Not such a menace

Rating: 8/10 (10 April 2020)

A lot of fans were upset with this movie, but I wasn't one of them. After so many years of enjoying the original trilogy, this was a welcome return to the Star Wars universe. And yes, it had its share of flaws, but a lot of the things that bothered many people about it didn't bother me as much. Like Jar Jar for example. Yes, he was a horrible character, but he did get a chuckle out of me from time to time, even if it was just a stupid humor chuckle, and I didn't find him as annoying as other people did. And who knows, if people didn't hate on him so much, we might have gotten that rumored intended twist that revealed that his stupidity was an act and he was actually Darth Plagueis secretly manipulating everything and everyone the whole time.
But lets talk about one of the big issues people had. Midichlorians. So many people hated this concept, claiming that it ruined the mysticism and magic of the Force, but I never saw it that way. To me, the midichlorians acted as a type of medium between a person and the Force, a middleman of sorts. So the more Force sensitive a person was, the more midichlorians gathered around them. The Force was still as mysterious and magical as before, this was just another part of it, so that never bothered me.
One thing I didn't care for though was Anakin's character. It's just, I don't know. I know that this is Darth Vader as a kid, but I just can't see him being the type of person that yells "Yippee!" when he's happy or "Oops," when he makes a mistake. And to be honest, his acting wasn't the best either, but this is common for many child actors due to inexperience and being so young, so I didn't really hold that against him, especially since playing young Anakin were some big shows to fill. It could have been worse though, so I decided to look at it as a glass half full scenario.
And now lets get to the political portion of the movie, Yes, politics weren't the most exciting part of the movie, but they did move the plot along. And there were fun action sequences and amazing scenery that occurred throughout the film, like small battles, light saber fights, and the pod-racing. Come on, you have to really hold onto your prequel hate to say that the pod-racing wasn't awesome.
And then we got Darth Maul. What a badass bad guy. And his fight with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan was epic. Really all the light saber battles in the prequel trilogy trump all the ones in the original trilogy, lets be honest. And yeah, Maul went out like a wimp, but he had thought that he'd beaten Obi-Wan at that point. And lets not forget the ground battle and the space battle. Yeah, Anakin supposedly blowing up the droid battle station by accident may have seemed like a bit of an eye roll, but whose to say that he wasn't unintentionally channeling the Force, or that the Force wasn't acting through him to an extent. Remember, what Obi-Wan told Han, there's no such thing as luck.