Star Wars: Ewan McGregor Reflects on the Disappointing Reception to the Prequel Trilogy

When the Star Wars prequel trilogy landed in theaters, excitement was immensely high due to the success of the original trilogy and with the films being the first new entries into the saga in more than 15 years, but with those films being targeted towards a younger audience than those who grew up with the original trilogy, they weren’t received entirely positively, with star Ewan McGregor recently reflecting on those disappointments and fully empathizing with frustrated fans. However, he also went on to point out how he has encountered fans who were kids when the prequels came out and how they connect more with those films than the original trilogy, much to his shock.

“Our films weren’t much liked when they came out, by my generation who loved the first ones,” McGregor shared with Empire. “I think people of our generation wanted to feel the way they’d felt when they saw those first three movies when they were kids, and George [Lucas] wanted to take our ones in a different direction, he had a different idea. It was tricky at the time, I remember. But now, all these years later, I’m really aware of what our films meant to the generation they were made for, the children of that time. They really like them. I’ve met people who, they mean a lot to them, those films, more so than the original three, and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding?’”

Interestingly, fans of all generations have largely praised McGregor’s performance of Obi-Wan Kenobi as one of the standout elements of the films, even if they weren’t universally praised.

One of the points fans begrudge about the prequels is how many visual effects there were and how Lucas seemingly pushed effects to their limit merely because he could, as opposed to using them to create the most enjoyable experience possible. Even McGregor himself admitted that he struggled with the filming process, detailing that he’s excited to return as Kenobi in the new Disney+ series because there will be a less cumbersome filming process.

“The first three [Star Wars films] I did were really at the very beginning of digital photography,” the actor detailed. “We had a camera with an umbilical cord to a tent, it was like back to the beginning of movies where the camera didn’t move very much because there was so much hardware attached to it. Now we’re going to be able to really create stuff without swathes of green-screen and blue-screen, which becomes very tedious for the actor.”

Stay tuned for details on the new Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series.

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