PHANTON MEN: Reflecting on 'The Phantom Menace'
The announcement of the upcoming 25th anniversary re-release of 'Star Wars: Episode I- The Phantom Menace' brings back memories of a memorable night.
On Friday, after Disney and LucasFilm announced that a 25th-anniversary re-release is coming this May for Star Wars: Episode I- The Phantom Menace, I got texts from multiple people with the phrase “PHANTON MEN.” Let me explain.
The Phantom Menace, which was the first of the Star Wars prequels, arrived on May 19, 1999. It was, for most of my friends and I of our basic generational cohort, the most-awaited movie that any of us could remember. I was a junior in college and of the age of people who saw the original Star Wars trilogy when we were very young and spent years watching it on VHS tapes on old CRT TVs. And aside from the 1997 Special Editions, there hadn’t been any new Star Wars movies or TV shows for all those years.
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