@Aaron: D’oh! I should’ve said “Tibanna-gas breathers”!

@DavidR: to be perfectly frank, I don’t dislike the PT. To the contrary — like I said toward the end of the piece — even bad sex is still sex, and that’s never a bad thing. If I had more time & space, I would’ve gone on to say that I firmly believe that the aesthetics of both versions of THE CLONE WARS feel much more in sync with the OT. You make some solid points, though, as to how the PT balances the OT. Certainly, there’s no dominant ‘villain’ visually in the PT, and, you betcha, that definitely contributes to the nebulousness of the pieces.

@RBourn: oh, yeah. I knew it was Tibanna gas, but, having never been into a Tibanna gas mine, I went with the sarcastic coal mine analogy. (I’m so Earthcentric!) Like I said, Cloud City just felt too clean to me … except for the places I mentioned. I grew up working in some steel fabricating plants with my father, and the industrialness of it rubbed off on me.

@Mr. B: true enough; however, the timeframe between the OT & PT was only 20 yrs … not much of a Dark Age if it was only 20 yrs apart … but I do understand & for the most part agree with your sentiments.

To all: thanks for reading & sounding off. Seriously. Much appreciated.

Its not always a given that the future is going to be more advanced/better. Look at our own history-what followed the glory of the Roman Empire? The Dark Ages. Not until after the medieval period could it considered that our civilisation got more advanced in architecture, medicine, culture etc than the Romans.

You can’t exactly dig into a gas giant anyway.

Otherwise, great job about the environments thing, I had never heard that pointed out anywhere else. Congrats on being original

That said, I DO seem to be the resident Prequel fan…

The Originals are certainly more sophisticated than their surface adventures would imply, but so too are the Prequels. They’re just about different things, and go about it in different ways.

Higher stakes are also simpler stakes. While the Prequels do lack an immediate emotional connection (at least, when compared to the Originals), they make up for it IMO by their complexity, their satire, and their “skullduggery.” The less-immediate stakes in that trilogy ALSO allows the Originals to up the ante on the Prequels, which is absolutely essential to maintaining the structural integrity of a six-part saga like this. In the PT, the world falls apart due to corruption and disrepair, and in the OT the Rebels have to fight for their life to get it back.

In the Prequels, danger is “ellusive.” A phantom menace, if you will. Intentionally so, I’d argue. Yoda, I sound like for some reason. With RotS, it comes into the light, and it is the heroes of the story who must scurry around in the shadows, if they want to make it out alive.

Yin and yang, to borrow a phrase from your article. The PT enriches the OT along with telling its own valuable stories.

A couple of other notes on locations in the PT:
-Naboo is idyllic; the perfect home for humans. Appropriate to show us paradise at the beginning of this series before it gets taken from us by evil, and also appropriate to bookend the saga with “green” planets.
-Kamino (my favorite of the Prequels) brings us a Bespin-like floating city, only this time over water. The structural echo to Empire is nice, but it works subtextually, as water has an association with things that are hidden/submerged. Also love the metaphoric visual of the spartan, glowing interior with the storm raging just outside.
-Mustafar basically speaks for itself, but is probably the most blatantly allegorical location of the series — except for maybe Cloud City, the heaven that hides hell within it.

Basically, I note the differences outlined in this article, but I think they largely work in the service of the story as opposed to against it.

They are all geographical impossibilities. No planet could ever be one giant type of biome, the topography wouldn’t allow it. The planets would all have to look roughly similar to Earth in their distribution of swamp, desert, snow and whatever else.