The Phantom Menace: What The Hell is Wrong With It?

Having gotten the DVD recently -- yeah, it is pretty good. There's some fun subtle detail in the acting that gets overlooked because everyone's beating up on Jar Jar. Which perhaps was inevitable. ;-)

the complete lack of character development...the points-on-a-line plot...the paper-thin justifications for plot points/development...the wooden acting...the crassness of truncation (knowing that it is merely one part of a trilogy)...the wink-wink knowingness of it alll...JAR-FUCKING-JAR...

this is not to say that the original trilogy didn't suffer from these factors either...(pauline kael rightly ripped it a new a-hole in a very prescient review where she saw it as the birth of a new roller- coaster-cinema...something which has certainly borne itself out to be true)...but this would be a shit-pile with or without the star wars brand name attached to it (worse with, only because it never would have seen the light of day otherwise)...

none of this will stop me from seeing episode 2, mind.

why are you in arizona, ally?

1. Jake Lloyd's acting. I know he's a kid, but even for a kid actor I thought it was pretty poor. 2. The Yippees. It's just a crap word. 3. Midicholrians. I don't care for the fact that the force is now more a medical condition that some mystical force. 5. Jar Jar, of course. He really didn't bother me the first time I saw it, but if you see it more than once it grates on your nerves.

Not that the trailers for Episode 2 didn't intrigue me. (Though Hayden's bitching about Obi Wan makes me think of Mark's Episode IV whining about Tattoonine, or whatever that stupid planet is called. George Lucas is a DOLT.)

He doesn't strike me as an improvement, I fail to see what's so special about him. As it is, a documentary bit on the DVD showed the other couple of actors up against Lloyd in the final screen test, and Lloyd made them both look terrible. That says something right there!

Apparently no one has invented guard rails in the Star Wars universe.

(Say what you will about cross generational romances, and I certainly don't have a problem with them, but if you knew them when they were eight, being precocious and saying yippee then frankly you a sicko). The rest of the film is kinda join the dot fun, but too much goes on at the end and the construction is Plot-Set Piece-Plot-Set Piece....

my Jar Jar Binks Sticky Tongue Toy is broken; now the extensible tongue lies limp in two pieces, one stuck to the wall, one still attached to Jar Jar.

Ally, did Liam have a bunch of porn movie charges on his bill?

All the dialogue in *every* Star Wars movie is superfluous. You're supposed to pay attention to the music and sounds. ;-)

But yeah, what the fuck, why do Jedis have so many pits in their ships? There's always a pit that they're dying in or getting destroyed by, c.f. that big pit into the ENTIRE CENTER OF THE DEATH STAR'S MAINFRAME (great design, dickheads) that they had to shoot into in E IV, the Cloud City endless tunnel that Luke falls into in Ep V, the big pit in the Death Star (AGAIN!!) that the Emperor gets tossed into in Ep VI (plus the pit Jabba wants to throw them all in), now this. Don't they learn their lessons about big unguarded pits?

I'm seeing this long-delayed thing tonight:

Plot:
"Star Wars" fans travel to Skywalker Ranch to steal an early copy of "Episode I: The Phantom Menace".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489049/

guys the lightsaber fights were cool

Billy Dee Williams ... Judge Reinhold

O_O

I assume that's a jokey "judge" name. O boy, can't wait (plus Shatner & Rogen cameos).

(& Carrie Fisher, Kevin Smith)

apparently all the funny people in this movie play guards

How much are you being paid to see this? xp

sounds almost worse than the Phantom Menace

xp: not even close to enough

really these movies are all kinda awful but this is the worst one

Captain Panaka and Tennille

Amidala $ign

Gungan Sheik’s single “Hold Me (Like You Did On Naboo)” was a big hit

Dua Lipa

Jar Jars of Clay

Gungan Roses

Reel Bigger Fish

Better Call Maul

Jar Jars of Clay

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, January 1, 2021 11:53 AM bookmarkflaglink

Gungan Roses

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, January 1, 2021 11:53 AM bookmarkflaglink

Gold star

Sheev 6

(references possibly too obscure all around but)

Bibble Puppy

most watched video on nabootube is "Baby Shaak"

Rewatching this.

Wow it's rough. I remember thinking the CGI wasn't great at the time. Now there are whole sections that look so bad it confuses me about what I'm actually looking at.

Somewhere in here there is a good movie that could have been made, but the whole trade war scenario is confusing and hard to follow. It's hard to understand what is going on in this movie a lot of the time.

Jar Jar wears boot cut jeans

It was the style at the time

As someone who dislikes most action sequences, the half hour pod race which is at best tangential to the plot is the worst part of this shit film.

It feels like it was created to be a theme park ride

oh my god the pod race is so good wtf

I don't care about 99% of action sequences, so a really long action sequence which isn't important to the plot is one of the most "don't care" things possible for me

yeah but with a plot this bad anything is a welcome relief

also we learn so much about the character of Sebulba

Maybe the visually ugliest movie I've ever seen in theatres, or at least challenged only by Attack of the Clones. I can't imagine how they look now.

Lest I be accused of coming here only to shitpost, though, I will say that I really do admire those--including several students of mine, and numerous Letterboxd reviewers--who manage to find genuine art in the prequel trilogy. I am not one of you, but I am glad that you exist.

Attack of the Clones looks *way* worse, because it's shot on early digital cameras with lousy color and lousy dynamic range, plus Lucas had fully gone in on the Sky Captain "all green-screen all the time" approach, and the techniques barely existed for matching the lighting between the on-set elements and the CGI ones.

Yes, Attack Of The Clones is the worst of the prequels and one of the dullest cinema going experiences I've ever had.

I think prequel defenders have their heart in the right place - individual folly over franchise IP slop any day - but the actual films are a pain to sit through.

It feels like it was created to be a theme park ride

Star Wars Episode I: Racer is a 1999 racing video game developed and published by LucasArts. It is based on the podracing sequence in the film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

The game was originally titled Star Wars: Podracer; however, the subtitle was changed to Episode I Racer when LucasArts learned that another company owned the trademark for games with "Pod" in the title.[12]

I like the idea of Lucas getting a bug up his butt to special-edition it again but with his lucasfilm team signed over to disney, he's forced to redo everything himself so it's popsicle sticks and tinfoil models on string with lucas making pew pew and vrooooooooooo sounds.

Hot take: The pod race is not the worst part of the film. It has stiff competition

i like the pod race because it's the only part with fun sound design

The worst part of the film is the whole film, all of it.

For someone who allegedly loved the editing and producing process above all elae, Lucas's editing choices are mind-bogglingly awful.

So much of this film is just characters standing around discussing at length the pros and cons of a particular course of action before inevitably deciding to take it regardless. Just get on with it!

Elsewhere there are very short scenes where all that happens is two characters introduce themselves to each other in a boring "Hello my name is Padmé, who are you? Well it is nice to meet you, goodbye" kind of way.

There's a very daft moment where we get a wipe-cut just so a droid can inform Nute Raygun (looool, the name) that they've captured the Queen and he can say "Ahhh victory!" before cutting away again. Why didn't they just show this happening instead? It might have made for a good action sequence, but no.

More than once in the film characters appear to be parting ways only to walk straight into the next scene and start talking again - often to reiterate what they just said in the last scene. It's like when you keep bumping into the same acquaintance again and again in the supermarket having made smalltalk the first time round.

There are some excruciating moments on Tatooine with Anakin's mother, where it sounds like the cast are reading their lines for the first time. No expression or naturalism, just a dry delivery with long beats between lines that give it a strangely inert, almost Lynchian vibe.

People beat on poor Jake Lloyd, but the poor kid really didn't have much to work with from the start. It really is so stilted and under-baked.

Apparently Lucas really wanted someone else to write or rewrite the script, but unlike on the precious films he had no real takers. He's great at world-building but a stronger writer at his side could have really brought this to life.

Qai Gon escaping from a lightsabre duel in the desert by just jumping very very high onto the starship's fuselage. Apparently Darth Maul can't do this but he can

Another hot take: Jar Jar isn't actually the worst thing in this film. But he is, again, terribly written. I really think people dunked on the actors too much and didn't go to the source of what was wrong with this film: That it is tremendously poorly scripted and edited, and that the cast weren't properly directed in any way

xp: Sith have an ideological problem with gaining high ground.

Also: Technology deciding it's not going to work for no real reason, so a character flips a bunch of switches, pulls a lever, and suddenly it works again. That's not how tech works

its weird to me how (at least in my memory) the voice performances of the cgi characters like jar jar, nute gunray, the alien who owns anakin, etc, are all more lively and energetic than the soporific nonperformances of the human actors. obviously the accents and characterizations are all crazy racist, but at least they're doing something. ppl who know the behind the scenes lore of this, did someone other than lucas direct the voice actors?

Why is Jar Jar Binks permitted to just hang around in Queen Amadala's chambers?

Why are there whole sections of this that read as though they're out of a complicated political thriller rather than a fun family sci-fantasy romp?

How is there still 45 minutes left of this film?

I don't think you can make a good movie out of this (fan editors have certainly tried!)
The complicated political thriller is a lot closer to the Lucas narrative core of "this is a republic in decay rescued by a sensible dictator" but y'know, not very thrilling.

Actor Liam Neeson praised Ahmed Best for his portrayal of Jar Jar: "I know a lot of fans and critics didn't like it. [Best] received a lot of criticism, to the point where it really hurt his career. And I have to say that when he was making that movie, with Best as Jar Jar Binks and with Ewan McGregor as young Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was probably one of the funniest and most talented guys I've ever worked with. I remember calling ... my old ex-agent ... and saying, 'Listen, I think I just worked with the new Eddie Murphy.' And I still believe it."[56][57]

I can see that. As a performance it's one of the more convincing ones. The character is annoying and hard to understand, but he does "pop" and is more memorable than much if the rest of the movie

Why are there whole sections of this that read as though they're out of a complicated political thriller rather than a fun family sci-fantasy romp?

The complicated political thriller bits are the parts people like! I appreciate the ambition but he's no Damiani.

God everything that's happened so far after the pod race and the short lightsabre desert duel has been straight-up just people talking without moving the plot on at all

Political thriller, fine. But as Philip Nunez said, it's bereft of thrills. Like watching a slow day in Parliament

I'm usually a big fan of people talking without moving the plot on at all, but not in this case.

this film is a chore a lot of the time but it's a respectably weird vision, as is AOTC (despite its worse flaws), and ROTS is actually good. the sequel trilogy made me gain more appreciation for Lucas just doing exactly what he wanted, and apparently taking no one's advice. having comparatively little in the way of terrible banter vs ep 7-9 was a plus imo.

i guess i like the fact that the story takes everything really, really seriously, the characters are aware they're in some universe-shifting moment and don't pause at key junctures to exchange dialogue that sounds like it was scraped off Kevin Feige's cutting room floor (unless i'm forgetting more moments like that than i remember.)

Yeah, they're good movies to support in principle - they just also happen to be unwatchable (the first two anyway, didn't bother with the third).

It’s fascinating to recall how I waited for each of these thinking “it’s going to be really great this time”, watched them in absolute dismay, then saddled up for “but the next one is going to be really great”. Phantom Menace was particularly memorable for everyone turning out in costume for a midnight premiere, the cheer that went up for the Star Wars logo, and the dead silence after the movie ended.

Thinking about where I heard Peter Serafinowicz talk about his experience as the voice of Darth Maul and the world premiere, and tracked it down. Premiere is towards the end but whole thing is kind of incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0wHqNi3x5M

TPM killed off my pre-teen obsession with this franchise; I remember being so excited, and leaving the theater with my father in silence. I watched a well-regarded fan edit a few years ago and the film still wasn't any good. Granted, I hadn't seen the original since it was in theaters, so perhaps I would have liked the edit better had I remembered more of the crap that was cut.