J.J. Abrams' Favorite Star Wars Prequels Scene Is One Of Its Most Divisive
J.J. Abrams remains highly controversial and divisive as a Star Wars director.
Yes, of course the sorry final state of the sequel trilogy cannot be entirely blamed on him, if only because it was a clear case of design-by-committee, with directors seen as replaceable, but it is clear that he contributed significantly to its plot snarls.
But at least it can be fairly safely said that J.J. Abrams genuinely liked the pre-Disney Star Wars, including the prequel trilogy, which Disney tried to ignore as much as possible early on.
His choice of the favorite prequel scene might also be characterized as divisive, however.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly's Dalton Ross, he said that his favorite scene was the theatre scene where Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid ) tells Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen ) the tale of Darth Plagueis, dangling the lure of the power to defy death before him.
"There's just something about that scene," Abrams says. "There's just two people sitting there. It's visually interesting. But I just think Ian's performance in it is spectacular."
While a lot of people liked that scene, some said that Palpatine was too obvious with his tale, all but directly exposing himself as the Sith Lord that the Jedi Order was searching for at the moment, and that Anakin appeared dense due to failing to figure that out right away.
By the way, when Abrams in turn asked Ross for the latter's own favorite scene, the host named the final lightsaber battle from The Phantom Menace, between Darth Maul (Ray Park) and Obi-Wan Kenobi ( Ewan McGregor ), which ended with Darth Maul getting cut in half.
Abrams agreed that the scene was "amazing" but also found that outcome disappointing for Maul as a character so massively hyped during the film's marketing.
In the end, Darth Maul ended up as little more than dumb muscle, sent to kill people for his master, and then he was promptly killed off before he had a chance to develop as a character (his rather nonsensical resurrection in The Clone Wars CG series notwithstanding). "It was over too quickly."
Now, this is a take that the good majority of Star Wars fans would accept without much argument.