A new, amazing, thorough and hilarious critique of The Phantom Menace

Man, I have not seen my DVDs in years!

That thing was hilarious in spots. It also was pretty perceptive as to what went wrong with TPM.

Pure genius! More well thought out and better written than the movie it's critiquing. Like Sam, I haven't watched my DVDs since basically I bought them (and yes, I saw them for what they were at the time but with no OOT I had to satisfy my Star Wars on DVD jones with the prequels).

I remember some of the argument PT defenders had back then: fans of the original were too old, too attached to the past, weren't the target audience, didn't understand the levels of complexity in TPM, oh, and it was aimed at kids. Time would vindicate the film.

Well guess what? It's ten years since TPM was released. Many of my friends now have kids who are at the age I was when the OOT was out and not a single one of them has PT toys or likes the PT films. It's not that the kids don't like the PT in the way that we loved the OOT. It's that they don't even register the PT as good films worth watching.

Time hasn't vindicated the film. Time has exposed it for what it was. A poorly written, poorly directed, and poorly acted (despite having three top-notch leads in Portman, MacGregor and Neeson) film being masked by a lot of special effects that the creator himself, twenty years prior, said should never get in the way of a good story.

And it only took a psychopathic murderer to encapsulate it all and put it on YouTube! What a great world we live in!

And in all seriousness, despite the goofy parts of the documentary, it is spot on in its analysis of what makes genre films great and its exposure of how TPM fails to provide any of those elements.

Wow it's 10 years already? We are getting old. No special event organized by the Lucasfilm for the tenth anniversary? Aren't you going to celebrate the anniversary?

 Well, at least The Clone Wars TV series is good!

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Well my anecdotal evidence is different than yours. My own kids love TPM and watch it quite often. And all the kids at my daughter's school (particularly the boys) love Star Wars, particularly the PT.

FAR more entertaining than the film itself.  I had really forgotten how awful it is.

I only sat through the first few minutes of the commentary. I couldn't stand his goofy voice. I still like the Star Wars story and I enjoy TPM. I agree that it could have done quite well with out Jarjar though. Padme's speach stating that "I was not elected to watch my people die while this is discussed in a committee" is in my opinion more powerful than "You can't handle the truth" (but is far less useful to quote. :)) I think any fantasy movie can be picked apart fairly easily if one spends the time doing those things. Look at how many times Froto dies in LOTR or how many time the kids in HP get into a situation and a new spell conveniently saves them.

The kids around here could give a fig about either trilogy.  But man, they love the cartoon Clone Wars

Star Wars is a very big deal for kids, but it is the cartoon they know.

If it was 1999, this would be funny. Since it's 2009, it's just sad that there's someone whose life is so empty that they spent hours of their life making a video to cry about a decade old movie. If someone didn't like it, they didn't like it but it's time to move on and find something that they do like.

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Then why does my 3 year old boy want to recreate the TPM duel every night before he goes to bed?! LOL

Bad parenting?? 

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Touche. :) However, and trust me on this one, I did not influence him one bit in his love for TPM. I let him watch it and it naturally grew on him. :)

Let him watch it? 

This is about how I feel. There's no amount of complaining or critiquing that's going to change it. It is what it is. You either like it or you don't.

I've been around HTF long enough to know that for some people, there's never a good time to ridicule the PT--not now, not 5 years ago, not 10 years ago. 

Same here.

The analysis videos are bang on.

I didn't say it was warranted or unwarranted. I said it's sad that someone wasted that much of their life worrying about a movie that they didn't like when they could be focusing on something that they do like. I have no problem wasting my own life (look at my post count) but at least, I generally focus on what I like rather than obsessing about a movie that I didn't like for a decade.

If I just made a 70 minute video complaining about The Matrix or The Blair Witch Project or Eyes Wide Shut or Mickey Blue Eyes or any other movie from 1999, you'd most likely think that I needed to move on and you'd be right.

i was racking my brain trying to figure out what cartoon/movie/spoof voice that sounded like, and it wasn't til the last part that i realized it sounded like Ryan Philippe's actual voice :P

But this completely misses the point.

One, I think he had a blast making it, and doing something that makes you happy is never a waste of time. Two, the end product was quality, something that he could be proud of (whether one agrees with his premise or not). And three, I don't know if it was his intention or desire to get Hollywood's attention for perhaps a future career, but he certainly achieved that (read the part about who recommended the reviews). He got more Hollywood insiders attention with this one film than most aspiring filmmakers turning in dozens of half-baked scripts! If that was his end, this was far from a waste of his time and was actually constructive towards a career goal! And even if it wasn't his intention, it might still do him some good.

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Ditto.

Chuck's point I can totally see. We all can present anecdotal evidence on whether kids still love Star Wars, but there are certain things we can't deny. The general consensus of the quality of the first two films is one of them (see the scores on IMDB with the massive amount of people who ranked, hardly a small statistical sample, or heck, just walk down the street and ask someone ). The second is that SW is still selling to kids (see the presence of toys in places like Toys R Us and Wal-mart). It's more likely due to the Clone Wars which from what I hear is popular with kids.

last week, I attended star wars in concert with 15,000 other people. we heard live music and saw images from all six films. whether those 15,000 cared about the PT or not, the PT certainly hasn't dampered enthusiasm for star wars in general. so don't overestimate the impact that the PT has had on star wars in general.

Not true at all. I too grew up on "Star Wars" and nothing that was done in the prequels spoiled those memories, or did anything to "taint" the original stories to me. I can still watch them as a self contained piece. I never let the "Droids" or "Ewoks" cartoons, the Holiday special, or the two crappy Ewok TV movies spoil it for me either (not to mention the scads of terribly written novels that actually includes the characters I love).

Or, to put it another way, I've loved "Spider-Man" most of my life. Loved the first two films, and despised the third. That third movie in no way diminishes my love for the first two or interferes with my enjoyment of them after the fact. I'm not going to go on and on about how the third one got so much wrong -- it is what it is. I just concentrate on the things I do like.

I agree we shouldn't overestimate how much the PT may or may not have soured people on the OOT, but you also can't draw too much of a conclusion from that concert's attendance for a couple of reasons:

1.Was there an option to watch the concert with only the OOT? If not, then it was the only option and there was no way for people to register their opinion on the quality of the films by attending only a concert with the OOT vs. only the PT vs. all six. I detest the PT but I'd probably attend that concert, because...

2. The music was never a problem with the PT. Couple that with the fact that you only had to watch images from the PT, sparing you from the "whole awfulness" (my words, my opinion) of the PT movies. That's why trailers to some crappy films look so good - you take exciting music, show clips and montages, and voila!

John Williams' score is so great, it wouldn't be hard to pick and choose clips and snippets from the PT to put together a montage that would stir and excite people. Heck with that music someone could probably put together a stirring and exciting montage from Battlefield Earth and Alien vs. Predator!

What time has done for me, rather than vindicate the PT, it's hardened the line in my mind between the PT and OOT. I still love the OOT and in fact, in my mind the PT doesn't really exist as part of the canon for me, so there is no negative effect for me between the PT and OOT. I will watch the OOT, and I don't ever watch the PT.

But we're starting to stray from the thread topic which is the great piece of satirical comedy that was the video review Sam posted. I'm getting overwhelmingly positive responses from my friends regarding it (none are HT/HTF guys but they're all in their thirties or early forties).

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