It is totally dumb. His pod doesn’t even look as awesome or powerful as Sebulba’s.
Yes, and if you watch the making of, there was very clearly a more talented boy who kind of looked like Mark Hamill that they set aside. I believe the casting director very much tried to push for the boy who ended up being runner up, but Lucas insisted Jake Lloyd was the one. I have no idea why.
It did look pretty good in the theater to my 1999 eyes, but it doesn’t look as good as I think it could have. I feel like it needed one more layer of texturing to make it finished.
I remember when tpm came out a lot of people said larry kasdan or Irwin allen should of directed and no one changed their mind on the other two … but if I remember correctly didn’t Anakin use the force once or twice in the pod race with out meaning or knowing how to ?
The rumor is that Lucas really thought they were going to be able to get Leonardo DiCaprio to play Anakin in Episodes II and III, and so he pushed for Lloyd because of how similar they looked.
I was skeptical; I figured you know Jake Lloyd was kind of a disappointment, and that that was maybe making you see a Could-Have-Been that wasn’t really there.
I was wrong; you’re right, the kid who looks more like Mark Hamill delivers his lines with just enough more serious-mindedness than Lloyd to make it clear – and then one of his interactions with li’l Natalie Portman was the convincer.
The trade dispute shit was just static to cover the fact that TPM doesn’t even have the bare skeleton of a swashbuckling adventure. The most onerous being no character has any development. Everyone knows anakin will become vader going in, but it’s not even foreshadowed here. His sweetness isn’t a façade. He never lies, never losses his temper. He doesn’t manipulate, or used his latent abilities unscrupulously. He doesn’t have an inflated ego, or rub his emancipation in the noses of his peers.
X has already been solved but Lucas eschewed the algebra. Anakin’s descent only makes sense because we expect it to happen. But it never happens in a believable manner.
To be fair, you don’t want Anakin to be unlikable from the outset. Showing Anakin being a snotnosed brat would make him an unlikable character right out the gate.
The lightsaber fight was terrific, and I also really enjoyed the pod race. And even though Jar Jar was terrible, I thought the Gungan underwater city was pretty cool. And even though they had some terrible lines, Liam Neeson and Ewan MacGregor did the best they could with the script. The brief scenes with Chancellor Valorum (underused) and Palpatine were also good, from my memory.
Pretty much everything else was very bad (i.e. bad B-movie writing paired with good special effects).
The universe of the original trilogy felt lived-in; the blue milk came out of a plastic pitcher, there was dust on the landspeeder, the characters in the holographic chess set flickered a bit. Something about the prequels just seemed too perfect, like an architect’s or a fashion designer’s sketches don’t look like the real things. Things get dented and scratched. People take shortcuts and wear paths across the grass. Stormtroopers have to scratch themselves every now and then. The prequels weren’t lived in, they were imagined.
The original trilogy were swashbucklers, but the sequels were more like the epics in the '50s and '60s. Everything had to be bigger and grander than the biggest, grandest things ever. Look at this picture from Cleopatra and tell me George Lucas didn’t want to put that in the prequels.
And while we’re on the subject, how many times during the three prequel movies was a character told to stay put, and then just charged off and did whatever the fuck they wanted? “Anakin, wait in this hangar bay and don’t go anywhere.” “Amidala, wait in the ship and don’t go into the robot assembly area.” “Anakin, wait here while I confront the Emperor and then I’ll trust you again.” Seriously, has anyone counted?
I’m not suggesting he should’ve been all the above, if that’s what you’re driving at. My point is there needed to be something perceptively “off” about Anakin from the outset, otherwise the story is extraneous. His reckless abandon in the second movie is not nothing, so the story could only logically start from there, but it didn’t. And even then, the arc left a lot to be desired.
At that: what do you think of the oft-mentioned idea that Neeson maybe should’ve been the background character who stays on the ship meditating or whatever, while McGregor would’ve been the hotshot apprentice who tries a Jedi mind trick on Watto and then rigs that dice game to win himself a slave?
After all, it’s Obi-Wan that we’re going to care about in the next two movies, right? We’re going to watch him, in over his head, struggling to mentor Anakin; and we’re going to know, throughout, that he’s the from-a-certain-point-of-view conman who breaks out the Jedi mind trick as Plan A – and who privately laments that he took it upon himself to train Anakin after sending the youth’s potential.
But if he’s the guy back on the ship while Qui-Gon is out there doing that, the whole through-line doesn’t really happen; he trains Anakin because that was Qui-Gon’s call, and he acts kinda like Qui-Gon did, and – that’s less of a story, isn’t it?
Maybe, though I don’t think that was anywhere near the top 10 of TPM’s problems. Fix Jar Jar, fix the dialogue, fix Anakin (I don’t blame poor Jake), fix the juvenile silliness, and then maybe we’ve got a decent SW movie, and then we can work on making it a great one.
In the future when we can use our omnipotent AIs to totally recreate movies…
You know that’s one thing jk rowling got right in the harry potter series is she made tom riddle a snot (tho not too big of a one )in his orgins that you know he was going to be evil just everyone around him thought they could make him better
Not to kick a move when it’s down but I didn’t like the pod racing scene even from when I first saw it. It goes on way too long. Was never really into Darth Maul either. He looks cool but hardly does anything in the movie.
I actually would have liked more Politics. I know everyone hates that about the prequels but the underlying story of a Democracy devolving into dictatorship is fascinating if done well. This wasn’t. What was worse is the plot makes absolutely no sense given that Sidious and Palpatine are the same person. Sidous does everything he can to make the queen sign the treaty but if she actually signed it he wouldn’t have gotten the sympathy vote that swept him into office which was his real goal all along. So basically he had to make all these plans but secretly want them all to fail and have his apprentice die so he could then “win”. Makes no sense.
It’s a good comparison. Tom Riddle was charming and so many people believed that they could help him. I think they deluded themselves into thinking he couldn’t be *that *evil.
It’s beautifully choreographed but devoid of any sort of tension or emotional investment. Darth Maul isn’t a character at all, Qui-Gon only barely so. It’s unclear, in fact, why they are fighting in that place, or over what; why is Maul on Naboo at all?
The character flaws that lead to Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader are actually shown in The Phantom Menace. First of all, Anakin has supreme confidence in himself, and in the rightness of what he wants. Second of all, he fears loss of those he loves. In TPM, that’s loss of his mother. Both of those traits are mentioned in the movie. Sadly, the actor in question fails to demonstrate either emotion well, and he is not helped by the poor dialogue he is given with which to do so. But one of the most memorable scenes is the one where he is being interviewed by the Jedi Council, and Yoda delivers the “Fear is the path to the darkside” lecture. That’s initiated by Anakin’s fear of losing his mother.
