Not true, The Phantom Menace has a 51 on metacritic and a 55% on rottentomatoes.

Well I liked the prequels, aside from AotC.

Exactly. lol

They were far from considered huge successes. Some fans raved about it when it came out, that's true, but that could be a consequence of the hype of seeing another Star Wars movie after all those years. But a lot of fans bashed that movie back then. Reviews were very lackluster. This is a totally different case, as reviewers and fans alike are raving about it, and it's rare to see a lot of negativity (as opossed to TPM) among fandom. I didn't see it yet, but I'm on a lot of film forums and I've only see a lot of praise. 

EDIT: By the way, I've enjoyed Episode III a lot. More than RotJ, so I'm not actually a prequel hater. 

Well son of a bitch. Just saw that spoiler. Oh well...I'm sure it will still be excellent. Waiting until probably next weekend to see it though.

I liked this movie a ton! Next to episode 2, it's my favorite. Yeah, I said it... I love episode 2.

You were supposed to read the post I edited above!

I thought Revenge of the Sith was the best of the prequels. I agree about Attack of the Clones being the worse though. Still the combination of Jake Lloyd and Jar Jar really hurt the watchability of The Phantom Menace...amount other things. Darth Maul was cool though.

I wont get to see it until next week probably, not a bad thing as I really wasn't looking forward to dealing with the madness that is a midnight/ weekend premier of a Star Wars movie. Did that for all 3 prequels, and what a crap sundae of a movie-going experience it was... and that was just the films!

Revenge of the Sith is great. While most really dislike the Phantom Menance, I can't help but notice how much better it looks than AotC. It's so odd how it's aged better. Maybe it was Clone's much 'cleaner' look. But idk, something about the second movie really aged horribly :S