Ah, yes, I missed your point. Yeah, actually building a story around the fight is essential, but as we've established earlier in his career: Lucas is a terrible writer. The Maul-scene in particular felt like "and then they come across Darth Maul and they fight. Darth Maul loses and dies."
I actually came across something similar in a movie I was watching yesterday, where the two villains' motivation was simply greed and pride, which accumulated to a fight I had no invested emotional value. I wasn't cheering for any party in those fights.
I really thought Kevin Smith detested the prequels with a burning passion. Maybe I remember wrong.
Yeah, Lucas is a terrible screenwriter. He should never be in charge of dialogue or the specifics, at least on a grand scale. If he just came up with the story for the prequels and let other writers/directors take reign they probably would have been fine. But I totally got your point too, and some of the fight scenes definitely would have been improved significantly by better choreography. In the Phantom Menace, imagine how much more powerful Qui-Gon's death would have been if it made Obi-Wan go from the fanciful routine he has been doing to a form similar to look starting to lose control of his emotions in RotJ. Or if Anakin and Obi-Wan's fight wasn't exactly like all of the other fights in the prequel trilogy but longer.
Smith defended Hayden Christensen and said he enjoyed the prequels. IIRC, George/LucasFilm/Hayden or someone was pissed at Smith for the bashing of the prequels in Clerks 2. He then told them that he enjoyed the prequels and liked Hayden, and tried to show how much of a tool the Lord of the Rings fan was being.
I hope not. It just looks like the prequel fights on crack. Lot of lazy ship designs there. I'm hoping for a much more reserved style of fighting, at least for some of the participants.
It would be cool is Luke's style remained relatively unchanged from ROTJ but showed that he could hold his own against others with perhaps a more prequel style - providing how showy and indulgent the latter is.
That would be pretty cool to see actually. I imagine Luke wouldn't be a huge fan of the way the old Jedi's operated.
I'm just saying it is literally too early to start panicking over something that has yet to even be an issue. It comes off more as a fear of change, rather than the makers doing something wrong.
Doesn't make it less tired.
No, you were defending something else entirely. It isn't a fear of change, it is a fear of things staying the same. BTW, people have been defending the prequels for just as long as people have been bashing them. Actually longer, because George Lucas had to defend his own work to himself before the movie even came out. Check out the behind scenes videos.