What's your favorite moment from the Star Wars prequels?

Whatever your opinion of The Phantom Menace, you’ve got to admit that the climactic lightsaber battle between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul is pretty spectacular. Underscored by the rat-a-tat trumpets and choral lamentations of John Williams’ iconic musical motifs, the scene is a powerful reminder of how epic Star Wars can be. It’s not just a thrilling fight, it’s also a pivotal moment in the Skywalker Saga, in which the fate of Anakin, and ultimately the entire galaxy, is decided. He would never recover from the death of Qui-Gon, who could have been the father figure he needed to guide him on the path of the light side. Without his positive influence, Anakin would become vulnerable to Palpatine’s manipulations, and we all know what happened next. [Cindy White]

When the newly grotesque Chancellor Palpatine Zooms into his various clone troopers’ locales and tells them to “execute Order 66,” it’s meant to be devastating. Of the prequel trilogy, it’s definitely one of the more effective and affecting moments as we watch the Jedi order be more or less wiped out via montage. That being said, it was also incredible fodder for the early days of YouTube, before the days of Google ownership and algorithmic rule. One video, that has apparently been removed from the internet but etched permanently in my still-plastic brain was Ki-Adi-Mundi’s death, sped up and reversed over and over into a perverse dance set to “Dragostea Din Tei.” This went platinum in my computer room, and played into the personal in-jokes my brother and I would have during the scene. When he mentioned that you never hear Plo Koon speak, I tried to convince him that he says “Ow” when his ship is blown up, mumbling it under my breath every time we ran the scene back. [Drew Gillis]

The actual fight between Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) is over pretty quickly—Mace closes in on Jango, chops his head off, and that’s that. But in the lead-up to the fight, Mace trades verbal blows with Count Dooku, played by the inimitable Christopher Lee. Seeing two legendary actors go toe-to-toe is extraordinary, and they meet the over-the-top dialogue with just the right mix of seriousness and camp. This is one of the first times we see a Jedi explicitly use deadly force, too; there’s no denying that Mace Windu just killed a dude with his signature purple lightsaber. [Jen Lennon]

One thing that I appreciate about the prequels is how George Lucas deepened R2-D2’s character by giving him rocket boosters in Attack Of The Clones. A flying R2-D2 was controversial in 2002, but by 2005’s Revenge Of The Sith, Lucas converted any and all skeptics by turning those little jets into flamethrowers. After dowsing some bulky battle droids with its little oil hose, R2 ups its kill count and sets the bastards ablaze with the sadistic glee of an action hero. Compared to the stiff walk-and-talks that comprise so much of the prequels, this scene is the most surprising gag in the largely laugh-free trilogy—apologies to any Jar Jar-heads. It’s such a funny scene, I can hardly believe Lucas directed it. [Matt Schimkowitz]

One of the first movies I remember sitting down and watching in a theater was Revenge Of The Sith in 2005. At just seven years old, I was positively thrilled by every second of it—blissfully unaware of any plot holes or character deficiencies. And while the prequels do often struggle to find compelling dialogue or character arcs beyond Obi-Wan and Anakin’s, those three movies always made good use of their lightsaber battles—and none have sat with me quite like when Yoda and Chancellor Palpatine (now fully morphed into his Emperor’s guise as Darth Sidious) went toe-to-toe near the end of Revenge of the Sith. The battle stands out as a high watermark of the prequels, if only because it’s that first real instance where we get a look into why Yoda was not only the greatest Jedi Master, but closer to the Force than any of his peers or pupils. And it’s the quintessential Jedi vs. Sith battle, too, documenting the greatest powers on each side of the Force meeting on a slow-burn collision course. On paper, two elders fighting against one another might not seem like such a glorious affair. But, once Yoda begins pushing back against the Emperor’s dark-side Force Lightning with his own Tutaminis, you instantly forget that it’s a 900-year-old Jedi Master versus a 60-year-old Sith Lord (whose face is getting more wrinkly by the second). It’s pure magic watching these foes duke it out on Coruscant, and it’s even more transcendent that the battle ends in a stalemate—not giving us fans even an ounce of material to use when speculating which side is greater. We don’t see the effects of the battle until years later, when Yoda’s survival grants him the chance to train a young Luke Skywalker—who eventually dismantles the very same Sith Order that the Emperor so greatly fought to keep intact. [Matt Mitchell]

As someone whose relationship with Star Wars has always involved a fondness for its weird little guys, including running around as a kid making Jawa noises and mimicking Salacious B. Crumb, The Phantom Menace offered a new blend of slick sci-fi and silly comic relief: battle droids. And yes, I mean the B1-series battle droids, not their badass older brothers (the super battle droids) or their killer cousins with the force fields. The fragile duck-billed skeletons delighted me. They were more than just pre-Stormtrooper/clone trooper fodder, embodying all the idiocy and incompetence required of evil henchmen. Representative of efficient yet ineffective technological encroachment (perhaps feeding into the theory that the Trade Federation was in part offensively inspired by Japan’s booming, threatening economy), the battle droids were built to be beaten. They were built to be stupid too. I love their digital robot voices, and I love that they say “uh” and “um” when something doesn’t compute. They say “uh-oh!” What’s not to like? And yet, there’s reality there too. When deployed in overwhelming numbers, their cheap yet uniform forces can intimidate and kill people (who don’t have a lightsaber). They’re a quintessential little-kid baddie, which was perfect for me, the seven-year-old kid going to see Phantom Menace in theaters. [Jacob Oller]

I’d argue that Ewan McGregor is the only member of the prequel main cast who comes out completely smelling of roses; sure, he’s playing petulant in Phantom Menace, but he comes by it honest, and there’s a sardonic side to his Obi-Wan that helps deflate both the self-seriousness and the silliness of George Lucas’ vision for these wildly inconsistent films. Among other things, McGregor is the closest anybody in the prequel movies gets to the wildly improvisational, “I don’t know, it worked!” energy Harrison Ford brought to the original trilogy; his muttered “Oh, not good” from Attack Of The Clones, when he belatedly realizes he’s just kicked a man he’s tethered to off of a ledge, is one of the only real laughs in the entire film. [William Hughes]