PT Why Are The PT Films criticized? (catch-all thread)

The weird connection the PT introduced between mechanical skills and the Force brings me to another point of criticism. Namely, my opinion that the PT uses the Force like some deux ex machina. In the OT the Force was first and foremost about spiritual enlightenment, something beyond the physical. Everything is connected through the Force, and you can use it to move objects with it, control the weak minded, and see the past and future. Aside from that weird Force jump Luke did in TESB (which felt out of place), it's never used as an augmentation of the physical. Obi-Wan was an old man, and stayed that way, when he fought Vader. Vader is a man in a mechanical suit, which makes him strong, but he's clearly limited in his movements. In PT the Force is mostly reduced to superpowers. Anakin has exceptional mechanical skills, it's the Force. A cripple can make summersaults, it's the Force. In the end the most telling sequence in the PT is where Dooku says to Yoda: "It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force... but by our skills with a lightsaber." That's what's the Force has been reduced to. Not this:



...but this:



Two geriatrics moving like teens, the Force as the ultimate fountain of youth. While in the OT characters like Yoda and Palpatine were frail physically, but powerful through their knowledge of the Force. In the PT your knowledge of the Force is exemplified by your skills with a lightsaber. Apparently, if you can't use a lightsaber, or jump tall buildings like superman, you're not much of a Jedi or Sith. So much for wars not make one great...

Yeah, and I know, Yoda learned from his experiences during the PT era, and became a full blown pacifist in the OT. Good for you, if that excuse makes it all work for you, but to me the PT betrayed many fundamentals, that were established by the OT, in favour of flashy action, and lightsaber battle galore.

 

Dooku is a Sith, so obviously he's going to concentrate on power more so than the meditative uses of the Force. Plus there's the small detail (scratch that--blatant plot point) that the lightsaber duel settles nothing despite Dooku's misguided boast. In fact Yoda puts his saber away and goes into an ESB like pose to stop the pillar from crushing him and Anakin. Then he hobbles away on his cane, showing us that both lightsaber skills and Force usage cannot overcome the mess the Republic has gotten itself into. They all have no choice but to face the flawed world they helped create. From that point on none of the saber duels make the heroes great Jedi. Anakin's kills Dooku and further cements his dark future. Mace takes order into his own hands and fails. Yoda fails to best Sidious. Obi-Wan "beats" Anakin, leaves him to suffer, which leads to Vader. If anything the PT goes out of its way to subvert the idea of the noble knight with a sword, reducing the saber not to a mystical relic wielded by a zen master who needs only to close his eyes and believe, but a simple weapon. The PT offers me a very nuanced take on fantasy adventure violence, exploring in depth a background that makes Luke throwing down the saber in ROTJ that much more meaningful. I much preferred it to TFA, which was pretty much summed up by "pick up that saber and go to town on those bad guys."

 

This is all far-fetched.
As far as we know, Rey is a scavenger, she sells parts of crashed ships on Jakku for living, so I wouldn't say she's versatile in technology. She lives alone, far from nearest settlement, so her knowledge of languages is not so convincing. As for her Force powers, the movie tells us nothing.

Of course, he's not been trained in the way of the Force.

Yes.

He's a slave working for a junk dealer named Watto. Now, it's really hard to miss his shop full of droid and spaceship parts in which Anakin was working. Rey is older than him, but Anakin was in constant touch with the mechanics so his knowledge is no surprise.

That's why Lucas decided that his fight with Maul at the end of TPM would be too much.

How do you mean?
You can't have a slave boy who's kind to other people, that has a good mechanical background and flies a pod for his owner? Besides from the things said above, that space battle was a child's play compared to the pod race.

To me, Ridley's acting doesn't improve her character. Rey is still wunderkind that manages everything she decides, she does too much in one movie (without nearly any help), she's just a typical movie's hero that has to fulfill the audience's expectations to beat the bad guy and find the good one. I was interested after TPM what will happen to Anakin, but for Rey... She'll end up teaching Luke.

 

That last statement really makes no sense to me considering your defense of the PT's use of the lightsaber. When Finn tries to use the lightsaber on the stormtrooper, and Kylo, he fails to achieve anything of significance, and in the latter case ends up seriously injured. I would hardly call that an advertisement for using it "to go to town on the bad guys". Rey also initially fails when she tries to use the lightsaber on Kylo. It's only when he quiets her mind and uses the Force, that she's able to anticipate Kylo's moves, and beat him. So, your argument is directly contradicted by what's in the film. I also think it's pretty inconsistent to first claim, that the PT shows the lightsaber is a simple weapon, because of the Jedi's failure, and to then criticise TFA's use of the lightsaber, while in reality it completely conforms to your argument.

 

I call it uneven because at times, I saw the character of Anakin Skywalker and other times I saw Jake Lloyd reciting lines.
Acting is harder than it can often look. Because not only do you have to hit your mark and cue and remember what you are supposed to say but you also have to make it sound like you just spontaneously decided to say that. Unless the character is giving a rehearsed speech.
And not just with Jake but at times with some of the other actors it didn't feel like the character were talking, they were reciting speeches at each other. And the tone was far too often so serious.

Anakin in TPM isn't complex, he is very simple and quite generic. A nice, cute, mop-topped little boy.
And a wonder kid that is great at many things and saves the day at the end.
He is like Wesley Crusher in early TNG, boy wonder who saves the day.

He is given a lot of things to be but that in of itself doesn't make a character complex or deep.
More below.

And Anakin in TPM is a very typical character in this type of genre films.
Sweet and good natured, check.
Great at lots of stuff, check.
Saves the day, check.

As I said above, giving a character lots of traits or things to be and then not developing them or exploring them. That doesn't make a character well-written or terribly deep or complex.
It is just a list of things the character is and when I have come across it, most often the writing is lazy as the writer skips over character development by just having the character be lots of things.

Ex. if I describe a character like this, "He is male, late 30's, tall, blond, lives in NY, works as a teacher, has studied geology, has a motorcycle, is an orphan, drinks beer and has big apartment."
Does this tell you very much of the character?

With most stories, the storyteller has a limited time to tell the story, in films esp.
So if you try to do too many things at once, you could end up doing neither of them very well.

If a character is given loads of traits but then no time is given to explore them, that to me, is worse than giving the character a few traits and going deeper.

Ex, the film BvS. That had lots of ideas and plenty of ambition and tried to do many things in one film.
The fall out of the last film, how Superman is viewed by humanity, establish Batman, establish Luthor, the conflict between Batman and Superman, introduce Wonder Woman, Doomsday and the death of Superman. There is story here for two maybe three films. But by doing it all in one film, the end result suffered. The film had other issues as well, but I liked bits of it.

Anakin in TPM is generic, in my opinion.
And unlike Finn, he doesn't change much as a character over the course of the film.
His situation changes but as a character he is a happy, go lucky kid from start to finish.

And as DrDre said, his character is very much a generic movie kid. But his amazing skills has had little to no impact on him as a character.

Fin goes from scared and out to save his own skin to caring about someone and risking his life to save someone else.
Fairly simple yes but simple doesn't have to mean bad.
Finn sold me on him as character, Anakin in TPM did not.
He sold me on him as a character in AotC, the problem was that I disliked him a lot.

And how could the fighter be on auto-pilot?
These fighter were in the Theed palace, which the TF controlled. So the Naboo people could get to them. But the TF just let these fueled and armed fighters sit there and they were apparently already pre-programmed to fly up and attack the TF ship. And no, the program couldn't have been put there before the invasion because then there were lots of TF ships, not just one.

And ignoring that, Anakin doesn't know the controls, sets the ship off by accident and generally flies around by mere chance and still manages to blow up the TF ship.

Plus his presence there makes no logical sense and it massively contrived.

[/QUOTE]


The film shows what Rey's life has been for at least ten years. Searching trough old ships for parts to sell. So she has lots of experience with mechanical things, far more than Anakin could have given their ages. She also lives on a planet with lots of aliens so knowing more than one language makes sense. Said planet is also lawless and anyone weak would be taken advantage off. So she must be able to fend for herself or she would have been killed or taken as a slave long ago.
Rey is a pilot, she said so. She had worked on the MF, she knew what Unkar Plutt had done with it and how he had acquired it. So her knowledge of the MF doesn't come from nowhere, it is explained.

Above you argued that Anakin experience with mechanical things would help him to blow up the TF ship. If so then you should also accept that Rey's experience with a staff would help her fight with a lightsabre.

The difference to me is that Anakin in TPM has loads more skills than Luke has in ANH and some of them can't really be explained by the Force. Can the Force given you specific knowledge on how to build things or program a protocol droid? Anakin is able to build lots of stuff and program a complex droid and he also knows how to race and is great at it.
And Anakin is nine. And he works as a slave. So how much free time would he have?

Also Luke knew the control of the X-Wing, he was a pilot and a good one, both Obi-Wan and Biggs says so. So the Force didn't help him to figure out how to fly or what button did what. It helped him to make the shot. Luke relaxed and let the Force flow through him and thus he was able to do what seemed almost impossible. So his use of the Force is conscious and deliberate. With Anakin it becomes much more of "The Force stepped in and helped him without him knowing about it."

Well he sort of does. In TPM he says that he is the ONLY human that can pod race.
At age nine he can do something no other human can.
So he seems to be aware of his uniqueness in this regard at least. And Anakin did have friends his own age but he can do stuff they could only dream about. Wouldn't this have come up?
Imagine if nine year old Superman used his powers in clear sight of kids his age, wouldn't they comment?


@seventhbeacon

But was that really Anakin's fault? The council rejected him, at least it seemed to me, because he missed and worried about his mother. He was regular nine year old kid. If he DIDN'T miss and worry about his mother I would think there would be something seriously wrong with him.
Anakin's reaction in TPM was normal but the council didn't see that.

I don't totally agree. She accidentally sets off the Rathars, so mistake. She needed Finn to destroy the TIEs that followed the MF. Without him she would most likely have been shot down.
When she first comes up against Kylo, she tries to run and shoots at him rather badly. She is scared and he grabs her with ease.


@DrDre

I totally agree.
I find it somewhat baffling.

Nine year old Anakin having great skills and pulling off an amazing victory. Genius writing.
Twice as old Rey having great skills and pulling off an amazing victory. Crap writing.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark

 

To me, a kid gleefulling yelling "yippee" is far less painful than a grown woman using words such as "nerfherder" and "laserbrain" as insults.

 

You're missing the obvious, namely that in order to scavenge crashed ships for used parts and sell them, you need to know which parts are valuable. She's clearly not just ripping random stuff from the ship, so she must know what she's looking for, and thus have an understanding of the technology she's selling. It also doesn't look she has much time to spend at her settlement, and appears to spend most of her time scavenging and working at the outpost, where she likely interacts with many different races and droids. With regards to her Force powers, she has a flashback, where we see her being abandoned on Jakku. She was clearly abandonded on Jakku, because of her Force potential, by someone who was aware of her powers, and feared for her safety. I highly doubt she was just left there, because of her dark hair...

Well, I would expect some of the Jedi prodigies to figure out at least some of these things by themselves. After all, the first Jedi wasn't trained in the ways of the Force, and ultimately ended up training other Jedi, so it must be possible to know the ways of the Force without being trained.

Yes..., so the way Jake Lloyd portrays him, he doesn't seem hyper intelligent, and subsequent installments make Anakin seem pretty gullible, and frankly rather stupid. He's clearly too young to have much experience. So, in short his mechanical skills don't fit his character, as he's not terribly intelligent and has little experience.

Well, as I demonstrated above Rey's also constantly around technology and spaceship parts, and makes her living of it, so your argument isn't very consistent. What's true for Anakin, should certainly be true for Rey. In fact, your argument with regards to Anakin is pretty weak IMO. Why? There's a reason we don't teach nine year olds complex mechanics, namely the reality, that at that age their immature brains are not able to understand it. Anakin is clearly a young kid, and behaves like one, so his mechanical knowledge is not consistent with his age, and character, unlike Rey.

Well, my argument is, that despite what everyone says about Anakin, he doesn't act like a wunderkind who's hyper intelligent. This is clearly made clear by the fact, that he acts like a normal kid, when he enters the cockpit of the fighter, and randomly starts pushing buttons. As far as I'm concerned, seeing things before they happen would help you fly a pod or fighter jet, not help you build one. In short his mechanical skills just don't fit his age, cannot be explained by his Force sensitivity, and ultimately are presented in an inconsistent fashion in the film itself.

 

Which is why those mechanical skills are not explained by Force potential, but by Anakin's history working with machines 'all his life'.

Watto obviously gets him to fix his pod, giving him the skills to create his own. C-3PO is even easier, as there is a ruined protocol droid in Watto's shop, showing that Anakin could have easily scavenged one.

 

All his life?!!! He's nine years old. His nine year old brain cannot fathom complex mechanics. There's a reason kids can't do this, as their brains are not fully developed. The things you mention would be applicable to Luke or Rey, who are old enough to understand technology. At nine years of age, Anakin might understand some very basic concepts, but build a protocol droid or a pod racer? I don't think so. That's like a nine your old being able to build a Formula 1 car, after he spent some time helping out in a garage. It's simply not believable.

 

To be honest, I don't really have that much of a problem with Anakin's set of skills in TPM, although it stretches credibility, and think Jake Lloyd is charming enough in the role. I don't think he's exceptional, and I think it demonstrates some clear weaknesses in GL's writing, but it's not detrimental to the film. I do have a problem though with many here dismissing the realism of Rey's character, while enthousiastically embracing the boy wonder...

 

In addition to what DrDre said, you overlook several things.
First, what does she trade her tech for? Food. And given how little Unkar Plutt gives her, she would have to come to this settlement quite often. At least several times a week.
So given that she is there very often, her language skill works.
And when she is going around scavenging she would at times come across others doing the same thing. And being able to speak with them would help. So again language.

Again you overlook things. Rey was handed over to Unkar Plutt and what does he do? He is a junk dealer, much like Watto. Except Watto is nicer.

So she would have lived a few years with Unkar and given how he is, I would imagine that she would have to start working for a living very quickly.
So Rey has also been with a junk dealer for some years and thus been around technology.
And we also know that she knows the MF and what Unkar did with it. So the implication is that she worked on it when she lived with Unkar Plutt. Again showing that she has experience with technology and the MF in particular.

In all, TFA gives Rey more years of getting experience working with mechanical things so her skill is more established than Anakins. How long could he have done work for Watto? Say three years.
Rey has at least twice that. Probably three times that.

And instead we got Anakin, whose mere presence in the battle is contrived. And he climbs into a fueled and armed fighter to hide, which is apparently "safe". He starts pushing buttons randomly and manages to blow up a big ship.

Imagine ANH but make Luke nine years old and he doesn't volunteer for the mission, he just climbs into one of the X-wings, starts futzing around, flies off and blows up the DS.
Would it be the same?

The time required to ge the skill set that Anakin has in TPM would be many years and he is quite young to be able to learn all this advanced technical stuff. Like how to program a protocol droid with six million languages.
And Anakin being a slave, if the film didn't tell you, would you guess it based on how he was?
Smhi, now she did convey some of the burden of being a slave. But Anakin is mostly a very normal, happy kid. He has a nice home, they have food to spare and he has loads of free time to do what he wants.
The slave part not withstanding, Rey's situation I would say quite a bit worse. She has to work just to get some food so she won't starve to death. She has no friends on Jakku it seems like, no parent for a long time.

[/QUOTE]

At least with Ridley I saw the character of Rey. With Anakin in TPM, far too often I saw Jake Lloyd.

And I wasn't very interested in Anakin after TPM. The film set up a few things quite clearly. Shmi would die tragically and this would have a big impact on Anakin.
Palpatine would begin to whisper in Anakin's ear.

I am way more curious about what will happen in Ep VIII. What will Rey do, who is she, What was Luke looking for. What will happen to Kylo? Who is Snoke really?

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

I think Lucas pushes credibility a bit with a 9 year old flying a starfighter etc. but it was established that he's a good racer , similar with Rey - I don't know how she got to be so good at flying the Falcon but I can allow that she did some flying before the film's events , and this is SW , flying ships is the equivalent of us driving cars , it's commonplace .

but with Rey it goes so much further - the Force skills she has are just immediate , Force visions , Telekinesis , Jedi mind tricks , and then beating a Darksider who's been trained ! - just ridiculous , especially after we've been shown in the other films that you need training / years to gain all those skills .
Force powers are supposed to be something special . For her it was like pick-ups in a video game .

.

 

I thought it was flippant and crude how at first Yoda lady (forget her name) reminds Finn that he does have a weapon, which he proceeds to ignite and instantly kill another trooper in one of the more gruesome saber deaths in the series. So much for Finn being reluctant to partake in violent acts. So much for Finn empathizing with what violent indoctrination has done to his fellow troopers. Later Finn fails against Kylo, true, but that's because the force didn't awaken in him as it did for Rey for some reason. Rey is portrayed as the rightful heir to Luke's saber, and Luke's saber comes across as an almost religious artifact that is key to Rey's awakening. After I-VI I expect that by VII the saber should be less important than ever in defining the Jedi, but with TFA it seems the opposite. Luke's saber is quasi-divine, it magically imparts knowledge to Rey, and by the end of the film Rey is silently begging Luke to take up the weapon. Luke is portrayed as a husk of the man we remember. Will he take up his Object of Power and become his old self? Tune in next time! It all strikes me as rather crude given that in ROTJ Luke's ascension to knighthood comes in large part due to him throwing down the saber. For me TFA glorifies the saber in a way that is at odds with the progression of the I-VI storyline.

 

Speaking for myself, I would have been more okay with Rey's exceptional abilities if they had been more clearly established from the beginning. I could believe that someone living an empty hermit-like existence in the desert would be unusually in touch with the force and might even be an exceptionally good fighter, able to best a trained but undisciplined Kylo Ren. After all it's not an uncommon thing historically for spiritual types to retreat into the wilderness to hone their skills, be they early Christian mystics going alone into the desert searching for a greater connection to God, or Chinese martial artists going up into the mountains for a few years to enhance their power. But the film doesn't really portray Rey as being a particularly good fighter at the start. With some difficulty she is able to fight off the two thugs, but there's no indication that she has much real technique or power, nor that she's at all connected to the Force. Instead, all that skill seems to come out of nowhere the moment she closes her eyes and thinks of the Force during her duel with Kylo. Then we have her characterization, which is so at odds with what we are shown. How is she so well-adjusted, having apparently grown up with no parents or friends or peers? Based on what we see of her upbringing, she should be half feral, I feel like. If she had had some kind of more serious personality flaw to overcome it might have gone a long way to reducing the "Mary Sue" quality about her.

 

I think going to the First Jedi temple is a sign that he learned his lesson from the cave which is that there are alternatives to fighting but yeah, as much as I liked the visions scene , the return of Anakin's saber doesn't make a lot of sense. As for why it seems to call to Rey, the Ahsoka novel provided a possible answer.

 

The film shows what Rey's life has been for at least ten years. Searching trough old ships for parts to sell. So she has lots of experience with mechanical things, far more than Anakin could have given their ages. She also lives on a planet with lots of aliens so knowing more than one language makes sense. Said planet is also lawless and anyone weak would be taken advantage off. So she must be able to fend for herself or she would have been killed or taken as a slave long ago.
Rey is a pilot, she said so. She had worked on the MF, she knew what Unkar Plutt had done with it and how he had acquired it. So her knowledge of the MF doesn't come from nowhere, it is explained.

Above you argued that Anakin experience with mechanical things would help him to blow up the TF ship. If so then you should also accept that Rey's experience with a staff would help her fight with a lightsabre.

The difference to me is that Anakin in TPM has loads more skills than Luke has in ANH and some of them can't really be explained by the Force. Can the Force given you specific knowledge on how to build things or program a protocol droid? Anakin is able to build lots of stuff and program a complex droid and he also knows how to race and is great at it.
And Anakin is nine. And he works as a slave. So how much free time would he have?

Also Luke knew the control of the X-Wing, he was a pilot and a good one, both Obi-Wan and Biggs says so. So the Force didn't help him to figure out how to fly or what button did what. It helped him to make the shot. Luke relaxed and let the Force flow through him and thus he was able to do what seemed almost impossible. So his use of the Force is conscious and deliberate. With Anakin it becomes much more of "The Force stepped in and helped him without him knowing about it."

Well he sort of does. In TPM he says that he is the ONLY human that can pod race.
At age nine he can do something no other human can.
So he seems to be aware of his uniqueness in this regard at least. And Anakin did have friends his own age but he can do stuff they could only dream about. Wouldn't this have come up?
Imagine if nine year old Superman used his powers in clear sight of kids his age, wouldn't they comment?


@seventhbeacon

But was that really Anakin's fault? The council rejected him, at least it seemed to me, because he missed and worried about his mother. He was regular nine year old kid. If he DIDN'T miss and worry about his mother I would think there would be something seriously wrong with him.
Anakin's reaction in TPM was normal but the council didn't see that.

I don't totally agree. She accidentally sets off the Rathars, so mistake. She needed Finn to destroy the TIEs that followed the MF. Without him she would most likely have been shot down.
When she first comes up against Kylo, she tries to run and shoots at him rather badly. She is scared and he grabs her with ease.


@DrDre

I totally agree.
I find it somewhat baffling.

Nine year old Anakin having great skills and pulling off an amazing victory. Genius writing.
Twice as old Rey having great skills and pulling off an amazing victory. Crap writing.

Bye for now.
The Guarding Dark[/quote]


But this is avoiding my entire point....How is Rey able to use the force just right after she heard it? A Jedi Mind trick? How in the Holly'Mc Hell can she do that already? If this comes down to "well acted characters" then both characters have terrible writing. Just because Daisy's acting was "better" doesn't avoid that fact that her character is inconsistent and worse than Anikan.

Put all those "mechanical skills etc" aside and look at how both characters utilize the force. In fact, since you favor the OT, look at what Luke has done and compare that. By this logic, you shouldn't really think Anikan or Rey are well written characters because they have more feats and "uber powerful" than what was established in the past.

 

Of course, the TFA apologists leaping to embrace Rey's insta-skills and utter flawlessness is totally fine.

Because after all, Rey is the first female character in SW who does more than get pregnant and die. No really, I saw that tripe said in a gushfest tongue-bath review of TFA.

 

@{Quantum/MIDI} I think you need to EDIT

Or explained later, like having the repair the Falcon scene being somewhat slower where she could have mentioned how she had learned to fly while being a low level scavenger on word were even speeders seems rare.

 

Well take the start of ESB, there Luke manages to use the Force to pull the lightsaber to him.
That is a power that he hasn't been told how to use nor does ANH establish that he even KNOWS this power exists.
So Luke, totally on his own, uses this power and escapes. It took a bit of effort yes but he still did it. No training or knowledge required.

So if you can accept that a novice can use one Force power that he/she hasn't been trained in or even knows about then why can't you accept another?
Is it easier to move things with the Force than to mind trick someone?

Rey used the mind trick AFTER she had looked inside Kylo's mind. Kylo used the Force earlier to read Poe's mind and get knowledge and he tries to use it on Rey. But she is stronger than he thinks and turns the tables on him.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

there's 3 years between ANH and ESB , obviously Luke would've spent that time learning/ developing Jedi skills .

Rey just gets them on Day one .
.

 

Sorry Heels didn't see your message

 

EDIT: Sorry Heels didn't see your message

I think that people that have problem with Rey but not with Luke is that Luke had some introduction to the way of the Jedi by Obi-Wan, some years to train and find out about the Jedi and their teaching and he is not really good at it before meeting Yoda.

Rey on the other hand we don't see have nor get any training or real knowledge of the Force - now it is possible that she had some training before being stranded on Jakku or, as it has been theorised by some, was able to get some of Kylo Ren's knowledge/understanding of the Force when he was trying to open her mind but that is something we don't see or hear implied on the silver screen - and can suddenly do Affect mind on a person that is prepared for it and then is able to grab Anakin's 'sabre telekinetically (in a way that remind you more of ROTJ Luke than ESB Luke what I recall) and that with Kylo Ren also trying to summon it.

 

Trying to get this back on topic.

Something that has been mentioned quite a bit with the OT, PT and TFA, and movies in general, is characters.

To me, the two primary things that get me invested in a film is story and characters.
And, again to me, if the story is so-so but the characters are good, I tend to like the film better than the reverse. That the characters are so-so but the story is good.

One example that I can give of the latter is "The Prestige" I didn't really like either of the main characters as they did rather bad things in pursuit of their obsession. But I found the story intriguing.

Based on what I have read here and in reviews, the OT characters are well liked but the story in ANH is pretty simple. "The heroes along with the good wizard rescue the princess from evil warlocks castle."
With TFA again a lot of the positives is about the characters while the story gets more complaints.

Is that a reason why the PT gets liked less? That the characters doesn't "click" with as many as the OT and TFA?
I can say it is partly that way for me. I didn't much like or care about most of the characters in TPM. Shmi I did like but I also realized that she would die in the next film.
So I wasn't as invested.
And since I had seen the OT and knew where the overall story was headed and that TPM had some rather obvious foreshadowing, the story didn't really hook me either.

Some argue that the story in the PT is more "complex". That may be but if the characters in that story aren't interesting or makes you care about them, the story itself might not be enough to "sell" the movie.

In closing, to me "Simple" =/= "Bad" and "Complex" =/= "Good". It is not that cut and dried.
A simple story is easier to get into and it requires less set up and explanation but it isn't inherently weaker than a complex one.
A complex story would probably require more set up and explanation.
But perhaps a complex story that takes longer to get into is served by having character that the audience really likes and cares about. That way they are quickly "hooked" and then they go along with all the explanations and exposition that the complex story has.

To some, TPM no doubt did this but to others it did not.

Just some thoughts.

Bye.
Old Stoneface

 

I completely understand where you're coming from. I feel the winsome, 'fairy tale in space' tag can only really be pinned to ANH if it were just a standalone film. Not the first act of (whats proved to be) an epic, overarching tale about the Skywalker bloodline. Anyway, my point is that every prominent character in ANH was basically an archetype of fairy tales of old. A relatively simple and charming tale of the plucky good guys overcoming huge odds and triumphing over the big bad evil. Headed by the menacing, mysterious Darth Vader. ANH (or Star Wars) introduced us to these iconic characters. Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Threepio and Artoo, Obi Wan and Vader. ESB then brilliantly expanded upon the story/character foundation ANH had layed. And then the trilogy culminated with ROTJ.

Now, without question, the backstory of Vader seemingly had a more complex tale to tell than the first trilogy. As in, just how DID the great Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker become corrupted by the Dark Side and betray the Jedi?..What exactly were the turn of events that ultimately lead to a peaceful, democratic Republic becoming the oppressive dictatorship that was the evil Galactic Empire?..
We'd get to see a young Anakin and Obi Wan.Yoda and the Jedi Order. A pre Emperor Palpatine. The Republic in its halcyon days before the Dark times. Not forgetting the Clone War!..such a great, 'how it all came about' story to tell..Now, taking all that into account, (allied with Anakins redemption at the end of Jedi) I was anticipating Anakin Skywalker in the backstory to be a sort of quick witted, daring..somewhat roguish character who oozed charm but also had a serious side about him. Akin to Solo in ANH perhaps but slightly more constrained. Subjective I know, but getting that character right so that fans, (like me) would genuinely like him, and in turn truly feel the tragedy of his fall from grace come the end of it all was paramount above all else. And that is why I've never been a fan of the prequel trilogy. The political machinations of Palpatine and his rise to power was fine. But the portrayal of Anakin (and the Jedi Order as a whole) was one I just could not endear myself too.