PT Why all the hate for Phantom Menace?

Whenever I talk to someone about Star Wars, in real life or on the Internet, everyone seems to all agree that the first movie is really quite bad. I re-watched the film just about 15 minutes ago and really I don't understand why there is so much hate towards it. The visuals were pretty groundbreaking for their time. The music is still awesome. Okay I know some people hate jar jar binks but to be honest, if you just smile and try to enjoy whilst he is on screen it is easy to understand he is just another character in this universe. I also do know that the acting is not very good at some points but this is easy to look past if you just enjoy the experience.

Please tell me your own opinion in the chat
Thanks

 

lots of people like it. it's just not popular to say so and people seem to think if you like the pt there's something wrong with you. the problem with these people is they took star wars so seriously that when they saw a sw movie they didn't fall in love with they all had a collective tantrum.

then all of the disgruntled adult/children/nerds took their rage to the internet and have been trashing lucas and the prequels for the last 16 years. sounds mature doesn't it.

 

lots of people like it. it's just not popular to say so and people seem to think if you like the pt there's something wrong with you. the problem with these people is they took star wars so seriously that when they saw a sw movie they didn't fall in love with they all had a collective tantrum.

then all of the disgruntled adult/children/nerds took their rage to the internet and have been trashing lucas and the prequels for the last 16 years. sounds mature doesn't it.[/quote]

Haha, sounds very "mature" Thanks for informing me as I always wondered. I was also really nervous that my first forum post was saying I liked the phantom menace hah.

 

Woah jeditraitor! You joined this site when I was a 3 years old!

 

dear god. since i'm much older than you i'll tell you a secret. negativity is always louder than positivity because people that feel good about something don't yell about it to everyone. also, always try something for yourself and see whether you like it. don't just listen to other people's opinions. form your own.

 

TPM moves very slowly for me. Too much time spent meeting Jar Jar, Gungan City, roaming Tatooine etc. I feel like it could have been substantially shortened. I don't consider it a "bad" movie, but certainly the least action packed of the saga.

 

least action packed? it has four simultaneous endings.

 

I dislike it because it was a mediocre film. It had annoying characters (little Ani and Jar Jar), a boring plot and was a wasted opportunity. It messed with the canon under the guise of "challenging us." It is very disconnected from the rest of the PT as well.

 

dear god. since i'm much older than you i'll tell you a secret. negativity is always louder than positivity because people that feel good about something don't yell about it to everyone. also, always try something for yourself and see whether you like it. don't just listen to other people's opinions. form your own.[/quote]

Haha that sounds like what master today would say also I didn't understand why they went underwater at all,could someone possibly explain that part. I actually liked the politicos part as we saw the planets different views and got more backstory.

 

That was meant to away politics oops

 

OH MY GOSH I CANT SPELL

 

Also I meant master yoda

 

Haha that sounds like what master yoda would say also I didn't understand why they went underwater at all, could someone possibly explain that part. I actually liked the politics parts as we saw the planets different views and got more backstory.

Sorry everyone for what looks like spam, I didn't realise there was an edit button until now
My full apologies

 

I think the hate TPM gets is largely from the hype of being the first Star Wars film in a long time and not being what people expected after the Original Trilogy. To be honest, TPM is my favorite of the Prequels...or seems more like a solid film than the two messes that followed (I'm not a Prequel hater, but overall I think they are a messy series of films with great ideas lost in too much flashiness).

 

Yeah, that does make a lot of sense, the one thing I find really funny is just imagining Padme thinking "I can't wait until that kid is about 10 years older, I hope he is hot "

 

Also, did anyone here understand why exactly they went underwater? I never understood that, maybe I missed some dialogue.

 

To hide from the Trade Federation I believe and find a better way to Theed.

 

I'll take a quick stab at this, sure. It's not like much has been written on the subject

The number one answer is: it's complicated. No matter what anyone tells you, there's no "one" reason why the public reaction to TPM has been what it is. It's a messy thing that honestly has valid (and less than valid) arguments on both sides.

But over the 16 (Sweet Jesus) years that this pop culture phenomenon has raged on, a few prominent themes have emerged:

Unmet expectations: Basically, the original three films led many people to gather a very specific definition of what Star Wars "should be", and TPM basically blew past that definition in a way that a lot of people were uncomfortable with. It may be hard to perceive if you were born after the film was released, but there were a ton of unfamiliar things in TPM, and in general the storytelling was stylistically quite different. I think you see a lot of this if you watch the various YouTube videos about "what the sequel trilogy needs to include" or "what the prequel's should have been". It's all very OT centric, and all centered around things (Star Wars can only take place on dirty backwater planets! No cuteness ever!) that George Lucas would tell you isn't actually at the heart of Star Wars as he sees it.

TPM's Tonal Extremes: TPM is at once a more innocent/childlike film and a more mature/nuanced film than its OT predecessors. Whereas a movie like ANH has a great deal of popular appeal thanks to its "straight down the middle" family friendly approach (nothing is ever "too" dark or "too" silly for adults or children) TPM is all over the place, arguably intentionally so. On the silly side, you have multiple instances of fart and fecal humor (a first for the series), rather unmenacing Battle Droids as the primary threat, and of course the incomparable Jar Jar Binks. There's also the fact that the central character of the film is a 9 year old child, an element that by nature has a subtle way of "aging down" the film to something that more resembles a "kids" movie rather than merely a family friendly movie.

At the same time, you have a political subplot that's given significantly more screen time than any political nuances found in the OT. Many children who see these films for the first time don't even know what taxes are, what a "trade federation" would be, and even many of the adults who see the film claim to be "bored" by these segments (which largely goes back to the "unmet expectations" thing again).

The Internet: The release of this polarizing installment of a universally loved franchise just happened to coincide with the rise of the Internet, which has completely changed the way that people talk about pop pop culture. Suddenly we are analyzing it reanalyzing things, together, at a maddening pace in a way that was never possible before. There's an intersting phenomena called "geek hive mind", where the constant rabble of Internet discourse eventually and inevitably ends up suppressing dissenting opinions and turning what is probably closer to a 50/50 divergence of opinion into one side being the universally agreed upon truth. A lot of this, sadly, is upheld by the Internet journalism community. You've probably noticed how almost every article on every website concerning Star Wars contains some sort of jab at the prequels, usually in a way that feels like a dseparate plea for geek-cred.

I feel like everything else kinda stems from these three issues. The weight of nostalgia, the arguments of "Its always been a kids movie!" Etc.... I think if you understand the three main points above, you can have a greater understanding behind all the discussion that has taken place, even at its most vitriolic.

 

They were on the far side of the planet from the city of Theed, and the fastest and most secret way to get there (so not alerting the Neimoidians to their presence until it is too late) was via submarine.

 

Thanks for helping me understand the underwater section and also, amazing detail you went into Han Burgundy, thanks so much for helping me out keep up your comments as this is really fun, insightful and helpful

 

I really hope we don't get a repeat of unmet expectations with Star Wars 7, 8 and 9 or Star Wars battlefront. That would suck of they turn out to be really bad.

 

Many people are just immature and they didn't like it because they expected something else (probably a rehash of EIV-VI).
Some just jump on the hate bandwagon because they think if you hate the movies you are cool and know more about filmmaking .Nearly every time when I hear that EI-III are bad then I hear something about bad acting,effects,not relatable,childlish Bla Bla Bla...Why ?
(Can't they explain ;or give an example ?)
While I don't have a favorite movie in the Star Wars Saga (my order changes like every week or so and every movie is different enough and connected to the other so that I love the movies for many different reasons),
I watch the movies in the chronological order and to me for various reasons the most Star Wars-y movie is Episode I The Phantom Menace .

 

It is boring
off course, most of the people who hate the prequels hate the action-packed ep2 too, but the movie is undoubtedly boring

 

I normally watch them chronologically over a few days as well Saga Explorer

 

No ,it's not .It's just your opinion got it ?