THE STAR WARS PREQUELS ARE NON-CANON

The prequels had a lot of inconsistencies with the old trilogy, which could have been avoided if Lucas had compiled an exhaustive list of ‘historical’ references from episodes IV-VI and built from there. I’ll attempt to do this now. (Note: Not all the quotations will be accurate.)

A NEW HOPE:

1. Leia: “General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the clone wars.”
2. Leia knows where to find General Kenobi and Artoo seems to know how to locate him.(Artoo was probably given instructions from Leia’s father.)
3. Obi-Wan: “I’ve not gone by ‘Obi-Wan’ since, oh, before you were born.”
4. Obi-Wan: “Your father wanted you to have this, but your uncle wouldn’t allow it. He was afraid you’d follow old Obi-Wan on some dang fool idealistic crusade like your father did.”
5. Obi-Wan: Anakin was a brilliant pilot and a good friend.
6. Obi-Wan: “A young man named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil. He betrayed and murdered your father” (Later shown to be just Obi-Wan’s point of view.)
7. Beru: “He’s got too much of his father in him.” Owen: “That’s what I’m afraid of.”(Owen and Beru both knew Anakin before and possibly after he became Darth Vader, and Luke acts similarly to the way Anakin used to.)
8. Obi-Wan: “Your father’s lightsaber. An elegant weapon from a more civilized age.”
9. Tarkin: “Obi-Wan Kenobi? Surely he must be dead by now.” (This implies the empire knew Obi-Wan escaped the Jedi eradication, but they assumed him to be a non-threat.)
10. Vader: “The circle is now complete. When I last saw you I was but a learner, now I am the master.” (This infers that Vader lost the last time they fought, and that he has grown stronger since then. Also, he was a student at the time of their last battle.)
11. Obi-Wan: “That was before the dark times, before the empire.” (Things used to be better before the Emperor rose to power.)
12. Han Solo was boarded by Imperials and was forced to dump cargo belonging to Jabba the Hutt. Jabba has since placed a bounty on Han’s head.
13. Obi-Wan: “I can’t seem to remember ever owning a droid.” (Obi-Wan never met Artoo or Threepio before.)
14. I got the feeling that Owen wasn’t really Luke’s uncle, but rather a friend of the family who adopted him, and that they were seeking refuge on Tattooine because it was the least likely place Vader would look. (Why wouldn’t Vader know where to find Luke if they were related and always lived on Tattooine?)

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:

1. Obi-Wan: “You will go to the Degobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me.”
2. Yoda: “You are reckless.” Obi-Wan: “So was I, if you’ll remember.”
3. Yoda senses anger in Luke and is afraid he will turn like his father did.
4. Emperor: “The son of Skywalker must never become a Jedi.” (The Emperor almost certainly knew Vader was having a son but couldn’t ascertain his whereabouts until now.)
5. Han has history with Lando in Cloud City. Lando is the Millenium Falcon’s previous owner but lost it in a bet.
6. Darth Vader is loyal to the Emperor to his face, but plots to overthrow him behind his back. (Shows the relationship between Vader and the Emperor, as well as the nature of the dark side.)
7. Vader has a really scarred head—I always thought the Emperor did that to him with lightning.
8. Yoda: “Your father, powerful Jedi was he. Mmm… powerful Jedi.”
9. Obi-Wan: “He was our last hope.” Yoda: “No, there is another.” (Obi-Wan may not know about Leia being Luke’s sister.)

RETURN OF THE JEDI:

1. Obi-Wan: Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.
2. Yoda: “Once gone am I the last of the Jedi will you be…. Do not underestimate the powers of the emperor…. There is another Skywalker.”
3. Yoda is 900 years old, and therefore was alive way before the prequels.
4. Obi-Wan: Luke’s sister was hidden when she was born and, “remains safely anonymous.”
5. The emperor calls Vader ‘my friend.’ (Shows that he does not fear Vader—even though he knows Vader is plotting against him.)
6. The Emperor uses Luke’s anger to tempt him with the dark side of the Force. Since this scene is all about Luke becoming his father, this was most likely how Anakin was turned as well.
7. The Emperor is a very clever and evil bad guy—he allows the location of the shield generator to fall into the rebels’ hands so that he can lure them into a trap. This hints at how the Emperor thinks and hints at how he may have risen to power.
8. Leia remembers her mother in images--she was “very beautiful, but sad.” She also, “died when (Leia) was very young.” Luke has, “no memory of (his) mother.” This suggests they were separated at birth, with Leia living with her mother for a few years before she died.
9. The force is strong in Luke’s family. Anakin must have been a strong Jedi, and there’s a reason for Jedi to have kids if Force sensitivity is hereditary. (Samurai were allowed to marry, I think….)
10. Obi-Wan thought he could, “train (Anakin) just as well as Yoda,” but was wrong.
11. Vader has robot hands in addition to his scarred face and inability to breathe.
12. Yoda: “Once you turn down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
13. Obi-Wan’s point of view is that, “(Vader) betrayed and murdered your father.” This means he was a very good friend who very suddenly turned to the dark side and became a totally different person, almost as if he had died and was replaced by Darth Vader. When we finally see Anakin’s face, he looks as though he was a very good person.

From these items we can extrapolate a few things:

            *Artoo (and most likely Threepio) is a new addition to the cast

*Leia lived on Alderaan with her mother until she was probably a toddler

*Kenobi served the Alderaanian government with Anakin as his student and friend.

*Anakin was a great pilot and ‘strong in the force.’

* Kenobi left the service of Alderaan when the Empire took over, changing his name to Ben.

Also: Leia’s father knew where Kenobi was hiding, but probably not where Yoda was. Vader’s wife/lover would’ve been on Alderaan at the time she gave birth to Luke and Leia. Vader must have known she was pregnant, but didn’t know she was having twins, which means she probably gave birth after going into hiding as a result of Vader turning evil. Since Leia was ‘princess’ of Alderaan, it may be inferred that Anakin was sleeping with the Queen of Alderaan behind the King’s back, but it’s more likely that Leia was adopted by King Organa in order to hide her because Luke kept his father’s last name, meaning that Anakin was probably married to Luke’s mother. Also, Anakin left his lightsaber behind with Obi-Wan to give to Luke before joining the Emperor and becoming Darth Vader—he probably went on a mission he didn’t think he would return from.

Therefore, the following is almost certainly what really happened:

Yoda trained Obi-Wan, a reckless student who turned out to be a good Jedi nonetheless. Anakin and Obi-Wan then served on Alderaan during the clone wars under King Organa. Obi-Wan was training Anakin against Yoda’s wishes, leaving him unprepared to face temptation from the Dark Side. Towards the end, Anakin left his pregnant spouse to go on a suicide mission, leaving his lightsaber behind for Luke. During this mission, the Emperor tempted him with the power of the Dark Side, and he succumbed and was turned to evil and became Darth Vader, possibly after a dreadfully scarring torture. Vader then helped the Emperor take control of the galaxy in exchange for the power he was tempted with, facing Obi-Wan one last time as master vs. pupil. Vader was defeated by Obi-Wan in this battle.

Obi-Wan went into hiding thereafter, changing his name to ‘Ben Kenobi’ and leaving his and Luke’s location known only to King Organa. Because of this, it’s possible to infer that Obi-Wan faced the Emperor after his duel with Darth Vader and was defeated. Obi-Wan brought Owen Lars with him to Tattooine to raise Luke as his nephew. Anakin’s spouse lived only a few years more, and Leia was adopted by King Organa to hide her, possibly after her mother died from some disease or something (not childbirth, that’s just stupid).

Yoda either also went into hiding, or was so difficult to find already that he didn’t have to move from his home on Degobah.

Using this as the framework for a plot, I can now propose a new storyline. It doesn’t really even have to be all that different from the existing one:

Obi-Wan is trained by Yoda. Obi-Wan meets and befriends Anakin, who is a brash young pilot. Yoda refuses to train Anakin—perhaps he is too roguish or angry, but Obi-Wan wants him to be trained because he’s a good friend and strong in the force, so he trains him himself, but in a different way than he did Luke.

There is then a sudden attack on the Old Republic by a near infinite number of clones. This creates a crisis during which the emperor rises to power and creates a militaristic regime in order to combat this new threat. The Jedi are the Knights of the Old Republic and therefore are the generals of the Army of the Republic. Eventually the threat becomes so great that the emperor is ‘forced’ to seize much more power than he should have, institute martial law, and issue a witch hunt for suspected cloners. Everyone is under suspicion, and therefore the Emperor has every right (nay, the obligation) to punish suspected cloners/spies/communists without trial. When Anakin discovers that the clones are actually under the Emperor’s control, he leaves his pregnant wife and lightsaber behind and tries to confront the Emperor, but is defeated easily. The Emperor tortures Anakin, but he will not turn despite his anger. The Emperor then searches Anakin’s feelings and learns he is a father-to-be. The Emperor suggests that if Anakin does not turn then perhaps his son will. Anakin then gives in to his anger and desire for revenge against the Emperor and turns to the dark side, longing to defeat him.

Once the Emperor is in power, he accuses the Jedi of being separatists in control of the clones all along and presents false proof, most likely by tricking them into attacking the Republic. He then uses his armies and Darth Vader to eradicate the Jedi.

The Emperor then sends Vader to Alderaan in order to collect Luke so that he can be trained as a dark Jedi. Vader goes with the intention of taking Luke somewhere to train him to fight the Emperor. Before he leaves, however, Obi-Wan faces Darth Vader and defeats him in battle, but is in turn defeated by the Emperor. Obi-Wan is forced to flee and takes Luke and Owen to Tattooine where they all go into hiding, leaving Leia behind with King Organa to be raised anonymously as a princess.

The Emperor remains in power because, by now, his troops are totally loyal and/or afraid of him, and also because there is the constant threat from the Rebel Alliance (which he himself created, as in The Force Unleashed).

This being said, I’d like to now complain about the existing prequels and propose ways of making them better.

THE PHANTOM MENACE:

1. Jar-Jar’s character could have worked. I like how he was supposed to be a down-on-his-luck everyman who, through his chance encounter with the Jedi and good attitude, left the movie in a much better position than when he started, but he was much too cartoonish, over-the-top, and annoying. My main complaints about him are that his voice was too high-pitched and that he kept acting like a clown. This totally disrupted the tone of TPM, even as light-hearted as it already was. He was basically “comic relief that wasn’t funny.”
2. Anakin was much too young, and the actor portraying him couldn’t act. It was too much of a stretch for the audience to believe that a nine-year-old was going to end up marrying Natalie Portman. Also, we’re told he is a great mechanic, but we only see him put an eye on Threepio and start an already completed podracer. Lucas should have had Threepio explode (again) and made Anakin frantically try to fix him before he died, or maybe they needed a droid quickly in order to decipher a computer’s programming and he built him on the spot. They kept emphasizing that Anakin is a good pilot, but he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing when he’s flying around accidentally blowing up the Trade Federation’s space station. (More on that later.) Also, he is supposed to be stronger in the Force than Yoda, but he never uses the Force except to fly his podracer. I think he should’ve accidentally used telekinesis, precognition, or telepathy once or twice to show how strong he is, otherwise we don’t really get the impression at all.
3. Queen Amidala was supposed to come off as regal and magnanimous, but her delivery was lifeless and robotic. Natalie Portman’s voice wasn’t deep or loud enough to do that, and she didn’t put enough feeling into her performance. When she was Padme she was kind of a weak character, as well. This sort of makes sense as she’s a servant, but it makes her suck—she didn’t have to be a humble servant, she could have imposed herself a little on the grounds that she is the queen’s representative. She’s the only weak female character in all of Star Wars. In short she wasn’t regal enough as Queen, and she wasn’t strong enough as Padme.
4. It was too easy to see through the disguise they put on Amidala—a little kid could figure out that Padme was the real queen. Also, when she stepped down and revealed that she was the real queen to Boss Nass, was her revelation really the only thing that convinced him to join her cause, even though “there’s a chance that many Gungans will die?” Supposedly the Gungans and the Naboo had a strong dislike of each other, but the only thing required to remove it was Padme saying, “I’m the real queen! I beg you for your help!” and Boss Nass is all like, “Yousa no thinkin’ yousa betta than the Gungans? Meesa likea this! Maybe weesa bein’ friends. Burble gurble burble gurble!”
5. The droids had no reason to be in the movie, especially since Obi-Wan didn’t remember ever meeting Artoo or Threepio before. Also, they don’t contribute anything to the plot other than to demonstrate that Anakin can supposedly build things. Compare this to the old trilogy, where the droids aren’t really part of the main plot (although they do prove useful from time to time), but they are mainly there to provide commentary and comic relief.
6. Qui-Gon Jinn had an opportunity to be a really interesting character—he had a James T. Kirk thing going where he was this renegade Jedi who felt the Council had grown too aloof. There was even a part where he had to be rebuked by Mace Windu and Yoda because he wanted to train Anakin against their better judgment, but there wasn’t even an argument there—no voices were raised and no harsh words were said. They should’ve had an opposing antagonist a-hole Jedi argue with him once or twice to show how far apart their opinions were and to create some conflict. All the same, wasn’t Obi-Wan supposed to have been trained by Yoda? And wasn’t Obi-Wan supposed to be the reckless one? It just felt like they inserted Qui-Gon in there so they’d have someone to kill off and also so that they could have Liam Neeson in the movie.
7. Samuel L. Jackson shouldn’t have been a calm, collected Jedi, they should’ve made him Captain Panaka and given him a gun so that he could yell and shoot things. That’s what Samuel L. Jackson does. If he had to have a lightsaber, they should have made him a bad guy so he could still yell.
8. Darth Maul had no character at all—even in the expanded universe his entire background can be summed up in one sentence: He was raised by Darth Sidius to fight the Jedi. In the movie, the only thing he does is fight the Jedi, and then he dies. He has maybe two lines throughout the whole movie, and we don’t see him do anything but track and fight the Jedi. The T-Rex in Jurassic Park had more personality than that! They should have shown Darth Sidius training him to hate the Jedi, or they should’ve shown the Jedi screwing up his past or something like that so that we know why he’s fighting them. (Boba Fett had only two lines in ESB, but we knew why he was hunting Han Solo.) Anyway, maybe Darth Maul thinks of Darth Sidius as a father and wants to make him proud? That way, they could’ve also shown him feel betrayed when it’s revealed that he’s been a tool of Darth Sidius the whole time just waiting to be sacrificed. Or perhaps he was lusting after power and was helping Darth Sidius in exchange for being trained to be a Sith? Or maybe fighting Jedi was part of his training and he botched it so that the Sith were discovered? Maybe Darth Sidius sacrificed him so that he wouldn’t have to repay his debt to the guy? Perhaps Darth Maul was being blackmailed into helping Darth Sidius? We don’t know anything about this guy, he needs more lines and they shouldn’t have killed him off for no reason.
9. On the same note, Darth Sidius was also too mysterious. We know he’s behind everything from the beginning, too, but we don’t know what his motives are or what he’s actually up to. Furthermore he’s also in the movie too much—they should’ve kept it hidden that the Trade Federation was being blackmailed the whole time and then at the very last second shown Darth Sidius for a few seconds so that we’re all in shock. Everyone who’s seen ESB or ROTJ would have flipped out and gone, “Aw snap, the Emperor was behind the whole thing all along!” So yeah, because he’s in the movie so much, but he’s unknown to all of the protagonists, we as the audience feel like we’re much smarter than all of the good guys put together, and when they finally reveal in the second movie that there is a Sith Lord running around doing stuff it comes as no surprise to us at all.
10. We know the Trade Federation is being blackmailed into invading Naboo, but we don’t know any of the details. (i.e. why they’re being blackmailed and what with?)
11. The entire premise of the movie is too vague and complicated. The Trade Federation is blockading Naboo because of some dispute over the taxation of certain trade routes, and they’re invading so that they can force Amidala to sign a treaty… I don’t understand this at all, and little kids won’t either. It makes you feel dumb when all these politics go over your head and all you want is an action-packed Star Wars movie.
12. The tone of the movie is too light-hearted and at some times even silly. We as an audience craved something that felt like A New Hope, but we got Rock-a-Doodle instead. Also, whatever humor is there is not funny.
13. This movie set the entire “CGI is overused” movement in motion. When you cram way too much fake stuff into every shot we get desensitized and there’s no tension as a result, despite the insane amount of things going on. Take the Planetcore scene, the podracing scene, the droid battle, and the spaceship battle as examples of this.
14. We don’t see a single human or Gungan bite the dust. If just one had died, it would make the audience wake up and realize the battle droids are shooting actual guns.
15. We don’t get the feel for anyone’s plight in this movie: The Naboo are being blockaded, but it doesn’t seem to affect anyone on the planet’s surface. The Gungans and the Naboo are in a constant feud with each other, but we never see any of it. There’s slavery on Tattooine, but Anakin and Shmi are allowed to have their own house and do as they please for the most part (build droids and podracers, play ball, etc.) Darth Maul always dreamed of playing violin, but we don’t see him practicing.
16. Obi-Wan was, in my opinion, the most entertaining character to watch in the whole prequilogy and he’s the only one who undergoes any sort of character development in The Phantom Menace. Jar-Jar becomes a general and Anakin gets released from slavery, but they don’t act any differently at the end of the movie because of these changes. Obi-Wan started as a padawan, witnessed his teacher’s death, had to make the decision on whether or not to train Anakin, and ended up more mature and a little more independent as a result. He should have been the focus of the whole first movie, especially since Anakin was just a stupid little kid at that point. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any good scenes and mainly stayed in Qui-Gon’s shadow the whole time. Furthermore, we didn’t get to learn about him as a character—he was thrust onto the screen and immediately started doing Jedi stuff in the first five minutes without properly introducing him or Qui-Gon. Where does he come from? How did he become a padawan? Wasn’t he supposed to be Yoda’s student? They really should have shown Qui-Gon Jinn training him a bit, so that those who are unfamiliar with Star Wars (which would be everyone watching these movies starting with Episode I) would learn what the Force is about, what the Jedi are, and what the trials are. Towards the end of the movie Qui-Gon says Obi-Wan is ready for the trials, but we aren’t told what those are so this just comes right out of the blue—was Obi-Wan looking forward to them? We don’t know. Later in the prequilogy they change his character around quite a bit without any real attempt at consistency, but despite all this he’s still very entertaining to watch.
17. The battle droids were totally useless comic relief villains in this movie, which would have been okay if everyone didn’t take them so seriously. In the Clone Wars cartoon network series they’re actually pretty funny because everyone in the show knows they’re useless, but in The Phantom Menace the Nemoidians treat them as though they’re completely capable of fending off a pair of Jedi—it just makes the villains seem totally stupid and out of their minds. It also makes it seem totally cheap when the film writer places an obstacle in front of the protagonists that is so easily swept away. I don’t think a single human or Gungan was shot by a battle droid the entire movie, even though they were ordered to wipe out the Gungans… all of them. And what sense does it make to have all the droids hooked up so that destroying the one space station makes them all inoperable? The Droidekas, however, were pretty cool because they actually posed a threat to the Jedi—Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were forced to flee from a pair of them.
18. Why would Watto make Anakin race in podraces if he ‘always bet(s) heavily on Sebulba?’
19. Anakin gets into a spaceship and Qui-Gon thinks it’s a good place for him to hide. Then he auto-pilots out into a battlefield, tries spinning because, “That’s a good trick,” and crashes into the hangar of the one space station that controls all the battle droids, even its shields are supposedly up. Then all the droids inside point their guns at his inoperable ship for who knows how long without firing. After a brief interlude the ship inexplicably works again and the droids just stand there while Anakin shoots them all and ‘accidentally’ blows up the space station’s main reactor, which deactivates the droid army and saves the day. While this was going on, all the legitimate pilots were getting gunned down by droids. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dumber sequence of events in any movie ever.
20. Nobody likes the idea of midichlorians because it takes the fantasy out of Star Wars. It also doesn’t really make sense—the Jedi are made up of many different species, so are we to assume that all species are capable of being affected similarly by a single symbiotic organism? Assuming that this symbiote isn’t contagious, how do all these different species have them? Furthermore, why doesn’t the Republic culture midichlorians and inject them into everyone so that they’d all have Force abilities?

ATTACK OF THE CLONES:

1. Anakin is thankfully not a little kid anymore, but his acting is terrible nonetheless. He often comes off as a creepy stalker and botches a lot of his lines. Furthermore, when he finally goes back to find his mother (ten years after he was released from slavery?!) and she amazingly dies right when he unties her, he has no reaction whatsoever. He does nothing but complain about Obi-Wan and argue with him, and they never show how they were supposed to work together as friends, or even show Obi-Wan teaching him anything. Obi-Wan tells us that his talents have made him arrogant, but we never see what makes him so gifted, and he seems more bratty and whiny than arrogant.
2. Why didn’t they go back to Tattooine to abolish slavery and to rescue/buy/contact Shmi? Also, why was she so important that fifty people sacrificed their lives attempting to rescue her? And then why did they just give up? (Wait… in A New Hope Uncle Owen was said to be able to fend off a horde of Sand People with a single blaster!) And after all that Anakin was able to infiltrate the sand people’s lair just by sneaking in after dark. What should have happened was he used the force to distract or defeat them all, then when he found his mother dead they should have shown him flipping out like crazy and killing every last sand person. Then they should have shown Anakin enjoying the slaughter and thusly starting his path down the dark side. After that, instead of botching lines and confessing everything to Padme, he should have lied to her about what happened, or at least shown satisfaction at eradicating them. Then maybe she could have then convinced him to stop being evil until the third movie. Just a few thoughts as to what would’ve been an interesting bit of plot development….
3. Christopher Lee is an awesome actor with an awesome voice, but although they mention him in the beginning of the movie they don’t show him until two-thirds through the movie. They wanted to make the audience question whether he was truly a villain by having him ask Obi-Wan to join him against the Sith Lord, but they rushed that scene and he didn’t really get that across well. Rather than having him talk to Obi-Wan while he was imprisoned, they should have had him secretly contact Obi-Wan to inform him about Darth Sidius. And why is his name Count Dooku? Furthermore, we don’t really see him do anything bad, we just hear him talk about politics until the whole movie culminates in a swordfight.
4. Dooku should have been no match for Yoda whatsoever. It should’ve been comparable to when Luke faced the Emperor—Yoda shouldn’t have even picked up a lightsaber, or at the very most he should’ve picked up Obi-Wan’s or Anakin’s…. but anyway, lightsabers are way below Yoda, so he shouldn’t have picked one up and started fighting at all, not against someone like Dooku. Here’s what I think should’ve happened: Dooku should have flung boulders and maybe lightning at Yoda (maybe fireballs—I don’t like how everyone has Force Lightning nowadays), and Yoda should’ve stood there calmly without lifting a finger in defense. He should’ve even let the boulders and stuff hit him and shatter, letting Dooku get more and more frustrated the whole time. Finally, if Dooku whipped his lightsaber out Yoda should’ve Force grabbed him or something (use the Force for knowledge and defense—never for attack). Then in desperation, Dooku should have attacked Obi-Wan or Anakin with the Force in order to make his escape, and Yoda should have just let him go on purpose because he is not a threat.
5. They overuse Force Lightning, they should come up with something original, something better than Force Glow-ball hands. How about Force Fireball? Force Solar Flare? Force Ice? Force Crystals? Force Forcefield? Force Spontaneous Combustion? Force Tornado? Force Iron Skin? Why not look to all the Star Wars games for inspiration?
6. NO JEDI SHOULD EVER SAY “THIS PARTY’S OVER.”
7. Did we really need to know Boba Fett’s backstory? He’s much cooler when he’s mysterious. Boba Fett is the kind of character that works best when he doesn’t say anything and you don’t see his face. With that out of the way, why did they kill off Jango Fett? He’s a cool bad guy, so they should have kept him until the third movie! And wasn’t he making a fortune off his DNA already? Why didn’t he retire from bounty hunting, an obviously dangerous job? Why did he hire another bounty hunter to assassinate Padme? And why did they want to kill her anyway? She’s no longer a queen at this point. And when they caught the shapeshifter, why did Jango shoot her (an ally) with a (traceable) poison dart instead of shooting the two Jedi with a non-projectile (non-traceable) laser blaster? Maybe it was Palpatine’s plan to have him be followed to Kamino, but if Palpatine’s plan was to have Obi-Wan discover the clone army on Kamino all along, why did he have a plan where so many things could have gone wrong? Count Dooku should have contacted him anonymously or something instead, this plan makes no sense whatsoever….
8. I guess they had to make Padme stop being the Queen in order to have her in the movie more, but now the whole star-crossed lover thing doesn’t work because there’s no reason why a senator can’t fall in love. Wait, that’s not true… They could have had her be the Queen and hiding from assassins on Coruscant, kind of like what she was doing anyway as a senator. Maybe she could have used the excuse that she’s much too busy for romance instead of saying, “I want to fall in love, but I’m a senator—what would the people say?!” She could’ve even said, “No, I don’t like you because you creep me the f*ck out!”
9. The small bit of detective work Obi-Wan did was a bit weak. He knew where the planet Kamino should be, and the maps in the library showed a blank area where moons and asteroids were affected by an unseen gravity well, but he asks Yoda, “Where is the planet?” instead of, “I know the planet has to be here, but why isn’t it in the records?” It’s a minor complaint but it always bothered me.
10. I find it ridiculous that Obi-Wan was able to locate Dooku’s hideout, sneak in undetected, and stumble upon Dooku’s secret meeting exactly when they  were discussing their top secret plans in a wide open and unguarded (and easily bugged) room. THEN they capture him AFTER he makes a transmission to Coruscant. Maybe the reason he found the hideout was that he tracked Jango Fett there, but how come Jango didn’t scan for life signs after he lost sight of Obi-Wan’s ship in that explosion in Geonosis’ rings? Surely someone has used that decoy trick against him in the past—he’s a bounty hunter!
11. The part with Artoo and Threepio rocketing all over the factory was too silly, and Threepio wasn’t a likable enough character to have throwing jokes about. Also, where did Artoo get rockets and why doesn’t he have them in A New Hope?
12. I liked the monsters in the coliseum, but if you’re going to execute someone why drag it out like that? I guess to provide entertainment for the Geonosians, but that’s not much of a reason is it? Why didn’t they “shoot her… or something?”
13. The romance in this movie was extremely forced—there was just no reason for Padme to be attracted to Anakin, and she kept ignoring his attempts at groping her/sneaking a kiss. A normal woman politician would slap him and call her guards, not put on more revealing clothing! I mean, she hardly knows this stalker guy, and what she does know about him includes facts like he kills tusken women and children, he wants to have someone rule the galaxy with an iron fist, and he hates sand. They should have either made him use the Force to get what he wanted (a dark side move) or rewritten every scene with them together.

REVENGE OF THE SITH:

1. Anakin’s acting was much better in this movie, but it was still pretty abysmal sometimes. Much of it wasn’t his fault—he can’t help how his voice sounds and some of the lines sucked, but it’s still grounds for complaining.
2. Did they really have to kill off Christopher Lee’s character so early in the movie and with so little fanfare? Could he not have had a line where he reacted to being betrayed? It could have added a twinge of mystery to the movie if he’d gotten out a, “Darth Sidius, why?!” before dying. Maybe they could have had a bit of plot where he realized Sidius was betraying him and he tried to either fight back or join the Jedi against him?
3. They had a lot of new locations, but they were each only on screen for a few seconds as eye candy—they only stay in one place for any amount of time on Coruscant. They should have at least drawn out the events on Kashyyyk.
4. Once Padme died there was no reason for Anakin to remain loyal to the Emperor—he was only serving the Emperor in order to save her life. Anakin should have turned to the dark side because of a lust for power, and they showed  a tiny bit of that when he said, “…my new empire,” and, “I can overthrow him,” but they didn’t have anything leading up to him saying either of those things so our reaction is, “Oh, so he wants power now? When did this happen?” If they were going to have Padme die like that Anakin should’ve turned on the Emperor and fought him until the Emperor defeated him, then he should’ve been forced to swear allegiance to the Emperor, but be plotting revenge on him from then on. Anyway, in ROTJ Leia remembers images of her mother, and feelings of her being kind but sad, so Padme should have survived until they were about two years old. This would make the most sense if he turned out of a lust for power and she feared for her safety, fleeing her husband and hiding one of her babies with Obi-Wan. Perhaps the Emperor desired Darth Vader’s offspring and sent him to collect them?
5. General Grievous was such an awesome villain in The Clone Wars cartoon miniseries, but in ROTS he was a huge disappointment. He never stayed to finish any of his battles, and couldn’t even take on a lone Jedi by himself, whereas in the cartoon he was able to handle roughly five Jedi simultaneously, including Jedi Master Ki-Adi Mundi. His voice and cough were rather annoying, and he really didn’t come off as threatening at all. Furthermore, why couldn’t they have introduced him properly, or had him be a part of one of the earlier prequels? We never see him do anything bad, either. All he had to do was strangle a Gungan or something and we would have liked him. Instead, he was a very shallow character and they threw him away like garbage in the middle of the movie, which is a trend in the prequels that I dislike. Compare the fact that they killed off Darth Maul, Count Dooku, Jango Fett, and General Grievous all in the same movies in which they were introduced with the old trilogy, where the only villain who dies before ROTJ is Grand Moff Tarkin. (Dooku was hardly in ROTS, so I include him in the list.)
6. I don’t think the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan was too long (I dunno, I’d have to watch it again) but there was no dialogue during the fight. Compare each of the duels in the prequels with any of the duels in the old trilogy and you’ll see that, except for in ESB they talk throughout each duel in the old trilogy. This makes each duel much more entertaining than mindless choreography. If they’d taken the dialogue from before the duel in ROTS, chopped it up, and spread it out throughout the fighting, none of the nerds would have had anything to complain about. (Well… the dialogue wasn’t very well written and Anakin kinda botched his lines….)
7. At the end it’s finally revealed that viceroy Gunray was only supporting the separatists because, “Darth Sidius… promised us peace!” Didn’t they have peace before the entire separatist movement? I understand Lucas wanted us to see that Gunray was bamboozled into being the bad guy and that he was essentially innocent this whole time, but that’s just ludicrous. Couldn’t he have wanted a position of power in Sidius’ new galactic order or something instead? Maybe he could’ve said, “We did everything Darth Sidius asked of us! He promised us if we kept our bargain we could go free!”
8. They didn’t need Chewbacca to be in this movie—it means that he knew Yoda longer than Luke did, and almost as long as Obi-Wan did, but they never meet in the old trilogy. They should’ve just named him something different, or at least made him just a relative of Chewbacca.
9. I don’t like how they have primitive TIE fighters and a primitive Death Star at the end, especially since the other ships in the rest of the prequels look more advanced than TIE fighters, and the incomplete Death Star in ROTJ looks much different than the one at the end of ROTS. Also, the one in ROTJ took only a few years to build, why did the first one take almost twenty?
10. Anakin was supposed to have been, “seduced by the dark side of the Force,” but in ROTS it’s revealed that he was tricked into turning to the dark side. I think it’s lame how much emphasis is placed on it not being Anakin’s fault—they should’ve had him really want to turn evil instead of only turning evil because he thought he had to. Furthermore, the only reason he turned to the dark side (to save Padme from death) was rendered null and void at the end of the movie, which means he didn’t have any reason to stay evil. It also makes statements like, “You don’t know the power of the dark side,” meaningless—if the dark side failed him so greatly, why would he be touting its abilities? Anyway, it’s obvious from Darth Vader’s dialogues in the old trilogy that he really desires power over all else and that’s why he so diligently serves the Emperor, so they should totally have tempted Anakin with power and had him give in. Why didn’t they watch the old movies beforehand to make sure there weren’t going to be any inconsistencies?
11. I don’t see why it was so difficult to make Palpatine look the same as he did in ROTJ. Maybe they tried their best, but with all the CGI they use everywhere else, couldn’t they have used it here as well? And did they really need to make the Emperor transform like they did? What exactly happened there anyway? Did he melt his own face or something? Why didn’t Mace Windu’s face melt? Palpatine should have gone into reclusion after becoming “deformed” anyway—he would’ve lost a lot of his charisma in real life.
12. I never really thought about this before, but I really didn’t care at all when Mace Windu died. I think it’s because he didn’t really do anything throughout any of the prequels. Maybe it’s because we knew all the Jedi had to die out anyway. It really does put a damper on the movie when everyone knows the outcome already, I guess.
13. Palpatine reveals to Anakin that he is a Sith lord (even though it has been obvious to the audience for three movies.) Anakin then says he is really angry (although we can’t really tell by his acting), and Palpatine allows him to walk off and tell Mace Windu. Then Palpatine waits for him to return with a bunch of other Jedi and pretends to be defeated by Windu in a duel so that he can beg Anakin to let him live, reminding him that he needs Palpatine in order to save Padme. Anakin then chops off Windu’s hand and Palpatine reveals he was only pretending to be weak all along, killing Windu with “Unlimited power!!” Anakin then pledges his allegiance to Palpatine even though he is horribly transformed, obviously untrustworthy, and admittedly doesn’t know how to save Padme. Then, acting on advice from the untrustworthy Palpatine, Anakin goes off and kills a building full of children. This is the culmination of all three prequels, folks. *facepalm*
14. Yoda has to run through a field of clone troopers flinging his lightsaber. Why doesn’t he just grab them all with the force and hold them stationary? Or mind trick them all?
15. I’ve previously mentioned that Yoda should never pick up a lightsaber, nor should the Emperor. When they dueled, it should have been a test of Force powers, not lightsaber fighting.

Top 5 Games that I hate that everyone else likes:

I’m not doing this to be a jerk. Rather, I just always feel left out when people tell me all about how much they are in love with certain video games. I mean I’ll listen to how wistful they get when they describe them, and then I feel bad when I have to tell them, “Yeah, I played that game before… I … I kind of hated it.”

I’ve tried to like these games, and wanted to like them, and come up disappointed. I’m writing this now, hoping that people will read it and inform me exactly why they like these games, so that I can maybe one day try playing them again under a different perspective. Perhaps if you tell me what you like about them I can find the fun in them.

5. Final Fantasy XII

I remember getting excited about this game when I saw the trailer for it. The cutscenes looked really cool and the story looked exciting—you were going to be a sky pirate and have aliens as friends! Then I played a FFXII demo I got with another game, and was a little turned off by the battle system, which should have made me stop right there, but I was still excited about the story. Eventually I bought the game for my brother for Christmas, but he got tired of it after about a month and let me borrow it “Until I beat it,” which hasn’t happened yet. When I offered to return it he said, “No Thanks.”

My initial reaction when I started the game was that I didn’t like the style, particularly of the enemies. Everything just tries too hard to be fancy, like the skeletons all have baskets of wire coming out of their heads and things like that. Nothing looks like it’s a monster that is used to fighting. I also hate how they call magic “Magick” and techniques “Technicks” and so on and so forth, and the way everyone talks like a Shakespeare wannabe grates on my nerves like nobody’s business. We’re sky pirates on a desert planet, we’re not in Tudor England!!

Another thing I hated was that the characters are so bland. I couldn’t tell the boy from the girl for the first few days of playing, and looking back I can’t remember anyone’s name besides Fran. Also, the fact that the license system lets you (and kind of encourages you to) make all your characters become completely identical aggravates the problem. Plus they’re all modeled after Star Wars characters—you’ve got Luke, Leia, Han & Chewie, and Darth Vader. They just left out the droids is all.

Another thing I didn’t like was how you can only talk to people with smiley faces over their heads. I know they wanted to make it feel like there were a lot of people in the city, but it kind of ruins it when you see a sea of blue smiley faces. And I want to talk to everyone, they just got lazy and didn’t feel like writing too much dialogue. I mean, all they had to do was have everyone that didn’t have something important to say tell you, “Sigh… times are tough,” or something when you talk to them.

The story sucked. I couldn’t even tell you what was going on. I think there was some sort of civil war, or maybe an invasion, and meanwhile the princess was disguised as a commoner… basically it’s a lot of boring politics. I don’t care about that, I want interesting characters, a story I can follow, and villains that I know I’m supposed to fight. That’s all. When you’re halfway through the story and have no idea which character is the villain or why you’re fighting him/her, there’s something wrong.

The battle system can be annoying, but it had a huge amount of potential to be fun and interesting. It just needed to be a little more fast-paced and satisfying is all. Furthermore, the fact that all the treasure on the field is random pisses me off to no end, and I hate how you have to “Loot” everything and then sell the loot to get your reward—it’s just stupid. The whole experience comes off as though the game is trying to be an MMORPG, except you don’t get to interact with actual people.

The license system is also kind of interesting—it’s not as elegant as the sphere system from FFX, but it’s frustrating that when you buy a weapon for a character they can’t use it right away until they buy the license for it. I mean, come on! We’re pirates, we don’t need no stinkin’ licenses!

I got pretty far in this game, but when it got to the point where I said to myself, “I know exactly what’s going to happen next. As soon as I leave this dungeon the empire’s going to destroy another town I just visited,” and then had it happen right before my eyes, I kind of lost interest.

I seriously hope the next Final Fantasy installment is more fun.

4. Metal Gear Solid

I didn’t really give this game much of a chance. I don’t really like military games and all, but I’d heard good things about this one. My brothers spent a day or so playing it and told me it sucked, but I tried it for a few minutes and did no better. Basically the complaints were that it was too hard, that we had no idea where we were supposed to go, that our gun didn’t actually kill anyone and that it ran out of ammunition too fast, and that they gave you a cigarette that doesn’t do anything but drain your life!!

I’m mentioning this game here because I kind of want to pick it up again just to give it a decent chance, but then again I don’t want to waste my money. My buddy Andy was really enthusiastic about it one time though, and asked me if I knew about the part where you fought a guy with a flamethrower, to which I replied I only played for five minutes before we returned the game. He didn’t seem to understand and asked me if I still knew the part he was talking about. Someone who loves this game so much makes me wonder if we made some sort of mistake.

3. Halo

I’m not really interested in learning to like this game, in fact I’d rather see more people hate it.

All in all, it’s an okay game I guess, at best. I even had fun with it back when Halo 2 came out and I played with Mary Nikityn, her brother, and her father (God rest his soul). It was fun because it was just us four and each one of us was able to kill each other (except Dave) at least once or twice before time was up. Dave sniped the crap out of all of us and won each time, but it was okay. Mind, it wasn’t great fun, I still would have rather played Smash Bros. or Tekken, but since that was what Dave wanted to play that was what we played. I guess the fact that it’s so overhyped makes me hate it a little.

Anyway, since then I have never had any fun playing it. I’ve given it plenty of tries (at my brothers’ requests) and have always come off pissed off and resentful at how much I hate it.  The story mode is a ripoff of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, except that it’s dumb and boring. Master Chief’s voice bothers me to no end, and the NPC’s are brainless, useless, annoying, and practically begging for you to shoot them yourself. None of the guns are anything special, except the alien guns that shoot exploding needles, and everything looks like it’s made of green or purple plastic. Oh, and Master Chief’s helmet makes him look like a sad puppy. It looks DUMB.

So why isn’t fighting other people fun anymore? It was fun with four people, why not with twenty? It’s because of achievements and ranks. Now when you play with people they want nothing to do with having fun, they just want to increase their rank and then teabag your corpse. That’s how they have fun, by pwning n00bs. Get someone with a headset and you’re guaranteed to be annoyed to death by their stupidity—I’ve only heard a handful of funny/intelligent people say anything during the four or five years that my brothers have played Halo online.

Now, most Halo fanatics will be telling me at this point that I just hate the game because I suck at it, but I don’t. I have gotten a couple of ‘Killtaculars’ or ‘Killtrocities’ or ‘Killwhamalangadingdongs,’ so ain’t nobody’s gonna tell me that’s why I hate it. The game’s just no dang fun.

Anyway, the thing I hate the most about this game, however, is that it took my brothers from me. We used to stay up really late every night playing Smash Bros., Tekken Tag, Wii Sports, Mortal Kombat, etc. but now they only play with me once every few months, for a few minutes, out of charity. It makes me hate Halo with every fiber of my being.

2. Little Big Planet

I really wanted to like this game, but it just bores me to death and pisses me off.

Let me start by saying that the music is awesome, it’s really catchy and gets stuck in your head for days. If you ask me, it doesn’t really fit the game, though. This is where I stop liking the game.

The gameplay sucks. Sackboy (heh heh, ‘Sack’boy) always feels like he’s sliding all over the place, and the way he jumps looks like he’s being pulled up by marionette strings—very sloppy. Compare this to any Super Mario Bros. game. And why does everyone think Sackboy is cute? I think he looks like a corpse, and the fact that you can change his eyes to X’s confirms that some of the designers thought the same. At least you can dress him like a gorilla with a shark for a head….

Anyway, it’s cool that you can control his arms and expression, but if I’m lying down playing, like if I’m sick in bed, his head stares at the ceiling because the tilting of the sixaxis controller is controlling his head. I hate that.

The levels piss me off. They are just friggin’ sloppy. I’ll be running along and get suddenly stopped by some freaky looking cardboard cutout that talks gibberish to me, and then have to make slippery sackboy actually navigate a ton of platforms and swingy vines. A lot of times you’ll get yourself stuck because of how sloppy the levels are—I can remember two places that I got stuck because a rock just happened to fall the wrong way or the platform I was supposed to jump on just happened to fall down. I hate how there are no enemies to kill (just cardboard cutouts with buttons on them), and don’t get me started on the horrible springy things you have to jump on.

It’s cool that most of the game is designed by people who play it, but when I play player designed levels it just gives me this feeling like the game designers got too lazy to make their own levels. I mean, so what if I beat a level designed by a 5^th grader? Maybe it was just a room full of those blue balls you collect followed by the finish line? I don’t get any sense of accomplishment by beating a level that was designed by someone without any experience, y’know what I’m saying? Maybe I’m just being picky, but that’s the way I feel about it.

Now, to be honest, the game is more fun with two people, and playing with others online is likewise more fun than playing by yourself. I haven’t gotten to design my own levels yet, but I’m hoping it’s fun. I guess if I played the game more I’d get to like it, but it’s not nearly the mindblowing experience I was led to believe it would be.

1. Chrono Trigger

EVERYONE loves this game, I don’t know why.

I’ve tried three times, three honest times, to get into this game, and even got up to Robo, but it BORES THE CRAP OUT OF ME.

The story is so boring! Right away I have to go back in time and find a princess lookalike? Okay, so how many hours of fighting stupid looking fuzzy balls, winged baboons, and green aliens until I get on with the story?? UGH!

The team-up battle moves are kind of cool, or at least they would be if they were any more imaginative than two people dashing at the same bad guy at the same time, or having the cavewoman throw you at the bad guy.

The character design is great, except for Chrono. I don’t know why they made him look like a clown. His red hair wouldn’t be so eye-stabbing if he wasn’t wearing such a horrible shade of blue. And why is he wearing clothes that are fifty sizes too big?? I guess he really is supposed to be a clown…. All the other characters are cool, Lucca’s my favorite, I think. Marle is passable, and Frog is just plain awesome. The cavegirl and Robo are cool as well, so no complaints there. Magus is obviously Piccolo from Dragonball Z, so why not just have him be a green alien from the planet Namek? C’mon Akira Toriyama!

Unfortunately, the character designs didn’t translate well into 16-bit sprites. The running animations bug the crap out of me. They totally should have added one or two more frames of animation, or at least not made their movements so exaggerated. Ugh, speaking of exaggerated movements, the way the characters celebrate after winning a battle is lame. Well, just Marle and Frog, but they look waaaaay too happy when they win. I mean, does Marle have to jump for joy after winning a minor battle every thirty seconds when you’re level grinding?

The worst part of this game is the music. Ugh, I can’t take it. When they rereleased the game on DS it came with an orchestral soundtrack which was awesome, but the 16-bit music just plain terrible. If you like it, good for you, but I can’t stand it. And let’s face it, if you don’t like the music, you won’t be able to play the game it sets the tone for.

Now, I loved Chrono Cross, that game was super great. Maybe if they rereleased Chrono Trigger with updated graphics and sound I’d be able to stand it, maybe even like it, but for some reason they’d rather rerelease it exactly the same. Boo.

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