Was the Phantom Menace neccessary

I like his death was shown because it was shown. Ya know, a battle and all that. And again, the dead Gungans IMHO weren't really shown, compared to Mr Dumb Jedi or the Ewok. I must have missed because I didn't watch TPM again and again, even when I was a gusher. Or maybe Jar Jar's "courage" distracted me.

And I'm sorry you feel didn't feel the way I feel about ANH. We'll just have to agree to disagree and respct each other's opinion on that. Hmmm?

Anyway, its getting late, like 4 am late. Have to go for now, but mesa will be bombad back!

Don't argue with Shelley. It's pointless.

The Prequel Trilogy is a giant mystery only to be understood at the end. Lucas has said that something's coming in Episode III that will change our view of the entire saga. In Episode II, we had discovered many mysterious aspects that made our mind speculate (Who's Sifo-Dyas?, How did Qui-Gon mantain his identy?, etc.).

My point is, I'm positive that after Episode III is released, you'll realize Episode I's importance and neccessaty.

Man, it's amazing that GL's still got folks holding out hope like that. The films should all deliver on their own. Whether the mystery is solve dor not, we should feel we saw a quality film that entertained us.

But it is important to wait until a story arc is finished before you judge it. All this talk about plot holes and Lucas forgetting the plot of his own saga is meanlingless until we see the last second of Episode III. Until then, it's still all up in the air.

To give an example, during Season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the character of Dawn was introduced as the younger sister of the heroine. Only problem? She never had a younger sister in any of the previous four seasons. They just threw in this new character without any explanation.
Now, if you were judging the show on a per episode basis, you could say that this was a stupid twist that made no sense, and the creator of the show was contradicting his own mythology. However, before the end of that season the mysterious sister's arrival was explained in full and added a whole new dimension to the show.

Now, I don't know if Lucas has some trick up his sleeve for Episode III that will make us totally re-examine the other episodes. But it's worth considering before we make any claims that Lucas doesn't care about the saga anymore and is creating unnecessary plot holes.

Well, we were assured by some that Lucas had tricks up his sleeve for AOTC which would show why TPM was the sublimely brilliant, subtle work of cinematic storytelling art that the gushers always claim it to be.

All AOTC showed me is which episode I'll consistently begin my SW saga marathons once the whole schmear is out on DVD... t'ain't Episode I, that's for sure.

I am wondering if ungrateful fans are neccessary.

I usually skip the "preface" when reading a novel...so you can guess what I'll do with TPM when I have the entire series on video/dvd. You'd lose nothing by starting the series with AOTC...the crawl gets you up to date on what's happening. My .02.

Wouldn't you miss out on:

Midichlorians
Qui-Gon Jinn
Darth Maul
Amidala's stint as Queen
Senator Palpatine's rise to power
Anakin being freed from slavery and separated from his mother
Jar-Jar stepping in Poop and being farted on
Chancellor Vallorum
Captain Panaka
Ric Olie

And any of this would detract from Anakin's fall, how?

Grateful?

Uh... Lucas didn't just come over to our houses and give us, his buddies, private screenings of all these films, did he?

Seems to me he put out a product and charged money for it. Some guy in a restaurant kitchen cooks me a steak, and I eat and pay for the thing, I don't go in there and offer to babysit his kids or lend him house payment money in "gratitude", do I? A product is provided, that product is bought and paid for, end of debt.

Same with a movie. Lucas makes a flick, we pays our sheckels, sees the movie, and makes our comments. No genuflecting or ring-kissing is necessary at that point. Fans are certainly not obliged to withhold any and all criticism of a film out of some misguided sense of "gratitude" that the film was made in the first place...

If you don't like it you go find something else that actually measures up to your astounding expectations.

You don't whine about it for 3 years do you?

I bet you didn't even ask for your mooney back from the theater.

I also bet you saw it more than once.

If you get a bad steak at a resturant, you don't finish the thing, order two more, and then complain for 3 years straight do you?

I am not saying you can't do it, I am just wondering if the world would be a worse place without it, or if it would get along just fine.

Of course it's important > it's important to me 'cause it's my favorite movie!



And it is, too.

Ah Gomes, I forgot... no criticism of any kind is allowed in a Star Wars forum. How silly of me.

I didn't say it wasn't allowed, I am just wondering out loud if it would be missed if it weren't there.

By the gushers, no.

By those who don't dip in bronze every single moment of every single Star Wars movie and prefer intelligent critical analysis of some sort to mere "It RAWKED!!" cheer-leading? Quite possibly.

I saw TPM once in the theatre. (That was enough.) A large section of the audience got up and left during the Tatooine sequences...I seriously considered joining them. I have never been so cheap to ask for my money back at a movie. The way I look at it, I took a chance going in there that it would be a piece of crap...I rolled the dice and lost. Why should I bug the poor kid making minimum-wage working the booth for a refund? It's so much easier (and more American, I think) to air my complaints and commentary in a public forum such as this.

So you would miss it?

F-Wookiee - I never saw anyone walk out of any movie in my life. I think they were just going to the concession stand and you didn't see them come back!

I think there are some people who just don't 'get' SW and insist in critiquing it based on what they THINK it would be "cool" as. If you take EPI as the ground-rules for this story stylistically and narratively - it works : on its own terms. If you don't like it, cool.

The OT was never the whole story > we didn't know the whole story. GL didn't even know the whole story, he's still inventing it. Stop regurgitating the ANH/ESB "gold standard" and accept that SW is different from what you thought it was/want it to be.

yeah, apparently walk-outs and booing were a unique phenomenon at certain screenings attended by bashers

Amen!

Ever notice how bashers practically brag about how much they hated TPM and how they fell asleep during the Tatooine sequence and how "large numbers of people in the theater" booed and/or laughed and/or walked out?

My favorite basher brag: "I went to see TPM with my mother. I was very drunk and enjoyed the movie more. When it was revealed that Anakin was an immaculate conception, I started laughing my ass off, and no one hushed me because they were all laughing so hard themselves."

Uh huh.

I've noticed the same with people who hated AOTC. "The theater was only half full on opening day! Everyone in the theater laughed uproariously during the love scenes and during Shmi's death! Everyone booed and hissed when Jar Jar first appeared and cheered when he left! People yelled and threw popcorn at the screen! Afterwards everyone gathered in a group and talked about how much they hated it!"

Uh huh.

Oh, and when they saw LOTR:

"Everyone in the theater was sobbing during Gandalf's death scene! In fact, they were crying all the way through because of the sheer magnificence of the movie! Afterwards everyone talked about how this movie was going to kill off Star Wars!"

Uh huh.

Blatant generalizations! how nice! spare me your stereotypical bashers are evil rhetoric shelley, if you don?t mind.. Nothing in any of your nice anecdotal stories ever happened in any of the theaters I was in, and I think I qualify as a "basher" personal stories are always open to question by the way,
Name the good things tpm did for starwars if you don't mind. I"d like to see what you, Shelley think was redeemable concerning tpm. Then we can have a nice civil discussion about it.

"Man, everyone in the audience cheered when Yoda got his lightsabre out! They were jumping up and down in their seats"

Uh huh.


"When Shmi died, you could hear a pin drop. I looked around and everyone had tears in their eyes. It was sooo sad"

Uh huh.


"On my way to watch AOTC for the 20th time, I looked in on a screen showing Spiderman, and there were only two people in there, and they were both talking about how bad it was and how they wished they were watching AOTC!!! How can this film have made 100 million dollars more then AOTC????"

Uh huh.


And why do people keep refering to Anakin's Immaculate conception? If the Catholic God and the fall of Adam don't exist in the Star Wars Universe, everybody's conception was immaculate.

Blatant generalizations!

No kidding! They were all blatant generalizions/exaggerations. Except for the "drunk" one. That was a direct quote.