Welcome back to my ranking of The Skywalker Saga. Last time, we covered the very worst of these films, but today things are gonna start getting a bit more positive.
#6) Revenge of the Sith
Regardless of how much you hate the prequels, most people generally agree that Sith is the strongest of the three. Which isn't exactly a glowing achievement, I'll grant you, but I do think this film is a lot better than people give it credit for, and the separation between it and Clones and Phantom is significant. For one thing, this is probably the most exciting and action-packed of the prequels, which doesn't automatically translate to better, but in a series called Star Wars, I'd consider it a significant factor. Similarly, this seems to be the most stylish and visually vibrant of the prequels, with the opening shot of the battle over Coruscant a particular highlight. Yeah, it's not got the charm of the OT's model shots, but if you're going to go CG, go all out, and that's exactly what this first shot does as the camera weaves between hundreds of Republic and Separatist cruisers, showing off the sheer scale and spread of the battle, with a manner reminiscent of a historical epic.
Lucas's direction has also improved. It's still not very good, but having watched them back to back, it's definitely not as hideous as Clones, although the problem with Sith's delivery isn't so much about being wooden as it is about being overly hammy and melodramatic. In particular, Ian McDiarmid seems to be having a great time as Palpatine, who was always a bit of a pantomime villain anyway to be honest, and Hayden Christensen is...well, he's certainly trying! Natalie Portman still seems to be struggling but I'm sure I saw at least one emotion in there, somewhere. There is still one perplexingly awful "love" scene between Anakin and Padmé, but I guess to make up for how few there are, they made it possibly the worst one yet. The lines don't even sound like they connect to each other, as if Lucas just threw a bunch of sonnets at a cement mixer and picked out whichever scraps of paper survived.
You know what is good though? Obi-Wan and Anakin's chemistry. Yes, I know every fucking line of McGregor's has been memed to shit, but do you know why they capture our hearts so much? Because it's banter. It's rare in a Lucas script, I'll grant you, but Anakin and Obi-Wan have a genuine rapport with each other, and you can believe that they're good friends. They talk like friends, they quip like friends, they tease each other like friends, and when Obi-Wan has to defeat Anakin on Mustafar, I can really believe how upset he is.
On a related note, the opening sequence where Anakin and Obi-Wan rescue Palpatine from The Invisible Hand is probably the closest any of the prequels get to reproducing the fabled 'Star Wars feel' that makes those OT films so enjoyable, in that the tone and scenario of the sequence are actually pretty similar to some of the ones you'd find in New Hope or Jedi. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar: the core group of protagonists infiltrate a heavily defended enemy base with a specific objective to reach and a half-baked plan that they keep improvising as they go. It's also got the same sense of humour, the cheesy one-liners and snarky dialogue and banter between the protagonists, and it's got a constantly evolving sense of peril. There are flashes of this formula elsewhere in the prequels admittedly, probably the next closest being the retaking of Theed Palace in Phantom, but it just doesn't have the charisma or character chemistry to make it work nearly as well as it does here in Sith, where it ends up being one of the highlights of the film.
This film does go off the rails eventually, of course, but what I found surprising was how far into the story the film got before it happened. The set up to Anakin's turn to the dark side actually makes a lot of sense. As sloppily as it may have been executed in Clones, we know that Anakin has a past trauma about losing his mother to the Tusken Raiders, and was too late to save her despite acting on a premonition he had of her in danger. So it makes a lot of sense for him to get obsessively paranoid about losing Padmé when he has similar premonitions about her. His tension with the Jedi council also makes a lot of sense, if you consider even from the very beginning they were sceptical of training him, and Anakin has always seemed to be held at an arm's length from the rest of the Jedi, ironically because they feared that he would be too dangerous, which then drove him towards wiping them out. Like that's actually good writing. And when his trust in the Jedi order is wavering, along with the lies fed to him about the Jedi trying to take over and the chance to save Padmé, it actually makes a lot of sense that Anakin lashes out at Windu, considering as well his impulsive nature. From that point onward though, it falls apart. Immediately swearing allegiance to the Sith and taking on the Vader moniker? Nuh-uh. He's not there yet. He's still travelling downhill, but he is far from reaching the bottom. But no, we go straight from that regrettable impulsive decision straight to evil bastard within about a minute. Even then, maybe we could swallow it with the melodrama of the thing if it weren't for...
The. Fucking. Younglings.
Again, everything to do with the younglings has been memed to death, and it doesn't take a genius to see how misguided and tonally kinda fucked up that is for what is basically a kid's film, but you know what, I get it. This isn't a pleasant story; it has to go there at some point. But not with Anakin. That's the problem with it. Like I said, Anakin isn't there yet, he's still at the top of his descent and should still be a somewhat good character. If I were writing this, I'd have Anakin shut himself away somewhere straight after the Windu scene and have some kind of breakdown as he comes to terms with what he's done. Meanwhile, the clones, which are faceless non-characters that are directly under the command of Palpatine, can go and do all the child-murdering in the Jedi temple, which is not only a lot more emotionally plausible but keeps Anakin as relatable as he can possibly be at this point, and it would sell the Shakespearean kinda tragedy angle that Lucas is going for a lot better. It is just straight-up inconceivable that Anakin goes from being an essentially good but haunted character who just wants to save his wife during the birth of his child(ren) to an unfeeling and unconflicted child-murdering machine within maybe an hour tops of in-universe time.
The other big problem for me is that Sith's entire plot about Anakin being manipulated by Palpatine makes no sense when you realise that prior to this film, there is very little relation between Anakin and Palpatine: they barely interact in either of the previous two films. And yes, there's a three-year gap which maybe The Clone Wars series plugs (but it doesn't count since it was made afterwards: that's called a retcon, boys and girls) where this might have been explored, but coming to Sith straight from Clones and being told Anakin is super-close best buds with Palpatine is baffling. Especially when Anakin randomly drops a line to the effect of "my allegiance has always been to the senate." WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? You've been a Jedi for the past thirteen years of your life; the closest you have ever gotten to politics is six inches inside the senator of Naboo!
#5) The Force Awakens
We have now crossed the threshold of 'bad' Star Wars, a term I'm still somewhat at odds with, and into the realm of 'good' Star Wars. I know a lot of people would draw this line a lot later, but no,there are at least five really solid Star Wars films, and here we have the weakest of them, The Force Awakens. After growing up with the OT and the prequels, when the lines of 'good' and 'bad' Star Wars were much more clear cut (to the point that a list ranking them like this was almost pointless), the announcement of a new trilogy made by Disney was met with a lot of trepidation, changing to tentative optimism when the trailer dropped and actually wasn't half bad. How refreshing it was when Awakens turned out to be not only a genuinely enjoyable blast of a film but also managed to recapture the same 'feel' of the OT and the magic of Star Wars which I only then realised had been so sorely missing from the prequels. Then a couple of days passed and we all collectively realised the reason it felt so much like the OT was because it was the OT: a flashy remake of A New Hope, to be precise, but with heavy use of the Find and Replace tool. Luke becomes Rey, Tatooine becomes Jakku, Ben Kenobi becomes Han Solo, Vader becomes Kylo and the Death Star becomes Starkiller Base. And that's just a sample; I nearly wrote a post back in the day exploring just how much of Awakens was just blatantly stolen from New Hope before I realised everyone and their stuffed Ewok was five steps ahead of me.
Of course, flashier doesn't mean better, just more polished and expensive. And when you make everything bigger and better, the cracks that existed in the original also become bigger and more problematic. The one that bothers me the most is Starkiller Base. Now, the Death Star has always been a bit of a hangup, even in the OT: in New Hope, we can just about accept that the Empire has the power and money and influence to build a space station the size of a small moon with the power to destroy planets. But with its swift destruction, plus the death toll and the presumed economic hit that surely accompanied it, you'd think the Empire would be dissuaded from trying it again. So when in Jedi they've just built another one in a fraction of the time and even larger in size, which is then also immediately destroyed, you'd think that any other Empire wannabes might be wise to avoid building such colossal and surely expensive battlestations in future, and that maybe future Star Wars writers might try coming up with something a little more original for their future instalments rather than just more planet-destroying superweapons. So then Awakens comes along with Starkiller Base, a Death Star that is to the first one in size what Jupiter is to Earth, with the ability to destroy five planets at once. This, ladies and gents, is how you raise the threat in the laziest way possible. "Look, it's five times as deadly, so its five times the threat". Except it isn't though, is it? Because while the ability to blow up one entire planet at once is quite a formidable threat for an audience to get behind, just simply upping the number of planets doesn't actually elevate the threat to any new level. The graph of 'number of planets that can be destroyed at once' against 'threat level' is not directly proportional: it's got to be at least logarithmic! And before you ask why I'm trying to illustrate my point with statistics graphs, may I remind you you are reading a ten-thousand word retrospective on Star Wars: I feel like most people who've read this far into such a document have at least some understanding of graph theory.
It's difficult to fully explain, but I guess if you imagine you were watching a thriller and one of the villains enters and says "I shot a hostage". Everyone's really shocked because this is a significant shift of the status quo, and now the blood being shed is innocent and what-have-you, but then if the same character comes back in and says "I've shot another four hostages" it just doesn't really have the same impact. You're certainly not five times as shocked, that's for sure. Starkiller Base isn't any more powerful or formidable plot-wise than the original Death Star except for being slightly more efficient. OOoooOOOOoooOoooOO, I'm so scared.
What also doesn't help was in A New Hope even though we never actually saw the world of Alderaan, we knew its emotional significance to Leia and so we still felt pretty bad about its destruction. In Awakens, even though we see people on the planet screaming as they see the blast approaching, we still feel nothing because we don't know who any of them are or why they're of personal importance to the main characters (spoiler alert, they aren't). Yeah, everyone's like "it sucks those planets got blown up", but there's nothing akin to Leia having her entire home, family and friends killed that made us feel something. Otherwise it has about the same emotional impact as a star destroyer being taken down. It's just flashy effects more than anything relevant to the story. Not to mention, which planets did they destroy? What were they called? Because they were never established other than just simply containing the Republic in some fashion, and so we have no real connection to them. Somehow the stakes actually end up feeling lower than they did in New Hope. Maybe if they'd destroyed Tatooine or Bespin or Coruscant we might have felt something, but then that would just be cheap manipulation. At least Starkiller Base was the last we saw of the Death Stars.
There are other niggles with the film, but on the whole, Awakens is a pretty solid and entertaining Star Wars film, even if it is just wearing a New Hope skin suit. If the OT didn't already exist, Awakens would probably be considered one of the best space fantasy blockbusters of its time. Of course, without the OT it wouldn't exist at all, so that's a paradox, but you get what I mean. Ultimately, while it didn't do much new, I do appreciate the logic of Awakens: that Star Wars fans had been let down so many times before and were nervous of how Disney was going to handle it, that Awakens essentially stood to prove that Disney understood the material and how a good Star Wars film should be, before they ventured forth and paved their way with a new story. Which is why it's such a shame to look back now and see Disney didn't have a fucking clue what they were doing.
#4) Return of the Jedi
Ok, things are starting to get a bit more serious now as we enter into OT territory. Originally, I was gonna spend a bit of time talking about the various changes that have been made to the OT but as with most things, the word count ballooned, and now I'm going dedicate an entire post specifically to them. So in the meantime, if you're wondering why I'm not mentioning Greedo shooting first or the dance scene at Jabba's palace or the blinking ewoks, don't you worry, it's coming.
Most people seem to be in agreement that Jedi is the least good of the OT, and while there are many factors as to why that is the case, I wonder if it's worth speculating that maybe some of the negativity towards Jedi comes from people watching it at the end of Star Wars marathons, and who are maybe starting to tire. Jedi is the longest of the OT by about ten minutes, and probably the most languidly paced, which isn't a bad thing, but it is the only one of the three where the action just kinda stops for a while in the middle, and if you've just sat through New Hope and Empire back-to-back immediately beforehand like I and many other fans do when we rewatch these, I think it's understandable that Jedi comes off as maybe the least exciting of the three. Which is still the equivalent of saying "this gold bar is probably the least shiny in the vault".
Now I have a bit of a rocky history with Jedi. When I first saw it as a three-year-old, I was mildly traumatised by the Rancor and its door-related demise. Not in like a bad way, in a perfectly healthy three-year-old-watching-a-mildly-scary-film kinda way. Plus I ended up developing a phobia of slugs at some point in my childhood (unrelated to Star Wars) and Jabba kinda freaked me out as a result. So for the longest time, I refused to watch Jedi, going so far as to read the novelisation instead of subjecting myself to the film again. I did revisit it eventually and of course I was completely fine, and I found myself kinda fascinated by the film, in the same way most people do when it comes to nostalgic horror.
So until very recently I kinda had Jedi on par with Empire in my mind as the best Star Wars films. Adding to that was, ironically, the Jabba the Hutt sequence at the beginning, because it's the best glimpse we ever really got into the seedy underbelly of bounty hunting and organised crime in the Star Wars universe, an area which I've always found a lot more intriguing than the 'evil Empire versus Rebels' plot and that I'd always wished we had a film entirely based around. Luckily, that's pretty much exactly what The Mandalorian is, and it's a big factor as to why I love that series so much. Oh, and Solo, which sort of does it too but really... rubbishly.
Today though, while the Jabba the Hutt sequence is still a highlight, it doesn't save the film, which definitely starts to suffer once said sequence concludes. There's definitely a sense of running out of ideas in Jedi. Some complain that the Jabba sequence is too long, and while I don't agree as such, I think it's still very deliberately there to kill some time. The Empire, in particular, seems to be running on creative fumes. As I mentioned above, the threat is just another Death Star (but don't worry guys, it's marginally bigger than the old one OOOooOOooOo), because the Empire has seemingly either run out of ideas of how to be threatening or have learned nothing from the first one (or both). And in another masterstroke of strategy, the Emperor is gonna be staying on the station too. And then a trap is set for the Rebels which involved letting them know the location of the new Death Star and the details on its shield system, and even consciously allowing them to sneak past the Star Destroyers guarding Endor. A very cocky move considering the Empire's track record, and while I get this was a plot to convert Luke to the dark side, it feels like the Empires not even trying to win at this point.
But then this isn't really about the Empire, this is about trying to conclude a trilogy of films with the biggest baddest threat of all and just not really knowing how to top what's come before. Not to mention contriving a way by which the Empire can be somehow permanently defeated in one fell swoop, and so taking out the new Death Star and also the Emperor if you fancy it and you're not doing anything else was about the best they could manage, like this is just some big ol' game of intergalactic chess.
Speaking of the Emperor, I know he's a beloved meme and the highlight of the prequels, but has anyone thought about how silly he is? His existence is important story-wise to motivate Darth Vader's arc, sure, but he's essentially a pantomime villain. Sitting in his chair looking like a witch, cackling like a witch, just saying evil things in his silly little raspy voice, it's very difficult to take him seriously and, let's be honest here, until the prequels came about this guy had zero character really. He's just the big bad evil guy, and has basically no real role or development otherwise. People complain about Snoke having no character or interest outside of being just a gross looking evil guy, but to be honest, both are about as complex as each other and their best contribution to their respective trilogies is being killed as part of the real villain's arc.
Let's circle back to the Death Star quickly. The last real complaint I have is there's something very slapdash about the final battle to destroy the second Death Star. Firstly, all the major characters are either on the Death Star confronting Mean Mr Palpatine or down on Endor taking part in a much more exciting setpiece. Yeah, I know Lando's leading the fleet, but that's my point really isn't it, it's Lando: a recent addition to the core group who's really one of the more minor characters in the series if you really think about it, so no wonder he's left to do the obligatory space fight while the rest of the crew has fun down in the forest. So there's this feeling that the Battle Over Endor is almost more of a formality than it is an exciting part of the story.
And do you remember when the Death Star was activated for the first time and blew up Alderaan and it was this really shocking moment? And do you remember when the second Death Star first activates and destroys some random Rebel cruiser and it's just kinda "ok cool." There's a theme developing with this particular post, but again, who was on that ship? Why did they matter? Yes, I get they're Rebels, but to us they're nobodies. Other than the faction they were aligned with there was nothing that separates that ship from every other ship that's being blown up. Hell, that one A-Wing that takes out the Executor has a thousand times the emotional impact and that's almost entirely because we see the guy in his final moments. That's all we really need.
Plus when the shield finally is down (by which point I'd like to point out the Emperor and Vader are already dead), the actual attack on the Death Star also feels so rushed and arbitrary. It's just "go in, establish the minimum amount of peril by showing the radar dish getting knocked off, into the reactor, one little pew pew, and then back out." It takes maybe two minutes and there's just no emotional connection there at all, it just feels like its ticking the box, like the editor's going "yeah, we know how this turns out. Let's just get on with it."
I gripe, but this is still the OT we're talking about, and Jedi is still a damn fine film with plenty of great moments. For all the campiness of the Emperor, the final showdown with Luke, Vader and Palps is one of my favourite sequences of the entire series, with its fantastic music swell as Luke finally snaps at Vader and battles him out from underneath the platform, the great visual representation of Luke's contemplation as he looks between Vader's dismembered stump and his own mechanical hand, and of course, Vader's fantastic (and SILENT) moment where he chooses between his son and his master, all utterly supreme.
And you know what? The Ewoks are fine too. Have a heart.
But Jedi is the weakest of the OT, and I think that's a fairly uncontroversial opinion. Unlike next week's hot take, which I think most of you have already foreseen. Hoo boy, this is going to be fun.
Tune in next week for Episode 3 of Star Wars: A Ranked Retrospective!
Thursday 21 May 2020
Thursday 14 May 2020
Star Wars: A Ranked Retrospective - Episode I
Ayyyy, Happy Star Wars Day guys! Because apparently, this is a legit thing now: to celebrate and watch Star Wars on this, the fourteenth of May. Yeah, bit of an arbitrary date if you ask me, I haven't quite worked out the significance yet, but I'm sure that-
What's that?
...
What do you mean I've got the wrong day? It's May the fourteenth, isn't it?
...
It's May the-? Oh. Ohhhh! I see. Well, shit. And how's the time machine coming along?
...
That bad, huh?
...
No, I'm not going to backdate it, that's cheating. We'll just, *ahem*, we'll just keep going.
BOY, wasn't that a fun Star Wars day we had last week? I've gotta say, I had a great time, watching all the Star Wars films back-to-back on the day itself like the good little fanboy I am. So what if it took over twenty hours, this is a sacred ritual we fanboys must undertake in order to appease The Great Mouse, Mickey be thy name. He is a fair but vengeful god, and you know he'll cancel season two of The Mandalorian if he doesn't think we're worshipping him hard enough.
So I hope you were all watching along, clad in your Darth Vader pyjamas, sipping Rebel Alliance coffee from your Luke Skywalker mug, and lovingly caressing your Yoda wank doll through every crucial scene in the series. Unfortunately, with the number of Star Wars films to get through in one day, I didn't have time to perform the ritual sacrifice of my firstborn child to the Knights of Ren, and just as well too, because I realised I'd left my good Ponda Baba ritual dagger in my other limited edition Wuher messenger bag at a fellow cultist's house, and what with the lockdown and all, I could hardly ride my TK-421-branded scooter over to his, could I?
*sigh*
What am I saying? There's eight different Star Wars related posters, paintings and artworks on my bedroom walls, there's a Lego Millenium Falcon on the shelf beneath my television, and there's a collector's model of Boba Fett's helmet on one of my DVD shelves. Everyone's got a bit of Star Wars memorabilia lying around somewhere.
And you know what, despite the horrific over-merchandising, the toxicity of the fanbase, the constant tampering and revisionism of the original trilogy, and every dodgy decision made by Lucas and Disney on almost every film that followed, I'm still a massive Star Wars fan.
And it's hard not to be. Star Wars is probably one of the most popular and influential franchises in media history. It represented a distillation of every story and idea that came before it into one seemingly perfect space opera, and has inspired basically every filmmaker since who grew up with these films, me included.
My earliest memory is sitting with my dad on the sofa at about three years old, watching the OT and Phantom Menace, taped off the TV. I remember seeing that shot of the AT-ATs coming over the ridge on the Battle of Hoth and being struck with awe. Of course, back then my understanding of special effects was limited and I thought they'd actually built these machines for the film, but even when I cam back to these films as a preteen, that scene still had a power to it, and that was when I realised that film was what I wanted to do with my life. And I wouldn't be here to this day, writing this blog with a degree in Film and Television if it weren't for Star Wars.
So yeah, I'll always be inextricably invested in Star Wars as a universe and a franchise, but that doesn't change the fact that Star Wars as a film canon is, umm, a little rough shall we say.
While I don't think any of them are truly bad films and are all enjoyable in some kinda way, they certainly aren't all peaches, and even the OT, praised by many (including me back in the day) as being some of the best films ever made, certainly are far from flawless. And while I loved the prequels as a teen, I'm a lot older and wiser now, and a lot more well versed in film criticism, so why don't we see how the Star Wars franchise holds up, and more importantly, how they stack against each other?
So here we go, a ranked retrospective of all the Star Wars films. Except Rogue One. And Solo. Oh and we're not doing The Clone Wars movie either. No, we're not doing Caravan of Courage, what is wrong with you? Or The Battle for Endor! The Holiday Special? WHY would I include the-
Right, fine. Here is my ranked retrospective of The Skywalker Saga. Are we happy now? Oh and there's gonna be no restraint on spoilers, so if you somehow don't know what happens in the Star Wars films by this point, might want to fix that before you venture forward.
Oh and don't worry, Disney. I definitely rewatched these on your frustratingly-well-timed streaming platform Disney+, and not on the seven seas or the old pre-Disney DVD copies I've been hoarding for years. See kids, this is why you get a DVD collection: so that when all the fragmenting streaming networks take your favourite films hostage you can still watch them without having to give a toss about paying the monthly ransom for their fingers.
#9) The Phantom Menace
"I am immeasurably shocked and surprised that The Phantom Menace is on the bottom of a ranked Star Wars list," said absolutely no-one ever. Yeah, ok obviously this one wasn't going to appear super high, and to be honest, until the sequel trilogy came about the Star Wars ranking was a pretty open and shut case. And regardless of whether you hate this or Attack of the Clones more, they're both usually occupying these bottom slots, and with pretty fair reason. That being said, come on guys, it's not that bad. Ok, it's not great, but even the worst Star Wars films are still decent enough entertainment. And for what it's worth, Phantom does some things well. Some of the digital effects have actually aged half decently, a rarity with Lucas, and....umm...uhhhh...Darth Maul's pretty cool. Well, he'd be a lot cooler if he had any kind of character building at all. Ok fine, maybe there isn't that much to like when you start to dissect it but it was hardly an unpleasant experience. To criticise Phantom doesn't feel so much like beating a dead horse as it does beating a dried red stain on the concrete old enough to drink in America, but I am a critic, so for the record if nothing else, here we go.
The plot's a mess, and with the political side as well it genuinely gets incomprehensible at points. Also, I can't think of a more boring opening line (well, second line) to a Star Wars text crawl than "The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute." It sounds like its own Simpsons parody. A lot is made about the performances in all of the prequels, but clearly, a lot of these actors have done plenty of other, much better things, and especially when the acting's this stilted across the board, it's probably way more likely that George Lucas just can't direct his way out of a paper bag. Consequently, I feel quite bad for Jake Lloyd, who abandoned acting after being bullied about his portrayal of Anakin, but honestly, he's nowhere near as bad as people make him out to be, and in fact he's actually better (or at least more convincing) than a lot of other cast members. Such as Natalie Portman, who I'd say takes first prize for most wooden, but Ewan McGregor isn't far behind: both delivering lines like human emotion is a concept they've vaguely heard of but haven't really grasped.
Speaking of Portman, the Amidala decoy plot point still makes as little sense as it ever did. Oh, and the whole thing about Anakin being a virgin birth? I just... George, please, you're not a great writer but you're surely better than that.
Finally, of course, there's Jar Jar. He's... well... he's Jar Jar. What more could I possibly say? The character has taken quite the proverbial beating in the Star Wars community ever since he was introduced and to be quite honest, it's mostly justified. He is obnoxious and feels weirdly out of place, both tonally and alongside the rest of the cast. But something I don't hear being brought up very often is how hard it is to understand what he's saying. I genuinely struggle to make out half of his lines because the way in which he speaks, specifically something that happens with the consonants, just makes him borderline unintelligible. And I can't decide whether that makes him easier or harder to endure.
In summary, I struggle to really muster any strong feelings about this film one way or another. It's certainly not a great film but it's really not too bad: it just kinda hangs out in the middle and evaporates shortly after watching it. For the most part, it feels like we're waiting for stuff to happen, and not in like an "I'm bored, get to the action" kind-of-way, more that everything in the film just feels so irrelevant to the overarching story. Besides discovering Anakin and having him bestowed to Obi-Wan, everything that happens feels like it just isn't going to go anywhere in the long term and doesn't really matter (which a lot of it doesn't), and I get an intergalactic war has to start somewhere, but a blockade of one planet that no-one else seems to care about feels a little small scale, and it feels like maybe we went a little too far back.
I guess the best way to describe it is if the Star Wars series was a student film, then The Phantom Menace would be the shot of an alarm clock going off, followed by the protagonist turning it off and getting out of bed. If that makes any sense at all.
#8) The Rise of Skywalker
Hooooo, boy. What in the ever-loving fuck happened here. It's Damage Control: The Movie. Now, the sequels have been pretty divisive among the Star Wars community, with The Last Jedi seemingly at the centre of it all. But while the wars still rage on as to whether The Last Jedi was a flaming heap of garbage that personally killed all of your family pets and gave your sweet old granny chlamydia, or whether it was the boldest and most artistically driven Star Wars film that dared to go against the grain we had grown weary of and try something adventurous and brilliant, both sides agree that Rise of Skywalker was the pits.
This is what happens when you attempt to make a sequel trilogy to one of the most loved franchises of all time with no plan whatsoever: something that I still cannot believe Disney went along with. So Force Awakens comes out: like most of J J Abrams' films, it's safe but ultimately enjoyable and it gets a favourable response from fans and critics alike. Satisfied, Disney hands Last Jedi to Rian Johnson and says "do what you like." So he does, leaping off from Force Awakens in a daring new direction/completely and utterly ruining the franchise beyond all repair (delete as to your level of butthurt). The critics love it. The fans love it until someone told them they shouldn't and they all decide they hate it now. Disney goes "shit, what are we going to do now? The fanboys are angry at us. JJ! Save us from the fanboys!"
And so we get a trilogy which reads like it was written by two recent exes in the wake of a traumatic breakup. The second instalment unpicks threads from the first one that it doesn't like, and the third instalment unpicks everything the second instalment did, seemingly out of spite, while simultaneously trying to pretend it never happened. But there aren't enough films to maintain this fight between Abrams and Johnson, and we're already at the end of the trilogy and need to somehow wrap this story up at the same time as JJ is trying to cover up an entire third of it.
So for one thing, Rise of Skywalker feels like it wants to be two films, or at least maybe one four-or-five-hour epic, but has had to squeeze into a skimpy 140-minute dress, and as a result, the story blasts through at breakneck pace. And not in a good, tight action thriller kind of way, in an "if we let up for even a second, everyone will realise how none of this makes any goddamn sense" kinda way. The characters move from one world to another on a convoluted MacGuffin hunt with scarcely room to breathe or develop character or do anything but move from setpiece to setpiece in the manner of an ADD-ridden squirrel, lest anyone go "hang on, why does this ancient Sith artefact that's existed for thousands of years perfectly line up with the jagged outline of the ruins of the Death Star that would have crashed randomly to the ground and, wait hang on, the Death Star was blown into oblivion, not just into chunks and WAIT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN PALPATINE'S RETURNED?"
Yes, the infamous line: "somehow, Palpatine's returned", barely spoken with a straight face and with a look of confusion matching the audience's, and again Star Wars is sounding like its own Simpsons parody. I mean really, there's no better line to perfectly and succinctly sum up the film and its refusal to explain or even give a shit about the hows or whys of its story as long as it thinks the fanboys are happy. I am convinced that a large part of the planning process for this film was done by looking at the Star Wars meme subreddits and going "ohh, so that's what the fans like", which is why Palpatine's back. It doesn't make sense, there's essentially no attempt to explain it outside of some half-arsed mention of cloning, but it doesn't matter, because the fans love Palpatine and therefore they'll love this film because he's in it. Oh and look, we gave Chewy a medal out of fucking nowhere. Do you love us yet? It's all the hip memes you ever wanted, what more could you ask for. This film is probably the perfect embodiment of the argument that fans don't know what they want, and if you try only to appease the fans you will end up with a desperate mess. No-one knows what they want until they've got it, so they'll only ever demand the things they've seen before and your series will stagnate, that's why it's so essential to do your own thing and do something brave and interesting and different. Even those who hate The Last Jedi surely would agree they'd prefer it to this film: a film that tries something new and different and fails spectacularly is a thousand times more interesting than a film that shits itself in tired iconography and pathetically humps your leg as it begs you to love it.
There are loads more things that annoy me about Rise of Skywalker: the blatancy of its merchandising with the introduction of D0, a useless character that gratifyingly didn't take off as the latest cute droid mascot (plus of course the infamous "tHeY fLy NoW", after which I could practically hear "each sold separately"), the devaluing of the Death Star threat even further than it had already been in Force Awakens (more on that later) with the attachment of a Death Star laser to every star destroyer like a massive dangling cock that of course if shot directly blows up the entire star destroyer because at this point no-one's even trying, the almost complete refusal to do anything with Rose Tico other than shift her to the background in shame and cut all of her presumed lines, the fact that not only is every character besides Rey and Kylo completely ignored and basically get no resolution whatsoever, but the subplot introduced where Finn desperately has to tell Rey something is completely dropped after being established way too hard (and no, I don't care whether it's that he's force sensitive or in love with Rey, it doesn't matter what it is, you can't just make a big deal of establishing it then never speak about it again). But one thing that I think quite poetically sums up this film's revisionist attitude and disregard for its predecessor and by extension the reason it irks me so much is the Chewy fake-out.
There's a moment where Rey and Kylo are force-fighting over a ship containing an imprisoned Chewy, and in her anger Rey's force lightning destroys the transport. It's a shocking and powerful moment, and great character development for Rey since she's now being made out to be a Palpatine. It's the kind of risky and dark twist that I'd appreciate in such a final instalment, and there's this great almost Akira-esque notion of Rey's powers growing far beyond her control to the point that she can't stop them from harming the ones she loves. Nah, don't worry boys and girls, he's alright. There's all of maybe two minutes of grieving before "no look, he's fine. Chewy was on the other transport ship this whole time. He's not dead. We'd never kill Chewy, he's far too marketable and we don't want anything dark and challenging in this series about constant inevitable warfare that's becoming dangerously stagnant. Nope, Chewy's alive. Don't worry Rey, you just viciously murdered a bunch of First Order soldiers who probably had families but who cares. You don't need to feel sad for them, they're not as marketable as good ol' Chewy. Here, let's give him a FUCKING MEDAL".
*ahem*
I am putting it ahead of Phantom though, and for one key reason. Sitting watching this film in the cinema, as with every Star Wars film I've been fortunate enough to see in a cinema, was still very entertaining. At least stuff happens, even if it is a complete and total mess. Phantom on the other hand... well it wasn't boring but as I've said it felt like a lot less happened in it. And there we go. That's maybe Rise of Skywalker's only saving grace: for about ten minutes after leaving the cinema, you feel pretty good about it. Then you start thinking about literally any of it, and it falls apart. I guess that is ticking a box of some kind and I hesitate to give it a negative score because I was at least entertained but, god I don't know. The more I write about this film the more I begin to despise it.
#7) Attack of the Clones
Oh wow, this one really hasn't aged well since I last saw it. When it comes to deciding which is the worst of the prequel trilogy, I think it comes down to what people personally prefer in a film. The bad dialogue and delivery is a lot more egregious in Clones than it is in Phantom, but Phantom's plot is less interesting, harder to follow and less relevant to the overall story than Clones, and while both actually have half-decent setpieces for their climaxes, I do think Clones' is better. I'm reminded of back in the day when the Star Wars Machete Order was a thing, and the suggestion was made that Phantom can be skipped entirely as it offers very little to the overarching story that isn't reestablished anyway in Clones, and I've gotta say, that's pretty much right on the money. Not only is Phantom non-essential for understanding the rest of the series, the fact that it happens ten years before Clones, the longest gap between two entries of any of the trilogies, actually raises more questions, a lot of which boil down to what the hell has been happening politically in that time?! The situation only seems like it's a year or two tops on from where we last left it with the Trade Federation and the droid army, what have they been doing this whole time? I guess politicians really do get nothing done. But also just being able to assume the droid armies were being built by one of the Separatists would work better than knowing that the Trade Federation (which I guess is the Star Wars answer to the East India Company or something?) has just had this army for a decade already and have already invaded Naboo and revealed the existence of said army to the galaxy, and only now, ten years on, has anyone decided this was a problem? Whatever, this is Phantom's boo-boo, not Clones', and in fact, I feel Clones makes at least some effort to make up for the mistakes of Phantom, by streamlining the politics a bit more and reducing Jar Jar's screen time. But I'm sorry, Senator Binks? Senator fucking Binks? Lucas, I get that Jar Jar was supposed to be an important character and you still want him to have some involvement with the plot, I honestly do, but no-one in their right mind would put Jar Jar fucking Binks in a position of political power. He is a proven half-wit that constantly gets into trouble and can barely think for himself, how is anyone supposed to believe that he'd - oh. Ohhh. I get it, now. God, Lucas was a genius, we just never saw it.
Not as a writer though. Christ. I get Anakin is supposed to be angsty and hate-filled, but Jesus the stuff Lucas makes him say makes Todd Phillips' Joker look like Cassanova. Genuinely, I am going to show you a quote from Anakin when he's trying to confess his love for Padmé, and I want you to look me in the eyes (somehow) and tell me this doesn't sound like something a neckbeard would write.
"From the moment I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you. And now that I'm with you again... I'm in agony. The closer I get to you, the worse it gets. The thought of not being with you- I can't breathe. I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. My heart is beating... hoping that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul, tormenting me... what can I do?- I will do anything you ask."
And that's probably the biggest problem with the film: Anakin and Padmé. Their 'blossoming romance' seems to be the focus of the film, but again, Lucas's direction and writing is so astoundingly poor that I just don't believe a word of it. There's no chemistry, they barely speak like real humans, plus Anakin is not just whiny but already disturbingly unhinged and creepy and it just doesn't feel plausible that Padmé would fall for him, especially after the whole Tusken Raider outburst, after which any sane person would probably back away slowly and make a note to sever contact.
Once you get past all that though, the climax on the whole is pretty exciting. The arena fight, the entrance of the Clone army, our first glimpse at the scale of the Clone Wars, and the fight with Anakin and Obi-Wan against Count Dooku, all together is probably one of the highlights of the prequel trilogy. However, there is still one thing in here that really pissed me off and that's the fight between Yoda and Dooku.
Watching the OT, Yoda has always been about the Force, and specifically how it should be used "for knowledge and defence, never for attack." This is kinda like the defining point of Yoda's character, he's never on the offence and seems almost pacifist in nature, and also doesn't seem massively keen on lightsabres. So why on earth in this film does he not only have a lightsaber, but fucking launches himself at Dooku with a battle cry and start flipping and flying off of all the walls. I'm sure you thought it was awesome to see Yoda kicking arse as a kid, but come on now, you've got to admit this is out of character to say the least. A Yoda fight is definitely possible and would be interesting to see (and we get one in Revenge of the Sith that's more along these lines), but I would expect it to be Yoda trying to outwit his enemy, using the force to expertly deflect attacks and find creative solutions to stun or restrain his opponent. But no, crazy flips and lightsabers it is. Although to its credit we do see Yoda blocking and absorbing Dooku's force lightning, which is pretty badass, so there's like a glimmer of that in there.
Again, not a terrible film, and it's above the other two primarily for its last thirty minutes or so, i.e. the point where the prequels finally start doing what we were kinda hoping for from the beginning. But if it weren't for that, this would probably slip further down. At its worst, it's probably more painful than Phantom, but again, so much more happens and it feels like it actually matters too, so it gives it the edge it needs to come out on top. In my mind anyway. I completely understand if people put this below Phantom.
Also, I know he built it in the first place, but did Anakin just steal C-3PO?
Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of Star Wars: A Ranked Retrospective!
What's that?
...
What do you mean I've got the wrong day? It's May the fourteenth, isn't it?
...
It's May the-? Oh. Ohhhh! I see. Well, shit. And how's the time machine coming along?
...
That bad, huh?
...
No, I'm not going to backdate it, that's cheating. We'll just, *ahem*, we'll just keep going.
BOY, wasn't that a fun Star Wars day we had last week? I've gotta say, I had a great time, watching all the Star Wars films back-to-back on the day itself like the good little fanboy I am. So what if it took over twenty hours, this is a sacred ritual we fanboys must undertake in order to appease The Great Mouse, Mickey be thy name. He is a fair but vengeful god, and you know he'll cancel season two of The Mandalorian if he doesn't think we're worshipping him hard enough.
So I hope you were all watching along, clad in your Darth Vader pyjamas, sipping Rebel Alliance coffee from your Luke Skywalker mug, and lovingly caressing your Yoda wank doll through every crucial scene in the series. Unfortunately, with the number of Star Wars films to get through in one day, I didn't have time to perform the ritual sacrifice of my firstborn child to the Knights of Ren, and just as well too, because I realised I'd left my good Ponda Baba ritual dagger in my other limited edition Wuher messenger bag at a fellow cultist's house, and what with the lockdown and all, I could hardly ride my TK-421-branded scooter over to his, could I?
*sigh*
What am I saying? There's eight different Star Wars related posters, paintings and artworks on my bedroom walls, there's a Lego Millenium Falcon on the shelf beneath my television, and there's a collector's model of Boba Fett's helmet on one of my DVD shelves. Everyone's got a bit of Star Wars memorabilia lying around somewhere.
And you know what, despite the horrific over-merchandising, the toxicity of the fanbase, the constant tampering and revisionism of the original trilogy, and every dodgy decision made by Lucas and Disney on almost every film that followed, I'm still a massive Star Wars fan.
And it's hard not to be. Star Wars is probably one of the most popular and influential franchises in media history. It represented a distillation of every story and idea that came before it into one seemingly perfect space opera, and has inspired basically every filmmaker since who grew up with these films, me included.
My earliest memory is sitting with my dad on the sofa at about three years old, watching the OT and Phantom Menace, taped off the TV. I remember seeing that shot of the AT-ATs coming over the ridge on the Battle of Hoth and being struck with awe. Of course, back then my understanding of special effects was limited and I thought they'd actually built these machines for the film, but even when I cam back to these films as a preteen, that scene still had a power to it, and that was when I realised that film was what I wanted to do with my life. And I wouldn't be here to this day, writing this blog with a degree in Film and Television if it weren't for Star Wars.
So yeah, I'll always be inextricably invested in Star Wars as a universe and a franchise, but that doesn't change the fact that Star Wars as a film canon is, umm, a little rough shall we say.
While I don't think any of them are truly bad films and are all enjoyable in some kinda way, they certainly aren't all peaches, and even the OT, praised by many (including me back in the day) as being some of the best films ever made, certainly are far from flawless. And while I loved the prequels as a teen, I'm a lot older and wiser now, and a lot more well versed in film criticism, so why don't we see how the Star Wars franchise holds up, and more importantly, how they stack against each other?
So here we go, a ranked retrospective of all the Star Wars films. Except Rogue One. And Solo. Oh and we're not doing The Clone Wars movie either. No, we're not doing Caravan of Courage, what is wrong with you? Or The Battle for Endor! The Holiday Special? WHY would I include the-
Right, fine. Here is my ranked retrospective of The Skywalker Saga. Are we happy now? Oh and there's gonna be no restraint on spoilers, so if you somehow don't know what happens in the Star Wars films by this point, might want to fix that before you venture forward.
Oh and don't worry, Disney. I definitely rewatched these on your frustratingly-well-timed streaming platform Disney+, and not on the seven seas or the old pre-Disney DVD copies I've been hoarding for years. See kids, this is why you get a DVD collection: so that when all the fragmenting streaming networks take your favourite films hostage you can still watch them without having to give a toss about paying the monthly ransom for their fingers.
#9) The Phantom Menace
"I am immeasurably shocked and surprised that The Phantom Menace is on the bottom of a ranked Star Wars list," said absolutely no-one ever. Yeah, ok obviously this one wasn't going to appear super high, and to be honest, until the sequel trilogy came about the Star Wars ranking was a pretty open and shut case. And regardless of whether you hate this or Attack of the Clones more, they're both usually occupying these bottom slots, and with pretty fair reason. That being said, come on guys, it's not that bad. Ok, it's not great, but even the worst Star Wars films are still decent enough entertainment. And for what it's worth, Phantom does some things well. Some of the digital effects have actually aged half decently, a rarity with Lucas, and....umm...uhhhh...Darth Maul's pretty cool. Well, he'd be a lot cooler if he had any kind of character building at all. Ok fine, maybe there isn't that much to like when you start to dissect it but it was hardly an unpleasant experience. To criticise Phantom doesn't feel so much like beating a dead horse as it does beating a dried red stain on the concrete old enough to drink in America, but I am a critic, so for the record if nothing else, here we go.
The plot's a mess, and with the political side as well it genuinely gets incomprehensible at points. Also, I can't think of a more boring opening line (well, second line) to a Star Wars text crawl than "The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute." It sounds like its own Simpsons parody. A lot is made about the performances in all of the prequels, but clearly, a lot of these actors have done plenty of other, much better things, and especially when the acting's this stilted across the board, it's probably way more likely that George Lucas just can't direct his way out of a paper bag. Consequently, I feel quite bad for Jake Lloyd, who abandoned acting after being bullied about his portrayal of Anakin, but honestly, he's nowhere near as bad as people make him out to be, and in fact he's actually better (or at least more convincing) than a lot of other cast members. Such as Natalie Portman, who I'd say takes first prize for most wooden, but Ewan McGregor isn't far behind: both delivering lines like human emotion is a concept they've vaguely heard of but haven't really grasped.
Speaking of Portman, the Amidala decoy plot point still makes as little sense as it ever did. Oh, and the whole thing about Anakin being a virgin birth? I just... George, please, you're not a great writer but you're surely better than that.
Finally, of course, there's Jar Jar. He's... well... he's Jar Jar. What more could I possibly say? The character has taken quite the proverbial beating in the Star Wars community ever since he was introduced and to be quite honest, it's mostly justified. He is obnoxious and feels weirdly out of place, both tonally and alongside the rest of the cast. But something I don't hear being brought up very often is how hard it is to understand what he's saying. I genuinely struggle to make out half of his lines because the way in which he speaks, specifically something that happens with the consonants, just makes him borderline unintelligible. And I can't decide whether that makes him easier or harder to endure.
In summary, I struggle to really muster any strong feelings about this film one way or another. It's certainly not a great film but it's really not too bad: it just kinda hangs out in the middle and evaporates shortly after watching it. For the most part, it feels like we're waiting for stuff to happen, and not in like an "I'm bored, get to the action" kind-of-way, more that everything in the film just feels so irrelevant to the overarching story. Besides discovering Anakin and having him bestowed to Obi-Wan, everything that happens feels like it just isn't going to go anywhere in the long term and doesn't really matter (which a lot of it doesn't), and I get an intergalactic war has to start somewhere, but a blockade of one planet that no-one else seems to care about feels a little small scale, and it feels like maybe we went a little too far back.
I guess the best way to describe it is if the Star Wars series was a student film, then The Phantom Menace would be the shot of an alarm clock going off, followed by the protagonist turning it off and getting out of bed. If that makes any sense at all.
#8) The Rise of Skywalker
Hooooo, boy. What in the ever-loving fuck happened here. It's Damage Control: The Movie. Now, the sequels have been pretty divisive among the Star Wars community, with The Last Jedi seemingly at the centre of it all. But while the wars still rage on as to whether The Last Jedi was a flaming heap of garbage that personally killed all of your family pets and gave your sweet old granny chlamydia, or whether it was the boldest and most artistically driven Star Wars film that dared to go against the grain we had grown weary of and try something adventurous and brilliant, both sides agree that Rise of Skywalker was the pits.
This is what happens when you attempt to make a sequel trilogy to one of the most loved franchises of all time with no plan whatsoever: something that I still cannot believe Disney went along with. So Force Awakens comes out: like most of J J Abrams' films, it's safe but ultimately enjoyable and it gets a favourable response from fans and critics alike. Satisfied, Disney hands Last Jedi to Rian Johnson and says "do what you like." So he does, leaping off from Force Awakens in a daring new direction/completely and utterly ruining the franchise beyond all repair (delete as to your level of butthurt). The critics love it. The fans love it until someone told them they shouldn't and they all decide they hate it now. Disney goes "shit, what are we going to do now? The fanboys are angry at us. JJ! Save us from the fanboys!"
And so we get a trilogy which reads like it was written by two recent exes in the wake of a traumatic breakup. The second instalment unpicks threads from the first one that it doesn't like, and the third instalment unpicks everything the second instalment did, seemingly out of spite, while simultaneously trying to pretend it never happened. But there aren't enough films to maintain this fight between Abrams and Johnson, and we're already at the end of the trilogy and need to somehow wrap this story up at the same time as JJ is trying to cover up an entire third of it.
So for one thing, Rise of Skywalker feels like it wants to be two films, or at least maybe one four-or-five-hour epic, but has had to squeeze into a skimpy 140-minute dress, and as a result, the story blasts through at breakneck pace. And not in a good, tight action thriller kind of way, in an "if we let up for even a second, everyone will realise how none of this makes any goddamn sense" kinda way. The characters move from one world to another on a convoluted MacGuffin hunt with scarcely room to breathe or develop character or do anything but move from setpiece to setpiece in the manner of an ADD-ridden squirrel, lest anyone go "hang on, why does this ancient Sith artefact that's existed for thousands of years perfectly line up with the jagged outline of the ruins of the Death Star that would have crashed randomly to the ground and, wait hang on, the Death Star was blown into oblivion, not just into chunks and WAIT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN PALPATINE'S RETURNED?"
Yes, the infamous line: "somehow, Palpatine's returned", barely spoken with a straight face and with a look of confusion matching the audience's, and again Star Wars is sounding like its own Simpsons parody. I mean really, there's no better line to perfectly and succinctly sum up the film and its refusal to explain or even give a shit about the hows or whys of its story as long as it thinks the fanboys are happy. I am convinced that a large part of the planning process for this film was done by looking at the Star Wars meme subreddits and going "ohh, so that's what the fans like", which is why Palpatine's back. It doesn't make sense, there's essentially no attempt to explain it outside of some half-arsed mention of cloning, but it doesn't matter, because the fans love Palpatine and therefore they'll love this film because he's in it. Oh and look, we gave Chewy a medal out of fucking nowhere. Do you love us yet? It's all the hip memes you ever wanted, what more could you ask for. This film is probably the perfect embodiment of the argument that fans don't know what they want, and if you try only to appease the fans you will end up with a desperate mess. No-one knows what they want until they've got it, so they'll only ever demand the things they've seen before and your series will stagnate, that's why it's so essential to do your own thing and do something brave and interesting and different. Even those who hate The Last Jedi surely would agree they'd prefer it to this film: a film that tries something new and different and fails spectacularly is a thousand times more interesting than a film that shits itself in tired iconography and pathetically humps your leg as it begs you to love it.
There are loads more things that annoy me about Rise of Skywalker: the blatancy of its merchandising with the introduction of D0, a useless character that gratifyingly didn't take off as the latest cute droid mascot (plus of course the infamous "tHeY fLy NoW", after which I could practically hear "each sold separately"), the devaluing of the Death Star threat even further than it had already been in Force Awakens (more on that later) with the attachment of a Death Star laser to every star destroyer like a massive dangling cock that of course if shot directly blows up the entire star destroyer because at this point no-one's even trying, the almost complete refusal to do anything with Rose Tico other than shift her to the background in shame and cut all of her presumed lines, the fact that not only is every character besides Rey and Kylo completely ignored and basically get no resolution whatsoever, but the subplot introduced where Finn desperately has to tell Rey something is completely dropped after being established way too hard (and no, I don't care whether it's that he's force sensitive or in love with Rey, it doesn't matter what it is, you can't just make a big deal of establishing it then never speak about it again). But one thing that I think quite poetically sums up this film's revisionist attitude and disregard for its predecessor and by extension the reason it irks me so much is the Chewy fake-out.
There's a moment where Rey and Kylo are force-fighting over a ship containing an imprisoned Chewy, and in her anger Rey's force lightning destroys the transport. It's a shocking and powerful moment, and great character development for Rey since she's now being made out to be a Palpatine. It's the kind of risky and dark twist that I'd appreciate in such a final instalment, and there's this great almost Akira-esque notion of Rey's powers growing far beyond her control to the point that she can't stop them from harming the ones she loves. Nah, don't worry boys and girls, he's alright. There's all of maybe two minutes of grieving before "no look, he's fine. Chewy was on the other transport ship this whole time. He's not dead. We'd never kill Chewy, he's far too marketable and we don't want anything dark and challenging in this series about constant inevitable warfare that's becoming dangerously stagnant. Nope, Chewy's alive. Don't worry Rey, you just viciously murdered a bunch of First Order soldiers who probably had families but who cares. You don't need to feel sad for them, they're not as marketable as good ol' Chewy. Here, let's give him a FUCKING MEDAL".
*ahem*
I am putting it ahead of Phantom though, and for one key reason. Sitting watching this film in the cinema, as with every Star Wars film I've been fortunate enough to see in a cinema, was still very entertaining. At least stuff happens, even if it is a complete and total mess. Phantom on the other hand... well it wasn't boring but as I've said it felt like a lot less happened in it. And there we go. That's maybe Rise of Skywalker's only saving grace: for about ten minutes after leaving the cinema, you feel pretty good about it. Then you start thinking about literally any of it, and it falls apart. I guess that is ticking a box of some kind and I hesitate to give it a negative score because I was at least entertained but, god I don't know. The more I write about this film the more I begin to despise it.
#7) Attack of the Clones
Oh wow, this one really hasn't aged well since I last saw it. When it comes to deciding which is the worst of the prequel trilogy, I think it comes down to what people personally prefer in a film. The bad dialogue and delivery is a lot more egregious in Clones than it is in Phantom, but Phantom's plot is less interesting, harder to follow and less relevant to the overall story than Clones, and while both actually have half-decent setpieces for their climaxes, I do think Clones' is better. I'm reminded of back in the day when the Star Wars Machete Order was a thing, and the suggestion was made that Phantom can be skipped entirely as it offers very little to the overarching story that isn't reestablished anyway in Clones, and I've gotta say, that's pretty much right on the money. Not only is Phantom non-essential for understanding the rest of the series, the fact that it happens ten years before Clones, the longest gap between two entries of any of the trilogies, actually raises more questions, a lot of which boil down to what the hell has been happening politically in that time?! The situation only seems like it's a year or two tops on from where we last left it with the Trade Federation and the droid army, what have they been doing this whole time? I guess politicians really do get nothing done. But also just being able to assume the droid armies were being built by one of the Separatists would work better than knowing that the Trade Federation (which I guess is the Star Wars answer to the East India Company or something?) has just had this army for a decade already and have already invaded Naboo and revealed the existence of said army to the galaxy, and only now, ten years on, has anyone decided this was a problem? Whatever, this is Phantom's boo-boo, not Clones', and in fact, I feel Clones makes at least some effort to make up for the mistakes of Phantom, by streamlining the politics a bit more and reducing Jar Jar's screen time. But I'm sorry, Senator Binks? Senator fucking Binks? Lucas, I get that Jar Jar was supposed to be an important character and you still want him to have some involvement with the plot, I honestly do, but no-one in their right mind would put Jar Jar fucking Binks in a position of political power. He is a proven half-wit that constantly gets into trouble and can barely think for himself, how is anyone supposed to believe that he'd - oh. Ohhh. I get it, now. God, Lucas was a genius, we just never saw it.
Not as a writer though. Christ. I get Anakin is supposed to be angsty and hate-filled, but Jesus the stuff Lucas makes him say makes Todd Phillips' Joker look like Cassanova. Genuinely, I am going to show you a quote from Anakin when he's trying to confess his love for Padmé, and I want you to look me in the eyes (somehow) and tell me this doesn't sound like something a neckbeard would write.
"From the moment I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you. And now that I'm with you again... I'm in agony. The closer I get to you, the worse it gets. The thought of not being with you- I can't breathe. I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. My heart is beating... hoping that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul, tormenting me... what can I do?- I will do anything you ask."
And that's probably the biggest problem with the film: Anakin and Padmé. Their 'blossoming romance' seems to be the focus of the film, but again, Lucas's direction and writing is so astoundingly poor that I just don't believe a word of it. There's no chemistry, they barely speak like real humans, plus Anakin is not just whiny but already disturbingly unhinged and creepy and it just doesn't feel plausible that Padmé would fall for him, especially after the whole Tusken Raider outburst, after which any sane person would probably back away slowly and make a note to sever contact.
Once you get past all that though, the climax on the whole is pretty exciting. The arena fight, the entrance of the Clone army, our first glimpse at the scale of the Clone Wars, and the fight with Anakin and Obi-Wan against Count Dooku, all together is probably one of the highlights of the prequel trilogy. However, there is still one thing in here that really pissed me off and that's the fight between Yoda and Dooku.
Watching the OT, Yoda has always been about the Force, and specifically how it should be used "for knowledge and defence, never for attack." This is kinda like the defining point of Yoda's character, he's never on the offence and seems almost pacifist in nature, and also doesn't seem massively keen on lightsabres. So why on earth in this film does he not only have a lightsaber, but fucking launches himself at Dooku with a battle cry and start flipping and flying off of all the walls. I'm sure you thought it was awesome to see Yoda kicking arse as a kid, but come on now, you've got to admit this is out of character to say the least. A Yoda fight is definitely possible and would be interesting to see (and we get one in Revenge of the Sith that's more along these lines), but I would expect it to be Yoda trying to outwit his enemy, using the force to expertly deflect attacks and find creative solutions to stun or restrain his opponent. But no, crazy flips and lightsabers it is. Although to its credit we do see Yoda blocking and absorbing Dooku's force lightning, which is pretty badass, so there's like a glimmer of that in there.
Again, not a terrible film, and it's above the other two primarily for its last thirty minutes or so, i.e. the point where the prequels finally start doing what we were kinda hoping for from the beginning. But if it weren't for that, this would probably slip further down. At its worst, it's probably more painful than Phantom, but again, so much more happens and it feels like it actually matters too, so it gives it the edge it needs to come out on top. In my mind anyway. I completely understand if people put this below Phantom.
Also, I know he built it in the first place, but did Anakin just steal C-3PO?
Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of Star Wars: A Ranked Retrospective!
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