[Ghoulish Delight]

Okay, so here's what I've been thinking regarding the prequels, and why they disappointed me so much.

First off, I'm very much about form when it comes to film. You can have the best story and ideas in the world, if you can't present it in an artisticly pleasing manner, you've failed to make a good film. So no matter how interesting the back story is, no matter how satisfying it is to learn that Anikin's own selfishness was his undoing, these will remain bad films.

Now, I'll admit, the original trilogy was hardly flawless. It shares, in fact, some of the same flaws I'm quick to point out in the prequels. But you've got to look at context. It's one thing for a movie shot on a tight budget, on a tight time schedule, with a largely inexperienced cast, answering to a studio, in sometimes difficult conditions, and that's pushing technological as well as artistic boundaries to have a few flaws. In the end you end up with an overall good movie with a few of the difficulties they had to overcome to make it peeking through. But when you've got an essentially unlimited budget, a time schedule of your own making, a cast of experienced actors, no one to answer to but yourself, shooting almost entirely in front of green screen, and the resources that prevent any technological challenge, those flaws should possibly disappear, and at the very least not get MORE glaring. What a failure.

And it makes me wonder if those flaws from the OT can be written off as a result of the limitations brought on by the situation. Which just sucks. Part of what helps elevate Star Wars past those flaws is the "knowledge" that, yeah, there was part of the vision that just didn't quite make it onto the screen. And as fans, we happily fill that in, "knowing" that flawless vision was there, but he was just limited by all those mitigating factors. Well, we don't "know" that anymore. If the Special Editions and these prequels were that amazing complete vision that just was too complex to make it onto the screen, then I think that really detracts from the original trilogy.