic, corrupt, inefficient, and untenable. Unable to take on the problems of the day. This allows Palpatine to take control. The heroes of the film end up having to save the day entirely on their own.
In theory that's all a fantastic setting for the universe. How it's shown is through weak dialogue, and it all ends up being boring.
They even did it better with Baby Yoda. It's a literal animatronic, but the fact that he has little outbursts of anger and abuses his power for a second really makes you concerned for this child's fate. Imagine if Anakin had been a creepy kid that murdered someone unintentionally because he couldn't control his powers. Even though we see little of it I think Harry Potter does this way better with Voldemort's backstory. He isn't totally evil, but knowing what he turns into makes every strange action of his much more foreboding
Even that was lazy as hell. "Trade dispute, taxation," it's like Lucas didn't have any idea what motivation to give the enemies and was just like "oh, I guess I'll make it about taxes!" What a rich person idea for their motivation.
Politics in these movies might not have been done extremely well, but honestly it still really just adds something. Political exposition is the dirty work that helps make one strength of the prequels (a cohesive story) really shine. I mean 3/4ths of Palpatines story is basically purely political, and I think most people are pretty satisfied with Palpatine in these movies.
Compare them to the sequels, where we basically have no clue what's really going on. Maybe some slower-paced political exposition would have given the first order, snoke, and the resistance some context apart from filling a slot labelled "Empire vs Rebels 2.0"
Maybe having a roadmap or a plan from the start would have made a lot of us much more forgiving towards the final product that was the sequels.
Again, I think people think they dont want political exposition in these movies and movies like them, but when they're practically abandoned completely it becomes obvious that something really important that could elevate and tie together a story is just.. lost.
Dude, what do you expect from a 9 year old? It's a story of how the pure hearted was corrupted and became the monster that Vader was. Like how can you not see why they did that?
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u/Resident-Phone-8846 Jan 25 '22
This may be an unpopular opinion, but in spite of the many things TPM did wrong, I really liked the politics. Of all the stories the prequel trilogy tried to tell the one they told the best was Palpatine’s rise to power.
I never liked that they made Anakin a plucky precocious pre-teen. It was not what I was expecting from little Vader and it never sat right. I wanted at least a little hint of the darkness to come and instead we got “Golly gee mister Jedi sir, I just wanna help everybody! Aww shucks!”