It´s just a movie

Rating: 7/10 (2 January 2002)

"Episode I - The Phantom Menace" was almost hyped to death when it came out, and when I look back I realize it was a bit foolish to expect it to be as good as the other three. I´m a huge fan of "Star Wars", "The Empire Strikes Back" (my favorite) and "The Return Of The Jedi", and therefore I wanted this to be as good as them. Of course, I became slightly disappointed with "Episode I" and realized that it´s, after all, just a movie.
As everybody know, the story takes place before the other ones and is the first episode of the classic saga. But somehow I think something is missing when the very beginning involves a taxation dispute between the federations. I would have preferred a prologue which explained how the Jedi Clan and the Sith Clan were born, and how the whole galaxy came to be! A bit like the prologue they had in "The Fellowship Of The Ring", if you catch my drift.

Dialogue has never been George Lucas´ strong side, and here it´s worse than ever. The story isn´t that good either, with slow pacing and it also lacks really spectacular scenes. "The Pod Race" feels extremely drawn-out and something put there only for the very young. The new environments are nowhere near awesome planets like the icy Hoth or the swampy Dagobah.

The actors looked good on paper, but only Liam Neeson and Pernilla August manages to bring warmth to their characters. Ewan McGregor is a disappointment as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jake Lloyd is an unbearably irritating child actor. But one can´t really expect them to perform any miracles with these lines... And then we have the hopeless CGI-characters, i.e. Watto, Boss Nass and Jar Jar Binks. The knowledge that Binks will appear in the next episode scares me. The only new characters I really liked were Darth Maul (and he won´t appear in any more Star Wars-movies, darn) and those cute little battle droids who got smashed up by the Jedis all the time. Their chess-computer voices were just wonderful!
If you don´t compare this to the other movies (but then again, who won´t?) this is actually endurable enough. The action scenes are exciting, especially the sword fights which looks better than ever. Lucas and his men have obviously been ambitious with the movie, and it shows. And since the wrap-up is so nicely made, I actually believe Lucas can fix his band-wagon up for "Episode II - The Attack Of The Clones". I just hope I won´t be disappointed again.
3/5