Star Wars: The Last Jedi director revealed that he used to be a certified Star Wars prequels hater. Rian Johnson told Rolling Stone that when the franchise’s prequels came out when he was in college, he and his friends were “Prequel Hate Central.” “Everyone was ruthless at the time. And of course now the prequels are embraced,” he said. The prequels—1999’s The Phantom Menace, 2002’s Attack of the Clones, and 2005’s Revenge of the Sith—starred Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman. Despite their mixed reviews, the films were box office smashes. Johnson noted that this “push and pull” and “hatred” to certain things about the intergalactic movies “is all part of being a Star Wars fan.” “Culture-war garbage aside, I think that essential part of it is a healthy part,” he remarked. Johnson’s own film for the franchise, 2017’s The Last Jedi, is the final film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and widely considered a flop, as it still holds the lowest Rotten Tomatoes fan score among all the films at 41 percent. Although Johnson admitted that it “never feels good to have anybody coming after you on the Internet,” he says that growing up as a fan of the franchise “ultimately let me contextualize [the criticisms] and feel at peace with it in many different ways.”
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