Next week marks the 20-year anniversary of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. For many, it’s unequivocally the worst Star Wars film. However, in recent years, that opinion has begun to shift, as people who saw Clones at a young age are now realising they have a certain nostalgia for it. And the star of a very prequel-based show that’s on the horizon has taken notice.
Speaking to the press recently, Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, Ewan McGregor, said he’s found it incredibly gratifying and rewarding in the past several years to see the prequel films, which were critically lambasted, begin to get some love.
“It was an odd experience to make those movies,” McGregor said to a younger journalist. “When you step into this world it’s a big deal. It’s scary. And then those films were critically not liked very much. Or they weren’t written very nicely about by the critics. But what we didn’t hear at the time was people your age, your generation. We meet those people now who really love our films, you know. But it’s taken us 15 years to hear that. And it’s so nice. It’s really nice. It’s changed my outlook. My relationship with Star Wars is different because of that.”
McGregor continued speaking about how his experience making the movies was so different from the initial reaction — and what it was like to revisit them in preparation for Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi, which is out later this month. “We put our heart and soul into [the prequels],” McGregor said. “And they were difficult to make because the second one, the third one, there was so much green screen and the blue screen. Because George [Lucas] was pushing into this new realm that he had designed. He was responsible for ILM and he wanted to max out that technology. But that meant for us that we were very much on blue screens and green screens. And it was hard work. And to do that and be passionate about it and then for the films not to be very well received was really tough. So it’s really lovely to have this new relationship with them now. And then watching them again, I hadn’t seen them since they came out, in preparation for this show…was really cool. I like them. Episode three is really good. It’s a really good movie.”
McGregor’s prequel and Obi-Wan Kenobi co-star, Hayden Christensen, who was standing next to him as he said that, agreed. “It’s a phenomenal film,” he said. “It’s non-stop action.”
McGregor is right, of course. When you see a film as a child and love it, you retain nostalgia in your heart for it even after you grow up. Watching that movie again makes you feel like you did when you first saw it. For me personally, a movie like that is The Goonies. I watched it hundreds of times growing up and still love it. But perspective is everything; if you showed The Goonies today to an adult who’s never seen it before, they’re likely to say it’s terrible. It just takes a few decades to change a consensus completely. And the time has, apparently, come for the Star Wars prequels.
Where do you stand on the Star Wars prequels? Is there reverence in your heart for them? Is it disdain? A bit of both? Let us know below.
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Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.