The best version of the Star Wars prequels is still the legendarily bad Chinese dub

Rogue One has been called a lot of things—“A Star Wars Story,” an anthology film, a stand-alone adventure—many of which are synonyms for “prequel.” Prequels are an inherently bad idea, and they are generally executed in a manner that makes them even worse, retreading imagery from the movies ostensibly “after” them as self-important foreshadowing, and glibly trading in self-aware references in the place of actual jokes.

While Rogue One trades in all of these prequel clichés, it is still much, much better than George Lucas’ prequel trilogy. There is no reason to watch the prequel trilogy in 2017, but if you did, you would remember how much worse a Star Wars prequel can get—its plastic acting, pristine PlayStation 2 set design, groan-worthy humor, and presence of Jake Lloyd have all somehow gotten worse over time. The prequels have been edited and re-edited a billion different ways, removing Jar Jar Binks, cutting them down to a single runtime, even ushered into watchability by Topher Grace.