I have a confession to make: I don’t hate the "Star Wars" prequels . In fact, I love them. Not having hatred for a movie trilogy that earned more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office is not an opinion that should be considered particularly controversial. For instance, I also don’t hate "Titanic" or "The Avengers" or the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

But while I’ve never felt the need to hide the fact that I am a "Star Wars" fan in general, I have always felt self-conscious about my love for George Lucas’ "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, which revisited the beloved franchise to tell the story of how young Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. I constantly qualified my affection by reminding friends that I was young when I first saw the films, that I liked the original trilogy better, and that I still preferred practical effects to CGI. And while all of those things are true, they do not make me like "The Phantom Menace," "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith" any less. What made me like them less, at least for a time, was everyone else.

The prequels do have their share of flaws – there’s no denying this. The films – especially "The Phantom Menace," which celebrates its 20th anniversary on May 19 – garnered deserved (but measured) criticism when they were released from 1999 to 2005. Yes, Jar Jar was terrible (from his language to his antics to his CG depiction), Jake Lloyd was not the greatest child actor, and the dialogue ranged from wooden to cheesy to downright silly. Blame Internet outrage or peer pressure or how excited we are for the new installments in the series, but just as nostalgia has inflated the original trilogy to near mythic heights, the last decade has allowed dislike for the prequels to sour into petty disdain. And they don’t deserve it.

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