I’ve read that same thing over and over, but I still don’t think it’s the case, but this is only due to my personal experience with Star Wars. I have never seen my father walk out of a theater with a smile, NEVER! He took me to see TPM at very young age of 4 years old, and while I barely remember it, I do remember having it on VHS. The thing is though, even as a young kid, I really didn’t like watching it and found it honestly boring when I could put in RotJ and Empire VHS tapes that had the most exciting space scenes. The point is, even as young as I was, felt something was off.

Back to my father. He took me next to AotC. I remember him saying it was at least better than TPM, but overall, I could hear his disappointment. Finally, with RotS, that car ride back home had this distinctive air of “Well, I guess that’s it, Star Wars could never be redeemed.” My dad still talks about how damn much of a letdown it was when Vader, his most cherished childhood villain, delivered that infamous “NOOOOOO!”, among other things of course.

Finally, all these years later, when we see TFA, I couldn’t believe it. He was laughing, tearing up, and genuinely looked like he was having a blast! So I dunno man, for as long as I’ve known my dad, he never bought into that hype of the prequels. Did he recognize the flaws of TFA? Sure. But overall, we were geeking out over the film of how fun it was!

The few parallels to really draw from TPM vs TFA releases was that both were Star Wars films that were trying to revitalize the franchise. The difference being that one film had more heart, more collaboration, and less Lucas.