[PvK]

I like IV better than V, but wouldn't say either is necessarily better. IV is more of a complete story unto itself, while IV is a bit more like filler between the start and end of a trilogy, and the "training with a dull muppet who talks backwards" has never entertained me much. Getting lost in the snow wasn't very entertaining either, and was as dull for me as the whiney Luke parts at the start of IV. But I also think IV is better than the rest because it includes more non-hero combattants and shows their experience of dying in fear as they fight the forces of the Empire. E.g., the rebel troops on the blockade runner, and the fighter pilots dying one by one trying to attack the Death Star. That kind of thing isn't there as much in V and VI, but in I, II, and III it is almost entirely absent.

I think VI could be as good for me as IV and V if it was a little less straightforward, and if there were fewer cute/unbelievable muppets, like the Jabba's orcs, and of course the kiddy-panderingly out of place and ridiculously victorious Ewoks. If the Ewoks were much less campfire-teddy-bear-like and more alien and believable, and Palpetine's "entire legion of my best troops" were shown as actually competant and even frighteningly effective, but out-foxed somehow far more convincing than the slapstick log tricks etc., it could have been as good as the IV and V.

But although I've ranted on this before, the prequels are IMO so inferior that they inspire me to rail against them again.

The Phantom Menace: Has some good points, but way too many really bad points, at least for my tastes. Alec Guiness as Obi-Wan was of course excellent, but even the actors used could have been directed to show some degree of caution, concern, and smarts, instead of just being "yawn, we're Jedi so we just auto-parry everything and never get concerned by even ridiculous odds. We don't need to use tactics or cunning or anything. Out CGI powers of fakeness are |337. Ho hum are we there yet?" The Gungans and Jar Jar are just insanely embarrassing on so many levels I won't even try to explain. The pod race was a great example of how to make something extremely unconvincing and so impossible to relate to that there is no tension involved. 9-year-old Annakin being Mr. Unkillable Unconcerned Uber Warrior certainly makes him a great candidate for the prequel Jedi, but it just triple-underlines for me the complete error of having totally unconcerned heroes who should be in danger but aren't, and don't even pretend to be concerned. It just detonates any disbelief I might have left, as well as my interest and ability to do anything but balk and scream at the utter waste of resources.

I thought Clones (II) was better than TPM (I), but had the same fake-o lack of concern problems, and more fake-o unbelievable CGI and action scenes. R2D2 with levitation jets? Part of R2D2's character used to be his logical and amusing mobility problems - the mini jets letting him levitate and zip around in some sort of 3D platform-jumping computer game sequence on an assembly line with lava... AAAAAAAAGH! Then Natalie Portman and the Annakin Teen actor in the arena situation, their acting was the opposite of what I was talking about with the rebels in near-death situations in episode IV, and thanks to the CGI, it's not even convincing that they are there, either. That and the amazing CGI overindulgence of over-busy chaotic hyper-fast scenes with action everywhere and no one needing to ever take a second to figure out what the heck is going on around them - it's just like it's all choreographed and no one gets disoriented at all. Utterly unbelievable. I did like the fight with Christopher Lee, and even Yoda, and the surface combat was spectacular and at least more believable than the arena chaos.

I think TPM (III) was overall sort of good, and better than I and II, but again could have been ENORMOUSLY better with not much more application of taste, logic, acting, script, etc. I thought the preview I saw a year or two before III came out hinted at a far more interesting film that III actually was. Annakin's conversion to Vader could (should) have been much more dramatically interesting, convincing, and sympathetic. It could have been about the Jedi actually denying Annakin's right to be a Jedi and to be with Padme. And perhaps this and maybe other real dilemmas could have caused Annakin to rebel and betray the Jedi, causing him to get sliced and diced (a part I did like in III), and then secretly rebuilt as Vader by Palpatine, and then we could have seen Vader participate in Palpatine's attack on the Jedi, and we could see Vader taking revenge on the Jedi in nice wicked battle scenes where we could watch the Jedi getting terrified and overpowered, and not just backstabbed. Of course, III also suffered from the incompetant CGI problems where physics, reaction times, and rationality are disregarded and hand-waved in the interest of making hyper-extreme action that just reminded me of 6-year-old boys playing with toys and getting way carried away. Particularly the scene where they try to kill Obi Wan on whatever planet that is with the holes in the ground and silly amounts of kinetic excess are involved. The stuff going on mainly in the background of the opening space battle over Coruscant though was one of my favorite parts - really nice. I don't believe in air-to-air sabotage droid missiles, though, or the crash-landing-the-battleship-on-manual parts.