I was going to wait until at least a few posts in to discuss this topic but I’ve had a lot of tests this week and I’m too burned out to talk about anything else, so here we go.

If you ask the average Star Wars fan what they think about the prequels, there is a pretty good chance they will say something along the lines of,  “I hate them, but the memes though.” Many consider the memes to be the best thing to come out of this infamous trilogy, and to an extent, I’m inclined to agree.

Prequels memes are a big deal. The Reddit page r/Prequel Memes has 710k subscribers, which, as this article points out, is bigger than the Reddit page for Christianity (which I gotta mention is a TERRIBLE litmus test for popularity on Reddit, but hey, it’s something) and the one Star Trek. Since the article was written, it has grown to six times as big as either of those pages, and last year, the biggest post on Reddit was a prequel meme. 

The prequels would not be nearly as relevant as they are now were it not for memes, but how did this meme culture come to be? I’m not so much interested in the history of prequel memes as I am in what makes them so funny. Personally, I think this is a result of what happens when you create a story which is at its core, highly relatable, but execute it in a way that is laughably bad and well, meme-worthy. My desktop background has been a montage of Anakin crying about sand for almost three years now.

Sandakin by Esamitch on Tumblr

It’s obviously a joke, but I’d also be lying if I said this wasn’t my daily mood. Prequel memes are funny because they are inherently stupid-sounding because of the bad dialogue and we can apply them to such a wide variety of contexts. This is partially because we have so many dumb phrases to choose from, that there is a prequel meme for practically every situation. Star Wars dialogue in general is iconic because of its propensity for vague truisms that can be applied to just about everything like, “Never tell me the odds,” and “Do or do not. There is no try.” Prequels dialogue still has that same catchiness and generalizability, but it also sucks, and that’s why we make so many memes about it. Many memes simply poke fun at some of the worst lines in the series:

However, many others utilize the generalizability of some of these scenes by applying them to life

I REALLY have not even scratched the surface of this phenomenon and I will definitely be mentioning it in future posts because honestly it is really integral to why I enjoy this stuff so much. In any case, it is clear that there are a lot of reasons for the success of prequels memes. They’re pretty great. I like them. They’re a huge influence on Star Wars culture and culture in general (seriously). If you get into the prequels for no other reason, get into them for the memes.