With the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the bridge between the Star Wars prequel movies and the original trilogy is now complete. In another thirty years, maybe we'll have the movies that bridge the gap between the Star Wars original trilogy and the sequel trilogy.
My personal opinion is that the Prequel movies leave a lot to be desired as movies. They suffer mostly from the problem that filmmakers got too geeked out on green screens and forgot that the actors they were putting in front of all the beautiful but nonexistent backdrops needed to be able to act against or with other characters. Even Mark Hamill rehearsed with a Yoda puppet before being filmed with the stiff but charismatic little green fellow that ended up in The Empire Strikes Back. And then he was still talking to something that was actually there.
Really I think that's the biggest flaw of the Prequel trilogies. I think it's very likely that, with more concrete environments, the actors they chose could have delivered much stronger performances and it wouldn't have mattered as much that the story didn't always make sense or that Anakin was a little whinier than we'd like to admit is appropriate for his character. Because Anakin is supposed to have been like that, for the most part. The guy who wrote the movies said so. You can't really argue with that.
I cannot thank Dave Filoni and the team of writers he has worked with over the past decade enough for giving depth to the Star Wars universe through The Clone Wars television show. Even if you liked them, the Prequel movies kind of hurried the Clone Wars between a couple films and so they ended up being at the end of the second one and sort of in the background of the third film. But the Prequel films weren't really about the Clone Wars, they were about Anakin's fall from grace and the rise of the Empire.
What The Clone Wars did for the time period was give development to the galaxy and the conflict at large. I feel that, honestly, the biggest missed opportunity with the series was the chance to really, really flesh out what kind of a person Anakin Skywalker really is. But anytime the show came close to doing that, they kind of backed off and let other characters (like the amazing Ahsoka Tanno) take the lead.
But the decision to focus on characters other than Anakin Skywalker was by a wide margin the best thing Clone Wars gave us. Even (and especially) Obi-Wan Kenobi got more development as a character. We saw how our favorite wise old man dealt with the issue of love, as well as how he behaved as a member of the Jedi Council. We also got to see Anakin and Obi-Wan being "good friends."
I will never like the Prequel trilogy movies, in all likelihood, but I do enjoy the era. That's all thanks to Dave Filoni and his influence on the way the Prequel era was developed outside of the Skywalker saga. Recently he has turned his attentions to the early Empire era, post-Clone Wars but pre-New Hope. Which is great, because that all ends with Rogue One.
I am usually not an advocate for novelizations and comics as tie-ins because it ends up being too much to keep track of. Certainly when I was growing up there was a dearth of really bad Star Wars expanded universe writing that made it to the shelves and took Star Wars in directions I didn't really care anything about. And there was practically a new novel every month. Time consuming and expensive, all to track whatever Wedge Antilles and the Skywalker twins were up to this season.
I have found the new novels to be a giant leap away from older Star Wars publishing habits. It's not all good. And maybe you don't like to keep track of all the minutiae, but if you do like to read books then certainly anything by James Luceno and Claudia Gray is worth your time. Not just because they tie in beautifully with everything that you see on in the movies, but also because they fit in flawlessly with what you see in Star Wars Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.
You won't necessarily find any huge revealing truths about any mysteries in the Star Wars galaxy by reading these books, but you certainly will get the emotional impact of the galaxy in ways not delivered since Timothy Zahn first published the Thrawn trilogy back in the early 1990's. And now that Grand Admiral Thrawn has returned, of course, Zahn has been asked to write a new book for him (aptly named Thrawn, available April 11, 2017 from Del Rey Publishing).
And that's what Star Wars novelizations have become. They're not continuing the saga, they're fleshing it out. They don't need to worry about pushing things forward, because there are movies and television shows to do that. Instead, the authors are able to give lots of real depth to the characters they're writing about. Lots of it. Thrawn himself would revel in the sheer volume of knowledge he could glean about all of his most loathed rivals in these books.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story honestly did not play out like any Star Wars movie I had ever seen. It did, however, play out like a very long and depressing episode of Star Wars Rebels. In fact, I'd say the amount of defeat that Phoenix Squadron faces in Rebels is entirely too low, but then I suppose it is a kid's show. Still, the Pyrrhic victory that is Rogue One was literally described as their first victory against the evil galactic Empire.
It's not like Phoenix Squadron is making any huge gains for the Rebellion. And they have three canonical years between where Rebels is in its third season and the events of Rogue One. It is possible that Phoenix Squadron could fall apart and the crew of the Ghost be absorbed into the Rebel Alliance based on Yavin IV. There's plenty of room and plenty of time to figure that out. But that's what's great about it. That's what's great about what's been done with the Prequel trilogy. And while the movies will always be a little less than perfect, the world they exist in is now deep enough to satisfy any fan willing to watch a little Star Wars television.
My personal opinion is that the Prequel movies leave a lot to be desired as movies. They suffer mostly from the problem that filmmakers got too geeked out on green screens and forgot that the actors they were putting in front of all the beautiful but nonexistent backdrops needed to be able to act against or with other characters. Even Mark Hamill rehearsed with a Yoda puppet before being filmed with the stiff but charismatic little green fellow that ended up in The Empire Strikes Back. And then he was still talking to something that was actually there.
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| This is a real thing, I seent it! |
I cannot thank Dave Filoni and the team of writers he has worked with over the past decade enough for giving depth to the Star Wars universe through The Clone Wars television show. Even if you liked them, the Prequel movies kind of hurried the Clone Wars between a couple films and so they ended up being at the end of the second one and sort of in the background of the third film. But the Prequel films weren't really about the Clone Wars, they were about Anakin's fall from grace and the rise of the Empire.
What The Clone Wars did for the time period was give development to the galaxy and the conflict at large. I feel that, honestly, the biggest missed opportunity with the series was the chance to really, really flesh out what kind of a person Anakin Skywalker really is. But anytime the show came close to doing that, they kind of backed off and let other characters (like the amazing Ahsoka Tanno) take the lead.
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| To their credit, there was some great late-game development of Anakin and Padme's marriage. |
I will never like the Prequel trilogy movies, in all likelihood, but I do enjoy the era. That's all thanks to Dave Filoni and his influence on the way the Prequel era was developed outside of the Skywalker saga. Recently he has turned his attentions to the early Empire era, post-Clone Wars but pre-New Hope. Which is great, because that all ends with Rogue One.
I am usually not an advocate for novelizations and comics as tie-ins because it ends up being too much to keep track of. Certainly when I was growing up there was a dearth of really bad Star Wars expanded universe writing that made it to the shelves and took Star Wars in directions I didn't really care anything about. And there was practically a new novel every month. Time consuming and expensive, all to track whatever Wedge Antilles and the Skywalker twins were up to this season.
I have found the new novels to be a giant leap away from older Star Wars publishing habits. It's not all good. And maybe you don't like to keep track of all the minutiae, but if you do like to read books then certainly anything by James Luceno and Claudia Gray is worth your time. Not just because they tie in beautifully with everything that you see on in the movies, but also because they fit in flawlessly with what you see in Star Wars Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.
You won't necessarily find any huge revealing truths about any mysteries in the Star Wars galaxy by reading these books, but you certainly will get the emotional impact of the galaxy in ways not delivered since Timothy Zahn first published the Thrawn trilogy back in the early 1990's. And now that Grand Admiral Thrawn has returned, of course, Zahn has been asked to write a new book for him (aptly named Thrawn, available April 11, 2017 from Del Rey Publishing).
And that's what Star Wars novelizations have become. They're not continuing the saga, they're fleshing it out. They don't need to worry about pushing things forward, because there are movies and television shows to do that. Instead, the authors are able to give lots of real depth to the characters they're writing about. Lots of it. Thrawn himself would revel in the sheer volume of knowledge he could glean about all of his most loathed rivals in these books.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story honestly did not play out like any Star Wars movie I had ever seen. It did, however, play out like a very long and depressing episode of Star Wars Rebels. In fact, I'd say the amount of defeat that Phoenix Squadron faces in Rebels is entirely too low, but then I suppose it is a kid's show. Still, the Pyrrhic victory that is Rogue One was literally described as their first victory against the evil galactic Empire.
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| Just in case you couldn't recall.... |
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