Star Wars fans typically fall into one of three camps, one) they believe the prequel films were absolutely awful and that the original trilogy are the only true Star Wars films, two) they love them all, or, three) they don't care.
If you were to ask J.J. Abrams, director of The Force Awakens, how he feels about the prequels, he would say that he was more drawn to the authenticity of the original trilogy, but would defend the prequels by saying it's an 'age-thing' more or less.
Well, Slash Film sat down with Abrams and asked him how he felt about the prequels and this was his response:
All I’ll say about the prequels is if you ask someone around the age I was when the original trilogy came out, “What's your favorite Star Wars movie?” they will tell you one of the original trilogy. If you ask someone around that age when the prequels came out, they will say one of the prequels. And it’s scientifically proven and undeniable.
The original trilogy was for me what Star Wars felt like. And it was what Star Wars was.
The prequels had a different but apparently equally powerful draw for so many people, and in some cases a more powerful draw.
In the same response to the question Abrams went on a wordy passionate description of why he loved the original trilogy. His passion for those films boils down to one thing, how authentic it felt. "What I loved about the original trilogy is how real it felt," said Abrams. "I still to this moment can’t believe how it felt to look at the desert of what was supposed to be Tatooine and seeing these two droids walking along and no fantasy genre film had ever, in my experience, looked like that before."
It was Abrams' love for how real the original trilogy felt, that he and producer Kathleen Kennedy decided that The Force Awakens needed to echo that quality.
"It was so miraculously visually authentic and it was one of the reasons why Kathleen Kennedy and I decided very early on, that’s what this movie needs to feel like…There are a lot of other ways to approach the movie that I think would have been okay, but it was so important that we made this movie feel authentic as much as possible. Now, what I’m describing doesn’t automatically make it any good but it was a piece of the puzzle that George got so unbelievably right in those first three films and it was really important to us that we adhere to that."
It's interesting that Abrams notes that while the film can feel authentic, it doesn't mean it's going to be any good. Either that's a humble-brag or he's incredibly nervous about releasing The Force Awakens this week.
