It’s weird to be a Prequel fan during the age of ubiquitous fanboy outrage
Because I feel like I have a lot of the first hand precedent experience that people are going through now when you see fans throwing tantrums and attacking others, creators and fellow fans alike, for the latest “abomination” to ruin something from their childhoods.
Back in 99 I was 15 and wound up falling in love with Star Wars all over again thanks to Episode 1. Everything up on the screen sang to me, not only on a level equal to what I’d grown up with on VHS but deeper– Naboo was like something out of a Disney storybook or a trip to the Cloisters blended with space opera sci fi; the Pod Race was the best scene from Ben Hur done at a sheer speed and scale of action I couldn’t have even found while playing Mario Kart; everything on Coruscant, from the grandeur of the Senate to thr stateliness of the Jedi Temple, was all kinds of art deco loveliness, like an apotheosis of New York City; and the Duel of the Fates combines all of the best things about the movie at once, it’s sheer imagination of design, the focus of its action, the heroism of the Jedi and the mystery of the Sith all in one package. The only real negative feeling I had when the movie was done was the nagging sensation that I liked it way better than anything in the OT, and with that an automatic obligation of low level guilt. But that was soon replaced by another negative feeling.
The scorn of my fellow fans.
It’s something I’d felt before, bit by bit. I fell in love with the movie Hook when it first came out– Peter Pan by way of Spielberg and Robin Williams, how could you do better? But then other kids in my 2nd grade class made fun of me for it, and I wound up “changing my mind” just to stop being mocked. Same thing happened when I liked Super Mario Bros. and didn’t even see Jurassic Park (I caught that on VHS and liked it), but by then I was sort of angry about the attacks. By the time I got to middle school and was bullied by macho freaks who thought anime was “gay”, I didn’t even know how to compute it all (they definitely weren’t watching the same anime I was).
So now when I see old school Ghostbusters fans waging genuinely shocking sexist, racist and homophobic tirades against the new movie and the people who like it, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. This is the fandom experience I’ve grown up with after all, one that took the divisions already existing of what franchises you liked best or what game systems you played and split into even more and more factions, like a fertilized egg undergoing cellular division. The generations who couldn’t accept Trek and Star Wars side by side or Zelda and Doom on the same level are the ones who encouraged OT fans attacking anyone who grew up with the Prequels and tried to convince them to “change their minds”, and they’re the same ones now who can’t accept a remake to a 32 year old film to include women and modern comedy sensibilities without igniting a new GamerGate out of pure spite. I don’t even really care about this new movie, and find the corporate politics behind it suspicious at best, but goddamnit, if people are enjoying it the least you can do is try to be polite about your disagreement.
Paul Feig and George Lucas mightve ruined your childhoods, guys. But you know what? You guys helped ruin MINE. Please don’t do the same for anyone else.
I have such fond memories of TPM, all mixed up with my favourite memories of childhood and summer holidays and endless sunshine. 1999 was awful for 12-year-me in many ways, but it was also sort of my formative year (probably because of the awfulness), and discovering Star Wars was a small but important part of that. When I hear the usual crowd of fanboys and comedians 15 years older than me yelling the usual angry junk about how The Phantom Menace ruined their childhoods, I keep thinking, you were doing that 17 years ago when I was the one supposed to be the target audience! At least your childhoods were over before they were ruined!