Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review

Warning: This review contains spoilers for Star Wars The Phantom Menace.

 

Star Wars The Phantom Menace is the first movie in the prequel trilogy. It had nostalgia to its benefit but not much else. The first shot of the movie after the opening is important. I do have to say the opening shot of this one was awesome. Then it all gets worse a few seconds later. You see two legit jedi and they’re fine, they’re cool. Then they take down a few troops in a disposable CGI droid army. What the heck was George thinking? A CGI army back when CGI was horrible.

Not to remind me of Viceroy, the ultimate Japanese stereotype. In previous movies, there have been death stars, lightsaber duels. His job is to introduce the main conflict in the story: taxes. He’s the one who asks the future emperor if invading a planet is legal. He’s the one who says,”There is no need to report this to him until we have something to report.” I wonder how poor Viceroy got an education.

Now that our cool jedi friends have made it to Naboo, we meet Jar Jar, the most irritating attempt at comic relief ever. Since he insists on coming with Qui-Gon Jin and Obi-Wan, we must deal with his presence throughout the film. At this point, how could it get worse? Now they make there way to a city full of Gungans. This and that happened and  they made it to the queen. If you watch the movie, they could have cut out almost everything of the journey from Gungan City to the queen and it would make no difference at all to the plot.

Obi-Wan turns out to be the best character in this movie. He is well written and Ewan Mcgregor does a good job in the part. He reacted well to many things. Including the astromechs fixing the ship from the outside, one of the best scenes and the intro to R2 D2. Jake Lloyd, on the other hand, didn’t do the best job as Anakin. To be fair, he had very little to work with: The “Are you an angel” scene for example. It just bothers me how little effort they put into writing young Darth Vader.

This movie definitely has flaws. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have things going for it. Darth Maul is a boss. It was cool to see C-3P0 meeting R2 for the first time. Anakin was a cool character because you know his future. Obi-Wan did a great job and displayed a what a young Alec Guiness might have done had he been alive enough for the role.

Rating:

Percentage- 70%

Letter Grade- C

I hope you guys thought this review was accurate. If not, share out in the comments section. And remember, nerd out!