Episode I Phantom Menace, why do people hate it? [Archive]

S@tanicoaldo

2018-02-14, 08:45 AM

Lvl 2 Expert

2018-02-14, 09:05 AM

- Pod racing, It's the most Star Wars thing ever.

I think all the prequel movies just feel forced in a lot of places. Either the plot makes no sense, or the dialogue is weird, or the acting is wooden, usually because of the weird dialogue. Things like that. I can forgive a child actor for being a child actor, so no young Anakin hate for me (although the writing for all prequel Anakin scenes stands out as the most jarring dialogue across the trilogy), there's just almost always something wrong with the scene. Like in Aragon, or Spiderman 3. They shouldn't be bad movies, you'd say if you just took a quick glance at what's in them, but they keep finding ways to make you step back from the story and think "hey, that part is kind of stupid". And Star Wars is hard to do. I mean, what is the difference between the Cantina from A New Hope and the 60's diner in which Obi Wan goes to talk to some old alien friend? I don't know, but I know one of them works on the screen, sets the mood for the scene.

I loved the Darths and Droids comics about the prequel trilogy, because there's so much stuff going on visually to tie things into. But I'm not particularly fond of them as movies. At the same time I fully watched the origtrig {geekword bonuspoints!} a few years back and it keeps me interested, despite featuring maybe half the amount of input per minute that the prequels do.

If I had to make a list of my favorite movies number one would probably be The Beast (1988), which objectively features some pretty bad stereotypes and something very close to terrorism apologism, and is remembered fondly by roughly nobody. So I'm not saying SW ep1 is necessarily a worse choice than I would make, but to me and obviously to many other people it has its flaws.

S@tanicoaldo

2018-02-14, 09:23 AM

Let me just make it clear that it's my favorite SW movie not my favorite movie of all time.

Scowling Dragon

2018-02-14, 09:40 AM

Id say general plot incongruity.
If you love something don't depend on outside view for permission.
I like the Prequels more then the layman, but id say the PM in specific suffers from a sense of floatiness. People just don't seem to be impacted by things and flit about without much threat.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-14, 09:52 AM

What I remember is that the Pod-Racing "scene" is way too long. I'm typically not a fan of characters like Jar-Jar which are just around to be bumbling idiots and comedic relief, so he was annoying. The special effects definitely do not hold up now, but I think at the time they were good.

I like political stuff, so I like that aspect of the prequels in general. Duel of Fates and Darth Maul are amazing. I'd watch that end fight over anything in TLJ any day of the week.

The age difference (in appearance) between Anakin and Padme was strange knowing that they would grow to love each other.

Strigon

2018-02-14, 10:02 AM

I really don't get the hate people have for Phantom Menace, it's my favorite SW movie, I'll list the reasons why here in the hopes to see why it's so bad.

-Planets, every single planet in this movie looks so awesome, I really miss this sense of epicenes in fantasy places, when I go to a fantasy world I don't want to see a miserable and boring medieval city full of ****ness and boring architecture, I want to see truly fantastical places like Naboo, that city and the underwater city are truly what I want to see when I go to a fantasy movie.

-Trisha Biggar, I'm a sucker for her work, she can create the most awesome, alien and fantastical costumes ever made. Her use of shapes, colors and makeup is so awesome I really miss her, I wish fantasy movies would take more risks to create a truly unique feel in their costumes, rather than "Just like the middle ages but a lot more boring" or "renaissance fair esque"

-Jar Jar, I think he's not so bad, as a kid I used to think he was funny and we all have the "clumsy friend", I think what really ruined him was his dub, I didn't watch it in English the first time as the voice actor in my native language just dubed him as a normal person, without the whole "meesa" I think that could have make him less annoying or at least bearable. That horrible Japanese accent of the bad guys also didn't happen so there is that.

-Epic fights, that music and that fight. Nothing more to say.

-Awesome female character, I never really liked Leia, my first experience with star wars was a Snes game were you could play as her, she was using armor and a staff and it was fun, I went to the movie’s expecting her to do that but she didn't she got captured and dressed as a slave, to see a princess kick major ass, be on control and look awesome as she did was so fun and important to me.

-Political things, I love politics in my fantasy so i have no problem with the political and bureaucratic background of the movie.

So guys what's up with the hate?

Your first two points are entirely window dressing. It's more than possible to have a terrible movie that looks fantastic. It's more than possible to have a fantastic movie that looks like garbage. While nice sets and costumes are definitely a good thing, they're not a priority.

As far as Jar-Jar, that's the issue. You liked him as a kid. But he's filled with toilet humour and general idiocy. He ruins the entire feel of the movie, because he makes every scene he's in feel like The Three Stooges. It's one thing to have a character be somewhat lighthearted, or naive, but it's another entirely to have him step in dung as a cheap joke, or be a competent warrior by tripping. You can't take him seriously, so you can't take any scene with him seriously.

The fights were cool. Most people agree with that as being one of the only redeeming qualities of the movie.

I'm honestly not convinced you've ever seen the original trilogy if you think Padme is an awesome female character but Leia isn't. She definitely did way more than "get captured and dressed as a slave". That's like saying you expected Han to do something awesome, but instead he got captured and put in carbonite. Leia saves Han and Luke pretty much as soon as she meets them, and continues to be a very useful character throughout the trilogy.

People don't mind political intrigue, they do mind poorly executed political intrigue with no background.

And there's a lot you missed. Every line that was written for Annie, midichlorians, the idiotic invasion force, and many other factors.

Truthfully, the main issue isn't that it's such a terrible movie, because it isn't. It's that it takes a beloved franchise and rips apart everything cool about it. The force isn't some mystical energy source; it's measured by a bacteria or something. Darth Vader is a clumsy child. The tension isn't there, the characters aren't there, and the innovation isn't there. Luke in ANH really felt like a farm boy thrust into this massive war. The rebels really felt like the scrappy underdogs. The Empire really felt unstoppable. Darth Vader really felt menacing. Obi-Wan really felt like a wise Jedi Knight.
All of that can't be said about The Phantom Menace.

Calemyr

2018-02-14, 10:13 AM

Jar Jar's presentation is definitely one of the weakest parts of it. I've seen versions that replace his dialogue with a subtitled alien language and give him a less moronic speech pattern and that alone improves the movie immensely.

Anakin's the second major weakness. Besides the Midochlorian thing reducing a beloved mystic aspect of the franchise that could make legends from farm boys to measurable number derived from a blood test... and the virgin birth... besides those, there was simply too much of the kid. He just seemed obligated to steal the spotlight of any scene they put him remotely near, and he wasn't interesting enough to deserve it. As a character, Anakin is as dull as stale white bread, and I don't really put the blame for that on the actor. The directing and writing for the prequels was enough to make Samuel L muthalovin' Jackson look dull. That is an impressive feat.

The final one is the focus on politics and trade. The original Star Wars trilogy operated on two levels. You had the rebellion, a literal war in the stars, that served as the backdrop to a personal Campbellian story about a kid bored of his mundane life losing everything that mattered to him and have to figure out how to stand on his own to feet and become the hero people needed. TPM has the personal story almost entirely drowned out by the Jedi mission and the political gamesmanship that keep shoving itself into center stage. Even Anakin, with his spotlight stealing, is used more as a means to explore the Jedi than a kid who jumped powerless slave to supernatural superpower in an instant. It's just so backwards, and the end result is pretty boring where other issues don't make it annoying.

That said, TPM is, at its core, a decent movie. I've seen edited versions on youtube that take the same content and make it pretty darn good, in fact. I can totally see why a non-English dub could be very enjoyable.

GloatingSwine

2018-02-14, 10:20 AM

Quite a lot of the problem with the entire prequel trilogy is that what the actors are doing is generally dull. They're doing dull things and spouting mostly dull dialogue, because George Lucas was in love with CGI and worked on the basis of "add something interesting in Post".

Peelee

2018-02-14, 10:38 AM

I really don't get the hate people have for Phantom Menace, it's my favorite SW movie, I'll list the reasons why here in the hopes to see why it's so bad.
Look, it's personal taste. If you like it, why do you care if others don't? I love the Super Mario Bros movie, and lord knows I'm in the minority on that one. But hey, if you wanna know, why not?

-Planets, every single planet in this movie looks so awesome, I really miss this sense of epicenes in fantasy places, when I go to a fantasy world I don't want to see a miserable and boring medieval city full of ****ness and boring architecture, I want to see truly fantastical places like Naboo, that city and the underwater city are truly what I want to see when I go to a fantasy movie.
Yes, the planets are very pretty. So what? Without a compelling story, the effects don't matter. Someone once said, IIRC, that a person could talk about a blue square that fell in love with a red circle, and if they knew how to tell a story, by the end there wouldn't be a dry eye in the house. Details like scenery add to the story, but they don't make up for deficiencies in the story.

-Trisha Biggar, I'm a sucker for her work, she can create the most awesome, alien and fantastical costumes ever made. Her use of shapes, colors and makeup is so awesome I really miss her, I wish fantasy movies would take more risks to create a truly unique feel in their costumes, rather than "Just like the middle ages but a lot more boring" or "renaissance fair esque"
See above.

-Jar Jar, I think he's not so bad, as a kid I used to think he was funny and we all have the "clumsy friend", I think what really ruined him was his dub, I didn't watch it in English the first time as the voice actor in my native language just dubed him as a normal person, without the whole "meesa" I think that could have make him less annoying or at least bearable. That horrible Japanese accent of the bad guys also didn't happen so there is that.
Jar Jar Binks was added for two reasons: comic relief, and to have something for the younger audience to enjoy. For the comic relief, for it to work, the character needs to actually be funny. For the younger audience, this is a universe with space wizards fighting each other with laser swords while spaceships fly around shooting lasers at each other. What part of the asks the question, "now how can we get kids to like it?"

-Epic fights, that music and that fight. Nothing more to say.
The fights were meaningless though. There was no emotional investment. Obi-Wan fighting Vader is good because it is the fallen student fighting the exiled teacher. Luke fighting Vader is good because it is the child fighting his father's murderer, and later the child fighting the father. The emotional investment in all three is built up over the course of the series (and, in Kenobi's case, over the course of the movie).

Qui-Gon fighting Maul is some random Jedi who gets screen time fighting some random Sith who looks cool. There's no emotional investment. There's no teasing the shark.

-Awesome female character, I never really liked Leia, my first experience with star wars was a Snes game were you could play as her, she was using armor and a staff and it was fun, I went to the movie’s expecting her to do that but she didn't she got captured and dressed as a slave, to see a princess kick major ass, be on control and look awesome as she did was so fun and important to me.
...Leia DID kick major ass on screen. Her introduction is her shooting at Stormtroopers. She mouths off to Darth Vader while being captured. She mouths off to Tarkin and Vader both on the Death Star. She resists torture by Vader and a torture Droid. She refuses to give up the location of the Rebel base. She mouths off to (what she thinks is) a stormtrooper coming to take her to her execution. She takes a blaster from her rescuers and takes charge of her own rescue. The only thing she didn't do in there first movie was fly a ship against the Death Star itself. If you don't like her, that's fine. Again, personal taste. If you don't think she was a badass, you weren't paying attention to the movie.

Now, Padmé doesn't even do anything until the third act, where she fights in a battle. That's ok. Not bad, but not great. Certainly not "awesome."

-Political things, I love politics in my fantasy so i have no problem with the political and bureaucratic background of the movie.
The problem with the political and bureaucratic background is that THERE IS NO political or bureaucratic background. The Trade Federation wants Amidala to sign a treaty. For what? What do they gain? Why does she not want to sign? In short, why do I care? This is important, because this is the basis for the whole damn movie. Everything revolves around the Trade Federation's invasion of Naboo. And yet the movie can't be bothered to tell us why we should even care about the core conflict, which is a massive failure in storytelling.

The Trade Federation invades and captures the queen. Why don't they make her sign the treaty then? She escapes, and goes to the Senate with Jedi to testify that there is an invasion. Why does the Senate disregard the testimony of the very arbiters they sent to mediate the issue to begin with? Even in the structure that the movie has built, it fails to be internally consistent for the sake of moving the plot along. If there are reasons for these things, then the movie should tell us. Otherwise, it's like a Terminator literally getting ahold of John Connor and, instead of terminating him, throws him around the room some. It completely goes against what we are told to begin with.

And those are just rebuttals to what you liked about the movie. There are plenty other issues I have, including (but not limited to) the complete lack of character growth for any character.*Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon end the same people they were at the start. Same for Anakin, even though he's introduced only halfway through the movie.

Cheesegear

2018-02-14, 10:52 AM

There are plenty other issues I have, including (but not limited to) the complete lack of character growth for any character. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon end the same people they were at the start. Same for Anakin, even though he's introduced only halfway through the movie.

This is what I was going to say.

There are three main characters in the movie; Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Anakin. Generally, when people talk about what they liked about the movie (Pod Racing and Lightsabers and visuals), the main characters don't come up. Darth Maul, the coolest looking villain has one line (two?) in the whole movie, and then he dies. The lightsaber fight doesn't matter, because I don't care about any of the characters involved. Because I don't even know who the characters are, besides their name.

Then of course, there's the atrocious dialogue. Episodes 4-6 are constantly quoted. Han Solo, Luke, Vader, Yoda, Obi-Wan...I've heard them all. Even decades after the movie was made, I still hear the quotes. From many characters.

The Phantom Menace? What gems did that drop?
Midichlorians? ...No. That's a joke.
"Try spinning, that's a good trick." ...No. That's a joke.
"Now this is Pod Racing." ...Just... No.

I can't think of a memorable quote, from either Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan, and they're the main characters. The people I'm supposed to care about. And I literally can't remember any of their dialogue. Oh, no wait. I remember... "You do not want to sell me Death Sticks." *headdesk*

GloatingSwine

2018-02-14, 10:59 AM

The absence of character was what led to the Plinkett Test.

"Describe this character without referencing their costume, what they look like, their role in the plot, or their job".

(So for instance Han Solo is a lovable but slightly dangerous rogue with an underlying sense of conscience beneath a mercenary exterior)

Celestia

2018-02-14, 11:00 AM

Boring politics stuff
Pod racing
Racist characatures
Whiny kid
Midichlorians

Peelee

2018-02-14, 11:05 AM

This is what I was going to say.

There are three main characters in the movie; Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Anakin. Generally, when people talk about what they liked about the movie (Pod Racing and Lightsabers and visuals), the main characters don't come up. Darth Maul, the coolest looking villain has one line (two?) in the whole movie, and then he dies. The lightsaber fight doesn't matter, because I don't care about any of the characters involved. Because I don't even know who the characters are, besides their name.

Qui-Gon is such a waste of potential, too. TPM builds up that he is does not dance to quite the same tune as the other Jedi (or at least the council), despite being wise and powerful enough to potentially be on the council. I liked his character a lot, for what little they developed it. And then they take him away and leave a cocky, arrogant Obi-Wan. And, IMO, the most heinous crime the PT committed what never showing us Obi-Wan turn into the person he is at the start of ANH. He's just, "Sith Lord's are our speciality" until a few minutes before the credits, and then it's just, "welp, I'm this kind of person now."

The absence of character was what led to the Plinkett Test.

"Describe this character without referencing their costume, what they look like, their role in the plot, or their job".

(So for instance Han Solo is a lovable but slightly dangerous rogue with an underlying sense of conscience beneath a mercenary exterior)

Thank you for that. I'd forgotten the exact restrictions.

Strigon

2018-02-14, 11:13 AM

Qui-Gon is such a waste of potential, too. TPM builds up that he is does not dance to quite the same tune as the other Jedi (or at least the council), despite being wise and powerful enough to potentially be on the council. I liked his character a lot, for what little they developed it. And then they take him away and leave a cocky, arrogant Obi-Wan. And, IMO, the most heinous crime the PT committed what never showing us Obi-Wan turn into the person he is at the start of ANH. He's just, "Sith Lord's are our speciality" until a few minutes before the credits, and then it's just, "welp, I'm this kind of person now."

That's somewhat forgivable, as all of his most traumatic events happen at the end of that movie. I mean, ~16 years living as a hermit in the desert does sort of change a guy. So does betrayal by your "brother", after he murders a bunch of kids and the closest thing to family you have.

But it is definitely true that all of his character development is done off-screen. We start in TPM, with him being a kind of idiotic padawan. Then we skip right to him being this overprotective father figure/mentor in AotC, and then we skip right to him having a sort of sibling relationship with Anakin by RotS. Then we jump to him being the old, wise hermit in ANH. We don't really see any of that change; it's sort of dropped in our laps.

I never realized that before; that's a good point you made.

GloatingSwine

2018-02-14, 11:16 AM

That's somewhat forgivable, as all of his most traumatic events happen at the end of that movie. I mean, ~16 years living as a hermit in the desert does sort of change a guy. So does betrayal by your "brother", after he murders a bunch of kids and the closest thing to family you have.

But it is definitely true that all of his character development is done off-screen. We start in TPM, with him being a kind of idiotic padawan. Then we skip right to him being this overprotective father figure/mentor in AotC, and then we skip right to him having a sort of sibling relationship with Anakin by RotS. Then we jump to him being the old, wise hermit in ANH. We don't really see any of that change; it's sort of dropped in our laps.

I never realized that before; that's a good point you made.

To be fair, most of Luke's character development takes place off screen between movies too.

Peelee

2018-02-14, 11:24 AM

To be fair, most of Luke's character development takes place off screen between movies too.

Well, partly. He goes through a crucible of fire in ANH, and the big shock of his wold being turned upside down by Vader's reveal in ESB is dealt with a good deal on ROTJ. But you're right, he does grow a lot between each movie.

Vinyadan

2018-02-14, 11:28 AM

I think that Phantom Menace was the best of the prequels. The problems with it were:

-- It's hard to tell who the main character is;
-- Anakin gets on board very late, and isn't well written
-- Lack of a convincing villain.

Anakin is probably the worst problem. His character was meant to be very important in later movies, but it was badly introduced. His introduction is a dialogue in an alien language, followed by the "are you an angel" thing, which is the oddball start for a verbal infodump about him.

How could it have been done? Well, the boy wants to be free -- fine! Introduce him as he attempts a daring escape. Have him steal a future motorbike and run away! He's caught by slave-hunter Sebulba on his slave-hunting bike, beaten up, and thrown back to his slaveowner.

This way, we have reason to side with him (Anakin). We have seen his trials. We know what he wants. We can empathize/sympathize. We established that he can drive fast. And then the pod race gets more interesting (I was very uninterested in it; I really couldn't see what the point was). We have reasons to dislike Sebulba, and root for Anakin.

There are more things that need adjusting, like the fight around the round ship, but I think that it's easier to fix them, if Anakin is better done in the earlier part of the movie. Anakin could also get more agency, later on. Fight to become a Jedi. There is no need for the Jedi Council in this film, we already have two Jedi that can quarrel over this.

Anyway, the end problem is that the prequels pretend to be about a bunch of people, while they really are about Palpatine, who traditionally needs to have an atrocious name and atrocious writing, so there's that. If they had really been written around him, it would have been a better idea, but it would also have been a trash fire. "Yes, young one. Don't mind me tempting you. Oh, wait. Were you... were you already falling to the dark side? Like, just now? Sorry to interrupt. No, no, go ahead. I said, go ahead. Just ignore me. YES, LIKE THAT YOU HOT SITH MAMA -- why did you stop?"

Strigon

2018-02-14, 11:31 AM

To be fair, most of Luke's character development takes place off screen between movies too.

This is true, and I'm even willing to say it might be a weakness of the series. But I will absolutely stand my ground in saying the two aren't really equivalent.
With Obi-Wan, we don't really see any growth, and we have no idea where it might go in the next movie. With Luke, however, we see him steadily learn more about The Force and growing wiser throughout each movie. Even though the biggest changes occur between movies, we can extrapolate where he's headed quite easily. Obi-Wan's changed aren't completely contradictory to what we know, but they really couldn't be predicted either.

Plus, opening Return of the Jedi with Luke suddenly being a wise and powerful Jedi Knight is pretty cool, despite the fact that I think the rest of that movie is the weakest of the trilogy.

Peelee

2018-02-14, 11:40 AM

I think that Phantom Menace was the best of the prequels. The problems with it were:

-- It's hard to tell who the main character is;
-- Anakin gets on board very late, and isn't well written
-- Lack of a convincing villain.

Anakin is probably the worst problem. His character was meant to be very important in later movies, but it was badly introduced. His introduction is a dialogue in an alien language, followed by the "are you an angel" thing, which is the oddball start for a verbal infodump about him.

How could it have been done? Well, the boy wants to be free -- fine! Introduce him as he attempts a daring escape. Have him steal a future motorbike and run away! He's caught by slave-hunter Sebulba on his slave-hunting bike, beaten up, and thrown back to his slaveowner.

This way, we have reason to side with him (Anakin). We have seen his trials. We know what he wants. We can empathize/sympathize. We established that he can drive fast. And then the pod race gets more interesting (I was very uninterested in it; I really couldn't see what the point was). We have reasons to dislike Sebulba, and root for Anakin.

There are more things that need adjusting, like the fight around the round ship, but I think that it's easier to fix them, if Anakin is better done in the earlier part of the movie. Anakin could also get more agency, later on. Fight to become a Jedi. There is no need for the Jedi Council in this film, we already have two Jedi that can quarrel over this.
Wholly agree. Also, aging Anakin a bit would have helped. Make him a teenager when he's found. That also helps show his power relative to other Jedi who train since early childhood, yet get matched or surpassed by Anakin within a few years. Though I'd either cut out the podrace entirely, or make it shorter.

Cheesegear

2018-02-14, 12:22 PM

And, IMO, the most heinous crime the PT committed what never showing us Obi-Wan turn into the person he is at the start of ANH. He's just, "Sith Lord's are our speciality" until a few minutes before the credits, and then it's just, "welp, I'm this kind of person now."

That's where Clone Wars and Rebels comes in. But you are right, in that those shows (and character development) was never part of the Prequels.

Lord Joeltion

2018-02-14, 12:31 PM

I think I'm in the middle ground here. Phantom Menace is one of the movies I like the least of the Lucas Films Hexology (can we say that's a good tag for non-Disney continuity?); but there are parts I certainly enjoy. Most of those are what OP mentioned: it's beautifully crafted on an aesthetic level, it's very imaginative and quirky just in the good way when it comes to lore and creativity in general.

But... it's not very well crafted on a cinematic sense. I will grant you, Gungans are a very cool race. I love their amphibian archetype and the society mashing together tribal tech with force fields and energy weapons is one of the coolest things in all SW lore. The problem is Jar Jar on his own. As mentioned, toilet humor, childish and tasteless slapstick... I couldn't stand him too much even as a kid. I liked the quick liners both Jedi threw against him way more than the "jokes" Jar Jar was actively involved in.

Another big problem is Anakin. Suffice to say, in retrospective (since that's all I can do, for I wasn't alive when the OT came up), Lucas chose to make him way too young. That's where most of the oddness of his character stems from, IMO.

The politics, I get where people come from when they complain, but most of them are kind of nitpicky... and then again, they are also almost spot on. Problem is, politics was probably fine during development stages; but was not so subtly watered down for little kids to understand. Which is what defeated the whole purpose of having politics from the start. So what could have been enough world building/background basis for tons of source material (Galactic Parliament is rich enough to make a setting interesting on its own) ended up being too cliched, or appear as having "lots of plotholes" (on the bigger picture, there aren't more contrivances than is average SW*), because either writers gone lazy or editors too edit-happy.

tl;dr: Yeah... Phantom Menace is still not good for a SW movie. It isn't that bad either. I think that; in a perfect world where George Lucas insisted on writing the same basic story but better; he would have released Phantom Menace either as a game (like KOTOR) or as a series (like CW... with better actors or animation). That would have been perfect. Because, let's admit it, the basic premise for the sequels wasn't all that bad. It's world is still very rich and the setting is enjoyable despite the movies on its own. It could have been as great as Revan's story. It could have been as enjoyable as the best piece of SW. But it wasn't; we got an average film with kinda crappy dialogue and direction. And maybe that's just fine. EU was just like that: we got a bag with lots of dirt and some diamonds lying around. It could have been worse. Like, a crappy director trying to convince us his lazy written marysuish characters aren't merysuish at all. And that the lore we know doesn't matter any more because we have to embrace the brand new nonsense, because he is oh-so-great-and-smart, and his ingenuity is supreme. Oh, wait... :smalltongue:

*Like, what kind of stupid government would allow someone as trigger happy as Tarkin to rule over a mass destruction weapon like the Death Star: A person who wasted ton**** of resources *in order to* obliterate what we can assume are yet even more valuable resources just because he wanted to "set an example". Not even to mention there were obviously more appropriate uses for the Death Star and Alderaan and a hostage like Leia that didn't involve burning up hazillions of credits for nothing. We know why nobody complains about things like that, though (RuleOfCoolRules!). And that is fine.

Sapphire Guard

2018-02-14, 12:57 PM

A lot of the criticisms of the prequels seem to preferences or feelings. 'I feel' is coming up a lot in what people are saying. Which is fine, but it's taste, not criticism.

Midiochlorians do not take all the mysticism out of the Force unless they're interpreted very narrowly. If that was all there was to Force sensitivity, then training wouldn't be such a big deal and Anakin wouldn't screw up so much.

The problem with the political and bureaucratic background is that THERE IS NO political or bureaucratic background. The Trade Federation wants Amidala to sign a treaty. For what? What do they gain? Why does she not want to sign?

To legitimise the invasion. Which is in the movie.

Why don't they make her sign the treaty then? She escapes, and goes to the Senate with Jedi to testify that there is an invasion. Why does the Senate disregard the testimony of the very arbiters they sent to mediate the issue to begin with?

Because she escapes before they manage it. In the movie

The were not sent by the Senate, they were sent by Chancellor Valorum under the table, that's why Palpatine was surprised about it. In the movie.

Now, Padmé doesn't even do anything until the third act, where she fights in a battle.]

She does a fair amount of political stuff, forms a complex plan to infiltrate the palace and brokers an alliance with the Gungans .She's the entire reason any characters go back to Naboo and liberate it at all. Like Leia, she's the driving force behind what happens.

The fights were meaningless though. There was no emotional investment. Obi-Wan fighting Vader is good because it is the fallen student fighting the exiled teacher. Luke fighting Vader is good because it is the child fighting his father's murderer, and later the child fighting the father. The emotional investment in all three is built up over the course of the series (and, in Kenobi's case, over the course of the movie).]

It's a different dynamic, but not meaningless. It's the Sith emerging from the shadows, a lowly apprentice that can fight and defeat two Jedi at once. It's the beginning of Anakin's fall, where Qui Gonn's death binds Obi Wan to his dying promise to train Anakin despite not being ready for him. If this is what a Sith Apprentice can do, what's the master capable of? Maul is memorable because he's so quiet and businesslike.

The prequels are not masterpieces, but the hate they get is way overblown.

Vinyadan

2018-02-14, 01:12 PM

If that was all there was to Force sensitivity, then training wouldn't be such a big deal and Anakin wouldn't screw up so much.

Do we ever see training in the prequel movies, though?

S@tanicoaldo

2018-02-14, 01:40 PM

Besides the Midochlorian thing reducing a beloved mystic aspect of the franchise that could make legends from farm boys to measurable number derived from a blood test...

How does that work exactly? I never got that, does anywhere in the movie it states that the midochlorian count you are born with sticks with you until you die?

my take was that the midochlorians thingy increases the closer you are to the force but is not set in stone, it's like vitamin D if you get a healthy dose of sunlight you are going to have more than someone who does it.

To me it was always a consequence of being close the the force not what causes soemone to have powers.

...Leia DID kick major ass on screen. Her introduction is her shooting at Stormtroopers. She mouths off to Darth Vader while being captured. She mouths off to Tarkin and Vader both on the Death Star. She resists torture by Vader and a torture Droid. She refuses to give up the location of the Rebel base. She mouths off to (what she thinks is) a stormtrooper coming to take her to her execution. She takes a blaster from her rescuers and takes charge of her own rescue. The only thing she didn't do in there first movie was fly a ship against the Death Star itself. If you don't like her, that's fine. Again, personal taste. If you don't think she was a badass, you weren't paying attention to the movie.

Now, Padmé doesn't even do anything until the third act, where she fights in a battle. That's ok. Not bad, but not great. Certainly not "awesome."

I'm not a Leia hater, I really like her when she's on the ice planet and all that, it's just that I feel most of her best moments are done off screen, if they showed her resisting the torture, if she was allowed to fight someone who was not a redshirt, it would be better.

I remember playing with the kids in the playground and having a hard time, I couldn't be a Jedi since there were no Jedi girls and I was forced to be Leia, I never liked pretending to be real character so I forced the kids to make their own original characters in that universe (As I always did), still I was stuck being a princess while the boys could fight and have fun I was the one capture and all that, I wanted to be a bounty hunter but it was hard for the other kids to picture me as so.

Now Padme is different, I admit she sucks on the other movies but on the first one we see her leading, we see her resisting, we see making a big reveal, she owns her gun, she gives orders to her soldiers, she shoots the big villains, it was a lot easier to be pro-active when the role model had a lot more of pro activity in the screen. I was able to be a senator, the boys my bodyguards and jedi sent by the council and we were fighting an evil federation in the name of good, the force was with us and I was able to lead, fight, shoot and climb things with grappling hooks

(Although I must admit I always pictured myself using Leia's E-11 blaster rather than Padme's thin white gun).

The absence of character was what led to the Plinkett Test.

"Describe this character without referencing their costume, what they look like, their role in the plot, or their job".

(So for instance Han Solo is a lovable but slightly dangerous rogue with an underlying sense of conscience beneath a mercenary exterior)

Well, here we go:
Anakin Skywalker: Genius mechanic, good at flying, love his mom, can speak many languages, conflicted about his love for his mom and the prospect for freedom, is a slave, like mechanical stuff, wants to be free, has great potential for power.

Qui-Gon Jinn: Wise fun mentor, badass fighter, practical, don't seem to care much about tradition and rules, kind of a rebel.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Naive and stubborn apprentice, a lot more conservative than his master, a lot to learn, hot headed, cocky, arrogant but kind of cute and well meaning.

Queen Padmé Amidala: Young yet powerful queen, doing what is best for people, fighting for her freedom, practical, smart, stuck with bureaucratic problems she can't deal with while the stakes are high, competent fighter, fun personality, emphatic and caring.

So there you go.

I think that Phantom Menace was the best of the prequels. The problems with it were:

-- It's hard to tell who the main character is;
-- Lack of a convincing villain.

Does a movie needs to have a clear main character?

I think he does a great job, it shows that the apprentice is a powerful force to be wreaked with but he's just a tool to his master’s eyes, to be used and discarded, and if the apprentice is that powerful (able to face to Jedi and kill a veteran without a lot of problem) then imagine the power of the master!!! Dun Dun Dun.

Red Fel

2018-02-14, 01:45 PM

Boring politics stuff
Pod racing
Racist characatures
Whiny kid
Midichlorians

This is pretty much the deal for me, too.

Look, we can all acknowledge that the original trilogy, while great, was hardly perfect. The stories were a bit linear, the heroes unambiguously good and the villains unambiguously evil. Also, little bears.

But they told a story. A literally classic story - we don't need to rehash the oft-cited comparison between A New Hope and Joseph Campbell's hero's journey.

Episode I... Tries to squeeze a lot of convoluted world-building in. The entire prequel trilogy does that. And it does it sloppily. Instead of one narrative - the hero awakens to the call, gathers allies, rescues the princess, and defeats the evil empire - Episode I goes all over the place. There's a blockade of a planet... for reasons. These two spacewizardmonkknights go to investigate... And get attacked... And now they're on the planet... And now they're fleeing the planet... And now they find this kid...

The kid forms a particular convergence of disappointment for me. See, in A New Hope, we weren't excited to see Luke because we knew who he was or would become - we had no idea who Luke Starkiller Skywalker was going to be. We were excited because he was a well-written hero-in-the-making. Sure, he started out as a whiny brat (apparently a family trait), but we got to grow with him as he came to embrace his destiny. His history was as much a mystery to us as it was to him, and discovering it with him was an adventure.

But Anakin... We're expected to know him already. Despite being a prequel, Episode I reads with a knowing nod to the original trilogy. Even the posters (showing little Anakin with a Darth Vader-shaped shadow) acknowledged this. And if the most compelling aspect of your character involves who he is in an entirely different movie, that's not good writing.

We needed a reason to invest in Anakin. We needed a reason to invest in a lot of things, frankly. Take Qui-Gon, for example. We needed to be invested in him as a character, in order to more sharply feel his death. Instead, he is simply a walking plot device, spitting out information and Force wisdom. Even Alec Guinness, as an aging Obi-Wan, had a glimmer of mirth or trickery to himself. His actions and words spoke to a character with history and depth. When he spoke of Vader, he became distant and thoughtful. Qui-Gon has no such depth to him; he's just there, and then he dies.

But I digress. Who was our protagonist here? It clearly wasn't Qui-Gon, who was acting as plot device/mentor to Obi-Wan. It clearly wasn't Anakin, introduced in the second act. And it clearly wasn't Amidala, whose job was primarily sitting and talking in a vain attempt to humanize some of these characters. I guess that leaves Obi-Wan as our protagonist.

As I mentioned, A New Hope did an excellent job at giving us a protagonist to whom we could relate. Luke wanted to get out and see the galaxy, and resented being cooped up on the family farm. We feel his loss and sense of hopelessness (thanks in no small part to John Williams) when he discovers their deaths. We feel him coming alive in his adventure, we explore the galaxy with him. We ride with him on an emotional roller coaster that tells us all about him as a person, all while watching his actions in major plot events.

Obi-Wan's participation in the plot of Phantom Menace is... Frankly, it's negligible. What does he personally do? He and Qui-Gon escape from the Trade Federation ship. Lots of stuff happens around him in which he is minimally involved. He and Qui-Gon escort Amidala to Coruscant. (Herein is the first of several painfully tedious prequel trilogy scenes of parliamentary politics and procedure, by the by.) Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon escort Amidala back to Naboo. He and Qui-Gon fight Darth Maul, and he kills Darth Maul. Obi-Wan becomes a Jedi Knight. That's about it.

I'm sure you could make an argument that it's not a movie with one protagonist, but an ensemble. You would fail. An ensemble cast requires multiple characters with depth and action and complexity. We have an all-wise monk, a passive student, a rescued slave-boy, a stone-faced princess, and Jar-Jar. Those aren't characters; they're adjectives. The friends from Friends were an ensemble, characters with depth and personalities, and they were all horrible people. They had more complexity than these people.

I could go on, but really, it just comes back to loose, awkward writing. Too many attempts at world-building by telling instead of by showing. Too much showing of things that don't even need to be shown, like parliamentary procedure. Too little character-building in a franchise once known for rich characters. Too much reliance on the promise of future excellence, building up for later movies without properly grounding this one.

And yet, despite this... Do I hate it? No. I don't consider Phantom Menace - or, really, any of the prequel trilogy - to be good Star Wars movies, or even good movies at all. I don't like them. But I don't hate them. Taken as pure cotton candy entertainment, they scratch the itch - movie movie, explode explode, wacky hijinks, more explode, fun. It's popcorn entertainment - lacking in any substance, but fun on the surface. And that's fine.

Kitten Champion

2018-02-14, 01:51 PM

I've written enough on this subject in this forum to fill a fairly lengthy essay at this point as this seems to be an every-other-month discussion here.

As I've said, I watched this as a child and lacking any preconceptions, critical facets, or the knowledge of a fandom echo-chamber that would follow -- and it was just awkward to sit through, like a high school play. The two things I distinctly remember from that time were people audibly laughing when Darth Maul lowered his hood and had literal horns like a goddamned Halloween costume devil, as well as literally not understanding what Jar Jar Binks was saying at all. That my takeaway from that experience was boredom and confusion, and I was the intended audience apparently. As an adult my perception of it has only gotten worse and I've been able to articulate why with many more words.

I also disagree about Naboo, the architecture is nice with the CGI but with what they did with it might as well be a matte painting for a TOS episode planet-of-the-week. Only a planet-of-the-week tend to have more to define them than their aesthetics, a Hat maybe. There's no people living there and the planet has no character to it whatsoever, it's a blue-screen sound-stage we're supposed to care about for some reason.

Though the number one reasoning why it fails as a movie is that characters are watching-paint-dry-levels of boring when they aren't being actively annoying. There's no moment I can point to where I actually give a damn about these characters or where the acting and script gel to have sincere moment of interest. The only prequel that did that was in brief moments of Revenge of the Sith with the actors really, really trying there, but it gets washed away by clunky, cheesy writing.

Peelee

2018-02-14, 02:39 PM

That's where Clone Wars and Rebels comes in. But you are right, in that those shows (and character development) was never part of the Prequels.

I love Rebels for the most part, but I absolutely hatedMaul going to Tatooine and fighting Kenobi.

[wistful look]
"Obi-Wan Kenobi? Obi-Wan? Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.... a long time. Except like a couple years back when I killed a former Sith Lord. So not all that long, really."
Can they at least try to stop making things in the first movie make zero sense?

To legitimise the invasion. Which is in the movie.
You're right, I phrased that wrong. Let me rephrase. What did the Trade Federation want from Amidala, and why did Amidala not want to give it to them?

Because she escapes before they manage it. In the movie
They have her in custody before she escapes. They have hostages. Instead of threatening her to sign the treaty, they decide to take her to a camp for processing. What needs to be processed? Will processing make her sign the treaty? The Trade Federation explicitly wants X, yet they choose to do Y. Why?

The were not sent by the Senate, they were sent by Chancellor Valorum under the table, that's why Palpatine was surprised about it. In the movie.
Chancellor Valorum is the Chancellor of the Senate. They present the case to the Senate, where Chancellor Valorum is presiding. That argument isn't very convincing. And even if you were to take your argument at face value, the Jedi are government-sanctioned body. One would assume that their affirmation of a serious accusation would carry some weight, instead of absolutely none.

She does a fair amount of political stuff, forms a complex plan to infiltrate the palace and brokers an alliance with the Gungans .She's the entire reason any characters go back to Naboo and liberate it at all. Like Leia, she's the driving force behind what happens.
You're right. She does do all that stuff. In the third act. See below.

It's a different dynamic, but not meaningless. It's the Sith emerging from the shadows, a lowly apprentice that can fight and defeat two Jedi at once. It's the beginning of Anakin's fall, where Qui Gonn's death binds Obi Wan to his dying promise to train Anakin despite not being ready for him. If this is what a Sith Apprentice can do, what's the master capable of? Maul is memorable because he's so quiet and businesslike.
I disagree. We are told that the Sith are enemies of the Jedi, and then they fight. We have no emotional investment in the fight. Take A New Hope, for instance. The opening crawl pegs the Empire as evil, the Rebellion as the heros. They are enemies. But if they just get the plans to Kenobi who fights Darth Vader while the ships destroy the Death Star, it's a terrible story, because there's no emotional investment in it. We're introduced to characters who have a personal stake in the events (Leia's home planet is destroyed, Luke's father was murdered by Darth Vader, who was also Kenobi's student). Since we relate to the characters, we feel invested in their struggle. Destroying the Death Star is no longer "the bad guys lose and the good guys win," it is "the disgraced teacher in exile confronts the student who turned against him," it is "the farmboy confronts his father's murderer," it is "the princess of a lost world avenges her people."

In The Phantom Menace, we're told that the Sith are enemies of the Jedi. We see no connection between Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn or Obi-Wan Kenobi. The first duel is, "who is this mystery person attacking us?" The second duel is, "bad guy kills good guy, other good guy kills bad guy, good guys win." Why do I care about the fight itself? Because it's pretty? It's damn pretty, I'll give you that, but emotionally, the movie tells us, "these guys good, that guy bad, fight!"

Padme actually does have emotional investment in her fight. Her world is taken over, she is taken prisoner, and as you said, she is the one who decides to return to Naboo (and the others follow along). We see her struggle. We care about the fight because we see her hardships. We can identify with her, so we care about her fight. Except, again, she doesn't really do anything until the third act. It's substantially harder to care about a character when they don't make any substantive actions until the movie is nearly over.

But Maul? Even your own argument has the only meaningful part of it is the aftermath. What reason is there to care about the fight itself, other than "white guys good, red guy bad?"

The prequels are not masterpieces, but the hate they get is way overblown.
I agree the hate they get is overblown. However, I do not like them, and if asked, I'll say why. As I said in my first comment, this is personal taste. If you like them, more power to you.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-14, 03:04 PM

Re: Maul fight

I think it has meaning. Not so much individually, like Obi-wan vs Anakin. But for the greater story. At the moment, the Jedi are blind to the machinations of the Sith. There's a growing conflict in the galaxy and they're not sure how to keep the peace. Their efforts to find the will of the Force in their meditations are clouded, shrouded in shadow.

It's somewhat of a vindication for Qui-gon, who would rather stay focused on the present where he feels the Force guides him, rather than meditate on what to do. Also, if I remember correctly, he describes the first encounter with Darth Maul and no one takes the idea that he's Sith seriously.

So here are our Jedi heroes assisting Amidala and liberating Naboo, and this cloaked figure stands right in their way. His presence alone diverts Amidala's forces and causes them to split from the Jedi.

It's the reveal of the Phantom Menace (or at least, an agent of the phantom menace). The Sith come out of hiding and this guy is taking on the two heroes by himself.

I don't know, it worked for me.

Peelee

2018-02-14, 03:10 PM

Telonius

2018-02-14, 04:06 PM

Regarding Jar-Jar...

-I think what really ruined him was his dub, I didn't watch it in English the first time as the voice actor in my native language just dubed him as a normal person, without the whole "meesa" I think that could have make him less annoying or at least bearable. That horrible Japanese accent of the bad guys also didn't happen so there is that.

Phantom Menace came out right before I took my semester abroad in Germany, so I saw it both in English and in German. Jar-Jar was still slightly irritating in German, but he wasn't even half as annoying.

One thing I really didn't like about Phantom Menace was the extent to which they relied on CGI. Rubber alien masks or not, the original trilogy's reliance on real props - dusty and dirty and broken stuff - made the movies seem more real. You could see the inside of Mos Eisley, and imagine yourself there, seeing it, hearing it, smelling it. That sense of immersion is missing from a lot of the prequels. (They seem to have gotten it back for Rogue One and Force Awakens/Last Jedi). There's nothing wrong with CGI, if it's well-done and supports the scene; it can make impossible things possible. But if it's overwhelming the experience and sucking the energy out of the scene, it's not being done right.

tomandtish

2018-02-14, 05:30 PM

I describe TPM thusly: Remember that friend you had in high school, the one you did everything with. But then you went away to College or elsewhere, and parted ways, and before you know it 10 years have passed since you saw each other.

Then you get in touch, and you get all excited, and you can’t wait to see them again. You remember all the good times you have, and you know it’s going to be a great evening. You meet up…

And 30 minutes later you can’t wait to get out of there. You have nothing in common anymore except the old stories (which took up the first 30 minutes), and you’re both trying to force something that just isn’t there.

Phantom was like that for me. Even though Attack of the Clones is objectively worse (IMHO), I hate PM more, because of how it made me feel.

DataNinja

2018-02-14, 06:09 PM

I think, from what best I can tell, (and, granted, take this with a grain of salt,) a lot of the disappointment and hatred towards the prequels (not all of it, by any means, though) is because it just... didn't live up to expectations or promises.

I know that for me, who was introduced to the movies in numerical order, rather than release order, I don't have any hatred for the prequels. I don't really even consider them to be bad movies overall. Certainly not the greatest, but not terrible. But that's probably in part because I had no preconceptions as to what anything was meant to be. (Also a not insignificant part, granted, is that I was somewhat youngish, so spectacle certainly had something to do with that.)

Pex

2018-02-14, 06:27 PM

S@tanicoaldo

2018-02-14, 06:29 PM

Jar Jar

Anti-Semitic Watto

Jar Jar

Midichlorians

Jar Jar

Immaculate Conception Of Anakin

Jar Jar

Chinese caricature Nut Gunray

Jar Jar

African caricature Gungans

Jar Jar

Anakin built C-3PO

Jar Jar

Yeah, that's not a thign for me since in my native language dub they don't sound so stupid, so picture the mvoie without the dumb voices would that make it any better? That's the movie I saw.

Peelee

2018-02-14, 06:57 PM

Yeah, that's not a thign for me sicne in my native language dub they don't sound so stupid, so picture the mvoie without the dumb voices would that make it any better? That's the movie I saw.

I'll readily admit that some characters not sounding so horrible would improve the movie for me. However, I also forgot about the Anakin-Jesus thing.

Kitten Champion

2018-02-14, 07:10 PM

Yeah, that's not a thign for me sicne in my native language dub they don't sound so stupid, so picture the mvoie without the dumb voices would that make it any better? That's the movie I saw.

Better in a purely relative sense, certainly. I didn't understand certain characters like Jar Jar on a basic human communication level. Straining to understand a character is not a fun movie-going experience, particularly when they have been given quite a bit of dialogue. TPM isn't Babel.

Vinyadan

2018-02-14, 07:38 PM

Better in a purely relative sense, certainly. I didn't understand certain characters like Jar Jar on a basic human communication level. Straining to understand a character is not a fun movie-going experience, particularly when they have been given quite a bit of dialogue. TPM isn't Babel.

Fun fact: the guy who dubbed big boss Nass warned Lucas that Jar Jar was getting too hard to understand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTJ3DSNP6Dg

Kitten Champion

2018-02-14, 07:58 PM

Wait, wait, wait... that was Brain ****ing Blessed!?!?

Why the hell would they waste him on that role? Any half-talented voice actor could've done that.

Think what you could have done with him. Just give him his Vultan costume and throw him in there and the movie would have been approximately 30000x better.

Thrudd

2018-02-15, 12:55 PM

As a visual spectacle with some cool jedi action, disconnected from any continuity and ignoring the plot and the writing and dialogue, it's fine. But looking at the movie on any level besides a good fight scene and shiny toys blowing up, it fails. The dialogue in all the prequels is horrible. The directing, the writing, the plot, are all terrible.

What bugs me the most about the prequels and sequels, both, is how they fail to make sense of or remain continuous in a sensible way with the setting established in the original movies. Both Lucas for his prequels and the new people now seem like they wished they could redesign the Star Wars setting. You can't do that. The original movies established a setting, and all the subsequent movies fail to be believable contiguous within that setting.

Plus, a 9 year old protagonist in a war movie is the worst idea ever. Nothing could have been more annoying than that kid accidentally flying into battle and destroying the battleship, and Jar Jar bumbling into success against the droid army . That is just the worst thing to do, to cheapen the effort and lives of everyone else out there fighting in those battles.

S@tanicoaldo

2018-02-15, 02:32 PM

I'll readily admit that some characters not sounding so horrible would improve the movie for me. However, I also forgot about the Anakin-Jesus thing.

Yeah, I also talk about it on another thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?550735-SW-phantom-menace-my-personal-theory).

Psyren

2018-02-15, 02:57 PM

Boring politics stuff
Pod racing
Racist characatures
Whiny kid
Midichlorians

These sum up my main issues. I liked it better than Attack of the Clones though.

Yora

2018-02-15, 03:10 PM

TThere are three main characters in the movie; Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Anakin. Generally, when people talk about what they liked about the movie (Pod Racing and Lightsabers and visuals), the main characters don't come up. Darth Maul, the coolest looking villain has one line (two?) in the whole movie, and then he dies. The lightsaber fight doesn't matter, because I don't care about any of the characters involved. Because I don't even know who the characters are, besides their name.
It also doesn't matter because it doesn't matter. If they had not been able to defeat Maul, what bad thing would have happened? What was Maul going to do that had to be prevented? Maul appears to be only there to try to kill the Jedi. If the Jedi were not there to fight with him, he probably wouldn't have been there either. If the Jedi are beaten, they are dead. And that's the end of it.

For some reason, the pod race is the only part in the movie that I like. :smallconfused:

These sum up my main issues. I liked it better than Attack of the Clones though.

Episode 1 has a few cool scenes. Episode 2 doesn't.

GrayDeath

2018-02-15, 04:41 PM

Episode 1 has a few cool scenes. Episode 2 doesn't.

Sorry, thats just plain wrong.

At the very least the Fight between Jango Fett and Obiwan has so far been described as at least cool by everybody I talked about it with.

And while the whole forced Romance stuff IS utter Crap, some of AotC showed at least as much grandeur and style as Episode 1. And at times hints of the potential for a really interesting galactic conspiracy THriller.
Not remotely enough to make it a Good Movie (TM), mind, but again,a side from the horribly acted romance, it wasnt THAT bad.

As for the OP: never HATED it. Just found it weirdly paced, slightly garbled and without a clear plot. In short: disappointing-
But pretty, and at times cool.

factotum

2018-02-15, 05:05 PM

Strigon

2018-02-15, 06:05 PM

I think my main issue with TPM was that it was very un-Star Wars like. The entire movie boils down to Naboo's Senator Palpatine having a secret plot to depose the current galactic chancellor and get elected in his stead. It's all about tax this, trade federation that, and cloak and dagger stuff. Don't get me wrong, all that stuff could have actually made for an interesting movie, in the right hands--unfortunately it was in the hands of George Lucas and his cadre of yes-men, so what came out was really just kind of dull and boring. Darth Maul was totally wasted, Jar Jar Binks appeared far too much, and young Anakin was frankly quite annoying.

I think the worst of the prequels was Revenge of the Sith, though, mainly because it completely destroyed Darth Vader's redemption in Episode VI. He was supposed to redeem himself by killing the Emperor, but episode III not only showed that he was largely responsible for the Emperor being in such a position of power in the first place, he also slaughtered a bunch of children along the way. We're supposed to forgive that because he finally backstabs the Emperor 20 years later? Nope, I don't think so.

I seem to be in the minority as far as prequel preferences, then.
I think that, from best to worst, it goes 3-2-1.
That's probably due to my priorities for movies, though; characters are extremely important to me. Master Obi-Wan is better than Padawan Obi-Wan, Padawan Anakin is better than slave Anakin (IMO), and Dooku and Jango Fett, while arguably not as cool as Maul, are definitely better defined.

At its worst, Revenge of the Sith felt like a mediocre sci-fi action flick to me. Which is much better than the other two at their worst.
And, as far as Vader's redemption, he had a hand in blowing up a planet. Even if we only assign him 1% of the blame, that's still way worse than killing those, like, 6 kids. Is killing a handful of kids yourself really worse than having millions killed?
Plus there's the whole argument of whether redeeming yourself requires you to do enough good to counteract the bad you did, or if simply becoming good is enough. But that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

Peelee

2018-02-15, 06:34 PM

Thrudd

2018-02-15, 07:09 PM

My issue with the kid-kill scene isn't so much that he kills the kids, it's how readily he kills them. He goes from, "We are Jedi! We cannot assassinate the Chancelor, we need to arrest him so he can stand trial!" to "welp, guess I should murder a kindergarten" in what, two minutes?

The way the "fall" to the dark side is represented in the movies, especially Revenge of the Sith, it seems like Lucas thought of it more like being possessed by a demon than just having a moral failing. Unfortunately he (Lucas) didn't recognize that. If they had depicted Anakin/Vader's struggle as that of a subordinate personality struggling to reclaim control of his body from the Sith demon that has claimed possession, thanks to being tricked into making a "deal with the devil" aka Sidious, the whole thing would make more sense. There should have been a spiritual battle depicted between the heroic jedi Anakin and the Sith controlling his body. Luke's belief in him, possibly with spiritual/astral assistance, would be the final straw that let him succeed- the physical battle between Luke and Vader happening simultaneously with Anakin's force battle against Vader. But nobody anywhere has ever described it that way, so it turns out to just be badly thought out plot/setting.

factotum

2018-02-16, 02:44 AM

And, as far as Vader's redemption, he had a hand in blowing up a planet.

If you class "had a hand in" as "being aboard the Death Star when it fired" then yes, I suppose he did, but I think pretty much all the blame for Alderaan is laid at Governor Tarkin's door--Vader was very clearly second string to him in the first movie.

Vinyadan

2018-02-16, 03:24 AM

Unless it was in a cut scene, Vader was actually against blowing up Alderaan, although it was to keep some leverage on Leia.

veti

2018-02-16, 04:35 AM

Bohandas

2018-02-16, 05:31 AM

What I remember is that the Pod-Racing "scene" is way too long. I'm typically not a fan of characters like Jar-Jar which are just around to be bumbling idiots and comedic relief

This is a matter of perspective. My family are unfortunately fans of movies starring Will Ferrell and Steve Carell, and so while I hate this kind of character with a passion Jar-Jar does not come off as this to me because I've seen so many moronic and unfunny Will Ferell and Steve Carell characters that Jar-Jar, by comparison, comes off as a scholar and a master of comedy

S@tanicoaldo

2018-02-16, 05:44 AM

I'm not a Leia hater, I really like her when she's on the ice planet and all that, it's just that I feel most of her best moments are done off screen, if they showed her resisting the torture, if she was allowed to fight someone who was not a redshirt, it would be better.

I remember playing with the kids in the playground and having a hard time, I couldn't be a Jedi since there were no Jedi girls and I was forced to be Leia, I never liked pretending to be real character so I forced the kids to make their own original characters in that universe (As I always did), still I was stuck being a princess while the boys could fight and have fun I was the one capture and all that, I wanted to be a bounty hunter but it was hard for the other kids to picture me as so.

Now Padme is different, I admit she sucks on the other movies but on the first one we see her leading, we see her resisting, we see making a big reveal, she owns her gun, she gives orders to her soldiers, she shoots the big villains, it was a lot easier to be pro-active when the role model had a lot more of pro activity in the screen. I was able to be a senator, the boys my bodyguards and jedi sent by the council and we were fighting an evil federation in the name of good, the force was with us and I was able to lead, fight, shoot and climb things with grappling hooks

(Although I must admit I always pictured myself using Leia's E-11 blaster rather than Padme's thin white gun).

Oh, and she ends up giving the location of the rebel base anyway. :/

Clertar

2018-02-16, 07:25 AM

Anakin should have been like Bastila: an exemplary Jedi knight that falls to the dark side in a moment of weakness, for all the right reasons.

Instead, we saw how an annoying child becomes an unsympathetic dude and then "falls" in the most boring way possible.

Suttle

2018-02-16, 07:38 AM

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-16, 08:42 AM

This is a matter of perspective. My family are unfortunately fans of movies starring Will Ferrell and Steve Carell, and so while I hate this kind of character with a passion Jar-Jar does not come off as this to me because I've seen so many moronic and unfunny Will Ferell and Steve Carell characters that Jar-Jar, by comparison, comes off as a scholar and a master of comedy
This must be where the theories that Jar-Jar is the true mastermind of the rise of the Empire come from...

Peelee

2018-02-16, 08:47 AM

Oh, and she ends up giving the location of the rebel base anyway. :/

She doesnt. Han does. She claims they're being tracked, but Han insists they're not. It is Han's fault the Empire discovered the base.

2D8HP

2018-02-16, 08:58 AM

To the OP: if I had to sum it up in one word, I'd say "disappointment".

You're too young to remember how beloved the original trilogy was. It was a religion - literally for some people. They loved Star Wars and all its works. When they heard that the prequels were coming out... well, reactions were mixed, but everyone was excited. Even I, who hadn't felt that strongly about the originals, looked forward to recapturing some of the excitement and wonder of my youth.

TPM didn't deliver that. Instead, it delivered an experience that highlighted all the flaws of the earlier films. Note to George Lucas: there may be, somewhere in the infinite possibility space of cinema, a scene in which "Yippee!" would qualify as appropriate dialogue, but you sure as heck haven't written it.

There's an episode of The Simpsons, where Homer produces a video of Ned Flanders to put on a dating site. At one point, Lisa points out that "star wipes" between every scene gets a bit repetitive, but Homer waves her away. I think George Lucas was the inspiration for that episode.

I never saw the "pre-quels" so the couldn't "ruin" Star Wars for me, but you know what did?

Return of the Jedi.

Stupid Ewoks!

In fact while I loved Star Wars, and The Empire Strikes Back, I didn't like The Return of the Jedi, and thought it was a sorry way to end the series.

Vader eliminating the Emperor was a good act, but I got the impression that it was only to save his son, compared to say stopping the destruction of a whole freakin' planet I'd call it small ball.

If I think of someone who had committed RL crimes compatible to the one's Vader committed, saving their own kid from another villian doesn't tip the scales.

"Redeemed"?

:yuk:

And Luke is a douche though, why is he bothering to try to save his dad's soul when they'res a struggle to defeat a planet destroying tyranny, a cause he enlisted in?

And then there's the Ewoks....

....stupid freakin' teddy bears!

At least the speeder bikes through the forest was cool, but Return of the Jedi left a bad taste.

"Oh the struggles of common people don't matter, what's important is the interpersonal relationships and psyches of a few with supernatural powers".

Fooey! :annoyed:

I saw Star Wars 9 times total in 1977 and 1978, I saw Empire Strikes Back three times, but Return of the Jedi?

Once was enough.

Put all Skywalker's against the wall!

And you know what also grinds my gears?

Lord of the Rings!

That ponce Aragorn.

Thinks he should be King does he?

Well la-di-da!

Same goes for Frodo and Gandalf.

I respect Faramir more.

Mayor Sam Gamgee is the only true hero of the lot of them!

You know what I'd like, would be a "genre" story without chosen one's.

No Aragorn's, or Skywalker's with snowflake "destinies", just a common people "band of brothers" full of good Sam Gamgee's and Captain John H. Miller's defeating "Dark Lords".

Why isn't that story told?

The early Guards books by Pratchett seemed to almost be like that, but then Sam Vimes was Marty Stew'd and superpowered up making Snuff a book I just couldn't bare to finish.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-16, 09:36 AM

Vader eliminating the Emperor was a good act, but I got the impression that it was only to save his son, compared to say stopping the destruction of a whole freakin' planet I'd call it small ball.

If I think of someone who had committed RL crimes compatible to the one's Vader committed, saving their own kid from another villian doesn't tip the scales.

"Redeemed"?

:yuk:
There is definitely a discussion to be had of whether or not that single act is enough to redeem Vader, for sure.

But as far as *why* Vader killed Sidious, I think that matters less.

The point is that the only way there was a chance to take down Sidious was in the way that it happened; Vader taking him by surprise and betraying him. Vader had a choice to make, and he made the choice that resulted in ridding the galaxy of it's greatest villain and oppressor.

Vader is the key. Without him, Sidious can't be defeated.

And Luke is a douche though, why is he bothering to try to save his dad's soul when they'res a struggle to defeat a planet destroying tyranny, a cause he enlisted in?
Because they have a pretty good plan to destroy the Death Star that doesn't require him to be there. Instead, he will be in the Throne Room occupying Vader and Sidious. The problem is that it's a trap. But you can't fault him for not knowing that.

And then there's the Ewoks....

....stupid freakin' teddy bears!
Yeah, I mean, nothing to say here lol, ****ing ewoks...

"Oh the struggles of common people don't matter, what's important is the interpersonal relationships and psyches of a few with supernatural powers".
I don't think supernatural powers catapult these people beyond relating to them though. People can still relate to Luke I think, and even Vader a little bit, when he says it's too late for him. A lot of people are afraid that they can't be 'saved', that they're a lost cause.

Strigon

2018-02-16, 10:03 AM

If you class "had a hand in" as "being aboard the Death Star when it fired" then yes, I suppose he did, but I think pretty much all the blame for Alderaan is laid at Governor Tarkin's door--Vader was very clearly second string to him in the first movie.

I mean, regardless of whether or not he was personally in charge of ordering the Death Star to fire in that one particular instance, I think it's pretty clear he was more than willing to be a large player in its construction, knowing that it would eventually be used. He bears some of the responsibility for its use.
If I gave a power-mad despot nuclear weapons, and then discouraged them from being used, that doesn't change the fact that I'm at least partially responsible for their use. Now, maybe the Death Star still would've been built without Vader, but his willingness to help with it definitely incriminates him in my books.

Personally, though, what ruins Vader's redemption for me more than the child-killing or even planet-killing, is that he was never really Good to begin with. The best that can be said about him is that he didn't completely abuse his powers, and he kind of listened to the Jedi Order. He was never really a saint, nor particularly selfless. He puts himself in harm's way plenty of times, but it always seems to be more for the fun of it than because it's the right thing to do. The comparison to Bastila is a good one, though he definitely shouldn't have been that... strict, I guess? There are plenty of ways for him to still be something of a maverick, but genuinely a good-hearted person.
If he wasn't a good person to begin with, then how redeemed can he really be?

And, as far as his choice to save Luke, I agree that's an easy stance to take. Personally, though, it's not how I see it. That scene always struck me as Vader finally realizing just how far he's fallen; he was manipulated, he fell, and he was resentful about it, but he never really gave it much objective consideration. He mourned for what he lost, but it wasn't until he found himself being okay with his own son's murder that he realized how deep he was in this mess, and it wasn't until Luke spoke to him that he realized he had a choice. That's not to say we can excuse his actions because he didn't know he had a choice, but his willingness to turn back once he finally opened his eyes is the point.
Another thing to be considered is that he probably didn't even know he was redeeming himself. He didn't know he could, and it seems like he didn't even know what a Force Ghost was. When the time finally came, he probably had no idea what would happen other than that the Emperor would die, and so would he. The fact that he did the only good thing he could, with no real benefit to himself is what seals the deal for me.

factotum

2018-02-16, 10:28 AM

Vader is the key. Without him, Sidious can't be defeated.

Except Palpatine/Sidious would have been killed by Mace Windu if Anakin hadn't intervened to save him--which is why I said it was largely Anakin/Vader's fault that Palpatine was in power in the first place.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-16, 10:53 AM

I'm not sure that Windu could have defeated Sidious though.

I mean... Sidious is presumably in pain and being killed by the reflected lightning, and calling out to Anakin. But the second Windu's arm gets lopped off he's suddenly full of life and and vigor again. Windu's attack was exaggerated and over the top. I don't think he would have struck Sidious down before Sidious would have countered.

I think he was putting on a show.

Vinyadan

2018-02-16, 11:00 AM

Windu was going to the dark side. Did you see his angry face?

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5FXjtdQHqoI/0.jpg

Also,

https://media.giphy.com/media/LTpmRMNSmZgIw/giphy.gif

Lord Joeltion

2018-02-16, 03:02 PM

What bugs me the most about the prequels and sequels, both, is how they fail to make sense of or remain continuous in a sensible way with the setting established in the original movies. Both Lucas for his prequels and the new people now seem like they wished they could redesign the Star Wars setting. You can't do that. The original movies established a setting, and all the subsequent movies fail to be believable contiguous within that setting.

To be fair, the prequels had a point in changing the setting and the narrative. The OT is a story about rebellion, opression, fear and hate. That is totally not what the Republic age was about. I don't mean the Republic movies needed to be as shiny and nonchalant as the setting of the Old Republic was (which I think was always a very good artistic choice, since it depicts how the "happy old times" were always better -> which in turn is the entire message of the original movies).

A little more decadence by the time Anakin was found, would habe been better, IMO. But if the prequels had used the same exact basis and setting, I think that would have been odd. Star Wars isn't Star Trek; where all "Generations" and "Enterprises" are indistinguishable to the layman's eye. Star Wars is a very complex rich setting which mashes together a lot of different settings, styles and oddities. You aren't supposed to recognize a Star Wars movie by the setting alone. None of the three original movies were like that either.

Except Palpatine/Sidious would have been killed by Mace Windu if Anakin hadn't intervened to save him--which is why I said it was largely Anakin/Vader's fault that Palpatine was in power in the first place.

There's at least one fan theory contradicting that claims. I tend to side in favour of because:

a) Palpatine was obviously obsessed with making Anakin his apprentice. Putting himself into a corner on purpose to show the faults of the Order was in the best of his interests.
b) There was no point at which Palpatine was overwhelmed by the Jedi. He could have easily escaped at any time, but chose to have a face off, again, in front of a passive Anakin.
c) Previous to that scene, Anakin, while resentful, still trusted the Council almost blindly. Sidious is a master manipulator. He knew he needed a little push.
d) It is heavily hinted that Palpatine's power is supreme, if we take into account all the other movies and the whole point of the Rule of Two*
e) If Palpie could handle Yoda's ass so easily, there's no way Windu could have had the edge if Sidious wasn't just toying from the beginning. We know Windu is the best badass ever, but Yoda is both wiser and more knowledgeable in the Force. Both Yoda and Sidious are Force specialists (Consular archetype), which Windu clearly isn't. And Force Abilities trump lightsticks in almost every other SW battle.
f) UNLIMITED POWEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRR!!!!!!!

*That's not even counting Legends depictions of Palpatine, where it's shown that his power is even more than unmatched.

So, yeah, it's probably debatable and possibly inconclusive either way, but we all know in a better crafted movie, Palpatine would have chosen to play the victim anyway, even if he could defeat Windu with his pinky toe. I'm that generous to the writers.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-16, 04:18 PM

Yeah, actually I missed that part of Factotum's comment regarding Anakin. In response to Joeltion's post, I tend to agree that Sidious could have defeated Windu easily if he wanted to, but was waiting to see if/when Anakin would arrive. It's not coincidence that Anakin arrives just in time to see Palpatine begging for his life with Windu towering over him threateningly, explaining why he has to kill him immediately without any type of due process.

But the bit about it being Anakin's fault... I think the PT shows us more than anything that Palpatine was poised to become Emperor no matter if Anakin was there or not. How that would happen, I'm not sure. I think Sidious can take on the likes of Windu and Yoda, and the PT shows as much (though I can see the case for Windu obviously). But Palpatine was stacking everything in his favor. I don't think having Anakin storm the Jedi Temple on Coruscant is the only way to take out the Jedi in a surprise attack. The guy was winning and on the verge of checkmate. Getting Anakin was icing on the cake.

Sapphire Guard

2018-02-16, 05:11 PM

Wrote a long post, but lost it. May be back at some point.

I think you can argue either way on Mace v Palpatine. But in the absence of Anakin, that confrontation doesn't happen in the first place.

Aeson

2018-02-16, 05:39 PM

I don't think having Anakin storm the Jedi Temple on Coruscant is the only way to take out the Jedi in a surprise attack. The guy was winning and on the verge of checkmate. Getting Anakin was icing on the cake.
I agree. One of the things which is true in the movies (and that the EU - especially the video games - often seems to have missed) is that when a large army directly confronts a few unsupported Jedi, the Jedi lose. They can do a lot of damage before they go down, especially to an army of garbage like B1 battle droids, but they still go down in a direct confrontation.

Anakin isn't leading the assault on the Jedi Temple because he's necessary to the success of the assault - most of the Jedi remaining at the Temple are underage trainees or overage Knights and Masters who can better serve the war effort through staff work and training the next generation than by personally leading fleets or armies or otherwise directly participating in the fighting; incompletely trained or overage and badly outnumbered by the clone army which marches into the Temple, it can be expected that the only Jedi who might survive the assault on the Temple are those who hide or flee. Anakin also isn't leading the assault on the Temple to reduce the casualties that the clones will sustain, though that's probably an incidental benefit of his presence since he can occupy the attention of some of the more competent Jedi combatants remaining at the Temple. No, Anakin is there as a test of his loyalty to Palpatine, and to bind him more closely to Palpatine and the Dark Side through active, more or less voluntary participation in an atrocity.

I think you can argue either way on Mace v Palpatine. But in the absence of Anakin, that confrontation doesn't happen in the first place.
Probably, yes, though getting the Jedi to attack the Supreme Chancellor (or creating the appearance of such an attack) is certainly a convenient way to justify initiating the Jedi purge.

Still, there are other ways to set up a case for a Jedi purge based on treasonous Jedi activity - the Separatists are lead by a(n ex-) Jedi, the Clone Army was (notionally) ordered by a Jedi, a number of Jedi betray, or at least desert, the Republic during the Clone Wars in the EU material, and you can always fall back on complete fabrication if you can sell it well enough. He could also just keep dragging out the war to have more and more Jedi die in the fighting.

Velaryon

2018-02-16, 06:08 PM

A lot of my issues with TPM have been mentioned already, but there's one crucial point that I haven't seen anyone make. Viewed from the perspective of the saga as a whole, The Phantom Menace contributes remarkably little. There's a reason that one of the most popular suggestions for which order to watch the movies is 4, 5, 2, 3, 6, leaving out Episode 1 entirely.

All that really matters in this entire film can be boiled down to:
-Anakin is found and Obi-Wan becomes his teacher
-The Jedi get the first hints that the Sith may be on the rise once more
-Palpatine becomes head of the Republic

Sure, you get a bunch more minor details that relate to the rest of the prequels (the beginning of Anakin's obsession with Padmé, R2 and 3P0 meeting, etc.) but frankly, Attack of the Clones could have covered the only important parts of TPM by making the movie 15 minutes longer. As a result, most of TPM feels superfluous, even the parts that are actually good.

I for one liked Qui-Gon's character a lot. Liam Neeson wasn't given much to work with but I think he turned in by far the best performance in the film. Darth Maul was a promising and very interesting-looking villain, and he was a major badass in combat. But then, he had two lines of forgettable dialogue and was killed off in the first film of the trilogy. The silent, badass henchman has been a thing in movies since forever, but he could and should have been so much more. Personally, I think he and General Grievous should have been combined into one character.

The final one is the focus on politics and trade. The original Star Wars trilogy operated on two levels. You had the rebellion, a literal war in the stars, that served as the backdrop to a personal Campbellian story about a kid bored of his mundane life losing everything that mattered to him and have to figure out how to stand on his own to feet and become the hero people needed. TPM has the personal story almost entirely drowned out by the Jedi mission and the political gamesmanship that keep shoving itself into center stage. Even Anakin, with his spotlight stealing, is used more as a means to explore the Jedi than a kid who jumped powerless slave to supernatural superpower in an instant. It's just so backwards, and the end result is pretty boring where other issues don't make it annoying.

I think some of that was necessary to show that the Republic had fallen a long way from what it once was. It should have been explained better, the Trade Federation certainly should have been handled better, and the whole thing could have been handled better in general, but I don't think political drama in general was inappropriate for the film.

And those are just rebuttals to what you liked about the movie. There are plenty other issues I have, including (but not limited to) the complete lack of character growth for any character.*Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon end the same people they were at the start. Same for Anakin, even though he's introduced only halfway through the movie.

Qui-Gon is the obligatory "wise mentor who gets killed off" character. He's not there for character development. Obi-Wan and Yoda didn't have any development in the original trilogy either.

I agree that Obi-Wan was handled poorly in TPM. It feels like the only reason he was even there was to take custody of Anakin once Qui-Gon died. Ewan McGregor looked bored and annoyed for the whole film (not that I blame him), but he clearly hadn't found his stride as Obi-Wan yet.

Everything about Anakin in this movie was done poorly. His introduction was poorly handled, he's too young, his interactions with Padmé are downright cringeworthy (not that they get much better in later films), his being not only crammed into the battle but actually turning the tide was awful... honestly, there's nothing salvageable about him in this film. I don't blame Jake Lloyd for that at all, though. He played what he was given as well as any young kid would have.

"Oh the struggles of common people don't matter, what's important is the interpersonal relationships and psyches of a few with supernatural powers".

Fooey! :annoyed:

I actually took the exact opposite message from the film. Think about this: suppose that Luke was wrong, that there was nothing good or compassionate left in Vader, and he watched dispassionately as Palpatine tortured Luke to death with Force lightning. What changes?

The shield still comes down. The Millennium Falcon and Wedge's X-Wing still fly into the Death Star's infrastructure, blow it up, and fly back out. The Empire still falls, the Rebels still win.

My favorite exchange in the entire throne room scene is when Luke tells Palpatine that his overconfidence is his weakness, and the Emperor retorts that Luke's faith in his friends is his. It's clear that to Palpatine, everything happening outside that throne room is completely insignificant, and that despite all the gigantic warships and absurdly large planet-destroying space stations in his command, the only power he truly respects is the Force.

The events of the battle go on to prove him completely and utterly wrong. Even though Palpatine and the Skywalker family drama takes center stage on camera, the larger story playing out in the background would have happened almost exactly the same way. The only thing Luke may have accomplished (other than on a personal level) was to tie up Vader and Palpatine's attention. Had Vader gone out in a TIE like he did in the first film, things might have been different. Maybe Palpatine's vast mastery of the Dark Side would have allowed him to change the outcome. But instead, they took their eyes off the big battle and focused on trying to corrupt one half-trained Jedi while all the normal folks won the day.

InvisibleBison

2018-02-16, 06:48 PM

I actually took the exact opposite message from the film. Think about this: suppose that Luke was wrong, that there was nothing good or compassionate left in Vader, and he watched dispassionately as Palpatine tortured Luke to death with Force lightning. What changes?

The shield still comes down. The Millennium Falcon and Wedge's X-Wing still fly into the Death Star's infrastructure, blow it up, and fly back out. The Empire still falls, the Rebels still win.

The Rebels win the battle, maybe, but they don't win the war, because the Emperor and Vader escape before the Death Star explodes. After all, Luke was able to do so in the actual film, despite dragging a dying Vader along with him and stopping to have an emotional conversation with him.

Bohandas

2018-02-16, 06:55 PM

I think Phantom Menace was decent, despite it's flaws. The only Star Wars prequel that I genuinely didn't like was Rogue One

Velaryon

2018-02-16, 08:10 PM

The Rebels win the battle, maybe, but they don't win the war, because the Emperor and Vader escape before the Death Star explodes. After all, Luke was able to do so in the actual film, despite dragging a dying Vader along with him and stopping to have an emotional conversation with him.

What reason would they have to leave? Palpatine considered the Rebels no threat at all. He would have made the same mistake as Tarkin.

InvisibleBison

2018-02-16, 10:45 PM

What reason would they have to leave? Palpatine considered the Rebels no threat at all. He would have made the same mistake as Tarkin.

As far as I recall, having not actually seen the movie for several years, there was a period of time between when the Rebels blew up the whatever they were attacking and the actual destruction of the Death Star. It's in this period that this scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNDwCsFzS8c) takes place, and when I imagine a victorious Palpatine would have evacuated.

Honest Tiefling

2018-02-16, 11:01 PM

Jar Jar

Anti-Semitic Watto

Jar Jar

Midichlorians

Jar Jar

Immaculate Conception Of Anakin

Jar Jar

Chinese caricature Nut Gunray

Jar Jar

African caricature Gungans

Jar Jar

Anakin built C-3PO

Jar Jar

This...Is probably a lot of it for Anglophone audiences. Apparently the Italian dubbers (the OP is Italian, isn't she?) had more damn common sense than Lucas. However, I can't speak for how Italians feel about the movie as I am American and I lose citizenship if I learn another language. But causal racism THREE FREAKING TIMES is...A bit much, even if it's on accident.

Another issue is Padme. Now, I didn't watch movies 2-3, but she's not exactly doing much. I can understand your frustrations at Leia, but doing it AGAIN in the ninties had no excuse. And then she dies of SADNESS because women and their fee-fees, amirite fellas? Women are always dying of emotions, that's why men suppress them and refuse to communicate! Can't have her die in a cool way, no, she has to die because her snuggle provider went nutso, screw those children she brought into the world, her man is evil and therefore she has no reason to exist!

Also, many actors turned in awful performances. I am probably biased against Ewan McGregor (I saw Moulin Rogue. If I never hear him sing again I will be so happy), but the rest of the cast are fine actors, but I don't know if it's the direction or the crummy script but most of them might as well have been asleep.

And then you have the idiot decision to bring things from the original trilogy back in. Why does C-3PO need to be in here? Are there no other droids? Is Greedo the only Rodian? Watto being really confused about how slavery works isn't helping. He OWNS those people, why is he letting them near vehicles and soldering supplies? You know, things that might let them escape? And if for some reason he had a reason to do this, he's apparently got a baby genius on his hands, why not exploit that in some fashion? Or did he just not plain notice? And why did the Jedi just LEAVE his mother there?

Natalie Portman was also what, 18 when the movie came out? The guy playing her romantic interest IS A FREAKING CHILD. Yeah, she looks young, but SWEET BABY PELOR, rob the cradle much? Was no one else creeped out by this? I mean, the dubbing can only go so far, so even if they gave him a voice on par with James Earl Jones, HE IS A CHILD.

EDIT: On the planets...Yes, they are pretty, but the issue lies in that the cast never interacts with the scenery, so it's as impressive as a Star Trek matte painting from one of the cheaper episodes. And then remember that Star Wars were impressive examples of practical special effects. The crew of Star Wars was known to have done a lot of work in making those special effects work. Admittedly, they didn't have the option of computers, but going from the beauty and the work put into the original trilogy to computer graphics done poorly really disappointed a lot of fans. I for one don't mind computer graphics, but they weren't used well in the Phantom Menance, even if the design was pretty.

McStabbington

2018-02-16, 11:43 PM

Hate would be a strong word. I don't particularly like The Phantom Menace. I believe I've seen it twice, maybe three times at most. That means I've seen it either one or two times too many. I do appreciate having seen it once, as it was useful to learn what a bad film really looks like, so that I made that mistake fewer times in the future.

Basically, I don't like The Phantom Menace because it's a film that would have only worked if it had emotionally invested me in the fate of its characters, and it didn't. A grand historic epic is great and all, but it doesn't mean much to me if I don't care about what happens to the people involved. And Lucas? George Lucas has difficulty connecting emotionally with people. This isn't an insult; the man will tell you himself that he has difficulty with emotion. He is quite candid in interviews that he rarely gives a lot of direction to his actors, precisely because he trusts them to know more about how the characters might feel in that situation than he does. In a way, I think the myth of George Lucas as some kind of out-of-touch artiste has taken hold, and overtaken the actual man, who actually is keenly self-aware of his flaws.

But the simple problem is that, again, the story he wanted to tell depended upon the audience connecting emotionally with his characters. And he didn't give his actors enough help to hook the audience in. Take the character of Amidala, for example. Let's suppose, just for a moment, that I'm asked to troubleshoot the script for The Phantom Menace, on condition that I never say "George, that just won't work. It's stupid, and you need to go back to the drawing board." Let's just stipulate that I can only add to the story that's presented, not completely rewrite something. Okay, so with Amidala, I'm presented with a fourteen year old who has been elected to the position of Queen of her planet.

Let's . . . for the moment keep the rules firmly in mind. I'm going to mentally set aside the first, second and third things that come to mind. Okay. So then I move to question four: how does Amidala feel about that? This is actually a really vital question, because it informs everything that happens with the character. And the actual answer doesn't really matter. What matters is that there is an answer. Maybe she's been selected because she's a genetic augment that's been specifically designed and honed from birth to rule. Maybe she's been "elected" merely to ratify the decisions of scientists who have literally built her from scratch to be the absolute best possible at reading other people, processing data, understanding subtle emotional cues, and the other key traits that make an excellent diplomat, politician and administrator. The possibility of a 14-year old being the best possible person isn't logically impossible, though of course it strains credulity.

But what's still necessary is to figure out what she feels when, for instance, she sees a teen girl sitting with a teen boy holding hands by the fountain with love in their eyes. Would that make her sad, and wistful for the opportunity she never had, and the childhood she had to give up? Would it renew her sense of duty. Is she genetically programmed to not even miss that? Because the answer to that tells us everything we need to know about how she's going to react to an enthusiastic padawan and a wide-eyed little kid. It's going to tell us how she'll react to meeting slaves, and pretending to be a handmaiden while her friend risks her life to pretend to be her. In short, knowing the answer to how Amidala feels about being Queen tells me a great deal about what she values, and how she reacts to the people around her. And its those relationships that really bond me to the character, in exactly the same way Luke's faithful trust in Obi-Wan, and shy flirtation with Leia, and rivalry that slowly grew more respectful over the film with Han, informed me about him.

But I don't see that in The Phantom Menace. What I see is an actress that has no lack of talent, but has been left adrift with no clear instructions for how to handle the character. And however much that might have come about because of George Lucas genuinely thinking that Natalie Portman would know better than he would what Amidala is feeling in the moment, it's readily apparent that Portman was, in fact, completely floundering, and Lucas never came back, never reassessed, never recalibrated his approach. And as a result, because he didn't take the time to really walk Portman through and help her with her character (a consistent theme in Portman's acting history, actually; the more hands-on the director in helping her, the better she performs), and Amidala as a result comes across as lifeless and stilted, never more than a collection of tics and lines designed to move the plot forward rather than a real person.

Kitten Champion

2018-02-17, 12:10 AM

This...Is probably a lot of it for Anglophone audiences. Apparently the Italian dubbers (the OP is Italian, isn't she?) had more damn common sense than Lucas. However, I can't speak for how Italians feel about the movie as I am American and I lose citizenship if I learn another language. But causal racism THREE FREAKING TIMES is...A bit much, even if it's on accident.

I think only the Gungans are by accident, "comic relief" somehow materialized into that. The other twp are "allusions to Golden-Age Hollywood" where such caricatures were common. Like, say, Ming the Merciless. Which is fine when you're doing campy tongue-in-cheek stuff like Flash Gordon, but less so given the degree of seriousness people treat Star Wars with.

Why does C-3PO need to be in here?

Fanservice? It's a horrible disease bad prequels have where they feel the need to connect everything they're doing to the later movies. Wolverine: Origins had this too, like, if you ever wondered where Logan got his coat - now you know.

Natalie Portman was also what, 18 when the movie came out? The guy playing her romantic interest IS A FREAKING CHILD. Yeah, she looks young, but SWEET BABY PELOR, rob the cradle much? Was no one else creeped out by this? I mean, the dubbing can only go so far, so even if they gave him a voice on par with James Earl Jones, HE IS A CHILD.

Honestly, the age difference is the least issue I had with their relationship.

Though I am curious as to how angels fit into the Star Wars universe. Perhaps that could be in the prequel's prequel. Get on it Disney.

Mechalich

2018-02-17, 12:35 AM

Though I am curious as to how angels fit into the Star Wars universe. Perhaps that could be in the prequel's prequel. Get on it Disney.

Angels, in the Star Wars universe, are an alien species (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Angel) from the planet Iego. Anakin would, in fact, meet one during the Clone Wars.

Kitten Champion

2018-02-17, 12:44 AM

Angels, in the Star Wars universe, are an alien species (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Angel) from the planet Iego. Anakin would, in fact, meet one during the Clone Wars.

Glad that particular bit of lore was fleshed out.

factotum

2018-02-17, 01:44 AM

But the bit about it being Anakin's fault... I think the PT shows us more than anything that Palpatine was poised to become Emperor no matter if Anakin was there or not.

OK, I'll grant that's a possibility. It doesn't make the slaughter of the children in the Jedi Temple any less an atrocity, though, and that was directly carried out by Anakin. I can never see him turning on the Emperor in RotJ as atonement for his deeds after that, so arguably watching episode III ruined VI for me--even before they removed Sebastian Shaw's force ghost and replaced it with Hayden Christiensen for no readily explicable reason.

Vinyadan

2018-02-17, 06:05 AM

About Amidala, since the Canon doesn't give any more details on it, I read it as elective from an extremely restricted pool (like "elect one of the members of the royal family/clan", or "rotate between some 10 families, and choose one member of the family whose turn is now").

Fanservice? It's a horrible disease bad prequels have where they feel the need to connect everything they're doing to the later movies. Wolverine: Origins had this too, like, if you ever wondered where Logan got his coat - now you know.

I think that this was the weakest point in Rogue One, which I otherwise liked a lot. The two very large Vader scenes didn't really have much to do with the plot, like the little tail ending with fake Leia.

By the way, this thing where actual actors must be substituted with CGI to look like dead people is slightly creepy.

factotum

2018-02-17, 06:57 AM

I think that this was the weakest point in Rogue One, which I otherwise liked a lot. The two very large Vader scenes didn't really have much to do with the plot, like the little tail ending with fake Leia.

That bit in Rogue One is a bit odd, to be honest. For a start, it was explicitly stated in Episode IV that the Tantive IV "intercepted some transmissions", rather than physically pick up a box with the information in it. Also, why did they store the information on a large box looking like a tape, when we also know from EpIV that they had the technology to fit it onto a credit-card sized thing inserted into R2-D2?

I mean, the fact that she then apparently went straight from escaping Vader to trying to find Obi-wan Kenobi on Tattooine is just par for the course for "I know we're being followed but we'll fly straight to the Rebel base anyway" Leia...

Bohandas

2018-02-17, 10:19 AM

I think that this was the weakest point in Rogue One, which I otherwise liked a lot. The two very large Vader scenes didn't really have much to do with the plot, like the little tail ending with fake Leia.

Those were the weakest parts of Rogue One, but don't let that distract you from the fact that Rogue One was weak in general

By the way, this thing where actual actors must be substituted with CGI to look like dead people is slightly creepy.

Does anybody else find themselves wishing that the Matrix trilogy would get remade using this technology? Like, it would look good in that context.

Kitten Champion

2018-02-17, 11:44 AM

I think that this was the weakest point in Rogue One, which I otherwise liked a lot. The two very large Vader scenes didn't really have much to do with the plot, like the little tail ending with fake Leia.

I personally love the Vader wrecking his way through the Rebels scene, it's the first time in the entire body of Star Wars where the Force has actually felt powerful and not a situational or hyper-choreographed thing. The other scene I could leave or take.

Peelee

2018-02-17, 12:24 PM

I personally love the Vader wrecking his way through the Rebels scene, it's the first time in the entire body of Star Wars where the Force has actually felt powerful and not a situational or hyper-choreographed thing. The other scene I could leave or take.

I felt the opposite; it was really jarring to see the Rebels firing wildly, then cut to Vader and have maybe five total blaster bolts coming at him. It made the whole thing feel less powerful and more "Vader can survive this onslaught if we remove 4/5 of the shots supposedly coming at him."

Plus, it makes the opening of Ep. IV weird as well; if Vader stormed the ship once, why not twice? Why wasn't he first through the door when boarding the Tantive IV in ANH?

Kitten Champion

2018-02-17, 12:35 PM

Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxL8bVJhXCM)'s what the scene actually looked like.

Plus, it makes the opening of Ep. IV weird as well; if Vader stormed the ship once, why not twice? Why wasn't he first through the door when boarding the Tantive IV in ANH?

Because they had captured the ship in its entirety and had no reason to rush? In here they had a single one of those Y-wings from RotJ and a couple of fighter swarming a Rebel battleship, in the midst of a wider battle. In A New Hope they had complete control of the situation with their Destroyer massively overpowering the lone Rebel ship in the middle of nowhere.

Peelee

2018-02-17, 12:53 PM

Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxL8bVJhXCM)'s what the scene actually looked like.

Because they had captured the ship in its entirety and had no reason to rush? In here they had a single one of those Y-wings from RotJ and a couple of fighter swarming a Rebel battleship, in the midst of a wider battle. In A New Hope they had complete control of the situation with their Destroyer massively overpowering the lone Rebel ship in the middle of nowhere.

Yes. Watch that clip, listen to how many shots you hear fired, and then see how significantly fewer are deflected by Vader. I get it, having overwhelming odds to overcome sometimes needs trickery. If Jackie Chan is surrounded by ten guys, he literally can't fight off then if they attack at once, so they attack over after another. But good editing and choreography can make it seem like this isn't the case, and that's what's important. This is not what happens in Rogue One: we see and hear dozens of blasters being fired, and we see less than ten actually get deflected. It's noticeably fewer. It's the 60's Batman show where you actually see the henchmen hanging back waiting for their turn to attack. It takes away the entire "unstoppable juggernaut" feel they are going for.

Also, as for the ANH opening, most of the fleet has jumped out when Vadee storms the ship in Rogue One. Vader's flagship is still massively overpowering Raddus' ship, which is practically derelict. Also, in ANH, Vader is still clearly on the warpath. The most emotion he shows in the entire movie is when her directs his Commander to take the ship apart until he finds the plans. He's absolutely furious, which means he can tap into the Force more easily. Besides, even if he's not in a particular hurry, what reason is there to dally around? It's not as if he couldn't do it, as Rogue One very clearly demonstrates. Why bother delegating the storming if the ship to Stormtroopers who take significantly more time and effort than he would?

Remember, the Empire also had complete control of the situation during the battle of Yavin, and massively overpowering the pitiful X-Wing and Y-Wing squadrons with their moon-sized battle stain brimming with turbolasers, yet Vader still got into a TIE fighter and personally joined the battle, so we know that under those exact conditions he is not at all averse to put himself in danger to kill the Rebels that his troops have difficulty with. And that's when he wasn't completely enraged at the specific people he fight against.

Manga Shoggoth

2018-02-17, 12:59 PM

I don't actually hate TPM, but I do dislike it - largely because Lucas took a series of three Family films, and replaced it with a mess that couldn't decide whether it was a Kiddie film or an late-teen/adult-oriented film. If he was expecting it to average out to Family film it really didn't work.

This is why I agree with the suggestion that the film would have been massively improved if Anakin was older - say in his late teens.

Bohandas

2018-02-17, 01:45 PM

This is why I agree with the suggestion that the film would have been massively improved if Anakin was older - say in his late teens.

Thirded!!!!

Thrudd

2018-02-17, 02:04 PM

That bit in Rogue One is a bit odd, to be honest. For a start, it was explicitly stated in Episode IV that the Tantive IV "intercepted some transmissions", rather than physically pick up a box with the information in it. Also, why did they store the information on a large box looking like a tape, when we also know from EpIV that they had the technology to fit it onto a credit-card sized thing inserted into R2-D2?

I mean, the fact that she then apparently went straight from escaping Vader to trying to find Obi-wan Kenobi on Tattooine is just par for the course for "I know we're being followed but we'll fly straight to the Rebel base anyway" Leia...

They did receive a transmission- remember that whole thing with the satellite dish?
I don't think Vader knows that they downloaded the info to a disc. If he did, the guy with the disk never would have been able to hand it off. Also, in Ep4 he doesn't say "where's the disc!", he says "where are the plans you intercepted?", after his guys check the computers and don't find them as they expected to. And where are you seeing a "large box like a tape"? They download it to a floppy disc/card sized thing that is probably the exact thing Leia uploads to R2. Rogue One did a great job connecting to EP 4 visually and in terms of story, imo. Unlike the prequels and sequels, they seemed to actually pay attention to the context in which their movie is meant to be taking place. The only thing I thought wasn't great in that movie was the sudden and unearned loyalty and comraderie the group seems to have with Jin and each other. Everything else was pretty great.

Bohandas

2018-02-17, 02:16 PM

Yes. Watch that clip, listen to how many shots you hear fired, and then see how significantly fewer are deflected by Vader. I get it, having overwhelming odds to overcome sometimes needs trickery. If Jackie Chan is surrounded by ten guys, he literally can't fight off then if they attack at once, so they attack over after another. But good editing and choreography can make it seem like this isn't the case, and that's what's important. This is not what happens in Rogue One: we see and hear dozens of blasters being fired, and we see less than ten actually get deflected. It's noticeably fewer. It's the 60's Batman show where you actually see the henchmen hanging back waiting for their turn to attack. It takes away the entire "unstoppable juggernaut" feel they are going for.

And contrast this with how the final fight in Tbe Last Jedi starts. Kylo says "i want every gun we have to fire on that man" and we see this

Honest Tiefling

2018-02-17, 02:21 PM

I think only the Gungans are by accident, "comic relief" somehow materialized into that. The other twp are "allusions to Golden-Age Hollywood" where such caricatures were common. Like, say, Ming the Merciless. Which is fine when you're doing campy tongue-in-cheek stuff like Flash Gordon, but less so given the degree of seriousness people treat Star Wars with.

I'm willing to accept that Lucas might just be that clueless, but I do wonder how you accidentally mimic the speech of um...Less than savory depictions of black people.

Though I am curious as to how angels fit into the Star Wars universe. Perhaps that could be in the prequel's prequel. Get on it Disney.

So Anakin can race a flying ship, repair robots, but can't identify his own speices? What was Watto DOING to that poor kid?

Bohandas

2018-02-17, 02:33 PM

Honest Tiefling

2018-02-17, 02:44 PM

Regarding the Gungans, I feel they're fine because they're missing the key element that makes this character archetype offensive. To wit, they do not depict black people acting like this. Instead they depict space aliens as acting like this. They depict black people as Mace Windu.

Yeah, I kinda get where you are coming from, but I don't know if I agree with this as this is often how racist propaganda begins. Ming the Merciless is from the planet Mongo, not Asia, so not racist?

factotum

2018-02-17, 02:49 PM

And where are you seeing a "large box like a tape"? They download it to a floppy disc/card sized thing that is probably the exact thing Leia uploads to R2.

It was in a large box in the super-sized data storage room they stole it from originally--I forgot that data was then transmitted and downloaded aboard the Rebel flagship, mea culpa on that one.

Bohandas

2018-02-17, 02:50 PM

Yeah, I kinda get where you are coming from, but I don't know if I agree with this as this is often how racist propaganda begins. Ming the Merciless is from the planet Mongo, not Asia, so not racist?

Yeah, but he was a human (or at least looked exactly like one; I'm not super familiar with that franchise and don't know if he was supposed to be human or not) with asian features, whereas Jar-Jar is clearly and unambiguously a space alien

Devonix

2018-02-17, 02:57 PM

Thirded!!!!

This was the original plan. Anakin being younger was part of a rewrite that caused a lot of other changes to the film.

Lucas thought that the audience wouldn't buy an older person being upset by leaving his family behind and so de aged Anakin. However this caused him to have an inexperienced child actor who couldn't elevate the weak directing.

Honest Tiefling

2018-02-17, 04:04 PM

Yeah, but he was a human (or at least looked exactly like one; I'm not super familiar with that franchise and don't know if he was supposed to be human or not) with asian features, whereas Jar-Jar is clearly and unambiguously a space alien

So...As long as they put him in a costume, racism averted? Same character, just less human?

Devonix

2018-02-17, 04:10 PM

So...As long as they put him in a costume, racism averted? Same character, just less human?

JarJar's personality and mannerisms were based on a character that the actor made up for his daughter so it's not really racist.

Bohandas

2018-02-17, 06:36 PM

So...As long as they put him in a costume, racism averted? Same character, just less human?

Doesn't have to be less human, just can't be those mannerisms plus black. Like imagine the same character but it's a white guy; not a white guy in blackface, a regular white guy who looks white.

Sapphire Guard

2018-02-17, 06:40 PM

Jar Jar isn't a typical Gungan, he was exiled. He is not meant to be representative of his species.

Do we ever see training in the prequel movies, though?

Well, we see that it takes years to become a Jedi, even for Anakin. They don't go through it lesson by lesson, but many people talk about its importance.

You're right, I phrased that wrong. Let me rephrase. What did the Trade Federation want from Amidala, and why did Amidala not want to give it to them?]

Dispute over taxation of trade routes something something.

They have her in custody before she escapes. They have hostages. Instead of threatening her to sign the treaty, they decide to take her to a camp for processing. What needs to be processed? Will processing make her sign the treaty? The Trade Federation explicitly wants X, yet they choose to do Y. Why?

"In time, your people's suffering will
persuade you to see our point of view."

Chancellor Valorum is the Chancellor of the Senate. They present the case to the Senate, where Chancellor Valorum is presiding. That argument isn't very convincing. And even if you were to take your argument at face value, the Jedi are government-sanctioned body. One would assume that their affirmation of a serious accusation would carry some weight, instead of absolutely none.

Chancellor Valorum takes it seriously, but he exceeded his authority in sending them. But he needs a vote from the floor to declare war. "Two Federal Marshals and the Governor are claiming General Motors invaded California"
"We're going to need more proof than that."

I think, from what best I can tell, (and, granted, take this with a grain of salt,) a lot of the disappointment and hatred towards the prequels (not all of it, by any means, though) is because it just... didn't live up to expectations or promises.
]

A key point, I think.

What was Maul going to do that had to be prevented? Maul appears to be only there to try to kill the Jedi.

He went after the Queen on Tattooine. If he killed the Jedi, he'd go to throne room and snatch Padme (she only has a few guards left) and rescue Gunray.

My issue with the kid-kill scene isn't so much that he kills the kids, it's how readily he kills them. He goes from, "We are Jedi! We cannot assassinate the Chancelor, we need to arrest him so he can stand trial!" to "welp, guess I should murder a kindergarten" in what, two minutes?

He's not happy about it (he's crying), but the logic seems to be 'I am doomed. I just killed a member of the Jedi Council. There's no way back from that.' He wants Palpatine alive because he needs his knowledge to save Padme. He still needs that knowledge. So he needs Palpatine. He can't save himself, but he might still be able to save Padme...if he does what Palpatine wants, and then he can betray and overthrow him later. The logic creaks a bit, but it's there.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-17, 07:44 PM

Palpatine also basically tells him that the *only* way to save Padme is to show no mercy in the Jedi temple. He has to give himself fully to the dark side.

That means child murder.

It didn’t work for me when I first saw it, and it still doesn’t really. But the reasoning is there.

Bohandas

2018-02-17, 08:03 PM

My issue with the kid-kill scene isn't so much that he kills the kids, it's how readily he kills them. He goes from, "We are Jedi! We cannot assassinate the Chancelor, we need to arrest him so he can stand trial!" to "welp, guess I should murder a kindergarten" in what, two minutes?

I agree. I mean, it would be one thing if it was clear that Palpatine had done the mind trick on him or perhaps activated some prior brainwashing like he did with the clone troopers, or at the very least offered him something plausible and made a cogent argument. Instead he gives a half-assed paltitudinous supervillain monologue and Anakin's like "wow. you're clearly the good guy, I will gladly murder people on your behalf"

It makes his character seem comically stupid. Like he just accepts Palpatine's claims out of hand. He hasn't been mind tricked, he hasn't been worked over by goons, he hasn't been watching Galactic Fox News for ten years and had his brain turned to mush. He's just that stupid that he'll accept any dubious claim someone makes to him.

Strigon

2018-02-17, 09:20 PM

I agree. I mean, it would be one thing if it was clear that Palpatine had done the mind trick on him or perhaps activated some prior brainwashing like he did with the clone troopers, or at the very least offered him something plausible and made a cogent argument. Instead he gives a half-assed paltitudinous supervillain monologue and Anakin's like "wow. you're clearly the good guy, I will gladly murder people on your behalf"

It makes his character seem comically stupid. Like he just accepts Palpatine's claims out of hand. He hasn't been mind tricked, he hasn't been worked over by goons, he hasn't been watching Galactic Fox News for ten years and had his brain turned to mush. He's just that stupid that he'll accept any dubious claim someone makes to him.

There are two things worth considering.
First, he has only ever had two real priorities: his mother and Padme. Maybe Obi-Wan, but he definitely comes second. He lost his mother after a vision, and now he's having visions about Padme dying. He couldn't save his mother on his own, so he's desperate - grasping for straws.
Does it seem incredibly adolescent? Yes. It doesn't necessarily mean he's gullible enough to automatically listen to anything anyone tells him; he has a serious chink in his armour, and that's what Palpatine exploited.

Secondly, the Dark Side clouds clear thinking. I'm not sure, but I got the feeling that even being too near it for too long can affect your judgement, especially if it's a Sith Lord trying to do so. Force Mind Tricks are definitely a thing; it's quite possible Sidious has some sort of Reaper Indoctrination thing where he can affect your mind if you linger near him. This is never explicitly stated, I don't think, but it's definitely his style, and it would fit in well with the insidious and corrupting nature of the Dark Side.

Both of those are excuses, of course, and they don't cover up the fact that it's shoddy writing, but there's something there, deep down.

veti

2018-02-17, 09:47 PM

And Luke is a douche though, why is he bothering to try to save his dad's soul when they'res a struggle to defeat a planet destroying tyranny, a cause he enlisted in?

"Personal loyalty" is a very important dimension of morality. If you can't accept your personal obligation to others as individuals, you've already failed the most basic test of humanity. If Luke didn't try to save his own dad, then saving the rest of the world would ring pretty hollow.

"Oh the struggles of common people don't matter, what's important is the interpersonal relationships and psyches of a few with supernatural powers".

Yeah, well, that's pretty much endemic to all stories in which worlds get saved. See also: Harry Potter, and the entire canon of Marvel, to name a couple.

And you know what also grinds my gears?

Lord of the Rings!

That ponce Aragorn.

Thinks he should be King does he?

Setting aside all the "destiny" claptrap for a moment... basic political theory tells us, it's not too important who, specifically, should be king, so long as everybody recognises it's the same person. Talk of "rightful" kings and bloodlines and the rest of it - is all just so much lures cast out to attract people to latch on to a particular candidate.

You know what I'd like, would be a "genre" story without chosen one's.

No Aragorn's, or Skywalker's with snowflake "destinies", just a common people "band of brothers" full of good Sam Gamgee's and Captain John H. Miller's defeating "Dark Lords".

Why isn't that story told?

Because conventional wisdom in storytelling holds that you need a thing called a "hero's journey" and "character development", and it's a lot easier to deliver those things if you focus on a single character. And Hollywood morality holds that when a character is virtuous, they must ultimately be recognised and rewarded. Just lately this has been compounded by the rule that virtuous characters basically aren't allowed any significant flaws at all: their behaviour must be impeccable at all times, and therefore their rewards must be absolute.

The early Guards books by Pratchett seemed to almost be like that, but then Sam Vimes was Marty Stew'd and superpowered up making Snuff a book I just couldn't bare to finish.

Yeah, Snuff is a horrible book. But "snowflake destinies" were there all along. In Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms it was Carrot, in Feet of Clay it was Angua... the watch have never been "just a common people 'band of brothers'". I'd say Lord of the Rings actually comes closer to delivering that, because the most important characters in it are not those who are singled out by Destiny - Aragorn and Gandalf are really just ciphers, the true heroes are the hobbits - all four of them.

If "destiny" and drama among superior beings offends you, then you might want to avoid the fantasy genre entirely.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-17, 10:06 PM

First, he has only ever had two real priorities: his mother and Padme. Maybe Obi-Wan, but he definitely comes second. He lost his mother after a vision, and now he's having visions about Padme dying. He couldn't save his mother on his own, so he's desperate - grasping for straws.
Does it seem incredibly adolescent? Yes. It doesn't necessarily mean he's gullible enough to automatically listen to anything anyone tells him; he has a serious chink in his armour, and that's what Palpatine exploited.
I just watched the scene again. The gist is... Anakin goes all in very quickly. Up until now, he's been disillusioned by the Jedi several times. But after this encounter with Windu and Palpatine, he's convinced the Jedi will come and kill him, Palpatine, and all the Senators, and he agrees that they must be killed first.

So that's one part. Anakin believes the Jedi are evil (as he tells us later in that heavy-handed line, "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!").

Now, the next part we just have to look back on with hindsight. He says to Palpatine: "I will do whatever you ask... Just help me save Padme's life. I can't live without her." Then Palpatine says only one other person has been able to cheat death, but if he and Anakin work together, he is confident they'll discover the secret. And Anakin pledges himself to Palpatine and his "teachings" right there. (I know you've all seen this, but I'm just recapping lol.) When he sends Anakin to the temple Palpatine says "do not hesitate, show no mercy" clarifying that "only then will you be strong enough in the dark side to save Padme".

Again, watching this the first time I thought I knew what I was getting into, and seeing the implication that Anakin kills children was too much for me. But you kind of just have to take what's in that conversation, and sort of think that Anakin is really that desperate and that tied to Padme that he is willing to justify the betrayal of the Jedi and the murder of children in his own mind to gain power in the dark side. If anything, it shows that this child slave is truly a damaged individual that was primed for Palpatine's manipulations.

Still doesn't come across great on screen though. There's so much going on in the PT, I feel like we could get three movies about the political aspect of Palpatine's rise, and three movies detailing Anakin's fall.

Thrudd

2018-02-17, 10:54 PM

I just watched the scene again. The gist is... Anakin goes all in very quickly. Up until now, he's been disillusioned by the Jedi several times. But after this encounter with Windu and Palpatine, he's convinced the Jedi will come and kill him, Palpatine, and all the Senators, and he agrees that they must be killed first.

So that's one part. Anakin believes the Jedi are evil (as he tells us later in that heavy-handed line, "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!").

Now, the next part we just have to look back on with hindsight. He says to Palpatine: "I will do whatever you ask... Just help me save Padme's life. I can't live without her." Then Palpatine says only one other person has been able to cheat death, but if he and Anakin work together, he is confident they'll discover the secret. And Anakin pledges himself to Palpatine and his "teachings" right there. (I know you've all seen this, but I'm just recapping lol.) When he sends Anakin to the temple Palpatine says "do not hesitate, show no mercy" clarifying that "only then will you be strong enough in the dark side to save Padme".

Again, watching this the first time I thought I knew what I was getting into, and seeing the implication that Anakin kills children was too much for me. But you kind of just have to take what's in that conversation, and sort of think that Anakin is really that desperate and that tied to Padme that he is willing to justify the betrayal of the Jedi and the murder of children in his own mind to gain power in the dark side. If anything, it shows that this child slave is truly a damaged individual that was primed for Palpatine's manipulations.

Still doesn't come across great on screen though. There's so much going on in the PT, I feel like we could get three movies about the political aspect of Palpatine's rise, and three movies detailing Anakin's fall.

The only problem with claiming it was his obsessive love for Padme that overrides all else, is that the movies don't show us a believable relationship. Just badly written and directed movies. They also definitely tried to cram in too many elements, and they failed to prioritize screen time on the elements that were actually important

Honest Tiefling

2018-02-17, 11:02 PM

Mechalich

2018-02-17, 11:54 PM

The only problem with claiming it was his obsessive love for Padme that overrides all else, is that the movies don't show us a believable relationship. Just badly written and directed movies. They also definitely tried to cram in too many elements, and they failed to prioritize screen time on the elements that were actually important

The PT in general has a whole bunch of 'if X, then Y' issues wherein X doesn't work because of some issue and therefore Y doesn't hold up when it is ultimately asserted. The Anakin and Padme relationship is supposed to be this sort of ultimately Romeo and Juliet tale of great love in space and dries the tragedy that is Anakin's fall. Unfortunately, pretty much every aspect of that relationship is handled poorly, from the bizarre age difference when they meet to the stilted dialogue, to the lack of chemistry between the actors, and so on.

In fairness, this is a hard thing to get right. Conveying a smoldering, passionate forbidden romance on screen that believably drives people to the edge of reason is a hard thing even for romantic comedies - in which the entire film is devoted to that premise - to get right. Witness the disaster that is the Fifty Shades franchise. To believably pull that off within an action film is a heavy lift indeed. Neither Lucas - never anyone's idea of a romance-inclined director - or the actors involved were up to it.

It also really doesn't help that there simply isn't very much time to push the romance at all - the entirety of their relationship is dependent upon a handful of scenes in Attack of the Clones, because the relationship needs to be already established for RotS and because Anakin was too young in TPM. That was a major structural error. They should have just started with teenage Anakin to begin with.

factotum

2018-02-18, 02:33 AM

I personally don't believe Anakin killing children for the sake of love actually makes it any better, especially since he rapidly goes from there to pushing Padme away. His entire fall to the Dark Side in the third movie was just rushed, and the utter lack of chemistry between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman didn't help--you'd think it would be quite easy to pretend you had the hots for Natalie Portman, but Hayden failed to do that on any level.

Vinyadan

2018-02-18, 05:57 AM

There is little detail with the killing of kids that isn't considered very often: killing kids isn't just a hamfisted way to show that Anakin's become eeeevil; that's probably secondary. Its first purpose is to give Yoda and especially Obi Wan reason enough to start their "targeted killing" missions, against Palpatine and against Anakin.

-D-

2018-02-18, 06:27 AM

Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman didn't help--you'd think it would be quite easy to pretend you had the hots for Natalie Portman, but Hayden failed to do that on any level.
Hayden Christensen is not to blame. Movie had Samuel L Jackson and he played as well as a stunted willow. First - Lucas isn't an actor's director, he is like Do Cool Stuff and Action.
Second - Lucas had no one to creatively challenge him, e.g. Harrison Ford (Kessel run was an off the script addition Harrison Ford made).

I mean, poor Hayden had only a few movies behind him and none as big as SW. I doubt he dared say no to Lucas. And only way to make that script not sound awkward would be to improvise.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-18, 07:19 AM

The only problem with claiming it was his obsessive love for Padme that overrides all else, is that the movies don't show us a believable relationship.
But... but he says "I can't live without her." You're saying that's not enough?? :smallconfused:

:smallamused:

McStabbington

2018-02-18, 12:48 PM

Hayden Christensen is not to blame. Movie had Samuel L Jackson and he played as well as a stunted willow. First - Lucas isn't an actor's director, he is like Do Cool Stuff and Action.
Second - Lucas had no one to creatively challenge him, e.g. Harrison Ford (Kessel run was an off the script addition Harrison Ford made).

I mean, poor Hayden had only a few movies behind him and none as big as SW. I doubt he dared say no to Lucas. And only way to make that script not sound awkward would be to improvise.

It was actually worse than that. 90% of the time, Lucas provides next to no direction whatsoever, because he feels that the actors are better at understanding what emotions are present in the scene, and how to convey them, than he does. That's why everyone comes across so stilted in the first film, because Ray Park would ask about emotion, and the only response he'd get back was, and I quote, "Be evil." Usually, Lucas is simply unhelpful.

In poor Hayden Christensen's case, however, Lucas did take a direct hand in directing him. Only his direction was to make it like a romantic epic from the 40's. You know, when you had to be extremely circumspect about how you portrayed your romance because of the Hays Code.

Now, in the 40's you could kind of work around it because of the natural charisma of the actors. Casablanca is a fantastic romance precisely because Ingrid Bergman had not simply off-the-charts beauty, but off-the-charts control of her facial muscles as well. She could sell "in love" with just a quiver of her voice and a tear in her eye (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vThuwa5RZU). But in this case, not only is expecting Christensen to act as well as Ingrid Bergman asking a bit too much of an extremely new and raw actor, but then you had Lucas constantly telling him to reign it in, pull it back, second-guessing every acting choice he made in favor of being more restrained and circumspect. It's literally one of the only times I can remember Lucas ever taking a personal hand in an acting performance, and everything he's saying is "dial it back". And then, its poor Christensen who gets blamed for looking like a block of wood with a laser sword.

Now we don't have the footage from Christensen's original takes, but given their respective talent sets, I'd put money on Christensen having a better feel for what was "overacting" and what was "just right" than Lucas did.

GloatingSwine

2018-02-18, 12:59 PM

That's why everyone comes across so stilted in the first film, because Ray Park would ask about emotion, and the only response he'd get back was, and I quote, "Be evil." Usually, Lucas is simply unhelpful.

P. sure it was Peter Serafinowicz (the voice of Darth Maul) not Ray Park. He certainly tells that story about his recording session.

Actually the lightsabre batttle at the end of Phantom Menace is one of the only times in the prequel trilogy that actions convey any kind of character. The contrast between the restless pacing and jabbing at the forcefield of Maul and quiet meditation of Obi-Wan tells you more about them as characters than basically any other action or mode of action of any other character in the prequels.

Most of the rest of the time it's "add something interesting later with CGI".

McStabbington

2018-02-18, 01:20 PM

P. sure it was Peter Serafinowicz (the voice of Darth Maul) not Ray Park. He certainly tells that story about his recording session.

Actually the lightsabre batttle at the end of Phantom Menace is one of the only times in the prequel trilogy that actions convey any kind of character. The contrast between the restless pacing and jabbing at the forcefield of Maul and quiet meditation of Obi-Wan tells you more about them as characters than basically any other action or mode of action of any other character in the prequels.

Most of the rest of the time it's "add something interesting later with CGI".

Pretty sure you're right. Thanks on the correction.

But you're also right about the physical direction and stage acting. When it comes right down to it, the actors that have done best with Lucas are the ones who have immense natural charisma on their own, and can bring that charisma to bear even and in spite of Lucas' direction. Harrison Ford and Sir Alec Guiness in the original trilogy, and Ewen McGregor in the prequels. And in the case of the prequels, that was further hampered by the fact that Lucas, however much he may have been trying to show Jedi at the apex of their ability, nevertheless created dances that drained the ability of the actors to inform the characters through action. Say what you will about the stage blocking of the Bespin lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader, but it's clear at every point that Luke is going all-out, but Vader is toying with Luke, because Luke just isn't a threat. Vader's just gradually stepping up the danger in an attempt to get Luke to lose control, but the instant that Luke actually makes him angry by tagging him, Vader just ends the fight by literally disarming Luke in seconds. Both actors are really informing the characters in the course of the fight, something that the elaborate dances of the prequels didn't allow.

Bohandas

2018-02-18, 03:14 PM

It occurs to me... if Maul was so impatiemt to get past the forcefield, why didn't he just cut around or through the forcefield generator in the wall

factotum

2018-02-18, 04:31 PM

It occurs to me... if Maul was so impatiemt to get past the forcefield, why didn't he just cut around or through the forcefield generator in the wall

Because that probably wouldn't be any faster. We saw at the beginning that, while lightsabres *can* cut through an enormously thick blast door, it takes a while to do it. Also, it's one of the few moments of genuine tension in the entire movie, why would you *want* to cut it out?

Aedilred

2018-02-18, 05:53 PM

I think fundamentally the problem is that George Lucas has no idea how to tell a story.

This applies at almost every level of the prequel films. He squanders an entire film on The Phantom Menace, a movie which adds so little to the overarching plot that its events are probably less important than the title scroll in any of the films. We don't need to see the finding of Anakin, or Anakin as a child, or Anakin and Padme meeting, or Obi-Wan as a padawan, or Palpatine's rise to power which happens off-screen anyway. None of this really matters to Anakin's turn to the Dark Side. There is stuff in The Phantom Menace that could be used well, but none of it is. It's a total waste.

Then ten years of Anakin's career and character development happens off-screen. Attack of the Clones shows us the beginnings of Padme and Anakin's relationship. But it's so ineptly written that it's become a laughing stock. Meanwhile, characters act irrationally or without apparent motivation. Important plot points are rushed through off-screen. The character of Dooku, who initially presents himself as a voice of reason, one who literally tells Obi-Wan the bad guys' plot and presents himself as trying to stop it, could have been interesting: the sort of antihero extremist who provides a bridge between the well-intentioned but complacent Jedi Council and the overt, unashamed evil of the OT's Sidious and Vader. But that promise is lost within the running time of the film itself.

By the time we get to the third film, there is so much ground left to cover that inevitably it's impossible to do the transition justice. It tries, but there's too much material to cram into the movie, so it feels rushed and unconvincing.

The films, especially the second and third (the CGI in the first having dated badly in places), are pretty to look at, and it does feel at times as if the visuals have been prioritised over plot. Lucas has no restraint when it comes to use of CGI, which is not in itself damning, but often artists work better when constrained. Famously, one of the reasons Jaws is so good as a film is that the shark they were using was so bad they had to work around it and limit its time on screen. Similarly, I feel that perhaps the earlier films in some way benefited from the limitations of model-based special effects and tangible sets; that this forced Lucas to apply his mind creatively, perhaps seek outside help, and come up with something that worked. When he can do whatever he wants, he can go straight from A to Z without worrying too much about whether the other letters are in place - and frequently does.

And the screenplay is a shocker. Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Christopher Lee, Terence Stamp, Jimmy Smits - these are not bad actors. Even the much-maligned HC isn't a terrible actor, albeit he does have a limited range. But they're given so little to work with that it's almost impossible to deliver the lines with conviction and sincerity while keeping a straight face. McGregor just about manages it, albeit the mask slips once or twice; Neeson looks bored; Lee and MacDiarmaid compensate with ham. Stamp and Smits are given almost nothing to do. Poor Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen have to struggle through romantic dialogue that's sub-sophomoric. No wonder they have no chemistry. It's not a surprise that the most convincing romantic scene in the trilogy is completely wordless (and moreover has them in separate rooms). Had Lucas given the actors time to breathe rather than fill their scenes with inane waffle, it might have been sold better.

These are all problems common to the trilogy as a whole, which has a dismal reputation. The Phantom Menace wasn't universally panned at the time. We didn't know where it was going, and there was scope for it to be built on. It was the second film that retrospectively doomed the first, because once Episode II was out we could see clearly for the first time how pointless the first film was, and that its apparent mediocrity wasn't because we didn't "get" it or a one-off slump, but part of a wider pattern.

Strigon

2018-02-18, 07:05 PM

... The character of Dooku, who initially presents himself as a voice of reason, one who literally tells Obi-Wan the bad guys' plot and presents himself as trying to stop it, could have been interesting: the sort of antihero extremist who provides a bridge between the well-intentioned but complacent Jedi Council and the overt, unashamed evil of the OT's Sidious and Vader. But that promise is lost within the running time of the film itself.

What I find even worse about Dooku is the fact that, in the Clone Wars, it's never ever brought up again.
He's a very significant figure, but he's just a cartoonishly evil overlord. Everything he does is to get more power or to get one over on the Jedi, but not once did I ever see him with a real endgame. I certainly never got the feeling that his motivations were for the greater good, or that the ends justified the means.

Velaryon

2018-02-21, 12:26 PM

It's pretty much universally agreed that Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman lacked any on-screen chemistry, but can anyone familiar with more of Portman's work tell me whether she's done any convincing on-screen romance at all?

She didn't have much chemistry with Chris Hemsworth in the first two Thor films either. There was little if any romance in V For Vendetta, and I don't remember Your Highness well enough to recall whether there was any actual romance in between all the stoner jokes (I do remember liking her performance in that, though). Those are all the films of hers I can remember seeing, but from that sample it seems entirely possible to me that she's not particularly skilled at romantic roles anyway.

Psyren

2018-02-21, 12:59 PM

Peelee

2018-02-21, 01:35 PM

It's pretty much universally agreed that Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman lacked any on-screen chemistry, but can anyone familiar with more of Portman's work tell me whether she's done any convincing on-screen romance at all?

Léon: The Professional To quote Psyren, hey, you never said it had to be healthy!

For reals, though, that was really creepy. She did a fantastic job.

Velaryon

2018-02-21, 08:35 PM

Thanks! I haven't seen either of those films, so wasn't sure. I don't think "healthy" is particularly necessary here, though of course exactly how those on-screen relationships are unhealthy might affect how much they count, I guess. I dunno.

Vinyadan

2018-02-21, 08:41 PM

Does Hotel Chevalier count?

McStabbington

2018-02-22, 12:33 AM

I don't know about romance, but the general through line for Portman's acting history is that the more involved the director, the better she performs. She can be an Academy-Award winning actress, or she can have all the charisma and talent of a cinder block; it's entirely up the director.

Given Lucas' directing tendencies, Portman may have been the worst possible casting choice for Amidala, though it's doubtful that there were many other big-name actresses in that age range who could have done much with the role in any eventuality.

Olinser

2018-02-22, 04:54 AM

It was actually worse than that. 90% of the time, Lucas provides next to no direction whatsoever, because he feels that the actors are better at understanding what emotions are present in the scene, and how to convey them, than he does. That's why everyone comes across so stilted in the first film, because Ray Park would ask about emotion, and the only response he'd get back was, and I quote, "Be evil." Usually, Lucas is simply unhelpful.

In poor Hayden Christensen's case, however, Lucas did take a direct hand in directing him. Only his direction was to make it like a romantic epic from the 40's. You know, when you had to be extremely circumspect about how you portrayed your romance because of the Hays Code.

Now, in the 40's you could kind of work around it because of the natural charisma of the actors. Casablanca is a fantastic romance precisely because Ingrid Bergman had not simply off-the-charts beauty, but off-the-charts control of her facial muscles as well. She could sell "in love" with just a quiver of her voice and a tear in her eye (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vThuwa5RZU). But in this case, not only is expecting Christensen to act as well as Ingrid Bergman asking a bit too much of an extremely new and raw actor, but then you had Lucas constantly telling him to reign it in, pull it back, second-guessing every acting choice he made in favor of being more restrained and circumspect. It's literally one of the only times I can remember Lucas ever taking a personal hand in an acting performance, and everything he's saying is "dial it back". And then, its poor Christensen who gets blamed for looking like a block of wood with a laser sword.

Now we don't have the footage from Christensen's original takes, but given their respective talent sets, I'd put money on Christensen having a better feel for what was "overacting" and what was "just right" than Lucas did.

Lucas definitely isn't that great of a director, but Christensen is simply not a very good actor. There's a reason he's had very few main roles since Star Wars and most of the few roles he's gotten have been in bad movies - where he turned in bad performances.

Bohandas

2018-02-22, 01:00 PM

Strigon

2018-02-22, 01:11 PM

Malifice

2018-02-22, 01:25 PM

And those are just rebuttals to what you liked about the movie. There are plenty other issues I have, including (but not limited to) the complete lack of character growth for any character.*Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon end the same people they were at the start. Same for Anakin, even though he's introduced only halfway through the movie.

I watch that movie a hundred times and I still can't figure out who the protagonist is.

I thought it may be Obi wan, but he spent pretty much the entire second half of the movie in the Naboo spaceship.

It's not Anakin; we don't meet him until half way through the movie. We don't find out Padme is Padme until the end so it can't be her. Qui gon is simply the mentors who dies at the end, so it isn't him.

In episode 4 you are left in no doubt who the protagonist is. Luke skywalker. Ditto episode 7. Rey.

It's possible to make a great movie without a key protagonist. It's also possible to have a movie with an ensemble list of protagonists (Avengers or Justice league). But it's bloody hard to do well (Pulp fiction is probably the best example). But there really aren't that many examples.

Malifice

2018-02-22, 01:30 PM

Lucas definitely isn't that great of a director, but Christensen is simply not a very good actor. There's a reason he's had very few main roles since Star Wars and most of the few roles he's gotten have been in bad movies - where he turned in bad performances.

He was really good in Life is a House. Of course he was playing a moody angsty teenager in it.

I'm prepared to give actors in Star Wars movies at fair bit of leeway. Not only do they get typecast heavily afterwards and and often struggle to find work, there were some very good actors (McGregor and Portman) in those movies.

Even Natalie Portman looked like a goose with the dialogue she was given, and having to talk to creatures on a blue screen, with George Lucas saying 'do it again; but with more emotion!'.

Dacia Brabant

2018-02-22, 02:33 PM

Velaryon

2018-02-24, 07:12 PM

He was really good in Life is a House. Of course he was playing a moody angsty teenager in it.

I'm prepared to give actors in Star Wars movies at fair bit of leeway. Not only do they get typecast heavily afterwards and and often struggle to find work, there were some very good actors (McGregor and Portman) in those movies.

Even Natalie Portman looked like a goose with the dialogue she was given, and having to talk to creatures on a blue screen, with George Lucas saying 'do it again; but with more emotion!'.

I'm not familiar with that movie, but the bolded part makes sense to me. Christensen's best work in the prequels comes after he falls to the Dark Side. He does anger and hate pretty darn well. If that had happened earlier in the third film (or better yet, at the end of the second), then Revenge of the Sith would have been a far stronger film.

Metahuman1

2018-02-24, 11:24 PM

En, I dunno, there's a bit in the third film were Padme tells him she's expecting for the first time. Watch his face in that scene. He does a marvelous job of processing everything you'd expect, every emotion that a person should feel, and expressing it, with out even needing to speak.

FreddyNoNose

2018-02-25, 01:07 AM

Going to take a guess that the vast majority of people who hate TPM is because they watched it.

haha

Aedilred

2018-02-25, 07:44 AM

Phantom Menace itself is probably the best movie of the prequel trilogy. Taken alone it has few problems (other than the fact that the war droids talk among themselves deapite theoretically being puppeteered by a single computer). Look at this very thread; you're all talking about episodes 2 and 3. However, it does kind of set the other two movies up to fail by being basically a standalone and leaving the entire narrative load on the other two films

I would still say that the third is the best of the three. It has clunky moments and troubled pacing but I still think it's alright. The second veers between two (relative) extremes. When it's good, is better than the Phantom Menace. It's just that the bad moments, of whihc there are many, are so crashingly terrible that they're all anyone can remember.

The Phantom Menace, meanwhile, is so jaw-droppingly bland and forgettable for most of its length that it's difficult to isolate specific criticism, and there's only so long you can talk about its general flaws unless you're writing an academic essay. That much of the attention is focussed on the second and third, I think, is because they feel more like missed opportunities, and hence the flaws feel more significant. The Phantom Menace was a car crash from the start.

But in summation, anyway, things that are wrong with The Phantom Menace:

There is no identifiable protagonist or antagonist
The plot is over-complicated, boring, and badly explained
The substance of it adds nothing to the overall story of Star Wars
Apparently recognising the above on some level, it tries too hard to tie itself into the overall Star Wars story
It's too long
It writes itself into corners and has to rescue itself with obvious contrivances
The acting is almost universally dismal
The fight scenes are over-choreographed and unconvincing
The CGI has dated very badly
The entire premise of showing us Anakin as a child is wrong-headed
Too much attention is paid to the Gungans and they are very annoying
An uneasy sense of racist - and specifically antisemitic - caricatures

And that's just off the top of my head. It is not a good movie. I think it's worth noting too that relatively few of the criticisms above apply to the second and third (over-length and quality of the acting being the two which are easiest to sustain).

Bohandas

2018-02-25, 02:03 PM

Bohandas

2018-02-25, 02:05 PM

An uneasy sense of racist - and specifically antisemitic - caricatures

I don't really see that. I mean yes, Watto's body is mostly nose but by the standards of Star Wars antagonists he's pretty darn low on the greed and conspiracy fronts, so I don't think he actually falls into the "antisemitic stereotype" archetype. He's just a guy with a big nose.

S@tanicoaldo

2018-02-25, 09:02 PM

Leewei

2018-02-27, 11:24 AM

What didn't work:

Anakin Skywalker's immaculate conception, enormous midichlorian (stupid in their own right) count, inability to fail at anything he attempted (Marty Stu character), and poorly-defined role as the "Chosen One". Basically, Anakin was supposed to be Space Jesus, and couldn't sell it.

JarJar Binks' idiocy, which by rights should have gotten him killed a few times during the movie.

What did work:

John Williams music

Costumes, sets, practical effects

Fight choreography, especially Darth Maul

Peelee

2018-02-27, 02:05 PM

What didn't work:

Anakin Skywalker's... inability to fail at anything he attempted (Marty Stu character)

I'll actually argue this with you. Anakin didn't have the inability to fail anything he attempted so much as he has the inability to achieve anything he attempted. At least, through his own choices; his successes are not due to his own conscious action.

He doesn't blow up the control ship in Episode I because he's an excellent pilot and calculated the tactical weakness, he accidentally flies into the ship and crashes, then hits the wrong button and blows it all up. He loses the assassin trying to kill Padme in Ep. II, and then flubs rescuing Ob-Wan. In Ep III, he explicitly turns to the Dark Side in order to save Padme, and then actually strangles her himself very shortly after. He's a consummate screw-up. The only time he's ever competent is when he's with the Emperor. No Palpatine, Dooku chops his hand off. Palpatine is around, he defeats the Count neatly. Disarms Mace Windu when Palps is around, get horribly mangled by Obi-Wan when he's not.

Anakin... kind of sucked. Now, that's not any better than being uber-competent, but at least Mary Sues can accomplish things by their own agency. Annie couldn't even do that.

Dr.Samurai

2018-02-27, 02:13 PM

I agree with Peelee on Anakin. I would only differ to say that Anakin didn't suck generally. He was pretty gifted among the Jedi and could accomplish quite a bit. He was on his way to becoming Master at a young age. But... those freaking Sith man. They screw everything up.

Leewei

2018-02-27, 02:41 PM

[Anakin] doesn't blow up the control ship in Episode I because he's an excellent pilot and calculated the tactical weakness, he accidentally flies into the ship and crashes, then hits the wrong button and blows it all up. <snip>My critique is only for Episode I; later episodes can be discussed elsewhere.

The unlikely destruction of the droid army by Anakin's botch was something I chalked up to him being the "chosen one". Thinking it over, I guess Mary Sue wasn't a good way for me to describe this. Really, it's much more in the way of deus ex machina, or perhaps an ***-pull on the part of Lucas.

Skywalker's creation of C3PO from scrap parts and his pod racing both strain credulity. The notion of his immaculate conception is nearly comical.

Peelee

2018-02-27, 03:09 PM

My critique is only for Episode I; later episodes can be discussed elsewhere.

The unlikely destruction of the droid army by Anakin's botch was something I chalked up to him being the "chosen one". Thinking it over, I guess Mary Sue wasn't a good way for me to describe this. Really, it's much more in the way of deus ex machina, or perhaps an ***-pull on the part of Lucas.

Fair enough to limit it to TPM. And yes, his winning the battle was entirely due to him being the "chosen one," but that still doesn't negate that even then he doesn't get anything accomplished through his own agency. He wins because the universe wants him to win. Contrast this to another "chosen one," Neo in The Matrix (also assume there was only one Matrix move. Good life advice in general, in any event). Neo is the "chosen one," but he doesn't believe he is; he's unsure. This is reinforced when the Oracle tells him that he has the gift, but he's waiting for something. When Trinity gives her speech, he realizes what he was waiting for, and realizes he is The One. Once he believes it, he also believes he can manipulate the Matrix, and then he manifests his powers. He needed the kick-start, but once he believed, he still exerted his own agency. Conversely, Anakin just has stuff happen to him. In the podrace, for instance he could have simply won based on skill; he clearly had the fastest pod, considering he was able to catch up despite the other racers having such a massive lead, but even then his speed eventually just matches Sebulba's (we'll ignore for the moment why he matches speed right after catching up, despite that he can clearly go faster). At this point, it's between him and Sebulba. Both have the opportunity to win. Anakin has the opportunity to do something - anything - that can give him the lead. But he doesn't do anything; Sebulba rams him, causing their racers to intertwine, and eventually causing Sebulba's to break. It's not a kick-start so much as it is a self-sabotage on Sebulba's part. Anakin doesn't end up winning the race, he ends up being the race. He's the only podracer with a vehicle at the end. He could have gotten out and walked across the finish line if he wanted, because all the other racers destroyed each other. He didn't win; everyone else just lost.

Ass-pull does pretty well cover Anakin's achievements; we're told that he's amazing, and then we're shown that he's one lucky SOB. It doesn't really match up.

factotum

2018-02-27, 05:11 PM

Peelee

2018-02-27, 05:33 PM

Yeah, but in the Star Wars universe, is someone lucky, or are they just being thrown a few bones by the Force? It could be argued that Anakin seemingly having all his victories gifted to him is down to his Force sensitivity rather than blind luck.

It could be argued incredibly well, in fact, but such argument doesn't change the fact that said bones being thrown are not a result of his agency. The Force helped Luke blow the Death Star because he put his faith in it, concentrated on it, and chose to let it control his actions but also obey his commands, as Obi-Wan put it. The Force helped Anakin blow the Droid Control Ship because he tried spinning, that's a good trick!

Amazon

2018-02-27, 06:29 PM

He rolled a natural 20. :smallbiggrin:

deuterio12

2018-02-27, 08:33 PM

Anakin Skywalker's immaculate conception, enormous midichlorian (stupid in their own right) count, inability to fail at anything he attempted (Marty Stu character), and poorly-defined role as the "Chosen One". Basically, Anakin was supposed to be Space Jesus, and couldn't sell it.

Well, to be fair Anakin would turn out to be super evil general Darth Vader who literally butchers jedi kids for dinner. I see it more as the force trying to tell Obi-Wan that the kid's bad news.:smalltongue:

Olinser

2018-02-27, 09:21 PM

It could be argued incredibly well, in fact, but such argument doesn't change the fact that said bones being thrown are not a result of his agency. The Force helped Luke blow the Death Star because he put his faith in it, concentrated on it, and chose to let it control his actions but also obey his commands, as Obi-Wan put it. The Force helped Anakin blow the Droid Control Ship because he tried spinning, that's a good trick!

Not to mention Luke was already reasonably skilled as a pilot (and exposited on-screen in ANH prior to him actually getting into a cockpit), and actually had to be saved by another pilot in the duration of the run because he couldn't shake a single TIE on his tail. The Force just amplified his already existing skill when he was already focused on accomplishing a specific task, and only after he consciously chose to trust it (and while the time period isn't clear, he DID have at least some explicit period of Jedi instruction from Obi-Wan on the trip to Alderaan.

Anakin had no experience in anything but a pod racer which used completely different controls, had no training shown, NOTHING he did for the entire space sequence had anything to do with any kind of skill or ability. He blundered around 'SPINNING GOOD TRICK LUL', got shot down, somehow crashed through the shields onto the single critical enemy ship he had no idea was important, and ACCIDENTALLY blew it up by pushing the wrong button.

It's the difference between somebody familiar with guns deciding that they need to kill an evil person and the Force helping them make a near-impossible long distance shot, and somebody walking down the street, tripping, and accidentally dropping a piano on the head of an evil person.