The movies Simon Pegg said you’re not allowed to like: “I don’t respect anyone who thinks those films are good”
Let’s be real, we’ve all silently (or not so silently) judged people for loving certain films, even though, in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t really matter.
Or does it? It’s like when someone goes down in your estimation because you’ve found out they support Manchester United (sorry) or went to the Eras Tour (sorry, Swifties). Your whole opinion of what they stand for changes, and while that doesn’t make them a bad person, of course, it can certainly alter how you perceive them. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want to be friends with a Tory, and finding out someone has paid to see artists like Coldplay or Morrissey gives me the same feeling of repulsion.
It can be that serious, especially when it comes to franchises that you care deeply about, and for Simon Pegg, his hatred of a certain set of prequels led him to compare them to “infanticide”. The actor is obviously referring to the Star Wars prequel trilogy, albeit rather brutally, that emerged in the late 1990s – something that left many fans feeling betrayed.
Pegg was a child when the original Star Wars came out, and like countless other viewers who caught George Lucas’ epic space opera back in 1977, it felt like a life-changing experience, and until this moment, it felt like no film had been this immersive, this easy to become obsessed with – Pegg treasured it immensely, so when the prequel series emerged, he was suspicious.
Of course, Pegg would go on to appear in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens as part of the sequel trilogy, playing Unkar Plutt, and he clearly possesses a lifelong love of Star Wars and trusted the JJ Abrams-directed film to do the series justice, something he thought was missing from Lucas’ own prequel series.
Talking to the New York Daily News, the actor boldly revealed, “I don’t really have any respect for anyone who thinks those films are good”… The series gave us new characters like Padmé Amidala and Darth Maul, as well as the controversial Jar Jar Binks, but fans were divided, and evidently, Pegg has no respect for these characters, seeing the movies as being responsible for tarnishing the legacy established with the original trilogy.
“They’re not [good]. [They’re] a monumental misunderstanding of what the [original] three films are about. It’s an exercise in utter infanticide… George Lucas killing his kid,” Pegg added. That’s one way to put it.
Lucas found widespread acclaim when he made the original trilogy, but he soon faced plenty of backlash when he made the prequel series, introducing characters that people found to be a joke, and developing backstories that people weren’t happy with. The original movies see the fight between good and evil take centre stage, but with the prequels, many fans couldn’t help but feel disappointed with the direction Lucas took them in, finding them more childlike and, quite frankly, a little ridiculous.
With that being said, the prequel series still grossed an impressive amount, with Phantom Menace alone raking in $1.047billion. These movies were always going to make a killing, even if fans, like Pegg, walked away wholly disappointed.
