PT What didn't you like about the phantom menace?

Fitting since Batman is similar to the comic book and serial “the phantom”, which is an example of many uses of the word phantom and menace in the titles of the pulp fiction SW is based on. So I think associating the title with other media with similar names is intended

 

Portman's acting, mostly on Coruscant, is occasionally too stiff and more so, though probably linked, Amidala has too many distracting different elaborate costumes changing between them too often.

I would prefer Anakin as a little older and also less cutesy-angelic-genius though how he is is still OK.

Obi-Wan is too minimally used and also unappealing.

 

These.

 

The ending. It had far too much going on. You had the Theed throne room attack, the Gungans fighting the droid army, Anakin attacking the trade federation control ship and of course the Jedi and Darth Maul throwing down.

IMO you only need 2 of these. If they scrapped the Gungan battle or shortened it to a few scenes it would have flowed a lot better. This is actually brought up in the making of TPM where the director says there is too much going on and George says we can’t take it out because it’s all intertwined.

TPM is watchable purely for Darth Maul and also Qui-Gon who Liam Neeson was a great choice for the role. It’s a movie made for children at the end of the day it’s not made for adults like the Terminator was, Lucas has even said this in interviews.

It’s messy in parts the ending being glaringly obvious but apart from that the lightsaber duel was pretty epic and it still holds up today IMHO.

 

Mostly Jar Jar Binks was a bit extreme at times, but overall a good movie. There is also a line where Anakin say's "Only I..." and Padme says "miss your mother." and that "Only I..." line was delivered in a way that he knew she would complete his thought. I can't think of much else.

 

I am a fan of TPM, but the podrace bores me a bit.

 

I agree with this, the race did drag a bit...

It is still my favorite film of the PT though.

 

I didn’t like the gungans. They were too much. I didn’t mind them as a kid, but they haven’t aged well for me.

I feel like too many of the actors played their characters as stoic. Jake Lloyd is the only exception to that out of the human cast that I can think of, maybe Ralph Brown too (bless his heart for trying) and the aliens were all well done. But Ewan, Natalie, Liam, Samuel, Pernilla, and Hugh all just seemed bored.

There are some stand out moments like Obi-Wan reacting to Qui-Gon getting impaled, or some of the pilots during the attack on the control ship, but not enough there to carry the film. The characters with the most emotional range were Neimoidians, Watto, Jar Jar, and Ratts Tyrell’s wife.

I felt like Ewan, Natalie, SLJ, and Ian all got better in each film and peaked in RotS. But I thought TPM was a rough start.

Ewan, Liam, SLJ, and Natalie are all fantastic in their other works whether Star Wars or not.

I’m not familiar with Hugh, Pernilla or Ian outside of Star Wars. But Pernilla did great in her limited screen time in AotC and Ian is great. Hugh didn’t continue on past TPM so I really don’t know much about him.

The only other role I know Ralph Brown from is Aaron in Alien 3 and he was great in that. But TPM had weak permanence across the board, IMO.


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Double post

 

I know a lot of people hate it but I liked most of it except for Jar Jar, I hated him! I even like the political scenes.

 

I loved it (along with all the SW films so far) so I kind of hate to get into this negative toned threads and wish we had more positive stuff, it's beyond stale, but whatever.

(Although I would have removed the lines where the other Gungans who were supposed to fierce said stuff like "yousa in deep doo-doo" an such which didn't seem to fit, replace them with something that works better or alien language. I think Jar-Jar might have been taken better by some detractors had they not made some of the fierce guard and soldier Gungans do baby talk stuff at times. But honestly, what is it, like 20 seconds total dialogue out of an over two hour long movie? Who cares! Not that horrible anyway. The final ground battle sometimes comes across a bit too cartoony looking, make it darker and dingier looking and occasionally maybe tossed in a bit too much comedy. The final space battle wasn't a match for OT battles, but then one needs to keep in mind this was just the opening chapter in a book and it kind of needed to be played down the way it was so it was well done in the greater context and no complaint. Sometimes it seemed a touch standard Disney/Hollywood aimed at kids 70s/80s fair unlike the OT.)

But pretty much it was awesome, along with the rest of the PT. Lots of inventive design with all sorts of cool creatures and locations, wonderful scenery, wild places you got to see, interesting political machinations, fun, great mythology, etc. etc.

 

She was supposed to be stiff, she was supposed to be like 14 and yet taken seriously as ruler, gotta play that part.
The costumes were inventive, should have won the Oscar (but until recently pretty much only same old same old period piece replicas ever won that Oscar).

 

The Phantom Menace is usually my favorite Star Wars movie, but I do actually think it’s sort of a slow and stilted beginning to the saga.

 

Even by child's actors standards, Jake Lloyd's acting is...awkward to watch, to put it gently. That's about the only thing I dislike about TPM, other than the clinical way they re-tailor the force into being something less spiritual in nature like how it's talked about in the OT, and more sort of coldly scientific and solely grounded in genetics and biology.

 

I think he's awkward in parts, but I think others he does fine with.

TPM just says that they connect to the force in regards to the midichlorians, not that the force is genetics and biology. The idea of a bloodline being more force sensitive is suggested in ROTJ.

 

What is known about the rough draft of TPM, for example from Mike Kaminsky's old website and his book "Secret History of Star Wars" sounds so much better than what we got.

One of these cases, where the original script was superior to the movie.

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I think there's parts that work. But I think there's parts that don't, from what I remember. I can very much see why some of the alterations were made and I think it cleans up the story and character aspects a bit more.

 

One negative is it changed my view of what Star Wars is and can be. After such a vibrant and fresh feeling film it's a bit harder to move on to installments that feel safer and/or more "corporate."

 

I'm not thrilled about the fact that the one major human character who could easily have been any gender and color is yet another white guy, nor does it please me that every single character of importance except the two that "have" to be female are male.

Furthermore, I dislike the racial coding of nonhumans (most notably the minstrelesque characteristics of Jar Jar), which is especially egregious in light of the story being dominated and driven by white humans.

I'm sure GL didn't deliberately and consciously set out to defile an otherwise near-perfect movie, but the filth is there. I was privileged enough to be unaware of it and just enjoy the heck out of TPM for about two decades, but that's in the past. I can't and won't unsee it now.

 

Only if you perceive the racial coding as existing, in that way, in the movie, but who says it does?

 

The Gungans are referred to as primitives. Watto and the Neimoidians are inspired by orientalist tropes in older sci-if and fantasy.

I think there is racial subtext, I just disagree that it’s discriminatory or defiles the movie.

 

I didn't expect a dark and gloomy Anakin, but an adult Anakin would have been better. They wouldn't have had to recast the role, and remember, Luke, Obi-Wan, and Kylo Ren all start their stories as adults, not children.

We have three previous films that do not concern themselves with fulfilling a prophecy, and they are better for that. Luke and Han were not chosen by destiny to be the only person who could do what they did. They were everymen, people like us who were thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
Obi-Wan should have had a bigger role. You could still have Qui-Gon, still have him as an apprentice, without relegating him to the back seat for the entire film.
And, as somebody previously said, too many climaxes. The Naboo fighter attack was sacrificed. It looked unplanned and uncooordinated.

 

The Gungans are referred to as primitives. Watto and the Neimoidians are inspired by orientalist tropes in older sci-if and fantasy.

I think there is racial subtext, I just disagree that it’s discriminatory or defiles the movie.
In earlier movies those would have reinforced beliefs about those ethnic groups. Nobody bases their beliefs about any minority
on what they saw in Star Wars.

 

Right... If you're all white and have nothing to add except your personal feelings and/or anecdotes about a POC friend, I suggest you let this go for now and seek out different views from people who know something about these things - and listen with actively friendly ears! Broaden your perspective.
If you're NOT white, I would still recommend that you do so if you haven't already.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion/reading of the film, but we should inform ourselves when we have the chance, in any way we can, to better form opinions that align with our personal values. That's my opinion.

That's all I'm going to say about this here. I just came to share my dislikes. No need to turn the thread into a hopeless debate on whether or not racial coding is a thing/something to worry about.

 

I’ll only say that the Neimoidians weren’t created with any type of dialect or accent in mind, and the voices that ended up being dubbed for them were based on Transylvanian accents. Now if you want to get into the perpetuation of negative Transylvanian stereotypes since the initial release of Dracula we can, but personally I’ve never seen anyone take issue with that.

And as for Jar Jar, all of his antics are based on Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, so make of that what you will.