Starting last night and into this morning I found myself reflecting on the world we live in. One of seemingly non-permanent statements that are actually extremely permanent. I feel like those poor people who we’ve all seen walking out of “The Phantom Menace” singing it’s praises wish they had never smiled so big and said that directly into the camera. They became, and forever will be the “I thought it was better than return of the Jedi ” guy.



For that reason I’ve tried to restrain my exuberance. But I will say the biggest star wars nerd I know could not hold back his excitement. Which to me is a good sign as he was one of the very few people I know who claims to have hated the prequels right from the start.

To speak to specifics. There were things about it that bumped me slightly but it’s ridiculous to say that somehow makes it inferior to A New Hope. There are pacing issues and awkward lines in that movie as well. I also initially thought, “wow they are sticking to the formula of the old movies pretty close”, but to claim that that’s a good reason why it’s inferior is also ridiculous. That would require that George Lucas made A New Hope in a vacuum without any inspiration, and if you ever seen Seven Samurai or Triumph Of The Will you know that’s not true. Lucas drew heavily on the generation of movie makers that came before him just as JJ Abrams did. The only difference is that when Lucas did it most people hadn’t seen Riefenstahl or Kurosawa and JJ’s movie had the same title, characters and Universe as his inspiration. It also has a formula that I’m shocked Hollywood hasn’t grasped yet. If you can do it without cgi, DO IT WITHOUT CGI. Peter Jackson proved this formula in his original LOTR trilogy but somehow forgot it by the time he started making the hobbit. I know it’s more expensive but these movies have seemingly unlimited budgets and every time the theory is tested it’s proven true. (The batman movies, Walking Dead, Hellboy) So I’m going to go out on a limb and say I loved it. Let the Bantha pudu fall where it may. (Also I was very happy to see no poop jokes when there were several moments that I thought “Lucas would have definitely made that thing fart right there.”