Best of the Star Wars films

Rating: 10/10 (10 October 2000)

I fear I must depart from just about all the other hard-core Star Wars fans I know, especially those who (like me) grew up on the original trilogy (Episodes IV-VI). I felt Star Wars Episode 1 was the best of the four Star Wars films so far. The critics, and in particular the Star Wars fans, have been much too hard on this film. First of all, they're forgetting that when they first saw Star Wars, many of them were 5, 10, or 15 years old. These people are now 25, 30, or 40 years old; they can't help but view Episode 1 through VERY different eyes. Judging how you felt upon seeing Episode 1 when you're a jaded 30 year old, vs. seeing the original when you're an amazed, wide-eyed 8 year old, is patently unfair to the new movie, and to George Lucas.
For me, there are several reasons why the Phantom Menace is the best of the four movies, and I will present them here. First, it has the best on-screen sword battle of any kind that has ever been filmed. Even the most vitriolic critics will agree that of the four movies, the lightsaber battles in the Phantom Menace are light years better. But I will go them one step further and say that the lightsaber battles in this movie were more acrobatic than any other sword-battling or martial arts movie I have ever seen. It looked like a dance. Several of my friends insisted they must have filmed in in slow motion and sped it up because "no one can move that well, that fast" (they're wrong -- according to Nick Gillard, the stunt coordinator, what you see is what they filmed, unmodified for speed).
Second, the Phantom Menace had the best special effects of any movie ever made. Just as the original Star Wars set new standards for stop motion cinematography, this movie set new standards for computer-animated graphics. It was done so well, you couldn't tell which parts of the background and landscape were real, and which ones were computer generated. I thought for sure that the Gungan-Droid battle on the open field had a computer-generated background, and the pod race over the desert was filmed live. In fact, the reverse was true! The desert scene is ENTIRELY computer generated, and the rolling grassland was real. Any special effects that can be this good, deserve recognition.
Third, I disagree with those who complained about George's directing abilities. This is probably the best-directed film I've ever seen. Oh, not the dialog -- that was decent, but I've seen better. However, special-effects directing is MUCH harder than directing for dialog. George had to direct people to interact with stuff that wasn't even there. Very few directors are capable of doing that well, and none of doing it as flawlessly as George Lucas.
Finally, there is the most important reason of all: it made me feel like a 10-year old kid again. As a 30 year old there are precious few times when I feel the sense of joyful childhood abandon that one feels at the age of 7 or 10. The week the Phantom Menace came out, I felt like a kid waiting for Christmas. And for two whole hours in the movie theater, I became a kid again, and lost myself in the Star Wars universe. Any movie that can capture that feeling for me, even for the brief time the movie lasts, has to be categorized as a resounding success.
Therefore, I say without apology or hesitation, the Phantom Menace is my favorite Star Wars movie, and probably my favorite movie of all time. I will never forget the joy of seeing it for the first time, and am eternally grateful to George Lucas, for giving me the chance to be a kid all over again -- even though it was only for a little while.
My score: 10/10