Guess what guys? I grew up with the Special Editions. That's right, I grew up with those things. Y'know what else? I grew up with the prequels too. I was 10 when The Phantom Menace came out.
I used to spend Saturday mornings watching my VHS of Special Edition Star Wars over and over, then go play around with my action figures and then watch it again. But, of course, I knew I was missing out on something. What I was watching wasn't Star Wars as everyone else knew it. I knew, even then, that the big pink-tinted entrance into Mos Eisley wasn't supposed to be there. I knew the occasional ugly Dewback crawling about was out of place. But I accepted it. I still do, in many ways, accept certain additions made in the special edition because for better or worse I grew up with them.
But it's the prequels that really get me. At 10 years old you're hardly interested in trade disputes or senate meetings no matter how visually impressive and galactic they may be. But I accepted that, and when I think back to my experience of The Phantom Menace in movie theatres it's mostly the image of battle-droids climbing out of their tanks that I recall along with that kid, who was annoying even when I was a kid. Jar Jar, strangely, doesn't much fit into my memory of things. Lucky, I suppose. I remember enjoying it.
Then came Attack of the Clones. I had grown up enough to realise how awful The Phantom Menace truly was by the time this movie came out, so when I went in to see Attack of the Clones I wasn't expecting much. When you're twelve, stupid romances don't bother you as much because they're only as bad as all on-screen romances when you're that age. They can be ignored until we get on with the pew-pew-pew. So there was a big mars-like planet, the farm was nice to revisit and Jar Jar thankfully wasn't there (who I'd watched on VHS recently and realized just how terrible he was). Overall, I felt okay about it. It was tolerable in comparison to how horrible I'd come to think of The Phantom Menace as.
So time went by again. As I grew up some more and became more critical in my viewing of Attack of the Clones I again had a revelation; this is awful! Putting my low-expectations aside I was again confronted with the bare reality that Attack of the Clones was an uncompelling and cringe-worthy pile compared to those films I used to watch every Saturday. So then Revenge of the Sith came out. I was through. I knew it'd be a stinker. I knew I'd hate every minute of it. Then I saw the trailer...
Wait! Gritty looking droids walking across a volcanic planet? Good old Ben doing the voice-over? Maybe this will be okay! Maybe he's finally going to get it right! Aside from the occasional cringe-worthy moment, the annoying purple-lightsaber, CG Yoda being back in action, CG everything back in action, the annoying loud-riding creature, the flaccid villain of Grievous who'd been so over-hyped and the unsatisfying transition to Darth Vader... I remember saying that it was "at least better than the others". But then, I sat down to watch it again. All those things that had been minor annoyances originally were now standing out sharply, and I simply couldn't watch it anymore.
Then I sat down to watch my old Star Wars VHS. Y'know what? I loved them just as much as I'd loved them as a kid. They were just as powerful, exotic and fun as I remembered them. But I just can't watch the prequels, and it disappoints me. It disappoints me because those movies should have been for my generation. They should have been as great as those movies I watched on VHS all those years ago. They should have been something I could enjoy, something I could be proud to say "I was there" about. But I can't. I can't because not only were they not good when I first saw them, but every year that I mature they actually get worse. The original trilogy remains as good as ever, but the prequels actually degrade every year. Lucas failed me and my generation. We deserved better.
That's the modern experience of Star Wars ... it's a sad picture, isn't it? :(