Let’s start this off with a bang; I absolutely, positively hate Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Yes, I know that is not an uncommon stance, and no, that is not really the point of what will follow here. It is, however, the starting point for what follows.
To say that the Star Wars brand has been in some… how to put it, ‘interesting’ waters since the Disney resurrection would be an understatement. Fans have been divided between those generally okay with the new series directions, and those who have nothing but vitriol for Kathleen Kennedy’s vision of the future. Personally, I -was- willing to give the new line of movies a chance. I was generally fine with The Force Awakens, even with it being a near carbon-copy of A New Hope, and heck, I actually enjoyed Rogue One quite a bit. The Last Jedi, however, actually managed to annoy me. Forget being a bad Star Wars movie; it felt like a generally pointless, bland, redundant and frankly idiotic film as a whole. So much so that it actually made me have a little bit of sympathy for the devil…
Okay, no, not -that- devil specifically. I meant the prequel trilogy as a whole.
A long time ago…
Here’s the thing; for how bad episodes 1 to 3 were, for how much the fandom raged about them, for how annoying most of the characters were, for how un-cool it made the mysterious Clone Wars, and most importantly, for how much it wrecked the character of Anakin Skywalker… somehow people still cared. Despite the mountain of missteps George Lucas made with those films, Star Wars remained a beloved universe that generations kept returning to. It was still relevant for years after, spawning many very well received offshoots in the form of comics, books, TV shows and video games. In short, the prequels (and even Jar Jar bloody Binks) did not -kill- Star Wars.
So why did I walk away from The Last Jedi feeling like one of my favorite settings was now gone forever? Why was news of a new spin-off (Solo: A Star Wars Story) met with such a lukewarm to downright hostile reception? Why have so many so completely lost hope in the new direction of the brand?
The first possibility is that I was simply much younger when the first three atrocities came out. I was most likely able to tolerate more nonsense back then, my brother suggested. Perhaps he’s right, or perhaps the nostalgia goggles made me think the series has always been better than it actually was in the first place. Maybe this whole universe has always been as shallow, inconsistent and repetitive as the new films seem to be?
The road to Hell
To get to the bottom of this, I resolved to watch the series from chronological start to finish. It started as a wish to see if there really were any genuinely good movies in the series to begin with. Additionally, I wanted to look back and see how well each film actually flowed into the other, since one of my personal gripes about the one flicks is how they feel simultaneously disconnected from and reliant on the older titles. Most importantly, I wanted to see if Star Wars really died at the hands of the New Disney Order, or if this is simply the last desperate gasp of a universe that has long since been on the way out.
So without further ado, let us begin with… Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace!
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