Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) (1 Viewer)

[TravisR]

He was just stating the order in which he watches them. But *I* agree with you!

Ha! Since everyone was listing the order they liked the movies, I assumed Joseph was as well.

 

[RobertR]

I always felt that George Lucas was going for a 1940's type feel to the dialogue, in the way it was filmed and the whole love story aspect, i personally liked those parts of the movie and John Williams love theme score, it had an old style feel to it, the actors did their best with what they had to work with and for me Attack Of The Clones is the best of the prequels.

Whatever Lucas was going for, I thought he failed miserably. None of his prequel dialogue (or the delivery) holds a candle to great 40s movies. I have to laugh when I think of him saying that his intent with Revenge of the Sith was for people to think of it as Titanic in Space.

 

[SamT]

First, I have to say that I think Attack of the Clones is the worst of the Prequel series. I think The Phantom Menace is better and gives you more the "Star Wars" feel. You get moments in the movie where you can use your imagination to imagine things, get stimulated. That's the key point. Movies that just show you everything on screen are the ones that fail. They don't engage you to imagine things more than what you see on screen.

My problem in TPM is not Jar Jar. It's everyone. The Jedi are as annoying as Jar Jar. Some examples. Do you remember Obi-Wan saying "Why do I get the sense that we have picked up another pathetic life-form" referring to Anakin? I mean really? Don't you see how bad that is? Are you in the Jedi program or Hitler's youth program? And there are many examples of the Jedi behaving really bad in TPM.

 

[FoxyMulder]

Do you remember Obi-Wan saying "Why do I get the sense that we have picked up another pathetic life-form" referring to Anakin? I mean really? Don't you see how bad that is? Are you in the Jedi program or Hitler's youth program? And there are many examples of the Jedi behaving really bad in TPM.

It all makes sense to me, the Jedi had become arrogant and complacent, that was their downfall and Palpatine used it to his advantage.

 

[RobertR]

It all makes sense to me, the Jedi had become arrogant and complacent

I didn't want to see the Jedi as arrogant, complacent, clueless assholes. I wanted to see the noble knights who were the guardians of peace and justice in the Republic that Lucas wrote about in the first movie but then basically threw in the trash.

 

[Jari K]

To me the main problem with The Phantom Menace was that it looked and felt so empty and shallow. Lucas went so deep into CGI (which wasn't THAT great at the time anyway) and "digital" that he kinda forgot everything else. He made the movie with "producer's mentality". What we got is a glorified CGI demo at the time.And Jar Jar. Nobody - and I mean nobody - told Lucas that, er, maybe this character doesn't work? Amazing. I guess he was surrounded with yes-men and people who just did what Lucas told them to do. Nobody challenged him and it shows in the final product.I actually have DVD-R of the Japanese LD somewhere. More:http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-four.html

 

[FoxyMulder]

To me the main problem with The Phantom Menace was that it looked and felt so empty and shallow. Lucas went so deep into CGI (which wasn't THAT great at the time anyway) and "digital" that he kinda forgot everything else. He made the movie with "producer's mentality". What we got is a glorified CGI demo at the time.And Jar Jar. Nobody - and I mean nobody - told Lucas that, er, maybe this character doesn't work? Amazing. I guess he was surrounded with yes-men and people who just did what Lucas told them to do. Nobody challenged him and it shows in the final product.I actually have DVD-R of the Japanese LD somewhere. More:http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-four.html

You forgot to add the most important thing to your post.............In my opinion.

I liked The Phantom Menace, it was shot on film, not digital, a brief sequence was filmed using digital cameras, ( Midi-Chlorians scene ) the rest was 35mm film, not that you would know that from the de-grained blu ray release.

I'll bet you any money you want that the kids and teenagers who saw The Phantom Menace on release day laughed at the Jar Jar Binks character, i bet you they enjoyed the film, it seems some of the original trilogy fans who grew up with those films just hate the prequels, count me out of the hate, hate just leads to the dark side, i like the originals and prequels.

 

[Jari K]

"To me the main problem with..." is not good enough for you? ( With "digital" I mainly mean the CGI-heavy look of the film. It looked kinda "empty" to my eyes.)

 

[TravisR]

I'll bet you any money you want that the kids and teenagers who saw The Phantom Menace on release day laughed at the Jar Jar Binks character...

I remember the crowd exploding with laughter when Jar Jar said "Exsqueeze me" and I was wondering why a joke stolen from Wayne's World was so funny to people. That being said, I do think some of the gags involving Jar Jar are funny like the visual joke that must have been pulled from a silent movie of Jar Jar hiding underneath a cart during the land battle, it pulls away and he's just laying on the ground or when Tarpals says that they can't give up and Jar Jar immediately surrenders and, since I'm lowbrow, he gets hit in the nuts a couple of times and I always get a chuckle out of that.

 

[SamT]

like the visual joke that must have been pulled from a silent movie of Jar Jar hiding underneath a cart during the land battle, it pulls away and he's just laying on the ground or when Tarpals says that they can't give up and Jar Jar immediately surrenders

Funny I find those jokes some of his worst but I do enjoy some of his other stuff but they are very little.

I mean Jar Jar is a General and he immediately surrenders? They should have tried him for treason!

 

[TravisR]

Funny I find those jokes some of his worst but I do enjoy some of his other stuff but they are very little.

I mean Jar Jar is a General and he immediately surrenders? They should have tried him for treason!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they're brilliant comedic moments. It's more that they're so silly that they make me laugh. Unfunny Jar Jar jokes to me are the "Exsqueeze me" line or when he gets farted on by the horse thing (I'm pretty sure it's called an eopie).

 

[SamT]

he gets hit in the nuts a couple of times and I always get a chuckle out of that.

Surprisingly I like that bit with the Pit Droid too.

 

[SilverWook]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they're brilliant comedic moments. It's more that they're so silly that they make me laugh. Unfunny Jar Jar jokes to me are the "Exsqueeze me" line or when he gets farted on by the horse thing (I'm pretty sure it's called an eopie).

And Lucas had to have Obi Wan ride one up the the moisture farm at the end of Episode III. Big emotional scene, and I'm having flashbacks to that damn thing farting on Jar Jar.

 

[TravisR]

And Lucas had to have Obi Wan ride one up the the moisture farm at the end of Episode III. Big emotional scene, and I'm having flashbacks to that damn thing farting on Jar Jar.

Thanks, now I'll never be able to not think about that when I watch that scene.

 

[SamT]

Wow, is that why Obi-Wan is touching his nose/beard at the end of Episode III ?!! (and by the way I always hated that bit)

 

[joshEH]

I didn't want to see the Jedi as arrogant, complacent, clueless assholes. I wanted to see the noble knights who were the guardians of peace and justice in the Republic that Lucas wrote about in the first movie but then basically threw in the trash.

To be sure, there's really nothing in Alec Guinness's dialogue in ANH to indicate that the Jedi weren't arrogant, complacent assholes by the time the final end came, necessarily -- he mentions that they'd been around for 25,000 years or so, but going by the films, it was clearly in those final few decades or thereabouts that they became ripe for a Sith ass-kicking.

Very likely their glory days were long in the past.

 

[RobertR]

To be sure, there's really nothing in Alec Guinness's dialogue in ANH to indicate that the Jedi weren't arrogant, complacent assholes by the time the final end came

There was nothing in the Obi-Wan dialogue to suggest that they were, either. In fact, Obi Wan, as the personification of a Jedi in the first film (and Luke in the third), was NOT such a person. It was Lucas' choice to junk that depiction in the prequels, a choice I think was a poor one.

 

[Edwin-S]

I've heard that Jake Lloyd still generates a lot of fan hate as "the guy who ruined Star Wars". I heard somewhere that he stopped attending SW conventions due to the vitriol that fans would pour on him. Is any of that true? If it is, there are a lot of fans who seem to have directed their hate to the wrong person. Jake Lloyd neither wrote or directed SW:TPM. That was all Lucas's fault. It was also Lucas's fault if Lloyd did a "bad" acting job, because ultimately it is the director who is going to "sign off" that the acting was acceptable by not reshooting scenes that were supposedly poorly acted.

Also, if a 9 year old kid could be held responsible by fans for the the way SW:TPM turned out then what was Hayden Christianson's excuse, since he arguably was even worse than Lloyd? At least Lloyd pretty well acted the part as I would expect a kid to act in the circumstances. From a story perspective, it would have been a game to Anakin Skywalker at that age. Smart or not, a kid isn't really going to understand the ramifications, political or otherwise, of the situation he found himself in. It would still basically be a game: a grand adventure.

SW:TPM isn't a very good movie; however, as far as the prequels go, I would watch TPM before ever watching any of the other two atrocities that make up that trilogy. At least, TPM had the pod race to partially redeem itself. I can't think of anything redeeming in the other two films at all.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I've heard that Jake Lloyd still generates a lot of fan hate as "the guy who ruined Star Wars". I heard somewhere that he stopped attending SW conventions due to the vitriol that fans would pour on him. Is any of that true?

Wow, I hope not. It's one thing if he doesn't want to go -- but it would be really sad if he didn't feel welcomed there. Whether haters like it or not, Jake Lloyd was closer to George Lucas and Star Wars than they'll ever be.

The only time I would ever feel justified in criticizing an actor like that is if they refused to return to a role that was their signature role, and in doing so, came off as disrespectful to the fanbase and those who helped make them famous. The closest I can think of this recently is Christopher Eccleston refusing to participate in the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special (even though other previous Doctors returned) -- but I'm not personally filled with hate and I'd never go out of my way to make him feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. He didn't like doing Doctor Who, so he didn't return, and it would have been really great for the show if he came back for a day, but he didn't and life goes on. It's a shame he didn't feel "the tug of history" calling, but like it or not, for some people, sometimes a job is just a job. And that's taking us off-topic, sorry for that... I'm just saying, I'm finding it hard to find a scenario in which that kind of hatred towards an actor is justified.

It's not as if Jake Lloyd (or Hayden Christensen, or anyone else for that matter), mangled the beautiful Shakespearean text that they were handed. They did the best they could with dialogue that rarely sounds like things people actually say to each other, under the direction of someone who by most accounts was more interested in the visuals than the individual performances. The prequels are an interesting look at which actors can do a good job with minimum direction and minimal sets to help their performances, and who needs more. I thought Natalie Portman was very wooden in the prequels, and I think she was equally lackluster in the Thor movies. Put her in a film that's no-bluescreen, no-effects, and she's much better. Ewan McGregor, on the other hand, I thought he was fantastic in the prequels, and pretty much always delivers a good performance whether it's on a $100 million movie or a $1 movie. (Or maybe everything he says just sounds better cause of the accent?)

 

[TravisR]

To be sure, there's really nothing in Alec Guinness's dialogue in ANH to indicate that the Jedi weren't arrogant, complacent assholes by the time the final end came, necessarily -- he mentions that they'd been around for 25,000 years or so, but going by the films, it was clearly in those final few decades or thereabouts that they became ripe for a Sith ass-kicking.

Very likely their glory days were long in the past.

Not to mention that if they weren't at least partially undone by thinking that nothing could touch them, how else did two guys manage to kill nearly all of a group that was large enough to be considered "the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic"?

I've heard that Jake Lloyd still generates a lot of fan hate as "the guy who ruined Star Wars". I heard somewhere that he stopped attending SW conventions due to the vitriol that fans would pour on him. Is any of that true?

I saw him at a comic book convention a few years ago and he seemed to have a steady line. I wasn't going to pay for his autograph but as I walked by, people seemed to be cool to him and vice versa. If someone wants to go on the internet and scream that a child ruined a movie, that's fine (I guess) but you have to be a real douchebag to walk up to a fellow human being and say something that dumb to their face.