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Answering this question would be a very time-consuming task indeed. You've got the list of Chefelf's reasons for each movie and a whole lot of others. You have Jar Jar Binks, terrible dialogue, stupid plots, Kung Fu Yoda (a.k.a Sonic the Hedgehog with a lightsaber), stupid names like "Count Dookoo", Anakin the Jerk...
The list is very, very long. In this post, however, I'd like to discuss two larger reasons why these movies did not work. I will try to be brief but you all know how I go on sometimes, so I will make no promises. Anyway, here goes...
REASON ONE: The complete lack of consistency with the Original Trilogy.
The original Star Wars trilogy had a certain look to it and a certain feel to it so that when you saw even a few seconds from one of the movies, you knew what you were looking at - meaning, you knew you were watching Star Wars.
The technology in this galaxy was pretty rustic. The ships had jagged lines. A lot of them looked pretty old and oily.
The people in these movies all had a down-to-earth familiar quality to them. They were scruffy. They did not wear the coolest clothes. The good guys generally spoke in a fairly informal manner and it was really only the bad guys who spoke in cultured accents. Most of the good guys also had bad 1970s scruffy hair-cuts. Why am I bothering mentioning something as trivial as hair cuts, you may wonder. I'm mentioning it because it too is a part of the overall look and feel of those movies.
The prequels are completely inconsistent with the look and feel of the original movies. We get strange new technology with smooth, streamlined ships.
We get everyone wearing new, clean clothes - in fact EVERYTHING looks new and sparkling clean in these movies, even the computer generated desert.
Jedi apprentices are now called Padawans and they have stupid crew-cuts with braided rat-tails. All the good guys now talk in an emotionless, stunted manner and there's no down-to-earth feel about these guys either. Obi Wan becomes a stiff and Anakin becomes a dodgy sleaze and a total asshole.
Every alien is now CGI and we are not seeing many aliens of species that we saw in the old movies. Now we get Gungans and mutated mosquitoes (Watto) and strange four-armed critters who work in diners - and diners instead of weird cantinas.
These movies do not look like Star Wars. Nor do they sound like Star Wars or feel like Star Wars. Some people say that the musis for these movies is good though - but I'd argue that, while it is good, it is nowhere near the standard of the music in the original trilogy. If Duel of the Fates is so good, why can I not remember it? I cannot even recall John Williams' new take on the Imperial March at the end of Attack of the Clones. I'm not criticising the music here. I believe John Williams would have had a hard time doing the music for these movies because he had such uninspirational material to work with.
The point I am trying to make is that these movies do not in any way feel like Star Wars. If I did not know better and tuned in to these movies on television, I would rather confused.
Seeing the start of The Phantom Menace, with no soundtrack and smooth silver polished ships, I would think I was watching Star Trek for at least a few minutes there.
Seeing some of the space fights in these movies, I would think I was watching Starship Troopers.
And seeing that stupid scene where Obi Wan and Anakin were chasing the changeling in their air speeders all over Coruscant, I would think I was watching The Fifth Element.
I believe that Lucas allowed himself to stray too far to make these movies look the way he wanted them to. I realise that he wants to make everything as cool as he can, according to his own personal tastes. But if he knew anything about film-making, he should have known that he also needs to maintain a look and a tone that is consistent with the original movies.
Because he did not do this, it is very very difficult to pretend you are watching Star Wars movies when you see these things.
REASON TWO: Nothing means anything in these new movies.
When we think of climactic scenes in the original trilogy, what makes them so powerful? Is it because the dialogue is so great? Is it because visually they are so amazing?
I would like to argue that while these things are important, they are not what makes these scenes. For me, what makes these scenes are the other things in the movie that build up and are finally played out in these scenes.
Luke's run down the Death Star trench in Star Wars is fantastic. But while everything is done beautifully in that scene, I believe it would not seem that good if one just watched it by itself without seeing the movie up to that point.
This scene is the culmination of a large story-arc. The Death Star is a very serious threat. We have seen it destroy a whole planet and we know that if Luke fails, it will destroy the rebellion. The fact that Luke is being pursued by Darth Vader is so much more potent when we realise who Darth Vader is and all the terrible things he's done. Luke's victory through using the force is beautiful after seeing him learn about it from the beginning of the story under Obi Wan - and that after losing his mentor physically, he is still with him.
Again, in The Empire Strikes Back, the scene where Darth Vader reveals that he is Luke's father is very potent because we have spent the better part of two hours watching as Darth Vader used the entire Imperial Fleet and wreaked havoc on the lives on many people - not just the main characters, but the large numbers of people living on Bespin - so he could have this one-on-one confrontation with Luke.
As with the previous example, watching this out of context would not be nearly as powerful.
So what do we get with the prequels?
Nothing. None of the big scenes mean anything. When Anakin blows up the droid ship, it is just another excuse for a big explosion. We've never seen it before. We don't know what it is and as a result, we don't care.
The fight with Darth Maul was a well choreographed fight but it didn't do anything from me except provide a much welcomed visual distraction from the other annoying scenes that were going on at the same time. And it was because I didn't know much about Darth Maul. He didn't say much - I thought he said nothing but someone told me that he did have a line at some point. And I don't think the little scuffle in the desert really made the fight with Obi Wan and Qui Gon have any sort of personal show-down quality to it.
And the big battle between the Gungans and the droid army? Why would we care about that? We have seen nothing to suggest that the Trade Federation is a threat to be taken seriously. It's leaders were introduced to us in the first scene as comical and incompetent and every time we've seen any of those army droids, they have just been help-desk droids. At no point during that battle are we worried that the droid army would kill all the Gungans (I was just worried that they wouldn't).
And what about the mess at the end of Attack of the Clones? A big show-down between lots of poorly introduced, badly developed characters that we don't really know much about, with the good guys having a huge advantage with the clone troopers. I generally find that battles are a bit more tense if the bad guys have the advantage but anyway...
Was this battle the culmination of the story? Was everything in the movie inevitably leading up to this?
No. This was just a spur of the moment thing. Yoda and the gang decided they'd rescue Obi Wan and check out whatever was going on at this planet (can't remember the name - like a lot of pther things in these stupid films) and for some reason, we find the Trade Federation has heaps of ships outside in this location we've never seen before. What were they all doing there? Who were all these people involved? I didn't know and I didn't care. I was just waiting for the damn film to be over so they'd put the lights back on and I could safely navigate my way up the stairs to the exit.
As a side note - I don't know why but I never walk out of movies at the cinema. But after a few experiences like the prequels, I'm beginning to think I should.
And to return to the problem, there is no build up to the climax in the each of these films. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that there were no climaxes in these movies because there was no overall story that I could discern - just a poorly presented series of random plot-lines with lots of pointless and annoying things being done. And then at the end of it, George Lucas tries to bring all of these things together for some big spectacular ending.
And so far, the big spectacular endings (like the whole movies) have just been meaningless filler, laden with annoying CGI effects and stupidity.
Nothing in these movies mean anything. And when we combine this with the fact that there is not a single sympathetic character in these movies, except maybe Artoo Detoo, this makes it very difficult to care about what happens.
And I've probably said this many times but how can anyone sit through a movie when they don't care about what happens in it?
Okay, I will leave the post open to you guys.
Told you I would be brief...
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