PT I think The Phantom Menace is better than Attack Of The Clones

There are plenty of critics of both movies - including me - but most people at least acknowledge the greatness of the DM vs. QGJ / OWK duel. TPM has one of the saga's true high points to hang its hat on. IMO, AOTC lacks a truly great sequence.

 

I'm torn, personally. TPM has some really great stuff in it.... Qui-Gon is a great character, Padme is pretty bad-ass in it (she's much less bad-ass in the later movies), and the effects, for the most part, are great . But the Anakin stuff really is... not so good, IMO, and I despise the Gungans (yeah, specially Jar-Jar). It is the film most infected with childish humor, too, which is a big minus for me. Some of the design choices bug me too, but ah well. AOTC, of course, has the cringey romance stuff, and the cartoony clones. The battle of Geonosis is a low point for the effects for me. But I actually really like Obi-Wan the detective. Kamino is pretty cool, though I do not like the effects there very much. Still, overall I prefer it to TPM. At the end of the day, TPM is too much of a prologue for my tastes. For all of its weaknesses, AOTC feels like a part of the story proper and there is less of it that makes me roll my eyes.

 

Obi-Wan vs. Jango? The Battle of Geonosis? Yoda vs. Dooku? "Begun the Clone War has"?

 

The_Phantom_Calamari

From my experience, Count Dooku vs. Yoda is the only one of those people really seem to remember and the reception towards that has been…mixed, to say the least.

 

Yes. I also think it's better than Revenge of the Sith.

 

It's the one prequel that feels like a movie. Shot on film, more real locations etc. In my opinion, Attack of the Clones have no redeeming qualities. TPM at least has a pretty (visually) good fight.

 

That certainly didn't seem to be the case in the theater I was in.

 

The_Phantom_Calamari

People either seem to love or hate this and…yeah, I’m somewhere in between. I understand both sides of the argument. On the one hand, yeah, it’s kinda neat to see Yoda with a lightsaber. It’s cool to see him jump around and it shows that such a little person can still cause a lot of damage, but, like the other half of people, I kinda liked the fact that all he had to do was wave a hand and a spaceship could fly by, like he was that powerful. All he had to do was point a finger. He was that in touch with the Force. I dunno. I’m just glad it was something I didn’t really see before, and it was kinda neat to see, albeit kinda goofy.

 

Exactly. AOTC and ROTS feel like animated cartoons in comparison. TPM is also the best-designed prequel, with Doug Chiang (the true heir to McQuarrie) leading the art team.

 

I think the camera works helps too. The camera actually moves like in "real" movies. In later prequels Lucas seemed to love completely static shots with an added digital zoom in post.

 

I think AOTC sometimes has an unreal or dreamlike quality to the visuals, but there's nothing really cartoonish about it to me. If fact I'd say the characters feel more like real people to me than pretty much any other SW installment aside from the Tatooine sections of ANH. On the other hand, some of the more cartoon-feeling installments to me are the same ones where practical effects were advertised as a major selling point. I find that if I can't buy into the characters, no amount of "in camera" work can make up the lost ground. Also, I've seen actual animated films that are far more serious explorations of humanity than most (if not all) Star Wars movies, so really the notion of tactical visuals is irrelevant to me as a film goer.

 

Partially due to Chiang leaving the AOTC design team halfway through to work on The Polar Express. Church and Tiemen's are great illustrators but not designers like Chiang.

 

Agreed. Church is a particularly terrible designer. Not quite sure how he got such a top job. He should be a designer for bottom shelf games, not the most popular space-fantasy film series of all time.

 

I think out of the three prequels, it has aged the best in terms of its visuals.

ATOC and ROTS look like outdated video games. The green screened, CGI environments create this weird sensation where the worlds look vast, but the actors feel like they are all trapped in an invisible force field and can't interact with any of it. Its really weird, but its very noticeable to me when I watch the films now.

Phantom Menace doesn't have that problem, at least not to the degree of the other two. Maybe its because most of the movie is set on Tatooine and Naboo where the environments are more organic, but most of the visuals of that movie hold up moderately well. And hey, if there is one thing they got right with Jar Jar, its that I believe he is actually there on screen. There are fully CGI characters I see in movies today that are clearly just effects. Outside of Gollum and the Apes from the new Planet of the Apes films, there aren't many fully CGI characters that I truly believe are right there in front of the camera interacting with the organic environment. Even Force Awakens and Rogue One had this problem. Snoke in TFA looked AWFUL and like a total cartoon character. And much has already been said about the CGI Tarkin and Leia (and those were just the faces). But Jar Jar? Yeah, I do believe he's there. I hate him and I want to strangle him, but at least he feels like any of the other characters could actually reach out and strangle him. Watto and Sebulba look really good too.

Clones and Sith also had the habit of putting too much stuff on the screen and just filling the frame up with as much as possible, creating a sensory overload. Phantom Menace is at least a tad more restrained in that regard.

 

ROTS is better than TPM and AOTC.

 

There aren't that many fully CG environments in AOTC and ROTS.

The only ones that spring to mind are some of the Coruscant backdrops (but not interiors), some parts of Mustafar, and the majority of the Droid Factory. Almost everything else are either full sets, miniatures, or locations.

 

Nah,

TPM lacks commitment to Padme as its central protagonist, whereas AOTC nicely commences Anakin's fall to the dark side.

 

By a long way.

 

Having a character who's basically omnipotent doesn't make for very good drama. But that aspect of Yoda is preserved to an extent in the prequels: He can absorb and deflect lightning with his bare hands, he can lift gigantic objects with his mind (something which we don't see any other Jedi do in the prequels), and he can easily overcome normal adversaries (like that pair of Red Guards) with a simple flick of his wrist. He only breaks out the lightsaber and gets physical when he has to face an opponent with whom he is equally matched in spiritual power.

 

I've said this before but TPM has a weird relaxing feel to it that I find difficult to put into words, which makes it a fairly unique part of the saga as no other episode has this. I also feel it has much more constant directing, acting and story then the rest of the PT (saying this as someone who still has ROTS as his favorite PT episode). In general I find its one the more underrated sci fi films in recent memory, despite some flaws.

 

I agree. In my opinion each prequel was a little better than the one before it.

I like AOTC slightly more than TPM, mostly because I really enjoyed the plot with Obi-Wan finding out about the clones. We also got to see more Jedi than ever before in AOTC.

However, the last time I watched TPM, I found that I really enjoyed most of what happens before they reach Coruscant. I also didn't mind Anakin as much, until he destroys the droid ship pretty much by accident (someone could interpret it as The Force putting him in the right place, but it still looks like an accident). I still consider TPM to be the weakest, but despite its flaws, I can enjoy it, and the weakest Star Wars film is still better than most other films.

 

I prefer TPM to AOTC. TPM is one of my favorites, period. I could write an essay on why, but suffice it to say, TPM is just better. I grew up with both, but TPM never gets old to me, even though I've seen it a lot more. Just when the OT and the old (post-Thrawn Trilogy) EU had fans thinking they had the tone, mood, feel etc. of Star Wars figured out, Lucas threw a curveball with TPM in regards to SW worldbuilding and mythopoeia. It's almost Wizard of Oz-esque in its colorfulness and archetypal fantasy feel. Not to mention the special effects. And also the politics. Love it or hate it, but Lucas was gutsy to bring parliamentary procedure and discussion of tax legislation into a well-known space opera franchise, and I applaud him for it.

Oh, and space motorsports too! What?! Sign me up!!

On the other hand, AOTC is more claustrophobic, the dialog is more stilted, and the long, boring sections are longer and more boring. It's always been hard for me to pay attention during Anakin and Padme's romance scenes at Varykino, both as a child and as an adult. I do appreciate the film noir references Lucas was going for, but thematically, the movie was a bit jumbled in comparison to TPM and ROTS (or the OT for that matter). Of course, come to think of it, maybe all this was intentional. It's a troubled movie for a troubled time in the SW universe. Of course the special effects are fantastic, the CGI is not only good for its time but absolutely good, but that doesn't redeem the story for me. I will admit I think AOTC relied on CGI too much, but then that assertion is a little absurd in a way. It's like accusing Return of the Jedi of using 'too many models."

As an aside: for all you who think AOTC looks like an "outdated video game," I need to know what graphics card y'all are running. Because if the Battle of Geonosis is outdated for a video game, I must be painfully behind the times.

 

100% agree Hutts! Great insight!!

TPM and ROTS (even tho both are polar opposites), are paced in a much more interesting/engaging way. AOTC is a slow burn film, not too dissimilar from Rogue One tbh. Both films have been criticized for an awkward, jumpy first-half, but an astounding climax. IMO, the reason AOTC ranks higher than ROTJ for me, is the slow first half pays off in my eyes. The Battle of Geonosis is my favorite large-scale battle of the saga, while I am bored by the first half of Jedi and the Endor battle in the second half falls short minus the Vader/Luke scenes.

AOTC is a strange film tbh. I have strong, or at least, pretty realized opinions of every film in the saga besides Clones. At one point, it was the best SW film, then it became my least favorite SW film, and now it is high in the middle. The film has, at the very least, an engaging opening with the speeder chase being one of the most fun moments of the saga for me, but the film does halt once Zam dies. It picks up a bit with Jango and Obi-Wan and the Tatooine scenes, and I am kinda happy the Droid Factory scene is there, only if it's because there's something low key satisfying about Anakin slicing Geonosians into pieces.

The reason why I can't hate Clones tho is because that climax, particularly before the Republic Army arrives, is fun as hell when Jedi are just battling.droids.

 

They're pretty equal for me, the only thing I don't like is the final lightsaber duel in Clones which is just a disjointed mess.

 

TPM is my least favorite. It began the moment the Jedi council refused to believe two fellow Jedi standing in front of them telling them they had been confronted by a Sith.