The flaws run too deep for this to ever be considered a good movie but only the most committed of cynics can deny that it's likeable, at the end of the day for every 'Yippee!' there's an awesome lightsaber moment.
Charlotte's reactions this time round were mostly incredulous, i.e. "THAT'S Darth Vader?" or "Why would somebody's mum let them go off to certain death in space? They have a nice home already" or "Is that thing going to be in the whole movie?" at Jar Jar.
Although when she acted indignant at the idea that young Anakin could destroy an entire spaceship with one shot, it did give me the opportunity to tell her that the shot was one in a million and he is a kid.
As likeable as Jihadi John
ReplyDeleteI've come to quite like Phantom Menace actually, despite Jar Jar. The worst thing by far is the awful dialogue between senators and people sitting around in chairs.
ReplyDeleteMind you, the fact I now know Jar Jar is/was meant to be a Dark Lord of the Sith helps :-)
I never got the gripes about Jake Lloyd either. As a kid actor he does ok, given his remit and the script. At times he's actually quite lovable, such as when he's winning the pod race.
There's far less face-palming involved with him as there is in AOTC with the awful love story stuff.
The Jake Lloyd issue is that the majority of his dialogue is written for a character 4 years older. He either needed to play the role as an advanced child (which he doesn't, yippee!) or they needed an older actor.
DeleteThe one redeeming feature of Phantom Menace - apart from the great score - is the absence of Hayden Christiansen.
ReplyDeleteStill suffers from the same two fundamental flaws (midichlorians explaining away the mystical and Anakin (too young, too middle class)) and would still work better as a prologue (giving the love story and Palpatine's manipulation more running time to breathe), but the biggest crime it committed is it took 20 years to make so we all grew up to varying levels of cynical and new what was coming so couldn't just the foreshadowing. Cannot argue that Jar Jar is a bit irritating; every character in the film who interacts with him thinks the same.
ReplyDeleteAs world set up its good (hence my belief it should be a prologue), Maul vs Jedi is amazing. Podrace is great (maybe a tad long). The political moving all works (albeit with clunky dialogue) within the film and as groundwork for the future.
All the pieces are there, but George Lucas isn't a strong enough director to quite nit them all together into as satisfying whole as other directors could have done.