Star Wars: The Last Jedi's Rian Johnson has come to the defense of George Lucas' Star Wars prequels and defended the divisive Episode I-III arc.
On Twitter, Johnson threw his support behind the prequels and championed Lucas for making "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."
Even 21 years after The Phantom Menace hit theaters, there's still a huge debate about the prequels. Although there were critiques like Jar Jar Binks, Attack of the Clones' story and Hayden Christensen's acting, aspects such as Obi-Wan Kenobi's arc, Mace Windu and the Battle of Mustafar have become fan-favorites. In fact, Revenge of the Sith was largely well-received. A similar case to Johnson's recently came up in Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, where Kathleen Kennedy and Dave Filoni also praised Lucas' pioneering work on the prequels.
Following the release of The Last Jedi in 2017, Johnson was accused of making a Star Wars movie that wasn't even a Star Wars movie. Mark Hamill was famously vocal about Johnson's characterization of Luke Skywalker, John Boyega called it "a bit iffy" and only recently, two Star Wars editors said The Last Jedi tried to undo the sequel trilogy.
This isn't the first time Johnson has jumped to defend the prequels. During behind-the-scenes documentary The Director and The Jedi, he spoke about how the movies influenced Episode VII in terms of the hypocrisy of the Jedi and their inability to prevent Anakin from turning to the dark side. This was represented in Rey's training montage of Luke explaining both sides of the Force. Just like a Jedi was responsible for training Anakin and the creation of Darth Vader, Johnson pulled a parallel between this and Luke/Ben Solo.
Although The Last Jedi was slammed by some, J.J. Abrams' The Rise of Skywalker was also met with similar critiques, and by many accounts, Disney's sequel trilogy is just as polarizing as the prequels. That said, Johnson is still expected to develop a new trilogy of Star Wars films, though details on the projects remain shrouded in mystery.