Ten years ago today, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace hit theaters.

The Phantom Menace was released towards the end of my time in college. We had just seen the remastered and “updated” versions of the original trilogy in theaters a few years before, and also enjoyed the excellent Shadows of the Empire campaign prior to that. Star Wars fever was riding high, and the new film couldn’t possibly disappoint, could it? Walking out of the theater after first seeing the film, everyone was caught up in the hype. But later, having had the chance to think about what we just saw…ugh. The poor script and acting, the over-reliance on special effects, the questionable continuity additions, and Jar Jar Binks…it was very painful for longtime fans.

Along came two more prequels, which couldn’t be nearly as bad as the first one, right? Wrong. Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were just as bad as The Phantom Menace, for largely the same reasons. The acting and script was terrible, some continuity elements made little to no sense, but worst of all…the heroic Jedi were portrayed as completely ineffective, and Darth Vader — one of the greatest science fiction villains ever created — was revealed to be a whiny, complaining pussy. Not to mention that with each prequel film, a new badass character was introduced…only to be violently killed by the end of the movie!

The darkest side of all of this Star Wars mania is the resurgence of the fanboys. Hardcore scifi nerds aren’t exactly social butterflies, but holy shit, The Phantom Menace and its sequels really drew ‘em out of the woodwork. With the insane popularity of the entire saga, it also gave many Star Wars fans a “right” to be obnoxiously arrogant, letting them relentlessly bash other popular franchises like Star Trek and Doctor Who (both of whom predate Star Wars by more than a decade), simply because George Lucas’ saga is more of a moneymaker. Sure, fanboy wars had always been there, but the prequels gave the Star Wars fanboys more ammunition. (Odd, concerning the films’ noted lack of quality!)

The prequels left a bad taste in the mouths of many (myself included; it took me a few years to get over it), but there’s no denying that Star Wars was a huge part of everyone’s life in 1999. And for the past decade, the franchise has been more popular than ever. While the focus seems to be on the prequel era more than anything else, there is quite a bit of good that has come out of this. The uptick of interest has resulted in a bevy of top-notch Expanded Universe content; most notably, the Dark Times and Legacy comic book series, as well as the Force Unleashed project.

To sum up, the prequel era ushered in a new age of shit, but thank goodness we’ve got decent science fiction writers and creators to handle the great stories coming out of the Expanded Universe. Without them, I (and many other fans) likely would’ve written off Star Wars for good.