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Most people blame the lackluster performances in the PT on the fact that Lucas is a bad director and is a poor hand at writing dialogue. They also point out that all of the leads have been good in other films.

I would certainly agree with those assessments of Lucas's abilities (or lack thereof).

But now that the prequel trilogy is complete, I would say that bad casting is largely to blame even beyond all that. Several of the key actors were just not right for their roles.

Jake Lloyd as young Anakin was all wrong. Whenever a child actor has a lead role, it is absolutely crucial that something set the kid apart from the countless other moppets who could deliver the lines. Jake Lloyd just didn't have it. Bad scripting aside, Haley Joel Osment might have been able to bring something to the role besides a pulse. Not sure he would have been the absolute ideal for young Anakin, either, but he would have been far better than Jake Lloyd.

Hayden Christensen just doesn't have it in him to play Anakin with the necessary gravitas. He can a play whiny, sniveling, weaselly character well (did you see him in Shattered Glass?). But he's too much of a prettyboy to be the Vader-in-waiting. His voice is too unsure and flutey. He lacks the physical presence. When he tries to be menacing, it seems like he's imagining passing a kidney stone to get into the part. A better actor for the part would have made it seem effortless. Anakin should have been played by someone more rugged, someone more self-assured, more capable of subtlety.

I'm not quite convinced that Natalie Portman is a good actress, judging from her non-SW movies. That aside, I certainly don't buy her as the woman who gives birth to Luke and Leia. And like Hayden, she doesn't have the physical presence. For one thing, she still looks like a teenager. Someone more mature-looking (and -sounding) would have been better suited to the part. Natalie seems a little too frail to play such a tough lady.

Ewan McGregor I think is well-suited to play Obi-Wan, so I'll cut him some slack. Didn't like him so much in TPM, but I accepted him as Obi-Wan Kenobi in AOTC, and by ROTS I didn't think anyone could have played him any better (with what he was given, mind you).

Samuel L. Jackson, as has been lamented time and time again, is just not right in the part of a Jedi Master. Pirate, gambler, mercenary...he would be perfect in plenty of SW roles, just not the one he got.

Individual actors aside, what the PT also lacked was the chemistry between the actors. Practically non-existent! I don't understand it, since judging from all the outtakes we've seen of the casting calls for the original Star Wars, great pains were taken back then to ensure that the actors played off of each other and that they worked well as an ensemble. I guess the process wasn't as stringent the second time around.

OK, so I know the term "maximalism" isn't really used to describe an aesthetic the way "minimalism" is, but I'm coining it that way.

If two words could sum up the OT for me, those would be "economy" and "simplicity." Economy of characters, economy of dialogue, and economy of effects. Simplicity in plot and concepts. Ideas aren't overexplained; secondary characters remain secondary; landscapes and backgrounds tend to be sparse and uniform. The galaxy seems more vast because unrelated characters aren't constantly bumping into each other by miraculous coincidences. There are some genuinely quiet scenes. The story is remarkably easy to grasp, but based on grand themes that hold up well to dissection and scrutiny.

If two words could sum up the PT for me, those would be "clutter" and "busy-ness." Everything is moving, all the time. Quiet moments are inevitably interrupted. When it would suffice to show one of something in the background (a ship, a droid, whatever), a dozen are shown instead. When it would suffice to show a dozen, a hundred are shown. Every secondary or tertiary character seems to be clamoring for screen time. Whenever two or more characters could possibly have some connection, it is exploited to the hilt. The story is needlessly complicated, based on flimsy concepts that fall apart upon closer inspection.

All other nitpicks aside, I will always prefer the OT for its admirable efficiency. It's just too hard to focus on anything in the PT because there's always some needless distraction.

I don't know why it seems strange to me, but it does.

In ESB, there are Earth snakes and lizards on Dagobah.

In the made-for-TV Ewoks movies, there are Earth horses. I think there may even be Earth dogs, but don't quote me on that.

If humans evolved long ago in a galaxy far, far away, it makes perfect sense that simpler creatures such as snakes and lizards and even horses might look exactly the same there as they do here.

And yet the idea still seems unlikely and non-Star-Wars-ian to me.

Thoughts?

I'll start off the thread by listing two of the most egregious examples:

1.) Boba Fett. I remember reading interviews with Lucas, pre-PT, in which he confessed to being mystified by the overwhelming popularity of Boba Fett. If I recall correctly, Lucas even referred to him as a "nothing character." Maybe that's why he polished him off so abruptly in ROTJ.

So what did he do with this "nothing character"? He created a whole backstory for him. And a lame one at that, which seems like nothing more than an afterthought. And then what did Lucas do? Promptly abandoned the character yet again.

It's pretty obvious that the only reason Boba Fett figured into the PT at all was because there was a massive fan base for the character, and Lucas wanted to take advantage of it somehow.

2.) Jar Jar Binks. Here we see the polar opposite of the Boba Fett phenomenon--George Lucas diminished the role of the character in response to fan disapproval.

While I'm willing to grant that Jar Jar's role would have been diminished anyway (it's hard to see how he could have figured into the rest of the trilogy), I have no doubt that Lucas would have employed the character as alleged "comic relief" to a far greater degree, had there not been such a huge outcry of hatred for the Gungan among the general public.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples that others can come up with....

So, I see a lot of bantering back and forth about how the bashers are going into Episode III expecting to hate it.

I'm not convinced that expectations have all that much to do with it.

How many of us went into The Phantom Menace expecting at least to enjoy it, if only because it was a new Star Wars movie? I was excited like almost everyone else. I really wanted to love it. Admittedly, early spoilers did not seem promising, but I was prepared to forgive an awful lot. But I couldn't forgive absolute shit, which is what we got.

I was skeptical when Attack of the Clones was released. But I figured that Lucas had been a bit rusty, as anyone might be after a 16-year hiatus. So I went in expecting AOTC to be better than TPM...not necessarily good, mind you, but better. I found it worse. Again, I was disappointed, despite expectations to the contrary.

Now, having been disappointed twice, I can't say that I have much hope for Revenge of the Sith. I fully expect to hate it. But that has never stopped me from enjoying certain movies before. Expectations only go so far.

In other words, I don't believe that the majority of people will hate a movie because they expected to from the get-go. The fact that most people shell out the money for tickets to movies that they supposedly have convinced themselves they are going to hate, just shows that they are open-minded enough to at least see the movie to render a final judgment.

Incidentally, I don't believe that people will love a movie just because they have convinced themselves that they are going to love it, a la the gushers. But I do believe that they will defend it just because they think they're supposed to have loved it.