The supposed fan backlash to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 1999 is as legendary today as it is mysterious. Unlike cultural events that are documented in real time in 2019, the real zeitgeist reaction to The Phantom Menace is tricker to pinpoint. But, I remember. I was there. And unlike now, there wasn’t an immediate consensus formed on the internet. Instead, 17-year-old kids like me had to search their feelings about The Phantom Menace without an echo chamber.
In 1999, I thought the film was excellent. Disturbing, but excellent. And now, exactly 20 years later, after having held a variety of differing opinions in-between, I think my first reaction was the right one: The Phantom Menace is great because it is a deeply weird movie. It shocked me and rattled me to my core. Here’s why that mattered.
When I saw Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace on opening night on May 19, I was wearing a blue flip-up watch sporting Ewan McGregor’s face, carrying a green Qui-Gon Jinn lightsaber in my backpack, and clutching a red package of Darth Maul candies in my hands. If I had hated the film—as many, many fans claim they did in 1999—I would have had to rip-off my watch, throw away my sweet lightsaber toy and regurgitate my Darth Maul candy. Spoiler alert, I didn’t, mostly because it was almost impossible for me to see anything wrong The Phantom Menace at that moment. Star Wars was a religion and this was the second coming.
The journey to sitting in that movie theater seat started months and months earlier, however. I was a junior in high school in 1999, and obviously, the massive cultural anticipation for The Phantom Menace started way before May. Shocking no one who knows me well, all of my best friends in high school were on the speech and debate team, which basically became an ad hoc Star Wars fan club from February 1999 until, well, I think it still basically is the same thing today. Our debate coach at the time was 27 years-old, meaning, in terms of enthusiasm, he probably fired us all up way more than any other adult in our lives. Was it cool if we left campus to go pick up the new lightsabers at Toys “R” Us? Yes, of course, said Coach Kenobi, as long as we brought one back for him, too.
I’ll never forget driving a guy a year ahead of me to pick up The Phantom Menace soundtrack from Tower Records in the hot Tatooine sun of Mesa, Arizona the day it came out. My 1987 Dodge Ram pick-up truck sported a red X-Wing decal poised above another decal for the rock band, Oasis. I thought my truck was like a part of Champagne Supernova Squadron, though everyone else called my truck “Ginger Spice.” (The Spice Girls were still HUGE in 1999.) Anyway, this guy—we’ll call him Dr. Soundtrack—had to own the CD the day it came out, and, he also had the 15 bucks on him. So, with the permission of Coach Kenobi, we got a signed slip that let us leave 6th period and drive to Tower Records, provided of course, we returned to facilitate a full-on listening party back in the classroom. I was chosen for this mission mostly because my truck had the best CD player and sound system on the debate team. Ginger Spice may not have looked like much, but she had it where it counted.
Oddly, by this time, Dr. Soundtrack, Coach Kenobi, and all of my other friends had already heard the hit single from The Phantom Menace soundtrack: “Duel of the Fates.” And that’s because that track was often played on the mainstream radio stations, you know, the same ones that played the Spice Girls, TLC, and Britney Spears. When we got this CD soundtrack, I obtained what is perhaps the earliest “spoiler” in my personal memory as, infamously, one of the tracks on The Phantom Menace soundtrack was titled “The Death of Qui-Gon Jinn.”
No one was really mad about this spoiler. Like, at all. I don’t remember one single person being upset. Qui-Gon was the new Obi-Wan. Of course he was going to die. Let’s crank “Duel of the Fates” one more time. Also, pass me that Mountain Dew with Captain Panaka’s face on it!
In so many ways, by the time you’d seen The Phantom Menace, it was like you’d already seen it anyway. The facts of the film were pretty much established but without the context of how you felt about it yet. In 1999, the events of a Star Wars movie weren’t spoilers; but your emotional reaction to those events totally were. We were drinking in Menace through all those collectible Pepsi and Mountain Dew cans, listening to those chants from “Duel of the Fates” whenever we drove anywhere, and always, always being aware of how many days were left till May 19th.
Anecdotally, I think a lot of other Star Wars fans around my age had the same experience. In the summer of 1999, Star Wars fever was like Stockholm Syndrome—we’d fallen in love with our captors. I think this is partly because The Phantom Menace was the beginning of a new Star Wars trilogy; one that would belong to us, not to our parents. That sense of ownership was important, and in my case, encouraged by cool younger role models like Coach Kenobi and literally all of my friends. We couldn’t hate Jar Jar Binks, Darth Maul, or anything else about the movie if we tried.
This was also the era of “line culture,” when you camped out not only two weeks before the movie to buy advance tickets, but also the night before—or several nights before—just to make sure you got a good seat. At least one guy I knew in line for The Phantom Menace had a Darth Maul inflatable beach chair, and further up, toward the front of the line, people were rocking Jar Jar Binks chairs. The characters and images of The Phantom Menace surrounded us and were binding us before we even saw the movie.
Even after the film came out, I saw The Phantom Menace ten more times, sometimes with close friends, but more often than not alone, like a religious experience. I remember being legitimately moved by Anakin saying “It’s working! It’s working!” and feeling genuine horror when Qui-Gon Jinn was killed by Darth Maul, not because I was expecting Liam Neeson’s Jedi Master to survive the movie, but because of the way he just got stabbed. This moment, to me, is the metaphor for the entire movie. You couldn’t like everything about the movie—that was intellectually impossible—but to deny the whole thing wasn’t emotionally effecting would also be dishonest.
It’s a small thing, but it’s worth noting that even though we knew Qui-Gon Jinn would die, most hardcore fans expected him to fade away into the Force, just like Obi-Wan Kenobi does in A New Hope. But he doesn’t. He just gets whacked in the face and then punked by a swift jab in the gut from Darth Maul. At this point, it’s obvious as hell to say that everyone loved this fight scene in The Phantom Menace, but what we’ve already forgotten is that relative to the rest of Star Wars at this point, it was a dirty fight. Darth Maul fights dirty, Obi-Wan fights dirty, and even before his death, there’s an edge to Qui-Gon Jinn that we’d never seen in Star Wars before. I’d also argue that in almost every single way, The Phantom Menace played dirty, too. This wasn’t a safe movie, despite being the most family-friendly. Essentially, it wasn’t what anyone expected, deserved or wanted. It was just fucking weird.
There’s a lot about The Phantom Menace that is bad, but those bad things (most of the stuff with Gungans, Anakin and Padme’s “flirting”, Watto, the Trade Federation) are bad in a way that is very strange. The movie isn’t embarrassed by how weird it is, mostly because George Lucas clearly created it in a crucible totally free of what he thought people wanted. With The Phantom Menace, Lucas made his version of Dune; a bizarre and ruminative sci-fi space epic that was also, somehow, a Star Wars movie. With Attack of the Clones, you can see him giving people more of what he believed they wanted: a faux-Boba Fett, Yoda fighting with a lightsaber, stormtroopers who are really clones. But none of that pandering exists yet with The Phantom Menace. It stands apart and alone as one of the most successful movies that is also supposedly a failure.
I think at this moment, George Lucas had more in common with teenage kids than when he made the original Star Wars films. Like me and all my friends, it seems like George Lucas lived in a bubble of aesthetics. It’s important to remember that The Matrix came out the same year as The Phantom Menace, and as backlash for the latter started to kick-in about six months after the debut, the overt coolness of The Matrix was partially to blame. The summer of 1999 eventually became the fall of 1999, which means I became a senior in high school. At this point, even Coach Kenobi wasn’t as hot on Phantom Menace as he’d been the previous school year. But I couldn’t let go.
In some ways, I don’t think I ever did. The months leading up to The Phantom Menace are some of the happiest memories I have about science fiction fandom, and there are days I long for the days of that Old Republic. Sure, I was clumsier and more random than I am now as a 37-year-old adult. There was nothing elegant about my love for The Phantom Menace. But it did feel like a more civilized age. I miss it.
Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com. He is the author of the essay collection Luke Skywalker Can’t Read (Penguin Random House) and an editor at Fatherly.
Very great and fun article, Ryan! (Though I do have to push my glasses up my nose to point out the two “spoiler” tracks on the CD were :
15.
“Qui-Gon’s Noble End”
16.
“The High Council Meeting and Qui-Gon’s Funeral”
:)
I didn’t hate this movie in 1999 and I don’t hate it now, although it is nowhere near my favorite Star Wars film. I saw it twice in the theater during it’s original run, the second time thinking, “I must have missed something the first time around,” because I did feel ambivalent about it. It felt long and dull to me, and visually very “fake” compared to the original trilogy. But I loved the closing act with the three battles going on, and I also enjoyed the podracing. So, 20 years later, I’m still pretty much with this movie where I was then, and even find myself appreciating more the fact that Lucas, whatever his merits as a scriptwriter, was at least intentionally setting out to do something different with his universe.
Don’t get me wrong – The Force Awakens, which is unabashedly more of the “same old same old” only gussied up for today, is very high on my list of Star Wars favorites – I think it sits at #3 right now, after Eps V and IV. But it is not bold in an attempt to be different in the way that The Phantom Menace tried, and, for that matter, that The Last Jedi tried (and, I think, largely quite succesfully, even if half of fandom can’t see it and even if The Rise of Skywalker ends up rolling some of it back).
Some other favorite TPM memories of mine from 20 years ago:
+ The Pizza Hut promotion – My wife and I were moving into our first home that summer, and I loved that the pizza we got to thank the friends that helped us had Anakin and the Star Wars logo on them :)
+ I was pastoring a church at the turn of this century, and when TPM came out on VHS (remember those?), I bought the cassette and we showed it for free to neighborhood kids as our inaugural Family Movie Night. I spent a lot of $$ on TPM merch at Toys R Us (ha, remember those?) and we had a fee-free raffle for door prizes. I gave a little evangelistic talk connecting the movie to Bible themes. It was fun.
Oh, and when TPM came out in 3-D several years back, I took my son (5th grade at the time, I think) and one of his friends to see it… So I’ve really seen TPM three times in the theater!
Thanks again for a great article to kick off this day!
Unpopular Opinion: I actually like Jar Jar Binks.
Like pretty much everyone else my age, I liked the original Star Wars movies. But I never read any of the Star Wars novels, etc. I wasn’t plugged into geek culture, which wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous in those days. I was certainly aware of the movie, but not nearly as much as I was of, say, the Michael Keaton Batman as a kid/captive audience. I was about the walk out of high school when The Phantom Menace came out. Blade and The Matrix were much more in my aesthetic (and much more in a late 90s aesthetic in general). I went to the theater and walked out disappointed but mostly unmoved. I promptly forgot about Star Wars for the next 15 years until the run-up to The Force Awakens. I only watched the other two prequels in anticipation of TFA. I bought The Phantom Menace on blu-ray at the same time, but I still haven’t rewatched it. I may revisit it after this post.
I was 19 at the time. I remember feeling good but underwhelmed by the movie; along the lines of “I think I liked that but hopefully the next two will be better? At least it’s Star Wars, we never thought we’d see a new Star Wars!” By the time I finished watching Attack of the Clones I realized “Oh, no, these are just bad.”
Star Wars was definitely a different thing at the time though. The remastered re-releases of the films in theaters a couple years before were a HUGE deal; a chance to see the original films in real theaters, whatever the format, was a treat. I saw Return of the Jedi in a theater when I was 3, and that was it; until 1999 no one was sure there would ever really be another Star Wars. There was never any hint, even after Revenge of the Sith, that more Star Wars was a guaranteed thing. You took what you were given! I feel very different about it now, since we know they will never, ever stop making Star Wars.
I was 34 and it was a date night movie with the then girlfriend. We saw it in a small town in Southern Utah so there wasn’t a line. It was the worst date movie ever. We came out of there, looked at each other, and our reaction was “WTF?”. It was weird, and not in a good way.
Several years ago I saw a cut with Jar Jar’s voice redubbed in a nice rp English accent and the character actually worked. But the whole sambo-ness of the character in the movie was a really bad choice.And the chiseling junk dealer with the big nose? Yeah, also not good
When the Star Wars logo came on the screen, somebody in the theater starting chanting, “Star Wars! Star Wars!” It was one of the more bizarrely geeky things I’ve ever witnessed (as someone who has never gone to cons or the like). To this day, I maintain that Lucas shot himself in the foot by a) casting Jake Lloyd and b) making Anakin so young. It would have been better for him to be a teenager. The Padme scenes wouldn’t have been so awkward…
I remember it too. I liked it. Okay, Jar-Jar was a bit tiring, and the whole pod racing scene was too long and referred to as the piss-break scene, but apart from that the buzz was positive. I still like it, with the same caveats, and I don’t recall when it got the bad rep that it got. I think it was around 2003/2004 when the Joss Whedon fans incessantly trashed every other space based franchise in online discussions where the idea that TPM sucked began to stick.
There were a lot of us in 99 and 2000 who regarded it as being, at best, aggressively mediocre. I never did go see Send in the Clones, and only saw the last one because a date wanted to. Chewie doing the Tarzan yell was pretty distracting in that one.
I’m one of those who sees Rogue One as being the prequel we should have gotten
I saw the original Star Wars in a big-screen cinema (the Uptown in Washington, DC) when I was 16 (on the second try, having missed my first attempt because the queue was several blocks long and all the tickets had been sold out). I had never seen anything like it, and was awestruck. Ditto in spades for The Empire Strikes Back. A bit disappointed by Return of the Jedi, but I was okay with it.
The Phantom Menace was the film that soured me on Star Wars. I thought the visualisation of the cities, the Senate, and all the grand sets was fantastic, a throwback to the Golden Age of SF and an obvious nod to such works as The Foundation Trilogy. And even though Jar-Jar was insufferable, there was a glimmer of hope because Darth Maul was so wonderfully evil and awesome; I thought we would have several episodes of this character as a lead-in to the eventual appearance of Darth Vader.
But no, he got cut in half and dumped unceremoniously at the end.
No backstory, no development, nothing. And that’s when I finally realised the whole thing was sound and fury, signifying nothing. Which is what it is now, with whoever the Darth Vader replacement is (I can’t even remember his name — Reno or something eminently forgettable that I can’t be bothered to look up). And, yes, I’m pretty sure I’ve watched every one of the films since, though I can’t quite recall whether I’ve seen the most recent one, as I’ve lost track with the burgeoning of the franchise.
So, for me there were only two Star Wars films that were really worth the viewing, and this was the one in which the series lost its lustre. Too bad, really.
I’m going to read htis more in depth later, but I love this. I was just thinking about this recently, and when TPM came out, I was 16, and also VERY new to the Star Wars fandom, but also basically had the zeal of a ‘new convert’. I’d only really just gotten into it from the special editions. So I think I was really in the perfect spot – at a good age, not too critical yet, really into Star Wars and consuming everything I could in this newfound fandom and wanting MORE, but most importantly, had not formed any preconcieved notions or emotional investment about what the story SHOULD have been (which would come to bite me hard in the sequels, even though the sequels are largely pretty good, and probably better movies. And yes, I agree with above that TLJ tried something new and interesting and I appreciate that. I also think that’s what the prequels did – George told what he wanted to tell, and I can appreciate that, even if he has some bizarre control freak tendencies about the movies).
And I absolutely loved it. So did the (older) friends I saw it with, and my mom. I saw it twice on opening day, and that summer, another friend of mine went and saw it almost every weekend. I ended up racking up 20+ views! (More came later during some holiday re-releases and then the 3D release!) My sister was about 4 or 5 at the time, and she enjoyed it as well (and even liked Jar Jar, lol). In fact, I catch her and her friends talking more about the prequels than the originals. They love them! (As an aside, my sister and I, and later my future husband and I, were doing what is known as ‘prequel meming’ WELL before reddit, and in fact before reddit even existed, and when I found that sub I was kind of ridiculously delighted, lol. You mean we’re not the only ones who randomly quote prequel lines at each other, or are prone to rattle of the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise for no real reason, lol).
Certainly, as an older/more critical media viewer I can see there’s some rough edges, some wooden acting, or bad dialouge. Jar Jar was probably a mistake in the way he was used (not the character itself, but I think the humor was way miscalculated). I don’t dispute that and understand why some people don’t like them or find them corny. But I loved the story. I was so excited to see Palpatine’s rise, almost as much as Anakin’s fall. I think even now the political machinations are more relevant. I never understood the complaint that there were too much ‘politics’ because…the story is literally about the fall of a government and the rise of an oppressive regime. I think it also brings up (maybe unintentionally, lol) some really interesting discussion about the moral/ethics of the Jedi themselves.
I do find Attack of the Clones to be the weakest of all of them (not just the romance, but the whole conveyor belt antics just took me straight out of the movie), but I would rank Revenge of the Sith right up there in my top 3 movies (along with Empire and Rogue One).
Also, the music was phenomenal, and many of my favorite Williams pieces are from the prequels. And as somebody for whom music carries the bulk of the emotional weight/impact of a movie – I wonder if in a way that helped me overlook things like the bad acting, etc. (Although I find that ‘bad acting’ is a thing I rarely recognize…).
I was 14 in 1977. I’d already read the Star Wars novelization, the first printing that came out six months early, because I was into Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run, Space: 1999, etc, and read Starlog magazine religiously. Even with the whole movie spoiled by the book, I was still totally captivated, because I couldn’t have guessed just how amazing and dynamic the whole thing was. I’d never seen anything like it. I hadn’t known anything like it was even possible.
But getting a philosophizing muppet in a Star Wars movie when I was 17 and getting into punk rock and underground comics… well, that wasn’t what I was looking for. Ewoks when I was 20, even less so. I read a few novels and comics, played a few games, but was never interested enough to classify myself as a fan. Still, we were all excited in 1999. Until the movie started. Not just all the ethnic stereotypes (Jar-Jar was hardly the only cringeworthy one), but the good, pre-Empire era being okay with slavery, and the law-unto-themselves Jedi being cool with it? Seriously? Plus the whole small universe thing of Darth Vader having built sophisticated droids with specialized skills as a little kid. Really?
On the positive side, I went with my sister, her husband, and a friend of my sister’s I’d met once or twice before. Ended up marrying that friend a couple of years later, one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.
It is legitimate to like the Star Wars movies, specifically the prequels as a very high budget ‘B’ movie. I think the weirdness -does- in fact improve it.
What makes the prequels weird is that they are films called Star Wars, directed by the creator of Star Wars but feel & act as if they were made by someone who had never seen Star Wars before. Like someone described it to him through muffled communications, some of it clearly understood & some of it absolute gibberish. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t entertaining but that doesn’t mean it was good either. Take away the hype & the lovely, lovely fetishes in each film & it would be understood as terrible. As they are they are terrible but curiously so.
Okay, so this thing really did put a smile on my face.
Those pop cans! I had a whole collection! It was kind of gross, really, because I probably didn’t do a great job washing them out! The trailers! (Funny thing is, I rewatched them recently, and they’re surprisingly low key by today’s standards. Same thing with the LotR trailers. But MAN did I get hyped up about them. But I will say that the trailers for the sequels have been absolutely incredible and practically works of art in their own right…). The interviews! I had a collection of VHS tapes that I religiously recorded TV spots, specials, trailers and documentaries on. I would watch them while counting down the days. THERE WAS A DUEL OF THE FATES MUSIC VIDEO ON MTV! I was so excited by that. Even as a younger fan, Williams’ music had a really special place in my heart (in fact, I think in some ways it is what made me a Star Wars fan, as listening to it in the theater before the movie started is what started to open my mind that this movie might actually be good – I was really reluctant to even see ANH in the first place, as my mom loves to remind me) . Weird Al did a parody of it! And as any Weird Al fan knows, it’s always one of the total highlights of his concerts. It really was such a great time to be a fan.
After the movie came out, one of my most vivid memories is riding the school bus the next day and listening to the heavy, rhythmic thrumming of the engine. It sounded just like Sebulba’s pod racer. The pod race in general isn’t really my favorite part, but I still loved all the sound design and art direction and the glimpse of the world it showed us.
I also remember somebody buying me this huge Jar Jar doll. It became an unofficial mascot for our Science Olympiad team. When I won a gold medal at the state compeition the next year, it came on stage with me. I think it made an appearance my senior year too, maybe during the flag parade (I was team captain that year). Or maybe I just brought it up on stage again. LOL. This is bringing back so many memories.
Oh, and I laughed at the ‘It’s working!’ reference. I work in development now and that line is always the first in my head whenever some tricky code FINALLY compiles/works. I realize how totally dorky it is but those movies are so ingrained into my brain.
I had seen the original Star Wars on my honeymoon, and the next two when they opened. My son joined me for Return of the Jedi. We were both big Star Wars fans, and had become fully immersed during the release of the remastered original trilogy; reading comic books and tie in novels, playing Tie Fighter, and buying Micro Machine spaceships, that sort of thing. We saw Phantom Menace at a midnight premiere. It was the last time I stayed up that late to watch a Star Wars premiere, which says something about my reaction to the movie.
I loved so many scenes and images from the movie. I did, however, think introducing us to Anakin at such a young age was a mistake, and thought he should have been closer to Padme in age. And I didn’t care for the slapstick comedy and racial stereotyping of JarJar. I saw an interview with Lucas later where he said that the movie would hinge on how the audiences accepted JarJar. He was worried about CGI, but should have worried more about how the character himself would be received.
But it was new Star Wars, and I was generally happy with the movie and looked forward to the sequels.
Man, I remember being around 20 years old back in 1999 and watching it on opening night with my friends, including a younger one who kept asking if Anakin was Luke as a kid, and coming out equally excited and disappointed. And I remember having kept for a few years a plastic bottle of Mountain Dew with the scowling face of Darth Maul on the label. Before we went to the movies, I remember we went to Target and I was shocked about the amount and variety of Star Wars merchandise they had. The store was taken over by THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR.
i have always liked the phantom menace. i played ‘jedi power battles’ on Dreamcast long before I saw the movie, but when I did see it, and those droid-carriers started pumping out troops on the plains of Naboo… my jaw dropped. lightsaber fighting was cooler than it had ever been after that movie. there are some flaws with it, obviously, but it isn’t the train-wreck people claimed. or at least, not to me it wasn’t. I say the same thing about ROTS, I thought the anakin/obi wan fight was awesome.
@5/wiredog – the worst date movie ever = Nah, that would be Black Robe. Amazingly, she still married me. :) (In my defense, we were both religious studies majors in college, so I thought it might have had some appeal.)
Attending the midnight showing on opening night of his film was the final Big Event of my college career (besides graduation which would come exactly 1 month later) and I can still remember the building excitement among my roommates and me as we got closer and closer to the release, totally avoiding any and all mentions of anything related to the film including arriving late to other movies to ensure no trailers spoiled any of the key scenes. We even stayed out of the toy stores to be blank slates when it came to the characters, but then rabidly collected everything we could like the happy little consumers Hasbro hoped that we would become. Incidentally, many of those toys continue to sit in my basement where I had been reserving them for my own children to enjoy, as I had done with the original toy line during my early elementary school days, when they came of age. However, this one-off film has very little connection to the following films since Anakin is all grown-up* and the super cool new villain was utterly wasted cementing this prequel trilogy as a political/philosophical story instead of the action series that the Original Trilogy that we all compared it against was, and thus, my two daughters have no interest in the characters from the Star Wars films that many of their classmates’ parents (and teachers) grew up watching.
Which of course brings us to the point that Disney best understands, you have to create signature touchstone event films for each new generation of kids to identify with; especially if you want to market tie-in merchandising. The interesting part, to me at least, is how even they have totally disavowed all of the characters, vehicles, and accessories of Episodes I-III in their current merchandising to adults and have instead created the offshoot and backstory standalone films that set up A New Hope to create that crossover bridge for consumers of my generation and those who have followed.
I find that Episode I still functions to establish historical context for what is to follow, but that with some judicious editing this could all be provided in 30 minutes or less like a Tarantino cold open before dropping us into the contextually confusing beginning of Episode II. I don’t have the patience to sit through all of the superfluous fluff of our heroes at risk since WE ALL KNOW who makes it to Episode IV and in what condition. And this is feel is the biggest disservice to our youth today, they know too much. They can’t appreciate the tension and the emotional impact that reveals in Episodes IV, V, and VI of the relationships between characters are supposed to have because they know it all from Episode III. At least with the (not a) reboot/continuation films the handoff from the “original” characters to the next generation is done in such a way that the prior films are both incidentally irrelevant and necessary supplemental historical research for the audience based upon their prior exposure.
I had seen the original trilogy in theaters — I was nine when Star Wars first came out, so it was a pretty formative experience for me.
I think I saw Phantom Menace 13 times in the theater. For opening night, we couldn’t get tickets to a midnight screening, so we ended up going at 3:00 a.m. or something obscene like that. There’s something surreal about walking out of the movie theater into the sunrise.
I realize that the entire prequel trilogy is profoundly flawed; but I also think that it’s ambitious, with a sense of scale & texture, in a way that I’m not sure if I’ve seen in another SF movie series (including the original trilogy, for that matter).
Also, Queen Amidala in Phantom Menace was supposed to be the age of Natalie Portman in Leon: The Professional, more or less, which would have made the interactions between her & Anakin at least a little less off-putting.
Ouch! This post brings back memories!
I have to wonder: what if instead of Jar-Jar, Watto had tagged along and become the alien comic relief sidekick? I liked his animation and performance better.
But I never hated the movie like some people. It’s kind of sad that the online world homogenizes opinion so much.
@22
I don’t think swapping one perilous caricature for another really helps.
Here is what it felt like to see The Phantom Menace for the first time:
I had to go back and see it again a week later, because I felt there must be something wrong with me; I didn’t think it was possible for the film I’d so eagerly awaited to be that bad.
But it was.
Twenty years on, my Star Wars obsessed 11 year old son thinks it’s…OK. Just OK.
I was an original Star Wars kid. It wasn’t the first movie I saw in a theatre, but I probably could have counted the others on one hand. I grew up a fan, and was still a fan 20-odd years later. But one could already see some hints of where Lucas was going in the tinkering he had done up to and including the Special Editions. So, I had been both waiting for, and dreading, the prequels for a long time when The Phantom Menace came out.
Perhaps it is a function of how I had set my expectations, but I was pretty happy when I left the theatre the first time. I specifically recall phoning my sister to say “It doesn’t suck!”
Which is not to say that it stayed with me as a favorite Star Wars film, by any means. But my first impressions were generally good. It felt more or less like a Star Wars film. It sounded like a Star Wars film. There were points that did not fit my headcanon (some of which, like midichlorians, I just sort of agreed with myself to ignore entirely) but I was back in the Star Wars universe and that was enough for me at the time.
I was 15 when this came out and was stoked. I even got my dad to take me to a midnight showing. At 15 I was a full blown Star Wards nerd.. I played the Star Wars Collectible Card Game, I had read the admiral Thrawn series, the Rogue Squadron books, pretty much everything that the library carried up to that point.
HOWEVER, during my first viewing I was confused. Where were the X-Wings, or the Z-95’s (earlier version X-Wings)? Why were the robots just standing in lines like it was the revolutionary war, shooting at Gungans? On my first viewing I couldn’t understand half of what JarJar even said. Anakin made C-3PO as like do it yourself build a droid, what are the odds of that?! That came out of left field for me.
On my second viewing I got a handle on what actually occurred in the plot, but it still was a let down. The lightsaber duel’s and seeing Obi-Wan and Qui Gon performing as fully trained “real” Jedi was amazing, but in the later movies it seemed to lead into the lightsaber insanity of the other two movies. It was just too much! Say what you will about the current series FA, and LJ, but at least they toned down the lightsaber fetish.
@23. Of course. I can see how elephants with fairy wings might get offended.
I was 5 in 1977. And I became a huge SW fan. I collected the figurines, and I got a Boba Fett for free, even if the second movie was still one year in the future. I watched Return of the Jedi at the first screening in Milan, and I got an ewok for free. My son now plays with my Kenner figurines.
I read all the Zahn books, buying the english version to get them one year before the italian version came out, looking after them at the American Bookshop, and I adored them: I also got my hands and some of the other books – meh. I collected the dark horse comics. I had some SW tee shirts. I was at the first screening of the Phantom Menace with my friends and our girlfriends.
We were hyped. We wanted to see what ‘full strenght’ jedis could do.
We watched the first fights with glee.
We exchanged a puzzled glance as soon as jar jar arrived on the screen. We shook our heads when Ani started to act. We got beers – lot of them – durimg the interval, and drowned our embarassment. That’s how we felt. Ashamed. We had invested so much in a goofy movie.
Only The Last Jedi made me felt in a worst way.
So don’t let your memories fail you: we immediately understood that the movie was bad.
(proof is, merchandising sales dropped after the movie release)
Anyone remember the cool toys you could buy with Taco Bell and KFC meals? I still have a giant Gungan sea monster with the mini submarine in its mouth. It has a string and reel arrangement so that, when you pull out the sub, it gets pulled back into the mouth.
If you try to step into the same river twice, you will only get yourself all wet.
@30 Or nicked by the water bailiff who was hiding in the bushes, waiting for you to come back for the keep net you had stashed in the reeds.
Don’t ask.
Breac à linne, slat à coille is fiadh à fìreach – mèirle às nach do ghabh gàidheal riamh nàire!
I was 8 and already a huge nerd when The Phantom Menace came out. That was just old enough to have read the novelizations of the original trilogy that my Star-Wars-loving parents had on the shelf but not quite old enough to notice things like flirting between the characters or racist stereotypes as aliens (speaking of the novelizations, remember the line in ANH when Obi-Wan says Luke will take to the lightsaber “like a duck to water”? Oh man). I DID notice that my parents were disappointed and that we didn’t buy the VHS when it came out even though we somehow had several copies of the original trilogy. I enjoyed it at the time, but my opinion now is that the best thing that came out of The Phantom Menace is the fanfic. You can see there’s potential for a good movie but it never reaches it.
Ryan, good article.
If you haven’t yet, I’d recommend to watch the movie Fanboys. It’s about 4 teenagers planning to sneak into Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch to watch this movie before it hits the theatres. It has some hilarious moments about SW fandom, and some nice cameos by SW actors.
I saw “a New Hope” 10 times in the theater as a kid, so I was hooked, I took my (then) 10 year old Nephew to see “the Phantom Menace” and he has been hooked since . I loved seeing it on the big screen and was hungry for any Star Wars, I liked the team Qui-Gon & Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul with the double sided light saber, well done, but I never warmed up to Jar-Jar![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_CCCCCC/border_DBDBDB/flags_0/" alt="Free counters!" border="0"></a>)
I think a fair amount of the anger came from those who had seen the original film on release and at the right age and were entranced. The anger came from a sense of betrayal (as expressed above), and, to be blunt, that they were no longer young children. It’s quite a common phenomenum. It’s very similar to the anger in some circles about TLJ.
The UK sitcom Spaced made fun of this as seen here featuring a not-yet-famous Simon Pegg:
https://youtu.be/hUkCJDkG3fg
I saw the original 3 in my teens and 20s. They were great. I’d still be watching them if Lucas hadn’t screwed them up with ‘enhancements’ (Disney: release the original unedited versions on bluray and i’ll be first in line to buy a set)
The company I was working for in ’99 took everyone to see the movie one afternoon. After about an hour I really wanted to walk out but couldn’t without making the boss mad. I hated that movie. The 2 sequels get a little better but not much. Jar-jar was just the stupidest idea ever. And Anakin was just annoying in all 3 movies.
I finally decided that Anakin wasn’t actually the real Darth Vader from the the first three movies (episodes 4-6). Sometime between episodes 3 and 4 after Anakin was in armor, the real Darth Vader came along, killed Anakin and took the Darth Vader identity. :)
What a fun post! I was in 3rd grade when The Phantom Menace came out. The only reason I saw it was that one of the boys in my class had his birthday party at a movie theater, and that was the movie we watched. I LOVED it, and I loved Jar Jar; he was quite entertaining to an 8 year old. It certainly doesn’t delight me as much as an adult, but it still holds a special place in my heart because it is the movie that got me interested in Star Wars, and Star Wars got me interested in science fiction and fantasy.
I didn’t mind APM. Jar Jar sucks but otherwise it was an adequate movie. I list it as the “worst” of these movies, but even a meh Star Wars is still more fun than most movies.
Never have understood thehate for TLJ. I found it to be one of the best of them. (3rd on my list after ESB & Rogue One).
Saw it in ’99 when I was in high school and thought it was just so-so. I guess my main complaint then, and still now, is the lack of war in this Star Wars movie. It’s more of a soft Star Skirmish.
Plus, in my opinion, this particular entry really isn’t needed in order to tell the story of Anakin’s fall from grace — at least not to this degree. Most of what’s here could be covered in a quick reference or flashback by an adult Anakin. But Lucas, bless him, must have had it in his head that to get the attention of a whole new generation of kids it must have a kid at the center, despite having three Star Wars movies prior to this which had no kids in them! Bah.
I loved the Phantom Menace. I admit Ewam MacGregor and Liam Neeson had a lot to do with it. All these decades and I’m still watching Star Wars for the beefcake. It also had a lot more female characters than the original Trilogy.
I was just looking at my shelf at the original trilogy box set that’s labelled IV, V, VI and reflecting on how that sums up exactly how it all went wrong. I was so excited Phantom Menace, having been 12 years old in 1977 and watching Star Wars in the theater as many times as possible that summer. I remember going to the first showing of Phantom in my area at 10 AM with some friends. We were excited when we walked out but…so many buts. A redemption path for Vader? The racism? The mess of a plot? Would it get better as the series progressed? I understand that it was exciting and cool to watch, but it was fundamentally not the same world. Stories have hearts. PM was like some kind of tricked-out automaton created by the Empire. SO thankful J.J. Abrams and team found the heart of Star Wars for Force Awakens and Last Jedi.
The prequels made me understand I am a definite George Lucas fan. Though I recognize his weaknesses I find I prefer his Star Wars to the that of the more skilled writers and directors who do it better. That’s why I prefer the Prequels to TESB, and have no use at all for the Disney films. Sad but that’s my taste.
I was probably mid teens when I saw it first time, at the cinema (remember when teenagers used to go to the cinema?)
I can recall feeling a little confused about the opening 15 minutes, as the plot just moves too fast. I remember thinking – ok there’s two Jedi – they are talking about someting I have no context for – wait why are these guys trying to kill them? I had a sense of bafflement from then on, and I think even as a teen I thought there was something uncomfortable about the jewish and chinese seeming aliens/being annoyed by the forced Aniken/Padme thing which has best been described by Weir Al Jankovic (Did you seem him hititng on the Queen though he’s just nine and she’s fourteen?). I don’t recall being angry about Jar-Jar at the time but I do remember just waiting for the next scene when he was around.
I’ve watched it since and there is an ok story there – it just moves too fast and doesn’t explain well enough why it matters. The plot is better when you realise what is coming in Episode III, but standalone its hard to understand why I’m supposed to care about trade wars in a film series about good vs evil.
So memories/vs knowing how it fits now – not a great film, but probably not as bad as its rep.
John Williams is the only one who saved this movie.
The kid is annoying. Obi-Wan is only likable bc we knew him from Alec Guinness. The queen is fine, but it is too bad her character is ruined by Lucas in Ep 3 (when we are supposed to believe this bad ass girl loses the will to live AS SHE GAVE BIRTH).
Lucas’s anemic directing even manages to make Samuel L Jackson boring.
Happy TPM anniversary day :)
@44 – while I did in general enjoy the movie, I do totally agree with you on John Williams’s general importance to this series.
@32 – I also remember that duck scene (and also if I recall, Luke thinking about a dog he once owned). Funny thing is, in TPM, Panaka says they’re sitting ducks, and you also can see ducks in the river in Naboo. So…ducks are canon, I guess :)
@42/Roxana: “I prefer the Prequels to TESB”
Me too. I’m not a Star Wars fan, but if I wanted to rewatch any of the films, it would be The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. I enjoy the worldbuilding, the vibrant galaxy, the comparatively realistic politics (“the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute”). I find Padme and Obi-wan more interesting than Leia and Luke. I like that bringing down an old, established democracy is a difficult task here, something that requires skill, perseverance, and manpower. I like the Jedi younglings. I probably like Star Wars best when it feels the least like Star Wars.
I was around 13 when TFM came out in theaters. I definitely drank in all the merch and movie tie-in products leading up to the films release (LOTR trilogy was also very heavy on this and I also would go on to drink the cool-aid on that commercial lead-up as well).
I definitely was excited to see the film and the podrace, the final fight, etc. there were great scenes or sequences within the film that I and my friends dwelled on and of course duel of the fates. Still, even then I knew that TFM had bad acting, weird pacing issues, and with repeated viewings some very annoying characterization with JarJar.
The first paragraph of this piece at Vox is a pretty good description of why I didn’t like Phantom Menace, and has a link to this piece which gets into the racist caricatures in TPM.
IMO the podrace goes on too long. I got quite bored with it after my third or fourth viewing.
I loved the Queen and her handmaidens so much. The idea that these demure, elegant petite girls are actually badass bodyguards and skilled fighters delighted me.
I have so many memories and stories about The Phantom Menace. I was and still am completely obsessed with Star Wars and even though I can barely make it through I-III these days I have watched them A LOT since they came out. I was 17 when Episode I was released and in full Star Wars hysteria. I camped out for a week, yes a full 7 days, at the local Edwards theater to get my ticket for the 12:01 showing and I still have it, full protected in a 1/2″ thick case. I actually got kicked off the track team just before State because I missed several practices when I was camping out. I do not regret it in the slightest. I don’t know the exact count, but I saw Episode I at least 10 times in the theater. On opening night, also in my full Jedi home-made costume I had my mom put together, I was put on the spot to go down in front of the theater and lightsaber fight with my friend. I didn’t go down and duel it out, which I do regret, but my buddy got the whole theater chanting my name, on opening night of Star Wars, to go down and have my own dual of fates. It is a memory I will cherish and take with me to the grave, even though I wussed out!
Really good capturing of the magical feeling leading up to TPM release. It hardly occurred to anyone that this movie might turn out to be bad. It was a given that this was going to be a magical thing to watch, because it was the return of Star Wars after 16 years and everything related to it had that aura, right down to the pop cans.
As a Star Wars fan who saw the original trilogy in theatres (the first when I was five), “The Phantom Menace” was beyond criticism. It could not be good or bad. It was simply the story of what happened. Some of the story telling decisions I didn’t care for (poop jokes? really?) and some of the acting (probably Natalie Portman’s worst performance ever), but in terms of what happened in the story, I couldn’t argue with it. I had to just accept it, and begin calculating what it all meant. I was sorry about the midiclorians, confused by Anakin’s lack of father, unappreciative of the gungans, but they simply were.
The difference I see and feel now, and emphasized especially in “The Last Jedi”, is that whereas the new movies feel like calculated entertainment, the original trilogy – and the prequels – felt like the true sharing of what actually happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. We don’t always like history, but it was what it was. Much as I wished some details were otherwise, I could learn to accept.
Disney doesn’t have that same backstop protection that Lucas did. With all respect to Abrams, who does about as well as anyone could, they can try all they like, break all the box office records they want, but the lightning is out of the bottle. There’s no ignoring the calculators and machinery behind trying to make the new movies successful: can’t do this, must have that. I’ll eternally wonder about Lucas’ outlines for his last trilogy that Disney chose to shelve, which would have ignored all of that and simply been whatever they were.
“supposed fan backlash”?
You weren’t old enough to have seen the originals when they were released! I’ll admit it was “emotionally effecting”. The emotion that it effected in me was nausea. I clearly remember that I went to see The Phantom Menace, while my wife went in to Notting Hill–and I thought she’d got the better end of the deal (though I still haven’t seen Notting Hill). I didn’t see another Star Wars film until The Force Awakens.
Ahhh TPM. The prequel trilogy is definitely bound up with my childhood, for good or ill. Our family wasn’t a “Star Wars family” so I don’t even remember when I first saw the OT. But I do remember early ’99, perusing my Lego catalog and seeing all these cool Star Wars sets. I was…barely 12 at the time? And so I started to get super excited for this new Star Wars movie which I knew nothing about, other than what I gathered from the Lego set pictures! My dad promised to take me to see the movie for my birthday, but somehow life took over and we never did go and see it. I must have seen it on TV at some point afterwards, but don’t remember when it was. So…AotC was my first proper Star Wars cinematic experience (and yes, as a 15-year-old, I loved every second of it…pure excitement and awe). But for TPM…apparently I missed some of the magic build-up to it as I really wasn’t aware of the SW subculture at the time…but this movie is still one I enjoy going back to and putting on in the background. I recently re-watched the PT and while noticing the flaws, I couldn’t help but smile and enjoy it for what it was…a magical story set in a fantastic universe. The weird and the wildly creative and slightly askew is what draws me to love science fiction, and this movie had all that in spades. I’m not ashamed to say I like TPM. =)
OLots of kids liked Phantom Menace. That’s how kids are. Doesn’t change the fact it’s hot garbage.
Star Wars has always been dumb, but fun. I was 12 in 1977, the exact target audience for the movie, which I loved. When ESB came out I was 15 and I thought it was simply idiotic with none of the fun. RotJ returned SW to the “dumb fun” category. Phantom Menace went beyond being dumb to being actively aggravating. The racist caricatures are cringey. The bold stealing of bits from things like Buckaroo Banzai and Dinotopia are embarrassing.
If you have a different opinion of the flick, that’s cool. But these movies aren’t exactly defensible and Phantom Menace is the nadir.
@54, I was thirty-eight when I saw the Phantom Menace. I was sixteen when Episode IV hit the theaters. And I’m female. I’m about as far from the target audience as it’s possible to be. As I said above I love Star Wars when Lucas does it. Not so much when ‘better’ directors take over.
@54/trike: “The bold stealing of bits” and subsequent merging of them into a new whole has always been typical for Star Wars.
And isn’t the 1977 film racist too? The Tatooine desert is inhabited by shady, hooded midgets, Bedouin-like savages, and hardworking white farmers. There’s a cowardly, lying, confused, but kind-hearted comic relief character who is the main character’s property. Luke and Han get medals, but Chewie doesn’t.
I was ten years old in 1977.
Maybe it is just my grandparents raised me with some pretty formal and old fashioned rules, but Chewie doesn’t get a medal because he is the co-pilot (Obi Wan says “first mate”) and it is always the pilots and captains that get the big gongs. Chewie gets to march up the hall as part of the honour guard though, and that is a big accolade in itself. Note that Wedge and the other surviving redshirts don’t even get that. Lucas is aping WW2 and even pre-WW2 styles, and that is exactly how that would work in those days.
Chewie not getting a medal is classist, but not racist. The Jawas, not racist yet but probably will be in ten years time. The sand people were a racist caricature even at the time though.
@57/random22: I didn’t know that. Interesting.
TPM is a movie that I sometimes feel, as a fan, that I should hate. I just can’t do it, though. Now, I still prefer the original trilogy but I honestly think that had as much to do with my age when I first saw them (IIRC, I was 18 when A New Hope was released) and the fact that I had never really seen anything like Star Wars before.
Now, there are certainly things that I don’t like about it. If Jar Jar had only been a background character he might have been mildly amusing, but as a new main character he ended up more annoying that comical. Jake Loyd didn’t do a terribly good job as Anakin, but that’s a problem with most child actors. And of course, the less said about “midichlorians” the better!
On the other hand, there were things I loved about it. The homages to the old Flash Gordon serials, the film Forbidden Planet, and to the old silent film Metropolis. The climactic battle between the two Jedi and Darth Maul (indeed Maul himself was a brilliant character and I was sorry he ended up as another Boba Fett).
As far as I was concerned Jar-Jar was a background character. I only noticed him when he was blocking my line of sight to the drool worthy Jedi.
My theater experience with The Phantom Menace was this: I was on a date to see The Matrix. Before going in, we had indulged in an activity that is no longer prohibited in my state, though at the time it was illegal. This preview came on, a starship darted across the sky, then some characters started talking and the like. There was no text, no anything to tell us what it was. This goes on for several minutes of stilted dialog and non-action and I think, “Wow, this looks really dull. What is this thing?” Then I realize, “Oh, no, this is the new Star Wars, and it’s going to be AWFUL.” I did not go see it after that. I caught part of it on TV eventually and did not waver from my initial assessment. We didn’t think much of The Matrix, either, which I still think is a rip-off of Phillip K. Dick’s life’s work minus the wit.
As somebody who was, at the time, a budding microbiologist (I ended up veering off into software development, but that’s another story) I still am continually perplexed by the hatred the midichlorians get. Like, it’s one thing if it just wans’t your jam, but people seem to have active animus towards the concept. (Or, is it specifically the concept of the virgin birth? I admit, that part I could probably have done without as it strikes me as a bit beyond the pale, even for midichlorians. What genetic material do they use, I wonder?)
I think it’s one of the coolest things Lucas came up with, honestly, and wish there had been more to it (aside from a few references in RotS and then in the Clone Wars cartoon). But I’ve also always been very comfortable with the blend of science + mysticism/faith instead of viewing them as enemies. The midichlorians have never ‘demystified’ the Force to me a bit.
@62 The problem with midichlorians is that it creates a genetic hierarchy. Not everyone can be a Jedi through training, you have to be born with it. It violates my sense of egalitarianism. Many of us dreamed of being Jedi before TPM.
I also don’t know where that idea came from, seeing as how I don’t think it was EVER implied that ‘anybody’ could be a Jedi. Even in the EU, some people had Force sensitivity and some didn’t.
And seeing how even in the post-midichlorian world, obviously Jedi aren’t strictly related to each other, it doesn’t seem like the midichlorians are *necessarily* transmitted/attracted to specific genetic lineages. I mean, heck, even in Return of the Jedi, Luke says ‘the Force is strong in my family’, meaning there was some sense of it sometimes running in families. In the old EU, a clone ends up manifesting Force sensitivity (not a Jango clone, lol).
So I don’t think it was ever strictly egalatarian in that literally anybody could be a Jedi if they just tried hard enough (well, maybe you could be an honorary Jedi if you abide by their philosophies, but wouldn’t be able to use the Force), but I don’t think either of these concepts mean that it HAS to be passed down geneically.
In fact, if the midichlorians are intended to be an analogy of the bacteria that were mitochondrial ancestors, that actually makes it MORE egalatarian. Qui-Gon even says that we all have them, it’s just a matter of how much. So maybe you COULD learn to use tap into them if you work hard enough. Or you could get a midichlorian blood transfusion ;)
I could see this going many ways, depending on your own personal headcanon :) And as it turns out, even in microbiology and genetics there’s a lot to be learned in terms of how much is genetic, how much is environmental which then turns on certain genes (epigenetics for example), how much is acquired from your environment (microbial biota from C-sections vs vaginal births, for example- which then go on to influence things like our immune system, mood, digestion, etc) and all that. The possibilties here are endless for some really neat stories and things to explore.
For example, look at Chirrut in Rogue One – some have said he wasn’t really fully a Jedi and couldn’t manipulate the Force, but he clearly at least could sense it. Perhaps it was through intense meditation and study. And this could be the case regardless of what you think about midichlorians. In fact, the more I type it out, the more I think midichlorians actually help make this theory even MORE plausible.
And as an aside, this is 100% my favorite example ever of some deep cut prequel-meming that combines two of my nerdiest loves :) There used to be a link that had screen shots of the study itself and it’s hysterical.
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/four-scientific-journals-accept-fake-study-about-midichlorians-from-star-wars/
ETA: ah, here’s a better one:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/07/22/predatory-journals-star-wars-sting/#.XObk7YhKhPY
Midichlorians never bothered me. It was logical that the Force would need some kind of biological vector to effect living things and midis are that vector. And it’s always been clear there is a genetic component to Force strength and that ‘everybody’ cannot be a Jedi. But anybody can be a hero – like Han or Wedge.
#59 Agreed on Maul. I was pleased when he was put to good use in, first, the Clone Wars series and then even more so in Rebels. Especially the latter as it finally gave the main character’s arc a real reason to care and the final showdown between Obi-Wan and Maul as night falls on Tattooine? An exquisitely told vignette of those two Rōnin …
I enjoyed it when I first saw it. I think I realized that it wasn’t as good as the original trilogy, but I thought the lightsaber fights were exciting, and I was excited to have a new Star Wars movie after 16 years. Even now (although it’s been almost 20 years since I saw it) I don’t think it’s as bad as Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith. The dialog and acting in those movies were so aggressively terrible (and I blame that entirely on George Lucas, because Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, and Samuel L. Jackson are not bad actors by any stretch).
@62/Lisamarie: I too like midichlorians. Paranormal microbiology is cool.
I was 17 when TPM came out. I am much more of a Star Trek fan, but Star Wars is still always a favorite. I loved it! I thought Jar Jar was cute, the music was glorious, and Darth Maul was EXCELLENT. Two years later, I dressed up as Maul for my campus Halloween party. (For reference, I am a teeny tiny 5′ tall girl.) I painstakingly painted my face, packed up the double lightsaber I bought at KB Toys (how’s THAT for a flashback, LOL), ran up to campus with a pumpkin bucket and spent the party trying to hand out candy to any little kids I saw. Every one of them took one look at me and said, “No, thank you,” LOL. As I was leaving at the end, I heard a voice behind me saying, “WE’LL handle this.” I turned around and there were two Jedi with lightsabers drawn, staring me down. I busted out my lightsaber and we proceeded to have a glorious battle right there in the middle of the student center. I “died”, of course, the crowd cheered, and it was the best Halloween ever. The rest of the prequels were meh (mostly because of the incredible disservice to Padme), but Phantom Menace still holds a special place in my heart. :)
Star Wars has always sucked, from stem to stern. But it was able to hide behind spectacular special effects, until they weren’t so out of the ordinary any more. As soon as Star Wars had to stand on its story (the Phantom Menace), people began to realize that it didn’t have one.
The picture of the mountain dew can brought a tear to my eye. I was 12 when TPM came out. I loved it. I wasn’t a fan of the next two movies.
That was the last Star Wars movie I saw when not on a plane (where my standards drop sharply, along with the quality of the experience, regardless of the movie).
The first one was extraordinary, at least at the time of its release. Not as extraordinary, by any stretch of the imagination, as Space Odyssey 2001 on the day of its release, which I saw by accident, as friends had an extra ticket – but sufficiently.
@71- I’m not as big a Star Wars fan as most either, but I would take issue with that analysis. I remember watching episode IV On 1st release and didn’t really find the special effects to be all that extraordinary. The casting was pretty good, but the dialog was brutally bad, save for some of those classic lines like “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”, etc. I think what captured the zeitgeist was the myth-building. Even the very first line: long ago, in a Galaxy far away, set the stage for something special. Ep V was astonishing, with a compelling story complete with the big twist reveal about Darth and his son, better special effects, and an actual serialized ending. I couldn’t believe the studio execs had the balls to allow a blockbuster movie with less than a completely happy ending with all the bows tied neatly.
So I don’t think it was story that was the problem with the 2nd trilogy. For me, it was the absolutely horrifying casting. I can’t think of a single Actor, even Ewan McGregor, then I would not have replaced with someone almost completely different in appearance and temperament. Except for maybe Yoda. :)
It was good, if not perfect, and I enjoyed it. I admit my heterosexual female hormones may have had something to do with it. Two words:Hot Jedi. Two more words: Glam Costumes.
@74 Not even Ian McDiarmid???