Nah, they're not THAT bad.

...and to be fair, Lucas had no clue what the prequels would be when he did ep. 4-6, he just made shit up. At least The Hobbit was written BEFORE LoTR.

This is to the Lord of the Rings films, what the StarWars prequels were to the original Star Wars films.

(a 'hit' that starts with an 's')

Some of the worst parts of the prequels were in "the frontier", with Anakin making crap out of dirty old parts. The reason the prequels sucked wasn't because of details of the setting or because there wasn't enough arms getting cut off or something. It's because the story was poorly written and the acting was horrible (mostly due to script/direction problems).

I also cried, because I loved that show as a little kid when it aired in my country, watching it together with my siblings as we had an amazing adventure along with the characters of the show every single episode. The reason I'm crying now, however, is because:

Unlike the original series, this sequel is produced entirely in France; as a co-joint venture between the French television channel TF1, the Belgian channel La Trois, the French animation company Blue Spirit and Jean Chalopin's company Movie-Plus Group.
The first of the new seasons sees the series move to China. The design of the characters are more or less the same, although some subtle changes have been made to their physical appearances. Jean Chalopin and Bernard Deyries act as creative consultants on the new series, with Chalopin concentrating particularly on the scripts (which are written by Hadrian Soulez-Lariviere from Chalopin's own draft for the sequel) and Deyries focusing particularly on the graphical aspects. New background music is composed by Noam Kaniel.

It's not the same animation, it's not the same writers, it's not the same setting, it's not the same voice actors and it's not the same memorable music. Nothing's the same. It's the same feeling as with the Star Wars prequels if you can believe it, only with less source material. Maybe our children will enjoy this show without having the nostalgic baggage of "The Mysterious Cities of Gold" series; but for me as a fan of what must be 25 years or more, this just looks unwatchable.
Not everything good is made better by making more of it, and especially after a 30 year period of the series being over and done with. I think that the window of opportunity has passed on making another season of this show by a couple of decades, I think the season they're making looks inferior both in content and quality and I think the people who made the series work so well aren't being emulated, making this creation something akin to a stranger wearing a face mask of the show, something which is copying the names but is completely set apart from "The Mysterious Cities of Gold", with no legs of its own to stand on but only a cheap imitation crutch.

This little video alone was better than all the prequels combined.

Almost anything would have been better. To my mind, the single biggest flaw with the prequels was that the originals focused on a small set of largely likeable characters who were generally together having adventures in space. The Prequels were just all over the place and there weren't really any likeable characters, and... and... for the sake of brevity, let's just say they suck in every way.

Also, for the love of god, George Lucas should not have been allowed to direct. He is a terrible, terrible, terrible director. Everyone knows that. Everyone has known that since the first one, and George should have known that too. He isn't a great artist in any sense of the word. I'd say the prequels are a textbook example of why the role of director is so important. How can such an accomplished cast deliver a performance barely better than what you'd expect from, say, "Sharktopus."

I think the next three will be decent. They don't have to be great (and really, the original three weren't *great* per se, they were just novel fun, imaginative, and hit a sweet spot. I think JJ Abrams will do fine.

Anyways, this guys plot would have worked. So would have a lot of others though.

I could have sworn that there were different colored lightsabers in semi-cannon material (all the extended universe stuff is licensed and authorized so I consider it semi-cannon) prior to the prequels. Dark Forces II for example, and the extended universe books (Mara Jade). By Knights of the Old Republic (which did indeed come after the prequels) multi colored lightsabers were a bit more common...

The explanation of the color is from the crystals that make up the lightsaber (Lea's is red so it isn't side alignment, then again her kid...), and during the official universe time frame the empire controlled the crystals more which limited the colors out there... but that is more of a retcon...

Still interesting to hear how and why we got a new color in the official universe.

You know how that guy cut all three prequels into one movie? Did that ever end up on the net? I want to see it.

This RotJ has the awful Hayden Christensen replacement for Anakin at the end. I hope the Disney movies are able to redeem this series somewhat. I can't imagine them being worse than what Lucas did with the prequels. Start with casting. The Anakins were just horrible in the prequels. And JarJar... wtf?

Interesting tidbits
Episode 4 is the shortest
The prequels are all longer than the first trilogy.
Episode 2 is by far the longest.

I have the whole thing on Blue-Ray, I probably would have paid more, if the prequels would not have been in the box.

Interesting to note that at almost every point when there's cool action in the real Star Wars films, the prequels are showing wide shots of actors hesitantly reciting shit dialogue in bluescreen sets.

About this film, to just highlight some of the heights of absurdity that the so-called intellectual property (which isn't really "property" at all in any consistent definition of the word) can reach, here's something an anti-IP expert, Stephan Kinsella (who, as it happens, is, ironically, also an IP lawyer) said about this new movie, 'Oz the Great and Powerful':

"So, for IP reasons, it's not technically a prequel to the 1939 movie by MGM. This is a Disney film, and it has to follow the original Baum books, not the 1939 movie. That's why in one scene, the witch in the new movie doesn't say "my pretties." She says something like "my pretty ... one." And that's why MGM and Disney lawyers had to meet to come to an agreement on what shade of green was permitted on the skin of the bad witch in the new movie. And that's why no reference to Dorothy's ruby slippers was permitted (that was from the 1939 movie, not the book, which had silver slippers). So once again, copyright distorts culture and life and meaning."

They had better choreography than Lucas did for the prequel films.

Is this the preview for the prequel to Jumper?