With all the media discussion about Natasha Richardson and her husband Liam Neeson, it occurred to me that it’s been ten long, painful years since the movie industry shat out the Phantom Menace (because every thought I have leads somehow to Star Wars). Ten years.

I remember how excited I was at the time. It was easy then to dismiss the horribly bad dialogue and the iffy plot points. It was action packed, generally fun, and most importantly, the first damn Star Wars movie in 26 years. But of course it begins to wear on you, all those questions. Darth Vader, the greatest villian of all time, was a whiney little snot.

The next two movies were a little better, at least partially because George Lucas handed the scripts off to someone else to work out kinks in the dialogue. They were still bad… if they were an improvement over an original draft I shudder to think of how bad that was.

But whatever. Just offering that reminder.