Star Wars: 5 Ways The Prequels Are Like The Original Trilogy (& 5 Ways They’re Different)
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Star Wars fans have plenty of grievances with the prequel trilogy, but, aside from some deviations, there are more than a few similarities.
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When Disney rolled out the Star Wars sequel trilogy, some fans were disappointed by the movies’ similarities with the original trilogy. Whereas George Lucas boldly ventured into new worlds with new stories and new characters in the prequel trilogy, the sequel trilogy copied a lot of the conflicts and plot points from the original movies.
Yet, the prequels aren’t completely original. They do share some similarities with their predecessors. Anakin even blows up the bad guys’ space station in the final battle of the first movie. In some ways, the prequels are wildly different than the original trilogy. However, in other ways, the two trilogies are similar.
10 Similar: Pulpy Tone
Just like superhero movies, Star Wars has its roots in pulp fiction. George Lucas was inspired by the pulpy sci-fi serials he grew up with like Flash Gordon when conceiving the colorful characters and bizarre worlds of the Star Wars universe.
Lucas continued to hark back to this classic pulp tone in the prequel trilogy. The sequels leaned less into this aspect and more into generic blockbuster territory.
9 Different: Peacetime
At the beginning of the original trilogy, the galaxy has been ravaged by years of war, and the Rebellion is struggling under the iron-fisted rule of the Empire at the height of the Galactic Civil War. At the beginning of the prequel trilogy, the Republic is thriving during an extended period of peacetime.
By the end of the prequel trilogy, the galaxy is a war-torn hellscape. Attack of the Clones sees the breakout of the Clone Wars with the Battle of Geonosis and Revenge of the Sith ends with the birth of the Empire, and, with it, the inception of the Galactic Civil War.
8 Similar: Dead Mentor
Dead mentors can be seen in almost every blockbuster these days—especially Marvel’s recent output—thanks to the powerful demise of Ben Kenobi in the original Star Wars film. Killing off the hero’s mentor figure is a great way to push them into the next stage of their journey and give them one more reason to hate the villain.
Just as Obi-Wan’s death motivated Luke to destroy the Death Star in the original movie, Qui-Gon’s death motivated a young Obi-Wan to bisect Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace.
7 Different: Not Told Through R2-D2 & C-3PO’s Eyes
The original Star Wars trilogy was told through the eyes of R2-D2 and C-3PO, two droids being passed from owner to owner, with the grand narrative of good versus evil happening around them.
However, this concept was dropped from the prequels and sequels. In the prequel trilogy, the two outsiders drawn into the intergalactic conflict involving a monarch are a pair of Jedi Knights.
6 Similar: Kurosawa Influences
George Lucas was heavily influenced by the work of Akira Kurosawa in constructing Star Wars. In fact, the original 1977 movie is a loose remake of The Hidden Fortress. The prequels continued to take inspiration from Kurosawa, including The Hidden Fortress itself, as Padmé disguising herself as a handmaiden and using a decoy is taken from the movie’s princess character.
On the whole, the themes of the prequels were influenced by Kurosawa’s Shakespearean tragedy Throne of Blood. The Kurosawa influences have continued into the Disney era, as seen in the Rashomon-esque conflicting flashbacks of The Last Jedi and the climactic duel in The Mandalorian episode “Chapter 13: The Jedi.”
5 Different: New Filmmaking Technologies
Whereas the technology didn’t exist for George Lucas to fill the original trilogy with computer-generated creatures and planets—although, when that technology did exist, he went back and crammed the original movies with CGI—that technology did exist when he made the prequels.
In fact, the technologies that are now used to make every major blockbuster were pioneered by Lucas himself specifically to tell the Star Wars prequel story. Some critics decried the prequels’ overuse of CGI, but its effects were undeniably groundbreaking.
4 Similar: Religious Allusions
There have been religious allusions in the Star Wars saga since the beginning. From redemption to resurrection to the dichotomy of good and evil, many of the core themes of the franchise are also core themes of most mainstream religions.
The prequels leaned even more heavily into the religious elements of the story. In The Phantom Menace, Anakin is introduced as a Christ figure, a messianic “chosen one” born from a virgin birth, and Darth Maul looks just like Satan or some sort of demon.
3 Different: Doomed Romance
Han and Leia are the main romance in the original trilogy, and Anakin and Padmé are the main romance in the prequel trilogy. Until the sequel trilogy divorced them off-screen, Han and Leia enjoyed a happily-ever-after ending in Return of the Jedi.
Anakin and Padmé’s romance, on the other hand, wasn’t happily ever after. It was doomed from the beginning, as Anakin went down a dark path that Padmé couldn’t, in good conscience, follow. Another difference is that Han and Leia’s romance wasn’t painfully cringeworthy and, sadly, Anakin and Padmé’s was thanks to some horribly wooden acting and questionable dialogue.
2 Similar: The Emperor Is The Big Bad
Although the original trilogy initially introduces Darth Vader as the big bad, The Empire Strikes Back surprisingly reveals that there’s a puppet master even higher up than Vader pulling the strings. By the end of the original trilogy, Vader was painted as more of a tragic hero and the Emperor was the true villain.
In the prequels, Darth Maul is introduced as the first of three secondary antagonists alongside Count Dooku and General Grievous, but the master of all three—Sheev Palpatine, the man who would be emperor—is the real villain. The sequels also made Palpatine the big bad, but it clearly wasn’t planned.
1 Different: The Tragedy Of Anakin Skywalker
While the original trilogy is about Luke Skywalker becoming a hero, the prequels are about Anakin Skywalker becoming a villain. He goes from a bright-eyed young Force prodigy destined to save the Jedi to a fearsome Sith Lord who burns the order to the ground.
After the original trilogy told the story of Luke bringing out the good in his father Darth Vader, the prequels told the story of how that good man turned evil in the first place.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-wars-prequels-original-trilogy-similarities-differences/