A great film victim of bad word of mouth

Rating: 6/10 (21 May 1999)

I just saw TPM, and I thought it was great cinema. And cinema it is: everything in there is so carefully imagined, you have to let yourself go with the flow to truly enjoy it. Which most people don't do. I think that this film suffers, up to now at least, from its own hype. People pretend to be so fed up by the merchandising that they go to the theater with unjust prejudice. I mean ,come on, stop examining every single scene comparing it to the others, and if you don't want to buy Queen Amidala sneakers at Wal-Mart, then don't.
As for the whole box office issue, I think that it is irrelevant. I just saw in IMDB that George Lucas does not think TPM will beat Titanic. You go, Mr Lucas, that's the spirit! People who were so hysterical about Titanic won't like it (Star Wars) for sure, because in their mind, J. Cameron's film is just the end of the world as we know it. But I think that we fans of George Lucas' exciting work should not worry about that.
I have one little reservation, in fact, and it's about the characters: somewhat, they are not as endearing as Luke, Leia, Han et. al. I think that Queen Amidala was curiously bland, but I don,t think it steals the movie's intrinsic interest. We have to remember that it is the BEGINNING of a trilogy. Maybe the characters will develop with time... As for dialogue, which some users found insipid, well, those of the first trilogy were not especially brilliant either, weren't they?