A word to the naysayers...

Rating: Null/10 (3 June 1999)

If you truly want to comprehend the impact a movie like Episode I is capable of delivering, the only way to see it is with somebody who has never seen the older trilogy. I've had the good fortune of doing this, and the look on this person's face, the absolute delight at the visual wonders and magnificently simple story-telling, was worth the price of admission for both of us. If you can do this and still state that this movie lacks the soul of the original trilogy, well, phooey. You're wrong.
Opinions of this movie were formed well before it was finished ... well before anyone knew anything about it, in fact. The die-hard fans could have been subjected to a showing of Speed 2 and claimed it to be a masterpiece, while the naysayers could have seen a movie with twice the impact of Citizen Kane and still proclaimed it to be a piece of crap. In a very real way, this movie is an inkblot test: your opinion of it says more about yourself than it does about the movie.
As for myself, well, I feel sorry for anyone that doesn't love this movie. To take an object of such pure imagination and dissect it, searching for flaws, is to miss the point. No single specific criticism has been made of The Phantom Menace that can't also be made of the original trilogy, but these criticisms aren't important. What matters is the fact that these movies are the visual realization of an amazing imagination, contained within a mythological story of good versus evil, told in a way that will, with time, transcend the criticisms of it that have been made thusfar.
Lucas knows how to tell a story the way stories were originally meant to be told. He wowed us once, with a trilogy that has defied its aging and will forever remain a classic. 20 years later, he's showing us he hasn't missed a beat.