To understand the prequel movie productions--and really all of the movies in the Star Wars saga--you need to first understand the 3 basic groups of assumptions being used by the storyteller George Lucas. It is like understanding the way a cultural group uses language. For an outsider the conversations inside of a culture can be puzzling and may even seem juvenile. For instance, many anthropologists have reported that their experience among "primitive" cultures began by thinking of them as simpletons and ended by counting them as very wise and even sophisticated thinkers. The point is that after the person understands enough of the stories, assumptions, lingo, and special meanings being used by the group, she can get along fine in the setting.
So it is with reviewing the Star Wars films. Granted, they are by no means as complex as a religious belief system, nor are they as specialized as knowing a particular language, however, without a rudimentary understanding of the language they are speaking, audience members are bound to misjudge and misvalue them. For example, if you don't know that Chancellor Palpatine is also Darth Sidious, you are bound to misunderstand the deviousness of his character and think him rather two-dimensional. After you get that distinction, you begin to see how Shakespearean a character he truly is.
For our discussion here, there are three preliminary sets of ideas you, the viewer, need to understand before the movies are brought alive for you. Most of the movie critics are either not aware of these things or they are not paying attention to them in the Star Wars serials. The first thing you need to get before the prequels make sense to you is what genre they are. The genre is very stylized and specific. Second, you need a general understanding of the harmony that exists between the new movies and the old ones. The prequels are beautifully constructed as complimentary pieces of the story rather than identical pieces. This fact makes them exceptional as sequels to the original movie. Hopefully, the intricate and splendidly deliberate way that these movies were constructed to fit with the originals will become clear to you all. The third item is related to the first but I think is multi-faceted enough to deserve its own analysis. It is the unique visual language that is used in Star Wars that shows the audience visually what is occurring rather than telling them verbally.
Once you grasp these items, you will be ready for a journey with me into each of the films' themes, motifs, and symbolisms. It will prove to be quite an enjoyable venture, I am sure. For the rest of this unfolding series of discussions, visit my movie review my blog.
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Steven Hall is a movie critic and a screenwriting student in a top 5 MFA program. www.writingup.com/MovieMan
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