The Definitive Evisceration of The Phantom Menace *NSFW*

cowmix writes "When TPM came out ten years ago, its utter crappiness shocked me to the core and wounded a entire generation of geeks. My inner child had been abused and betrayed. I moped around, talking to no one, for almost two weeks. I couldn't bring myself to see #2 or #3, whatever they were called. Now, a decade later, comes Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review, the ultimate, seven-part, seventy minute analysis of this mother of all train wrecks. Not only does it nail how the film blows, but tells us why. Time, apparently, does not heal all wounds." Or, if you prefer all 7 parts embedded in one page, you can check out slashfilm's aggregation.

Comments

If that's what it means to be a geek...

[RedK]

Seriously, if a Movie wounded your inner child and destroyed your hopes and dreams, you had a very sad life. Most normal Star Wars fan just didn't watch the movie again and that's it. Personally, it was the 3rd movie that turned me off completely. Anakin's turn to the darkside felt so rushed and didn't seem to work with the character at all (one minute he's a goodie 2 shoes that's going to turn Sidius in, 30 seconds later he's bowing to his new master... wtf ?).

Re:If that's what it means to be a geek...

[Doctor_Jest]

WELL put! Although I wasn't as put off as you on the 3rd movie (I enjoyed it a bit better than ATOC), I echo the sentiment. I think the pacing problem was Lucas' inability to show sufficient time passing in the movie... don't know why.

The prequels were for kids, no doubt about it. And all these whiners who are talking about how Lucas raped their childhood (and so on) are forgetting one important thing... they were KIDS when they saw the first trilogy. The only problem with the 2nd set of movies is that after the first Trilogy, everyone and his sister tried to re-capture the model Lucas used to achieve blockbuster status. There have been DECADES of also-rans, improvements, and the entire hollywood system has morphed into the "blockbuster channel" (with some Oscar stuff thrown in like sprinkles on a sundae). Before A New Hope there wasn't much in the way of epic Space Opera storytelling (the storyline was pretty standard and had been done to death in books before and in movies/games/books since), now with the likes of Terminator, Alien, etc. we have been accustomed to the epic blockbuster sci-fi movie. The new Trilogy from Lucas did not open in the same atmosphere as ANH did.

I for one enjoyed the movies for what they were... another trip into the Star Wars universe. I didn't expect Shakespeare, nor did I expect Oscar quality acting (let's face it, Mark Hamill was a whiny bitch in the first movies...) I just wanted a fun ride with awesome effects that let us know how it all started. Was it perfect? Far from it. But then again, if we are honest with ourselves, neither was the first Trilogy.

Han shot first!

[burtosis]

IMHO the decline into craptacularism and lowered expectations started with the re-release of an otherwise good film.

Jar^2

[TBoon]

Jar Jar wouldn't have been so bad, if he had gotten way less screen time. Sure he's a "breakthrough in technology"...hmmm... actually that seems to summarize everything wrong with that movie... It's there because it's possible (and/or have never been done before), not because the story needs it to be there...

Box Office

[Dan East]

Of course this doesn't directly correlate to the "crappiness" of the movie, but Phantom Menace did just shy of $1 billion in worldwide sales, and it is currently the #10 top grossing movie of all time (placing just below LOTR-TTT). It was the #2 top grossing film of all time until the first Harry Potter movie came out in 2001.

Regardless of the hype, or the previous success of a franchise, a movie cannot be so popular without being liked or enjoyable to at least a very significant portion of the population. That seems to go against TFA's opening line of "Chances are you probably didn’t like Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace."

Could Episode 1 have been better? Absolutely, in so many ways. But it was an incontrovertible success on many levels too. For me personally, various aspects of the movie was too childish (for starters).

I was more disappointed by Return of the Jedi

[bunuel]

I think Return of the Jedi was a more disappointing movie. The change in tone in this from Empire was more drastic than the change between this and the prequels.

Re:Why a decade later

[jellomizer]

The Phantom Menace could have been fixed by 3 things...

Older Skywalker (Lets get him in his late teens)
No JarJar and/or no C3PO and R2D2 (way to many comedy characters)
No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.

Re:Good Material But Lengthy and Bad Delivery

[badboy_tw2002]

Seriously. The review itself has more character development, plot, intrigue, etc than TPM itself. Thought I found the ST: Generations review to be a lot funnier, esp. the parts that show the shortcuts and incongruities with the series.

Re:Demo Reel

[Grishnakh]

I was so digusted with Ep. 2 that I never did get around to watching Ep. 3.

But you're exactly right. Lucas should have stuck with just coming up with ideas and visuals of these alien worlds and ships, and that's it, and left the storywriting to people who are actually talented at that. That's why ESB was so great: it was written by a professional sci-fi author, not Lucas. Any time Lucas writes dialog, it's beyond terrible. But his ego is so huge that he refuses to admit it, and insists on doing it himself.

Re:Why a decade later

[gnick]

Those three points violate rule #1 of sci-fi action for kids - Marketability outweighs quality.

Older Skywalker (Lets get him in his late teens)

Younger kids identify more and are responsible (indirectly) for many more toy sales.

No JarJar and/or no C3PO and R2D2 (way to many comedy characters)

Action figures.

No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.

Video games.

Re:Different Audience

[Captain Fallout]

Sure, TPM was lame when compared to the original Star Wars trilogy, but it was never meant to please the audience of the original films. Its primary target was the little kids... progeny of the original audience.

That point is addressed in one of the later clips. If this movie is made for little kids, then why make it so complicated in regards to trade disputes, political arguments in the galactic senate and the machinations of someone trying to take power.

Re:Good Material But Lengthy and Bad Delivery

[foo fighter]

One important caveat that this review overlooks is that many of his criticisms center on complexities and different approaches that Lucas took (before that he wanted to take different approaches when he asked Lynch to direct RotJ).

I don't know what this sentence is supposed to mean, exactly.

Just because Lucas screwed it up doesn't make these things bad.

Well, yes it does. The Phantom Menace is bad because Lucas screwed up. And the critic does explicitly address the fact that it is not just Lucas's fault, but the fault of the editors, producers, screenwriters, and everyone else who were sycophants instead of creative partners willing to say no and challenge Lucas when he screwed up.

Lucas gambled and he lost. He lost everything.

Lucas didn't gamble anything. And he sure as frak hasn't "lost everything". He's still in the top 25 of Forbes Celebrity 100. He pulled in $170 million last year and has an estimated net worth of around $3 billion (that's three-fraking-BILLION-with-a-"B").

In software development, you generally start with the basics and master them before you begin an epic endeavor into parts unknown.

How did this vacuous comment make it to +5?

Re:Demo Reel

[MightyMartian]

Episode V had some great dialogue. The Yoda sequences gave us all the mystic mumbo jumbo of Episode IV, but with more Zen-like conviction and less being pure corny. The fight between Vader and Luke, and the ultimate revelation of Vader's identity was a moment of extraordinary drama that surely stands as one of the great moments in cinema history.

The whole film has a kind of tension to it that none of the other films had. It was a character driven film. The special effects don't play as a big a role. You'll note a lot of the action in this film takes place in claustrophobic places; ice tunnels on Hoth, Bespin interiors, Star Destroyer interiors, Dagobah (which is so murky it might as well be a closed interior), the interior of the worm creature/asteroid. This means the camera is concentrating less on eyecandy and more on the characters, and requires a lot more dialogue and interaction between characters.

Re:Did she mention Stupid?

[Minwee]

A lot of these characters are STUPID, but I don't think that's a good enough description for a redeeming movie.

That was actually the point of the movie. It's all about the downfall of the Republic, characterized by Queen Amidala's ineffectual term as Senator, and the decadence of the Jedi Order, demonstrated by how even "renegade" Qui Gon Jinn tells Obi Wan to let The Force guide him. When Qui Gon said "There's always a bigger fish" he didnt mean "It sure was lucky that a bigger fish came by", he actually means it. Throughout the entire trilogy all of the Jedi blindly stumble around hoping that The Force will do their thinking for them, and without the Sith to oppose them that approach had worked pretty well for them for a long time.

So the characters in the prequel trilogy weren't mind numbingly stupid because of sloppy writing, it was all part of a larger plan to --

Oh, forget it. I can't keep this up with a straight face. If Lucas had really explored any of those ideas in the films then he could have had something interesting. Instead all we got was a bunch of muppets.

midichlorians

[DoofusOfDeath]

A big problem for my enjoyment was the midichlorians, the microbes that supposedly give a person control over the Force.

By making the Force scientifically explicable rather than mystical/magical, it changed the feeling of the story for me.

Re:midichlorians

[BobMcD]

I've always wondered why more people can't subscribe to the notion that midichlorians don't cause the Force, they're drawn to the force. Like if someone had control over magnetism, you'd expect to find lots of iron on him... that doesn't mean that that iron caused the magnetism

Because that's simply a mechanism put there by your brain to help you maintain your sanity. You're making that up because it helps you feel better.

What the Beardo actually said in the movie was:

Anakin: “Master, Sir... I heard Yoda talking about midi-chlorians. I’ve been wondering: What are midi-chlorians?”
Qui-Gon Jinn: “Midi-chlorians are a microscopic life form that resides within all living cells”.
Anakin: “They live inside me?”
Qui-Gon Jinn: “Inside your cells, yes. And we are symbionts with them.”
Anakin: “Symbionts?”
Qui-Gon Jinn: “Life forms living together for mutual advantage. Without midi-chlorians, life could not exist and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you’ll hear them speaking to you.”

Maybe he's just delusional. There's little mention of this feature of the Force ever again. Perhaps he's uploading his test results to the Jedi temple, they're rolling their eyes, and playing along, but it doesn't really mean anything. Again, however, this goes outside the material provided and makes assumptions. Beardo certainly believes in a causal relationship, and we're never given any story reason to doubt him.

Ergo, bad plot element.

Re:midichlorians

[jitterman]

Ergo, bad plot element.

I think even Lucas realized this mis-step, which is precisely why the midi-whatsits were ignored in the other films.

Further, it's a shame that on at least one more occasion (R2 having booster rockets is one example) Lucas introduced something that had no later historical reality (in the scope of his fictional universe).

Re:Why a video

[Darinbob]

Who's going to watch a video review, much less a 70 minute one? Write it up on a web page with some illustrative clips.

I'm not sure why there's this trend to having high bandwidth video for stuff that the simple written word can handle. The Apple site comes to mind with the "Learn Your Way Around the Mac in Minutes" videos, that would take only seconds if it were text. Some of us still remember how to read.

Re:Why a decade later

[Rary]

I think the one thing it needed that would've made it a thousand times better would be a single likeable character.

I don't know about you, but for me the star of the original trilogy was Han Solo. I'm not sure who the star of the prequel trilogy was, but there was not a single Han Solo-esque character in it.

Re:Why a decade later

[Ben Newman]

The comparing of the opening shots of The Phantom Menace and A New Hope was a great piece of film design analysis. The scene of the blockade runner getting blasted by the star destroyer set up everything; there was a conflict going on, the rebels were weak and ill equipped and the empire was big, scary and not afraid to use force. The Jedis approaching the trade federation ships in The Phantom Menace told you nothing about either side, and that sort of weakly defined sense of design pervades the entire movie. The battle droids were never intimidating, they looked like they were designed purely to stand around waiting to be light-sabered in half. I mean storm troopers were a joke in an actual fight but at least they looked bad assed. Darth Maul had some scary design going on but he was out doing his own thing. Vader not only looked like a bad guy but he was also the fist on the long arm of the empire which added to his menace. Epic fantasy (yes, Star Wars has more in common with the Lord of the Rings then 2001) needs its clearly defined villains and heros, and some trade dispute is just not the right kind of conflict for this kind of movie.

Re:Why a decade later

[altoz]

Really? Just those three things? Let me point out why the movie really sucked.

In IV - VI, we find the story of a character who's very evil who finds redemption. We also find out that he used to be good.

That should have been the heart of the story. Why and how did Darth Vader become so evil? How did he get seduced to the dark side? The films hand-waved through the most important question that everyone had. He thought his wife was going to die and started killing children or something.

The flaws weren't that there were too many characters. The flaw was that there just wasn't a coherant story.

Merchandising doesn't require bad child actors

[sjbe]

Those three points violate rule #1 of sci-fi action for kids - Marketability outweighs quality.

Marketability is made much easier by having a good product.

Older Skywalker (Lets get him in his late teens)

Younger kids identify more and are responsible (indirectly) for many more toy sales.

I've got a box full of the original Star Wars action figures that says the age of the kid has little to do with marketability. Furthermore, none of the other Star Wars movies featured a child so prominently and somehow they still managed to sell a galactic ass-load of merchandise.

No JarJar and/or no C3PO and R2D2 (way to many comedy characters)

Action figures.

See previous response.

No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.

Video games.

You don't need pod racing to do a video game. Even if you do want to make it a video game you don't need 25 minutes of it where the plot advances nowhere and we have bad dialog and worse acting by the kid playing Anakin. They could have shown pod racing in about 2-5 minutes and you'd have your video game AND a better movie.

Re:Merchandising doesn't require bad child actors

[Anonymous Coward]

You're response is too intelligent to deserve a response. (and likely beyond the abilities of most movie executives to understand)

Re:Why a decade later

[fermion]

In Star Wars, the book, we learn, or at least it is much more fully alluded to, that Luke is a much more accomplished driver. One of the problems with Star wars is that this is not established, yet Luke magically knows how to fly a fighter. Admitadly there are differences between two and three dimension navigation, but at least we would have some experience.

In the phantom menace, most things could have solved by making Anikin a little older. I think some of the pod-racing was good, as it established the family as skilled in the trade. Developmentally putting a kid that young into a pod racer just seemed too fake, so the establishment seemed forced.

It is arguable that R2D2 had some knowledge of Anikin and the kids, as well as where Obi was hiding. This allowed him to deliver the message from Princess Leia. It seemed to be quite silly to have CP3O built by Anikin, and did go too far on the comic relief. The urge was likely to have some overlap between the movies, but this as a plot device failed.

An overall critic of the critics. I think many fans did not like the world painted by the second trilogy. It seemed too different. I found it was the one think that world. The empire of Anikin was the high point of civilization about to fall apart, but still visually perfect. The world of Luke was broken, not in the over the top manner of Road Warrior, but in a very natural manner where things are simply old and not much creation is going on.

Because it is funny and entertaining

[sjbe]

Who's going to watch a video review, much less a 70 minute one? Write it up on a web page with some illustrative clips.

I did. It's actually funny as hell as well as pretty insightful. If you actually watch it you'd understand that there are some points that are a LOT easier to make with a video. It also has more impact when you see Darth Lucas himself actually saying things that matter in the context of the argument about why the movie sucks.

I'm not sure why there's this trend to having high bandwidth video for stuff that the simple written word can handle.

Because there are some things that video can do that text can't and vice-versa. Sure it can be misused but that isn't an argument against the format.

Re:Demo Reel

[ascii]

I may receive flack for this but Lucas' is *horrible* at writing dialogue. Try to count the number of times he has used the line "I have a bad feeling about this" throught the Star Wars movies and you'll get to jesus kabillion in no time.

What's more - the only variance with these lines is where to put the intonation. Here's a quick rundown on Lucas' options when writing dialogue:
1. *I* have a bad feeling about this
2. I *HAVE* a bad feeling about this
3. I have *A* bad feeling about this
4. I have a *BAD* feeling about this
5. I have a bad *FEELING* about this
6. I have a bad feeling *ABOUT* this
7. I have a bad feeling about *THIS*

That is all.

Re:Why a decade later

[Darinbob]

Have to have C3PO and R2D2. That was the original concept way back when Star Wars was just a single movie with no thoughts of it being a trilogy or more. A huge galactic conflict seen through the eyes of the two droids. A theme borrowed from The Hidden Fortress that is a major influence on Lucas, where the viewpoint from two peasants drives the movie. When it was a trilogy and Lucas had grand ideas about a series of 9 movies, Lucas said he wanted the droids to be the common thread between them all.

As is was The Phantom Menace seems heavily designed to be a marketing vehicle. This is quite the opposite of the original Star Wars (not going to call it A New Hope as that was never the original title). No one knew Star Wars was going to be a hit, it was just going to be a stand alone story, an homage to older space operas. The major merchandise tie ins to movies didn't exist. The concept of a blockbuster didn't exist either. It succeeds on its own merits.

Flash forward to The Phantom Menace. Merchandising is now a huge concern. So are demographics; like many lousy movies, you either start with a kids movie and sneak in some adult jokes, or you start with a more mature movie and stick some bratty kid in to attract the kids to the theaters too (it's a sci-fi movie with explosions, the kids should have been a built-in audience without the brat). Then you toss in a comedy character so the kids keep watching and don't start whining that it's too long. The big problem with The Phantom Menace is that it was created with a formula. That may work for a Syfy movie of the week, but not a major theatrical release when your professional reputation is already starting to slip.

Re:Why a decade later

[Zalbik]

No Pod-Racing... 20 minutes about 1/3 of the movie about nothing.

Video games.

Ahhh...that's why there are no video games based on any of the other star wars movies...lack of pod racing!

Re:Why a decade later

[LordArgon]

I think you're totally on the right track, although I would disagree that there wasn't a coherent story. It just sucked and wasn't entirely believable.

The key, IMO, is that Anakin was a whiny bitch. Darth Vader was anything BUT a whiny bitch. Given how much I loved 4-6, I expected to see a noble character who was gradually, tragically led to the dark side. Instead, we see an emo prima donna who whines about everything. How did this guy become the most dignified and feared person in the galaxy? It just doesn't add up.

At the end of of the prequels, I wasn't mourning the loss of Anakin Skywalker; I was just glad that whiny kid was going to finally STFU.

Re:Why a decade later

[Joe Tie.]

Younger kids identify more and are responsible (indirectly) for many more toy sales.

I'm not sure who said it first, but I think there's a lot of truth in the statement that no kid wants to be robin, they all want to be batman. As a kid, I recall always hating the "kid character". I never identified with him. Or, if I did, that was a bad thing. I didn't watch transformers, for example, to understanding of the young male viewpoint in a world with giant robots. I just wanted to be a giant robot who could shoot lazers. Or be a part of gi joe, not the dumbass kids they saved.

Re:Why a decade later

[optimus2861]

Keep in mind that every star wars movie was a kids movie. Kids were the target audience.

No, they weren't. You don't have Han Solo shooting Greedo first in a kids movie. You don't have Darth Vader torturing Han Solo and cutting off Luke's hand in a kids movie, or Lando betraying Han. I don't even think you have the Rebels getting their asses kicked from one end of Empire to the other in a kids movie.

The original trilogy were all-ages movies. The kids could enjoy them, the adults could enjoy them, and they (until Return) didn't insult anybody's intelligence.

This "they were only ever kids movies" is pure Lucas bullshit intended to paper over just how bad the prequels really are.

Re:Why a decade later

[MightyMartian]

Because it had cool space ships, guys dueling with swords made out of light, and the coolest looking damn villain ever put on the silver screen.

Re:Why a decade later

[Cytotoxic]

I'll add this: In the first five minutes of Star Wars, Vader walks into the carnage of battle, picks a captured soldier up by the neck, holds him dangling in midair at arm's length and questions him before offhandedly snapping his neck with one hand and tossing the body aside. Bad guy established in less than 2 minutes. While it is cheezy sci-fi schlock, it is also effective storytelling. You knew right off the bat that Darth Vader was an evil badass that you didn't want to get involved with.

Darth Maul gets introduced half way through the movie and despite the cool makeup we have to be told that he is a bad guy. Also, despite being a much better stunt man and athlete and having much cooler fight choreography, Maul never reaches the level that Vader does in that introductory scene. Therefore his defeat is no more intriguing than getting past the chompy things on the assembly line. He's not a character, he's just another obstacle for our hero to jump over.

Actually, it has the trinity

[SmallFurryCreature]

All good stories have MULTIPLE characters, to appeal to our different tastes.

The hero is Luke, he is the guy you know you should wannabe like. He is the guy your sister knows she should want to date.

Han Solo is the guy you want to be, and the one your sister/mother REALLY liked. You can see that in part 1 of the review, the guys describe Han as a wannabe womanizer. The girl describes him as a succesful ladiesman. He can jump her hyperdrive anytime.

And Leia, Leia is the girl you wanted or the one your sister wanted to be.

While Obi-wan guides them until they are old enough to stand on their own feet. It is classic stuff. Kirk/Spock/McCoy. The Fellowship of the Ring. It works, because one person can't appeal to the entire audience or even one person.

But in the end, it is Luke in Star Wars who is the real hero, we just like to pretend he isn't because we want to be cool. But in the end, it is Luke whose struggle we follow. Luke who we see grow up from anxious teen farmboy to Jedi Knight who confronts the emperor and his past.

And that, as this review points out best in part 6, is missing. We don't care. Characters are not making sense and fights are about acrobatics.

I totally agree with the reviewer when he states that if you thought the prequels were okay because of the fights, then you don't get it. The slow fight between darth vader and obi-wan was never about swords-play. This is NOT a swashbuckler movie. And that was missing. The prequels are a Jackie-Chan movie. Very nice moves, but that is all there is. Early Jacky Chan movies don't even have an epilogue, they cut to credits the moment the boss bites the dusts.

At the time you had a lot of kiddies wowing about Darth Maul, but who or what was he. He was no Darth Vader. Rather amusingly, George Lucas is quoted in the review as saying that CGI is nothing compared to story telling. Boy did George forget that lesson.

What the review is wrong about is focussing on the story plotholes. The original got tons of them too, perhaps even more, but it don't matter because the core is solid. The CGI and even the story don't need to be good if their is a heart beating in the middle of it all. And that is ultimately what the prequels lack. There is no soul.