STAR WARS Poetry Tries to Redeem the Prequels

“You see the echo of where all is gonna go. It’s like poetry, they rhyme.”

In recent years, there have been a lot of people who have tried to make sense of the Star Wars Prequels in a positive way. Essays both visual and textual have been released, comparison pieces, analysis’ – you name it. Sometimes it’s people who genuinely want to dive into these movies, and other times its because fans don’t want to admit how much they suck. This time around, I’m gonna assume it’s another case of the latter.

Vimeo user whoispablo has put together a video called Star Wars Poetry, comparing the visual cues and camerawork of both the Original and Prequel trilogies, finding that there’s more similarities than people originally thought. A lot of the examples really aren’t great links in my opinion, but it’s still an enjoyable video – check it out!

So, yes, there is definitely some symmetry between the two trilogies, however only a few of them really work. For example, the deaths of Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first of each trilogy mirror each other because they fulfill the ‘mentor’ role, and the relationships between he and Obi-Wan and then Obi-Wan and Luke provide some nice ‘rhyming’. Using orange colours for Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back and on Geonosis in Attack of the Clones is just re-using a motif that doesn’t add anything to the scene, unlike the aforementioned deaths.

That’s when rhyming between films works best – if it enhances the movie.

Let’s say that The Phantom Menace (or The Force Awakens…) opened with a large Republic cruiser chasing a lone TIE fighter through space. This would directly mirror A New Hope‘s opening because they would be polar opposites of each other, visually portraying the drastic shift of power in just a few seconds. Similar shots of R2-D2 moving his head doesn’t do that.

However, that isn’t to say that the video is incorrect. Lucas evidently uses similar camera angles or motifs to what he already did in the Original Trilogy, but the problem is that most of them have little to no artistic merit. They’re just there for the sake of it.

I find that the Star Wars Prequels are so bad people make attempts to justify bad decisions or dumb down their expectations/opinions in order to rationalise what they’re seeing. Of course, this doesn’t extend to all fans; there are plenty of people who genuinely enjoy those movies, and if you do then fair play – that’s your opinion. I’m referring to the people who will say, “well, Revenge of the Sith isn’t THAT bad… right?” because it’s better than admitting that almost everything in those movies is terrible (from a certain point of view).

They’re not all-bad, though. There is the odd idea thrown in there that is actually pretty good, or could work well under the right direction. George Lucas was right in that the films should have been more political (you don’t really have a choice given the subject matter) and it shouldn’t look all grimy and used. The ‘clean’ look of the Prequels made sense to me because it contrasts with how the Original Trilogy looks, which represents the Empire’s tight and negative control over the galaxy. Liam Neeson is the best part of The Phantom Menace and Ewan McGregor is the best part of the following two movies; the idea of pod-racing is pretty cool and they have some good cinematography here and there. That’s as many compliments as I can name, though

But hey – this isn’t about discussing them! This is for a fan video that somebody made. We’ll discuss the Star Wars Prequels another time – but I’ll still hate them.