I have seen Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace several times in the past month.
I’ve listened to Griffin & David’s phantom podcast, I’ve watched the RedLetterMedia Mr. Plinkett reviews, I’ve listened to the Chapo commentary track. I’ve heard every criticism of the film said in many different ways by many different people, and I still can’t stop watching Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
I recently watched a staged live reading of the script with esteemed actors such as Tony Hale and Haley Joel Osment (highly recommend this one btw)
Surely by now I should be tired of everything to do with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, but no. Every time I watch the film I’m every bit in awe as I was when I watched it in theaters at the age of 6.
Every choice confounds me, every scene surprises me anew with its sheer ineptitude, every frame oozes incompetence. I should know the film by heart, but I never have any idea what’s coming next, it’s as if my memory is erased every time a new terrible scene begins.
As a species we have just barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s wrong with this movie. I don’t think we will ever come close to fully unpacking what George Lucas has done here.
Please, Lord forgive me for what I’m about to do, which is press “play” on Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. This is the last time, I promise. I just need to get this out of my system and then I’ll be done forever. I can stop anytime…
oh god, oh fuck I’ve had the film playing on a loop for the past 48 hours. I can’t tear my eyes away, I haven’t eaten or slept, all I can do is watch Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, wallowing in my own filth until I inevitably die of exhaustion like in Infinite Jest. These are the last words I will ever hear:
Mesa caused mabbe one, two-y lettle bitty axadentes, huh? Yud-say boom da gassar, den crashin der boss’s heyblibber, den banished
— Jar Jar Binks
wait no, I’ve seen the light, I know how to break free, how to escape this endless nightmare. I’m going to watch Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones
I was that age when a new hope was first released in theaters and for the rest of my life I would watch that movie any chance I could. It was the greatest theatrical joy I could experience pretty far into adulthood for me.
When the phantom menace was released my friends and I couldn’t wait to see it… And we didn’t really care for it that much and some of my friends thought it was absolutely terrible. But that’s because it wasn’t made for “us” and our age group. It was made for you and your’s. Lucas new exactly what he wanted to do with episode one and he did it.
You should love that movie as much as you want and never apologize for it. Watch it every chance you get so you can remember what that six year old felt the first time they saw it.
I want to sincerely love the movie but it’s honestly just really boring lol, I find it impossible to care about a single thing the characters are saying and I kinda zone out every time. The battle of Naboo sucks too, who wants to see a bunch of frogs fight a bunch of droids? It’s a mess. At this point I just enjoy breaking down what went wrong with all the terrible choices Lucas made. And to be clear I’m not hate-watching it or enjoying it “ironically”, I find it genuinely fascinating from a filmmaking perspective, to study how not to make a movie.
I do unashamedly enjoy Attack of the Clones though, even though it has all the same problems as the first one, at least the action scenes are fun in that one, and Natalie Portman wears some pretty dresses. I’m certainly not gonna go around claiming it’s a good movie though.