Obi-Wan Kenobi actor, Ewan McGregor shared his thoughts on the negative public reception the Star Wars prequel trilogy received when it was first released. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mcgregor explained how he feels that there’s a new “wave of positivity” with the trilogy and that the films are well regarded by many fans now.
McGregor went on to describe his encounters with fans who were children when the prequel trilogy was released saying, “Now I meet the people who we made those films for, who were the kids of the time. And our Star Wars films are their Star Wars films. In the way that Carrie Fisher and Alec Guinness and Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford’s films were ours, we’re theirs. And that’s beautiful that they were important to the kids who we made them for. It’s just so nice to finally get that wave of positivity about them.” Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace hit theaters in 1999, premiering to mixed reviews which seemed to only decline with each subsequent installment. By the time the third film, Revenge of the Sith released, fans had gotten loud about their disappointment with the prequel trilogy.
In the same interview, Mcgregor described how he handled the negative public opinion on the Star Wars movies at the time saying, “I found it quite hard. For it to come out and get knocked so hard was personally quite difficult to deal with. And also, it was quite early in my career. I didn’t really know how to deal with that. I’d been involved with things that just didn’t make much of a ripple, but that’s different from making something that makes a negative ripple.”
The change of heart that seems to have occurred with the Star Wars prequels has now led Disney+ to expand on it with their upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series. The new show will premiere exclusively on Disney’s streaming platform on May 25, 2022.
