Star Wars prequel trilogy

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Star Wars prequel trilogy begins with a nine-year-old slave boy on the desert planet Tatooine. Two Jedi Knights stumble upon Anakin Skywalker almost by accident, and one of them immediately believes the boy is a prophesied figure destined to bring balance to the Force. That chance meeting sets in motion three films and more than two decades of filmmaking history. The prequels, as they are colloquially known, are a series of epic space-opera films written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. and distributed by 20th Century Fox. They were released from 1999 to 2005, and they answer the questions the original Star Wars trilogy spent years only hinting at: who was Darth Vader before the mask, and how did a democracy transform itself into an empire? What listeners will discover is that the answers are stranger, more political, and more contentious than almost anyone expected.

• 2. Lucas's Long Wait

  ›

  Gary Kurtz, producer of the original trilogy, later confirmed that loose plans for prequels were sketched out during the outlining of the very first films. By 1980, Lucas had confirmed publicly that he had a nine-film series plotted. Then he stopped. The stress of producing the original trilogy, combined with pressure from his wife Marcia Lucas to settle down, led him to cancel further films by 1981. The prequels sat dormant for nearly a decade.

  What changed was a test reel. After viewing an early CGI test that Industrial Light & Magic had created for Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, Lucas described watching those images appear on screen as comparable to the invention of the lightbulb or the first telephone call. He said he had tears in his eyes. A gap had been crossed, he believed, and things were never going to be the same. By 1992, Lucas was acknowledging plans for the prequels in the Lucasfilm Fan Club magazine, and he announced them formally to Variety in late 1993. In 1989, he had already cautioned that the films would be unbelievably expensive.

  Other writers came close to working on the scripts. Producer Rick McCallum reached out to Frank Darabont, who had previously written The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and The Shawshank Redemption. Darabont was considered until at least 1995, but Lucas ultimately kept writing the screenplays himself. Jeffrey Boam, who had written Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, expressed interest in 1995 to rewrite and polish Lucas' drafts. Even before any of those discussions, Return of the Jedi director Richard Marquand had expressed interest in directing one of the prequel films, until his death in 1987. The trilogy's revival was also smoothed by a theatrical rerelease of the original trilogy in 1997, which updated the twenty-year-old films with the style of CGI Lucas intended for the new episodes.

• 3. Three Films, One Fall

  ›

  Episode I, The Phantom Menace, opened on the 19th of May 1999. The story is set 32 years before the events of the original film and 13 years before the creation of the Galactic Empire. Two Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi, are dispatched to negotiate with the Trade Federation, which has formed a blockade around the planet Naboo. The planet's 14-year-old queen, Padme Amidala, helps them escape. On Tatooine, Qui-Gon meets a nine-year-old slave named Anakin Skywalker and believes him to be the Chosen One of Jedi prophecy.

  Lucas originally planned the prequels to fill in history tangential to the original trilogy. He then realized they could form the first half of one long story centered entirely on Anakin. He began writing what he initially titled Episode I: The Beginning in 1994. Following the film's release, he announced he would direct the next two films himself, marking his return to directing after a 22-year hiatus since the original Star Wars.

  Episode II, Attack of the Clones, arrived on the 16th of May 2002. The story jumps ahead 10 years. Anakin is now a Jedi apprentice under Obi-Wan Kenobi, pursuing a forbidden romance with Padme while the Clone Wars break out across the galaxy. The first draft was completed just weeks before principal photography began, and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish it. Lucas had at one point jokingly called the film Jar Jar's Great Adventure.

  Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, the first film in the franchise to receive a PG-13 rating, was released on the 19th of May 2005. Three years into the Clone Wars, Anakin, now tormented by visions of Padme dying in childbirth, is manipulated by Palpatine into submitting to the dark side. Work on the film had begun before Attack of the Clones was even released, with one scene shot during that earlier production. Lucas reviewed and radically reorganized the plot during production, rewriting Anakin's motivation so that his turn to the dark side was driven by a desperate desire to save Padme, rather than simply a belief that the Jedi were plotting to seize power. That rewrite was accomplished through editing principal footage and filming new scenes during pick-ups in 2004.

• 4. Myth, Politics, and the Devil's Face

  ›

  Lucas made a conscious effort to mirror scenes and dialogue between the prequel and original trilogies, particularly the parallel journeys of Anakin Skywalker and his son Luke. Lucas has collectively referred to the first six episodic films as the tragedy of Darth Vader, and he has stated that the correct order to watch the films is by episode number.

  The prequels draw heavily from the hero's journey, an archetypal template developed by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. Christian symbolism runs through the films as well. Darth Maul's design draws explicitly from traditional depictions of the devil, complete with red skin and horns. Anakin is described as the Chosen One, a figure prophesied to bring balance to the Force, and he was conceived through what the films present as a virgin birth. The saga then departs from the Christian narrative: Anakin falls from grace and appears to fail his destiny, with the prophecy only fulfilled later, in Return of the Jedi.

  Politically, the prequels engage directly with the mechanics of how democracies collapse. Palpatine's path from chancellor to Emperor deliberately echoes Adolf Hitler's ascent from chancellor to Fuhrer. Lucas also drew parallels between Palpatine and Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and former United States president Richard Nixon. The Great Jedi Purge depicted in Revenge of the Sith mirrors the Night of the Long Knives. The fall of the Galactic Republic is modeled after the fall of the Roman Republic. Political science had been woven into Star Wars since the franchise launched in 1977, and the prequels made that theme explicit at every level of the story.

• 5. Irony Built Into the Frame

  ›

  Audiences who had seen the original trilogy already knew, walking into every prequel screening, that Palpatine was Darth Sidious, that Anakin would become Darth Vader, and that the Republic would fall. Lucas structured all three films around that foreknowledge. Every victory the heroes achieve does little or nothing to stop Sidious from reaching his goals. The Battle of Naboo and the Clone Wars are, from Sidious' perspective, steps forward in his plan.

  The end credits of The Phantom Menace carry this weight visually and musically. As Anakin's theme plays, it slides into The Imperial March, accompanied by Darth Vader's breathing, reminding the audience that the innocent boy on screen will inevitably become the Sith Lord they already know. A 1998 teaser poster released before the film showed Anakin casting Vader's shadow behind him, an image that arrived in theaters a year before the film itself.

  After the deaths of Qui-Gon Jinn and Shmi Skywalker, Anakin seeks a replacement parental figure. That need blinds him to Palpatine's manipulation. Yoda warns him early on that fear leads eventually to suffering, and Anakin's story arc ends with him sealed inside a life-support suit, with Sidious and the dark side as his only companions. The final scene of the prequel trilogy, set at the Lars homestead on Tatooine, deliberately mirrors the scene of Luke gazing at the sunset in the original film. Both scenes feature the same location, the same music, and the young Luke himself, offering the audience the hope they already know is coming.

• 6. Reception and Reassessment

  ›

  The Phantom Menace had a budget of $115 million and earned over $1 billion worldwide, ranking at number 47 on the all-time worldwide chart at the time. Attack of the Clones, also budgeted at $115 million, earned around $657 million worldwide. Revenge of the Sith, with a budget of $113 million, brought in nearly $903 million worldwide. All three were box-office successes. The combined worldwide total exceeded $1.8 billion.

  Critically, the films drew mixed responses. On Rotten Tomatoes, The Phantom Menace scored 52 percent, Attack of the Clones 61 percent, and Revenge of the Sith 79 percent. On Metacritic, the scores were 51, 54, and 68 respectively. All three earned an A-minus CinemaScore from audiences, reflecting stronger reception among viewers than critics.

  Common criticisms targeted the over-reliance on CGI, wooden dialogue, slow political scenes, and the character of Jar Jar Binks. Several alien characters in The Phantom Menace drew accusations of racial stereotyping, including Jar Jar as a Jamaican caricature and the Neimoidians of the Trade Federation, some of whom were deliberately given Thai accents. Watto's design was said to draw on Alec Guinness's portrayal of the Jewish character Fagin in the 1948 film Oliver Twist. Lucas denied all accusations. Natalie Portman later said that with the perspective of time, the films had been re-evaluated by many people who actually love them now.

  Ewan McGregor's portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi was widely praised. J. J. Abrams singled out Ian McDiarmid's scene recounting the tragedy of Darth Plagueis as the best in the trilogy. Jar Jar Binks has since been recognized as the first fully CGI character in a live-action film, credited with paving the way for Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson praised the prequels' visual effects innovations and their handling of the rise of fascism. Since the late 2010s, the films have amassed a cult following built largely on internet memes, with Millennials and Gen Zers who were children at the time of release forming the core of the dedicated fanbase. Writers at Screen Rant and Den of Geek have both noted that the prequels, in contrast to the sequel trilogy, tell one coherent narrative with a clear through-line and the product of a singular vision.