Success in Tinseltown is measured by expectations, and no film has built expectations higher than The Phantom Menace. Ask Howard Stern about this. For anyone else in the humor business, this would have immediately established them as a Hollywood power player. Incredibly, despite generally favorable reviews, the movie was considered a failure. That's Hollywood, where perception is everything.
Reality often runs a distant second.
The Phantom Menace is facing much the same dilemma. Lucas has raised the bar to galactic heights. The expectation is that it will easily break the domestic and international box-office records set by director James Cameron's Titanic. Let Cameron be the king of the world, Star Wars fans say, George Lucas is the king of the universe. Fair or not, many will consider it a failure, and Lucas will have only himself to blame for this.