Every generation must lose its innocence, must see the brightly painted nursery wall smashed away by the wrecking ball of betrayal to reveal a blighted landscape. For our predecessors, it was the Somme, the Great Depression, the Holocaust or Vietnam; for my generation, it was The Phantom Menace. The problem isn’t just that it’s terrible but that it also retrospectively spoils the original films. George Lucas took the hinted-at mythical, ancient yet futuristic realm of his first films and filled in all the detail like a tedious nerd. He ruined his own creation. It was as if Leonardo da Vinci had painted a speech bubble on the Mona Lisa in which she explained her state of mind. Everything that was magical, mysterious and half alluded to, he now ploddingly dramatised, making it seem dull and trainspotterish. Those three prequels worked like aversion therapy for my addiction to the franchise.