I have to be honest… my Star Wars fandom was a late-bloomer. Although I largely agree with people that the prequel trilogy was… well… crap, that’s also when I became aware of Star Wars, and found myself interested in it… which is why I will never hate the prequel trilogy as much as some others do.
And of course I loved The Force Awakens and Rogue One, I can’t wait for The Last Jedi, and I’m actually looking forward to the Han Solo movie, as well.
We’re going to be getting a lot of Star Wars films going into the future, too. One every year. And there are rumors that Disney is looking at Netflix for live-action Star Wars series, which would also be incredible. So, of course, many many people have discussed what anthologies they’d want to see.
Featured here are three videos discussing anthology wish lists. The first two videos are in fact connected, as they’re a collaboration. The third video is a completely separate/independent video on the same topic. Then I’ll follow that up with two subjects I personally want to see explored in live-action form…
As for me… well… I do agree with most of these. I’d love to see an exploration of Yoda’s history; his days as a padawan, his moving up the ranks of the Jedi order, and so on.
But there are two subjects I find immensely fascinating in the Star Wars universe that people making similar videos seem to skip entirely.
The first are The Ones. Their story, as well as the story of The Mother, who would become Abeloth, has fascinated me for some time, and it would be amazing to see in live-action form on the big screen.
The other subject I want to see really fleshed out is The Grey Jedi.
When I think about how I feel about the Sith and the Jedi, I have always thought that both were wrong. You cannot achieve balance by destroying the light or the dark. You can only find balance by bringing the two together. Sith and Jedi are fanatics, led astray by their own arrogance. Hence, my interest in the middle ground, like the Grey Jedi. And I’m not talking about the term in its generic use to refer to “rogue Jedi” or Jedi like Qui-Gon Jinn, who sometimes disagreed with the counsel, but ultimately was a true Jedi.
I mean those like Ahsoka, the Jensaarai, Jolee Bindo, the Voss Mystics, the Imperial Knights, Bendu, etc. The ones who truly walk the middle ground. I’d love to see these characters fleshed out.
And yes, it’s entirely possible that this is where the Star Wars main films are heading, if the teaser for The Last Jedi is any indication… could Luke have actually given up on the Jedi, and become Gray himself?
Actually, I do have a third idea… an exploration into the Force itself. Go back to the very beginning, and explore the origins of the Force, the Sith, the Jedi, and so on. This would probably work better as a darker Netflix series or something like that, or maybe a multi-series verse. But still live-action. I think it’d be fascinating for the official canon to really delve into the history.
But anyways… that’s just me.
What would y’all want to see in terms of anthology films, and/or maybe series?
In what way do you think the prequel was crap?
I watched the original trilogy before the prequels came out, and I watched the prequel trilogy some years after it came out.
I think the prequels were crap, but considerably less crap than the original trilogy— sort of a high point for the series even if they still didn’t make it above sea level (or crap level or whatever).
So as a fan, why do you think the prequels were a low point for the series?
I love the original trilogy. Yes, I started watching them after the prequels, but I loved those original movies, problems, over-acting, and all. I think they were good for their time. I get why they became such a cultural force. I’m not saying those movies were perfect by any means (they absolutely have issues). But for what they were, I absolutely adore them.
The prequels… basically everything was wrong with them:
-Jar Jar Binks was a disaster that could only have been saved if he had turned out to be a Sith Lord, and even then… just barely.
-Hayden Christensen should never have been cast to play Anakin Skywalker.
-Midichlorines… that was already confusing before I saw the original trilogy… but after seeing the original trilogy and reading the lore and talking/listening to fans, all I can wonder is… why? What was the point? Just keep it supernatural and be done with it. We don’t need any “science” to explain the Force.
-The original trilogy had action. Yeah, sure, it had its boring moments, but it didn’t over-drag. The prequels spent what felt like hours on trade talks. I mean… I guess if you like political dramas, then sure, but at least House of Cards has good writing, acting, and direction.
But the biggest crime of the prequels?
They did more to destroy Darth Vader than any Jedi (even Luke himself) could have ever hoped to do.
The original trilogy gave us arguably one of the most terrifying, iconic villains ever put on the big screen.
The prequels turned him into a whiny brat; a loser with no sense of purpose. It made sense when he was 14. But as he got older, his maturity level seemed to get younger. When he was an adult, his maturity level was on par with a 6-year-old. No wonder Anakin was easily corrupted and turned into Vader… he was a pathetic man-child.
I mean seriously… all he needed was a neckbeard, a fedora (excuse me… “trilby”), and access to Reddit, and he’d be an MGTOW in one day flat.
Kudos to Clone Wars for redeeming Anakin, Rebels for continuing that redemption, and both Rebels and Rogue One for redeeming Darth Vader.
Here’s a Google search for Why the Star Wars prequels are bad. There you really can see why the prequels were Lucas’s biggest mistake.
It’s one reason I loved The Force Awakens so much. That movie proved that Disney knew what they were doing. Yeah, it was a safe film… a very safe film. But it had to be. If they had experimented, and failed, then there’d be no more Star Wars. Now the franchise is going to brand new places, because TFA earned the trust of the fans, after the prequels tainted the Star Wars for us (which is a very very large portion of the population… big enough for these films to be Blockbuster movie events).
Funny, I thought the prequels were better for a lot of the reasons you hate them.
I’ll give you that one. Yeesh.
Meh. I don’t know anything about actors so I can’t comment.
I kind of liked the midichlorians. I didn’t view it as “using science to explain the Force,” I viewed it as pseudoscience held by a society of mystics. I always sort of viewed Star Wars as a society in decline, which has access to technology invented by their distant ancestors but no idea how it works; they may know how to use it, and they may know specific manufacturing processes but science as an enterprise is dead and entropy is slowing claiming available technology.
It’s why the prequels seem so much more advanced than the original trilogy despite taking place decades earlier; the political upset merely sped up an ongoing process of decline.
The midichlorians fit perfectly into that. The description of what they are and do (symbiotic organisms that live in our cells and provide some form of power/force) is a slightly squashed description of mitochondria— which means they’re actually parroting half a forgotten scientific fact out of context as an explanation for something superficially related whose true explanation is long forgotten.
That’s exactly why I think the prequels were better.
For me, a little action goes a long way— and a movie needs to earn it by making me care about its characters and presenting a plot in which the action makes sense. The original trilogy didn’t do that; it started with a cold open of randos shooting at randos and expected me to automatically side with the pretty ones over the faceless ones because all good people are pretty and only evil people wear sensible combat gear when fighting.
And it didn’t let up! So much of it was just random fighting with only a paper-thin excuse plot to string it together and no reason given to care about anyone involved. That’s what I’d call “boring.”
The prequels were a little better; sure, they never bothered to make any of the characters worthy of caring about but at least there was some semblance of a plot. They’re fighting over taxes and trade, all of which are part of an established political system that (doesn’t make any sense but) has a nicely-polished veneer.
Mind you, the prequels did have what felt like hours of boring action sequences, so I wouldn’t say I liked them, but at least they put in a tiny bit of effort to make them matter.
The sad thing is that a series like the Star Wars prequels was perfectly positioned to marry political drama and action. Such a wasted opportunity.
Terrifying? Really? Darth Vader was a cardboard cutout. He was the villain that comes free with the scriptwriting software. He was Generic Faceless Bad Guy #309. He was a stormtrooper painted a different color so you could tell he was in charge. Iconic, sure— being in a massive franchise would do that to any villain. But terrifying? Not seeing it.
I liked that. Villains don’t always have a sense of purpose, and they aren’t always mature. I hate cartoon villains with grand schemes to dominate the world because they’re Just That Evil. Being an immature man-child is doubly appropriate for Vader who is always a #2 villain in service to Palpatine and never actually in charge.
Besides, he was a slave who was bought by and indoctrinated into a fundamentalist cult that doubles as a police state apparatus for a collapsing society. I’d hardly expect him to be a mature and well-rounded adult.
And for what it’s worth, he was “corrupted” in no small part by the Sith promising him a solution to his problem and the Jedi denying the existence of his problem and then being colossal hypocrites about everything they claim to stand for (and taught him to stand for). This leads to a eureka moment in which he figures the Jedi and Sith are functionally identical, so he might as well side with the one at least claiming to have a solution for his problem— even though it means accelerating his country’s slow collapse by installing a dictator.
So basically, Anakin is a Trump voter. Truly a villain for our era.
He doesn’t need the hat and beard. Just give him access to Reddit.
I doubt you could make it halfway through his whiny possessive post about protecting “his” women.