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Back when the Star Wars prequels first came out, they were polarizing. Many fans of the original trilogy hated though many young people experiencing George Lucas' space opera for the very first time loved them then and loved them still. It's been 20 years since the final prequel film, Revenge of the Sith, first hit theaters, So it seems like fitting time to re-evaluate, well, everything about them, really. From Jar Jar Binks and the taxation of trade routes to that final climactic...
that broke the internet in half? Let's talk about it. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we're revisiting the Star Wars prequels on this episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. These days, there's a lot of news. It can be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider this from NPR as a podcast that helps you make sense of the news.
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what the day's news might mean for you. Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics Podcast. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Joining me today is Pop Culture Happy Hour producer Hafsa Fatima. Hey Hafsa. Hi Glenn. Hi. Also with us is filmmaker, pop culture critic, and iHeartRadio producer Joelle Monique. Hey Joelle. Hey Glenn. Alright folks, as you can tell by this lineup...
We are representing several generations of Star Wars fans because I think that's the only useful way to talk about these movies. The Star Wars prequels, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith follow Anakin Skywalker's transformation into Darth Vader. Anakin is played as a boy by Jake Lloyd and by Hayden Christensen as a young man. He falls in love with Queen-turned-Senator Padme, played by Natalie Portman. Annie?
My goodness, you've grown. Some of you have grown more beautiful, I mean. Well for senator He gets trained as a Jedi and gets seduced to the dark side of the Force by the kindly politician Palpatine, who is played by Ian McDiarmid. Palpatine, of course, is secretly the evil Darth Sidious. Good point of view, Rannigan. The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way.
including their quest for greater power. I mean, he's not wrong. With Anakin's help, Sidious seizes control of the Republic, declares himself Emperor, and wipes out most of the Jedi Order. As for Anakin, he enters into a climactic duel with his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, played in the prequels by Ewan McGregor. Yeah! Let's not join them! Balance to the fourth! That duel leaves Anakin so injured that only an iconic helmet and set of armor can keep him alive.
Meanwhile, Padme dies in childbirth and her twins, Luke and Leia, get separated and sent off to live in hiding. Hafsa, kick us off. Where did you stand on these films when you saw them? and how has that changed, or has it changed over time? So, full disclosure, I was about six years old when The Phantom Menace came out, so I didn't exactly have the best critical.
thought process are these bad movies objectively yes but did kid hafza have a great time growing up with them yes she did Because as a kid, all I wanted to really see was lightsaber duels and sci-fi stuff. And these movies were a big part of my life growing up. Even when I got older and I heard the critiques, I think it was too late because the movies were already pretty endeared to me.
So yes, I am a prequel appreciator, and I can love them while also making fun of them. And they're bad, but they're my bad. Okay. Bad, but my bad. You remind me of my... nieces and nephews who are pretty much your age, which is exactly the age I was. when Star Wars came out, so we'll talk about that. This is, I think, a very important barometer for how you feel about these films in general. Joelle?
I have it on good authority that you weren't sold on them when you saw them first, but you've come around on them, which is a fascinating proposition. Tell me more about that. So picture it. It's 1999. which means I'm 10 years old. So I had come up like re-watching Star Wars. Like when they released those on VHS and then again on DVD, we got every iteration that came out. We were watching them religiously. I was a Star Wars stan. This is my first.
Midnight screening ever. It's huge. Okay, I have the Pizza Hut cups. I'm fully invested. Pod racing. I mean, just wow. It blows me away. I love the first one. So when we talk about Attack of the Clones, cover 13, I'm thinking a little bit higher now, a little more attuned. I'm like, what's happening? And the adults around me are hating it. And so immediately I'm like, well then it's not good. I don't like it. It's bad. And then you see the third one.
We are no longer doing midnight showings. No, which I remember walking out of that movie just being like, what? Why? What's happening? It's awful. I'm with you so far. Before in a few years, I'm in high school. Clone Wars is coming out. It's an animated TV show. That's like, what if we explained how Anakin turned to the dark side? I think if you cherry pick certain episodes, they're so beautiful and wonderful and loving.
and do a lot to expand the lore of Anakin in this era that when you go back to watch these movies you're like haha I saw that like side battle Anakin and Obi-Wan were sort of like mildly chit-chattering about on the side so that's how I've come around to this idea Now, as an adult, I have such an appreciation for George's forward view on filmmaking. After this, people are flocking to doing digital filmmaking.
And while neither, let's be real, the originals or the prequels are your gold standard of filmmaking. It's not everything you want out of movies. Both fundamentally changed how we make movies in America. Is it sometimes gaudy? Absolutely, okay? But they were doing it at a time when no one could touch it. Even Jar Jar. I have many a critique.
on Jar Jar but this is our first digital character portrayed by a young black guy and he's really pushing the limits of what you can do and despite some of the choices made here His physical talent is so present on screen. So it makes that character blue. I mean, you might still find him annoying and hateful or whatever, but...
It's believable that he's there in the scene. It's working. And so from a cinematic history level, I have a lot of appreciation for the prequels. This is interesting what I'm hearing from you both because when I saw the original trilogy, I was... Well, I was nine years old when Star Wars came out. I knew it was a film for kids, but it felt adult to me because it was live action and people died in it. And I hadn't seen that many films that were allowed. Everything I saw was like animation or...
Disney stuff and I felt like I was going above my station I was watching an adult film even though it was pew pew pew and space wizards and all and then when Empire came out that film felt directly targeted to me like it was a little bit more adult a little bit more sophisticated But something happened. What happens is these films stay the same and you change around them. Because when Jedi came out... I remember stepping out of that theater, I was 15 at that time, and thinking,
I have outgrown this franchise mostly because we spent so much time with the teddy bears. The Ewoks, that I hated then, still kind of hate, that I felt like, oh, these films have stayed the same. They were always for kids. And I grew up, even though I was only 15 at the time. What I'm hearing from you, Hofstra, is an emotional reaction that stays with you. And I still have a kind of an emotional reaction to those original films.
But, Joelle, I'm hearing a more intellectual, critical voice kicking in, your adult critical sense of where these films stand in film history and the use of digital. That's interesting to me. Joel, talk to me about your emotional connection to the films. I would argue that the flaw with these films is that they're made by a director with a great eye for technical detail.
but not a sense of emotional nuance at all. The dialogue is a struggle. Yes. Okay. Where's the emotional connection for this? It's in three parts. And their names are Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Padme. There's something so wonderful. about Frank Oz's voice coming in and just guiding you as Yoda through some of these beats. One of my best memories of this franchise is when Yoda whips out the lightsaber and the audience just absolutely beside. We gotta see Yoda fight! Freaking awesome! I like
Leia didn't love her. Thought she was really cool as a kid, but also I was like, she's the girl. Now, Padme has a little bit of... She's the girl energy. But also, she gets to be a super smart girl. I love the smart girls. I love the super brilliant ones. And watching her get to be not just Queen in her fabulous outfits, which, again...
Loved, adored, definitely tried to get my mom to let me dress up on her. She was not about it. I really appreciate it. Here's a young woman and we watched her become a senator and like everything that Padme does except for dating Anakin which we will talk about later was fabulous to me I really loved her and then Ewan McGregor
Honestly, I don't know if they could have gotten to a second movie without him. Maybe a third. I don't think they could have gotten to a third without Ewan because he's just so damn charming. You just love him.
I guess finally, I'm just a sucker for lore, Glenn. I'm so sorry. Like, if you give me an average show, a shot full of, like, a lot of lore, I'm gonna be invested. I'm gonna be picking it apart. I'm trying to understand, like, why are the characters making these choices and how do these things fall into place?
I think that's what it is. It's really, it's those three characters plus the expansion of lore that really worked for me. Now, Hafsa, with your experience with The Phantom Menace, I have some questions about because. It has been over a decade since I watched The Phantom Menace. I did so just in prep for this show. And the first 45 minutes of that film, Hafsa, is so much Jar Jar in a way that I did not recall.
It's all Okie Day and How Wooed and Excuse Me, and I'd forgotten how much it is. I kind of want to defend Jar Jar Binks because the internet came for him. just as it was still developing. It was just starting to bring nerds together into their little toxic clouds of hate. And I think, you know, certainly Ahmed Best, who voiced and mo-cap Jar Jar got a raw deal because he was just doing what he was hired to do. But what he was hiring to do was so much over and above kiddie stuff than even the EY.
And yet, at the same time, this is also a movie that gets bogged down in going to committee, and I have a vote of no confidence. So, were you down with Jar Jar and the sipping cup and the whole, you know, me so wooed aspect of it? Or... Did you understand why there was so much politics? So no, at eight years old, I did not understand what a trade federation was. It was a little hard for me to kind of get the nuance of that. But I will say, even as a kid, I found Jar Jar very annoying.
I did not like the Misa dialogue. I did not like how inefficient he was. I do remember, though, that Toys R Us was full of Jar Jar Binks. so they were really really selling that it was on he was hitting the shelves so i think they were really really pushing him as like hey this is like the big merchandising character I will say that even as a kid, The Phantom Menace was perhaps my least favorite of the trilogy. A lot of it sort of went over my head at that point, but I just think that...
There was the concept of a good movie. Like, Star Wars isn't just about lightsabers. It's also about politics. It's also about trade rights. There's like a gem of a really good film in there that never quite comes through. Overall, I think George Lucas has always defended these movies as like it's for kids. But you can have, I think, a good kids movie. without dialogue like, are you an angel?
I am not even kidding is something that Anakin says to Padme when they first meet. I know, I'd forgotten about it, but yeah. There's a way to appeal to the children without making them cringe. But there's a bigger issue here, which is I think... No matter what age we were when we saw The Phantom Menace, we can all remember where we were when we first encountered those immortal iconic words. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute. What does that mean?
The sentence right before that, the one that opens the crawl, is a lot better. It's like, turmoil has engulfed the galactical public. And you're like, turmoil engulfed. These are active words. I can get into this. Oh, this is going to be great. But he was tipping his head.
And some would argue, and I want to get your take on this, some would argue that he was doing this intentionally because over the course of these three films, one thing he does show is that fascism takes advantage of very deliberative processes like democracy. And then there's even lines in The Phantom Menace about this where Padme says, like, courts will be too slow. So while the legislature and the courts are just dithering, evil happens.
Did he make that case for you guys? Lucas has been very clear about what his political stance is and how he wants to wield Star Wars as visual metaphor specifically Vietnam was on his mind during the original series but I would say what he failed to do was to make that understandable to folks who have no idea about politics As a kid, I was like, whatever. Some stuff is happening. Grown-ups are fighting. It's bad. Okay, and now we're back. There's a romance that I...
fully don't understand. Right. Weird. Okay, now the lightsabers are backing him in and we're racing. We're now in a moment where the greatest Star Wars check out Andor if you haven't yet. is making all of those things really easy to understand and really palatable. The films don't stand on... their politics in that they're just not conveyed. Well, really until the last film and only kind of.
The spectacle is what upholds these films, the costumes, John Williams' score, of course, and Natalie Portman and Elon McGregor's performances that really keep people in their seats, whereas the politics, I think most people were able to either just... let it go by or ignore completely. The prequel trilogy is like orbiting these concepts, but they're not fully hitting it.
and it makes you wonder what could these movies have looked like in the hands of a different director or a different screenwriter. Which, to be fair, George Lucas apparently did go to Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and asked them to take on this project of the prequels and they all said no so he was kind of left to deal with these movies on his own as I sort of grew up and got older I started to see kind of like
the political metaphors that this saga was dealing with and also if you kind of go beyond the movies. I started reading the books when I was in high school. So like, there are a lot of books. in the prequel canon and so i think through those books and also the novelization of the revenge of the sith by matthew stover which i think is one of the best books i've read period you kind of understand like joelle said like
How did Anakin fall? It wasn't just because of Padme, but it was also because he slowly became disillusioned with a larger political and spiritual system that he grew up in.
and then suddenly began to question and said, I don't think I believe in this anymore. And I think that's a pretty universal experience. I think many people, you know, who have grown up in certain cultures or communities, have kind of grown up and said hey maybe this isn't for me maybe i don't agree with all of these values and that really is i think anakin's larger journey that i wish the films
had spent a little bit more time exploring instead of like pew pew pew stormtrooper clone. Yeah, I will say I'm going to give George Lucas this much was he did spend the prequel films trying to demystify the jedi or at least de-idealize them i guess because
There are a lot of folks who hate on the modern sequels, the ones with Rafe and Poe for being anti-Jedi. Oh, you don't understand the Jedi order. You make the Jedi seem out of touch and bad because Luke in those films is pretty anti-Jedi. But these movies, the prequels,
like all the others, are trapped in a black and white universe, a dark side, light side, where do you go with it? Where's the ambiguity? So in these movies, they're depicting the jedi again in keeping with his whole notion of a bureaucracy as the enemy basically he depicts the jedi as not corrupt because that would be too like dark side but haughty and imperious and So sure of themselves.
Which is why a lot of the stuff Palpatine says to Anakin, yeah, you can read it as, oh, it's lies and deceit, but also... Have you heard the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? Best seen, I think. But no, I mean, like he says in that clip we heard...
They are different sides of the same coin because there's a scene where Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, he goes to Yoda and he says, I'm scared of losing something. And this comes after he has like his vision of Padme dying in childbirth. He doesn't tell Yoda that's what it is. But Yoda's response is, hey man, you need to let this stuff go and be a good Jedi. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is. What must I do, Master Yoda? Train yourself to let go
you fear to lose. Imagine if that conversation had gone differently, like maybe the entire order wouldn't have been wiped out. If this order that has been so rigid for the last hundreds of years had maybe done a little introspection and evolved. And they had gone back and actually saved his mom. Come on. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. They take this little boy from his mother, never go back, never allow him to visit.
Even when the film seems to be trying to distinguish Jedi from Sith, it loops right back around to they're far too similar. If you think about Obi-Wan's line, only the Sith, Dylan Absolute. Which is in and of itself an absolute. Which is an absolute. Yes, exactly. It's like, sir, read the room. What is going on?
We can now come to Padme and Anakin. Yes, we can. And this romance. Was there ever a point in your watching where you were like, hey... this couple make it sense it's hot it's working for me even as a small child me either as a small young lady i was like no man i was deeply uncomfortable with anakin staring at padme Padme saying, please don't look at me this way. And then Anakin proceeding to creep on her for like an entire movie.
They roll around in a grass field. She's a senator! They fight a battle together, and then they get married. And, you know, three years later. And why? Yeah, this to me is the biggest failing of this series, because... It relies so heavily on that storyline working. Yes, I'm convinced about why he fell in love with her because he's had this 10-year obsession with her.
Why did she fall in love with him? Like, where does that change that part? I have an answer. Okay, okay, give it to us. As I watched these recently, I was struck by the first time I brought these on home video, and I listened to the George Lucas commentary track. And I was struck, then and now. by how much time he spends commenting on the dry technical aspect.
I've ever shot. How he can do something now that he could never do in 1977. How much of this or that set was purely digital, purely CGI. If he ever mentioned Things like story, characters, motivation, emotions, even though he was the one responsible for them, he was the one writing them, I don't remember it. This is a director with an eye for technical detail instead of emotional truth. And there's not much new to say about Hayden Christensen in these films.
Can we give him the benefit of the doubt, though? Can we say that, like, the character of Darth Vader had already entered the public consciousness in such a major way that there was no way any actor, much less certain Christiansen, who has been good in other things, could bridge that gap in our minds. I'm going to defend my boy here. Please do. I love Miesma Hayden Christensen. I do. And I really feel there's a lack of directing that is responsible for what we end up in the end role.
There's like key moments where you're like, this kid is tuned in. That I hate you is visceral. It sends chills down my spine every time. I'm like, that's real. He's in that moment. when he comes back after his mom has passed and he's just talking to Padme about like what his future looks like now and that single he almost gets a Denzel worthy single tear down his face I'm like he's in it They just- make him start at rage. And they never differentiate.
So as an actor, he has nowhere to go. He's trapped. Without these little touches, you can't get, like, in Empire Strikes Back, one of the greatest Star Wars films of all time. It's so keyed into it. I mean, if you look at the Leia and Han scene, their romance scene.
really soft just a couple of lines here and there so that you're completely leaning into like oh my god these two are like it's real even when you get these sort of isolated moments with them it reads as so silly almost as if they're not talking to each other which frequently feels like they're not talking to each other about the same time and we've seen these actors do that really well. It takes a lot to make Natalie look not great in a movie. And I don't mean physically. I mean not.
like she's performing well she's so extremely talented and there are moments in here where i'm like i'm not sure she's fully in this scene and that's bizarre i have to defend my fellow canadian in the media we gotta stick together i also have to say Natalie Portman was only a few years away from winning the Oscar for Black Swan. You have Ewan McGregor, you have Ian McDiarmid, who is really Hannah Montana-ing this.
Darth Sidious thing like when he puts the hood on he's a Sith Lord but then he takes the hood off and he's the Chancellor I'm like really like nobody spotted this but you know there is again like the potential of this cast to have been so good but they're really working with what they have I don't think Hayden was in the same category of being as good as an actor.
as someone like ewan mcgregor to be honest but that script did not do them any favors right and he's so much better when he's there like in the opening scenes of uh revenge of the sith when they're like just going around being brother. They're like homies. They're like, okay, we're going to do this one. We got to do the other thing.
they're so fun to watch like that entire like sequence of them is a good one being together is great and the minute you pull them apart it's just like my god it's static over here the energy is gone I could have used another movie of this so that that ending hits a little bit harder. So I wanted to say, like, I think also Star Wars is not just the movies.
or the books or the shows, but it's also about the community that we've built around these movies and this legacy. And it's been really lovely to see Hayden Christensen embraced at things like Star Wars Celebration. I went to the 20th anniversary release of The Revenge of the Sith.
and i watched it in theaters again and it was like coming home like it was amazing i've watched this movie so many times and it was really funny to see all of the scenes that had become memes over the years like anakin you're breaking my heart or this is where the fun begins. People were applauding and cheering and there were lightsabers.
So just kind of seeing that community come back and embrace these films and, you know, like me, not think they're the best things to have happened to the cinema, but also appreciate them for what they are. That's been really heartening to see. That's great.
Well, you've heard three different journeys with the Star Wars prequels, and now we want to know what your journey was. Two things. Where did you start out with these, and where are you now? Find us at facebook.com slash pchh, and that brings us to the end of our show. Joelle Monique, Hafsah Fatima, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, Glenn. I want to say that sand is rough, coarse, and irritating. Not like Eli. It certainly is.
This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Hafsa Fatima and edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzoff and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all next time. On this week's Wild Card Podcast. says she can have a hard time What is the plan man? That is the last year. It's like, oh boy. a pickle right now, guys. What you gonna
I'm Rachel Martin. Wanda Sykes is on Wildcard, the show where cards control the conversation. On The Indicator from Planet Money Podcast, Trump's tariffs. It's called, in game theory, a trigger strategy, or sometimes called grim trigger, which sort of has a cowboy-esque ring to it. To what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is. Listen to NPR's The Inderguide from Planet B.