There was a post on Slate about the Star Wars and Disney deal that I want to respond to, since it disagrees with my post of a few days ago. The writer basically says that the Star Wars movies are for kids, that both the original and the prequels were made that way and suffer from the same faults that only adults see. And Disney is good at making movies for kids so the next movies will be good, too.
I completely disagree. The original movies were compelling and easy to understand. It was revolution against an empire. Any student of the American Revolution - or any other revolution - would get it. It was powerful and cruel despots against fledgling upstarts with heart. It was good humans against bad humans.
The prequels were the opposite. There were arcane trade wars that I don't understand (and neither does the author of the Slate piece) and clone wars that make less sense when being shown in the prequels than when mentioned in the originals. And it was humans against machines. Darth Maul was powerful and scary - if there were more like him, the movies might have been better. But the 4 light-saber robot was boring and unmoving - I felt nothing during the battle and nothing when he died - because he was a robot.
The author of the Slate piece is right that there are similarities - there is some bad acting (maybe Mark Hammil and definitely Hayden Christiansen, though the later I blame on the directing) and bad dialogue writing. And both have annoying characters (C3PO and Jar Jar). But the stories are much different. Only the originals have powerful and understandable themes. And only they stand up to adult scrutiny.
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