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| The One With This Guy |
I always liked The Phantom Menace, which runs against the grain a bit because it is the second worst-reviewed of the Nine Star Wars episodes on Rotten Tomatoes (the ninth one is just a shade worse.) Still, we have to start by acknowledging that this movie has its weak points. For example:
- Jar Jar Binks. He appears to have been created to appeal to young children.
- The ridiculous "always a bigger fish" journey through the core.
- The whole bet on whether Qui-Gon can take one slave with him, plus the part he needs.
- Nothing can be done about Anakin's mother, ever?
- My brother once compared the admittedly-visually-impressive pod race scenes to a cartoon called "Wacky Races" that we watched as kids. For the uninitiated, Wacky Races was very much like...the pod races in The Phantom Menace.
- Jake Lloyd as Anakin. He does his best, no doubt, but he is unconvincing.
- Young Anakin gives no hint of being the future Darth Vader. More on this problem in Episode 2.
Still, there are some good characters in this movie: Qui-Gon, Padme, Darth Maul. Unfortunately, Qui-Gon and Darth Maul are killed within minutes of each other, and Padme's role turns to mush after this movie, but those are problems for future movies, not this one. The main storyline is a fairly standard good guys versus bad guys plot, with lots of action and the good guys winning by the end of the film.
Also, there are two major backstories in the first three Star Wars episodes: how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, and how Senator Palpatine becomes Emperor Palpatine. As mentioned above, we don't learn much about how Anakin becomes Vader here, and that is a good thing, as we will find out in the next episode. Meanwhile, the story of the rise of Palpatine starts with this movie, and that story works well.
So this one is fun if not exactly perfect in every way. On to the second one, where things start to go downhill.
