Most Star Wars fans I’ve heard said that “Phantom Menace” didn’t live up to expectations. Reasons for their disappointment:
[ul][li]Too many computer-generated characters[/li][li]Poor plot[/li][li]Jar-jar Binks[/ul][/li]
So *why[/i} has it had $100,000,000 in video sales in its first 2 days of release!?
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
I can honestly say that I did not contribute to that number. You have no idea how much I wanted Quigon to drop Jar Jar’s stupid ass when he ran into him…
EW lists a whole bunch of eater eggs that you really have to watch for and pause to apprechiate, maybe that’s it.
A little persistance goes a long way. Announcing:
“I go on guilt trips a couple of time a year. Mom books them for me.” A custom made Wally .sig!
I also have kept my contribution to the entire episode 1 thing to a minimum.
I saw the movie one time, and shared my disappointment and low opinion of its quality with anybody who would listen, and I will not be buying the video. If I ever need to see it again, I can take a 15 minute drive to NYC and buy a bootleg of it for $5. 
[note: we absolutely do not condone the piracy of intellectualy property, even if the property is owned by a bunch of greedy jerks who have no interest in producing a quality product, because they know that the public will STILL shower their hard-earned cash on it, regardless]
There are no dangerous weapons.
Only dangerous Men.
When I went to the theater to see TPM, I was hoping to have a similar experiance to the ones I had when I saw the original trilogy. I wanted to be awed by the special effects and I wanted to root for good to defeat evil. Well, I was awed by the effects (the battle droids, Corosaunt(sp?) and the like). However, when the movie finally ended I realized that I had put no ‘emotional’ investment in the characters. I didn’t care about them at all.
Where the original movie was just that, a movie that was made to appeal to as wide a market as possible, TPM was a 2 hour infomercial directed at young children.
Buffalo: The conspiracy widens…
I take it you’re relying on Lucasfilm’s press releases for that $100M figure. That would represent around 5 million units sold.
Thing is, Lucasfilm has exaggerated their sales numbers. Videoscan, a group that tracks videos actually sold by (not just shipped to) retailers (representing about 85% of the industry), reports that sales of The Phantom Menace for the period of April 4-10 totaled 1.3 million fullscreen and 300,000 widescreen videotapes, or 1.6 million tapes all together. Even if VideoScan represented only 50% of the total sales market, the numbers wouldn’t jell; the difference between 3.2 and 5 million is pretty huge.
More Lucas hype? Probably. Fact is, Phantom Menace isn’t renting or selling as well as The Sixth Sense, no matter what Lucas wants us to believe.
You make it sound as though Jar Jar wasn’t enough by himself to ruin it…
Exibit “A”
The nutty dive into the lake.
Exibit “B”
The numb tongue scene
Exibit “C”
“Yous’a tink’a people gonna’ die?”
Exibit “D”
The nutty “whipping the disembodied robot arm around and killing a platoon of robots” scene.
Exibit “E”
“Yous’a tink’a people gonna’ die?” (it’s so bad it deserves repeating…)
Almost forgot!
Exibit “F”
The nutty junk juggling scene.
Exibit “G”
“Weesa in a deep poohdoo”
I’m sure theres more I forgot…
My sister bought a copy of the tape. Please contact me for an address to send exorcism materials. She actually likes Jar Jar. Thinks he’s funny. shakes head in bewilderment
I bought it. I have watched it three times now.
Yes, it could have been better, namely having Jar-Jar killed, but it wasn't as bad as the Blair Witch, or almost any of the Star Trek movies.AWB, my reason for buying it, is my fifteen year old son loved that movie, and while it drives me nuts (* probably making Billy like it even BETTER! * )it made him happy to have it.
::::searching frantically::::::::
Where did I put those ear muffs for keeping bugs out of my ears again?!
“I never saw so many words compressed into so small an idea.” Abraham Lincoln
My roomate purchased the “Special Wide-Screen Edition”. He buys all things “Star Wars”. I think Lucas could put out a five minute film consisting only of one shot of feces lable it “Star Wars : Darth Vadar’s DooDoo” and he would buy it. I watched “Episode One” again yesterday . . . it still sucks.
“I am mortal, born to love and to suffer.” - Friedrich Holderlin
Here is my two-cents worth on Phantom Menace:
(a) I enjoyed the movie, but it lacked all the wonder/warmth/magical substance of the originals.
(b)I neither liked, nor disliked Jar Jar, but I certainly wouldn’t have missed him if he were killed, or never put in the story to begin with.
© The only interesting characters were Darth Maul and Queen Amidala. I found the queen quite stunning, and Darth Maul wonderfully sinister; too bad he was a woos compared to Darth Vader. He was too good of a villian to eliminate so soon.
(d)MY BIGGEST COMPLAINT = What in the @#! was Lucas thinking by trying explain away how "The Force" worked and what it was??? @#!%*^ Midiclorians??? The beauty of the force was NOT knowing what is was or how it worked!!! This is what truly ruined the film for me.
“You will never go broke underestimating the taste of the American Public.” P.T. Barnum (or was it menken)
There were several things I didn’t like about TPM. Personally, I found Jake Lloyd much more annoying than Jar Jar. And the podrace announcers were just sooooooo cartoony and lame. Many of the podracer characters were just dumb looking. The Midiclorian thing pissed me off, too. But when I think of the fact that they are just microscopic things that communicate with the force, not are the force, that’s a little better.
But there was so much I liked about the film, too. I love actually seeing the Jedi. And Quigon and Obi-Wan in action… that was just cool.
But the real pleasure for me was knowning what is to come, and the questinos that have to be answered in the next to episodes: Who are Owen and Beru Lars? How and when does Sidious become Emporor Palpatine? What’s the deal with the Clone Wars? How does the Rebellion get started? I am looking forward to seeing Anakin trained as a Jedi, Vader hunting down and killing the Jedi (I think Boba Fett will have a part in that), seeing C-3PO completed, Anakin being forced to kill Shmi (pure speculation on my part)… there is just so much to the story that I love. The back story to TPM is so huge, so vast, that I love it. The saga is the only true modern epic fantasy, and I get all I can. The next two films will be awesome, I’m sure.
Having just watched it for the first time on video, I can say I was utterly disappointed. Firends had told me that they didn’t like everyone dissing it, saying “It’s the first chapter, it’s all about character development!”
Then I watch it, and I hardly saw ANY character development. We learn a little about the young Anakin, but the only other two characters we learn much about are Quigon (dead now) and JarJar Idiot (should be dead now). I expected more on Obi-Wan (next movie maybe?)
And my biggest pet peeve is all the computer animation. I don’t know about anyone else, but most of time the animation looks fake. I prefer the models used in the first one to the computer images.
“In this life you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.” -Elwood P. Dowd in “Harvey”
I like Jar Jar.
I thought the effects were outstanding.
I thought that many of the visual flaws were easily forgivable, especially comparing to some of the fakeness in the original trilogy.
And I think you should wait until the whole trilogy is complete before you make a definitive judgement of Episode 1.
However, there are flaws in TPM, the dialogue is pretty cheesy, and the characters are not easy to like - they seemed a little wooden or cold.
But the Sith Lords rocked And frankly that’s enough for me.
Darth Maul?!? Mr. I-get-in-two-fights-and-lose-both-of-them? The man who is completely incompetent at doing anything more strenuous than standing around and looking cool?
I will admit that he did look cool, but he didn’t do a damn thing. “Fly to Tattooine and kill a couple of Jedi, kid.” “Yessir, boss.” Later: “Boss, they scared me away!” “Oh, that’s all right, we can kill them later.”
He gets lucky and does manage to kill one of them (the old, slow one), and suddenly he’s the baddest thing on two legs? Queen Amidala could have taken him down. Hell, even Jar Jar would have had a decent shot.
The whole “Darth Maul” mystique is, to my mind, indicitave of two things: a) that he was designed and marketed to be “the cool villain” (a la Boba Fett) and b) the hardcore fans were so desperate to find something they could like, they latched onto him like a chimp onto wire mother.
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since I was three (23 yrs). I’ve always loved the whole Star Wars universe and was always looking for more and more info on StarWars. I think that the original trilogy stunned us all because of the special effects, the story, the characters. That was all something that everyone could enjoy. The effects held up to the contemporary standards for almost 20 yrs! It wasn’t until CGI that anything actually matched the originals.
Special Editions: These were great, added more to StarWars, gave a new look to things (although Greedo should never have shot!) and gave a peek into what we have now.
TPM was an ok movie. None of us were impressed by the special effects. Why? nothing new has been done since the introduction of CGI. The characters didn’t have that warmth to them, and to me, at least, we jumped all over the galaxy. In ST:ANH at least we stayed in one location for some time.
I don’t care what happens to Jar Jar, but I wish that someone more along the lines of Chewie was there. Who doesn’t want to give that overgrown walking carpet a big hug??
All I can say is this: There still is a great deal of Jedi wiping-out to come. Samuel L. Jackson better be doing more than holding committee meetings or I’ll be the first one at the gates of The Ranch with a pitchfork and a torch.