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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
... that after Return of the Jedi, no more Star Wars movies were ever made.
I've been waiting almost 10 years for The Definitive Evisceration of The Phantom Menace and I must say that now that it's here I'm very disappointed.
My inner child has been abused and betrayed. Im going to mope around, talking to no one, for the next two weeks. I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to see #2 or #3, whatever they will be called.
There were so many good points to be made, but it seems the director just went for the easy, mass appeal, fluff. Maybe if the director wasn't surrounded with mindless 'yes men' with no vision this could have been better. Maybe if they had cast a narrator with a better voice. Unfortunately this 70 minute train wreck cannot be undone.
I hope I don't have to wait 10 years for the The Definitive Evisceration of The Definitive Evisceration of The Phantom Menace.
The real problem is that George Lucas wrote it. As a generic sort of idea man, Lucas is great, but the more involved he is in the film, the worse it gets. The reason The Empire Strikes Back is probably the best of the bunch is because Lucas was at his most distant from the whole process.
Frankly, the prequels were a letdown. Episode III is clearly the best, but that's pretty relative. It still sucks a lot more than even the most dismal of the original trilogy; Episode VI, but compared to TPM and Attack of the Clones (I mean, that really is a retarded name), it's a brilliant film.
Lucas seems to have a hard time building any kind of dramatic tension. In place of a decent script and dialogue, he puts in ever more insanely huge spectacles. In Episode III, for instance, instead of a battle between Anakin and Obiwan around a lava crater (as was originally expounded in the book for Episode IV, Lucas, who seems incapable of writing the kind of chilling dialogue that would go on between a former master and pupil and friend, replaces it with a WHOLE MOLTEN PLANET. I mean, it's eyecandy to be sure, but every time I watch those scenes, I feel like I was robbed of what could have been an extraordinarily dramatic moment.
TPM lacks any kind of useful dramatic device. It holds the worst aspects of Lucas's filmmaking, with little or nothing of some of the better aspects of the franchise.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'd just like to point out that Jar Jar -alone- allowed the creation of the Galactic Empire.
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
Star Wars was for children because it was about a teenage hero who teamed up with a mysterious old wizard and a swarthy space pirate to rescue a princess, battle an evil knight dressed in black armor, and destroy the Death Star.
TPM was for children because it was about galactic teamsters strike negotiations, interspersed with with CSPAN footage of a senate sub-committee debate on interplanetary tariffs. If the Jedi don't foil Senator Palpatine's evil plan in time, he will be elected to a Senate sub-committee chair! The video game probably expands on this theme by including lots of exciting amendments and cloture votes, because kids love that stuff.
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.
I find your lack of faith... disturbing!
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.