At Least it Felt Real

Rating: 6/10 (16 September 2008)

With the entire prequel trilogy now out, I look back at The Phantom Menace with a bit more kindness than I might have without the other movies. The first of the new movies is certainly no masterpiece outside its technological achievements: most of the actors give weak, stilted and/or just plain awkward performances (Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid among the saving graces) and the story was often too silly, among other things.
But the one thing I realize looking back at this movie is that it FEELS real...something that's lost as Lucas moved to digital backgrounds and characters for almost everything in the later movies. Depending more on real locations, real stunts and real characters (more often than the other two, anyway), this movie doesn't lose itself in boundlessness that plagued the next two films, which were often overdone to the point of feeling like a glitzy made-for-TV movie (the Matrix sequels made this same mistake). The lightsaber battles of the Phantom Menace are still easily the best of the Star Wars films, sticking mainly to the limits of stuntmen (with some necessary exceptions) and not trying to turn the Jedi into godlike warriors.
Episode I may not be a great film, but the action's still plenty of fun, and the movie itself may be the last to give you that feel of the classic Star Wars films before moving on to things bigger and brighter, though not necessarily better.