The worst lines in the Star Wars prequels

Number 57 “Nooooooooooooooooooo!” should've been number 1.

 

The line is fine, it's the whiney intereptation of it that kills it.

 

In fairness, good child actors are fairly hard to come by. Interestingly, Haley Joel Osment was up for the role at one point, and this was right after The Sixth Sense, which he actually did a pretty good job in.

CORRECTION: The Sixth Sense actually came out a few months after TPM, so I guess he probably could have only done one or the other. I bet after The Sixth Sense came out the producers were kicking themselves for passing on Osment.

 

I'm glad this thread was created. I haven't seen the prequels since they first came out. Lately I've been wanting to revisit them and have thought about buying the blu-ray prequel trilogy set a few times, but always held off. Just reading these lines again and remembering them has tilted me back to sanity. I don't need to buy these movies again.

 

At the very beginning of Phantom Menace when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are ambushed by battle droids and they first take out their light sabers, one droid turns to another says "uh oh."

Are you freaking kidding me??? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Robots were really programmed to say "uh oh" in the middle of battle? I knew 3 minutes in to this that it was going to be terrible.

 

Watch this video instead, far more entertaining than the movie:

 

You're right! That is outstanding!

 

There's a scene in The Making of Phantom Menace where Lucas shows photographs of the final 3 kids from which he has to choose young Anakin. He points to one and says, "this kid was the best actor by far." And then the second, he says, "and this one has the most experience." Then he points to Jake Lloyd's picture and says, "but this kid had a little spark of something, plus he looks a little like Mark Hamill. He had the worst audition, but I think he'll do great in the movie. I'm casting him in the role."

 

That 'Making Of" documentary on the DVD is fascinating because there's a moment where they've just finished watching the rough cut and they know they have a turd on their hands, but they also know they can't edit around the film's problems.

 

They show the casting on TPM making of documentary. There was another kid in the finalists that seemed like an OBVIOUS choice over Jake Lloyd. He was more polished, and looked like Luke.

Watch 1:25 in this video:

Lucas even admits that this kid would be far less "work".

**I have long contended Lucas should have started the Prequels with Anakin as a young Jedi, and just do a flashback for the youth part (if at all).

Episode II should have been the turn to Darth Vader.

Episode III should have tracked Vader leading up to the forming of the rebellion.

 

Now those are some prequels I could get excited about!

 

I won't provide any details, but I can tell you on Episode 3, there was concern about the relative lack of chemistry between Hayden Christianson and Natalie Portman. After I saw the film many months later, I could see this was a problem they never could solve.

In the case of Phantom Menace, the problem I saw there was that the entire film rested on the kid's shoulders. If you didn't have a brilliant little kid actor, the film wouldn't work because you couldn't believe him and you couldn't empathize with him. I never believed that kid for a second. He was a terrible actor (who I have no doubt did his best), and it brought the whole movie down. You'd need an actor on the level of Haley Joel Osment to pull that off -- that kid was an exceptionally good actor in the 1990s.

 

Agreed on all counts. Even for a child actor, Jake Lloyd was more wooden than Pinocchio. He just couldn't emote to save his life and that's a real problem when most of his lines involve emotional situations and dialogue.

 

I dunno... it's hard not to be affected by the knowledge that poor little Jake sucked in Phantom Menace when looking at the screentests. Trying to set that knowledge aside, I think he looks like he has more personality than the other two kids.

Ironically, the brown-haired kid, who is the worst of the three, is the one who's a working actor now -- Michael Angarano.

I don't know that *any* kid that young would have been good. It just wasn't a good idea.

 

I had a feeling Lucas' feet must have directed those movies!

 

Ah that Jar Jar...freaking poet, he was.

 

I thought he was in top form in that scene.

 

All the love talk is hilariously bad.