Darth Magus

I will not accept this newfangled historical revisionism claiming the prequels are good. They are not good. We knew they weren't good when we saw them opening night in the theaters. I was 12 years old when TPM came out and I was the biggest Star Wars nerd on the planet. Had all the EU books, toys, video games, you name it. I got Star Wars "banned" from my elementary school because we started two opposing Star Wars clubs and one kid ended up getting so mad arguing about Star Wars he punched another kid. Lol. The principal called us into the office and said "Today, you're joining Star Wars clubs. Tomorrow, you're joining gangs." I had to duct-tape over my Darth Vader backpack to take it to school. All of that, and when we went to see Phantom Menace, we were bored out of our skulls. There's this narrative that hating the prequels is "reddit-coded" or just cynical people who saw some YouTube video about them and decided they're bad. Nope. We knew they were bad at the time. We kind of ironically enjoyed the second 2 films, going in knowing they would be bad and everything, in the same way prequel memes ironically revere the film. The prequels have good elements - the technology was super-impressive for the time. Duel of the Fates. Maul/Qui-Gon/Obi duel. Interesting ideas and some interesting new worlds. There is maybe the bones of a good story buried somewhere in there. But they are painful to watch. Dialog, acting, plot, characters - none of them work. We should care that this teenager is turning into Darth Vader. But we do not care. That's failure on an epic scale. Yes, Disney Star Wars sucked. Yes, Disney Star Wars failed to clear the very low bar of "do not make a Star Wars movie that clearly hates Star Wars." That does not magically make the prequels good. I've heard it said that the prequels are good ideas, poorly done, while the Disney films are bad ideas, well done. I'm not sure if that's quite right, but what I think it means is if George had handed writing, maybe some directing, casting, editing, etc. off to experts, they could have been great. By way of contrast, most individual scenes of the Disney films are well-shot and acted and competently done. There's just no saving the story they tried to tell.