It would be hard to be upset if you're a Star Wars fan right now. Star Wars: The Force Awakens successfully relaunched the franchise and became one of the highest-grossing movies ever made, plus Star Wars: Rogue One has already made more than $500 million worldwide and delivered on its promise, by most accounts. Now we can look ahead to Star Wars 8, which is due out in a little less than a year. Updates on the movie have been minimal, but director Rian Johnson did recently take some time out of his busy schedule to defend the Star Wars prequels.

Rian Johnson decided to Tweet a response to a couple of fans who were having a bit of a conversation on Twitter about how much they hated the prequel trilogy. Common practice among Star Wars fans. In this case, not even just that they hated them, but more that they felt making the Star Wars prequels was a bad idea in the first place. Rian Johnson had a pretty interesting and convincing response. Here is what he had to say.

"@HeerJeet Pssst. Devil's advocate: the prequels are a 7 hour long kids movie about how fear of loss turns good people into fascists."

You would be hard pressed to find a Star Wars fan who doesn't at least have some problems with the prequels. Even the most confident defender of the movies still cringes when Jar Jar Binks makes his way on screen. That said, looking at them as "kids" movies that try and teach an interesting lesson, as Rian Johnson does, is sort of a compelling argument. Granted, that can't possibly fix the actual problems that exist in movies like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, but it is probably good that the guy directing the next Star Wars movie is able to look at the franchise in such a way. Why not look at the good that exists in what came before and use that to your advantage?

At this point, for all we know, Rian Johnson could have made a three-hour movie about Gungans that happens to feature Luke Skywalker and Rey, because we seriously know very little about Star Wars: Episode VIII at the moment. While that is highly unlikely, bordering on impossible, it is possible that the next episodic Star Wars movie could take some positive cues from the prequels. Like, if Ewan McGregor shows up as Obi-Wan Kenobi in a flashback sequence, for instance. We do know that we will be getting a title and probably a trailer sometime in the next few months. Most likely at Star Wars celebration in April.

George Lucas' Star Wars prequels may be the stain on a galaxy far, far away that many fans try their best to forget about, but we do have one good prequel movie now in the form of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, since it takes place before Star Wars: A New Hope. We'll have to see how Star Wars 8 shakes out, but at least Rian Johnson seems to have a good grip on the good in Star Wars. Star Wars: Episode VIII is set for release on December 15, 2017. You can check out the Twitter exchange for yourself below.