This is How You Ruin a Franchise

Rating: 3/10 (27 June 2015)

The Phantom Menace was atrocious. It was a pain to sit through the duration of the movie which was just a little over 2 hours. George Lucas returned as the director previously having directed the first movie of Star Wars, i.e, A New Hope. He was simply not up to the task and made some terrible choices in this movie. There are certain creatures who are weirdly shaped and talk even more strangely and I won't even bother to look up to know what they are actually called. This was an unnecessary addition which did not help in moving the story forward and only managed to irritate the viewers. The reason for the long duration between the last Star Wars movie to the current one was because George Lucas didn't believe that the special effects technology had advanced enough to fulfill the vision that he had for this movie. There was nothing groundbreaking about the special effects. Frankly, the visual effects of the original trilogy was far more original and well-implemented than what they achieved in this movie. The acting was below par despite having a talented cast comprising of Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor. The movie focuses on a young Anakin Skywalker as he is spotted by the Jedi Knights and is selected to be trained.
The movie is a complete snooze-fest and I wouldn't have bothered on watching this if it wasn't for the Episode VII which is going to come out later this movie. Avoid this movie if you can as it did not do much to move the plot forward.