In my ongoing war with Star Wars Prequel haters, I respond to all the "they ruined my childhood" nonsense by explaining that the Prequels are my childhood memories. The Phantom Menace is to me everything A New Hope was to those people who fell in love with it in 1977. When I re-watch it now it's one of the few things that makes me tear up.
And I'm not alone, the Prequels have plenty of fans on Tumblr and Wordpress. And Facebook groups dedicated to them.
And when saying this on a message board, I inevitably get a response from someone saying they were a youth in 1999 and they hated that movie too. As if that proves something.
My mother was of the same generation as the original Star Wars fans, being a late Baby Boomer. She's told me about how she and a boyfriend went to see it in 1977 and walked out of the theater. The movie also got a fair share of less then glowing reviews at the time.
But there is a difference between failing to fall in love with a movie that is an established franchise and one that isn't. The people for whom A New Hope wasn't their thing weren't invested in it, they just moved on, when it became a big thing later then went "huh", but felt no emotional need to be offended by people who liked it.
But for people who kept hearing about Star Wars all the time, who were told it was a classic before they had the chance to make up their own minds on it. When the movie made for your generation doesn't appeal to you, you may become unwilling to consider that it was simply not your thing.
Digibro, an Anime YouTuber, got into trouble once for complaining about boring tastes in 3x3s, for questioning if there really are so many people who's personal favorites happened to be all these "Elitist" Anime. And I think for a lot of people of my generation or younger, movies like the original Star Wars trilogy, or the first two Godfathers, are in the same boat. A lot of people convince themselves they like them because they feel they have to.
Am I saying anyone born in the 80s who didn't love TPM wasn't meant to be a Star Wars fan? Not necessarily, there are plenty of differences between them to explain why one would appeal to you and not the other. For me, the OT has a limited appeal, I appreciate them same as I do Evangleion as an Anime fan, but they don't speak to me.
Digibro said in a podcast once that he thought he simply didn't like Space Operas because he didn't enjoy TPM. But then played Mass Effect and loved that, and then watched the RLM review and "realized' TPM was simply a bad movie:. Well a youtuber named SaganFan1983 has a video totally destroying Plinkett's TPM review. Meanwhile Mass Effect may also be a Space Opera, but it's basic appeal is still massively different from Star Wars. Based on Digi's taste in Anime, Star Wars simply isn't for him, after all he said in the Kill La Kill video he hates orchestral scores.
Digi isn't quite my "Generation" in the sense I mean here though anyway. Five years younger might not seem like a separate generation at first, but in the context of how quickly Hollywood and Anime trends have shifted in the New Millennium, they are a world apart.
I was 13 when TPM came out. For awhile I'd been making the argument I summarized in the first paragraph of this post thinking of myself as the oldest end of the generation the Prequels were made for. That it's odd to say I grew up on it when I was already a Teen. But lately, I've noticed how in most old footage I see of people in 1977 gushing about the original film just after leaving the theater, they were mostly Teens and early 20s, I see no real little kids. So I now realize that I am rather the youngest of the Prequel generation.
So Digibro and EndlessJess and the other PCP members, like the other rising stars of YouTube right now have a much younger perspective then I do on fiction. The time when people my age would have been the core of YouTube, was a time when the Internet assumed only negative reviews were marketable.
People of Digibro's age have stuff from 1999 they are Nostalgic for, but those are shows and movies that were aimed at a much younger audience. I was into Pokemon at the time they were super popular, but it's that fandom I was definitely arguably too old for. It caught my attention because I was a Nintendo freak who'd spent 5 years being into Mario and Zelda already. I think many Nintendo fans my age resent Pokemon for so quickly becoming equal to them. I fortunately have always been pretty accepting of new stuff.
We have on YouTube now a generation that grew up at a time when the Internet was ruled by those Nostalgic for the OT. And for whom Star Wars films made for them didn't start till 2015. No one denies TFA was a BO success, even though financially it really didn't do any better then TPM.
It used to be you wouldn't really get to be a famous reviewer until your personal golden age was already over. But people born in the 90s and 00 have had the opportunity to become famous praising their favorite shows while they still aired. If more people my age had that opportunity during the Prequel era, things might be different.
However I still believe it's only a loud Minority. Plenty of Prequel defenders exist in every generation of Star Wars fans.
But the Internet is still somewhat a place where negativity trends more, as much as things may have improved. So the first YouTube videos to come up on a google search for them, are often saying "not THAT bad" at best. Because that's what trends.
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