Thread by @charles_gaba

My son is on spring break and convinced me to watch "The Phantom Menace" with him. He loves Star Wars but has never seen the prequels before (by design). He knew they'd be bad but wanted to watch them anyway just to see how bad they are.

This is the first time I'd watched Phantom Menace since it first came out. I was hoping that with the benefit of hindsight, perspective, etc. that it might turn out to be better than I remembered. It's actually worse.

Aside from the more obvious stuff--Jar Jar is like fingernails on a chalkboard; Jake Lloyd is terrible as young Anakin (nothing personal...I'm sure he's a nice person in real life); the overused CGI--there's also a bunch of other stuff I'd forgotten about.

A lot of people have noted that the setup for the "romance" between Anakin & Padme was flawed from the start by having him be 8-9 when she was a teenager, but it's actually the relationship between Anakin and *Obi Wan* which is even more flawed from the start.

When Obi Wan first tells Luke about Anakin, he describes him as an old and dear friend with a wistful look in his eye. The impression is that they entered were boyhood friends who both started their Jedi training at the same time, at around the same age.

Instead, Lucas goes out of his way to show Obi Wan seeing Anakin as an annoyance at best or as a dangerous burden at worst. He doesn't want Anakin along for the ride. He disagrees w/Qui Gon about defying the Council. He's shocked when Qui Gon basically kicks him aside...

...to take on Anakin as his new Padawan (you'd think he would've given Obi Wan a heads up first). And he only grudgingly agrees to take over training Anakin as a promise to Qui Gon's dying wish. He never wanted Anakin trained and is only doing so grudgingly.

The "body double" thing w/Keira Knightley pretending to be Queen Amidala didn't serve any purpose other than for her and Natalie Portman to wear a lot of makeup and speak in an absurd monotone voice.

Apparently even Knightley forgot who she played. cnn.com/videos/movies/…

Aside from Jar Jar being irritating, Lucas tried doing a callback to the Orig Trig by having him made into a "General" like Han and Lando are. Sifference is that 1) Han & Lando had at least proven themselves to be skilled pilots and 2) The Rebels didn't have many to choose from.

I was fine with R2-D2 & C-3PO being thrown in for quick cameos, giving them more than that was eyeroll-inducing. 3PO in particular made zero sense being built by Anakin, who I'm pretty sure would've had at least a glimmer of memory at seeing his Rosebud 35 years later.

Also, why the hell would a 9-yr old mechanical/electronics genius build a PROTOCOL DROID as a hobby? He says it's to "help his mother." Help her with WHAT? Is Anakin's mom, who's also supposedly a slave to a junk dealer, supposed to also be an intergalactic diplomat??

That brings us to the whole "slavery" thing. Aside from them being portrayed more as indentured servants at worst, they don't seem to be particularly unhappy or yearning for freedom. Anakin seems to run around doing whatever he wants most of the time.

There's a brief mention of slavery being illegal, but Qui Gon seems to pretty much shrug it off. He makes a bet with Watto to free Anakin & his mom, but doesn't seem particularly bothered by them being slaves--he only makes the bet because he knows Anakin has Jedi powers.

Qui Gon says he can only free Anakin because those were the terms of his bet with Watto...but he attempts to *cheat* Watto by using Jedi mind control earlier, then *does* cheat on the bet by flipping the dice blue. Yet he's "honorable" enough not to free a woman from slavery.

It's not like Watto was an Important Official where freeing his slaves would've caused an international diplomatic incident either...he was a 2-bit junk dealer who *owned slaves*. What was he gonna do if Qui Gon told him to stuff it & took Shmi (that's her name) with them?

In short, here's what I *liked*:
--The pod race scene was fun.
--The light saber battle w/Qui Gon, Obi Wan & Darth Maul was awesome.
--Darth Maul is a great character who was underused.
--The *concept* of Palpatine secretly manipulating his way into power was great.

Otherwise...gah.

My son generally agreed that it sucked...but he loved the Orig Trig *and* the Clone Wars series.

P.S. Oh, and don't even get me started on the Jesus "Chosen One" "Balance to the Force" parable stuff.

I think @pattonoswalt said it best: "I don't want to see Darth Vader as a little kid."

ONE MORE THING: "A communications disruption can mean only one thing: Invasion!"

Actually, it could just mean your wi-fi is down, or someone tripped over the holograph-generator power cord.