Before Disney’s Sequel Trilogy came along, a lot of Star Wars fans were often at odds with how George Lucas decided to depict the prequels. Over the years, though, audiences have grown to see these films in a new light, finding ways to appreciate the creator’s vision of what the story of that galaxy far, far away should be.
The House of Mouse, meanwhile, opted for a more classic approach, with director J.J. Abrams essentially formulating the script of The Force Awakens after A New Hope, which, in hindsight, might not have been the way to go about it. Indeed, after the last two movies in the Skywalker Saga essentially divided the fandom, the general consensus seems to favor George Lucas’ Prequel Trilogy.
That being said, there’s no denying that there are many prevalent issues that still haunt those films and their scripts. Take the second one, Attack of the Clones, for instance, which contained a couple of corny, if not downright cringeworthy, subplots that all but fell apart by the time the pic launched into its final act, which was basically a generic CGI battle.
One of these narrative threads, in particular, involving Anakin and Padme’s love story, has supplied many a running gag among fans. In fact, it seems that even George Lucas agrees that some of Hayden Christensen’s lines as the Chosen One were corny, though in a recent interview, he said that it goes back to what a lot of people don’t understand about the nature of his fictional universe, explaining:
“It is presented very honestly, it isn’t tongue-in-cheek at all, and it’s played to the hilt. But it is consistent, not only with the rest of the movie, but with the overall Star Wars style. Most people don’t understand the style of Star Wars. They don’t get that there’s an underlying motif that is very much like a 1930s Western or Saturday matinee serial. It’s in the more romantic period of making movies and adventure films. And this film is even more of a melodrama than the others.”
I’m sure that many Star Wars fans would jump at the opportunity to defend Lucas as the ultimate creator of the franchise. And yet, he’s also infamous for making some of the most controversial decisions in regards to the story of the Skywalkers.
The connection that he and viewers share is the sort of love-and-hate dynamic that people usually attribute to toxic relationships, though that always seems to work out in favor of the IP as a whole. If anything, a lot of them actually want Lucas back now that Disney has dropped the ball on their sequels. But at this point, there’s no telling if that’ll happen or not.
