Goodbye, "Star Wars" prequels

Sorry, Mr. Lucas. I can no longer in good conscious own or acknowledge your overly produced, poorly scripted, and badly directed prequels that were made only to sell toys. There is a backstory to the original trilogy, but these three movies will never be my true interpretation of that mythical tale. That will stay happily in my imagination. So here I am selling my three "Star Wars" prequel DVDs at Amoeba Music, the iconic music store in the heart of Hollywood where people come to buy and sell records, CDs and DVDs.

The "Star Wars" prequels were never great and a one might ask why I even purchased these DVDs to begin with. Perhaps it was a sense of wanting to be complete or a hope that I might bond with aspects of the three-movie story arc more in time...but none of this ever happened and I was left with three movies that continued to just take up space in my collection. I slowly began to realize that I'd never watch them again. Then, a tell-all extended interview with producer Gary Kurtz revealed that George Lucas intent from the onset of producing "Return of the Jedi" in 1983 was to expand a line of toys based on the movies that would in fact eclipse the quality of the movies themselves. That became even more apparent with the release of "Episode I" in 1999.

When I watch the original trilogy I envision a somewhat different episode I, II, and III. One that follows the continuity, look and feel of "Star Wars", "Empire" and "Jedi"...not where these classic films have to be retooled to accommodate the new kids on the block. When I watch Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader in "Star Wars" I don't see older versions of Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christiansen. Instead I imagine a backstory that keeps much of it's mystery in the same way only seeing glimpses of the future war in the James Cameron "Terminator" movies does. "Terminator Salvation" went to a place where the mythology of the machines taking over was actually demystified a bit. Leaving that event up to our imagination was much more fulfilling then what any filmmaker could bring us.

The same thing holds true for George Lucas. Sometime you need to know when to stop, and I think if a lot of us knew what we'd be handed over the course of three overblown prequels I think we would have told him to go back to San Francisco and start from scratch...or even just scrap the whole thing.