RedLetterMedia already closed the case

Rating: 3/10 (17 December 2015)

...but I still wanted to express my own feelings about this movie. Phantom Menace is like a cancerous tissue you just have to keep studying, because every time you do, you find a new cancer. I didn't even understand, at first, that Phantom Menace has cancer all over it. I just thought it was a somewhat disappointing movie about space politics, cartoon kangaroos, a nice end battle with lightsabers and a great score. Now I'm sure that not only does it have cancer, but it also IS cancer.
The denial was strong at first. There's a guy called Obi-Wan, there's a kid called Anakin, there are lightsabers, there is the music of John Williams, George Lucas made it...this is Star Wars! And if it's Star Wars, it can't be that bad, right? Then, after the years went by, I had watched the original trilogy many more times and started to make comparisons. Granted, Lucas spread his cancer all over the original trilogy too, but he couldn't kill the greatness of those movies. The greatness is still there, even if it is covered by digital feces, horrible changes and all sorts of nonsensical crap. The original trilogy had heart. I actually cared about those people! They had real emotions! I cared about what was happening! I could tell you a reason for almost everything that happened in those movies. I cannot tell you a single reason why anything happened in Phantom Menace.
Phantom Menace is written by a child pretending to be a writer. If you manage to get your head out of the cloudy box of apathy and boredom this movie tries to keep you in, you'll notice that absolutely nothing about Phantom Menace's space politics make sense. Try it, I dare you. Try to think about the space politics. If you manage to do it without bleeding from your face and skull, you are truly a hero. And since the space politics are the reason for everything that is happening, the movie has already lost. It lost before it even tried.
Phantom Menace tries to set things up that eventually lead to episode IV: A New Hope, so everything is crammed in there, and none of it works individually or together. The force is explained by midi-chlorians (a form of space cancer caused by shitty screen writing), which in turn are the reason Anakin even gets noticed. We even got C-3PO and R2D2. Why? Probably just that you wouldn't notice how bad the movie is, when it throws familiar faces and names at you. Or to sell toys. Probably the toys.
Jar-Jar Binks, the unfunny space kangaroo, is a red herring. He is a horrible character and deserving of all hate and several mutilations, but if you take him out of the movie, the movie doesn't get any better. At least he made me feel something, even if it was rage and disappointment. Like so many other things in this movie, Jar-Jar Binks is there to distract you so you wouldn't notice the structure of the movie itself. Jar-Jar Binks is Podracing in a character form: absolutely meaningless crap with rabbit ears.
I feel bad for several people. I feel bad for the kid who plays Anakin. He is horrible, but someone should've stopped him. He is not to blame for the mess he was in. I feel bad for the main actors too, who had nothing to work with but miles of green screen and disinterested directing from George Lucas. It's telling of Liam Neeson's charisma, that I managed to like him, even though he was given horrible lines, horrible directing and horrible script. Pretty much everyone else came out flat.
But most of all: I feel bad for the people who saw this. I feel bad for the people who are too young to never have seen the original trilogy in its theatrical glory without the crappy changes Lucas made when this movie was released. I feel bad for the people who got a passionless piece of glimmering digital crap instead of a real movie from a franchise they loved. George Lucas, once a rogue filmmaker, had turned into a bored businessman. This is the result.
Is there anything good in Phantom Menace? Well, yes. I did like the end battle. Too much choreography and too little feeling, but it's still cool. Darth Maul has potential as a bad guy, even though eventually he is wasted. The music is excellent, as well as much of the sound department. I liked Liam Neeson, but just because he's Liam Neeson. His character though, in the end, was as useless and contrived as everything else in these prequels.
Check out RedLetterMedia's Plinkett Reviews of the prequel trilogy if you already haven't. They're gold. Also, check out the Despecialized Edition of the original trilogy. Some people made their own HD cuts of the original movies, taking out the changes Lucas forced on us in 1997. It's worth it. Get it, if not for yourself, then at least for your kids. Let them see the movie magic from 1977 to 1983.
George, you can't win. You once made a movie we all love. Stop trying to kill it. Please get help. I'm glad you don't hold the rights to the franchise anymore. Disney and Fox, please do the right thing and release the theaterical versions for the public. I don't question that you are companies full of bored businessmen and/or aliens too, but just for once, do something human to make us think otherwise. Please.