the relevant plot points seem washed over in all the PT films. example, one of the most relevant scenes in TPM was actuallly the one where anakin is on the naboo-ship and he says he's cold: padme comes over to comfort him with a blanket and, effectively, takes on the role of anakin's mother; later, in the next movie, the mother dies a preventable death; and even later, in the movie after, anakin becomes obsessed with preventing padme's death. who knew, at the time, that THIS would turn out to be THE Major Story Arc which leads him to becoming vader(?) ... in TPM when we FIRST see this relationship developing, we aren't even conscious of this BEING an important scene. it just seems like yet another random scene, in a movie FULL of random scenes. (which goes on and on, until most of the audience is convinced that TPM was functionally irrelevant to the overall story).
--> if we could take all the tiny bits of 'relevance' from all three PT films and string them together into a 90 minute montage.. then you'd have a single story-arc that makes sense. instead, the little bits of relevant story are washed out in a 7-hours-epic that seems to go absolutely nowhere. like trying to have a conversation with a rambling schizophrenic. you both KNOW he has a point to make. but he can only illustrate that point via hours and hours of rambling nonsense. (and we can only 'decipher' his point, in retrospect).
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when it comes to the prequels, I believe that george had planned enough of a "story" to fill a single movie (and make it interesting). unfortunately his self-declared mandate was for three movies, not one. and his point was mostly 'washed over' in 7 hours of rambling nonsense, representative of AOTC
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