I tried one more time to watch Star Wars Episode I on Fox last night. What was Lucas doing for all those years after Return of the Jedi – it certaintly wasn’t writing a decent script? Is it just me or does Episode I border on criminal? It is soooo bad! When I think of how good the movie could have been I just tear up inside.
I was just last evening holding forth on problems with Phantom Menace (mostly springing from the fact that you can’t generate life-or-death-situation drama when dealing with characters your audience knows live another 30 years) and ways the story could have been better. Here’s what I came up with (ignoring the three most obvious things they could have done to make it a better movie*):
[li] Qui-Gon Jinn should have been the main character. I know Neeson got top billing and everything, but this was much too much an ensemble piece. Not knowing his ultimate end, we could have actually gotten some drama worked up over Qui-Gon and maybe even cared when he died if he’d been more clearly the protagonist of the story.[/li]
[li] Keep Anakin off-camera until about 40 minutes before the film ends. He really shouldn’t have anything to do with the story yet. Good way to handle this: bring in Darth Maul earlier for a first show-down with Qui-Gon. Both wind up injured, and Shmi Skywalker winds up nursing Qui-Gon for a time. Allows for some love-interest type stuff, along with some exposition about Anakin without having to see him.[/li]
[li] I’ve got to tell you, from the moment I figured out what was going on with Padme, I liked it. I’d have liked it better if Anakin had actually been falling for the handmaiden, though, thinking she was the queen. It would say more about him to fall for a queen and still want to love her as a handmaiden than to fall for a handmaiden and still want to love her as a queen. I mean … duh.[/li]
But I wound up watching it anyway. 
- Those being, of course, no midichlorians, no Jar-Jar, and no “Directed by George Lucas.”
When I first saw it in the theater, I thought it was a pretty good movie. After watching it again on FOX last night, I am disappointed. The first two movies can survive repeated watchings on TV, delivering the goods every time. A fun story, interesting characters, and good character interaction make the movies great, not the effects.
I cannot say the same for Phantom Menace, I find the characters flat, no interpersonal tension at all, the situations absurd, etc. In Star Wars, the characters spent tons of time just talking with each other, being people.
I’ll watch the Clones and just hope it redeems the series.
My wife (who hates all things sci-fi - somehow we get along) started watching this last night (thinking I would want to see it) as I put our daughter to bed.
As I walked bsck into the den, her first words were “Who the hell is that thing with the annoying voice? I hate him.”
Ahhh, it’s nice to know Jar-Jar hatred can cross taste boundaries.
I too watched again last night. Is Natalie Portman that poor of an actress or is Queen Amadalla supposed to talk like a stilted cyborg? She sounds like she’s reading queue cards while suffering from stage fright.
From IMDb:
It may not be cool to go after child actors, but that kid playing Anakin was the worst kid actor ever seen.
And I could have done without the entire pod-race scene, George Lucas obviously forgot how to maintain any pretense of subtlety while ripping off old movies. Also, when Anakin wins, his friends doing the cabbage-patch dance made me CRINGE.
But I never found Jar-Jar’s voice and mannerisms too annoying. It was that the role he was forced to play–that of the klutzy comic relief–was handled with zero nuance.
And my final rant . . .
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOMEONE STOP GEORGE LUCAS AFTER HE FINISHES WITH THE STORY PHASE OF THE SCREENPLAY!!! MAKE HIM GO PLAY WITH THE MODELS IN THE SPECIAL EFFECTS DEPARTMENT WHILE SOMEONE WITH TALENT ACTUALLY WRITES THE DAMN MOVIE!!!
The standards will definitely be higher for the next movie. “Attack of the Clones”? Doesn’t look good . . .
Not only is it bad, it’s offensive. The racial stereotyping in it is blatant. Someone needed to tell Lucas he was not making a WWII propaganda film. They’re all in there; the greedy hook-nosed middle eastern, the dim-witted comical negro, the trecherous scheming orientals and the gosh-darn-it straight-up All-Americans.
Welcome to the movies, 1943 style.
That may explain it. Perhaps it’s just the way Lucas intended the Queen to be, but I felt she was cold and stiff. Since I think young Anakin was poorly acted, I’m not sure if the same is true for Amidala.
Direction was definitely the key flaw here. Any director that can make Neeson that wooden ought to hang up his spurs.
My sons and I are all big SW fans, and we waited in great anticipation for TPM’s release (coincidentally the same day as my oldest’s birthday), and we had a lot of fun seeing it, despite of all the problems so manifestly present, and so well articulated above.
But you know the movie is seriously flawed when an eight year old can walk out of the theater saying “Man that last fight was so stupid! Why didn’t Darth Maul just hold his light saber straight out in front of himself when Obi-Wan jumped out of the pit? It would have cut him in half!”
Killing Darth Maul that way was a criminal waste of a bad guy. I knew right away they were going to do some weak-ass clone thing, but you can’t bring back the incredible Maul mystique built up prior to the film’s release after zapping him like that. Really pathetic.
BTW, Natalie Portman is a great actress, as you can see in the movie The Professional with Jean Reno and Gary Oldman. I also understand that Jake Lloyd did a great episode of ER, so he is actually a good actor too. George really ought to let Irvin Kirshner, who directed The Empire Strikes Back, take the reins again.
Actually, now that I think of it, my son was just tuening seven at the time, which makes his observation all the more damning.
Actually, now that I think of it, my son was just turning seven at the time, which makes his observation all the more damning.
I was annoyed the whole time I was watching it last night. I would tune out when it became too much to bear and then come back for more. It just got worse and worse.
Liam Neeson is terrible with the CGI characters! He never looked any of them in the eyes. He always seemed to be looking in their general vicinity but never actually at them.
Rolling in all the money he’s making from Star Wars toys and bedsheets and videos and other schlock. What, you were expecting something else? 
I know everyone hates Jar Jar – but here is something that really gets me – why is Jar Jar in, like, every scene and Darth Maul is in (barely) 3 minutes? What is the point of even teasing us with Darth Maul if he wasn’t going to use him? I would have loved learning more about him.
It seems like all Lucas cared about was loading up the movie with CGI graphics. Terrible
Every time they show that Star Wars marathon on USA (about every other Sunday) I get sucked in. I can’t stop watching. I have to see them because I just love Star Wars.
Last night I saw TPM on Fox. Well…rather, I saw 5 minutes of it. I sat there, watching it, thinking I’d get sucked in. Instead, I turned it off. “I really have better things I could be doing than watching this,” I said. A shame, I suppose.
Lucas has said that every single scene except one has some sort of digital effect added in. Every single scene but one. As if it’s a game to find it. It’s not a game. It speaks volumes towards what Lucas’s ultimate goal in this film was. To dazzle us. To wow us with the pretty colors and enchant us with the beauty of the world he has created. Hopefully, if we do that, no one will notice just how badly written it was.
I’ve been trying to look up the exact quote, but a movie reviewer for Dinosaur said something that is extremely applicable here.
Something to the effect of “10 years from now, the technology that we use in movies today will be outdated. Every movie will be even more realistic than we have now. People will look at the films of today and see past the special effects to the core of the movie…and realize that nothing is there.”
Well I guess I have to pony up and defend TPM.
Its not great. Nobody says it is.
To the people who complain about Darth Maul getting killed- Are you retarded? Darth Maul had to die. Why else would Sidious/Palpatine need Vader if Maul was still around? THERE’D BE NO EPISODE 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
And no Maul is not coming back as a clone.
<turning up the sarcasm> Oh no, a frog like CGI alien who talks in a sing-song dialect and provides comic relief. THAT MUST BE RACIST! He obviously must be representitive of a Negroid. Since all Negroids act and talk in this way.
And Watto, whose nose is more of a penis than a hook, has a middle eastern accent. So? The Neimodians are Chinamen. Obi-Wans limey. Jabba’s wop. Chewbacca’s Bear, Yoda uses a verb first form of English. Any racism or prejudice you find in it is coming from your own black heart.
One thing you have to say for it, the movie looks good.
Everybody who hated episode one will hate episode two. Basically everybody wanted to hate episode one, and they want to hate episode two. It wasn’t the Star Wars of memory so it had to be bad. If you want to dislike Phantom Menace go ahead, but how any body can say that and claim what a great movie Star Wars was is beyond me. Lucas wrote Star Wars scene to scene from Campbell’s * The Hero’s Journey* with a standard ‘deal a cripling blow to the powerful badguys against all odds’ stolen from about a thousand war movie thrown in. It has the most basic one dimensional charcters imaginable, and absolutely no imagination in anything. Phantom Menace has magnitudes better choreography. Alec Guiness said one of his greatest regrets was that people will always remember him from Obi-Wan, which was one of the most Corny-One-Dimensional archetypes ever put on film. Mark Hammil and Carry Fisher arn’t going to be held up as examples of subtle emoting either. In Phantom menace at least the plot was somewhat cool in a Machiavelian sort of way. Palpatine manipulated a bunch a greedy fools into attacking his own people and ending up getting begged to be the new chancelor. By winning, the clueless good guys not only accomplished nothing but proudly put the bad guy right where he wanted to be all along. It may not be the most complex plot ever but at least it had more than one boring layer.
I watched last night as well. I remember when I saw this in the cinema I was disappointed, but on second viewing I agree. It’s a load of crap. Anakin cannot act. Every chance that Lucas gets to throw in a cliche is used - the Jawas appear for one second and shout “houtini!” or whatever, C3PO says “oh dear” more than once, the tuscan raiders do the same screaming thing they did in Star Wars. The pod racing scene is OK, but ruined by the two headed John Madden. What the hell is that! Bad bad bad.
I think the premise was fine, except for some reason Lucas, or whomever, decided to go for the kid market. So you have 1) Improbable genius kid who is capable of anything under the sun.
2) “Cute” and “funny” bumbling sidekick.
3) Kid doing the impossible and saving the day where competent adults could not.
This is the formula for 2/3 of the disney movies out there. It bothers me to see such blatant marketing and going for the bucks. Especially for a series which is a guaranteed moneymaker without resorting to cheap screenwriting tricks.
Think of this though…
How is it possible to disney-fy a movie where the cute kid’s character fights his former teacher/best friend and ends up being hideously mauled while turning to become the great force of evil,
Looking forward to the 3rd installment for this very reason.