Will anyone watch this for pleasure in 10 years?

Rating: 1/10 (10 December 1999)

Hey, blindly loyal Star wars fans who have posted your love for this movie here: just what exactly do you see in this movie that will draw you back again and again as the first movie did? The kid's all-thumbs acting? The completely undeveloped relationship between Jedi master and apprentice? The dull, unscary villains? The human warmth of the scenes in which the kid leaves his mom forever without even a goodbye? Trying to figure out which one is the queen dressed as her servant and which one is the servant dressed as the queen dressed as the servant (like it matters)? Watching the best years of Ewan Mcgregor's career be wasted talking bilge about midi-chronthians or whatever they were?
This is shockingly inept filmmaking, illogical even on its own terms-- Jedis blather so much about sensing the force, but Obli-Da can't sense a Dark Lord coming up behind him on a scooter-- and bad at everything we used to go to movies for (and even got a little from Lucas's early movies). Lucas plainly doesn't know that what made the originals enjoyable was the presence of a character mocking the whole business (Han Solo); now he takes himself as seriously as those dull Star Wars imitations (Krull, The Dark Crystal, etc.) that followed in his wake. There is nothing in this frantic, pompous kiddie adventure movie to suggest that he will be capable of handling the more serious themes of Annakin's temptation and corruption that are implicit in where the next two films will go-- you might as well ask the director of the Pokemon movie to do Godfather IV. I look to the hype surrounding the next two movies with nothing but dread.