The Prequels, slouching towards respectability

From Polygon today:  “The MCU keeps copying the Star Wars prequels”

It’s been interesting to watch recently as the years have started to treat The Phantom Menace well.  I’ve seen several pieces now over the last year or two with a favorable view of the prequels—did folks rewatch them for the first time in a decade over lockdown and realize they wern’t as bad as they remembered?

I’d submit George Lucas does the Big Special Effects Jamboree Action Scene better than anyone working today.  Even Phantom Menace, probably the worst-received work of his career on release, has a meticulously crafted final three-part action sequence that puts most movies to shame.  Always exciting, never confusing; the cuts from place to place are clear, you can tell where people are relative to each other, and every character in the movie gets at least one highlight moment to shine.

After dozens of movies with the same confusing all-computer graphics smash-em-up third act—Marvel and otherwise—it’s worth going back and looking at what the master of the form did, even in his lesser works.