Johnny Carson died today. A few moments for Johnny Carson, please.

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OK, so, what I’m hearing everyone saying is the old, “The original trilogy is great, the prequels suck.” Well, far be it from me to disagree, but, well, I guess I disagree.

First off, I honestly liked both Episode I and Episode II. Did I have the same reaction to them as I had when I first saw Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back? Nope. But, then, I was 10 and 13, respectively, when I saw those movies, and I viewed them through the eyes of a 10- and 13-year-old kid. Interestingly, I was disappointed in Jedi in 1983, when I was 16, which is a very different age than 10. When I watched it the other day on DVD, I was genuinely surprised that it’s a good movie.

My point is, you were in your 20s or 30s when you saw The Phantom Menace. You had life under your belt. That always changes things. Menace was a movie about a 10-year-old kid, made for 10-year-olds. Deeper, it told the story of how a galaxy (read: country, culture, civilization) went from being peaceful, productive and luxurious to being at the brink of a war.

Clones was a “romance” made for people (that is, young girls) who think romance is sitting by a fireplace, looking deeply into your lover’s eyes and saying things like, “No one must know that we are in love.” To an adult, it’s silly — and, I will admit, in Clones some of the performances didn’t help matters. In the middle of it, though, is Anakin Skywalker (who is learning how to be a Jedi — or, in our terms, something like a UN Peacekeeper) talking to Amidala (a politician) about the need to control people, to get things done, to wield power. He believes that power should be taken by those crafty enough to have it, then manipulated to their whim — in short, a dictatorship. What he doesn’t realize is that his views have been shaped by his association with Palpatine, a mid-level politician with an eye toward being the most powerful person alive. Rings kind of true to our own world, eh? So, that’s in there, if you look beyond the surface of the movie.

The big difference is, Star Wars, Empire and Jedi had no real subtext, beyond the Luke-Vader thing. There was nothing “more” to them. And there shouldn’t be, because they’re relatively straightforward stories about a band of freedom fighters trying to overthrow an oppressive government. It’s just “let’s find a way to get ’em.”

What George Lucas did was surprising and tough to pull off — he wanted to tell a story about how the war started, to follow a group of people who would shape its destiny.

That’s a tall order, and it requires patience from viewers. Worse, what the viewers really wanted, truth be told, was much simpler: They wanted to see a first movie that told the story about how a kid grew up to become Darth Vader, have him don the mask at the end of the first movie, then have the next two be about Vader crossing the galaxy causing destruction.

It will be interesting how naysayers view Episode I and Episode II in light of what they see this May, because (without giving away more than George did in Vanity Fair), they’re going to discover that Vader isn’t as horrible and evil and all-villainous as we imagined; he’s a person underneath there, a person who had to wear that mask and respirator for a reason — and when we learn the reason, we’re going to view him differently. Maybe we’ll even hate him even more because we know who he is, but there’s also going to be a bit of pity for this guy who had a choice to make and chose very, very poorly.

That’s not to say that Episode I and Episode II don’t have some bad acting and stilted dialogue — of the sort found in, say, Titanic or even (dare I say it?) Lord of the Rings. Particularly with the latter, so many people hold that trilogy up and say, “Here’s what Star Wars should have been,” without pausing to think that some might consider them bloated, lumbering and repetitive beyond belief.

Whatever, that’s just my anti-Rings rant. What I know is this: My 10-year-old goddaughters loved Episode I and Episode II. They fell in love with Star Wars and talked about the movies incessantly and bought Anakin t-shirts and read the books and bought the DVDs. They think the movies are great, because they saw them through the eyes of a 10-year-old — which is virtually impossible for us to do.

In the end, like I said, I’m going to change no opinions. But I think the difference between the trilogies is intentional and will make sense when you see Episode III. Maybe you still won’t like the prequels, but hopefully you’ll give Sith a shot and at least be able to say, if nothing else, that George Lucas stayed true to his own vision — even if you feel his vision was somehow flawed.