Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

If my son wasn’t a fan of Star Wars, I would have never gone to see this in 3D. But he is a fan, due of course to me sharing parts 4, 5 and 6 (the only good Star Wars films) with him. I, of course, was one of the millions who saw Phantom Menace when it first came out 13 years ago. I was also one of the millions so terribly disappointed by it. Now I find myself spending more money on this dreck, but I do it out of love for my son. That’s how I justify it. The underlying issue for me in this film, apart from Jar Jar and Anakin single-handedly saving everyone by accident, is that no one is ever in any real peril. Sure robots get destroyed, but that’s what the robots are there for. There was far too much politics and procedure to make this fun.

The only reason I can see for converting the six film series to stereoscopic 3D is to make more money. And it will, but if this version is any indication of what’s to come regarding the 3D conversion, I’ll skip it and it would be best if you do too. My predominant emotion, besides boredom and fighting the urge to sleep, was anger at the “3D” conversion. There are entire sequences, completely CGI, that we not rerendered in 3D. Instead, small ships or inconsequential elements were thrown in to give the illusion of depth.

There is a saying in screenwriting: come into a scene as late as possible and get out as early as possible. That’s why Star Wars: A New Hope, the first film, worked so well. We’re thrown into the action immediately. It’s exciting. We don’t need back story. We get the good guy versus bad guy thing. Somewhere along the way, Lucas has forgotten everything that he learned at USC that made his first few films so good.

Why two stars? Well, no matter what you say about the lackluster story, there is tremendous creativity in the visuals, the character, ship and city design. That counts for something, doesn’t it?