There’s a good deal of irony thrown in, as there is for similar communities devoted to Nicolas Cage and Brendan Fraser, but it’s the underlying affection that shines through. (Contempt for the sequels is another key component: All non-prequels are to r/PrequelMemes as the Sith are to the Jedi, a dark force that must be eradicated.) It becomes difficult, after a while, not to develop a soft spot for these goofy films when so many people are express their fondness for them in increasingly outlandish ways. Most of these memes point out of the movies’ ridiculousness, of course - one of the funniest pits Anakin’s hatred of sand against his love of Padme - but do so in an affectionate way. Once it became received wisdom that “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones” in particular were terrible, they never recovered. If we can reasonably assume that most of the folks on r/PrequelMemes are dudes in their 20s, as general reddit demographics suggest they are, then my experience may well be closer to the rule than the exception. It’s worth wondering, all these years later, how many viewers were young and impressionable enough at the time to both enjoy the prequels and be so influenced by their negative reception as to conflate the general consensus with their own opinions. Rewatching all three before “The Force Awakens” did little to sway my opinion of them in either direction, but these ridiculous memes have - the movies now seem endearing where before they mostly felt ill-advised. My view of the first two prequels lessened in the following years, though “Revenge of the Sith” made for a poignant conclusion. Our senate isn’t the only one with problems. (I also prefer “Jedi” to “Empire,” though, so what do I know?) I hadn’t seen any of them in years, and was never quite obsessed enough with the original trilogy to feel personally offended when “midi-chlorian” was introduced to the lexicon. Shortly before “The Force Awakens” came out, I did what I imagine many others did: watched all six existing “Star Wars” movies in order.

The answer is probably a mixture of both, but allow me to make a case for the latter effect.

In addition to being frequently hilarious, this phenomenon raises a question: Are people joining in on the fun because they already love Episodes I–III, or are the memes actually inspiring them to go a little easier on the once-loathed prequels? At the forefront of this apparent reappraisal is, of course, a never-ending barrage of memes emanating from the r/PrequelMemes subreddit, whose numbers have grown more in the last few months than Jango Fett’s did in the lead-up to the Clone Wars. Well, whaddya know: The internet doesn’t hate the “ Star Wars” prequels as much as it used to.

Star wars empire meme