I miss being 9 years old. Text messaging and the Internet didn’t exist, cable was a luxury for folks who didn’t live in the middle of nowhere, and I wanted to be an astronaut.

There is nothing cooler than manned space flight. Back in the 1990s, the notion of strapping our best and brightest to the tip of a rocket and hurling them into the vacuum of space for a week was nothing but awe-inspiring. If we were to advance as a civilization, we were to master the art of hurling ourselves through the solar system, if only to grasp how extraordinarily infinitesimal we truly are.

It was more than that: For the decade leading up to the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, our hearts and imaginations were fueled by the single greatest achievement in modern cinema: “Star Wars.”

I’ll concede that Gene Roddenberry beat George Lucas to the punch, but let’s not kid ourselves: Up until the embarrassment of the prequels, “Star Wars” was the gold standard.

I’ll see your phasers and raise you a lightsaber. I’ll see your Enterprise and raise you a Star Destroyer. Meet Han Solo, and watch him fly off with your women in the Millennium Falcon. Klingons as the intergalactic badasses? The Klingons didn’t build a Death Star, the Empire built two.

Then, Lucas, not content with the size of his bank account/goiter, released “The Phantom Menace,” and thus began his decade-long violation of my childhood.

I could go into extraordinary, babe-repelling detail why each of the prequels are god awful, but it’s already been done. I could talk about the lack of quality cinematography, lack of character depth or general stupidity of the entire plot line, but I won’t. 

But, given a public forum for reasons unknown, I will say I’m disappointed with Lucas. He had the opportunity, twice, and half-assed his way up the Forbes 400. Surely not because he is owed 40 percent of box office and all merchandising rights — the “Star Wars” franchise has only made $22 billion; or because the fans demanded it; or because home 3-D technology is increasingly more affordable?

No, that couldn’t possibly be it.

There hasn’t been a trend of hodgepodge 3-D conversions of horrible movies — I’m looking at you, “Clash of the Titans” — to capitalize on the success of “Avatar.” People just want to see CGI Yoda fight CGI Ian McDiarmid; in the third dimension.

It’s not like George Lucas hasn’t done a fine job with his other independent projects — after all, the latest Indiana Jones sequel he whipped up with Steven Spielberg wasn’t horrible (yes it was).

When someone asked me what I hoped to see in the new movie, the first thing that popped into my head was “Sam Witwicky swinging from Nazis on CGI vines with CGI monkeys in a CGI forest on a quest to discover CGI aliens.”

Hell, “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” ranks right up there with “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler’s List” in terms of quality cinema, not to mention a vast improvement over the previous Indiana Jones movie. After all, anything titled “The Last Crusade” totally needs a sequel.

For what it’s worth, some of the newer things that have been done with the “Star Wars” brand name aren’t all bad — I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit I’ve watched both “Clone Wars” cartoon series, and both are pretty awesome, although the Genndy Tartakovsky series is far and away the better of the two, and the trailer for the sequel to “Force Unleashed” is four minutes of nothing but awesome.

Still, I can’t help but get the feeling that the 3-D conversions of the old “Star Wars” movies are anything but an attempt to keep cashing in. I’ll concede that of all the companies to have tackled such a project, Industrial Light & Magic is at the top of the list, but is it really necessary?

When Lucas announced that he’d be “cleaning up” the original trilogy in the mid-1990s — adding new scenes and CGI — all but the most elitist geeks were absolutely thrilled. The concept seemed solid, but the execution was a bit like “dressing up” Chinese food with nacho cheese. Han Solo shot Greedo because Han Solo is a badass. Period. 

I’m all about Hi-def Blu-ray cleanups of the original trilogy — minus the mid-1990s CGI — but beyond that, leave well enough alone or spend the money making the prequels less of an abomination.