Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Hate “The Phantom Menace”? The Ewok Line theory could explain why

What if a "How I Met Your Mother" hypothesis also applies to our divided opinion about the "Star Wars" prequels?

Published May 25, 2024 3:55PM (EDT)

Twenty-five years onward from the theatrical debut of “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,” nearly every one of its haters has a story about how George Lucas wrecked their childhood.

Maybe it was the acting, or more accurately, its absence. Many cite the introduction of the whole midichlorians pseudo-science which, as my still-traumatized husband explained during a recent rewatch, negated the mystical wonder of the Force connection. “The podracing . . . the podracing . . . ” he muttered his breath with all the resignation of Colonel Kurtz gasping out his last words.

This man loved “Star Wars” well into his 20s . . . until Lucas brought Jar Jar Binks and the Gungans into his orbit. The Naboo natives’ barely intelligible patois moved critics like NPR’s Bob Mondello to wonder what Lucas was thinking in “ [introducing] “a race of idol-worshiping primitives who speak with Caribbean accents and behave like refugees from ‘Amos n Andy.'”  The Jar Jar hatred ran so deep and fierce that it brought years of virulent harassment upon Ahmed Best, the actor who voiced him.

To the manchild I love, that character and most of what surrounded it marked the death of any nostalgia he held for “Star Wars.”

This explains why the bulk of the movie’s silver anniversary........

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