The Star Wars Prequels = Nickelback

When I heard that JJ Abrams was being handed the reins to the next Star Wars trilogy, I think like many others, I felt encouraged by his previous effort at helming a major sci-fi franchise: Star Trek. Personally, I felt that the first new Star Trek movie (not so much Into Darkness) managed to walk the incredibly fine line between catering to devotees and being accessible to neophytes. It was clear he had respect for the source material without being slavish to it.




Of course the big news is the release of the first teaser for The Force Awakens, as Episode VII will be known as, for now. As expected for any teaser appearing a full year before the release, it hardly tells us anything. But I noticed that the hype is probably is bit muted compared to the pop-cultural explosion that occurred when the first teaser for The Phantom Menace appeared in 1998, and remember, that was in the early Internet Age. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the prequels were just bad. But were they really that bad? I haven't seen any of them since their first theatrical release, and I seem to remember that Revenge of the Sith might actually have been passable, but the long floppy ears of Jar Jar Binks cast a long shadow.

I realized now that the Star Wars prequels are like Nickelback. I really haven't seen/heard them enough to have a truly informed opinion about them, but they've become pop-cultural touchstones for automatic badness. In fact, I think that should be a new use for the word Nickelback: anything in pop culture where the popularity of hating on something for being bad exceeds how bad it actually is.

Urban Dictionary, get onto it.

Update:
OK, I stand corrected there is massive hype about this, so I should say instead that there is a noticeable sense of apprehension we didn't really feel when The Phantom Menace was first teased.