Not a great movie overall but it has some amazing scenes.

Rating: 6/10 (23 January 2018)

Since this is mostly a bad movie, I'll start with the negatives. The first are the performances. It was cool to see Liam Neeson play the Jedi Knight Qui-Gon, but his performance as the character was very stale and unemotional. I don't think that it was because of Neeson, but mostly because of the script. The other main actor is Ewan McGregor playing the amazing Obi-Wan Kenobi. In the original trilogy, Obi-Wan was one of my favourite characters and he was portrayed excellently by Alec Guiness. In this movie, he wasn't so great. Again, this was mostly down to the script for the character but Ewan could've done something to be more energetic or wise, especially considering he's playing a younger version of Obi-Wan. Natalie Portman is this movie is also very basic and doesn't show any real emotion. Finally, Jake Lloyd should not have been cast as the young Anakin Skywalker.
Into my positives, Darth Maul is easily one of the best villains to be introduced into the Star Wars universe. I think one of the main reasons for this was the fact that he was an actor covered in make up and not some terrible attempt at CGI. He also doesn't have to say much from George Lucas' script which makes him a much better character. Also, I really liked the Ian McDiarmid returning to this universe to play the younger version of the Emperor. So towards the end of this movie is when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight Darth Maul in Theed, Naboo. This is honestly a really good battle between them and I love when Darth Maul reveals himself and brings out his double bladed lightsaber. The fight is really good and ends with Qui-Gon being killed by Maul. This, in my opinion, was handled really well. Obi-Wan then fights Maul and the best character in the movie is sliced in half.
I just want to say that I didn't mention JarJar or Yoda in this review. The reason for JarJar is because there is so many things wrong with him that I really could go on for a very long time. The reason for Yoda was because he was another one of my favourite characters from the original trilogy and this CGI version of him in The Phantom Menace was somewhat disrespectful to his character.
I don't mean to offend with this review. I understand there are fans of the prequels out there and that is fine. It's your opinion