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Tie-ins and spin-offs explored both the Clone Wars and the Dark Times between the trilogies Darth Vader's " noooooo" moment from Revenge of the Sith became the foundation for an entire comic book run and new Star Wars films liberally mixed references to the original trilogy with references to the prequels.
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When Disney purchased Lucasfilm, though, the process began to accelerate. Lucas himself began this process, with Star Wars: The Clone Wars drawing together various loose narrative threads and adding new depth to both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Related: Star Wars Fandom Has Finally Got Over The Prequels - Thanks To Disney But it's also partly because Lucasfilm has been carefully working to rehabilitate the prequels. As the years have passed, though, the level of vitriol has faded in part that's because, however vocal some fans were online, the fact remains that the prequels were a success, and the young viewers who grew up watching them have come of age. Any one of these elements would have made for a good film together, they didn't quite work, like pieces of four or five different jigsaw puzzles that have all been mashed together. That was particularly the case with The Phantom Menace, which contained so many good ideas - an ancient Jedi prophecy, the return of the Sith, a political crisis in the Old Republic, a slave-boy seeking his freedom, the battle to liberate a planet - but all stitched together quite poorly. Unfortunately, although the prequels all performed well in the box office, to Star Wars fans they were seen as the nadir of the franchise. When he finally decided to make them, in theory, they should have been unforgettable hits. By 1978, he was openly discussing the past of the galaxy he had created, including talking about a fateful duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader on a lava planet. The much-maligned Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace may be getting a reprieve after the Disney-era has worked to fix and otherwise improve the movie. George Lucas had been promising the prequels for almost as long as he'd been making Star Wars films.