Why The Star Wars Sequels (After The Original Trilogy) Sucked

There are probably many reasons, though there a few that come to mind. First I would have to say would be too great a reliance on CGI (computer generated images). There was a coldness, an emptiness to the proceedings that was certainly not present in the first three films in the series.

There was also that that later films (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith) were clearly an afterthought. George Lucas may have been thinking about extending his first trilogy of films, but it seems relatively apparent that his ideas did not exactly gel before he went about actually making them. This was the very tendency that hurt the two sequels to the Matrix (in and of itself an incredible film, it’s sequels not so much as well. In both cases I think money was the motivator for the series moving forward so relatively quickly, though in the case of George Lucas it doesn’t appear to be that simple because his original trilogy made billions (this is not even including merchandising), so I get the feeling that if George Lucas wanted to take a few years longer to churn out the second series of films, I suspect that no one on at Twentieth-Century Fox would have made a peep.

So why rush it?

Though I think the greatest error made by Mr. Lucas was the casting of Hayden Christensen as the person who would become Darth Vader. Now keep in mind, I am not saying that Mr. Christensen is a bad actor, indeed, he was really excellent in Shattered Glass, directed by Billy Ray.

Which makes it even stranger that he was so whiney and irritating in the Stars Wars films. I also get the feeling that he was giving what the director asked for, which is the saddest part.

Though worse of all they reduced one of the most fascinating characters in the entire Star Wars mythos to little more than a sad–unfortunately not in a tragic sense–in a very pathetic sense. Such an elemental being, such a personification of evil and sinister intent, was reduced to a immature child.

That is the greatest tragedy of the later sequels to the original Star Wars films.