I Love Star Wars.

[beccatoria]

I hate the prequels.

Actually, that's not entirely true, but I mostly hate them, and I've never really written out why, at least not here. I'm not the only kid who hated the prequels. Hell, I wasn't exactly a kid when I first saw the movies, impoverished as my childhood was by parents who never thought to show them to me until the cinematic

Comments

[beccatoria]

Well, it does to me. Both in terms of his own character and in terms of others reactions to him, the fact that he was this great hero who fell to evil was really kind of central to my understanding of him. My issue is that I don't feel I can coherently read the reactions and statements of either Yoda or Ben Kenobi, or even Luke's certainty about his father's true self in the context of the psychopathy he exhibits in the prequels.

As to the prophecy, to be honest, they regard that with trepidation and a lot of concern rather than hope. There is constant talk of it being misread, or one person will raise it as a possibility and another will parry by talking of how arrogant Anakin's abilities have made him. They didn't even want to train him, even knowing the prophecy initially. It's far from presented as some wonderful, blind hope.

Star Wars is space fantasy myth and suspension of disbelief doesn't require absolute logic. I just find the idea of a great hero losing his way and becoming a villain - in broad, mythic terms - far more tragic and epic than a psychopath continuing to be a psychopath, just under a slightly different guise. Which I find...not really that epic at all.

Which also brings into play the contrast between the originals and the prequels again. Which I kind of touched on in my original post; even if ROTS achieves some emotional resonance based on the original trilogy, the reading of him as a psychopath from start to end robs the prequels of narrative punch, certainly in terms of Lucas' much-vaunted attempts to invoke the 1930s action serials against the background of the monomyth.

Believe me, the amount of Star Wars material I've consumed in my life, I've suspended my belief over some pretty bizarre stuff that was only trying to be epic, because I wanted that feeling, even though I understand, logically, it wasn't actually that well done. Probably the most recent example of this would be the Legacy of the Force series. Another would be my bullheaded devotion to the character of Nomi Sunrider. Hell, I defend Planet of Twilight because it makes me feel all pseudo epic and spinetingley and most people hate that book and think it's boring as cheese.

But I honestly feel that making Anakin a psychotic character, against the apparent intentions of the text, is a decision so bizarre and so incongruous that in the context of the prequels I can't see it as anything other than a narrative failure and in the context of the originals, it adds absolutely nothing and, in fact, takes away a great deal since many of the statements and beliefs about the character now no longer make sense.