Kevin C. Wong

Movie Trilogy - Star Wars Episodes 1-3 (1999-2005) [/]

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) [/]
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002) [/]
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005) [/]

I watched Star Wars episodes 1-3 over the course of a month and realize I've never seen these movies in the theater nor completely until now. The Phantom Menace is the best of the three. New but familiar characters bouncing around familiar locations meeting beings that are three decades older in Star Wars episode 4. By the way, Jar Jar (Ahmed Best) is fine as a character and barely appears in the next two films (though more in Clone Wars).

Attack of the Clones is much less romantic than I expected. There is a bit of Anakin (Hayden Christensen) harboring a decade-long obsession over Padmé (Natalie Portman) and then it's suddenly she's also in love with him and they get married.

I like that the Clone Wars animated series takes place between episode 2 and 3. Once we get to Revenge of the Sith there are several characters that originated in Clone Wars making appearances. The part where the Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) has suborned all the clones I guess comes from Clone Wars since it came out of the blue to me. And it's got the nice touches of how the Emperor and Darth Vader got their looks.

Overall though I kind of feel this is the weakest trilogy of the Star Wars saga. Episodes 4-6 were produced first and there's a lot of nostalgia plus they were genre-breaking at the time. Episodes 7-9 are better produced and the stories seem a bit better developed and more epic. And I guess 7-9 are treading new ground whereas 1-3 start from an unknown point but have to end setting up episode 4.

Still, I did enjoy these three films and it's nice covering the back stories that setup the following two trilogies.