Gosh, the Phantom Menace really WAS bad. SPOILERS!!!

Cafe Society
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(Spoilers, I suppose, although I may be the last person in existence who had never seen this movie.)
As part of the relentless hype for the next Star Wars movie, Fox showed the Phantom Menace last night. Somehow I had never gotten around to seeing it – back when it was in the theatres, I was at first put off by the hype and then disheartened by the word-of-mouth. In fact, it got panned so soundly that I never even bothered to rent it, even though I enjoyed Star Wars when it first came out and I adore cheesy Sci-Fi. So last night was the first time I’d seen this lead balloon of a movie. And gosh, yes, it was just mindbogglingly bad. Great effects, nice set design, and a plot that was at once so contrived, so banal, so predictable, so manipulatively cute ,so determined to pull all the disparate threads together that they might have just drawn the special effects with crayon for all the good they did.

I particularly hated how you could see the clunky plot points falling into place. Yes, there’s only one vendor on the whole of Tatooine who has the hyperdrive you need and he won’t take your money and he’s immune to Jedi mind tricks and did we mention he’s the only one who has the hyperdrive, and by the way, there’s a big race tomorrow and a precocious kid with an untested pod racer and so on…

Or Anakin’s * stupid * narrative while he’s piloting his space ship(!), “Oh, I can’t find the trigger.”, “Oh, I guess this starts the engine.”, “Oh, look, here’s the trigger.”, “Oh, I guess it’s on autopilot and is set to deliver me to the middle of a space battle so I can blunder my way into a hanger of a spaceship that is certainly not UL approved because destroying one reactor somehow causes the whole gigantic thing to self-destruct, thus causing all the evil mechanoids to freeze because clearly the enemy fully subscribes to the “Lord of the Rings, let’s put all our eggs in one basket to make it easy for the good guys” syndrome.”

Or the conveniently placed timed force-fields during the battle with Darth Maul – they reminded me of nothing so much as the weird piston engine in Galaxy Quest – it’s only purpose was to make for an exciting plot point. Speaking of which-- the levitating light saber? Look people, as Larry Niven pointed out, if you have telekinetic abilities, you don’t dick around with laser swords – you reach into the other person’s chest and squeeze. Or stir their cerebrum like a container of yogurt.

Let’s not even discuss stupidities like the princesses assault team having “ascender” modes on their laser pistols so they can grapple their way up the castle wall. The idea of sacrificing an army of stupid primitives as a distraction for an invasion of the capital is just so stupid and hackneyed and contrived – I don’t understand why the Gungan’s didn’t flay and eat the princess when she suggested it.

OK, I don’t know why I’m beating a horse that has been lying dead for several years now. All I can say is “Wow. They weren’t kidding.”

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I can’t think about one good thing to say about that damn movie. And, from what I can tell, the “love” scenes in the new one are going to be even more cringe-worthy. I would avoid seeing it. Unfortunately, it’s mandatory.

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I also feel that it was incredibly bad. I was amazed. I thought that the grumblings back when it first came out were just the purists. It was that bad. It was so clearly aimed at children. The Last Starfighter (granted, a tolerably good movie, but not in the league with Star Wars) was markedly better.

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Wait a second Finagle
All that and you didn’t mention Jar Jar Binks once?!?!?

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I missed it at the theatre (Lucas didn’t need my money, even fanboys I knew who hated it went to see it several times to support it) but I caught it on video. Everytime it caught my interest while watching, and I started to say, “it’s not that bad,” something would happen to make me think differently. Another Jar Jar scene, Anakin Skywalker - Idiot Savant Child Pilot, mitochlorians (sp?) WTF, Liam Neeson’s beard, gratuitous Sam Jackson, etc.

I so wanted it to be good, I am a recovering fanboy myself. I even taped that news segment/commercial on “60 Minutes” to show to the other fanboys, since none of them even knew it was on.

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I found this on another message board. Sorry, I forgot who, as I saved it a while back since it so perfectly reflects my thoughts of TPM:

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I thought he looked like a Mexican wrestler.

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Although I did think that Lucas could have done better with Judges, he really came through on Second Kings, or Kings the Return, as we call it around here.

OT as in Original Trilogy. Not OT as in Old Testament. It all makes so much more sense now… His old testament was perfect. Don’t change a word!

Tenebras

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Thank God they didn’t let Ray Park, who played Darth Maul, speak. Park was Toad in “X-Men,” and while his voice – British, kind of street-urchinish – was PERFECT for that role, it just wouldn’t have worked with Maul.

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HEYYY!! I wanted to be Darth Vadar! Or the Emperor. heheehehehe

:smiley:

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Well, Maul did speak. He has about seven words of dialogue. And they’re all evil!!!

I get annoyed when it becomes obvious the characters don’t have the slightest clue what they’re doing. Everything in TPM hinges on goofy coincidences and contrivances. And the big bad guy, Palpatine, gets what he wants (the Chancelorship) way too early in the movie. Once he had that, why would he give a damn about what the Trade Federation guys did if, as implied, the whole thing was a manipulation to get Amidala to call for a vote of no confidence? And why would he bother to send out his apprentice? What exactly was Darth Maul supposed to be doing on Naboo? Killing two Jedi? Why bother? Did they know too much, or something?

What the hell was going on in this movie?!?!

If what Palpatine really wanted was the Chancelorship, why does he try to prevent Amidala from getting to the Senate by sending out Darth Maul to find her? If anything, Maul should be helping the Jedis get away from Tatooine. There were plenty of ways to make that interesting, rather than throw it away with some dopey inconclusive and entirely premature lightsaber fight between him and Qui-Jon.

For example, it would have been nice to see Maul helping Anakin win the pod race by slaughtering the Tuskan snipers, or using the Force to crash the opponents. Evil and functional.

In the end, though, Palpatine seems pleasantly surprised that it all worked out. Of course, it would have worked out a lot sooner if he had just put on his hood and secretly ordered the Trade Federation to just end the occupation. That way he looks like a hero in his first weeks as Chancelor.

Oh, well… chapter one and all that.

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Hell, with the exception of any scene that had thad damn kid in it, I thought it was a really good movie. I didn’t even mind Jar Jar that much. IMO, the hatred for him was largely just a thing the media grabbed because they wanted to talk about the biggest movie of the summer, and from then on it just kept getting repeated.

That kid contributed more to the movie’s failure than anything else. I mean, sure young Anakin DID have to be in the flick, but pod racing? Hoppin in a fighter and destroying a ship through pure chance? The force is strong in him, but it can’t account for that.

Really, you can’t blame the movie. Blame Lucas and his blatantly marketing-oriented approach to the whole film. The real problem was that apparently no one expected him to be all about the money.

But still, there’s more good parts than bad, if you’re willing to suspend belief AT LEAST as much as you had to for the original trilogy! Much of your gripes can be explained, but this post is long eonough already.

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I hadn’t seen the whole movie since I saw it in a theater in ‘99. I’d forgotten:
The aliens that appear to have Asian accents. WTF?
The midiclorians. Apparently, the Force is like cholesterol.
Anakin actually says “Yippie!” Without the sarcasm that would have made it palatable.
That Lucas apparently raided old Full House scripts for Jar Jar Binks’ dialogue. (“How rude!”) I had also mercifully forgotten the depth of Jar Jar’s obnoxiousness.

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Viceroy: You will sign the treaty or we will sic Godzilla on you!

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I don’t know, for some reason, I liked Episode one. Yes it’s predictable, but so was the original. The special effects and created worlds are nothing short of incredible. Yes, Jar Jar was a crime against nature, but I’m willing to overlook that. Ewen McGregor, Liam Neeson, and Natalie Portman were all very good. Creating an Obi Wan that was believable after Alec Guinness was an enormous task, But Ewen was up to it. I think that in the end, Phantom Menace was a victim of its’ own hype. There was no possible way that this movie could have lived up to what people were expecting. I think that once the three prequels are done, we will see the true measure of this film. People went to see this and compared it to the entire first trilogy, which isn’t really fair. The only one of the first three which can really stand on its’ own as a great film is Empire, and I think that when TPM is looked back upon after the release of the next two, the popular opinion will be different.

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TWICE, no less!

Actually, the word “Yippie” appears in that movie - if I recall correctly - at least FOUR times. FOUR "YIPPIE"S! That’s how bad it is!

I’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong with TPM. It just occurred to me. TPM should have been the first twenty minutes of AOTC. We should have had twenty minutes to show that Palpatine was wresting control of the Senate through a plot to invade Naboo… and then moved on to the whole Clone Wars bit. That left two episodes to dedicate to the war itself, Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, Palpatine’s bid to become Emperor, and all sorts of other knick-knacks that were running around.

Instead, Lucas wasted an entire episode by taking the first twenty minutes of what should have been the first film, stretching it out WA-A-A-A-A-AY too much, and making it its own movie.

How to cut down TPM to twenty minutes? Simple… remove Jar-Jar, the Gungans, the whole “trip through the planet core” sequence (waste of space), the trip to Tatooine (make Anakin a resident of Naboo if necessary), the pod race, a good chunk of the unnecessary business on Coruscant, and don’t have the main characters return to Naboo for the Final Battle (instead, have a Republic task force show up at Naboo for a REAL space battle). Further, eliminate Qui-Gon, or at least make him and Obi-Wan equals. Additionally, Anakin should be a teenager when the Jedi find him.

This allows us to skip what is, essentially, unnecessary filler. Filler should only be used in Star Trek, which relies on it. It also allows us to get the main gist of the whole movie - Palpatine wrests control of the Senate - without being distracted by said filler. It cuts down on the ridiculous coincidences and shows that the galaxy doesn’t revolve around the main characters. Further, SO MANY of the events in TPM would have been FAR more plausible if Anakin were only five or six years older.

And cut out the whole “I’m a slave!” shtick. There are ways to make a sympathetic character without pulling the largest, most obvious heartstrings. C’mon, George, if you were going to do that, you also should’ve had Anakin selling matches on a street corner.

Anyway, after the battle at Naboo - a small, meaningless skirmish, in the grand schem of things - the galaxy moves on to the unbalancing of the Clone Wars, which practically tears the galaxy to pieces.

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What really bothered me about TPM was that the characters seemed so bland, at least in comparison to the OT. The characters are all nice in the worst possible way, boring. There was zero chemistry.

In ANH, Luke was a whiny brat “but I wanted to go get some power converters, waaaaa!” Han Solo was a criminal just looking to make a buck, and he shot Greedo first, dammit! Leia was tough, argumentative, and authoritarian. She had been imprisoned and tortured, but when Luke shows up in disguise her first words are “Aren’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper?”

By the end of the movie, Luke took charge and did things HIS way. Han came back to save his friend from Vader. Leia changed her tone and seemed to really care about the safety of Luke and Han. They formed an obvious bond during the movie, and made us care whether or not they lived or died. These are characters you can fall in love with. Which characters in TPM struck ANYBODY that way?

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What about the fact that when they get to Curosant (sic?), Amidala has her “replicant” self carrying on conversations with all the other chancelors and senators and such as soon as they land. What kind of professional is that? “Hey, let my fake duplicate carry on a conversation with these important deligates so I can FLIRT WITH AN EIGHT YEAR OLD BOY!!!” Whuh?

The Gungan ship? In a sea full of gigantic sea monsters that eat one another, why would any civilization build underwater ships that look like fish?

And I counted four BLATANT blue screens. One involving people coming out of a spaceship. When you have two people walking out of a two dimensional ship, you need to put your focus somewhere other than making sure that even while standing still, Jar Jar is in CONSTANT MOVEMENT!! Who girates that much when standing there looking at the wall?

And Natalie Portman, I love her, she’s really a great actress, but I pray to GOD she gets rid of that HORRIFIC accent in the next films. What the fuck was that?

And it’s been said, but the medichlorians was an awful, awful piss poor scientific explaination of something that was supposed to be mystical and great. It’s like going back through old Greek myths and explaining that Hurcules really had incredible strength because his family lived next to a uranium deposite and his genes mutated in the womb to make his muscles more dense, thus making him super human strong. Oi.

And Darth Maul’s show up, get killed routine? Hate to spoil it, but the same thing happens in Episode 2. Already, there are two characters that have built up a bit of a fan base, they’re both evil, they’re both cool, and they both die before the end of the movie. Can’t wait to see who “Big Bad Disposable Villain” is going to be in Episode 3. Just don’t get attatched to anyone cool.

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The first time I saw Episode One, I was just too damn excited about finally seeing a new episode of Star Wars to really care or process what I was seeing. I’ve only seen it a couple of times since then, most recently a week or so ago, and I’ve come to feel quite blah about it, for all the reasons listed by others here.

It seems to me that if you took any of the poor to average-quality fan fiction written in the last couple of decades about the early life of Anakin, and turned it into a movie with huge production values, you’d get something very similar in quality to The Phantom Menace.

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You know what REALLY pisses me off about midiclorians? The whole thing is a lame-ass way to make something mystical, that didn’t need to be explained, and make it seem more scientifically plausible. You know what other sequel did the same thing? You got it!

Phantom Menace could have been SO much better. That’s the tragedy.