Chen G.

Samantha Davis, wife of Warwick Davis, died in March, but her death has only been announced today. She was 53.

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This problem is hardly unique to the prequel trilogy, having also plagued Return of the Jedi a great deal: the cutting from the gloomy Emperor scenes to the Ewok crap could not be more peculiar if Marquand, Lucas and Kasdan tried. The lesson here is NOT that Return of the Jedi is somekind of prelude to the prequel trilogy but just that, as I always say, it doesn't do to lump these films together in trilogies: its best to look at them as individual entries, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
 
I'd definitely agree there is a neither-fish-nor-fowl quality to Episode One, tonally-speaking. Its weird to see a film whose overall style is that of a children's film, but which ends with the death of the protagonist. I don't think Episode two has that in quite the same way: that movie is just goofy from start to finish, even if not entirely by design. Episode III has some of this inconsistency, too, but definitely lands harder on the more gloomy side of things.
 
Interesting you associate this more Machiavelian turn in the prequels with Star Trek. I tend to think it more in terms of Dune and, to a large extent, Lucas trying to one-up Coppola and his Godfather films: the structure of the prequel trilogy is suspiciously similar to the "prequel" parts of The Godfather: Part II, and all the Machiavelian atmosphere is very much in Coppola's wheelhouse.

Themes don't have names.
 
They sometimes have nicknames.

Yes, if you assume simple answers then yes, the film "works". But it makes the film as a whole feel shallow and lazy if it doesn't explain hardly anything that's going on. Yes, you can assume everything I pointed out, but you can do that for something like the Transformers films. Sure we never learn Megatron's backstory and motivations besides a basic "I want power", but you can assume with a few slight context clues here and there. Doesn't make him a well written villain. 
 
 
This comes back to my main issue with the prequels. They want to have their cake and eat it too. I'm not saying something like the camps should have been Auschwitz-like, but showing them as prisons to demonstrate Naboo's subjugation would have added tangible stakes, and the fact that the prequels are both goofy, childlike, family fun, while also supposed to be a more complex, semi-political Star Trek like film doesn't work. The force is both magic that you can make up whatever you want about, and a definite, measurable, sci-fi concept. Those are contradictory. As far as I know, Gandalf's magic is not also a complex physics system.

Showing the suffering of the people on Naboo was not the narrative goal of having the trade Federation invade the planet. It's the same reason we don't see anyone die on Alderaan. It's meant to show the state of a galaxy that would allow something like this to happen. A corporation invading a planet is bad (don't know why I have to keep saying this), but it's the ineffectiveness of the Senate to be able to do anything about it that is the real problem. I don't know how anyone can watch this movie and not come away with impression of a deeply corrupt government. We must be watching different movies, or have very different definitions of corruption.
 
Palpatine uses all of this to his advantage. He's orchestrated the invasion of Naboo to get sympathy in the Senate, because, while they can't do much about the Federation, they can kick Valorum out, and he can become Chancellor. It's a straight line from a corporation has a seat in a representational government to corporation invades a planet to new government is formed to fix the problems of the old one to civil war to Empire. If you're going to go past the OT at all, TPM is essential. Machete order is ridiculous for cutting it.
 
"Him" being a Jedi, the people I've convinced myself are trying to take over, not "him," who you're secretly in love with behind my back.
 
They are "trained in the Jedi arts." The movie never calls them Jedi, ex or otherwise.
 
"Fear is a path to the dark side." I think it's safe to assume that they use fear, and anger, and hate as the driving factors of their force usage. What is their motivation? What's the Empire's motivation? Power. The decisions we make on how to use what power we have is a theme throughout all the films.
 
"The Sith have been extinct for a millennium."
 
While I think TPM answers a lot more of the questions you have than you seem to be remembering, or are able to put together for yourself, I also think it's unfair to task that one film with answering every niggling detail we might have. It's doubly unfair to compare a two hour movie to a forty hour video game. Not all the answers are going to fit in one film. That's why he made three of them. But I still think it gives us plenty to build on, and solid foundation for the next films. I've watched these in order with people who've never seen them. They had no difficulty in parsing what was going on. TPM does a fine job as Episode one.

Well, Frank Herbert kind of took something of the tropes of Edgar Rice Burroughs (man comes to alien desert planet, befriend the local noble savages and leads them against a technologically-superior but tyrannical foe) and inverted them, and Cameron's films owe a lot of Burroughs.

Correct. The prequel trilogy is often given as the most planned of the trilogies, but your critique exposes the flaw in that outlook: in some (not all) ways it is, in fact, the most episodic. Another aspect is that the three films look almost nothing alike: Episode I having been shot on 35mm anamorphic, Episode II on 960p anamorphic, and Episode III on 1080p spherical. Baffling.
 
Add to that dropped plot threads like Boba (in any other trilogy, you'd surely have an older Boba in Episode III, something Lucas pondered), the whole Sifo-Dyas mystery, and the rather housewife-y role that Padme is reduced to in Episode III. Its also clear that rather than have a clear hamartia for Anakin's fall in mind since Episode I, Lucas had multiple possible avenues open and didn't decide on one until he was editing Episode III, although he gets away with that much better.

I would say one of my biggest issues with the prequels is how disconnected each of them feel. There is a disconnect between A New Hope and Empire, but there's still a strong connection in that our characters are more or less the same people as they were from the last film (their introduction), and A New Hope sets up Luke's hatred for Vader in Empire, his connection to Obi-Wan, and how he already knows of the force and the Jedi. 
 
Whereas you don't need TPM as Maul is barely (if ever) mentioned again, Qui-Gon is only alluded to in the latter two, and even then Yoda was originally written as Obi-Wan's only master anyway, and Anakin (and even Obi-Wan to a certain extent) is a completely different person by the second movie so his introduction was worthless. All it showed that sets up the second film is Anakin's connection with his mother which isn't even that convincing in my eyes anyway in TPM. Plus everyone's kind of introduced in the second film anyway. 
 
Even the third film has the same problem. It has a bit more connection to the previous with the same villain (dying immediately), and Anakin being more similar than from 1 to 2, but considering how the context from the second film makes the third film worse, the movie works better overall as its own thing, separated from the other two. 

By that logic, you could cut the original and just watch The Empire Strikes Back...
 
The plot of the classic trilogy doesn't really start until a good halfway into Empire. Its only there that a bigger conflict with the Emperor is set-up: "Only a fully-trained Jedi knight, with the Force as his ally, could conquer Vader and his Emperor."
 
Both trilogies, to varying extent, have this presentation of a prelude, plus a more closely-knit duology of films. In both cases, its probably the result of a lack of forethought on the part of Lucas, although for different reasons.

By that logic, you could cut the original and just watch The Empire Strikes Back...
 
The plot of the classic trilogy doesn't really start until a good halfway into Empire. Its only there that a bigger conflict with the Emperor is set-up: "Only a fully-trained Jedi knight, with the Force as his ally, could conquer Vader and his Emperor."
 
Both trilogies, to varying extent, have this presentation of a prelude, plus a more closely-knit duology of films. In both cases, its probably the result of a lack of forethought on the part of Lucas, although for different reasons.

Although I'm sure Lucas had a lot of input into this book - and especially the prologue - the book was principally the work of Alan Dean Foster and was only credited to Lucas to keep the appearance of the single visionary. In fact, the requirement to have the book credited to Lucas deterred his first choice of writer, Dan Glut.
 
All the "Whills" stuff is from Lucas' early drafts. Its basically his version of Burroughs' "Girdley Wave."
 
None of which is to go against your basic argument, of course.
 
Oh, and just one more thing I can't resist:
 
 
This is supposed to be in the background of the movie: The whole idea is that the Emperor is the lackey of the Imperial officers and, specifically, Tarkin, not the other way around. Tarkin's line "regional governors now have direct control over their territories" was obviously mean to be read more smug than it does in the film, being that Tarkin is a regional governor.

Conan the Destroyer. Yeah, it is a "bad" sequel. One of those goofy 80s fantasy movies. But it was nowhere near as terrible as I was expecting.
 
Karol

I actually wrote a lengthy essay arguing to the opposite in that particular case...
 
But I feel like the Star Wars case is very different.

Yeah, but then we got Rogue One, Solo, Obi Wan etc...
 
Imagine watching all that stuff and then seeing the original for the first time:
 
Vader's entrance? Meh. Seen him plenty for that to maintain its drama.
The Droids wandering through the dunes? Meh, we've seen endless amounts of far-more-impressively-framed desert shots AND we know Tatooine so its no longer about the Droids venturing into the unknown.
The cantina? Pfft, we've seen more weird aliens than stars in the sky.
The Death Star blowing up Leia's home? Pfft, please! We've seen the Death Star blow up several planets by this point.
The lightsaber battle? Pfft, we've seen people - including Vader and Obi Wan - slash and jump and throw objects at each other, so these two geezers gently poking at each other? NEXT!
 
etc... You get my point.

I think that's very, very likely. A kid in 2024 is much more likely to first encounter a contemporary Star Wars show or a recent Star Wars film or couple of films, and much less likely to first hit upon the original, 1977 film, especially seeing as how its nestled into the midst of the whole thing as "Episode IV." There's nothing to say that's the original: its just one of the episodes.
 
And, if that's the case, I do think it will take the edge off of the original film when kids DO get to it eventually. Its a much quainter film - it was made for far less money, and with less means - its more light on its feet, much more referential of then-fashionable pop-culture works, and all those qualities really work for the film in isolation, but when viewed after having seen a good helping of the larger "saga", all that stuff make it feel out-of-place, quaint and kind of underwhelming.
 
Tatooine was probably pretty darn cool in 1977. But if you've seen Episode I (which I think had a far better location scout for Tunisia) and other entries into the expanded series that take place on Tatooine or on other desert planets (Jakku, Geonosis) and which far greater means to showcase the vastness of the desert (not to mention films depicting the antecedents of Tatooine: Barsoom and Arrakis), then the shots of the desert in the 1977 film lose a lot of their grandeur and mystique. Certainly, after all the frenetic lightsaber action in the other entries, the brawl between Old Ben and Vader comes across far lamer than it did in 1977.
 
Probably the best essay written on the film has this to say on the matter: 
 
 

I feel like its much, much, MUCH more detrimental in Star Wars, and while the prequels do give some stuff back, I feel like in that case the scales are tipped way too far in the direction of detracting from the original film, as opposed to enriching it.

Although I'm sure Lucas had a lot of input into this book - and especially the prologue - the book was principally the work of Alan Dean Foster and was only credited to Lucas to keep the appearance of the single visionary. In fact, the requirement to have the book credited to Lucas deterred his first choice of writer, Dan Glut.
 
All the "Whills" stuff is from Lucas' early drafts. Its basically his version of Burroughs' "Girdley Wave."
 
None of which is to go against your basic argument, of course.
 
Oh, and just one more thing I can't resist:
 
 
This is supposed to be in the background of the movie: The whole idea is that the Emperor is the lackey of the Imperial officers and, specifically, Tarkin, not the other way around. Tarkin's line "regional governors now have direct control over their territories" was obviously mean to be read more smug than it does in the film, being that Tarkin is a regional governor.

Although I'm sure Lucas had a lot of input into this book - and especially the prologue - the book was principally the work of Alan Dean Foster and was only credited to Lucas to keep the appearance of the single visionary. In fact, the requirement to have the book credited to Lucas deterred his first choice of writer, Dan Glut.
 
All the "Whills" stuff is from Lucas' early drafts. Its basically his version of Burroughs' "Girdley Wave."
 
None of which is to go against your basic argument, of course.
 
Oh, and just one more thing I can't resist:
 
 
This is supposed to be in the background of the movie: The whole idea is that the Emperor is the lackey of the Imperial officers and, specifically, Tarkin, not the other way around. Tarkin's line "regional governors now have direct control over their territories" was obviously mean to be read more smug than it does in the film, being that Tarkin is a regional governor.

I suppose a good deal of the potentially antisemitic content is about things that we today still tend to consider "bad", but which also have a history of being attributed to Jews. Given Wagner's background, that might well have been intentional, even if the broader aspects he criticises about them still ring true with us today. He does get rather explicit in his wordings at least at the ends of Lohengrin and Meistersinger though, even if it may seem authentic for the time the operas are set in. But contemporary implications of his stories and lyrics are hardly accidental with Wagner.

Sure, I'm just saying if you're a DP who also directs, you're sure to be very opinionated on directorial issues, and depending on the director and the project that can get you into trouble...

Yes! That was the explanation in the companion! That its just one of the more sensationalist aspects Wagner ported from the mythology. With the music, its undeniably effective in the theatre, though!
 
We're not going to succesfully disentangle the complex subject of Wagner's antisemitism here, but I personally see no antisemitism in the Ring. I might see it in Meistersingers, but even there I'm not sold, in spite of Barry Millington's pointing out of the comparison between Walther's "Fanget An" to Grimm's "Jew among the thorns."

In any case, the pointing thing is adapted from the original Nibelungenlied, where Siegfried's wounds begin to bleed when Hagen approaches (apparently a standard proof of guilt at the time - similar to the Gottesgericht in Lohengrin I guess). Wagner transfers it to Siegfried raising his hand (the one with the Ring, I suppose; if the printed libretto in DG's Karajan box is complete, Wagner doesn't actually specify that, but at least I've seen it staged that way). Whether that's because of some inherent power of the Ring of just a "natural" reaction of the dead is maybe up to interpretation.
 
Apparently, there's an antisemitic background to the whole concept, too…

Somehow, Titurel has returned. It is the greatest unsung line in opera history.
 
Karol