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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.
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 ?).
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
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...
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
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.
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?
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
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.
naah sig schmig
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.
Ahhh...that's why there are no video games based on any of the other star wars movies...lack of pod racing!
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.
Everything will be taken away from you.
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.
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.