I'm getting to the point where I'm almsot more frustrated with the people saying "the Prequels have good qualities but....." then I am with insane haters who trash every detail. Almost like how my fellow Leftists are so annoyed by Centrists.
Most importantly is the increasingly common attitude that they work "on paper" that the basic story could have been good, it was just all executed poorly. Rick Worley's video was all about the execution. So Uncivilized is another new YT channel with good content. Full Fat Videos has some SW vids that are a mixed bag.
Some of these people are being disingenuous, like you can't say the basic story is fine but still hate on it "beginning with a taxation dispute" there is no way this story doesn't begin with a taxation dispute, if you want it to be a commentary on how modern right wing politicians and capitalists corrupt and subvert democracy then it has to begin with a taxation dispute.
Maybe you wanted at least the first paragraph of the Crawl to say something about the deep lore of Star Wars, but ANH's crawl didn't do that and nor did the old Saturday matinee serial crawls these are meant to imitate.
Q Reviews is not being disingenuous however. He made a pretty good video on the political commentary of the Prequels (leaving aside how it continues the trend of treating Fascist and Totalitarian as synonyms) but continues to idiotically call them poorly made movies and even "unwatchable", I watch them all the time and grow to love them more with each viewing. There is not a single second of screen time that doesn't fill me with joy.
The acting and dialogue are often a first target of this.
Well I already did a post on how this is really just a specific modern taste in acting. To me calling Natalie Portman's acting in these movies stiff or wooden is frankly a joke. But the real main target of that is the two actors who played Anakin. Guess what, Anakins is SUPPOSED to be awkward and cringey, that's part of the entire message about how the Jedi's attitude towards emotions was the problem. You don't have to enjoy watching it, but you can't say it's poorly made when the very reason you're unhappy is that it had exactly the intended effect.
It's also intentional that Obi-Wan comes off as a bad teacher, he admitted in ROTJ that he failed Anakin, but fanboys wanted that confession to be just token humility and so no it wasn't really his fault even partly.
Dialogue is one of the things I have half a mind to concede to them sometimes, but not really. Guess what, dialogue is one of the few things I'm kinda picky about, and frankly lots of beloved universally praised movies have dialogue that comes off as inherently unnatural and I often wonder if I'm truly alone in being bugged by this. Some Star Wars dialogue is like that, but others are the opposite, they are the few times I actually think what I'm listening to is a real conversation between human beings. And again, Anakin is specifically not supposed to be a a smooth talker.
People also don't like the simplicity of Lucas' directorial style. But ya know what I'm sick of the camera constantly trying to disorient me in modern action movies. I just want to see what's happening, I'm not impressed by your fancy camera tricks.
However the other thing people have in mind when they say the execution is bad is the tone. They feel there is something inherently wrong with the Trilogy that should be so much darker also being so much goofier and more cartoony then the original trilogy.
The story of the Prequels is a tragedy because of how it ends. But it makes perfect sense for the OT's overall tone to be darker when it's about the world created by that tragedy. The dark tragic ending of Revenge Of The Sith actually hits harder when we'd seen before that this Galaxy was a pretty bright place however flawed, definitely far more a world I'd actually want to live in then the OT.
The fact is I like tonal inconsistency. A lot of popular Anime is far more tonally all over the place, like Slayers which goes from being an outright parody of it's genre one minute to being as emotionally intense as Frodo in the Crack of Doom later in the same episode. Digbro who ironically is a Prequel hater has a great video on Anime Tone Shifts.
But there is western precedent for it too, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Xena Warrior Princess managed to be fondly remembered parts of pop culture in-spite of their tonal whiplash. And so have the Prequels, the haters are still merely a loud minority. Star Wars has a message Lucas wants to tell, but they're also supposed to be fun Saturday Matinee serials.
Ya know what Patrick Willems, the Prequels are the movies that should be defended by making a "this is a movie about space wizards" meme. The Last Jedi's central flaw is that it wanted to be the Watchmen of Space Operas, the Neon Genesis Evangelion of Space Operas, and so the humor it contains feels forced by a studio that also wants MCU style fun. And those Deconstructions worked because they weren't new installments of beloved franchises, and when DC does do something like it with Superman and Batman they don't do it in the main continuity.
I'm really annoyed when people claim the Prequels have the same Nostalgia pandering as the new Disney Star Wars. Like this youtuber saying people only liked ROTS because they got to hear Vader's first breath. Well guess what I had and still have no Nostalgia for the OT, I am a fan of Star Wars for the Prequels first and foremost, I have grown to like the Original Trilogy only for the depth the Prequels add to them and for the Happy Ending TORJ provides for the Prequels.
There is a lot of stuff Lucas could have done for Nostalgia pandering but didn't. The only thing referencing the future movies that's even close to being unnecessary is making the key Bounty Hunter of Episode II the predecessor of Boba Fett. But that story needed a bounty hunter regardless. Maybe you could see putting Chewie and the Wookies in Episode III is close, but again Yoda needed to be on a different planet regardless.
The prequels truly brought us to new worlds, not just basically the same world with a new name. And even when he had to go to Tatooine he choose to create a new city and not just visit Mos Iseley again, Abrams or Rian Johnson would have had it be Mos Isely again and had someone inform Obi-Wan that it's the most wrenched hive of scum and villainy in the Galaxy.
Basically even the allegedly bad "execution" is still that they are not the Star Wars movies these Boomers expected.
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