Sad that a director/visionary could go so low..

Rating: 4/10 (29 December 2004)

I think there's about 1,000+ words to describe how disappointing this movie is for fans of the genre and fans of science fiction, I look to science fiction cause it's the only interesting thing my mind I can't predict well.. And so in the original trilogy we saw much of that greatness in this cheap cash in we saw little of the original..
I finally wanted to know more about why Lucas the man behind the series destroyed the former glory of the series and a little research easily turned it up Gary Kurtz original producer of the first 2 of the original trilogy is largely responsible, a good interview with Kurtz done by FilmForce shows that he was responsible for hiring the director of The Empire Strikes Back and for keeping the film highly original Kurtz described a concept which I think is true of Lucas's writing and directing work to date, he described a movie term called the "Roller-coaster Ride" and that's what Phantom Menace is clearly it's a roller-coaster ride without question..
Why should movies be great? Why should movies inspire to push our moral/social limits? Why should movies have story or imagination? When all we need is a good ride and this is sadness to phantom menace because it comes from the push of movies to a roller-coaster ride..
It's easy to spot the roller-coaster ride in the sequel or #3 in the trilogy "Return of the Jedi" why a 2nd death star? why the ewoks? Where was the originality in #3 we see the originality sapped and the beginning of plagiarisms And Lucas's career continues in this saga with more Indiana Jones with Willow and with Howard the Duck.. there is a extra feature on the DVD of Willow where Ron Howard (Director) and George Lucas (producer writer) talk and you can tell the relationship between two great artists is strained and this was the truth in every movie Lucas made that was good he was strained in both Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back he was challenged and pushed to do better..
In these movies he is not challenged he is in charge and he wants what he wants.. he's lazy and he let's ILM cover his butt on challenges he doesn't want to handle..
George was Director, Executive Producer and Writer on this movie that means that every thing you saw was what he wanted there was no one to say no to him, no one to say what if we did this better, he shot every scene with his movie in mind and in this case with no one there to tell him his vision missed what the public wanted.. this is his movie, this movie will not connect with a audience and therefore it's just wasted cause we know George's film past that George could connect with audiences really well he just didn't want too he was going his own way.. so this film will be forgotten and his original legacy will live on..
This movie is a sad excuse because it provides little enlightenment and shows a once semi-competent producer/visionary/director in a utter-cash in half -ss attempt And I recently watched a re-work of this movie dubbed MAGNOLIAFAN this one edited and slightly changed movie increased the overall feel of this movie by 25%, I have seen this movie perhaps 3 times now and this re-work beat out my previous viewing experiences.. this re-work helps make this movie better and if Director's continue to get rewarded (our money) in the theater for sub-par crap then the Roller-coaster movie cycle and re-works will continue to be in our future..
No one who wants more from movies should ever support the industry in failures such as this one.. the pocketbook speaks to these guys more then anything.. I think old George has gotten too much approval for sub-par work and I'm sure he thanks his marketing people most generously