SF Signal has a new contributor who decided to start with a bang by arguing that the Star Wars prequels were actually pretty good (Part 1/Part 2). I can sort of halfway agree with his notion that the original movies had built themselves up to mythic proportions in our heads by the time the new ones came out (particularly for those who were at a young and impressionable age in 1976), but I do have to question his claim that these too-high expectations were what made the prequels fall flat.

The things he holds up as illustrations of areas where the new movies are superior to the old are things like “sound effects” and “diversity of alien species,” whereas my thoughts are, “even a snuff film can have good production values” and “those aren’t examples of the rich variety of life in the Star Wars universe, those are an easy way to expand your line of action figures.” Then he addresses the deficits of the new movies by claiming that the old ones had the same issues: Bad writing, wooden acting, and so on. I have a couple of thoughts on this: 1) The central plot of the old movies involved thwarting a plan to subjugate the galaxy. The central plot of the new movies involved, um, trade negotiations. 2) The writing was significantly worse in the new movies. Or, as James Lileks put it:

they had dialogue so bad “everyone could have spoken in an Al Jolson accent and it would have been an improvement. (Really! Try it. “Hold me, Anny! Hold me like ya did on Naboo, Anny!”)

3) The new movies had to go to ridiculous lengths to shoehorn themselves into the canon of what fans knew was “the future,” and their success was qualified at best: Given what Obi-Wan went through with R2D2 in the prequels, could he really not remember ever owning a droid a few decades later? (We’re not even going to discuss the whole concept of testing positive for Jedi.)

Take a look at his arguments and let us know what you think. Were the new movies unfairly dismissed?