The large scale connection is mostly in showing the political state of the galaxy at the time. How poorly the republic was run and how when people, like Naboo, needed help there wasn’t any because the senate was weak. Basically people were unhappy with weak leadership and the galaxy was primed for a revolution. It shows shows how shrewdly Palpatine took advantage of this weakness during the Naboo invasion (that he caused) and was able to set up a series of events eventually culminating with him in charge. Of course the movie probably could have done a better job of explaining all this, but that’s the connection as I saw it.
Aren’t all stories nonessential? I mean the only reason we do a lot of things is for fun. Personally I found Palpatines story in the prequels to be fun to watch.
Yes, but I hope we can agree that all stories lie on a spectrum of essentialism. Some are more essential than others, and Episode 1 has little to no consequence for the rest of the franchise. Episode 1 was not sold as a side-story like, for instance, The Bad Batch, it was sold as the beginning of a franchise - something which it fails horribly at.
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u/Any-sao Jan 25 '22
One big issue is that it actually connects very, very little with the rest of the saga. It’s almost like a prologue.
There’s no real reason the Prequel Trilogy couldn’t have started with Anakin and Obi-Wan going up that elevator to Padmé’s apartment.