Saga The Phantom Menace VS. A New Hope

I didn't like ANH when I first saw it. On the other hand, I didn't have any trouble liking TPM when I first saw it. Despite this, I usually ranked ANH above TPM. In fact, I did so for years. Then I recently saw the two movies - almost back-to-back - and my opinion changed. Now I rank TPM above ANH. That's about it.

 

OK I'll stop now. That's something that really bugs me lol

 

I know it used to be called Star Wars lol. It just bothers me how some people can't wrap their heads around the fact that "A New Hope" is now the real version. As of today, there is no movie called "Star Wars"

 

"Your focus determines your reality."

The original film still exists for very many people. Stop trying to determine what is and is not real for others. It comes across as intellectually juvenile.

 

No, it is not juvenile. They can watch the old version but that is not the version that is G-Canon.

 

Please get on topic before the thread is locked.
For me, it's ANH but TPM is severely underrated.

 

Enough.

Canon status has no bearing on the validity of any of the films in this forum. If anyone wishes to refer to the film released in 1977 as Star Wars, they're welcome to do so.

 

ANH > TPM. Bar none. TPM is the only Star Wars movie I was legitimately bored by in the theatre. I went to go see it a second time because a friend, who had recently watched ANH and ESB for the first time and loved em, wanted to see it. He fell asleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Aside from the fantastic characters of Qui-Gon & Darth Maul, and watching Sidious work his way into power, TPM is a really boring film.

A New Hope all day, every day.

However, "Duel of The Fates" is unprecedented. I really thought Ep. 1 was going to be the greatest film ever made... I was wrong!

 

What track from each sound track do you prefer from these two movies? The Force theme, Battle of Yavin, The Throne Room from ANH.
Duel of the Fates, the celebration song at the end, and the Droid Invasion theme from TPM.

 

In terms of an "action piece," I'd say Duel of the Fates. It's just amazing, and I've easily listened to it more than a hundred times. I may not enjoy TPM as a film, but it's soundtrack is on the same level as the other 5 films - astounding.

In terms of a "quiet piece," then it'd be The Force Theme, which is just simply the most iconic piece of SW music there is. It's featured in every film, but to me it always conjures up the image of Luke looking up at Tatooine's twin suns, desperately craving to explore the wider galaxy. Heck, this moment in ANH still gives me goosebumps every time I watch it. I've actually got goosebumps right now just thinking of that scene!

 

Corn on the Cob! Corn on the Kabob! Still an amazing piece. I can listen to the Battle of Yavin and never get tired of it. All of the songs are made by John Williams so that might be why. I've grown very fond of the Force Theme. Goosebumps as well.

 

I watched the hell out of The Phantom Menace way back when. Yet I still never get tired of it. Personally, I like the dark subtext of the movie; while it mainly focuses on the "good guys," behind the scenes, we witness the re-emergence of the Sith, the corruption of Palpatine, and the roots of Darth Vader. Can be both a happy or depressing movie, depending on how you look at it.

While I prefer The Phantom Menace by a small margin, it wouldn't be nearly as effective without the groundwork set by A New Hope. Preferences aside, you can't ignore the historical significance, and the continued fame that the first movie brings.

 

A New Hope

 

I could sit and watch ANH over and over again and not get sick of it....I can't however say the same thing about PM so I'll have to go with the original.

Though I do prefer some PM characters over ANH ones....I find Qui-Gon in PM a better Jedi Master than Obi-Wan in ANH.

 

The answer is easily ANH both as a standalone film and as fitting into part of a series.

I'm staying away from things like special effects (it's not particularly fair to compare films 22 years apart in this regard) and more subjective stuff like finding... certain... 'characters'... annoying.

Antagonists
The antagonists in ANH are simpler. This is not necessarily in itself a positive, but here it works, because each of these are cold introductions to their own universe. The Empire in ANH storm a ship, their commander in chief chokes out the ships captain with his bare hands and the later puts the squeeze on one of his own men with his mind. It is announced that the senate has been dissolved and that the governing will be handled by local authorities. Remember that we don't know anything about this galaxy at this point, but we've been shown that a) the Empire are fairly evil (reinforced by them blowing up a planet about 15 minutes later) and b) that they've binned off any democratic process and concentrate power in the hands of said evil bastards. Simple and effective storytelling.

By comparison TPM (admirably) tries to be more ambitious. The Trade Federation are blockading Naboo, but really they're being used as puppets by Palpatine so that he can bring a vote of no confidence in the existing Chancellor so that he can ascend to the position. However it falls down in four key areas.
1) Cutting in cold to the trade dispute is not a particularly compelling opening, especially when compared to the opening of ANH (and basically every other Star Wars film) and especially when you consider that...
2) The trade dispute is never particularly well explained or contextualised in the film.
3) You don't ever really see them doing bad things apart from marching groups of civilians around with battledroids - I am aware that Sio Bibble makes garbled reference to "thousands dead" as his transmission is cut off, but you don't really see it. Combine with the leaders and footsoldiers of the antagonists being used as comic relief and you lack the immediate identification of the Trade Federation as a serious threat. Compare to Captain Antilles being throttled, Alderaan getting vaped and Vader almost choking out one of his senior officers before Tarkin stopped him.
4) Basically refusing to show Palpatine directly as Sidious until the last act of ROTS causes a disconnect when considered both from the point of view of watching as someone who has never seen any Star Wars films and for a veteran. The newbie basically has no idea that the manipulation is happening until the last act of ROTS - as far as they are concerned the Trade Federation are taking orders from some random old guy in a hood. The veteran knows that Sidious is Palpatine and is frustrated by the lack of expansion on his character and motives. In trying to please both audiences Lucas unfortunately pooched it.

As I said, much more ambitious and much less like a caricature of a Saturday morning cartoon villain, but the execution was very flawed - properly done they could have been better than The Empire, easily. A missed opportunity.

Protagonists
The protagonists in ANH are better as well. Luke is a farmboy who can't wait to move on in life from what he's been doing since he was a kid. Basically every single one of us at some point can relate to wanting to leave home. Han Solo is the epitome of rugged individualism, but at the same time he's a guy that you feel like you could be one day, if you were cool enough. To quote the man himself "the only person I take orders from is me" - again, everyone at some point yearns for total control of their own destiny. I didn't particularly want to come in here just to jump on the 'TPM lacks an audience insertion character' train, but you compare that to Obi Wan and Qui Gon and it really becomes glaring. They're not as easy to relate to - they're both members of a highly revered and exceedingly codified order, who spend the entire film following orders given to them by the government or by ruling members of the highly revered and exceedingly codified order. It's so deterministic as to preclude a great deal of identification with the audience. You couldn't be either of them (even if you ignore lacking the genetic factors introduced to the G-Canon by this film), and you wouldn't particularly really want to be either of them either.

Padme is a better female lead in TPM than Leia is in ANH though. Leia in ANH is basically the space version of Princess Peach - captured by antagonist, placed in space castle. Padme on the other hand leads the insurrection that reclaims her planet from the (ambiguously motivated) invaders. It's just a shame that that's the high point of her characterisation and she's relegated to being basically a plot device/character development punching bag for Anakin in AOTC and in ROTS.

Plot
As alluded to above, ANH has a simple plot. Bad guys hoard power and do bad things with their bad spaceship, and good guys want to destroy the bad spaceship. It's simple and jaunty, largely thanks to the editing of Richard Chew. It ticks along at a nice pace and chronologically it makes sense.

TPM, again as alluded to above, was a lot more ambitious but fell short in execution. The Naboo head of state has to escape her planet to report atrocities to the space UN to get them to intervene. However, in the second act it all falls apart - they land on Tatooine and the film basically grinds to a halt. It entirely compounded the problem I had with the antagonists not being shown as being particularly bad - ostensibly if they've invaded they'll be subjugating the local population but apparently the head of state has time to take in a local race over the course of a few days for contrived reasons that entirely ignore the logic that TPM itself had established about half an hour before (and that other films had previously established). I don't want to fixate on this too much and want to concentrate more on how it affects the flow of the film, as opposed to in continuity nitpicking, but I'm going to indulge myself. Bear in mind that earlier in the film Qui Gon mind tricked Boss Nass into giving him a vehicle to reach Theed. Bear in mind that the first act of ANH ends with Luke and Obi Wan trying to find a ship captain who could provide them with passage to another planet. Set against all three of these things (the invasion, the previous mind trick vehicle gifting, the fact that apparently there's a trade on Tatooine for space charters) it's entirely ridiculous that they do the whole 'let the kid race in a few days and if he wins give us our Hyperdrive part' thing. Aside from that in continuity nitpicking, from a story telling point of view it entirely destroys the urgency of what is the primary conflict of the film - you spend a big chunk of the film faffing around on Tatooine, then another nugget of time in the temple with Yoda and Sam Jackson thinking of reasons that Anakin can't be trained as a Jedi. Then after about an hour away you're reminded of what the entire thing is about - the Trade Federation had invaded Naboo, and the Queen had fled to seek assistance. Instead of getting to Coruscant the fastest way possible because her people were suffering, her party got involved in some kind of local Grand Prix and/or space version of the Harry Potter Hogwarts induction letter.

As with the antagonists, it's ambitious and far far less of a caricature then the plot of ANH, but ultimately the execution and pacing are really lacking. The middle act kills it basically, with any urgency grinding to a halt. Compare to ANH - once it gets going after the Empire kill Luke's family they're fleeing the Empire on Tatooine, then they've been captured by the Death Star, then they've got to save Leia and escape, and then they've got to destroy the Death Star. It builds and builds in intensity until the end, and any breaks in that buildup are appropriately short and entirely in context - for example, the brief moment of mourning for Kenobi, or the pilot briefing and hangar scenes.

Conclusion
ANH is a simpler film, but this simplicity isn't what makes it a better film. It uses a more effective storytelling method. TPM is much more ambitious but unfortunately it wasn't a particularly well directed film. The second act is a killer, especially when you consider that the bad guys seem to spend more time being shown as either comic relief or as pawns, instead of being shown to be actual antagonists. It destroys any sense of urgency.

Overall, ANH by a country mile. It's admirable to try and tell a more complicated story but when the execution lacks the nuance to uphold that story then points for trying can only get you so far.

 

They're very similar movies, and yet very different.
TPM starts in a peace time, when the Sith lie hidden in shadows, manipulating galactic events in an attempt to gain supreme power. There are many characters who wonderfully connect in a group that thwarts the threat to Naboo, and that maybe childish, or youthful, feeling is present, especially in Anakin's scenes that makes the movie more lighthearted than ANH.
ANH is a movie that throws us in a middle of galactic civil war, good and bad guys are clearly recognizable, a sense of greater-than-life adventure follows us throughout the movie, characters are overly simplistic, but fun and relateable. Although full of really obvious plot holes and conversations that are later proved to be wrong (Luke's father, Darth was a name), it still is a great movie.
Although TPM is a better movie (by movie, artistic or SW trilogy aspect), I still find myself more satisfied at ANH's ending. So... ANH.

 

TPM is a better movie!? I prefer the PT to the OT overall, but as a stand-alone film ANH trumps TPM by..like..a lot.

 

Well to offer up a counter argument, some of those things are implied in the OT as well.

Obi-Wan spoke very fondly of Luke's father, both in ANH and RotJ, so Luke's father was obviously a good person before he fell.

In ANH, it is implied that the republic became an empire and this change was gradual. You had an Imperial senate that still had power. But, as Tarkin said, when it was disbanded, "the last remnants of the Old Republic has been swept away." So I figured, just from ANH alone, that the change for Republic to Empire was not due to a conquest or a very quick coup, but a gradual change.

Lastly, in TPM the "Bad Guys" are quite obviously that, bad guys. Take Maul, is there any doubt that he is a villain? Or Sebulba? Even the TF are quite obviously bad guys. Palpatine seems to be a good guy but the ending quite strongly implies that he is Sidious.

As for how I rate these two films.

ANH by far.
The acting is overall better, to be fair Mark and Carrie are still a bit rough around the edges and got better in the next film. Sir Alec's performance remains the best in any SW film to me. Harrison is great and Peter is his usual good self.
In TPM, there are some good bits between Shmi and Qui-Gon, which one of the few times I got a sense of warmth between any of the characters. For much of the rest of the film, I got a strong sense that the characters just didn't care. Either about each other or what was going on. I know that Lucas was going for a more formal and dethatched way of speaking. But, to me, it didn't work, the characters sounded bored and uninterested instead of formal and regal.

ANH is slow in comparison to newer films but once they leave Tatooine, the pacing is quite good and builds well. TPM's pace actually feels slower. After they leave Naboo, the pace slows down a lot. Then you have the race, which is almost like a mini movie, and then the pace slows down again with the Coruscant scenes. The end battle is well done but I think it suffers from trying to outdo RotJ three way fight by having a four way fight. The ground battle is robbed of tension with silly antics. The space battle feels way too contrived with Anakin being there just by randomly pressing buttons and his presence in the battle makes very little logical sense. Why did Qui-Gon bring a kid into a war zone? Did he want Anakin to be killed? The duel is done well but, to me, Maul had no character and thus the fight was just that, a well done fight, it lacked dramatic punch.

As sharkymcshark explained above, ANH is a simple story done very well, TPM tried to be more complex and layered but doesn't do it as well.

In closing, I do feel that TPM was a very genuine effort on Lucas part. AotC, I think, feels like some fan service has been thrown in and despite what Lucas said, I do think he listened to some of the critics and made some changes. RotS feels rushed and suffers a bit from having to set up all of the OT plot points. What I am trying to say is that IF Lucas had made all three PT films at once then I think AotC and RotS would have been quite different.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

This is probably the only pairing for which I don't have a particularly strong preference either way. My fave parts of ANH are in the first part of the film (before they get to the Death Star) and my fave parts of TPM are any parts with Qui-Gon in them. But I think I like the Duel of the Fates more than any single thing in ANH (at least anything I can think of at the moment), so maybe I would say TPM? I dunno, kind of a toss up for me...

 

A New Hope by a thousand galaxies. The Phantom Disaster is not even in the same league.

1. A New Hope (called Star Wars in my day) was groundbreaking and took the world by storm. If TPM would have come out first in 1977, there would not be a SW craze that exists today.
2. TPM is plagued with problems. Most of it is boring. The Political scenes are horrid. The characters are flat and uninteresting. The logic of the entire plot is flawed. Just the point that you could have started the prequels with Episode Two and just have some expository dialogue to explain where Anakin came from would be enough. The ineffectual enemy force for the most part. Jar Jar. The Gungans. The slow pace. Jar Jar....ok I will stop lol.

 

Thank you.

 

The Phantom Menace for me. Perhaps I'm biased because it was my first Star Wars movie, but it will always hold a special place in my heart. Now, ANH is a wonderful film as well and I think, of all the Star Wars films, it achieves what it sets out to do with the greatest success. Part of the problem, for me, though is that what ANH sets out to do is rather conventional and not nearly as interesting as the other films (although it is helped by the Saga context). Maybe it was more revolutionary in 1977 but by the time I rolled around to watching it in the 2000s, a great deal of its structure, plot points, and set up in general had become staples in media. On its own, ANH is an enjoyable movie but I really didn't come to care about characters such as Luke until ESB, when he was fleshed out a great deal.

TPM is riskier and more problematic, but I felt it handled some things better than ANH and that the payoff was much greater as a result. Both TPM and ANH allude to horrors happening on the home world of a female protagonist but don't actually show citizens suffering. Where I feel that TPM succeeds better is that it implies this (rather than violently showing the planet destroyed) and makes Padmé's concern a real focus -- as opposed how it's handled with Leia. I also really like the use of Qui-Gon as a centerpiece character to bring the three leads of the next movie together. It's not a typical structure, but it works very well. Focusing on Qui-Gon helps make his absence in the subsequent films resonate more.

The characters in ANH feel a bit too stereotyped to me: the farm boy, the wise old mentor, the rogue, the feisty princess (although, in fairness, ANH helped to invent this trope, but it wasn't very rare by the time I got around to watching it). A lot of these, fortunately, are subverted in subsequent films, which is one of my favorite things about the OT. But I find TPM's characters resist such easy classification and that's a good thing in my book.

 

I has been discussed before in this thread, but I'd like to give my opinion as well.

Let's see:
1.) Characters: TPM introduces us to the characters themselves and the relations of the characters are established. ANH does the same. I'd say that Anakin leaving his mother is more relevant to his arc than anything Luke does in ANH for his, but I will call it a draw.
2. Plot: TPM's resolution elevates Palpatine to the position of Chancellor, which is very, very, very important for the subsequent films. The destruction of the Death Star in ANH leads to....well, nothing really since the Empire is reintroduced as stronger than ever in ESB.
I'm not saying that ANH is irrelevant, no wayt, but I'd say that TPM is actually more relevant to AOTC and ROTS than ANH is for ESB and ROTJ.