Doesn't do justice to the Star Wars Universe

Rating: 1/10 (25 June 2013)

Yesterday for the first time since 10 years I tried to watch Phantom Menace and again I turned off my DVD with disgust. Clearly this is one of the movies that haven't passed the test of time - the prequels, and that one in particular, are a giant kitsch and once you start looking beyond giant layers of CGI you shake your head in sad contempt. Phantom Menace fails both as a movie - part of the defined art - and as an addition to Star Wars Universe.
Let's say categorically that Star Wars are not George Lucas and his movies anymore. George Lucas may have created Star Wars like Homer created Illiad, but like Illiad, it started living its own life long time ago. It doesn't matter who owns the franchise - Star Wars Universe became a living being and a modern myth fueling the imagination of people around the world. It is not just a movie anymore, although it started as a movie - it is much greater entity than that. Star Wars outgrew Lucas and in the end he was like a child tinkering with a unexpected creation in a silly way.
Books, comics, games and movies are only entry tickets to that wide universe and people keep buying them because they crave contact with it. And over the years Star Wars benefited from many great stories told in comics or games, stories that gave much us better contact than Lucas and his prequels...
Lucasfilm keep telling that only the movies are a true source of Star Wars, that what Lucas personally invents is more important than work of many writers and artists often more talented than him... I do not agree with all that. This is only the opinion of Lucasfilm and one could ask: why then they had released all that EU material in the first place? When TPM appeared in theaters I hoped it will give me as much epic storytelling and heroism as Expanded Universe... but it never came close to even standard EU products which was humiliating to Lucas. In fact, Lucas plundered EU heavily and with complete disregard when making TPM but ended with a very mediocre movie.
The dialogs were naive and annoying, the acting was wooden, the action scenes would be OK in 1940s - but not very artistic for our time, computer monsters were awfully rubber-like and unconvincing, general plot was not epic at all. After watching it I couldn't care less about Star Wars - had I not been a regular fan. But had my first ever contact with Star Wars came through TPM - I would certainly never had became one.
When I compare any of the prequels with a sci-fi masterpiece that Dark Knight Rises is (although I am not a Batman fan), with its masterful dialogs, great tension and drama delivered by actors, excellent composition I feel ashamed as a Star Wars Fan that We ended with such incredible crap instead of epic movie like Dark Knight is. I couldn't care less about storyline - but the way Dark Knight delivers that storyline is masterful. Now watch TPM again and all you find is contempt...
It would be hard to expect that Star Wars will remain consistent and immune to spirit of time or generational change: but it does not explain why we have to endure bad movie or uninteresting story. Where Lucas has failed KOTOR video game somehow embodied Star Wars mythical spirit and stole the show.
Classic Trilogy created in gray and boring 1980s was a window to another universe - it had a magic and mythical undertone. But prequels are just a CGI crap without any deep content. It seemed as in Lucas tried to get his revenge on Star Wars for growing too big and living its own existence for all these years he remained passive. The TPM is so incredibly BAD movie - especially when you compare it with best creations of Expanded Universe - that you cannot help but wonder if Lucas indeed was subconsciously trying to sabotage his own child.
I am not a fanatic of Classic trilogy and enjoyed some of the changes Lucas made to it, but regardless of how appeased I try to be toward the TPM I cannot not see how it destroys the Star Wars magic: Jedi are bunch of arrogant catholic-like monks, Force is just a bacteria in your blood, Anakin is a whiny version of Jesus and despite becoming a mass-murderer he is made by Lucas to be a true hero of six movies - not Luke - ruining the mythological archetype of Classic Trilogy which was basically a Hero's Journey.
The question is: why should I care about Prequels at all? Being a hardcore fan I am of opinion that best and most powerful stories ever delivered by Star Wars Universe are Tales of the Jedi comics and KOTOR video games. It is not even the question if they equal Classic Trilogy, but does the Classic Trilogy equals them. Knights of the Old Republic video game alone is so perfect epic story and has so likable characters full of depth and convincing visuals, that frankly, after playing you do not care that much about the movies anymore.
Similarly Tales of the Jedi which are basically the saga of Nomi Sunrider and her heroic journey beat the crap out of any prequel episodes, be it witty one-liners, great tension, epic storytelling or interesting characters.
That is why I do not care about Lucas and his failed venture in filmmaking: others took care of Star Wars and produced great stories.