Director Rian Johnson is no stranger to receiving backlash from Star Wars fans after helming The Last Jedi, so that could explain why he's chosen to leap to the defence of George Lucas and his prequels (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith).
However, the filmmaker made quite the case for the divisive trilogy, praising Lucas for delivering, "a gorgeous 7 hour long movie for children about how entitlement and fear of loss turns good people into fascists, and did it while spearheading nearly every technical sea change in modern filmmaking of the past 30 years."
Say what you will about those movies, but Johnson isn't wrong; Lucas made great use of green screen visual effects to create environments (the norm for blockbusters these days), while his intentions to tell the story of Anakin Skywalker's fall to the Dark Side had a lot of strong moments...even if his execution was flawed.
In many ways, the Star Wars sequels are now more divisive that the prequels, and The Rise of Skywalker has faced a far more negative response than any of Lucas' movies in many ways. Johnson, meanwhile, reportedly remains attached to another trilogy, though there's no word on its status.
Check out his comments below: