Everyone knows that George Lucas lifted what turned out to be “Chapter Four: A New Hope” directly from the structure of classic myth as outlined by academic Joseph Campbell in his book “Hero With A Thousand Faces”.

And he already had the base concept of the hero’s fight against the evil Empire more or less fixed. So he applied the hero structure to it to create what he initially assumed would be a “one off” single film, originally titled “Star Wars”.

But when it grabbed a universal appeal and it because clear the entire extended saga of nine episodes was financially possible, he outlined the vaguely defined concept of making the entire thing about the Skywalker family, father, son and children.

But first he had to complete what would essentially become the “second act” of a three-film per act, three act structure. And he accomplished that with relative success. Except for the Ewoks. They suck.

Anyway, he was then faced with the uncomfortable task of jumping back to the very beginning of the entire saga and showing how it all started with the main character of the first two acts, Darth Vader, came into being. And in order to do that he had to decide when exactly to introduce the alter-ego of Vader, Anikin Skywalker and what the galaxy would have been like at that time, pre-Empire.

And that meant he had to also explain how a Republic could devolve into a tyranny. In other words, a political story.

And that’s where he began to prove he wasn’t really that good a writer to begin with. Because without the Joseph Campbell hero structure to depend on, he had to come up with something more suitable to Tom Clancy or Allen Drury of “Advise and Consent” fame. A political opus.

And on top of that, he also had to show where Anikin came from and how this meaningless waif, stuck on a backward, outlying planet in the middle of nowhere, happened to come under the notice of the Jedi in distant Corisant.

So how does he choose to accomplish these two vital goals? He starts with a confusing, badly explained “diplomatic mission” to negotiate some uncomprehensible local planetary conflict somewhere which, for some unexplained reason (but really just to have a bit of open conflict right off the bat) collapses into an attack on the negotiators. Huh? Who would be that stupid?

Anyway, having established a fragment of the political “conflict”, he then had to focus the rest of the movie on introducing Anikin. And having begun with the characters that had to encounter the boy (Jedi Quigon and Obiwan) somewhere in the vicinity of where Anikin lived, he literally had to construct an unlikely series of conveniences and coincidences to allow that encounter.

In other words, the opening of Act One of this massive saga is almost entirely complete drivel and convenience. And if any single bit of that series of events doesn’t happen (however unlikely that occurrence is) then there is no story. In fact, no Star Wars at all, even the Second Act that had already been created and fixed as canon.

Add the fact that there was an expectation of the opening being, to one extent or another, an “action” sequence and it gets even more nonsensical.

Consider:

The Galactic Republic, a unified entity consisting of a thousand or more planets (and their armed forces) sends negotiators to open talks with the Trade Federation aboard their command ship currently running a shipping blockade of the planet of Naboo. And what do the leaders of the Trade Federation do? They attempt to murder the negotiators, which is nothing short of an open act of war!

Can you imagine what would happen if, for example, Iran were to murder negotiators from the United States before nuclear weapons talks even began? Iran would be wiped off the map within a day. Yet in spite of this open act of war the Republic does nothing.

The problem was that politics is boring. It consists of talking, not action, and George was faced with having to both start the world-building, to set the scene that would, over the next three films, take the galaxy from a Republic to a Tyranny, and at the same time “hook” the audience with the kind of thing they came to see – the action.

The chief offenses however are the string of coincidences, conveniences and “strokes of luck” that even allow George to introduce the single character on which the entire trilogy will be based, Anikin Skywalker.

Consider:

George opens the story with the ambush of the Jedi on the Trade Federation ship, the escape to the surface of Naboo, the descent to the underwater city to secure transport to the human capital, all essentially (effective or not) action sequences.

And having established the basis of what will be the primary conflict of this first film, now has to somehow try to introduce the actual main character of the entire trilogy, Anikin Skywalker.

So how does he accomplish it?

1.     The Naboo spaceship, intended to carry Queen Amadala to the Capitol planet of Coruscant, CONVENIENTLY gets shot and damaged as it attempts to leave the the surface (another blatant act of war by the Trade Federation against a sitting member of the Republic government).

2.     The damaged ship can no longer reach the Capitol and must put down somewhere else to effect repairs. And, CONVENIENTLY, the only other planet close enough for them to reach just happens to be Tatooine, where CONVENIENTLY Anikin happens to be living.

3.     When they arrive they CONVENIENTLY happen to land in the one tiny outpost where Anikin lives, as opposed to anywhere else on the entire planet.

4.     Discovering they require a part replacement, they CONVENIENTLY drop into the one business in the entire community (and it must be a pretty big community considering the size of the crowd at the local Pod Race) where Anikin just happens to be a slave.

5.     And what happens? This eight year old child simply says that he’s the only human that can participate in the Pod Races. That’s it. That’s the sole clue that Anikin has any affinity for the Force. He can drive a Pod Racer. The very idea that he might simply be a savant with a specific unique talent or skill never enters Quigon’s mind. So how does he verify that Anikin does indeed have some Force affinity?

a.     He hears Anikin’s mother tell him he was born by immaculate conception. She doesn’t prove it in any way. She just says it. And he believes her.

b.     But he can’t justify dragging Anikin away from his mother and literally kidnapping him to the other side of the galaxy just based on that flimsy “evidence”, so what if George forced to do? Provide a sure-fire, independent, scientific test that confirms Anikin has “Force power”… the most CONVENIENT contrivance of all: midichlorians testing.

c.     And what makes the entire concept of midichlorians a supreme piece of garbage writing is that it isn’t mentioned a single time in any of the Act Two trilogy films. Not once. Because for those the Force was treated as some kind of spiritual, not genetic capability. And because after being shoved in at this point to get Quigon off the hook of being a cultist child kidnapper, it is never mentioned again. Ever.

All of the above constitutes bad, sloppy writing composed of a series of necessary rather than cause and effect events. Without any single one of those things happening, there is no Star Wars Prequels.

And what makes it even more frustrating is that there was a simple and obvious solution to the quandary of both beginning the political world building and introducing Anikin in a perfectly sensible and even compelling way.

Instead of attempting to start with an action sequence (which in the context of the story makes no sense whatsoever), you instead open on Tatooine, in the dead of night. We see the town shut down in sleep, and focus in on Smee and Anikin’s small hovel. Suddenly there is a disturbing and mysterious rumble and Smee awakens, already aware that something bad is happening yet again. She goes immediately to check on Anikin and entering his room discovers that he is having a nightmare and every single object in the room is floating in the middle of the air and vibrating wildly. She watches, stunned and frightened, knowing what’s coming. After a few moments the rumble builds to something almost deafening and then dissipates with a flash of bright light and everything drops to the floor, shattering with a crash. She rushes to comfort him as he awakes sobbing in terror. 

Cut across the street to where an alien couple are standing at the window of their bedroom looking over at where “it’s” happened yet again. Without a word we realize they are going to complain to someone this time.

Then we cut to Naboo, and instead of having the official Trade Federation representatives attack the Jedi we see them quietly and secretly ordering some “pirates” to attack them, damaging their ship and forcing them to land on the planet, encounter Jarjar Binks and so on.

Once they obtain Amadala’s ship they receive a message from Jedi central ordering them to go check out these incoming reports about weird Force-like things happening on Tatooine with an eight year old boy named Anikin.

That effectively solves the problem and in a way that doesn’t require the creation (and instant abandonment) of a convenience like midichlorians or an ridiculously unlikely string of conveniences to finally get the story started.

But George Lucas simply isn’t a very good writer, so none of that raised a red flag while he was trying to compose the screenplay.

And what we get is the opening installment of perhaps the world’s greatest scifi saga that is boring, confusing, nonsensical and ultimately only possible because good will from the Act Two trilogy was still potent enough to carry it through.

But it’s still garbage storytelling. And always will be.