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Rewatching The Phantom Menace after 10+ years

Discussion in 'Prequel Trilogy' started by Skaro, Nov 19, 2014.

  1. Skaro

    Skaro Clone

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    Hello there peeps, first time poster on these boards. I'm not exactly a hardcore Star Wars fan, but far more a casual viewer. I've got two buddies who are rather into Star Wars and Star Trek respectively (their disagreements can be hilarious at times), I go with these guys to the movies when a new Star Wars or Star Trek movie is released (last movie Star Trek into Darkness).

    Right now I'm stuck at home with the flu, my SW friend dropped off his Star Wars complete saga box to help me through the day (provided I don't sneeze on them). So I figured, let's watch it again and come in with a fresh perspective. Note that I know very little about the expanded universe, I'm going purely by the movies here.

    So let's get started:


    Episode I: The Phantom Menace

    Intro and thoughts:
    I get that many people don't like this one, even I was rather disappointed when this movie hit the theatres. Watching this movie got me thinking, there are more kid friendly aspects to this movie then the other ones. My guess here is that George Lucas went into this movie thinking that many of the original Star Wars fans would go to this movie with their (young) kids. A nice gesture, but I think that the story suffers far too much because of this.

    Story:
    I think that the story is rather disjointed, most notably the Trade Federation and their blockade make no sense whatsoever. I'm guessing that the Trade Federation is part of the Republic and have the Supreme chancellor in their pocket (judging from Palpatine's statements). There is simply no political or financial gain for them to do all this, their agreement with Palpatine was rather vague at best. The logical course of action would have been to cease trade with the Republic out of protest but show some goodwill by allowing things like medical supplies, there is no reason to target Naboo when it's the senate that screwed them over.

    Now the part with Palpatine pushing for a vote of no confidence does make sense for him to get into power, the way he got it doesn't.

    It's clear that the Jedi were sent to negotiate since they are a neutral party (I think), trying to kill them instead of negotiating should have raised a red flag immediatly.

    Enough about trade and taxes, let's go to Tatooine. The podraces seem to me like a extension of Luke Skywalker's landspeeder, it's a nice expansion to what I remember as a largely empty and boring planet. Getting a rare part for a ship seems a bit excessive to me when they could have just sold their ship and rented a ride back to Corusant (this was how Luke met Han Solo in Ep 4 IIRC).

    Now back to Corusant, the Jedi debate way too much when they should be out fighting crime and helping those in need (that's atleast how I always thought the Jedi would be). Yoda's prediction was right here, they should have seen the Jedi massacre coming. After that we get the aforementioned vote of no confidence and we're back to Naboo.

    The action in this pretty fun, only having Anakin blow up the control ship was a bit too much. I think that this stems from the fact that Anakin was mentioned to be a good pilot in the original trilogy. Now the fight with Darth Maul is one of the best in the series, wel executed and fun to watch.

    So yeah, the story could have been better.


    Characters:
    Anakin Skywalker:
    I think that the kid actor did a decent job here, so I won't be laying into him. They made Anakin way too young for this movie. They missed a golden opportunity here by making Anakin the same age as Padme/Amidala and having him fly them to Corusant and later through the blockade. I also never got the vibe that Darth Vader was all that techsavvy in the original trilogy, I'll believe that he can make fieldrepairs but not build C-3PO in his spare time.

    Qui-Gon Jinn:
    Liam Neeson does a pretty good job here, I think that he was cast well for this role. My SW friend always thought that the story would have worked better if it was revealed that he was actually Anakin's dad but kept his affair hidden so he wouldn't have been booted out the Jedi. I kinda agree with him.

    Obi-Wan:
    They couldn't have gotten a better actor for this one, Ewan McGregor was excellent in Trainspotting and he's really good in this movie. Love the fact that we got to see Obi Wan fight while in his prime. No complaints about this one.

    Amidala:
    She does here job pretty well as a prototype Leia, I guess that this is what they were going for with her character. It's nice that she went with Qui-Gon to learn about poverty and slavery instead of camping on their ship.

    Jar Jar Binks:
    You know this one was coming, he's not as annoying as I remember, must have been those Robot Chicken episodes I saw over the years. This guy could have been a fan favorite if he wasn't the goofy comic relief. As a character he failed hard. Hell, they should have made him the techsavvy guy who built the podracer out of scrap and whatnot to spite Sebulba.

    Palpatine:
    Magnificent bastard, he looks like a nice grandpa in this. Gotta love that this is the same actor we saw in Return of the Jedi, you'd never notice with all the makeup and prostetics he had in that movie.

    Darth Maul:
    I'm a bit conflicted about this guy, his menacing appearance and fight scenes are nothing short of awesome. He could have had some more dialogue, especially when he's fighting Obi-Wan. Though I was given to understand that he talked more when he returned in the Clone Wars cartoon (canon?).

    Yoda and Mace Windu:
    Yoda seems pretty consistant with what I remember from the original trilogy. Though I think that they wrote themselves into a corner by having them already anticipate Anakin's potential fall to the dark side. Anakin's fall should have come as a total surprise, having them guessing it here undermines the movies that will follow.

    C-3PO and R2-D2:
    I remember these guys fondly, they were mostly the comic relief and the occasional saviours. They should have both been present at Amidala's ship from the start (it makes sense to have a translator with you for diplomatic missions). Unfortunately their comic relief role went to Jar Jar Binks leaving both of them underused.


    Conclusion:
    Many people think that this movie is crap, I wouldn't go that far myself. I think that it is merely poorly executed and could have been saved with a number of tweaks in the right places. The disappointment with the fans is probably because they set the bar very high and that they didn't get their expectations met.

    As I said before, I'm not a hardcore fan, more a general scifi fan. consider me the guy looking back at some partially forgotten nostalgia.


    So what do you guys think? Am I way off the mark here? Is it the flu talking and should I go back to bed? Or should I just watch SW ep 4 to 6 followed by ST 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8?

    Next up, Attack of the Clones.
     
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  2. DarthDwight

    DarthDwight Force Sensitive

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    Awesome points my friend and welcome to the board. Nice to see a perspective from someone who isn't a diehard fan.
     
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  3. Paulo Henrique

    Paulo Henrique Rebel General

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    I agree with you. The biggest problem was make Jar Jar a comic relief. They didn't well, almost every scene of him doing some stupid thing is forced. I also watched the prequels recently(last week) and they're good movies.
     
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  4. DEKKA129

    DEKKA129 Professional Slinger of Balderdash

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    Great stuff, Skaro! "Disjointed" is how TPM has always felt to me overall too. Like you, I've never felt like the blockade makes any logical sense - reacting to a diplomatic trade dispute with an act of war is a good way to ensure that the dispute doesn't end up being resolved in your favor. Obviously, Lucas needed a crisis that Palpatine could exploit in order to gain the chancellorship, but the blockade/trade dispute thing just seemed forced and didn't really ring true.

    Anakin was far too young in this film, which also meant that they had to start from square one with another actor and almost an entirely different character in Episode II. You also make a good point about Padme basically being "a prototype Leia." I never thought about that before, but you're right about that. Other than not being quite as sassy, Padme is almost the same character as Leia. Which is fine, I guess, since they're mother and daughter, but it doesn't make Padme as interesting a character as she could have been.

    There are pieces of a good movie here. It's always just felt like a rough draft to me, in desperate need of a couple more rounds of heavy editing and restructuring to make it as compelling a story as it ought to have been. Lucas clearly needed to show some early plot elements from the original trilogy's backstory (how Palpatine assumed power, how Obi Wan came to train Anakin, how Luke and Leia's parents met, etc.) but it just seems to me like he wasn't particularly inspired in the way he ended up presenting it all.
     
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  5. Ceruleanlord

    Ceruleanlord Rebel General

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    Ever since Return of the Jedi, Lucas made the films more younger kid friendly when he really never had to. I think he went to his own children's reaction to things in TPM and if they thought it was great then it was good enough. When making ROTS he felt that things in the movie were going to be to dark for those younger kids and it gravitated back to the way Star Wars really was to begin with. Another point is that the prequels seem to be made from Anakin's perspective, for instance, Anakin was a child in TPM and so it was marketed for children, He was a late Teen in AOTC and that also seemed to be marketed to late teens, and in ROTS when he was early twenties it seemed to market people with the same types of temptations as Anakin.
     
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  6. Paulo Henrique

    Paulo Henrique Rebel General

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    The Blockade of Naboo was a mere distraction. The Federation plan was to invade the planet.
     
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  7. Skaro

    Skaro Clone

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    Thanks for the kind replies people :cool:

    Just watched Attack of the Clones will be posting my thoughts on it soon.
     
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  8. Vagabondarts

    Vagabondarts Rebelscum

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    I love this movie.
    Enough time has passed that it feels less like an attack on what made the OT great (which is how I felt about it when it came out) and more a bold attempt to realign StarWars to do new things. In hindsight it accomplished what it set out to do, expand the universe of StarWars for a new generation and show us young Anakin.
    Lets be honest, for all it's missteps and strange choices one thing you can say is Lucas didn't play it safe.

    I really like the space battle, Obi-Wan, bongo scene, podrace... there's a lot of inventive visual things happening but not a lot of heart.

    All of that being said, I enjoy watching it now and can laugh at the elements that are ridiculous and admire the ships and action scenes and stuff.
    It and Episode 3 are my favorite prequels (but I like all of them).
     
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  9. Bob Fortuna

    Bob Fortuna Rebel Trooper

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    But what for? I get that Palpatine / Sidious was just using them to create a crisis, but what was in it for them? And all that stuff about trying to get the Queen to sign a treaty made no sense - if she had signed the treaty to accept the occupation, there would no longer be any crisis for Palpatine to take advantage of.
     
  10. Pobody's Nerfect

    Pobody's Nerfect Jedi General

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    I really liked the movie when it first came out.

    Liam Neeson was just excellent. I thought he did everything Alec Guiness did 10x better. Wise, direct, fearless, calm, just an outstanding casting choice.

    Darth Maul blew me away. Damn, the fight between Maul, Obi Wan and Qui Gonn... just wow! John Williams' Duel of the Fates, the footwork, Maul Force-tossing that object to activate the door switch, the blinding fast lightsaber action, the way Qui Gonn meditated behind the laser curtain while Maul paced like a cat, and that oft overlooked, totally insane behind-the-back block Maul does at 3:09


    Jar Jar really didn't bother me the first time around, even though I was in my thirties. I guess I just understood Jar Jar was there for kids and he made my daughter laugh, so it was good. Repeated viewings have soured me on the character, but I don't remember hating Jar Jar when The Phantom Menace came out.

    I left the theater feeling like my daughter and I certainly got our money's worth.
     
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  11. Deadeye

    Deadeye Clone Commander

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    I agree that the Maul duel was a highpoint of the movie. Here's the problem though, even when GL gets it right, he gets it wrong. Consider the following:

    1) There is no real reason to kill Maul. Even though I did like Dooku, I think the PT would have been better served if Maul had been in all three PT films with Anakin killing him off at the same point he kills off Dooku.

    2) The manner in which Maul dies is downright embarrassing and shows a complete lack of creativity by GL. Obi Wan is lifted by an obvious wire, simulating what amounts to flight (which Jedi aren't supposed to do) and Maul just stands by and watches with a lit light saber as Obi Wan slices him in half. HORRBLE writing, and poor execution.
    Here's what really should have happened: Obi Wan is not skilled enough to defeat Maul straight up. So the way it goes down is that eventually Obi Wan finds himself unarmed and laying on the ground. Maul is a show off, so to deliver the killing blow he goes flying through the air doing a flip. And at the last second, Obi Wan uses the force to throw a large object at Maul while he's air born. This causes both Maul and the object to fall into the shaft. This type of ending accomplishes several things. It keeps Maul's light saber skills supreme since he technically didn't get beaten by superior saber skills. It shows that hubris and pride are weaknesses that can be exploited. And finally it shows Obi Wan to be resourceful in a much more realistic way that what we were shown.

    This part of the movie actually makes me angry because it was very cool, but could have still been so much better.
     
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  12. SWToyscapes

    SWToyscapes Rebel Commander

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    The conception, design and script-skeleton suggested this could have been one of the best SW films, but the final script which didn't seem at all polished and rather a big smushed-up pile of notes, made it one of the worst?
     
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  13. Pobody's Nerfect

    Pobody's Nerfect Jedi General

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    That's a fair assessment.

    I guess if I'm really honest with myself about it, part of the reason I loved it so much when it hit theaters is because it was the return of Star Wars. I desperately wanted more Star Wars as a kid, but somewhere in my twenties I lost hope that the other six movies I'd read about in Bantha Tracks were ever going to be made. Seeing it was like seeing an old school friend after years had passed. Watching it made me feel like a long forgotten promise was finally being kept, or a debt I was owed from years ago was finally being repaid. If that makes sense, you'll understand why I enjoyed The Phantom Menace maybe a little more than the movie deserved. Perhaps I was enjoying those feelings more than the movie itself.
     
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  14. SWToyscapes

    SWToyscapes Rebel Commander

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    All six movies are tooled to the same design which is quite basic - they all reward a single, blind viewing handsomely with great special effects, eye candy and fair narratives. The only difference I can see at a story level from a purely technical perspective is that the prequels crumble if given a deeper inspection. It's as though there's this invisible 'sweet spot' or 'garden spot' of appreciation - if we just happen to be in a conducive frame of mind and our analytic brains are switched off, if we can take at face value what we are being told by the films, then they are fantastic, but it's not an attitude we can consciously fall into and so we can watch a film one afternoon and really enjoy it, and two days later watch it of a morning and not be able to progress past the first 20 minutes?
     
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  15. BobaFettNY21

    BobaFettNY21 Force Attuned

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    There are times when I really thing TPM is the best of the prequels, but its flaws are too overbearing.

    It almost works as a 'children's space opera', but the 40 minutes of dead time, exposition and people sitting and talking in circles makes it fail as even a children's movie. However, some better editing makes it palatable. Unfortunately, nothing can improve AOTC and ROTS has the flattest moment at the most important part of the trilogy (Anakin's turn) so there's no way to fix that either.

    TPM just gets the worst rap because of Jar-Jar and it was the first time you really thought that the emperor/maker had no clothes. Everybody kind of accepted that ROTJ was just 'not-as-good' but thats ok because lightning can't really strike 3 times perfectly.
     
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  16. Amanaman

    Amanaman Rebel Official

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    I have to say that the Darth Plagueis novel really makes the Naboo blockade make alot of sense and reguarding the Padme, Leia issue I have to say that sadly SW seems to have a mold they are going through regarding it's lead females as each and every one of them seems to have to be a badass at everything they do. Leia, Padme and Rey are made from the very same mold and it seems that Jyn is going to be exactly the same.
     
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  17. DEKKA129

    DEKKA129 Professional Slinger of Balderdash

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    The problem is, if a movie has to rely on a spin-off novel to make sense of one of its primary plot points, then it's failed to do its job. James Luceno did a good job of trying to pull that mess together in his Plagueis book, but that does nothing to fix the movie itself.

    As for Padme, my problem with her wasn't that she was a badass. Rey is a badass, but I don't see her as a Leia clone at all. My problem with Padme was the fact that she came across as a watered-down version of Leia. A queen fighting for justice for her people, or a princess fighting for justice for her people - not much difference there. I just thought they could have given Luke and Leia's mother a more distinctive background.
     
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  18. Darth Malkovich

    Darth Malkovich Rebel General

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    I rewatched TPM at the weekend too, still thought it was awful in general but you make a lot of great points. Qui Gon and Palpatine stole the show and it's a shame that he was killed off so early in the trilogy. More conflict withing the Jedi order would have made AotC more interesting and I feel he could have brought that. Totally agree that Anakin should have been older, Jake Llyod got a lot of hate for his role but it wasn't his fault. He did alright for a young kid.

    TBH you can't blame any of the actors, the buck stops with Lucas, they had to shoot almost exclusively in front of green screen with a terrible script. My god was that script bad. It's such a shame because if you read the Darth Plageuis novel, the Naboo crisis makes so much more sense. It could have been a great movie if Lucas had good collaborators, a good script and didn't obsess so much over the effects and making it a movie primarily for small children.

    In fact the tone of the trilogy shifted all too often. TPM was kiddy, AotC was young adult and they tried for RotS to be more adult.

    Incidentally, the reason I was watching it was that my fiancée who has only recently got a little bit interested in Star Wars hadn't seen the prequels. She thought it was terrible too.
     
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  19. Abishai100

    Abishai100 Rebelscum

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    The Boy Who Saved...

    The Phantom Menace was so hyped that it was destined to disappoint. You can't repeat A New Hope. However, Menace is the best Blu-ray (if anyone cares), and it is the only film to offer us a vignette of Anakin as a young boy.

    maul.jpg
     
  20. Bandini

    Bandini Jedi Commander

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    I wasn't aware of that cut scene and I loved it :D

     
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