So I thought I'd watch all the Star Wars' again, because I recently got them for my birthday. I thought I would start with the bad ones, because otherwise I would have no inspiration to watch the bad ones after I had already watched the good ones. So tonight I watched The Phantom Menace. Yes the one everyone hates. Now the thing is, I hadn't seen it in a while, so I couldn't really remembered why I disliked it so much. This is why...
George Lucas has done a James Cameron and thought that special effects would be able to let him get away with having such an awful story, but this just didn't work. It only worked for Cameron because he had an above average story, albeit cliched and stolen from countless other books/films, but it was okay. The Phantom Menace story is so weak. From the start you feel like you've missed something, which is pretty awful due to this being a prequel that is there to give you information on what has happened. The story is very stop/start, also. It starts off fairly strongly, then has a massive dip, when Jar Jar Binks comes in (I'll come on to that), then it starts to get fairly interesting when you meet Anakin (which should have happened far earlier may I add), even though it is terribly childish and very PG. It then has another major dip with all the political nonsense the film is based around. Then it picks up to the fairly decent ending showdown.
The characters are another big flaw in the film. Think of all the memorable characters from the original trilogy. In this, the only interesting characters are Obi-Wan and Anakin, and that's only because we already know them from the other films. The others are all very dull or extremely annoying! Which brings me on to my next point... What was Lucas thinking bringing in Jar Jar Binks?! Everything about him makes me want to scream, and watching it again, he really has no role in the film. If you take him out, everything would still make sense and would probably lift the film up a bit to be honest.
Another annoying aspect to the film is that it is, undoubtedly, trying to find another audience. The film is incredibly childish at times, which just turns out to be very annoying. They also make cheap jokes, mainly through Binks, which don't work and just end up breaking the flow of the film. Star Wars is supposed to be such an epic, you can't have an epic if you make it PG. It's such a kick in the teeth to fans of the original story!
The film is only of any worth due to the nostalgic trip it gives you. Some of the references and the characters you see are pretty much worth watching the film alone, but that's not the point. George Lucas should have taken a lot more care with this film. He had made such a brilliant original trilogy, but that gives him no right to cash in on a bad film.
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