Star Wars will not live up the the over the top, millitant, lunatic hype espoused by the frothing megafans. Nothing can, really. You can't undrink the nostalgia Kool-Aid, but try your best to remember that this person has never had a sip off that Kool-Aid in the first place. Be gentle if they have an impression that doesnt match your own.

17 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Heavens no, don't start with Rogue One.

18 hours would never work out anyway if you start with prequels.

I mean, you need like 48 hours for them at least, before you even start to get into the OT era, which still has with Rebels and Rogue one two more sort of prequel sources, before you can start with Star Wars.

ask them politely to leave

Personally I’d recommend watching the Clone Wars series between II and III. It makes so much sense of the relationship between Obi Wan and Anakin. I’d say it moves the films from bad at best to reasonable at worst.

A lot of people here are criticizing the prequels to a degree I simply don't agree with. Additionally, I think people are undervaluing Episode 1, and overvaluing Episode 2.

I'm going to Paraphrase Red Letter Media's review for parts of this, but the Phantom Menace, while by no means a good movie, is at least a complete story; with a proper beginning, middle, and end. It does have plenty of bad moments and key decisions that should have been altered. While some people will say the biggest problem is Jar Jar, I say the biggest problem is a lack of an identifiable protagonist. The movie can't tell you if it's supposed to be Obi-Wan or Anakin, because the former you don't meet until halfway through the movie, and the latter sits out of the action in the ship for the middle third. Padme is the only character in all 3 acts, in the majority of the scenes, and also introduced early enough to qualify as the protagonist. But then that is partially foiled by the fact that there is a reveal that the Queen and Padme are one and the same near the end of the movie, establishing her as in on all of the action after the fact. A lack of an identifiable protagonist is subconsciously going to make your movie harder to follow. Despite these flaws, The Phantom Menace remains a better movie than it's direct successor, Attack of the Clones.

Attack of the Clones is hot garbage from start to end. It counts on everyone to be utter simpletons to get the villain's plot machinations to actually work. Why don't the Jedi question the existence of a clone army from a dead Jedi Master? Why should the Jedi accept it, when they know the clones are stock of a man they are facing off against? Shouldn't that be ringing alarm bells right off the bat? The dialogue is of course, atrocious, especially the scenes where Padme and Anakin are supposedly falling in love. Shmi exists solely to justify Anakin's rage, and when Anakin opens up to Padme about this, instead of being terrified, Padme does nothing rational.

All those problems with Attack of the Clones are at least mitigated by the Clone Wars series.

1 minute ago, Major Tom said:

All those problems with Attack of the Clones are at least mitigated by the Clone Wars series.

In my opinion, the mitigation of the Clone Wars is not enough to salvage AotC retroactively. It does, however, salvage Revenge of the Sith, but that movie is almost a decent film by itself (stilted dialogue and all.)

The Phantom Menace has a better skeleton upon which a good movie could be based, but Attack of the Clones needs almost a complete rewrite to be salvaged, as nearly everything is off; pacing, editing, style, execution all leave something to be greatly desired. The only thing that AotC did better than TPM is a signifcantly reduced Jar Jar presence, and Yoda's appearance (while CGI) looks more in-line with what we are used to.