"The Phantom Menace in 3D tomorrow" Topic

Well I plan on going to see The Phantom Menace in 3D tomorrow,and I'll enjoy it.

I'm waiting to see how the Battle of Grassy Plains looks in 3D,and the lightsaber fight which I think is one of the best lightsaber fights in all 6 fims.

Captain Gideon

Something makes me think the movie will not have improved since the last time I saw it.

I am seeing it right after work today with my wife!
I CANNOT WAIT!!!

Still my favorite of the prequels. For all of it's short comings it still has a epic scope that the others don't.

Now que the haters.

BTW ROTJ is the kissing cousin to this film. Before everyone gets all nostalgic about how the classic trilogy is so much better.

Too bad the 3D will not be able to improve the plot, Mannequin Skywalker's Acting, or the dialog.

The lightsaber fight is the second best of the movies though, Empire's nudging it out due to having the best ending in the whole series.

I'll go see it and enjoy it. It isn't my favorite of the six, but…dang it, it's Star Wars and in 3D! I normally don't care much about 3D. But I want to see the Star Wars movies, maybe Indiana Jones, Aliens, and Ghostbusters done in 3D.

meh…*burp*

I won't be queueing out of the theatre dressed as Watto, but I think that in the end I'll give this a try on a mid-week afternoon with two hours to kill and discounted tickets.

Agree, meh. 3D will do nothing to hide the flaws, and just make it more annoying to watch. Perhaps I'll protest watch my DVD copy on my bigscreen TV. Theater experience is overrated these days anyway…

Damon.

The theater experience is not overrated. OVERPRICED would be a better description.

My home theater is the best it has ever been. But I still like seeing things on the big screen.

But the prices have reached beyond reason. I understand the need to make a profit. But $6.00 USD popcorn? Cmon. And the industry wonders why piracy is an issue…

I'm a *huge* Star Wars fan from way back, but I absolutely hated the prequels and have no interest whatsoever in seeing this in 3D or any other D.

Meh. Then you were not that *huge* of a fan.

I'm kidding. But seriously, consider giving them another shot. Its about sitting in the theater, and remembering a time when you saw the originals. Before work and life and all that stuff. What it was like to be a kid.

Now it sucks IN YOUR FACE!

Okay, enjoy the film, those of you who do.

I'll watch the original release of the original Star Wars in the comfort of my home.

And yes, I would agree that TPM is on a par with RotJ. Or vice versa. But that's not a compliment. It's like saying the Colts' 2011 season was on a par with the Dolphins' season. It simply means both stank.

Fortunately I have something to do tomorrow, so I will have to miss it.

Sitting in theater waiting for it start in 10 minutes.

Parzival what exactly don't you like about Phantom Menace?

To me it's not that bad a film and yes it has things I can't stand young Annie and C3PO,but I enjoyed the pod race and I loved The Battle of Grassy Plains.

And this film gave me the idea to do a Grassy Plains Battle with the Star Wars collectible Gaming figures by WOTC.

Captain Gideon

Now it sucks IN YOUR FACE!

Heh. :)

I asked my six-year-old son (who has seen IV-VI and LOVES them) if he wanted to see it in the theater, and he said that he thought it would be "too intense to see it for the first time in 3D and on a gigantic screen."

Can't argue with a response like that.

I think we're going to have a home screening of TPM tonight instead. :)

Yeah, and I'll go see the first three in the theater when they're re-released (again), but not the prequels. Lucas took my money for those once; never again.

As for the huge-osity of my fandom: Saw "Star Wars" more than 20 times in the theater, first run. (A friend's father owned a local theater, so he could score pretty much as many free tickets as we wanted. We even sat on the front row for one viewing; whoa!) Saw "Empire" and "Jedi" several times each in the theater. Bought them all on VHS, then later on DVD (the "improved" editions that also included the original theatrical releases). Bought every original-trilogy Star Wars model kit that was released, up to about 15 years ago. Bought many original-trilogy action figures. Bought literally hundreds of the WEG minis, including about 100 Tusken Raiders. Bought lots of diecast vehicles.

Went to the theater back in 1999 with high hopes for "Phantom Menace." Left the theater stunned at just how bad it was. Felt the same after the next two prequels. Never again.

I still see movies in the theater more than 40 times a year, and, yeah, I usually get the same thrill I did as a kid. For example, "The Artist" gave me that feeling, of discovering something new, something very cool. The prequels, on the other hand, would just fill me with the vile bitterness of missed chances and dashed hopes. Damn you, Lucas! :)

Actually, in all truth, at this point in time I much prefer the:

Family Guy

and

Robot Chicken

…versions of the Star Wars saga, they are much more entertaining!

jpattern2 just what made you think that Phantom Menace was that bad,please clarify.

I know I'm in the minority when it comes to liking The Phantom Menace,but the bottom line is I liked it and for me that's good enough.

Andrew Preziosi I enjoy the Robot Chicken Star Wars stuff but I don't like the Family guy ones,but then I don't think much of Family Guy anyway.

Captain Gideon

I enjoy the Robot Chicken Star Wars stuff but I don't like the Family guy ones,

I agree. The Robot Chicken ones were funny parodies. The "power converters" that Luke mentions he's going to "pick up" as a throwaway line turn out to be exotic dancers at Toshii Station? That's funny.

The Family Guy one waffled between a straight re-make with different characters and a pedophile story. Really clever. :p

Just in case anyone is still looking forward to see this movie, here's the officiel trailer. And yes, I sure wished it was a joke.

YouTube link

How doth I dislike The Phantom Menace?
Let me count the ways…

1.) The opening scroll. "Trade negotiations?" Really? This is the best crisis Lucas could come up with? And they need two Jedi to hold a glorified business meeting? Okay, I can admit that some negotiations could do with a light saber swipe or two, but c'mon. Where's the tension? Why should I care? Star Wars opened with a full out war, a rebellion of freedom-loving patriots against a totalitarian quasi-facist galactic empire. TPM starts with a meeting in a boardroom. Zzzzzzz.

2,) The incredibly stupid, possibly Asian-stereotype alien bad guys. The only thing they didn't do was wring their hands and cackle maniacally (though that might have been better). It might have helped if their lines were funny or if they actually pulled off menace, but neither are true. They're just inept. The audience is no more frightened or concerned about their schemes than we are about what the neighbor plans to do with his garden weeds. If Darth Vader had shown up in your bedroom, you'd be freaked into absolute terror. If these guys walked in, you'd beat 'em senseless with your bedside paperback novel.

3.) The battle droids (the regular troops, that is). Menacing? These guys? They look like q-tips and sound like a bad drive-thru speaker. They even say "uh oh." The original SW stormtroopers, for all the later jokes about their accuracy, at least look both intimidating and deadly. The fact that you can't actually see what's under their helmets (are they men, clones, or what) only increases the menace, which you don't get from pencil-necked, chicken-headed robots— plus the stormtroopers have got a vague "Nazi"/Samurai feel with the helmets. They just look mean, cold and dangerously sterile. The robots look (and fight) like toothpicks.

3.) Jar Jar. I'm not one who thought his Stepin Fetchit routine was intentionally racist— it was just stupid. He wasn't funny, he was just annoying, with no functional purpose. C3PO at least had utility beyond his squawking… and you could turn him off. Jar Jar just grates on both his comrades and the audience without any benefit to plot, story or narrative.

4.) The Gungans in general. Why do we even need them? What purpose do they serve in the narrative, the plot, or the story? To tell the Jedi they need to go see the queen? Duh. An unnecessary waste of scene and CGI.

5.) Darth Maul. No lines of any note (I think he has maybe three, tops, and all of them merely throw aways). Make up is absurd. Why does he look that way? Racial characteristics? If so, nobody seems to recognize his species. Bizarre experimentation? To what purpose? Or is he just some punk loser with a plastic surgery and tattoo fetish? The last seems to be the case, as no other explanation is offered. Yeah, he's got that great two-bladed light saber, and a neat fight scene, but by the time we get to it, we really don't care about him, we aren't really scared of him, and we actually have no idea at all what the heck he is supposed to be accomplishing, for good or evil.

6.) Princess/Queen Amidala (or whatever she is): The governmental system makes no sense. An elected queen who's 17 years old? Who thought up *that* constitution? To top it off, how does a Jedi master like Qui-Jonn (phenomenal mind powers, able to sense things others can't) NOT realize that the Queen is merely a decoy, and the hand-maiden who's been following him around a desert for days is actually the real queen. Maybe his midichlorian count was low that week. Is it like blood sugar? Should he have stopped at a vending machine and gotten a quick snack?

7.) The kid. To begin with, it's kind of creepy to have a 17-year-old bonding with a 9-year-old future lover. Secondly, bad acting aside, this little Cabbage Patch kid is "too old" and "has too much anger" to be a Jedi apprentice? What do the Jedi do— snatch each pupil from the maternity ward when the mom's not looking? Wow, that really endears us to the Jedi as "the good guys". The young Anakin should have been cast as 14 or 15— then we get the "too old" bit and even possibly the "too much anger" bit, and we can also see why the queen might think he's hot stuff in a few years. But this… this is just too much to believe, in a movie that's asked us to believe too much already.

8.) Midichlorians. Gaaah. Not only does this entirely contradict established canon of the Star Wars universe, it's just nonsensical blather, worse than the techno-babble from a bad Star Trek episode. Nor is it even necessary— why not just "sense that the Force is strong in this one" as they did in every movie prior to this one and which the audience accepted without question? Pointless blather that adds nothing to the plot and takes a great deal away.

9.) Bring balance to the force. Yeah, we get it. it's a prophecy with a double-edged meaning. He's gonna kill all the Jedi and you'll end up with half on the good side, half on the dark side. Obviously a very bad idea— who can't see this one coming? The great and wise Jedi, that's who. Pfft.

10). "Two there are, a master and an apprentice. Never more." Hold on, we've got two in this movie, Darth Sidious and Darth Maul. And then another pops up in the next movie— Count Dooku… but he has to have been working with Darth Sidious simultaneous to the developments in TMP, making for three Sith, not two, and then the later canon establishes other Sith simultaneous to both Dooku and even Vader, so… what, is Yoda an idiot, or do Jedi count differently than other people? (Okay, this one isn't fair, as it is based on later developments in the saga, but come on, Lucas. Try for a little consistency, will you?)

11.) The ground battle. The tactics make no sense whatsoever (there actually aren't any tactics at all. Line up and march at each other, lobbing explosive beach balls), especially in as technologically advanced culture as this is. And why do the Gungan still use live mounts— what, they can't make (or buy) their own jeeps and tanks? And tension-loaded catapults? Huh? No better artillery than that? But even if we set aside the silly tactics and the ridiculous arsenals of either side, there's just Jar Jar's presence in the whole thing, shooting robots by accident, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Okay, fine, comic relief and all that, but geez… and what is the point of this battle anyway?

12.) But the ground battle is wonderfully logical compared to the space battle. Little 9 year old accidentally triggers an automated pilot system that somehow knows how to fly straight into the enemy's flagship, avoiding attacks, etc.. If the automation system is that good, why the heck do they bother with pilots? And looky there— kiddo accidentally shoots two torpedoes into a shaft that starts a chain reaction that blows up the superbaddy flagship and ends the war… hang on, haven't we seen that plot before? Well, yes we have. TWICE. We realize it's supposed to be back-added foreshadowing, but it just comes across as the product of someone who can't come up with an original plot idea.

Okay, yes, the light saber duel is impressive (and the soundtrack is terrific), but in the end we don't care about Darth Maul to begin with, and the loss of Qui-Jonn just doesn't seem as meaningful to us as the simple, selfless sacrificial death of the older Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, especially with the latter's mysterious disappearance in mid-death. Qui-Jonn just gets stabbed, like a cop in a gang fight. We care, but not all that much.

The Phantom Menace is not the worst movie ever made, nor the worst space opera ever made, nor the worst sci-fi movie ever made, but it is the worst Star Wars movie ever made, and comes nowhere even close to reaching the level of the original, or even the original trilogy. The script is bad, filled with forgettable line after forgettable line (c'mon… quote one worth the quoting). The acting is bad, even for veteran actors like Neeson, McEwan and Jackson, and horrid in the principle young lead. And the directing is pedestrian, unimaginative and boring— except in scenes where no people are essentially present or no lines (aside from shouts and the eternal interminable "NOOOOO!" scream that seems to be necessary in every Star Wars film ever made). Action and spectacle? Good to top notch. Actual scenes involving dialogue, character interaction, story, theme and plot? The suckage approaches black hole levels.

Well, you asked for it. You got it.

Why do you like it?

Parzival,

That…was…brilliant.

Thanks,

Pat

Parzival: I can't change what you think, but I will point out one error: qui-gon OBVIOUSLY knows that Padmé is the queen. Obi-Wan doesn't. Watch them exchange looks when the decoy is exposed.

And yes, the Jedi begin training at 4 or 5 years of age.

If you think the plot is shallow, look again. It's working on several levels.

I for one will enjoy this with my son on Sunday.

Lucas has enough of my money. From the movies, to the re-releases, to the toys, to the prequels, & everything.

I've given too much money to the man that can't even say Han shot first. A story about redemption and we can't have a scoundrel that becomes a good guy later one? Redemption is only for the Skywalkers?

Parzival for the win. Drop the mic and walk off-stage, the show is over.

And it's not just that Han shot first, it's that GREEDO DIDN'T EVEN GET A DAMN SHOT OFF! THAT'S how bad-ass Han is. Having Greedo not only shoot, but shoot first, COMPLETELY changes that aspect of Han's character.

But that's a rant for another movie. :)

Parzival I think Jar Jar Binks was pretty funny IMHO and I enjoyed watching him in the films,unlike C3PO who was VERY Annoying and I NEVER liked him from the first time he was one the screen.

As to the Gungans to put it bluntly they saved the Naboo's ASS,and they kept the Droid Army busy with buying time with the lives a very noble thing that they did.

And as for the ground battle which I thought was great and what's the matter with the Gungans using live mount's,it did'nt bother me in the least and they did pretty damm good with what they had.

I can agree with some of your other reasons but the ones I pointed out I must strongly disagree with you.

For me the bottom line is I enjoyed the Phantom Menace and yes I'm in the minority when I say that but I say that proudly.

Captain Gideon

Okay I saw it and I have to say it was a waste of time and money.When they did do the 3D it was awesome and cool.The bad thing and this is what sunk it for me is they did not use it when they should have.Like in the last 15 minutes in the 3 simultaneous battles.
Plus,No matinee prices due to Lucas involvement.

Han Solo approves this message.
link

I see no reason for a 3D gimmick needed for Star Wars. Sorry George, I'll pass on this one. The only movies I'm looking forward too this year will be Iron Sky and the Hobbit. Pass on all others.

Right on Parzival. I agree 100%

I will add this though. There was just too much CGI in the prequels. I enjoyed the "used future" concept Lucas used in the original triology. Everything looked like it had been used every day and was suitably worn looking. It made everything seem more real be they a rubber mask alien, a beat up x-wing, or the Lars hovel. When I see the prequels, the enviroments just scream "FAKE". The entire series of prequels were shot on a green screen. While convenient and offering complete control to the director, it just cant compare to a physical set.

The 4D version should be out by Christmas.

How many times can Lucas "re-make" his movies??????!!!!!!!

Truly sad that a guy with his resources can't come up with something new.

I'd happily watch some other movies, or TV shows in the Star Wars Universe, if he'd make something new, from episode 4 on, that didn't include teddy bears defeating Imperial Stormtroopers.

Truly sad that a guy with his resources can't come up with something new.

Lucas had his hands all over Redtails and that was mostly terrible.

This was my first time going to a 3D film. About the time they are leaving Naboo (about 30-40 minutes in) the 3D effects starting messing with me. So I left. No movie is worth risking a migraine headache over.
I have sat through 3D rides, shows, and such at amusement parks and thought I would be okay. But I guess I can handle it in short bursts, but not for an extended time.
Hope the local theater has a non-3D showing of John Carter… I have a "please come again" ticket all ready to go :)

Parzival and jpattern2 (and chuck05 and Mako11): you have my respect and support.

Hey, this is GREAT news! I Love Phantom Empire!

YouTube link

… oh

So flooglestreet dig this out of the archives did you?

I saw this many years ago and did'nt like it.

Captain Gideon

I have 3 different copies of Phantom Empire, including the Digitally restored 3 disc set from Serial Squadron. Gene Autry personifies the American pioneers as they won the west despite natural disasters, psychotic gunmen and subterrainean super civilizations. Phantom Empire has Rootin' Tootin' robots. Phantom Menace has nothing but Jar Jar Binks.

I wont be standing in any lines for this one.I didnt dislike it,but I didnt really like it,either.

Parzival

Took the family out last night. Everyone had a good time. The 3D did not impress me, but the movie holds up as a family movie. The young girls were playing pod racing around the living room with gaming figures this morning until Anakin smashed into a butte. The children laughed at the Jar Jar Binks gags. The adults rolled their eyes. Harmless fun.

TMP link

12.) But the ground battle is wonderfully logical compared to the space battle. Little 9 year old accidentally triggers an automated pilot system that somehow knows how to fly straight into the enemy's flagship, avoiding attacks, etc.. If the automation system is that good, why the heck do they bother with pilots? And looky there— kiddo accidentally shoots two torpedoes into a shaft that starts a chain reaction that blows up the superbaddy flagship and ends the war… hang on, haven't we seen that plot before? Well, yes we have. TWICE. We realize it's supposed to be back-added foreshadowing, but it just comes across as the product of someone who can't come up with an original plot idea.

this single bit destroys the film for Me
at least it was established that Luke could fly and Lando was an experienced pilot.

Parzival – I agree with everything except the Queen/Decoy bit, Qui Gon did know.

AS for this movie having layered meanings, Lucas may have tried for that but it does not have any layered meanings – there is a difference between ham-fisted attempts that end up slapping the audience with a fish in the face and actually pulling it off.

Wait, didn't Obi-wan tell Luke when he first met his father he was already a great pilot? I guess some how pod racing equates to flying a starfighter some how in Lucas' universe. But Obi-wan did not think much of Anakin when they first met, saw him as just another pathetic life form as he clearly thought of Jar Jar.

No point seeing a movie in 3D that was not filmed with 3D in mind. 3D is about utilizing the 3D tech to enhance the film which, like any sort of filming, requires planning to pull off effectively. Adding 3D in after the fact is going to have a limited effect.

-Eli

I saw it yesterday and enjoyed it as much as seeing for the first time when it first came out,I was not dissapointed.

I would've gone to see it wheither it was in 3D or not.

Captain Gideon

I saw it with my 7-yo son, and we had a blast. OK, the 3D effect wasn't great, since well, the movie wasn't made with 3D in mind.

But I just wonder, why do everyone have to on our experience? I get that you might not like the movie, and I enjoy discussing the films, but some posters just want to "win" the argument, not being able to accept that other people actually like the prequels.

@Sarghonares: No, Obi-Wan called Anakin a pathetic life-form before he met him. "Don't tell me we picked up another pathetic life form." or something similar.