McGregor on the prequels: “I was happy to be in them.”

Ewan McGregor spoke to /Film about his latest movie, Salmon Fishing in Yemen, his Oscar-winning Beginners co-star Christopher Plummer, the upcoming Jack the Giant Killer and, of course, the prequels:

Well I like them. I mean I saw them when they came out and I haven’t seen them since, but I was happy to be in them. I felt that it was great to be part of that huge legend of STAR WARS and you know I never involve myself in the discussion about it or the criticism of them or not. They are what they are and fortunately to the moment they’ve re-released the first one and there’s a whole generation of kids now who weren’t around when we released them before. Children love them, regardless of what the die hard STAR WARS fans from the 70’s think, kids love them to bits and I’ve always really enjoyed that with my discussions with them, you know when people’s kids who I haven’t met before come up and they see Obi Wan Kenobi. They’ve always got nice questions to ask and stuff.

He hasn’t seen The Phantom Menace 3D due to filming on The Corrections, but he hopes to go soon – and “take my kids along.”

8 Replies to “McGregor on the prequels: “I was happy to be in them.””

  1. He makes a good point. They bring people happiness and isn’t that an awesome thing to be able to do?

    But I’d still be happy to see him, no matter what my opinion of the Prequels! :)

  2. What is it about that guy? I could look at him all day. He’s just so pretty. *sigh.*

    Ahem. Sorry.

    Maybe it’s just because I’m one of those weird people who mostly liked the prequels (I also liked Kindred: The Embraced and Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers, so I don’t pretend I have good taste), but I see his point. The kids that see them when they’re at the right age for them are going to think of them as fondly as we think of the original trilogy, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

  3. I just finished reading the whole article, and damn, he reinforces my impression that he is just such a nice guy. The cuteness doesn’t hurt at all either.

  4. That’s the spirit!

    The thing is, too, that in my eyes, it’s this guy’s preformance that carries the PT, maybe because he manages to bring in exactly this down-to-earth niceness into his role.

  5. I took my two daughters (10 and 12) to see TPM 3D and they laughed their asses off at JarJar. Thought he was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. This is what pisses me off about fanboys my age who complain bitterly about the prequels and how Lucas raped their childhood. The movies (even the OT) were made for 10-year-olds.

  6. “The movies (even the OT) were made for 10-year-olds.”

    Please. Whoever they were “made for”, the OT movies obviously work for all ages.
    They’re idealistic, wide-eyed and escapist, but there’s nothing patricularly “childish” about them (except possibly the Ewoks).

    The prequels aren’t particularly childish, either – TPM is due to Jar Jar and Anakin, AOTC is more pandering to the Twilight audience due to the bad romance scenes.

    These aspects aside, the prequels are basically just like the OT in terms of style and target audience, except with additional pretentious attempts at grit and political and psychological “complexity”, and of course much worse execution.

    So quit these bullshit excuses, they’ve invalid ;)

    As for McGregor, I find it a bit annoying that he dismisses the negative feedback to these movies as coming from “die-hard SW fans from the 70s”.
    What about the normal reasonable viewers and their valid criticism of the prequels as movies, which really makes up the biggest chunk of the whole “prequel bashing” thing, especially now that everyone’s crazy about RLM?

    Why establish this false dichotomy between “die-hard fans” and “children who loved it”? This isn’t the Carebears we’re talking about, stuff that no one would judge as anything other than flicks for little kids?

    Just a bit of a disappointment, as McGregor rather seemed to be the kind of guy who’d rather go “well, yea, they were fun and all, but also kind of meh, it was an awesome ride though!” than jump on the whole butthurt-ish “nerd Grinches bashing happy children’s movies” bandwagon – I mean, if Sam Worthington can say that about Clash, why can’t this guy?

    But whatever.

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