Enjoyed it / Age Influence / A Question

Rating: Null/10 (25 August 1999)

A few simple comments (there are 1700 life-story comments already).
Overall this film was enjoyable but a bit too much to take in effects-wise at the first viewing, so I am seeing it again. I have to agree with a previous comment that ones age definitely influences opinions on the film. Those of us who saw and loved Episode IV at the cinema in '77 are a tad older now and will have radically different ideas about how a modern Star Wars film should be. The kids of today are of course used to a different standard of films of this kind, but if you put yourself in their shoes (hard, but just think back 22 years), you can see why they would thoroughly enjoy it and that it does indeed have all the elements of the previous 3 films, good and bad.
If the comment writers age appeared with the comment, I think most of us could understand the opinions much better. (I am 32, by the way).
Lastly - and noone has answered this yet - why the hell is this film called The Phantom Menace? I can think, as a starter, of a few reasons:
1. (Practical) Darth Maul (and his boss) are like phantoms and are a menace.
2. (Mystical) It marks the beginnings of an evil (the evil being Darth Vader, the Emperor and his crew) that is yet to come which will cause problems for most people in the galaxy (this is the menace), but since it is not yet tangible or its presence fully felt it is only a phantom of the real evil.
3. (Probable) They wanted a good sounding title that cunjures up interesting images in your mind before you see the film, but bears no actual relevance to the film whatsoever.
I hope the next 500 comments will touch on this question!