10 Cringiest Moments In The Star Wars Prequels

7. Palpatine Does A Barrel Roll

Palpatine Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Disney

Along with Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid was one of the few actors who fared quite well in the prequels, with the thespian delivering some questionable dialogue with a deliciously sinister tone.

He acquitted himself admirably, and Palpatine was highly entertaining to watch - but the dastardly Sith Lord couldn't escape the trilogy without one or two cringey scenes to his name.

In the same movie as our first entry, Palpatine has another cringey moment while squaring off against Mace Windu and his three Jedi comrades. After brushing aside Windu's threat of arrest, Palps - for reasons known only to George Lucas - lets out a bizarre battle cry and busts into a horizontal 360 corkscrew forward leap.

Considering that he could've just jumped towards Windu normally, Palps' barrel roll maneuver feels completely unnecessary, and, as such, more than a little out of place.

The fight that follows is also quite cringey too, with some noticeably weak CGI being used to cover McDiarmid's stunt double's face, and Windu's supposedly badass allies flailing about like incompetent buffoons while Palpatine dispatches them way too easily. It's poorly done, to say the least.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!