First off, the movie starts off great. The production is really good with nice visuals, graphics and cinematography. The first 15 minutes contain a lot of short snippets and interviews from people on both sides, explaining their points on the prequels. Some negative, some funny, some positive. All in all, I thought that the movie was going to feel like an earnest attempt to unite all fans, by at least understanding each other, agreeing to disagreeing in a civil way.

Then the movie completely stops with the negative stuff, and turns into ridiuculousness. Every interview, shows people defending the prequels, with the context "After watching the movies several times over 5-10 years, I now kind of get them".
Seriously, if it takes you that long to learn to like something, it's not in my opinion an honest critique.

Then you start noticing that these people are constantly contradicting themselves. They say one thing that's really great about the prequels, with the notion that Lucas had it all planned and that he's a genius, when all I'm thinking is that there are tons of contradictory examples to this later on in the films. All of these examples were so many and so condensed into such a short period of time, I couldn't keep track of them.

Then, they basically go into the whole notion that prequel-haters neglects everything good Lucas has done, as a person, but also as an innovator. When I'm shitting on the prequels for being obtuse, stiff and tonally fucked up movies, I'm in no way, shape or form, discrediting Lucas for pioneering special effects, non-linear digital editing or digital filming. But nor is Lucas protected because of these accomplishments, which no one seems to bring up.

Then we get to the ring theory, and all I'm thinking of, is on Bullshit!, when these Feng Shuie experts says that it's some kind of science in regards to rearranging furniture, when they can't agree on which way is the best. These people are all citing different examples of how everything is supposedly connected, when it's a perfect example of finding symbolism where you want to.


Room 237 anyone?

All in all, movie was nicely done from a structural and technical standpoint, but content-wise, it felt incredibly one-sided and without teeth. If the movie had had just a couple of segments with counter-arguments from the other side, it would've felt like a much more earnest and interesting movie. As it is now, it feels more like a convoluted defense-statement.

Fudgepuppy said:

documentary summary

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Thanks for the breakdown. I think I will try to catch it just to see the later parts just out of curiosity.

Are the Plinkett reviews brought up at all? I imagine you would have to mention it in some manner since they are so well known.

jdstorm said:

The Trade Federation invaded Naboo, at the behest of Darth Sidious/Senator Palpatine due to its location along what was a vital trade route.

The ability to maintain supply lines in a major conflict is crucial to winning a war and by invading Naboo, Palpatine was essentially trying to cut the republics supply line, giving them limited access to those resources in any future war.

TLDR Yes. The natural resource the Trade Federation wanted was a refuelling location/Shipping lane

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How does that work with light speed travel

GekigangerV said:

Thanks for the breakdown. I think I will try to catch it just to see the later parts just out of curiosity.

Are the Plinkett reviews brought up at all? I imagine you would have to mention it in some manner since they are so well known.

Click to expand...

No, and this is what irritated me so much. The revived critique of the prequels, came from Plinkett. Outright ignoring it, just makes it seem like they didn't want to ruin the echo-chamber they were creating with the movie.

Like if no one who had never heard of Plinkett, and who hasn't seen the prequels in years, they would probably get out of this movie and think "Ah yeah, I think that there's something to these movies I obviously missed", when the Plinkett-reviews essentially did perfect counter-arguments 5 years ago.

Not including Plinkett, is like making a documentary about Steve Jobs, and not even mentioning Wozniak.

And another thing, they try to make it seem like Lucas was bullied and hated by the prequel-haters for trivial things like Jar-Jar, while completely ignoring everything regarding the special editions and his overall contempt for the fans who disagree with him.