One of the worst films in the history of world cinema

Rating: 2/10 (24 November 2019)

HUGE SW fan here. But a fan not a fanboi. The difference? A fanboi can't acknowledge that sometimes the franchise is utter garbage, every installment is glorious. A fan, on the other hand, acknowledges the successes and calls out the failures.And Ep 1 TPM is a colossal failure. Awful on every level. Cringe-worthy and painfully bad.
Every time I think I'm being too harsh on TPM, and maybe try viewing it again, I realize within 15 minutes that this film is garbage. And Jar-Jar Binks? The single most obnoxious cultural artifact since the Lascaux Cave paintings.
And Ep 2 TCW is not much better. Hayden Christianson's and Natalie Portman's performances were stunningly terrible. Zero chemistry. But I do believe a talented film editor could splice together the best scenes in Eps 1 and 2 and produce a fairly decent, tolerable 2-hour film.
What I've discovered over the past few years is that the film releases are the weakest portion of the SW franchise. Far better in quality are the animated movie and series "The Clone Wars" and "Rebels." Also, the novels are more adult oriented and much more skilled at bringing the SW universe to life.
Ultimately Disney needs to decide whether SW is for children or adults. Can't be both. Only Eps 4 and 5 had crossover appeal. None of the other films could quite capture the original magic. I wish Disney would just split the franchise into: SW-C (for children, with lots of Gun Guns, and Jar-Jars, and Ewoks, and Porgs) and SW-A (for adults, bring the animated series into live action, show us Ahsoka Tano and Asajj Ventriss, and pull in G.A. Thrawn and bring the novels to life).