As I work my way through the EU, I hit the first movie, and here's where I go off on a bit of a tangent. I'm not really going to review Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Quite frankly, if you're reading a Star Wars blog, you've seen the movie. I'm not even going to go into the added detail the book adaptation adds to the EU. Quite frankly, there's only one thing I'm going to really discuss today:

People are Stupid.

They just are. It's the only conclusion I can come to whenever anyone tells me "The Prequel Movies aren't as good as the Original Trilogy."

I've been fighting this argument for almost ten years, and I've given up. You simply cannot convince people who won't listen that they're wrong.

Episode I gets a horrible reputation, even among some Star Wars "fans" (though how you can consider yourself a fan and not like this movie is beyond me). And I've come to the conclusion that the ONLY reason why people didn't like it was because it wasn't Episode III. See, I have this feeling that back in 1999, everyone was waiting on bated breath to see a new Star Wars movie. And expectations were high. But they were all in the wrong place. People who thought Star Wars was only about Luke, Leia, The Death Star, and Darth Vader wanted those things. I honestly believe some people went to Episode I, fully expecting to see Anakin Skywalker in his Darth Vader armor by the end of the movie. And I honestly believe those people did not think ahead to how DULL that would make the next two movies. I mean, what was going to happen in Episodes II and III if Anakin was already Vader? Was it just going to be 4-6 hours of Vader and Obi-Wan fighting over nothing? Or did they expect to see Baby Luke lifting a baby lightsaber and mowing down Stormtroopers (wait, wasn't that a Kevin J Anderson plot?)? What did people honestly expect to see?

I got EXACTLY what I wanted to see, plus more. I got to see the Old Republic, and the Jedi of Old, enforcing the Peace. I got to see the Sith start their reign of treachery by laying down the building blocks. I got to see awesome lightsaber action. I got to see Anakin Skywalker meet Obi-Wan Kenobi. And, bless the maker, I got a Starfighter battle in there, too. Beyond that, I got introduced to my now-favorite actress, Natalie Portman (as well as my second favorite actress, Keira Knightley, though I didn't know it at the time). I got to see Coruscant (the beloved city-world capital I'd only read about in books before this), I got to meet up with R2 and 3PO again, and I got to watch Obi-Wan kick rear end.

I got EVERYTHING I wanted, and MORE.

I still remember walking out of the movie theater that day with several of my friends in '99. We were all PSYCHED. And my friends are not the Star Wars freaks I am. I remember comments like "Man, old Obi-Wan was cool, but YOUNG Obi-Wan is AWESOME. I totally respect Obi-Wan so much more now." "Man, those Battle Droids just kept coming and coming! I can't believe they were done in computers! They looked so real!" "Anakin really WAS the best pilot in the Galaxy before he met Obi-Wan!" And so on. Honestly, I think the only thing anyone asked me that was even CLOSE to a negative was "What were those energy bars that kept Obi-Wan out of the fight?" Seriously, everyone LOVED it.


And then, a few weeks later, I saw this TV report on how some people thought Jar Jar Binks was a racist symbol. And I literally went "WHAT?!" And then came the slow trickle. People complained about Jar Jar. That was it for the first year. No one I actually went to the movie with, mind you. But I heard it. Jar Jar's annoying. Jar Jar's stupid. And then, more than a year after the movie came out, that all seemed to swing onto George. "The Movie Is Stupid. Episode I Sucked! It was awful! George Lucas ruined my childhood!"

Along the way, both Jake Lloyd and Natalie Portman get ripped on for their performances (why I don't know, I thought they both did fine - Natalie, fantastic even). Jake gets bashed for acting like an annoying little kid. Hate to break the news for you, folks, but most 9-year-olds I've dealt with in my life ARE ANNOYING. Always have been, always will be. And Where anyone can find fault in Natalie's performance boggles my mind. I can't see anything wrong with anything she did. Admittedly, the role wasn't going to win her an Oscar or anything (damn Oscar hates Sci-Fi), but I never once thought she wasn't in her character. I fully expect in the next couple of years that people will start harping on Liam Neeson for not acting Qui-Gon's death better, or some such nonsense.

What changed? It's not like the movie was suddenly 100% different. There was no additional, secret, annoying Jar Jar footage added in. It was like all of a sudden, our culture became one of backlash against the successful. It was the highest grossing movie of the year, and everyone hated it for THAT VERY REASON. It was successful, and that ticked people off.

And so, I'm left with the conclusion that people are stupid. Really, it's all I can come up with. I watch Episode I, and I still love it. I don't mind Jar Jar. But I have a friend who's never seen Episode II or III, because he hated Jar Jar, and even though I tell him Jar Jar's in all of FIVE FRACKING MINUTES of Episodes II and III, he won't watch them. And yet, I don't ever remember him complaining about Episode I after it first came out. He won't even admit to having seen it.

People are just Stupid. And that makes me very, very sad.

All right, rant over. Up next, we delve into the Post Phantom EU.