Fan reactions to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace remind us why not to trust The Force Awakens early reviews

'I think Mr Lucas did a fabulous job'

We’re all super excited for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but let's all focus for a moment. The last three Star Wars films were really bad.

It’s easy to poke fun at Jar Jar Binks, but he wasn’t even the worst part. What really grinds peoples’ gears is that they took an iconic villain - Darth Vader - and gave him a sub-par background story, played by two pretty awful actors.

At the time, however, people thought The Phantom Menace was the bee's knees. Thousands of people came out of the cinema thinking they had witnessed one of the greatest films ever created.

“I think it’s going to be the hugest thing,” said Lucy Lui, while Shaquille O’Neal said he thought it was “an excellent movie. I think Mr Lucas did a fabulous job, the special effects were wonderful and the storyline was wonderful.”

Yes, those are real quotes. Watch footage of people who had seen the movie on its first day of release, and pray that the bosses at Disney haven’t ruined the upcoming film.

Of course, things are looking pretty optimistic for The Force Awakens. The original trio are back, George Lucas’s ideas were scrapped by JJ Abrams and it looks fantastic in the trailers.

Then again, people thought the prequel trilogy was going to be amazing and look how that turned… All aboard the semi-hype train? Oh, who are we kidding. All aboard!