A Terrible Waste

Rating: 5/10 (22 May 2005)

Before starting this review, I think it should be pointed out that the Phantom Menace is my most disliked movie ever, but I was an obsessive fan of the originals. Please don't listen to those misguided people who hail this movie as a masterpiece. Okay, it does start reasonably well and ends decently (barring Darth Vader's truly ludicrous 'nooooooo'), but the other hour and a half is junk. It's true to say that Revenge of the Sith is the best of the trilogy, but that really doesn't mean a thing.
The dialogue and acting is no improvement at all on the first two installments. Most worryingly of all, the character development of Annakin is pretty laughable. I mean c'mon, at one point he's still fundamentally a good person, and about five minutes later he's killing numerous innocent children (stupidly named 'younglings'). It's ridiculous how suddenly this happens, and it's completely beyond the realms of all credibility.
Hayden Christensen is so wooden, you'd swear he's learned acting by studying tapes of William Shatner. At the same time, I don't really blame the actors when they have to play on such a clunky script. There's also the fact that virtually every seen in the movie was filmed against blue-screens, which makes it difficult for McGregor, Portman and co to capture the atmosphere effectively.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but until tackling this trilogy, George Lucas hadn't directed a big movie since "A New Hope" in 1977. In all this time, he's lost touch with the core elements of what makes a great movie and he's instead become a techno-geek. I was as big a fan as anyone of the effects and technology in the original Star Wars, but they would have been nothing without the simplicity of the plot, the warmth of the characters and the talents of the actors on show. Sadly, all that this trilogy has amounted to is cold computer flashiness. Even when the CGI on display is impressive, it's undermined by its prevalence in every single moment of the new movies. This is never-better demonstrated than in Yoda's ridiculous fighting moves in this movie and the last one. Yoda was once a mysterious character due to the fact that he didn't have to do anything to be impressive. Now, he just looks like the product of some ILM geek showing-off.
I could go on for hours, but I think I've said enough already. I'm sure to a lot of fans, I'll sound like I'm just cynical and that I don't really care, but I do. When the whole sorry state of affairs grounded to a halt, I was left feeling so empty I was close to tears. The fact that I think these movies are awful doesn't make me any less of a 'real' Star Wars fan than anyone else. I AM a real Star Wars fan, and we deserved better than this.
P.S. Did anyone else find that the shots of Annakin after the lava was a bit excessive for a PG movie?