July 4's hottest summer video game takes in one place

Published Jul 3, 2026, 6:59 AM EDT

Fireworks, flame wars, and Polygon’s hottest opinions over a holiday weekend

Fire up the grill and hide the potato salad: our hottest opinions are taking over the long weekend in Polygon’s Spicy Takes Cookout.

All weekend, we’re loading up the picnic table with opinions on games, movies, TV, tabletop, anime, fantasy, and everything else worth lovingly fighting about. Maybe Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t the sacred text we pretend it is. Maybe there’s no such thing as superhero fatigue. Maybe no RPG should last more than 40 hours. (No but seriously…) Like the best cookouts, we’re feeling overconfident while lighting fitres, things will get a little messy, but somehow everyone still loves each by the time we pack up and go home.

This weekend is not about rage bait. No troll jobs. No tossing a lit firecracker into the potato salad and walking away. Just Polygon writers making the case for the takes they truly believe in. We hope they make you laugh or inspire you to prepare a rebuttal while passing the mustard.

So grab a plate. The takes are hot. The coals are glowing. It’s a lil’ Spicy Takes Week(end) for July 4.

Anakin and Padmé’s awkward love story is the best part of the Star Wars prequels

Image: Lucasfilm

I’m not going to lie and say the Star Wars prequels are good. They’re objectively bad movies and some of the most baffling blockbusters ever made.

The prequels are best observed as relics of pop culture, but regardless of their quality, they mark an important moment for the franchise, serving as an entry point for an entire generation of fans (myself included). And while we can analyze the many elements that don’t work (Jar Jar Binks, the bad dialogue, the embrace of CGI and disregard of puppets), I am here to defend my favorite part of the trilogy: the romance between Anakin and Padmé, a plot line that’s often singled out as an example of George Lucas’ worst impulses.

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Toy Story 5 is the most vital film of the 21st century

Image: Pixar

Nearly 20 years later, Toy Story 5 asks: Will we do anything about that? In forcefully asking the question — and pointing fingers at the adults in the room who brought us to this moment — directors Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris have turned the fifth movie in a three-decade-old franchise, destined to make $1 billion worldwide, the most responsive and vital film produced by an American studio in this century.

A cheeky scolding wouldn’t earn that distinction. But Toy Story 5 goes deeper — a referendum on child-rearing in the digital age, an ode to the power of play with radical new context, and a plea to kids over what they’ll see when they look up from their screens. And through it all, in a refreshing twist, Toy Story 5 refuses to blame the kids. The lead human character, Bonnie, isn’t weak or broken; she’s an 8-year-old responding exactly as Lilypad, the stand-in iPad, was designed to make her respond.

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Dwayne Johnson’s Jumanji movies are better than Robin Williams’ — and it’s not even close

Image: Frank Masi/Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection

Back in 2017, when Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle came out, I assumed it would be yet another pale imitation of a movie I loved from my youth. The idea of Jumanji being a video game instead of a board game just seemed wrong. How could a video game ever give off the ancient, haunted vibes the original board game had? Plus, I’m not really a huge fan of either Dwayne Johnson or Kevin Hart. They’re fine, but they’ve got nothing on Robin Williams, the biggest comedic voice of my childhood and someone whose movies still make me laugh today.

But, the response to Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was so overwhelmingly positive that I decided to give it a shot. That’s when I realized that the reboot isn’t just great, it’s a heck of a lot better and funnier than the original (and so is the reboot’s sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level).

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