'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back': Rolling Stone's 1980 Cover Story

Reading this, it’s striking how innocent everything feels. The general lack of knowledge about the series from the actors, the guilty confessions that they were ‘pretending’ a lot (which is just what acting is, right?) because of the nature of special effects, and the examples of the “glut of aggressive merchandising schemes” they gave which were a soundtrack and a proposed Yoda doll.

21 years later, and something like this just makes me feel even more sad about the prequels. Not just for the general low quality of the movies, but for the spectacle around them. Jar Jar Slurpees is a thing, and that’s all I probably need to say.