I know it’s ancient history, but I still can’t get over the spectacular train wreck of Star Wars Episode One. So much hype, so much hope, and then you get a two hour arcade game promo with Jar Jar Binks. It was like George Lucas had picked every single terrible trope of 90s movies and packaged it neatly into a movie.
Man, Phantom Menace being the worst Star Wars movie when it came out is like George W. Bush being the dumbest US president: those were simpler times, somehow.
I’ll say the prequels aged better than I’d remembered them, though. And they get a lot better with the existing fanedits, especially HAL9000’s take on Episode I, which trims a lot of the dumb humour, dials down the Jar Jar antics significantly and tightens the plot a nice bit, to make it more of a classic Star Wars adventure.
Yeah, at least the prequels had an actual story to them and were cohesive with each other. The sequels are just a jumbled mess with each director doing their own thing. I’d take the prequels over the sequels any day.
Yes! That’s what actually got me into Star Wars fanedits and fanedits in general, he made the whole prequel trilogy into a unified experience. Saw one based on his editing notes and liked it, but through the years I’ve come to enjoy other takes from the movies, as well.
The funny thing is, having been born several years after it was released and having probably played the lego games before seeing the films, I liked it! Hell I loved it!
But if i put myself in the shoes of, well, you for instance, then I can see that it’s as dissapointing as the disney sequel trilogy. And then I can see how lame some aspects are on further rewatches
Phantom Menace was great for lore expansion of Star Wars, but it was weird to see it get more infantile than the previous trilogy, seeing as original fans were actually getting older.
It has really low rewatchability too. The in-universe gap between phantom menace and attack of the clones is reallly long, making it less relevant to the rest of the trilogy. And it has huge swathes of boring stuff in the middle. Politics stuff, very hard to follow.
Jar Jar doesn’t bother me as a character.
I say this everytime phantom menace is mentioned, but the original plans would have had appropriately aged characters and been really fun.
Phantom Menace was great for lore expansion of Star Wars, but it was weird to see it get more infantile than the previous trilogy, seeing as original fans were actually getting older.
I find this a fascinating thing to think about.
I’m the same age as the original Star Wars film and grew up on the Original Trilogy. Those three were some of the best stuff ever to my kiddie brain. The older I get, the more I feel like the OT was pretty much just as childish as the prequels when it comes down to it, just without access to 1990s cartoony CGI. I’m not saying this as a bad thing, I still enjoy the OT, but it’s clear to me now as an old fart that the prequels felt more kiddie than the OT when I watched them in the theaters because I was watching the prequels for the first time with a grownup’s brain.
I still enjoy the OT, they poke those childhood brain cells that have been hooked on them all this time. I can enjoy the prequels a bit, but it’s mostly in the form of memes and cracked-out fan remixes. The sequel movies, though, always struck me as a goddamned mess and I still haven’t figured out who they were meant to be for.
I was born the same year episode 6 came out, so I was 16 when Phantom Menace came out, and grew up loving the original trilogy. And my teenager brain enjoyed the Phantom Menace too. Yeah, Jar Jar was annoying and the CGI was jarring sometimes, especially growing up watching the practical effects they used in the originals, but I still loved it. I just really think they should have aged Anakin up in TPM though, he should have been a teenager instead of a kid because it just made the scenes with him and Padme really weird.
I’ve seen it twice. I bought tickets to two showings on opening day because after sixteen years of waiting there was finally going to be a new Star Wars movie. I had one for the very first showing in the morning and the other for that night. There hasn’t been a more exciting moment in a movie theater than when I saw the Lucasfilm logo and “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” and then that blast of trumpets. And then the movie happened. After the closing credits rolled, I spent the next few hours debating on whether or not to use the second ticket. I bit the bullet and went, surrounded in the line outside by all of these hopeful, happy people. I didn’t have the heart to warn them.
I know it’s ancient history, but I still can’t get over the spectacular train wreck of Star Wars Episode One. So much hype, so much hope, and then you get a two hour arcade game promo with Jar Jar Binks. It was like George Lucas had picked every single terrible trope of 90s movies and packaged it neatly into a movie.
Man, Phantom Menace being the worst Star Wars movie when it came out is like George W. Bush being the dumbest US president: those were simpler times, somehow.
I’ll say the prequels aged better than I’d remembered them, though. And they get a lot better with the existing fanedits, especially HAL9000’s take on Episode I, which trims a lot of the dumb humour, dials down the Jar Jar antics significantly and tightens the plot a nice bit, to make it more of a classic Star Wars adventure.
Yeah, at least the prequels had an actual story to them and were cohesive with each other. The sequels are just a jumbled mess with each director doing their own thing. I’d take the prequels over the sequels any day.
I haven’t witnessed the edit you mention, but it sounds like it fits in 20 minutes. 🤣
I think Topher Grace was behind an edit that only used about ten minutes of episode one.
Yes! That’s what actually got me into Star Wars fanedits and fanedits in general, he made the whole prequel trilogy into a unified experience. Saw one based on his editing notes and liked it, but through the years I’ve come to enjoy other takes from the movies, as well.
The funny thing is, having been born several years after it was released and having probably played the lego games before seeing the films, I liked it! Hell I loved it!
But if i put myself in the shoes of, well, you for instance, then I can see that it’s as dissapointing as the disney sequel trilogy. And then I can see how lame some aspects are on further rewatches
Phantom Menace was great for lore expansion of Star Wars, but it was weird to see it get more infantile than the previous trilogy, seeing as original fans were actually getting older.
It has really low rewatchability too. The in-universe gap between phantom menace and attack of the clones is reallly long, making it less relevant to the rest of the trilogy. And it has huge swathes of boring stuff in the middle. Politics stuff, very hard to follow.
Jar Jar doesn’t bother me as a character.
I say this everytime phantom menace is mentioned, but the original plans would have had appropriately aged characters and been really fun.
Here: https://youtu.be/OgRTlW5gNCI
It’s because it was for Star Wars fans to take their kids too.
I find this a fascinating thing to think about.
I’m the same age as the original Star Wars film and grew up on the Original Trilogy. Those three were some of the best stuff ever to my kiddie brain. The older I get, the more I feel like the OT was pretty much just as childish as the prequels when it comes down to it, just without access to 1990s cartoony CGI. I’m not saying this as a bad thing, I still enjoy the OT, but it’s clear to me now as an old fart that the prequels felt more kiddie than the OT when I watched them in the theaters because I was watching the prequels for the first time with a grownup’s brain.
I still enjoy the OT, they poke those childhood brain cells that have been hooked on them all this time. I can enjoy the prequels a bit, but it’s mostly in the form of memes and cracked-out fan remixes. The sequel movies, though, always struck me as a goddamned mess and I still haven’t figured out who they were meant to be for.
I was born the same year episode 6 came out, so I was 16 when Phantom Menace came out, and grew up loving the original trilogy. And my teenager brain enjoyed the Phantom Menace too. Yeah, Jar Jar was annoying and the CGI was jarring sometimes, especially growing up watching the practical effects they used in the originals, but I still loved it. I just really think they should have aged Anakin up in TPM though, he should have been a teenager instead of a kid because it just made the scenes with him and Padme really weird.
I’ve seen it twice. I bought tickets to two showings on opening day because after sixteen years of waiting there was finally going to be a new Star Wars movie. I had one for the very first showing in the morning and the other for that night. There hasn’t been a more exciting moment in a movie theater than when I saw the Lucasfilm logo and “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” and then that blast of trumpets. And then the movie happened. After the closing credits rolled, I spent the next few hours debating on whether or not to use the second ticket. I bit the bullet and went, surrounded in the line outside by all of these hopeful, happy people. I didn’t have the heart to warn them.
Nobody would have believed you, anyway. Expectations were so high, you would have just come across as a hateful troll.
Star Wars : The Parliamentary Debates ?
I actually walked out somewhere in the middle of it