By Adam Robles
When films are successful and have told a complete story, filmmakers usually decide to follow up with a sequel. Prequels, however, are almost never a good route to take when there are not enough ideas to explore.
The idea of prequels usually seem easy, but they often go in the wrong direction. Depending on how the story is left after the first film of the franchise, it is set up to continue for another film or two.
When a film series is done, there are times when either the creator wants to go back and revisit certain characters or the production company wants more content for the purpose of making money.
One of the notable franchises to do this is “Star Wars.” The film was first released on May 25, 1977 with one objective in mind — to tell a three-episode story throughout three films.
This process concluded six years later in 1983 with the third film “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.” These films were blockbuster films that had a cultural impact and changed the film industry forever.
Toys and clothing merchandise for these films are still sold at local retail stores. Many other films have parodied these films because moments in them are so iconic.
An example would be in “Toy Story 2,” on the elevator scene where the evil Zurg reveals in a dramatic fashion that he is Buzzlightyear’s father. This is a parody of the moment in “The Empire Strikes Back,” when Vader tells Luke that he is his father.
The original “Star Wars” films were so successful that fans were left begging for more content. Its success caused filmmakers to string out another trilogy 16 years later in 1999. This trilogy was set to be a prequel of the beloved original three films.
The prequels were definitely successful, but lacked the “Star Wars” original vision. This is often the case when film prequels are produced for the sake of more content.
The reason why film prequels don’t usually hit the same mark as the original films is because prequels often lack originality. The “Star Wars” prequels revealed Darth Vader ‘s storyline and the fall of the Jedi.
It told how Vader went from being a typical little kid to being a Jedi, and then becoming the evil villain he is in the original films.
The story of Vader was the whole drive to create the prequels, but he wasn’t the only focus throughout the whole trilogy. The prequels also told the story of the Jedi. It got into their political corruptness, their laws and showed how most of them ended up dying off.
The “Star Wars” prequels has lots of boring and unlikeable characters, the perfect example of how a story should not be expanded.
The soundtrack isn’t as good as the originals, and many of the dialogue and special effects were more computer-generated rather than practical.
These films were made decades after the original films, but it looks worse because lots of the environments are fake or filmed in front of green screens.