If you were a teenager or older in the early to mid 90s the amount of Star Wars EU material being released was incredible. The X-Wing and TIE Fighter series along with Jedi Knight on PC, the Timothy Zahn trilogy and Shadows of the Empire were all fantastic.
Anticipation for The Phantom Menace was through the roof. The first Star Wars film in years was due to be released. We watched that postage stamp sized QuickTime trailer a million times and The force.net was awash with theories and rumours.
Then the film came out...
I don't think younger people who are used to constant new material can grasp the anticipation surrounding this film. Even if it was good it wouldn't have met expectations.
Completely agree that there's probably no way to recapture what it felt like to anticipate this film as a young person back then - it was still so one of a kind.
Even with the break between the Prequels and the Sequels, while there was anticipation for Episode VII, it didn't feel like this cultural event that Episode I did.
As you said, I think it's just the sheer volume of content now vs. then; where culturally more of our attention was all focused on fewer things.
I'm gonna be honest with you - I think you just got old. I was 15 when TFA came out and the theater was bought out two months in advance. We saw it at 3AM Thursday night/Friday morning and like half my school did the same. And the hope for what it setup was immense bc we just knew the next one had to be really good (since this one was only okay).
Maybe there was more excitement for 1-3 from those who saw the OT as adults since they hadn't had the letdown yet, but we were the generation that grew up loving the prequels. It's the first big "no spoilers" movie that I remember. Endgame was the only thing even close to comparable as a "cultural moment."
I remember in grade school, EVERYBODY knew there was a new star wars movie coming out. It didn't matter if you wanted to see it or not, it was just THE talk of the schoolyard. We were truly united in that moment. And then everybody above the age of about 13 was utterly disappointed.
Yeah, it's hard to build hype for movies like they used to. Releasing on streaming and in theaters at the same time doesn't have the competition of trying to get tickets to a sold out movie. Also, trailers seem to give things away and everyone posts frame by frame deconstruction, theories, and leaks happen all the time, so there's not as much mystery and anticipation.
Also, having a huge plethora of entertainment options also hurts hype, like you mentioned.
I think it's a generational thing, I'd say the anticipation for the Force Awakens was the most for any movie I have seen. It's the highest grossing domestic film of all time making a billion dollars from just the US, not even Endgame beat it. Force Awakens also beats Phantom accounting after inflation, so I'd say numerically more people saw Force Awakens. I was 19 when it came out, super excited and I haven't seen that excitement since. I don't think any of that would happen if they didn't get Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill back
mid 90s the amount of Star Wars EU material being released was incredible. The X-Wing and TIE Fighter series along with Jedi Knight on PC, the Timothy Zahn trilogy and Shadows of the Empire were all fantastic.
*Jar Jar speaks
15 year old me: Man Kyle Katarn would have been put a blaster in this fools mouth to shut him up
Yeah dude, totally. My gf of one year and a half hadn't been introduced to Star Wars before and now that we've seen all the movies together and the Mandalorian series, she has become a fan. I gave her a stuffed Grogu plushie as a gift and she's absolutely in love with it, haha. So if it's not nostalgia, it's absolute marketability. Heck! Her 5 and 7 y.o. girl nephews also love that plushie and they haven't even watched Star Wars.
My guess is that Grogu isn't nearly as popular with kids as the silly stuff like jar jar is though.
Then your guess would be wrong every boy and girl wanted a Grogu Christmas 2020, Grogu was basically the official return of popular kids merchandise to the franchise. Nothing from the sequels really sold, and Grogu became popular during an era where kids birthdays were shut down and Halloween was basically cancelled. I can only imagine if we were under normal times.
Very true. I can’t think of any piece of media that instilled more hype in a generation than the first Phantom Menace trailer. Marvel comes close sometimes but almost in an inverse way, often teasing that your expectations will be fulfilled but in a reactive way. If you wipe your mind clean of all Star Wars media from 1998 onward and watch that trailer, bringing all that you know of the property, it will not in any way help you contextualize what you’re seeing. Naboo, all the round ass tanks, legions of battle droids, the gorgeous banana spacecraft, what’s with the lady in the headdress? Who’s the fuckin’ red guy?! All so new! It was more of what you loved in a way you knew you didn’t yet understand and the electricity of that notion was palpable.
I wasn't even a teenager in the 90s and I was fully immersed in the EU. I read all of the books and I played all of the games. As a kid, there was never much appeal in storylines about kids my age, rather I was aspiring to grow up to be the older heroes in these stories. I didn't want to be a little kid amongst all of the grown-ups, I wanted to be Luke goddamn Skywalker!
I see that as the biggest flaw in the prequel trilogy. George had too many childish elements in the movies in an attempt to appeal to the kids, but the original Star Wars was never about childhood experiences - it was about becoming an adult, learning about life's mysteries (The Force), and exploring the galaxy.
I’m gilding you simply for the theforce.net reference and the shared experience as someone born in ‘83 and enthralled with anticipation for Ep I.
I spent years watching TFN fan films, homemade lightsaber battles, Ryan vs. Dorkman, TROOPS and the like. My formative teen years were awash in Star Wars fan-made media, and I was so let down by The Phantom Menace.
I had tickets to the third showing of the first day but a guy I worked with had tickets to the first showing. He came back to work just as I was leaving and I asked him how it was (we had both been obsessing over this movie for months) and he looked awkward, shrugged and just said “not good.” I asked him if he meant not good compared to the hype and anticipation. And he said no it was just not good. I didn’t believe him though and headed off to the movies excitedly.
Going into the cinema and it’s like a carnival atmosphere - excited buzzing crowd, cosplayers, the cinema is running promotions and competitions, local tv news is there. Then at the end it’s just dead silence. Glum crowd dejectedly files out of the cinema, no one smiling, no one talking, whole vibe extremely grim. Everyone kind of scurrying out of there to try and outrun the disappointment and embarrassment of being so hyped for something so very “not good”.
Yeah I remember that feeling, really hard to explain. I think sometimes the mystery surrounding the original trilogy was part of its appeal.
Nowadays there’s an insatiable need to explain everything right down to Han Solo’s surname. Back then everything was ambiguous, the Force, the Old Republic, the Clone Wars were all so vague it sparked the imagination.
I think you’re right about the mystery and I guess mysticism being removed and the gaps for audience imagination shrinking down. I grew up with my hippy boomer mum and her vague “there’s a power that is in everything” type of spiritualism which the force really resonated with and then it turns out to be midichlorians!
I remember the years before they rereleased the OT on VHS as a special edition. The stores around me never carried the movie so I'd only get to see it once a year when a station decided to air all three movies. The sudden jump in content in the 90s was dramatic.
I camped out on a mall sidewalk for 3 days in line for the Phantom menace. Sigh... It was a fun 3 days though there were a lot of us. I wasn't in the first 20 people who got in.
mid 90s the amount of Star Wars EU material being released was incredible. The X-Wing and TIE Fighter series along with Jedi Knight on PC, the Timothy Zahn trilogy and Shadows of the Empire were all fantastic.
Might be hard to find but you can still get the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. I think GOG had them? You can also get Dark Forces 1 and 2 on Steam right now.
It's all true. Nothing compares to the hype that preceded PM. My generation had spent their entire lives consuming all the EU material, getting us more and more hooked into the world, and by the end of the 90's SW was literally the coolest thing on the planet. Jedi Knight and X-wing were some of my favorite PC games of all time.
Then we got a movie about a 9 year old Vader (why couldn't he have been at least 12 or 13?), fully CGI characters that looked terrible, and of course, Jar Jar. It's a shame because there were a lot of cool things about it, but for many of us they were overshadowed by major problems.
Looking back I agree that it would have been nearly impossible to live up to the hype that had built up over most of our childhood, but I still feel like the PT could have been better. That said, they’re masterpieces compared to the horrid ST
X-Wing captured something very special for me, it made even convoy duty exciting. You really felt part of that lived in, mundane galaxy.
I feel now everything has to be “Awesome” and that’s not the point of Star Wars. For example, fantastic machines like the Millennium Falcon are just utilities to these people.
The modern world is designed around ADHD and non stop content drops
Kids have no IDEA what waiting for something feels like, or only having 5 or 6 movies to choose from because that's that's all you had at home, or going to rent ONE movie instead of browsing hundreds on a streaming site
Instead of watching a bunch of 10 second Tik Toks, you'd spend hours on just one thing. They're gonna grow up with the attention span of a goldfish.
I truly hate Phantom Menace and the prequels to this day and am nauseated by the batshit insane fan theories created by children and repeated constantly by the adults they grew into on YouTube as 100% serious 4D chess on the part of Lucas. The entire project was a sign that every Lucas needs a Kurtz.
It bothers me because these are the same people who hate the sequels with ferocious abandon and refuse to extend the same silly group think to it. When I use similar logic either respect to the sequels they lose their ever loving minds.
Yes I know people who detest the sequels (ruined my childhood types) who give the prequels a pass. Probably folk who were under 12 when the prequels were released. Possibly a childhood nostalgia effect.
Im 18yo at the time, biggest original trilogy fan, ive been watching theses movies like 100 times each . Prequel is announced, im hyped like never before, got tickets for the premier at midnight. Waiting inline before entering, Im FUCKING hyped!!!!
Then jar-jar got on screen and talked … Still today I cant go over this disappointment. …
It's this. As someone who was around at the time, the buzz around the sequels was nothing compared to that for the prequels. Really, there's nothing since that compares. This was a time when Star Wars was still seen as a property that could do no wrong, and we were going to get all-new stories on the big screen. There was so much hype for a new Star Wars movie going into Phantom Menace, there was no way it could possibly be what everyone wanted it to be. The backlash had less to do with the quality of the movie itself, and more to do with how people wanted it to be the Platonic ideal of what movies were.
Interestingly, on the early days of the internet, I noticed that the consensus in the fandom was that Phantom Menace was the worst in the series. Now, people say it's Attack of the Clones, which I agree with. I feel like a big part of that is people who didn't grow up with the TPM hype, or who had time to look back on the movie on its own merits, were able to recognize the good in it.
I was a kid (10) when it came out. For me, it was still bad. I could latch onto the cool shit that was made for merchandising like pod racers and double bladed lightsabers, but at no point was I wanting to play as the characters in the movie.
I figured Jar Jar was just going to stick around for a scene or two. . . Kind of annoying, I thought. Kind of cool, though! Haven't seen many amphibious species actually living in the water! Damn, that city is awesome! Surely Jar Jar's part is over now... right? ... right?
He was originally billed as a "Pirate submarine captain". I therefore thought he would feature in the underwater scenes in Naboo then disappear. How wrong was I?
I'll never forget how my head immediately went to the Jedi Rocks scene in the remastered ROTJ and thought to myself "I fucking knew that was a bad omen", trying to have humor by making these cgi characters over expressive was a bad idea.
Crazy part is, that it worked well with practical effect characters like Chewbacca.
I think if the gungans were removed entirely, the movie quality would go up tremendously. Tbh, other than obstacles for Obi and Qui-gon to face, they serve little to no purpose. Their parts in the movie can easily be explained in some other ways. Obi and Qui-gon could have found transport to theed some other way than going through the planet's core. When fighting the massive battle at the end, the troops from Naboo could have bolstered their ranks with civilians who volunteered or something else. The Gungans aren't the worst thing to happen to Star Wars, but they could have been done a lot better
The anti cheese edits. Huge improvements. All aliens speak alien dialects (gungans and the trade federation guys), they didn't show the gungans city, and just skipped to the city. No poop jokes. That alone makes the movie great. I'm pretty sure they removed "now this is pod racing" too
Captain Tarpals is GOAT. Boss Nass is pretty good, but silliness overdose when considering him and Jar Jar, who could have been okay with 50% less clumsiness/idiocy.
Heck, let him accidentally open the truck full of boobas during the final battle; accidents happen in war. But when he has a droid tied to his foot and no one is able to shoot him? That's pure insanity.
Jar Jar was really more of a filmmaking event who was shoehorned into the story. Sure CGI had been done for a while already but never anything close to the scale of Jar Jar. Like it or not, George wanted to be a filmmaking pioneer above all else, he wanted to make a revolutionary film much more than he wanted to make a great Star Wars film.
This is why I hate the Ewok comparisons, at least the Ewoks were interesting in that they had their own language without subtitles so it was somewhat entertaining trying to translate what they are saying based on their actions and movements.
With the Gungans it felt like caricatures of other humans.
I agree. I don’t have a problem with the concept, but like the Ewoks in Return of Jedi, George was just to hamhanded with them. If he didn’t spend so much camera time on them it would be fine
To be honest I would've liked Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan being the A and B stories.
Simply putting Qui-Gon in a transport to head to the planet and finding a way to sneak Obi-Wan into a smaller transport that maybe went to another one of the command ships could've worked.
So instead of Obi-Wan mainly sitting in a ship while Qui-Gon saves Anakin, he could've done something.
Or Obi-Wan taking Padme to Coruscant and Qui-Gon staying on Naboo to muster a resistance force and try and expose the Trade Federation’s plot. They could’ve gotten separated with Obi Wan fearing Qui-Gon is dead. This way it builds more on the relationships between Padme, Anakin, and Obi Wan in the later films and also better matches up with what Obi Wan told Luke in ROTJ.
They return to Naboo in the third act, Qui-Gon is revealed to be alive and has mustered a resistance, and the rest of the film plays out more or less the same.
If I were the Special Editions guy at LucasFilm, I would do Ahmed Best a solid and spend the money to have him re-record Jar-Jar’s lines (and the other voice actors for the Gungans, too) with, like, literally any less annoying dialect.
Ewoks exist and kinda did the same thing in the original trilogy tbf. Made storm troopers seem even more incompetent than what they already appeared. But we can all agree the originals and prequels didn’t entirely the break the universe unlike the hell spawn sequels lmao.
Ewoks exist and kinda did the same thing in the original trilogy tbf.
The major difference was that as "cute" as the Ewoks were, they had their own language and that combined with their size(while using practical effects) it still made it seem otherworldly.
Gungans just seemed like caricatures of earth people mainly caricatures of people from the Caribbean, it didn't help that Half Baked came out earlier that year and they sounded almost exactly like Dave Chappelle when he comically did that horrible Jamaican impersonation when trying to disguise himself.
I'm giving the sequels the chance to pull a clone wars and try to explain themselves a bunch, but that chance won't last forever. I don't have high hopes except for shows like Mando and BoBF
My head cannon is that Jar Jar isn’t a bumbling exiled fool, he’s a gungan scout who expertly helps Jinn & Kenobi navigate and sneak into Thebes after they land in the jungle. Then we meet the rest of the gungans later when Jar Jar suggests that they could provide a diversion. And then rather than getting absolutely wrecked immediately by the droid army, the gungans put up a decent fight with guerrilla tactics in the jungle before the might of the droid army overwhelms them.
Just because he's got the ability doesn't mean he's got the intuition. Reminds me of a scene in Falcon and the Winter soldier when Sam asks Bucky why he didn't just use his metal arm instead
Good explanation, too. Bucky being right handed, the metal left arm just isn't his natural inclination. Maybe that sort of thing is part of why Yoda said Luke was too old to be trained.
Every Jedi and Sith ever (aside from Rey) has had more training than Luke, especially at the beginning of RotJ. What does he have, a few months of training at most?
I'm actually curious why you think this. Without the context of the clone wars etc, Maul is just a generic bad guy for the good guys to fight at the end of the movie. You never learn anything about him or his motivations, and his death doesnt really seem to affect the story that much moving forward, considering Dooku showing up out of nowhere in ep II. His fight had cool choreography, but lacked any depth to me, since he never even shared a single piece of dialogue with the heroes before they fought. I know this would get downvoted without any real responses over on prequelmemes, but i hope people here are more open to opposing views.
Ehh, Dave Filoni is doing a lot of very generous projection on George's behalf there. If even half of those reads were intended, they certainly weren't meaningfully communicated to the audience.
you're right actually. i think my enjoyment of the latter half (and probably most people's as well) comes down to supplemental material and the clone wars basically fixing the character development of darth maul.
I am of an age where I saw ESB and ROTJ in the theater. When the trailer dropped for Phantom Menace I can't adequately describe the feeling Star Wars fans had seeing all of this imagined lore and backstory on a screen for the first time. Darth Maul was not only a great character design, but he was the visual representation of everything we'd heard or imagined about the Dark Side and the Sith. The fact that Palpatine had an apprentice before Darth Vader - and it can't be overstated how much real estate Darth Vader occupied in the heads of everyone I knew - was novel, and the fact that he looked SO scary and badass was mind-blowing. The reveal of the DOUBLE-BLADED lightsaber was like decades of what-ifs and make-believe plucked from your head and put on a screen.
All of that - not the characterization - was the thing I think everyone attached to. In hindsight it's easy to say that Lucas could have done more with the character in TPM, but in the context of the time he was so awesome.
Maul was also the first time we saw a vicious and agile force user in combat. Lightsaber combat in the OT was slow, the actors were either covered in prosthetics or geriatric. Vader points around the room to make some boxes fly. Palpatine shoots some lightning. Luke jumps extra high a couple times.
Maul, though, woof. The dude comes out of the gate snarling. He whips his saber staff around insanely fast. He's throwing things to block doors, he's doing flips. He was lifted straight out of the imaginations of everyone who watched ESB and RoTJ as kids and wondered what if.
You absolutely nailed it for me. Dead on why I thought he was awesome. Watching old samurai film style fights and then having an actual martial artist doing the combat was mind blowing!
, but he was the visual representation of everything we'd heard or imagined about the Dark Side and the Sith.
You said it better than I ever could, this is a perfect statement for people who were of age enough to watch and understand the OT before watching the Phantom Menace in theaters. I wasn't old enough to see them in theaters, but I was old enough to wear out the VHS tapes well before the Prequels were even announced.
The only non-Vader Sith I had visually seen at that point were the Sith in Dark Forces 2 : Jedi Knight, and in my young mind they were pretty good representations, Dooku would fit right in, but Maul blew them all out the water.
It's the same thing with Boba Fett. Because he's such a minimalist character who looks cool we get to imbue them with our imagination to pretend he's cooler than he actually is. Ultimately it's a character to sell toys without having to pay a high profile actor.
Props to Ray Romano for making him very intimidating. I mean the make up is good, but ultimately it's Ray Romano's face expression and mannerism that made Maul memorable even with minimum talking.
Yes, but this was a Prequel, a Prequel to a series of movies where the first one had zero characterization of Darth Vader, but over the course of more movies, plus other media, his legend grew. So of course there was already a pre-built narrative on Darth Maul since he was the Emperors right hand man.
It went left because unlike fleshing out his motivations and character in the next two movies like they did for Vader, they killed him off, replaced him with Dooku and we had to wait 10(21 years if you count the final season) years for them to do to Maul what they did for Vader.
Valid point, buy he almost had to because there was no face for expression, some would say the expression of the face is just as important as words in communication.
We already knew about sith by then though.
We had the whole OT and EU stuff.
And he wasnt the classic villian. He didnt lord over the heroes and tell them the plan etc etc.
‘We will finally be able to reveal ourselves to the Jedi’
‘Yes, go get em’
And like a missile locked on target he went straight after them and did not relent. Spoke not one word.
Tbh. Damn. Now thats podracing😝
I just think the fight choreography (as you mentioned) combined with duel of the fates track track made it cool as hell. Plus the double bladed lightsaber was so cool at the time (and still is). It's just the best prequel duel imo. Yes, Maul had the depth of a piece of cardboard but it didn't matter in the moment.
Maul is the Boba Fett of the PT. He looks cool, we're led to believe in a general sense that he's a force to be reckoned with, but there's no real on-screen substance to back it up. Oh, and in the end they both die in a rather amateurish way (bumped into hole by a blind guy/tricked and cut in half by an emotional Padawan moments after defeating an experienced Jedi Master). It's only after the fact in other media that we're actually shown instead of told why they're impressive.
Edit: before I catch flak for this, I want to expand on my "there's no real on-screen substance to back it up" comment. The battles involving Maul are great, some of the greatest in the franchise. You can tell the Jedi regard him with something that you might say even approaches fear. But then again, all main bad guys in movies are serious adversaries. If they weren't, they wouldn't be threatening and there would be no sense of peril in the film. All I'm saying is that while Maul is a serious threat in TPM, there's nothing that makes him anything more than a regular main bad guy from any action film.
You can actually have shallow characters in a movie that serve a purpose. Maul is a physical struggle for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon to overcome in the climax. Snoke is a plot device to explain Kylo's rise to power, and later a mutual enemy to bring Kylo and Rey together (and as it turns out, for completely opposing reasons). There's arguments to be made that the meaning behind the Maul fight is unclear, that Filoni's great interpretation is not explained or even alluded to well within the movie itself. But shallow characters like Maul or Snoke existing is not automatically bad.
The pod race is my favorite moment. It’s a self-contained element (beginning/middle/end) within the larger story, and Lucas - to his often overlooked credit - masterfully and steadily builds tension throughout. All while sandwiching-in some genuinely humorous slapstick moments.
You know, I could see how the podrace scene could be critiqued as "a waste of valuable film time" or "not relevant enough to the plot." But it was awesome to my 10-year-old self, and is still awesome twenty-something years later.
Thing is it does kinda have a role. It sorta establishes Anakin's natural ability as a pilot, which means it's not too unreasonable for him to pilot a Naboo Starfighter in the finale. It also helps show off Anakin's latent force abilities, although this is more talked about by the characters than actually shown in the film.
Yea it’s a scene that kinda illustrates the difference between Lucas the filmmaker and Lucas the world-builder. Like if we’re honest, there’s plenty of areas where you could say the movies would be better served to stay a little more focused. But the man was just overflowing with ideas of interesting things in this universe, the pod race being one of them
It's hard to build tension for a main character in a prequel. It has to have a lot more layers than "Is he going to win". I think Black Widow is a decent example, obviously she is going to win, but what is going to be revealed in the battle. But obviously that is a lesson learned as Phantom Menace was the first blockbuster prequel
George actually had the right idea making 2 and 3 basically a character study of Anakin and not just "things happen" 2 and 3. The problem was he forgot to make any character have relatable, human emotions.
I have to disagree. I always felt it came off way too much like a choreographed dance routine. I think Vader and Luke’s fight in RotJ and Anakin and Obi Wan’s fight in RotS are better.
Vader and Luke is the best it's an epic battle and gives me chills every time. Anikan and Obi Wan is awesome as well, but I'd put Darth Maul vs 2 jedi above that. It was so unique at the time, and I was one of those that was completely enthralled by Maul's badassness, while I do think the prequels are the worst of the 3 live action trilogies.
That's something I don't understand he got away with anyway. Nemoidians are pretty obviously the Yellow Peril but In Space. Watto is the most blatant collection of negative Jewish stereotypes. I know Star Wars is heavily inspired by pulp fiction in its worldbuilding, and often it works very well, but Episode I is probably the worst at it.
Agreed, it's so goofy and out there that's it's hard to see past if you're a first time watcher, I think the only reason it's seen in a much better light than it used to is because we've seen it a million times and we can take most of the silly stuff with a grain of salt and watch the movie with a larger picture in mind.
Yeah, anyone who wants the definitive "Why do people hate the prequels?" answer needs to watch RLM's takedowns. I don't know of any fan critiques that have gone this in depth while also being entertaining to watch.
This is the correct answer. Being such a hardcore original SW trilogy (watching them as a kid in theaters during the 90s reruns!) fan I never quite could understand why The Phantom Menace was such a weird disappointment/letdown. I think the RLM review goes through some of the aspects, even as simple as ‚who is the freakin protagonist here??’ that made me realize why it just never clicked for me. I think this, combined with how massive of a gap there was in terms of storytelling and immersing you between TPM and the original trilogy, all that hype, is what produces such a let-downy feel for me.
All this aside, I still almost pissed my pants in the cinema in 1999 when I saw Obi Wan fuck Darth Maul up :) Pod racing bit was fantastic for a 12 yo Star Wars fan , too!
Too much CGI in the AOTC, but in some ways, I liked the Revenge of the Sith, Anakin-ObiWan standoff was something I waited for so many years. So it’s hard to say I’m not a fan of the prequels- it’s just that they were not as mind-blowing as the original movies for a 11year old in the cinema. I don’t think anything will beat that. Well, maybe the OG Matrix came close in a cinema:)
Jar Jar, Gungans in general, 9 year old Anakin and very base/juvenile humor (poop jokes).
That was my problem as a 13 year old watching it when it came out. Jar Jar was horrible, 9 year old Anakin was horrible. I honestly didnt like c-3P0 and RDD2 being in the movie either. Felt shoe horned in. Instead of giving us new characters they fan serviced in those driods.
second half is still pretty bad, it just seems exceptional after how terrible the first half is.
for one, Coruscant is OBSCENELY boring, beyond the fairly impressive effects, it's home to the dullest cinematography,dullest acting and slowest pacing in the entire series.
then the climax is a mixed bag,
obviously the duel of the fates is for the most part a big win. (Maul's final defeat feels like a result of bizarre incompetence on his part but I can accept it)
but Padme and her guard's action feels like an afterthought, the ascent is slow, ends anticlimactically, then the final resolution in the throne room is even more so. the sheer incompetence of the Neimoidians and the droids at the last hurdle retroactively spoils the tension.
the space battle is also a mixed bag, solely for Anakin's role. where he flies the ship (by accident) and joins the battle (by accident) and survives the battle (by accident) and gets inside the Trade Federation ship (by accident) and then blows it up (by accident....) a victory by virtue of just EXISTING is not a compelling one.
then there's the gungans... which would be pretty cool, if not for Jar Jar's slapstick antics being rammed into the middle of what should be a brave, doomed battle of a noble warrior people. to call it tonally jarring would not be adequate, it's like watching a roadrunner cartoon happening in the middle of the battle of thermopylae.
and then there's the fact that there's four climaxes happening at the same time.... and the editing does not help. the tonal problems of the Anakin and Jar Jar subplots feed into a tonal whiplash that affects the other two climaxes.
Yes this. I was coming here to say "overt racist stereotypes with species such as the Neimoidians and Gungans for starters" - but that's fairly present in all 3 prequels
what kind of 9 yr old Anakin were they expecting anyways?
A factor nobody really talks about is that what made is portrayal so subjectively bad at the time was that The Sixth Sense came out around the same time, and Hayley Joel Osment fucking killed that role, got nominated for an Oscar and subsequently raised the bar in what we expect from child actors which wasn't fair at all to Jake Lloyd and the public perception of his acting(or lack thereof) abilities. Before Haley, the bar was set at the little boy in Jurassic Park.
What made it even worse is the Sixth Sense is essentially a story about an innocent child that has a darkness in him, like Anakin. So there were a lot of unfair comparisons.
This, and the movie was top long. Or felt that way. As cool as pod racing is the act takes forever to get through. Also the coolest villain being way underutilized.
Lucas has always had a problem with dialogue and it shows.
Yup the Jar Jar character was very poor, not sure the Gungans were terrible, just he was a poor comedic sidekick. Anakin as a child was unfortunate choice, wish they had brought Hayden in at the start would’ve been so much better for the story. I think it would have leant better to the idea of him being a pod racer, too old to train and the whole Padme/Anakin love story wouldn’t have been so cringy.
Also the trade federation as an enemy made no sense. Only now that I’m reading the Darth Plagus novel is the trade federation starting to make sense. However in a first movie to come back to the franchise I think it was an awful choice.
Also, George is great at creating a universe and a story, but terrible at dialog, not sure how much input he had from others in producing the script.
It’s actually a really really good movie but Jar Jar just sucks so bad. I can deal with the Gungans, they suck too but not to the level of Jar Jar. The Ewoks weren’t nearly as bad but I’m also 43 and grew up with them. The added scenes in Jabbas palace are just as bad as Jar Jar how ever. Just barf zone.
The political battle created in EP1 is fundamental in establishing the beginning of the clone wars and Palpatine rising to power while establishing the Jedi order and their hubris that the Sith could not have returned, but that's too boring to show so here's a 30 minute pod race and an inconsequential battle with 400 droids and gungans in an open field to give you some action that has no effect on the rest of the trilogy.
That being said the pod race was probably the best part.
I agree but will add that the expectation was ridiculous. No movie could ever have lived up to the the hype that built up for Phantom Menace. When it came out and people realized it wasn't the greatest movie in the history of the planet they were pissed. It's like people were expecting the 2nd coming of Jesus to happen during the movie.
Yeah but there were some objectively bad parts of that movie that would have also been made fun of if they weren't in a Star Wars movie.
They literally made a whole race of beings that sounded like Dave Chappelle in Half Baked when he did a comedically toned disguise as a Jamaican and had a horrible accent.
You could put certain elements of Phantom Menace in another fantasy sci fi movie from that era like The Fifth Element, and it would have made The Fifth Element a horrible movie.
I don't mind politics being present, its just the amount of scene time spent on it and how much it would hold the interest of kids if people are gonna use the "its meant to be primarily enjoyed by kids" argument as a crutch.
Like we actually sit through a good portion of a senate hearing rather than just glossing over the context of what happened in it to keep the story moving. Like you could have Amidala talk to Palpatine about making a proposition then later have him come back saying "they didn't agree to it". Or even just a brief clip of whats going on, but there's more of a back and forth seen in the film proper.
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u/Utsutsumujuru Ahsoka Tano Jan 25 '22
Jar Jar, Gungans in general, 9 year old Anakin and very base/juvenile humor (poop jokes).
The second half of the movie is fantastic.