Obi-Wan Kenobi star Ewan McGregor thinks opinions of the Star Wars prequels have shifted, and admitted that the original reception to the movies was hard for him to take at the time.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the 50-year-old Star Wars actor explained that he sees a new “Wave of positivity” when it comes to the prequel trilogy.
“Now I meet the people who we made those films for, who were the kids of the time, he said. “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.”
Of course, it wasn’t always that way. After the release of The Phantom Menace in 1999, the film was met with mixed reviews. Over time, it only worsened… and with the release of both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith the trilogy failed to live up to many fans’ expectations.
“I found it quite hard,” said McGregor. “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.”
Equally, the young Darth Vader actor Hayden Christensen felt the force of critical reaction.
“When the films came out and the critics were very critical, of course, that was a difficult thing,” said Christensen. “Because you care so much about this thing that you’ve invested so much of yourself into. So, for sure, that’s challenging.”
Now, the pair get to revisit their roles in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series for Disney+.