A good film in retrospect

Rating: 8/10 (26 June 2005)

Many people in the past have looked upon George Lucas' return to the Star Wars franchise with confusion. Many new fans have been won over by three simply entertaining cinematic experiences, with more characters and exotic locations than the first three installments. Episode 1 has to take most of the credit for this. Most criticism has been leveled by old hands like myself, who have held onto a false expectation that somehow 25 odd years since it's conception a story as broad in scope and complex in detail can boast the continuity of, say, a Tolkien trilogy (which were shot back to back) I have seen episode 1 now many times and find it to be very entertaining. The musical score is very good (so good it's critical pieces are reused throughout the the following two episodes) The concept of the republic, and it's capital Coruscant, show great imagination. I can understand how difficult a task it is to take the scope from a small group of rebels and then broaden it to galactic civil war. The jedi have been evolved from the mystical and largely unexplored cult of the first three releases to the para-religious servants of the republic. SFX are great, and some great work has been achieved by the stunt and fight co-ordinators. Ewan McGregor has and always will be great, although this was his weakest performance of the three (not his fault - see below) As needless as the scene was, the pod race is very cool and obviously a homage to great cinematic races of the past. The droid battle is an important scene and is also well done. Lucas would have had many sleepless nights over it. Droids are so dumb... cept artoo. Naboo royalty are very well conceived and look stunning (yes you Natalie) The story is simple yet it sometimes seems to confuse itself. You tend to go from thinking about the story and what the characters are doing to a state of thinking why did they write it that way, or they should have done something else. The basic tale is quite good and unique, and I wont go into detail as every man and his dog has seen this movie. Needless to say that this isn't exactly a tale about college fraternities or summer holiday love affair or suburban inquisition - it is a very difficult task of spreading thousands of years of history of a galactic wide government and law enforcement agency, and their ultimate doom, into three two-hour movies. Sorry, three two-hour watchable movies. Some concession must be made for the sheer size of the project.
It would be unfair to suggest that us old fans are naive though. There are some very glaring-come-annoying anomalies. Trade federation block all routes in and out of small planet (not investigated enough really) republic secretly try to end dispute (what dispute, why secretly?) Mysterious puppet master orders invasion and jedi assist royalty to escape and plead case to republic (ironic that they are asking the help of the body that tried to help them...) hindered by annoying alien creature, whose only 2 purposes in the whole saga seem to be to accidentally help them to the city of Theed and to table the vote to give executive powers to supreme chancellor. Struggle through blockade and must land at desert planet (why only tatooine, and why the answer so soon?) come across boy who likes girl who like boy (she could have her pick of billions of other eligible men but chooses to like little slaveboy) who just happens to be only human in galaxy who can race pods (never finished a race though...) just happens to have built one (how does a slave have so much money and time...) and says he will race it to get them off planet (why they didn't just slaughter Watto and take the thing is beyond me...) kid wins race beyond all odds. Gungans, with their grand (coward, retreating) army decide to battle droids after hiding for the rest of the movie. And Anakins destruction of the one ship in the fleet that controls the droid army (redundancy people, don't these trade types have a backup...) is very lame.
The rest of the movie is generally free of criticism. Many attack medichlorians and the prophecy of the chosen one. To me these criticisms are just a distraction, and I think that if the story was as attractive as, say episode 3, then things like this would probably be ignored. But that's just my opinion.
In short, I enjoyed this film when it was first released. It was entertaining and exciting to see the continuation of a story I had come to love. The barrage of negative talk from non-fans seemed to malign me somewhat but now that I have witnessed the entire opening trilogy, many times, I look back now and see that for all it's flaws the story is good, the effects are great, the score is excellent, and that sith rock!