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Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
Where do we start with the childhood memory-killing Episode I? This movie flat out sucks. Everything from the lame storyline about Trade Federations and blockades, lifted from a High School Social Studies class, to the unbelievably annoying aliens and cute little kids. There are so many things wrong with this movie it would just take up way too much bandwidth to go through it all. So, we’re just going to touch on a few things we really hated about it, and leave the rest to our forums.
First things first, although we hate to go there, no review of this movie would be complete without some Jar Jar bashing. Jar Jar Binks is simply horrible. There’s no way around it. Many fans think that he was completely to blame for how bad this movie was, and although we don’t totally agree with that, we do feel that he brought an already bad movie to an even lower level. He was just a ridiculous cartoon character that didn't belong in a Star Wars movie. Heck, he’s too cartoony for a Harry Potter movie these days.
No matter how good Lucas thinks his computer animation looked, he kept reminding you that Jar Jar wasn't real by making him do silly things like extending his tongue and walking like a fool. He also uses the phrase "How rude" three times in the course of the movie, a phrase made popular by Stephanie Tanner from Full House. When you see him jump about twenty feet in the air, do a double somersault with a twist, and dive into the water you realize you're going to be seeing a movie a lot less like the Original Trilogy and a lot more like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Another stomach turning aspect of this film is the fact that Anakin Skywalker, the young Darth Vader for all you n00bs, built C-3PO. This is so stupid that this reviewer has no words to even describe it. In a galaxy that’s so vast, with millions of sentient beings, and just as many droids, why does George Lucas have to make everything and everyone connected to the characters from the original trilogy? He’s got a whole galaxy to work with. How many coincidences are there in the galaxy far far away?
Anakin is strong with the force, does he really have to be a mechanical genius too? We didn't know midi-chlorians gave you mechanical abilities too. Anakin built a Pod Racer. We'll buy that. We’ll entertain the notion that he may have put C-3P0 together using an "Assemble Your Own Protocol Droid" home kit, but its doubtful as to whether they give those away to slave boys. But what we just can’t accept is that Anakin, the ten year old slave boy who has never left Tatoonie, knows over six million forms of communication. Does little Anakin know how to speak Ewok? We doubt it. C-3P0 can. The only language other than Galactic Standard that Anakin is shown to speak in the movie is Huttese. And he probably only did so to try to impress Padme so that she would sleep with him. Also, does Anakin have experience with binary loadlifters? No. We know that C-3P0 does. Does Anakin know how to understand moisture vaporators? Again, probably not since he's not a machine (not yet anyway).
Midi-chlorians give Jar Jar a run for his money as the worst part about this movie. We at Old-Wizard have actually spent many nights arguing over which part ruined Star Wars more. Zeromage sits firmly in the Midi-chlorian camp, while Nano is more anti-Jar Jar. Regardless, thanks to midi-chlorians, the force can now be quantified by something found in someone's blood. It makes the connection to the force more biological than mystical. This is starting to sound more like Star Trek than Star Wars. The concept was obviously introduced by Lucas as a lazy way to get across to the audience that Anakin was the most powerful force user alive. Which is funny, because this never really comes true in the rest of the prequel trilogy (see Episode III when he is pwned by Obi-Wan Kenobi. The only other Jedi he ever beats are a bunch of “younglings”). A better way would have been to actually show us how powerful he was. But that takes actual creativity.
Let’s take a quick look at the political structure of the Old Republic. Somehow all it takes to force the Chancellor to retire is for one senator to say: "I move for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor such and such." So one insignificant planet, like Naboo, can knock the supreme leader of the galaxy-wide Republic out of office. What sort of system of government is that? That’s like a Senator from Rhode Island calling a vote of no confidence in the President and a week later he’s gone, except this is on a much more ridiculous scale.
Our Rating:
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