I have a theory-Lucas didn't have 3 more stories to tell

Rating: 4/10 (1 July 1999)

After watching The Phantom Menace (in a very empty theater) I have devised my own theory that I think explains most of the movie's strengths (few) and weaknesses (many). It has been 22 years since Lucas promised the world a nine-part space saga. With the release of the new movie, he modified that to six-part, saying that he never really intended to make a third, post grown-up-Luke trilogy. But seeing Phantom makes me think he didn't really have a second trilogy either. The movie is paper thin, filled with much to do about nothing.
I imagine Lucas has been walking around with this story in his head for years, but that once he sat down to write it he discoved there just wasn't enough there to fill out three more movies. How else to explain the totally expendable character played by Liam Neesom? He does nothing but deliver exposition and bring the characters together that need to be together for the next two movies. Any of the other major characters in this movie could have done that, particularly the more logical choice of Obi Wan. And what about Obi Wan? He does nothing except pose as a stiff action hero until the last few minutes of the movies, when we find out his particular role in the coming two stories. He should have just showed up at the end to get his mission impossible assignment. We learn nothing about who he is, what his story is, what brought him here. Certainly that could have made this movie a little more interesting.
Everything that needs to happen in this movie in order to prepare us for the next two could be compressed into the first 45 minutes of a better movie.
A lot of people have complained about the acting, but I think everyone does just fine, considering they are all playing characters that have not been fleshed out at any level by the author. Lucas is lucky this is the fourth movie because fans of the previous films can fill in the character blanks for him and flesh out the characters in their own imagination -- an imagination fed by the creativity of the first three films. You just can't blame the actors. I mean, the acting in A New Hope was amateur at best (all of them got much better afterwards) and it was just fine because we cared about the characters. Here Lucas has picked some stellar performers and they all come across as though no one has told them what is going on.
The strengths of the movie are all contained in its last half hour. Finally you get an exciting(albeit badly filmed and total ripoff of the earlier movies) battle scene with Darth Maul, and you find out who is going to what with who in the next two movies. The end of Phantom is why I think many people are still coming out of this movie excited -- because it does make you hope for greater things still to come. It is just too bad Lucas didn't open his mind a little more and not only expand the visual universe of the movie, but expand the character's universe as well.