PT Empire magazine's original TPM review

I finally got hold of a copy of the August 1999 issue of Empire magazine, which featured their original review of TPM. This 4-star review (which according to their rating system makes it a "very good" movie) has since been removed from Empire's website to be replaced with a decidedly different 3-star one (http://www.empireonline.com/movies/star-wars-episode-phantom-menace/review/), so I've typed the whole thing out below. It's very interesting to compare what Empire said in 1999 to what it says today:


Be it cheerleaders at “soccer” matches, or the popularity of Mariah Carey, the Americans occasionally display a remarkable capacity for getting things wrong. And so it came to pass with US press screenings of Episode I. “Star Bores!” screamed the tabloids; “Lacklustre Lucas!” shrieked the broadsheets. Thumbs down was the cowardly consensus. Yet, by seeking a story rather than reviewing a movie, the Yanks missed the point entirely. For, while never scaling the heights of Episodes IV or V (but definitely besting VI), The Phantom Menace is much more triumphant than any level-headed movie fan had the right to expect.

After the strange sensation of watching the same-but-different opening crawl, the early scenes—Jedi Knights Qui-Gon Jinn (Neeson) and apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor) chaperone Queen Amidala (Portman, effective once you get past her rounded tones) of peaceful planet Naboo from the threat of the avaricious Trade Federation—feel muddled and stilted. Yet, with the discovery of Tatooine slave boy Anakin Skywalker (Lloyd) whom Jinn senses is symbolically in league with The Force, Lucas hits an impressive groove, adding neat new tricks to the familiar milieu.

In many ways, Phantom conquers its biggest challenges. Time and again, the movie renders jaw-dropping effects—droids that unfurl into tanks, the Naboo invasion—at a time when audiences are suffering from digital fatigue, even surpassing the original trilogy in the sense-of-wonder stakes; from the luminous beauty of a subaqua city to the awe-inspiring cityscapes of Coruscant, Lucas' universe has never looked so visually rich and intoxicating.

Easily refuting “Mannequin Skywalker” accusations, Lloyd is fresh and believable and there is even a killer equivalent to Darth Vader—Darth Maul (the astonishingly agile Ray Park), a whirling dervish who, as the muscle for political puppetmaster Darth Sidious, practically devours the screen—disappointing, then, that his black image is used so rarely.

Elsewhere Phantom falters on the seemingly obvious: the overflowing plot sometimes suggests that the storytelling is setting up future episodes rather than concentrating on the present; with Neeson and McGregor inhabiting stolid roles, the film would really benefit from a Han Solo-type to add some cynical fun to the mix, while the Jedi's Gungan sidekick Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best)—a triumph of character animation and less irritating than you probably feared—seems to have wandered in from a Disney franchise.

Such minor carping is blown away, however, by the film's centrepiece—the Podrace, a stunning melding of digital dexterity and editing pizzazz that renders The Matrix positively arthritic. Pulled by giant engines, a grid of wonderfully exotic speed demons take on Anakin through the perilous terrain of Tatooine rockery—little in recent cinematic memory has fuelled the blood so furiously. Between the pixels, Lucas juggles strangely moving interludes—Anakin's mother Shmi (Pernilla August) saying goodbye to her son, Amidala giving comfort to Anakin—with epic action building to the three way 'saber standoff between Jinn, Kenobi and Maul where the opera of The Phantom fulfils the mythic stature it always promised.

Ultimately, how much you enjoy Episode I will depend on preconception: if you expect a life-changing, generation-defining experience, you'll be sorely disappointed; if you expect a superbly fashioned blockbuster, then The Phantom Menace delivers. After a 16 year wait, it turns out it is only a movie after all. Just as well it's a bloody good one.

 

Interesting. The beginning of the original review is 'reflected' in the actual one, or we can see that the original reviewer was right.

 

It's not surprising, considering on their best film of all time poll ESB was no.1. I like the film, but any Star Wars to be called the best film of all time is a severe overestimation of their quality.
Empire have proven they have nothing interesting to say, time and again in my opinion. They are another magazine that seem to be in place purely to confirm the popular consensus that is around.

 

Sad to see them get swayed by the popular opinion. That's all the media seems to be anyway, lol. Heck, I know a few SW fans personally and most of them like the prequels and only a few I know dont so I'm not sure if hating the prequels is a popular opinion

 

Sadly, it has become the popular opinion and while I am fine with someone genuinely disliking the prequels, it seems there are many instances where people have coincidentally changed their mind as it has become cool to dislike them.

 

There is a star missing from the review. It should be ... here, there were 4 stars, but now there are three ?
How is this possible?
It must have been erased from the archives.

Empire have lost a star, how embawesing.

 

Yes, it's funny how the original review states that TPM "defintitely" bests ROTJ and yet Jedi retains a 4-star status on Empire's website, wheras TPM has been down-graded.

What I want to know is how a film goes from being better than another to being worse than it?

I'm pretty sure TPM is the same film now as it was in 1999

 

And of course all this 'revisionism' is just paranoia.

Empire were disgusting in their coverage up to the release of TFA. They gorged on all that Disney stuff about 'practical FX' etc.

Funny thing was after all of that waiting for the sunshine to come out of JJ's posterior, the film got a fairly lukewarm four star review. Of course it ended with 'it's not the prequels'. Yeah - anything but. Anything.

Grown men.

 

Yes, "The prequels this ain't" Empire snidely remarked.

Without noting that they had originally given the very same 4-star rating to all three of the prequels.

 

"the Podrace, a stunning melding of digital dexterity and editing pizzazz that renders The Matrix positively arthritic"

I love The Matrix, but that made me giggle.

 

Does anyone know approximately when Empire swapped their TPM write-ups? Like the year?

 

TPM is bloody good? Jar Jar isn't the end of the world? Jake as Anakin was fresh and believable??

What am I reading? Is this real life??



Or is this a glitch in the matrix??


Haha, but seriously, did some grown up people actually call poor little 9 year old Jake 'Mannequin Skywalker' back then? If so, I think humanity had reached a new low after the Holocaust.

 

I think the current review was posted last December, around the time TFA was released.

However, there was a different 3-star review in-between.

So the current review is at least their thrid one.

 

so they literally
Rewrote their history. Like people trying to be cool . "You said last year you used to like the Backstreet Boys !!" "Uh...No man...i'm too cool for that i never did ! "

 

Haha, perfect analogy!

(Confession: I always loved Backstreet Boys and will continue to love them.)

 

They did the same thing with AOTC, dropping it from 5 stars to 2.

 

They let the bashers and perceived "common wisdom" bully them into recanting. Cowards.

I feel the same way toward James Berardinelli, who has described himself as being a "defender of the prequels," but who in fact has taken gratuitous swipes at them every chance he gets, and if he's "defended" them, he's done so weakly and apologetically at best. He continued to snipe at them to excuse Natalie Portman for blah performances ("maybe the prequels ruined her," he once claimed, then lied about having said it when called out), long after logic would dictate that that so-called "argument" should have been retired (i.e., when she won a Best Actress Oscar).

A certain....person recently smirked elsewhere in this forum about how the reviews for TPM: 3-D were worse than the reviews for the initial release, and how that's "proof" that the hatred toward the movie hasn't softened with time, etc. Never mind that the 3-D reviews didn't occur in a vacuum, but were written after almost a decade and a half of nonstop, virulent, vicious hate directed at the movie from all angles (sometimes it seemed like people were trying to "out-bash" each other, showing how much more they hated the prequels than so-and-so and were therefore much cooler), and it had become supposedly "common wisdom" that the prequels are horrible, they're universally despised, with TPM being the worst and most despised of all.

 

Correction: from a 5 to a 3.

 

About ten years ago, I think. They're not the only reviewers to flip-flop, though. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave TPM and AOTC overall favorable reviews, but decided that chewing the cud and following the herd was more to his liking, so now he claims both movies are terrible. Well, the movies themselves didn't change...

 

In fairness, didn't Empire Magazine (or some other magazine) write an article in 1996 or 1997 '50 reasons we hate Return of the Jedi.' I'm sure they wouldn't have said that in 1983. Titanic gets alot of hate because of the backlash from it being so popular, as you will see people on the internet take shots at it that they wouldn't have done in 1997-98. So lets stop the whining that the TPM is the only movie that gets reevaluated years later as this happens all of the time.

I just remember my friends were split on TPM in 1999. Some thought it wasn't bad, some hated it, but NOBODY I knew said it was great. Most of my friends are just indifferent about the PT these days, as honestly it just isn't discussed and pretty much forgotten. Only the internet really blazes up these debates, but were a small % of the overall fanbase.

 

Feb 1997: Sci-Fi Universe, Dan Webber & Dana Gould.

 

Is it honest reevaluation or just following the loudest bovines in the herd? Yes, people change their minds over time, but for a rating to change that drastically says more about the reviewer's lack of backbone or integrity than the movie's weaknesses. As for Titanic, I never got the hostility. But then, I've been dragged into so many chick movies that I've probably built up immunity the way a mongoose does each time it's bitten by a snake. Besides, Kate Winslet almost always gives me two very good reasons to watch her movies...

I can think of worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

Anecdotes are of limited use. The only scientific survey I could find was the Gallup Poll taken in the weeks after the movie was released:


http://www.gallup.com/poll/3757/public-gives-latest-star-wars-installment-positive-rave-reviews.aspx

The percentage of adult viewers who watched The Phantom Menace and thought it was one of the all-time great films was higher than the number who rated it "poor", and by a large margin with the exception of one week late in June 1999. That's pretty telling. Among parents taking their kids to the movie (you know, the target audience) it's a blowout: The percentage rating TPM as one of the best ever, compared with the percentage who rated it "poor" ranges from 18-1 to 5-1.

 

I was talking more about the internet culture in how they frown upon anyone who mentions they loved Titanic in the present day. The perception was that teenage girls made Titanic the highest grossing film at the time, but it had a wide range of fans. I loved Titanic, as I was a 25 year old male at the time, and still think it holds up well. And I can't argue with you about Kate Winslet.

Yes, but you know that many new movies always get an initial high rating from fans, and then it takes a few years to reevalute it. I can remember in the mid 80's when Rocky 4 came out, my friends and I all thought it was the greatest Rocky movie, and one of the greatest movies ever. It was the highest grossing Rocky movie, as Stallone and Arnold were kings of the box office at that time. A few years later, people started to reevaluate the movie and now its a cheesy 80's guilty pleasure movie thats not even close to the Original Rocky in terms of quality. I kind of laugh at my teenage self for thinking it was a great movie, as once I was an adult I realized how great The Original Rocky was.

My point is that all fans get hyped at something new when it comes to movie sequels, and I'm sure many fans at the time gave TPM high marks. But like most sequels, you sort of reevaluate them on repeated viewings and they usually don't hold up as well. I don't think TPM got downgraded because of the internet, I think it got downgraded just like Rocky 4 got downgraded years later: They are OK at best films to most people.

 

What the???

So let me get this straight. Empire had a 4-Star review of TPM and pulled that then for AOTC gave it a 5 star but after complaints that it wasn't objective changed that to 3.

Once was silly enough I thought but that they had already done it before make them look even sillier-er.

So there actual scores would be TPM 4/5, AOTC 5/5, ROTS 4/5 (assuming ROTS wasn't also pulled and downgraded!) or 87% total instead it's "officially" 3, 3, 4 or 66%

Thanks for the information.

You are being very kind to them calling them cowards.

I would not be so kind.

 

Wow. That's unsurprising. Corny on their part but I now unfortunately expect BS like that to be written. I don't remember the last time i read a movie magazine that praised the prequels. It's all pandering and it certainly shows when Empire Strikes Back is now the crowning achievement of cinema. Good news is ROTS made it on the list of their best films of all time. Empire being no. 1 film of all time? LOL No. Sorry, that seems ridiculous to me. No Star Wars film deserves the greatest thing cinema has ever offered. They are great but not THAT great.