An Uncanny Return To The Prequel Trilogy

Coming back to the prequels, I found myself lost in a sea of innovative imagination, and crazed surreality.

For the first time in nearly a decade, I find myself face to face with…countless horrifically rendered CGI aliens. The prequel trilogy’s reputation precedes itself; everyone knows that these movies are, to put it simply, bad. I knew going into this rewatch that I most likely wouldn’t enjoy the films in the way Lucas intended - I doubt he wanted audiences reacting to his space epic as if it was a comedy. Or, maybe he did! There’s certainly enough forced humor and cliches to make it appear that these films are attempting to satisfy audiences. However, the incessant “humor” is but one of many threads women into the tapestry of awkwardness that is the first three episodes. That is to say, I thought I knew what to expect. I thought I would encounter the Phantom Menace with confidence, enter the Clone Wars with courageous cautiousness, and finish Revenge of the Sith with a slight satisfaction at the Mustafar fight. Memory couldn’t have obfuscated the legendary action scene from a banal reality; Aa the very least I remember feeling goosebumps as a child seeing Anakin and Obi-Wan clash in front of plumes of molten lava as furious and roaring as the two jedi that could have been actual characters. However, what I met when opening Disney Plus wasn’t just a bad set of films, but a collective runtime of complete surreality. Never, and I mean never, have I watched a film and been so utterly confused as to how to react to significant narrative beats, character interactions, and even action scenes. It is easy to make a bad movie, but it’s impressive to make one that makes the viewer question if they are even watching a film. 

That’s a little harsh. I know this article will be critical - I’ve already discussed the trilogy as if it were poison - but before continuing I want to preface that this is still a movie made by passionate filmmakers who were quite literally slaving away to complete what they saw as potentially innovative art. The prequel trilogy thus exists as an encapsulation of a specific moment in cinema history, where ambition was truly far too great for the relative technology at the time. In approaching these movies, I want to discuss them primarily as texts, secondarily as passion projects. It’s impossible to strip Lucas’ shadow from the shockingly awkward end product, but ultimately, these films are more interesting to discuss rather than simply tear down and bemoan, lord knows the cast and crew have suffered enough from angry online “critics.”

That being said, uncovering what exactly makes these movies so strange is more entertaining than the films themselves. Why did I feel so uncomfortable when Anakin first locked eyes with Padme? What went wrong in the scene construction to make everything look and feel so flat? What is even happening in Attack of the Clones? Again, the only term I feel appropriately describes these movies is not “bad,” “lazy,” or “unfinished,” but “surreal,” “uncanny,” and “awkward.” I'll still use the adjective as shorthand, one has to understand that these films constitute a very different type of “bad” movie from one that simply feels rushed or the result of a suit demanding a sequel. Those usually are just bad movies, films that commit a worse sin than any of the prequels: being boring. If the prequel trilogy is anything, it’s entertaining, but not for the reasons anyone behind the scenes would hope for. I find entertainment in uncovering the mystery as to how a set of films can be so mysteriously and uniquely unreal, how a film can feel so stripped from reality, logic or causality. The fun in the prequels isn’t in laughing with them, but at them, and then analyzing why exactly this is the case. 

So during my viewing, I eventually started asking myself these questions: “Why are these movies so awkward?” The vast majority of the scenes in Attack of the Clones are cringe-inducing, the Phantom Menace innocently and naively presents the Jedi as kidnapping monks bent on manipulating the world to fit to their rule, and Revenge of the Sith makes about as much sense as its predecessor while being even more disappointing. It’s all so…contradictory. This set of films have very specific ways in which they break their own rules or sense of reality that results in stories that operate on an invisible logic that is never explained, filled with characters who must be clones masquerading as humans. The myriad of issues that lead to this trilogy’s horrific execution, I find, can be placed under an umbrella issue that shrouds all aspects of the trilogy: a lack of motivation.

Direction

Again, I don’t mean to bash a single creator for having an innovative idea.

But I have no idea what Lucas told his actors, or what god-forsaken torture he put them through, to pry out such unbelievably ambivalent performances from legitimate talent. 

I haven’t a single clue why George finds such fascination in othering demographics with horribly racist stereotypes that he naively projects with an inhuman lack of awareness or empathy.

I could not even begin to come up with an idea as to why Lucas decides to intercut between scenes at the most inopportune moments, place emphasis on locations and CGI spectacle instead of story, or just about anything else that has to do with this film’s construction. 

There is no logic in making a series of films completely dependent on an experimental emerging technology. 

If a director’s job is to direct the audience's attention through precise shot selection and informative editing, to guide actors through and to their best performances, to lead a cast and crew towards creating a unified product governed by the projects diegetic logic and non-diegetic production mandates, then I apologize, but Lucas utterly failed at his job.

However, that doesn’t mean he didn’t try. Why did Lucas force CGI into every nook and cranny of these films? During the making of documentaries, the answer is found in the gleam of Lucas’ eye as he looks to a monitor with a falsified Naboo in awe and whispers “none of it is real '' with cold reverence. His fascination in the falsified shows a disconnection between the man and the movie-going audience he once walked among. The characters are out of touch because, well, maybe the man leading the film’s are as well. 

It is clear that there is passion put into these movies by Lucas - one doesn’t work 24 hour days for no reason - but tragically, it seems like that is also what made the prequels completely fail in execution. George had a vision, and he was the only one who could see it. 

CGI

Trivia says every shot in Attack of the Clones implemented some use of CGI. The human eye and uncanny valley confirms this as fact. 

There is no more room on the internet for, again, self-proclaimed “critics” to be bashing the prequel’s use of digital effects. Anyone born after 2000 can see the visuals have aged poorly; but then why aren’t other films from 1999-2005 that incorporated digital filmmaking techniques criticized as harshly as the prequels? Because, the prequel trilogy didn’t just incorporate CGI, they forced it down the viewers eyes. Working on CRT screens and computers fifty times larger and weaker than my phone, the cast and crew behind the prequel trilogy were overambitious in their aspirations with this new tech. Hearing this seems obvious now, but who could blame Lucas in the moment? Finally, an emerging technology that could potentially bring his imagined space epic to life with a level of fidelity achieved with breakthrough efficiency. However, it’s clear from even a cursory glance at the abundance of establishing shots or the flat wides that two-dimensionalize every scene that the technology simply could not match the imagination. 

This would be forgivable in small doses - early MCU success has shown audiences are willing to forgive a lot of hackneyed CGI fights as long as it’s entertaining, somewhat convincing, and brief enough to never enter the uncanny valley. However, the present day MCU has begun to dial back its forced CGI as a result of audiences beginning to feel uncomfortable in the unreality of their films, and this was a realization that Lucas never came to. Meaning, we got the prequels as they currently exist; films not just identifiable by their CGI, but ones built from the ground up in the digital. Looking to behind the scenes featurettes, one will be blinded by blue and green, and after regaining vision they would notice the single actor standing in the vast hull of primary hues. Suddenly, the film’s awkwardness makes a little more sense: who can act natural in the most foreign, impersonal location put on screen? With an emerging technology as new as the digital filmmaking techniques being introduced, how could anyone behind the scenes have felt confident in their abilities to render an entire movie? Lucas and crew made as much of the trilogy as fake as they could, rigidly adhering to an experimental process that had no proof of succeeding. It’s a completely nonsensical decision that leads to unmotivated implementation of what is now proven to be horribly unconvincing visuals. The creators simply did not have examples of how to make something look and feel real in a digital environment; they were inventing the rulebook they themselves were forced to follow. And yet, still CGI was used in places that could have easily been filmed in reality. The result is, well, the prequels; in all of their uncanniness, all of their overt falsity, all of their horrifying creatures and rubbery, backflipping jedi. Undoubtedly, Lucas’ obsession with CGI is injected into the veins of the prequels like a drug, and it's the forced, unmotivated insertion of this fetishistic interest that poisons the rest of the films.

Performances

Behind the overabundance of unnecessary CGI, the prequels are most notorious for their inhuman performances attempting to choke out treacherous dialogue, and it’s in these characters' lack of character where I find the films to be at their most surreal.

A character is the director’s vessel for speaking with the audience. While not every protagonist has to be relatable because not every story is telling a moral tale of good vs evil (is it bad that I relate to x character?), it is Hollywood convention that the protagonist acts as the audience surrogate. What our lead feels, the audience often will as well. What our protagonist learns, experiences, and does as a result draws the viewer into the film from a sense of immersion and relatability. Meaning, when character’s feel inhuman, the main emotional connection to the film is severed. Eyes are the window to the soul after all, and it seems as though Lucas hung up the “closed for repair” sign behind every piece of plexiglass. This is one of the reasons the films feel so uncanny, and honestly, genuinely uncomfortable to watch. Characters don’t act with emotional intention, instead inhumanely proclaiming their feelings in unfiltered, overt bouts of pent up rage or love, which according to the Jedi, are apparently states of mind one can switch on and off. Characters are performed with the graceful nuance of a tornado, crashing and colliding with others in tone and delivery. When Anakin says he murdered a small village (even the women and children too!) with as much believability as a character like Padme fantasizing over an eight year old boy for the past decade, it is impossible to feel the weight of the words or significance of his actions. 

The uncanny turns awkward when one realizes the romantic leads probably have the least amount of chemistry out of any pairing in the cast. One part love story, one part attempted noir, Attack of the Clones provides a feast of indulgent cringe. One can harp on Anakin and Padme’s sand speech for eons - a fate worse than death to be sure - but there are countless other sinful pairings of characters lacking chemistry. Obi-Wan and Anakin are supposed to be chummy, but their “charming” banter comes off as a forced friendship between two kids whose parents wanted to get a drink when performed with such ambivalence. Yoda and Mace Windu are hardly characters, their rigid bouts of exposition giving the audience nothing of interest whenever the two are on screen. Performances are stiff during declarations of love, but the forcefulness of every relationship is apparent when more than one character is on screen. 

Finally, the awkward turns hopelessly confusing with the complete lack of differentiation in character’s speech. Take Windu and Yoda as an example. In The Phantom Menace, the two hang back from Qui-Gon’s funeral to discuss their partner's death. At least, that’s what one would assume. Instead, Yoda states that the Jedi are losing their powers with as much worry and gravity as a twenty something hungover college student realizing they overslept and missed class. “Ah well, we’ll worry about that later.” Crucial pieces of information are relayed to the audience with little to no indication from the performances as to how significant it is. This has countless negative effects on the film; stakes are non-existent, characters’ two dimensionality is only highlighted, and the plot becomes impossible to follow. Films are holistic; a couple bad performances may not be enough to derail a film, but if the actors are as unconvincing as they are in the prequels, complete disarray is inevitable. This is only heightened by the third most notorious aspect of the trilogy. 

Dialogue

To keep this section simple, the dialogue in the prequel trilogy is essentially a perfect example of what not to do when writing a screenplay. Overtly stating exactly what one is feeling, characters only serving as mouthpieces for rules or “necessary” exposition, and a general inhumanity from the result of such crude dialogue being espoused by wooden performances. However, I find these to be the most common complaints, with a plethora of other fatal wounds beneath the bandages of a script stitched and sewn together as much in an editing software as it was on paper. 

For example, the pure repetition of the screenplay is absolutely dismal to sit through, especially when considering these films all run over two hours. Yes, it’s unconvincing to hear Anakin say…literally anything, but it’s genuinely annoying to feel as if one’s time is being wasted. Again, the completely boring pair of Windu and Yoda are essentially nothing more than exposition dumps in every film, their roles on the Jedi council only defined by Windu being “the strong one” and Yoda “the wise one.” Nearly every scene I can recount of either character is just one grimacing at the other after they commented on something I just watched happen. Never, and I mean never, have I ever felt so insulted as an audience member as when I had to hear characters explain the same concept over and over, with every person having to seemingly comment on any action taken or word said. I wouldn’t be surprised if “ouch, that hurt!” was a line that appeared in all three of these films but was easily forgotten for how useless it was in serving the actual plot. Characters don’t just sound inhuman, but like Saturday cartoons as they essentially narrate everything that is happening on-screen. Once again, we see the insertion of another completely unmotivated element of filmmaking.

However, all of these issues - wasted time, treating the audiences as if they were all born minutes before the showing, and painful repetition -  all culminate in the trilogy’s attempts at humor. One can easily think of a hilarious set piece or character that could have been cut for time in any of the films; the aforementioned droid factory, the incessant cuts to Jar-Jar embarrassing himself, the horrifically stereotypical portrayal of specific demographics through insulting alien allegories. The jokes are never ending, and they are nearly never funny. Meaning, not even the humor can be seen as motivated, as oftentimes it completely interrupts scenes that makes for horrific pacing, another fatal blow to the films sense of reality not at all softened from the awkward editing. 

Editing/Pacing

It’s an age-old rule of filmmaking to “get in late and get out early.” That is, to remain as close as possible to the relevant, exciting information in a scene. I can assume Anakin and Obi-Wan greeted each other before they exposited their way through a scene, so why does Lucas feel the need to show us? Oftentimes scenes will open with characters entering a room for the first time, having an entire conversation, and then leaving. So many sequences felt as if they could have been trimmed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the collective amount of time saved from following the aforementioned adage equated to a movie  length runtime all of its own. The absolute refusal to end a scene is only highlighted by the continued insertion of unmotivated and repetitive dialogue, as well as the bland cinematography. We start in wide to show off the lush landscapes of a galaxy far, far away, and hardly ever push in for a more intimate perspective. Scenes are often captured completely in static stills, never cutting to a more appropriate angle or perspective to highlight a character’s speech, reaction, etc. There is a missing utilization of one of cinema’s primary elements of storytelling, and the result is a trilogy of confusing, uninterrupted scenes that hang on awkward pauses, leading to an abhorrently slow pace in an already repetitive film made so by way of the routine dialogue. 

When the film does choose to cut, it’s often with an inappropriate tacky transition (especially in Revenge of the Sith) to a scene completely unlike the previous. In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan and Anakin split up for essentially the entire film, and the plot never deviates from the monotonous repetition of “one scene Obi-wan, one scene Anakin.” It’s a back and forth that becomes banal instead of exciting; who knew tennis could be so boring? Without an engaging or entertaining pace to any of these films, the prequel trilogy flounders with moments meant to be emotional. It’s much more difficult to treat Anakin and Padme’s love with any seriousness when it's sandwiched between C-3PO’s droid shenanigans and Jar-Jar Binks’ insulting…everything. In a word, the editing, like the rest of these films, is completely unmotivated.

Cinematography 

Just as there is no aural differentiation between actors, leading to a disorienting experience of trying to parse what is and isn’t crucial for the plot, the cinematography is about as varied and exciting as the predictable narratives and cliche dialogue. Take the Yoda and Windu discussion again, the one where audiences learn that the entire Jedi council is losing their connection to the force. Captured in a static low, Yoda and Windu choke out their lines, and scene. No close-ups to highlight worried expressions, no change in lighting to indicate the dark implications of this information, absolutely nothing to indicate that what we just heard was at all important. In other words, the cinematography is completely unmotivated.

Actually, I need to correct myself. The camera is guided, but only by the same curse that has doomed this trilogy to the depths of VFX hell. The forced insertion of massive, sweeping CGI landscapes forces the camera into static wides that capture the rubber environments in all of their plasticity. While some visuals hold up better than others, specifically the establishing shots of any planet are the most consistently impressive, the vast majority have fallen victim to father time. Meaning, not only does the cinematography become restricted primarily to static wides and mediums from the required apparatus to produce Lucas’ imaginative locations, but the visuals he attempted to “show off” are at this point, eye sores. The missing piece is a close-up, a dutch angle, I’d get excited when the camera would even move, but even that was often digitized. I don’t mean to come off as a “film or nothing” critic, but simply put, the negative effects of the forced CGI leading to unmotivated cinematography was a risk that has proven fatal.

One would imagine the general flatness of the cinematography would be difficult enough to watch, but again, it is as if these films were produced to be confusing. Specifically, I recall high angle wide shots of Darth Maul and Qui-Gon fighting that failed to capture the intensity of their action. I felt separated from the fight, and it didn’t help that the two seemed awkwardly off center in the frame. Unmotivated cinematography is one thing, but poorly framed shots and a missing visual language completely destroys any sense of place the audience had in the world of the film. At times, the perspective of some locations seemed so warped and falsified that characters could either be the size ants or elephants relative to their surroundings. I often felt lost in these expansive virtual sets, never concretely understanding where I was located in relation to other aspects of the geometry. Watching the prequels is thus a test in surrealism; without a sense of time or place, one is left floating in a sea of political conflicts and unexplained wizard powers that are never highlighted as more or less important via the visuals.

Finally, the invisible digital filmmaking rule book Lucas was writing and attempting to follow at the same time did not yet have any entries on how digital filmmaking affects the reality of the actors on screen. Lighting a sound stage is drastically different from a concrete set, a green screen, etc. However, Lucas and crew weren’t privy to these new filmmaking conditions, instead learning as they went as to how to make the digital look like reality. Tragically, this has an especially adverse effect on the actors, with their skin tones often discolored, oil drenching their faces from obscure and confused lighting setups, and other technical errors that come with rushing with experimental technologies. Digital filmmaking was clearly in its infancy, and its uncanny effect on the actors only makes these films feel more inhuman. 

Lessons Learned

All of this complaining having been typed, what is there to learn from analyzing the prequels? Do we gain anything from looking back at one of cinema’s greatest disappointments? I’d argue the curse of the prequels seems almost cyclical, and we are currently facing the threat of repeating Lucas’ over-ambition. 

A.I. is a tool for creativity, not the creator. However, these two roles have been blurred in recent months, striking fear into the heart of every actor and writer in Hollywood, and giving every film student an existential dread concerning their future career (as if I wasn’t already holding that fear from deciding to major in film in general). Much like the twitter users claiming their A.I.-generated profile picture has the same artistic integrity as the Mona Lisa, Lucas replaced reality with artifice and claimed it was the next era of art. We saw how that went; a trilogy of movies laying claim to the importance of humanity in the Humanities. If there is anything to learn from the prequel trilogy, it is that the most crucial part of any art is the reality behind it. The signature left in a film frame, the fingerprint on a claymation doll, the loose hair hidden in the paint on a canvas. Tangibility and tactility has proven to be crucial in making films cohesive, but emotion and humanity is definitively understood to be irreplaceable in the artistic process. 

At least, we can hope so. Luckily, it seems as though recent waves of A.I. takeover have been partially mitigated by the successful protests conducted from various organizations in the creative industry. That doesn’t mean the fight against the machines are over; we still have to understand how to creatively use A.I. most efficiently while balancing it with the element of art that actually makes it actually meaningful. I can see why Lucas would stare in awe at a blue screen translated to his imagined world on a computer monitor when seeing the possibilities of generative A.I. However, I don’t think I’ve ever muttered the same words as Lucas did when facing a similar unreality, and especially with such admiration. “None of it is real” is no longer an expression of pure awe, but instead, a common complaint amongst letterboxd users reviewing the recent MCU blockbuster. Humans crave humanity in their art, and it is impossible to code the feeling of staring at two suns on a distant desert planet, desperate for something greater in the future. Hopefully, Lucas has at least taught us the lesson of cautious excitement with the prequels, lest we are doomed to repeat the damage of overused digital filmmaking with a new burgeoning technology.