StarWars.com made their poor reporter Pete Vilmur go through video and audio of the panel I moderated and transcribe some of the best bits.
You can see their recap and pictures of it here. I’ll put a few of the best bits below:
James Arnold Taylor: I love them because it sets it up in a beautiful way. It’s also amazing to look at — I mean, they’re gorgeous. It’s also a very honest story…I was seven when Episode IV came out and I love it, but I also always look at Episode IV through the eyes of seven-year-old James, thinking it’s the most magical thing I’ve ever seen in my life… We watched all seven films, I like to say, and I was just amazed at the story. You have to watch them that way and when you do, boy, it’s a beautiful story.
Kyle Newman: Without the prequels we wouldn’t be here right now — we wouldn’t have Celebration. It kept the community alive. It kept us thinking about Star Wars, talking about Star Wars, going on the net and bringing Star Wars into our lives. No matter what you say about them or how you feel about them, they’re pure. You can debate the story [George] told but they came from a pure place.
Bryan Young: One of the best things about the prequels is that they make the classic trilogy better. One of my favorite things is, if you watch Attack of the Clones, you watch Anakin go through these trials in which he fails miserably and leads to him turning into a Sith. In Empire we watch Luke doing the same thing. And if you can suspend the idea that you’ve seen Empire a thousand times, you can get thrilled thinking, oh my God, is Luke going to turn to the dark side and become the force that Vader could have been?
Kyle Newman: There’s so many layers to it…every movie has parallels. Anakin’s falling into a similar Sith trap in the same way Luke does when he goes to Bespin…And the spiritual aspect of the prequels actually comes from the dark side. It’s Palpatine. Palpatine is taking a person under his wing the same way Obi-Wan did. You get that understanding of the Force almost from a dark side perspective in contrast to the original trilogy where it’s a light side perspective.
Jesse Hildreth: If there’s anything I like more than The Clone Wars itself…it’s the plan that Sidious had. He really did execute it perfectly. He created the army for one specific reason, and you never know it until Order 66. The army was made to kill Jedi. The war was made to spread them out so they couldn’t help each other and could be picked off one by one. It was a masterstroke.
Dave Filoni: I actually really like the scene where [Lucas] put Hayden [Christensen] in at the end of Return of the Jedi. I heard that was controversial, but I liked it, it really tied it all together for me. It really made me go, wow, there’s that boy, and he suffered through all of that. I thought it brought great closure… it was like hearing Vader say Padmé’s name at the end of Revenge of the Sith. That blew my mind…Remember when we were kids, there was a big debate as to whether there was even a person in there.
