Moving the debate from the
Fiction Bitching thread to here.
You're free to not like it and its retread plot that depends heavily on coincidence (or Force fuckery) and Rey being a special destined snowflake. You're free to not like Abrams tendency to be Michael Bay-lite. That's fine, it can't be everyone's cup of tea, and there are lots of things I dislike about Ep VII too.
But don't tell me the prequels were better. The acting within the movie is leaps and bounds better than in the prequels. Lucas had a acting giants on tap for Eps I-III and squandered them. Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson, Ewan MacGregor, Samuel Jackson,
Christopher fucking Lee. Even Hayden Christensen is better than his Anakin would indicate. Not only did Lucas actively stifle actor decisions during the prequel trilogy, he directed his actors into the most wooden performances they've ever given. He gave them lines like 'I don't like sand,' 'Want to buy some deathsticks?' and the completely nonsensical 'I have the high ground!' Don't tell me that sewage stew of terrible acting and shitty lines was better than VII, where we actually got fun, screwball dialogue
a la the original trilogy delivered in a believable manner.
As far as plot goes, the prequels are no better than VII, and are considerably more disjointed. Ep 1 is entirely forgettable. It serves no purpose in the overall story. The fan recommended 'machete' viewing order drops it entirely, and the whole movie is a bizarre hodgepodge of crammed together visual effects and action sequences that don't accomplish anything in service to the story of Darth Vader's Background or The Fall of the Republic. Dropping also removes that fucking 'midichlorians' nonsense.
Lucas completely fails to establish a consistent villain the way that Darth Vader is handled in the original trilogy. We have Maul, who has an AWESOME setup to be the next big antagonist, he kills a mentor in Ep 1, he's all set to leave Obi-wan behind and give him and Anakin some nice motivation in a future movie and... he's dead. Well, nevermind, look who his replacement is! Christopher Lee! Dooku is a bit underplayed in Ep 2, but he exudes menace and... well that duel with Yoda had kind of a crap ending, but it was cool for a bit. Can't wait to see what happens in Ep 3... where he dies like a chump in the first 10 minutes.
The prequels had the
potential to be much better than they were, but as they were served to us, they are some of the worst movies I have sat through in a theater. I've seen worse, but only on DVD/TV/MST3K.