A 90's kid who really enjoyed this film

Rating: 10/10 (19 August 2016)

I watched this film when I was 9 years old. My father was a huge fan of the original saga, and we watched the films a few times at home before I went to the cinema and watched episode I. It blew my mind. Jar Jar Binks and the underwater kingdom, the cool destroyer droids, the energy shields, Darth Maul, Naboo and its breathtaking architecture. I was fascinated by this fantasy world, to the point I started to like the new saga much more than the old one. Episode IV, V and VI seemed boring and far more unimaginative. For a 9 year old child, the amazing new cultures of Naboo, the huge buildings in Coruscant (shown in episode II), the different languages spoken, the amazing variety of creatures... It seemed more like a truly inter-galactic world compared to the original.
Someone in this review section wrote "Viewers in 1999 (let alone 2007) just couldn't feel as young, as innocent, as optimistic as they did when they saw the very first Star Wars", and this is exactly how I feel about episode I. At my young age, I became obsessed with this strange inter-galactic dimension and started fantasising about new possible creatures. I didn't find out about the hatred against this film until much later, when I started reading reviews online; and I must confess: it took me by surprise. I guess most of the Star War fans wanted something closer to the original. But for me, episode I was the original, the first and greatest.
Without the expectations surrounding it, this film would have become to be known as one of the best in its genre.