The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

00:00:00.060 Hello and welcome to this premium video. Thank you for joining us. I am Harry, your host, joined today by Luca.

00:00:08.800 Hello there.

00:00:09.440 And the Dark Lord of the Sith himself, Dr. Nima Parvini. Thank you very much for joining us today.

00:00:16.160 And we're going to be talking about the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the reassessment and re-evaluation of the film's quality that's been going on over the past few years,

00:00:27.540 the discourse leading up to that, and just generally the overall quality of them.

00:00:32.200 And I think all three of us are going to be in agreement that these films have been unfairly maligned.

00:00:39.140 The criticism that was applied to them early on when they had been released and in the early years of internet discourse was bad faith and very unfair.

00:00:48.600 And actually when you re-evaluate them and watch them with a more objective eye today, they not only hold up much better than you expect,

00:00:56.060 but there are many arguments to be made that these are fantastic films.

00:01:00.380 And just to give a little backstory for this, so over the past few weeks I just decided over the Christmas period to re-watch the full Star Wars films

00:01:11.420 and I decided to do them as you are supposed to do, as George Lucas intended, which is to watch them in episode order.

00:01:19.320 Episodes 1 through 6.

00:01:22.220 And I went through a phase when I was a teenager, as many did, of having watched the Plinket reviews around the time that they came out.

00:01:30.940 My friends recommended that I watch them. 0.77

00:01:33.340 And I was a stupid, impressionable teenager and had been told by all of them that they're really great film reviews, 0.93

00:01:39.940 they're great critiques, they'll make you see the films in a whole different light. 0.92

00:01:43.140 And because of the way that the reviews were presented, and because of the way that it was a new form of criticism that I'd not seen online before,

00:01:53.740 I went along with it.

00:01:55.220 But it's been so many years removed from it now that I thought, I'll give them another fair chance.

00:02:02.240 And not only did I go into them and find that I really enjoyed them,

00:02:06.620 I found that I enjoyed the prequels more than the originals.

00:02:10.520 I agree with this.

00:02:11.280 I genuinely appreciated them more than the originals, both in terms of their construction,

00:02:18.900 in terms of the overall narrative they were trying to construct and trying to tell,

00:02:23.840 and the greater themes that they were discussing as well,

00:02:27.160 which are interesting and complex on a level the originals were not.

00:02:31.560 Perhaps controversially as well, I would even dare suggest that the characters of Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme,

00:02:38.760 these are really underappreciated characters.

00:02:41.980 People always just go to Han, Luke, and Leia as the iconic trio.

00:02:46.040 But I think that there are many really, really good characters in the prequels as well that are, yeah, overshadowed.

00:02:52.380 I agree.

00:02:53.240 And there's a lot of nuance to their arcs and motivation, which is skipped over.

00:02:58.360 But now, Nima, again, thank you very much for joining us on this.

00:03:02.400 I'd like to give you a moment to introduce your thoughts on this,

00:03:05.840 because you said when you joined the call this is one of your favourite subjects to discuss,

00:03:09.320 and you have been a prequel defender for years up to this point.

00:03:14.580 I've seen for years going back on Twitter and elsewhere,

00:03:17.980 you've spoken about the prequels and you've been carrying the torch for them for a long time.

00:03:22.780 Yeah, and also for my sins, I am the principal pioneer online of what I call Palpatine revisionism,

00:03:32.320 which we can get on to as well, because, I mean, in my view, you know,

00:03:37.840 I mean, I talked to you in the past about Shakespeare and his great history cycle.

00:03:43.420 Yes.

00:03:43.720 Okay.

00:03:44.500 And when I used to lecture on the history plays,

00:03:47.540 I'd always say that, much like George Lucas, Shakespeare wrote the history plays out of order, right?

00:03:53.840 He started with Henry VI, and then he wrote the prequel Tetrology afterwards.

00:03:59.080 Of course.

00:03:59.600 So Henry IV and Richard II, right?

00:04:01.320 So there's, but they are a kind of masterpiece of political playwriting, okay?

00:04:10.280 And then we can go forward and look at the novel form, War and Peace,

00:04:14.480 and the great political novels.

00:04:16.000 And for me, the prequel trilogy is our equivalent of Shakespeare's history plays

00:04:25.120 or War and Peace or something like that.

00:04:27.840 It is the political masterpiece of our time, told over a series of films.

00:04:35.320 And as a three film cycle, I think that Lucas,

00:04:40.260 and now there is some things to say about George Lucas.

00:04:42.960 I don't think he's perfect.

00:04:43.900 He's a boomer and all this sort of stuff.

00:04:46.300 He's got liberal priors.

00:04:48.360 But despite all of that, he is dealing with such deep themes and such important political themes,

00:04:55.020 that even despite himself, he actually ends up telling the story of what Polybius called the anacyclosis,

00:05:03.720 something I discuss in my book, The Prophets of Doom,

00:05:06.100 where you actually get to see a republic in decay, a bureaucracy that is atrophied,

00:05:15.060 a Jedi order that has started to defend something that is arid and spiritually bankrupt,

00:05:20.660 and the need for a new order to be established, represented by Palpatine.

00:05:25.140 Because George Lucas is a boomer and has boomer values and so on,

00:05:31.060 he sees this as a bad thing in some sort of way.

00:05:35.140 But I think that even despite that, the films are well made enough and well written enough

00:05:40.760 that these things that I'm talking about are explored in real and quite surprising depth.

00:05:47.600 And when I say quite surprising depth, I am somebody who has kept spreadsheets

00:05:52.360 on the construction of the Jedi Council over time, okay?

00:05:57.580 So like in the Phantom Menace, you know, you've got Yaddle sitting there,

00:06:02.700 and Yari, who's the one with the long neck, okay?

00:06:05.920 Oh, yes.

00:06:06.440 And you can actually watch the Jedi Council decline in real time, okay?

00:06:13.300 You can actually watch it decline, and, you know, people elevated to the Council

00:06:19.940 clearly have no business being there.

00:06:22.680 So by the time you get to Revenge of the Sith, the Jedi Order itself, right,

00:06:29.480 has kind of, I mean, what is it even defending by that point, okay?

00:06:33.640 It's almost, yeah, and what Lucas does is he actually gives you an insight into it.

00:06:40.500 We watch Obi-Wan Kenobi go to that library and deal with it.

00:06:45.180 Do you remember that woman with a little pin in her hair?

00:06:47.260 Oh, yes.

00:06:48.020 The librarian.

00:06:49.060 In a second, the clones, yes.

00:06:50.280 Yeah, in a second.

00:06:51.200 Now, everybody derided that sequence.

00:06:53.040 They said, oh, it was boring and so on.

00:06:54.800 And, you know, if you watch the Lucas commentaries, he's like, yeah,

00:06:58.900 we will worry that this bit was going on too long.

00:07:00.840 But it was important because one of the reasons it's important is the Jedi

00:07:05.820 had so lost their way.

00:07:07.740 They'd so lost their way that now this woman who's meant to be, let's not forget, 0.99

00:07:12.740 she's meant to be a Jedi. 0.57

00:07:14.120 She's meant to be a keeper of this spiritual order.

00:07:17.780 She is devolved into being a mere bureaucrat, an empty suit, okay? 1.00

00:07:25.500 And in a way, a lot of the problem people have with the prequels are things

00:07:32.720 like, you know, Yoda's midi-chlorian speech, okay?

00:07:36.160 But if you think about it in these terms, yeah, the Jedi stuff is going to feel

00:07:43.280 less special and demystified because they've lost sight of what matters.

00:07:47.000 And in a sense, I mean, the whole saga is meant to be about Anakin bringing

00:07:53.420 balance to the Force, okay?

00:07:56.040 But let's not forget, I mean, I think prequel trilogy are as much Palpatine

00:07:59.380 story as they are Vader's story.

00:08:03.120 Palpatine is a kind of great man of galactic history, if you want to put it

00:08:08.980 this way.

00:08:09.460 He's the primary driver of all of the events that happen in the prequels.

00:08:13.220 So there is an argument to be made that he is the protagonist in that his

00:08:17.220 actions are what cause everything to happen.

00:08:21.120 Absolutely.

00:08:22.240 But you see, the thing is, in order for there to be balance in the Force,

00:08:28.780 quote-unquote, Palpatine needed to do those things.

00:08:32.540 If you think about it in terms of Thomas Carlyle, you know, he says of the

00:08:37.000 Bourbon order, the old enchantment regime, it had gone rotten.

00:08:42.520 The elites had become corrupted.

00:08:44.500 It needed to be cleansed with fire.

00:08:46.220 Now, you can say, well, all sorts of bad things happened in the French 1.00

00:08:49.180 Revolution, but the fact is it needed to be swept aside, right?

00:08:53.720 Napoleon, good or bad, he did a function for France.

00:08:57.020 It needed to happen.

00:08:58.480 And in a way, you could say, well, even if some of the things that Palpatine

00:09:02.160 ends up doing are evil, quote-unquote, and we can debate that,

00:09:05.760 it kind of, like, in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled, that needed to

00:09:12.360 happen because the state of the Jedi Order that we find it under Yoda, I mean,

00:09:17.680 think of the stuff that Yoda does.

00:09:19.480 What's Yaddle even doing on the council?

00:09:22.320 Nepotism.

00:09:23.220 It's D-E-I. 0.98

00:09:24.100 But anyway, the fun thing I find about that is that I've seen so many people

00:09:31.780 since I've put out my takes on Twitter that generated a wild amount of

00:09:36.580 controversy, and I do need, as we get into this, to talk about the fans and the

00:09:42.920 culture that emerged around the films and the prequels as well.

00:09:47.080 Because the amount of investment that some people have in their personal egos in

00:09:53.940 hating the films, being the right opinion, is absurd to me.

00:09:58.660 One of the complaints that I've seen is that people say that, yes, it demystified

00:10:02.120 the Jedi Order, but that having watched the original trilogy first, they had in

00:10:07.120 their minds this noble idea of kind of a Knights of the Round Table situation where

00:10:12.980 the Jedi were infallible.

00:10:14.900 But re-watch the originals again, right?

00:10:17.720 And I'm not just saying this with the hindsight of the prequels existing now to give you

00:10:22.300 all of this backstory, but we already know by the time of the originals without the

00:10:26.540 prequels, the Jedi Order failed.

00:10:28.680 Whatever it was that they were trying to uphold in the Galactic Republic had failed.

00:10:32.780 How do we know this?

00:10:33.600 Well, because it's an empire now, and because Obi-Wan has been exiled to the far reaches

00:10:39.100 of the corners of the galaxy, and Luke Skywalker, being Anakin Skywalker's son, has had to be

00:10:44.300 hidden from him because his father fell to the dark side.

00:10:46.720 So we already know that they failed, right?

00:10:49.320 And then look at the actions of Obi-Wan and Yoda in Empire and in Return of the Jedi, right? 0.99

00:10:59.180 I'm sorry, they suck. 0.82

00:11:02.000 Their advice to Luke is terrible because they are still going with this kind of outdated, 0.99

00:11:09.300 irresponsible idea, which is the same thing that helped Anakin to fall to the dark side

00:11:15.780 in the prequels, that you must divest yourself of all personal attachments, all personal

00:11:21.580 relationships.

00:11:22.960 You must become a spiritual nomad and a hermit.

00:11:26.820 Only then will you be able to achieve your destiny.

00:11:29.500 Luke proves them wrong.

00:11:31.340 It's through nurturing his relationship with Anakin at the end of The Return of the Jedi

00:11:36.720 that Anakin is able to be pulled back into doing the right thing and destroying the Emperor.

00:11:43.400 And to protect his sister.

00:11:44.700 And to protect his son and his sister.

00:11:47.340 And then by the time you go back to the prequels and you see that this is the same mindset,

00:11:53.040 this is the same behavior that pushed Anakin away from them.

00:11:57.640 Because what you see, and people like to say the writing is one note, the characters were terrible,

00:12:02.920 there's no character arcs. 0.95

00:12:04.740 One of the most concerningly stupid things I've ever heard people argue is that Anakin 0.79

00:12:09.880 is a Mary Sue in the prequel trilogy. 0.98

00:12:13.300 I don't think so.

00:12:13.620 Which is absurd because he is conflicted, he makes poor decisions.

00:12:18.880 Reckless.

00:12:19.400 Yeah, he's reckless, he's pulled between different worlds.

00:12:22.340 People forget that a Mary Sue is not just somebody who is powerful,

00:12:25.640 it's somebody who also makes the right decision all the time and is loved by everybody around them

00:12:32.500 and shapes the world to their will.

00:12:34.260 That's what the Mary Sue return was.

00:12:36.180 So it's just a complete misuse of the term.

00:12:38.400 But Anakin in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith

00:12:42.320 is pulled between the advice of, well, the tradition of the Jedi,

00:12:48.900 this whole idea of divest yourself of your feelings,

00:12:52.120 get rid of your attachments, and Palpatine, 0.99

00:12:55.960 who is saying that, no, you should care about your feelings,

00:12:59.300 I understand why you are worried, especially in Revenge of the Sith.

00:13:03.680 He's very paternal towards Anakin, whereas there's that scene in Revenge of the Sith,

00:13:09.060 Anakin's already been, he's taken away from his mother in Phantom Menace,

00:13:13.020 the Jedi do nothing, the Republic does nothing to solve the slavery problem on Tatooine.

00:13:18.520 They just let it happen.

00:13:19.760 So he's taken away from his mother at nine years old,

00:13:22.540 which clearly the attachment issues traumatize him.

00:13:26.440 Attack of the Clones, he has premonitions and dreams that his mother will die,

00:13:31.280 that turn out to be true because she dies in his arms.

00:13:34.800 And then you get to Revenge of the Sith,

00:13:37.540 he's having those same premonitions and dreams about Padme,

00:13:41.620 who he cares about, who he loves, she's his wife,

00:13:44.560 and he knows that his dreams come true.

00:13:46.760 And so he goes to Yoda and he doesn't say exactly that that's what's going on,

00:13:51.060 but he says, I'm having all of these issues, I have these doubts and fears.

00:13:55.300 And what does Yoda say?

00:13:57.440 Basically, don't worry about it, bro. 1.00

00:13:59.720 Suck it up. 1.00

00:14:00.420 Yeah, just forget about it. 1.00

00:14:01.800 Who cares?

00:14:02.780 If you're going to be one with the Force, just like meditate on it and you'll feel fine.

00:14:06.540 Whereas he goes to Palpatine with those same issues,

00:14:09.540 and Palpatine says, I understand your fears.

00:14:13.160 I understand the fear of losing.

00:14:15.620 If you join me, you can actually maybe find a way to fix those problems,

00:14:21.280 to prevent the people that you love from dying.

00:14:23.500 So I was watching them and going, yeah, the Jedi Order is corrupt.

00:14:27.900 They're in league with a corrupt republic.

00:14:30.300 There's a scene in Revenge of the Sith where, you know,

00:14:33.540 Palpatine is saying they're going to usurp my power to Anakin,

00:14:36.580 and it's presented, well, some people present it like he was just being paranoid or lying to Anakin.

00:14:43.160 No, Mace Windu says at one point, we're going to have to usurp Palpatine

00:14:47.760 and take power to, quote unquote, ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

00:14:53.060 And they ask Anakin to spy on him as well.

00:14:54.940 Yeah, like those ever work out.

00:14:56.980 So if I was in Anakin's position, I would say, yes, there is a conspiracy against Palpatine.

00:15:02.400 And Palpatine actually does care about me more than this ancient order

00:15:07.420 that's supposed to be so spiritual and in touch with the force in the galaxy.

00:15:13.900 I would have sided with Palpatine in Anakin's position as well, frankly.

00:15:18.660 And I think the film presents a very strong and nuanced case,

00:15:21.800 which people just completely ignore.

00:15:24.540 So there's actually a great through line from the prequels to what you see in the originals.

00:15:29.360 And that's why I think that as a full six film piece, the prequels improve the originals.

00:15:36.080 It's a full story in that George Lucas wanted to tell it as a full story.

00:15:40.080 Just one thing to add as well, what you were saying about the corruption of the Jedi Order as well.

00:15:47.980 I feel like this is such an important part of why Qui-Gon Jinn is at the beginning of the story, right?

00:15:55.460 Because when you have all of these Jedi like Mace Windu, like DEI hires like Yaddle and, you know, 0.76

00:16:01.880 people who become institutionally captured, which even happens to Kenobi, right?

00:16:06.920 Kenobi, if it had followed Qui-Gon's teachings, would have stopped chasing the approval of the institutions 0.83

00:16:12.840 and just followed the will of the force.

00:16:15.760 And so in the, because really you're looking at, what is it?

00:16:18.520 The Republic has stood for a thousand years, ten thousand years, a long, long time, right?

00:16:24.740 And so we are looking at it absolutely at the end, you know, late, late, late Republic stage.

00:16:31.780 And so we see all of the rot and the corruption.

00:16:33.920 And so I think it really makes sense to have that one Jedi character in there 0.99

00:16:39.200 who actually shows you the ideal of what a Jedi should be.

00:16:44.400 And that is someone who rises above the politics, who is entirely at service to the will of the force.

00:16:51.060 Who is happy to defy the council if it's what he knows right.

00:16:55.440 And that's the tragedy of the end of The Phantom Menace.

00:16:58.360 And why, because...

00:16:59.200 Qui-Gon could have been the father figure that Anakin was pushed to Palpatine.

00:17:03.700 Obi-Wan was not ready.

00:17:05.420 No.

00:17:05.580 He was not ready.

00:17:06.920 And that's part of why it is true, Obi-Wan failed him.

00:17:10.020 He really did.

00:17:11.900 Yeah, no, this is a good point.

00:17:13.560 And in fact, you said what I was going to say, which is that the film actually builds in the critique.

00:17:19.160 Okay.

00:17:19.340 And it gives you key characters.

00:17:21.560 Qui-Gon Jinn is one. 0.99

00:17:22.780 Another one, let's not forget, is Count Dooku, who's clearly somebody with higher ideals.

00:17:28.320 Somebody who has become disillusioned genuinely.

00:17:30.580 Qui-Gon's master. 0.99

00:17:31.420 With the Jedi Order and with the Republic, which is like, why are the, why are the Jedi defending this rotten Republic?

00:17:39.740 Okay.

00:17:40.340 And the film actually showed, the films show us how much in decline, like when he goes, when Qui-Gon goes to see Watto.

00:17:51.660 And he's like, well, we don't want your Republic credits here.

00:17:54.660 They don't worth anything.

00:17:55.980 Give me real money.

00:17:57.260 Because we can actually see the currency has become worthless, you know, in the outer rim.

00:18:03.860 So I think Dooku is also put in there as a kind of, because I don't think Dooku is a straightforward, this guy is just an evil so-and-so.

00:18:14.000 No.

00:18:14.080 He's clearly a noble character with ideals, and I think it's suggested that he may have been Qui-Gon's mentor.

00:18:21.180 He was.

00:18:21.680 He was.

00:18:22.520 He was Qui-Gon's master, and Qui-Gon was his apprentice. 0.98

00:18:26.000 Which is probably why, when there's the scene where Obi-Wan is being held captive by Dooku, Dooku says to him,

00:18:33.220 Qui-Gon probably would have listened to me. 1.00

00:18:35.560 Qui-Gon would have been able to see where I'm coming from. 1.00

00:18:37.940 Because it's also implied in that, that Dooku is not working for Sidious purely because of the fact that he's a bad guy and wants what Palpatine wants.

00:18:49.180 Like all Sith master-apprentice dynamics, the likelihood would have been that Dooku at some point would have tried to usurp Palpatine so that he could reform the Republic because he knew how corrupt it was.

00:19:02.540 He just never got the opportunity because Palpatine got Anakin to take care of him before he could.

00:19:06.740 But this is something else I wanted to point to, right?

00:19:10.240 The films also show us Palpatine running through different apprentices.

00:19:16.220 First there's Maul, gets rid of him. 0.88

00:19:18.140 Then Dooku comes in, gets rid of him.

00:19:21.480 Then he's got Anakin.

00:19:22.740 Now Anakin, after he has the fight with Obi-Wan, that gets cut in half, is a busted flush, right?

00:19:29.800 Imagine you're Palpatine.

00:19:30.980 You're invested in this apprentice.

00:19:32.800 He's basically injured.

00:19:34.480 He's been cut in half.

00:19:35.440 He hasn't got any legs anymore.

00:19:37.460 Palpatine could have just done away with him at that point, but he sticks with him, right?

00:19:41.920 As it is shown in the film.

00:19:43.540 I know you can go to novels and comics and stuff where he's got 15 apprentices and so on.

00:19:49.560 As you see it in the films, he doesn't get rid of, he sticks with Vader.

00:19:55.720 It sticks with Anakin, which shows some sort of genuine care on Palpatine's heart.

00:20:03.060 This is something else that is worth mentioning when it comes to why it is the Republic fell and the order of Palpatine comes, is that you actually watch Palpatine and you see it in Anakin.

00:20:17.880 But this is also happening at a kind of galaxy wide level, right?

00:20:22.840 Like, why would you live and fight and die for the Republic?

00:20:27.160 And you actually see this problem.

00:20:29.000 Yoda goes to that place and he's got, what is he, enlists the army of the clones or whatever?

00:20:35.360 Yes.

00:20:35.560 Oh, yes.

00:20:36.480 Right, Mino.

00:20:37.280 Yes.

00:20:38.220 So they're already having a problem with military recruitment, if you want to put it this way.

00:20:42.360 Whereas Palpatine, when he comes in, he actually gives a meaning and a purpose and an order to people's lives.

00:20:47.840 Okay?

00:20:48.460 And I don't want to get too far away.

00:20:50.200 But if you accept the Disney canon as well, you accept the sequels, you actually see what Leia and Han and Luke, right?

00:20:59.400 They fail to build an order, right?

00:21:02.160 They collapse the empire and they build nothing because they don't have, like, whatever those values of the old Republic were that led to the collapse in the first place, you can't build a new order on San.

00:21:13.780 It just falls apart again and then you end up with the first, whatever they call it, the first order or whatever, comes in again afterwards.

00:21:22.380 So to me, what is interesting in the films is that you actually see the reasons for the decline and you see the reasons for why the new order succeeded, you know, at least initially, because people actually wanted to fight and die for Palpatine.

00:21:40.680 And you gave them something to believe in, whereas it was almost impossible.

00:21:45.520 And the last thing I want to say is that as well as Qui-Gon and Dooku as critique characters, Lucas also gives us a lot of examples of the Jedi having atrophy.

00:21:58.440 Okay?

00:21:59.340 I think the banner, like, the kind of, is Kai Adimundi, right?

00:22:04.500 He is shown consistently as, like, the number three.

00:22:06.880 You know, it's Yoda, Windu, and then there's Kai Adimundi.

00:22:10.680 And he can't, like, they're sitting around, dark side clouds everything.

00:22:14.380 He's by the book.

00:22:15.560 He can't think for himself.

00:22:17.340 He doesn't follow the force.

00:22:19.000 You know, they've got all these rules.

00:22:20.500 And they've, like, when I say they've lost their way, this is not me kind of reading the film against the grain.

00:22:27.000 All of it is there.

00:22:28.060 It's all given to us by the text.

00:22:30.580 And I think it's, we're meant to think these things as we're watching it.

00:22:34.460 This is not shallow writing.

00:22:36.260 This is, like, it's there.

00:22:37.720 It's there.

00:22:40.680 It's there.

00:22:53.800 It's there.

00:22:54.360 It's there.

PREVIEW： The Star Wars Prequels Are Great, Actually

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