Be warned my review contains at least one minor sp...

Rating: 6/10 (16 August 1999)

Be warned my review contains at least one minor spoiler.
This film is actually rather bad I'm sad to say. First of all, one is dumped right in the action without any build up of either characters or tension. Since this is the first episode one would expect some background explanations. E.g. an important character like Obi-Wan, who is he? Where did he come from? The pacing is very fast in the beginning and one doesn't get any chance at all to develop any attitude towards the characters. I mean in most films you hate the bad guy and love the good guy. In fact I didn't care at all about most of the characters, if they died or not. That, I would say is bad in any film and points to bad directing. The conversations were artificial and the acting unnatural and I got the feeling we were always in a hurry, the same feeling one gets when seeing a TV advertisement when there is limited time into which certain amount of information have to be compressed.
The special effects are good almost 100 % but a good film has to be more than 100% special effects. Special effects should be there to enhance a good story and enrich the characters, not the other way around. Mr. Lucas: We have seen a lot of those the last 20 years or so, please ease up on the gadget buttons, we want characters and story.
This medichloride thing was terrible. George what were you thinking? It destroyed the mystique that the Force had in older Star Wars films. If the force can be seen in a microscope then why not draw some blood from the kid and inject the medisomething into good Jedi candidates. Also people could go to the clinic to get tested if the were `Force  positive' No, this part could have been left out, it did nothing for the film.
If Episode 1 is supposed to take place some 30 years earlier than New Hope then one starts to think about the technical advances over 30 years. R2 D2 and CP3O are the same, except that CP3O hasn't got the cover yet. Why not leave the introduction of those two, or at least one of them for later episodes?