A while ago I made a post on my news/update about me not liking "Star Wars Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace".
And boy did people get pissed off at hearing that, I got a lot of e-mails and someone signed my guestbook saying "give him a brake" and watnot.
So I am gonna do just that, give him a break and an honest "good vs. bad" comparison on the movie. As of March 28th, I started writing things I didn't like about the movie (referred to as simply "BAD"). After that I plan on writing all that I like about the movie ("GOOD").
I'm also gonna number every entry, and when I'm all done we'll see which side wins!
I go into this project knowing fully well that the "GOOD" side might win, and if it does, I'll apologize for bashing the movie.

These are all _MY_ thoughts and comments, noone elses. And this is my own page/domain so I get to say whatever I want. Agreed?

THE GOOD

1. Natalie Portman is in it. This is so good that it's worth 2 points!
2. Natalie Portman is in it. This is so good that it's worth 2 points!
3. The CGI f/x and enhancements. They are totally seamless, only by knowing what's possible to actually do live and not can you really tell what's CGI and not. Take a look at this pic of Senator/Emperor Palpatine's arrival at Naboo an you'll see just how much of that scene was actually there and how much wasn't!
4. The landscapes. Most, if not all, of the landscapes were artificially created in computer land, but they were still beautiful. Like Theed, the Naboo capitol, really nice!
5. "Dual of the fates". Ok, it might be combo of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" and Beethovens "Ode to joy", but so what, it sticll rocked the place and made the fight scene way better!
6. In the middle of a heated, testosterone & adrenaline pumping fight with Darth Maul, Qui Gon Jinn is able to pause when the force field goes up, and cool down. I liked that.
7. My nephews liked it alot. Which is good since if SW hadn't appealed to kids, I'd never gotten interested in the originals!
8. The droid-deployment. I may bash the droids alot, but the deployment of hundreds of droids was quite nicely done!
9. Samuel Jackson was in it. 'Nough said.

1. The pace! This movie is way, way too fast! Granted, I'm not a scriptwriter or moviemaker, but I have seen so many movies and read so many scripts that I dare say it's way too fast. A paus or something in the story would have been welcomed, but instead it just kept plowing through scene after scene, never EVER giving any closure to anything! Too much to do and only 2 1/2 hours to do it in, but I don't know what he could have done differently.
2. The droids talk. TO EACH OTHER! Do you have any idea the programming it involves creating a verbal interface to put a command into audio. Add to that linguistic skills. And then creating the capacity to de-code a verbal command to an executable one... The interpretation invovled will have to have fault tolerance for everything from dialects to noise reduction (they were after all designed for combat!). And they did have a command ship they were linked to. So where was the need for the droids to talk? And why talk to each other? It never made any sense to me! I buy Data in Star Trek being able to talk and understand things, but he's got an AI, and these droids obviously didn't. (if they did, they wouldn't have stopped functioning when the command ship was destroyed)
3. The Pod race! I'm a Formula 1 fan. And I'm a special f/x fan. And I like Star Wars. So I should love a computer animated racing sequence in a Star Wars movie? Well, I didn't! As I said earlier, the story is too fast paced and the only time we stop at one place for more than 5 minutes is for this pod race. It's basically a 15 minute CGI extravaganza that serves no purpose! I'm sure two Jedis and a Royal security force could have gotten Anakin out of there in some other (faster) way. And last time I checked, the fastest route from A to B is a straight line. But Anakin goes 500 feet into the air and comes crashing down in front of the other guy?
4. The chemistry! Oh my god, it hurts looking at Ewan and Liam trying to be best buds! From what I've seen, Ewan is an OK actor that might be great one day. And Liam Neeson is a great actor. But the chemistry between those two were non existent. When I first saw it, I thought they were just two people teamed up for this one mission, but oh no, they were suppose to have that apprentice-master relationship, but that went by me unnoticed! And don't even get me started on the lack of chemistry between Natalie and Jake!!!
5. "Jippiii" ? "Jippiii" ? This is Anakin Skywalker talking, the future bad ass of bad ass movie villains in history of movie. And he actually uses a word like "Jippiii!" ? He says it when his owner allows him to go out and play or something.
6. "Jippiii" ? "Jippiii" ? This is Anakin Skywalker talking, the future bad ass of bad ass movie villains in history of movie. And he actually uses a word like "Jippiii!" ? He says it again when his mother says it's ok for him to go with Qui-Gon to Coruscant to be trained as a Jedi. (this second one convinced me it wasn't just an improvisation/adlib from Lloyd but scripted)
7. "Are you an angel?" It might be a good pick-up line (haven't tried it though), but seriously, he's 9 and he's already picking up girls, and a queen at that. But OK, I believe in love at first sight, and Anakin might have fell for her right there and then. But what about her? Did she fall for a 9 year old boy right there and then, or did she fall in love later? Don't know about you, but I have a hard time thinking about anyone I knew when they were kids in a romantic way. Anyway, those are questions that'll be answered in Episode II, BUT it still bothered me that you knew the two would get together, get married, have kids and jaddajadda so that ruined anything magical about that part. I quote Weird Al - "Do you see him hitting on the queen, though he's just nine and she's fourteend? Yeah, he's probably gonna marry her".
8. Continuity! Ok, I agree it can't be easy to be in perfect continuity to a movie made in 1977, but he can atleast try. Two big continuity mistakes are ; In "Empire Strikes Back" Yoda says that Luke is too old to be trained, and Obi Wan says Luke is not that much older than Obi Wan when Yoda took it upon him to train Obi Wan. But according to "The Phantom Menace" Qui Gonn trained Obi Wan to become a Jedi, not Yoda. And if Luke was too old when he was 20, why would Anakin be too old when he was 9 ?
9. Destroying beauty! Lucas had Natalie Portman to play the Queen. And he had Keira Knightley play the Queen decoy. Now, both of these women are really, REALLY beutiful! So what does he do when he has two beautiful women like that? He first puts on really weird make-up. Then a funky hairpiece, and weird costumes. And then he also screws up their voices in post production. I can understand he got Natalie for her acting abilities, but why not take advantage of the fact that she's beautiful as well!?
10. The noise. Oh, the noise! It may be blaspheme to call John Williams music noise, but in this case it was just too much! Somebody should teach Lucas how powerful silence can be. Take the scene when Anakin leaces his mother, that's one of those scenes where silence would have been better (in my opinion!). But there is always music thumping in the background in this movie, never a silent moment ever! When I watched it at home I had a "low movie watching"-volume (which is "normal volume" in the cinema theaters) and after the movie was over and I turned off the TV and everything became quiet it was just a great feeling to enjoy silence for a while! And I'm normally the guy that loves a good-sound movie!
11. The duel! No SW movie would be complete without a good lightsaber fight, and "Episode I" had a pretty big one, 2vs1. But several things in this duel bothers me. First, when the doors opens and Darth Maul stands there with his saber turned off, why doesn't the Queen and her little army shoot him? They have guns, they are about 30 feet away and there are about 20 of them. Instead they wait for the 2 Jedis, who are in the rear, to step forward and take him. Then they fight in the hanger, Maul opens a door into a huge... what? It's a huge place that I don't get what the hell it is? It's suppose to be the power generator, might be, but it's idiotically designed, with small ledges that don't go anywhere, and open energy beams, no floor or roof, just weird. Then they come to a force field? What the hell was that doing there? Stop people from getting to the abyss ofcourse, but in that case, why were they deactivated with regular intervalls. They don't make any sense at all! And about the abyss.. WHAT THA HELL WAS IT DOING THERE? In the middle of the royal castle, just by a hangar is a hole that goes straight down. Why?! W.t.f ?! And for being a Jedi master, Qui-Gon is pretty stupid to run alone into a room without any exits, why not retreat and wait for Obi-Wan, Darth Maul wasn't going anywhere, he was trapped?! Then when Obi-Wan finally gets there and starts swinging around you can clearly see this fight scene is too well trained because reaction comes before the action. (for example, Obi-Wan covers his back with his saber before Darth Maul swings at it). I got the feeling this duel was there just to have a cool lightsaber fight and to kill of a character.
12. Lack of strategy. Whoever thought up the fightscenes and battles didn't think tactically. How tactical is it to have the regent's HQ, the main hangar for the Royal Space Force as well as the city's power generator in the same building? The Gun-Guns were suppose to live underwater - why did they chose to have a stand-up surface fight. And why were they so good at it? And the droids didn't breath, so why didn't they use gas? (not lethal gas since that's illegal and immoral, even for an evil army) They also forgot to program the droids with any targetting system at all. And those droids would obviously have been better at an urban-based battle than an open-field one, so why send them away in the middle of nowhere and leave the capitol vertially defenseless? In the opening shot we see atleast 7 bases blockading Naboo, and only one of them controlled the droid army, without any redundancy whatsoever? And I've already mentioned this, but why oh why didn't Qui-Gon retreat and wait for Obi-Wan when Darth Maul was cornered? Hope they think more about this in the arena fight in Episode II !
13. Blasphemy! Many movies have played on simularaties with Jesus to make a character seem extreme in some way. But this is the first time I've ever seen a (serious) movie use the "Immaculate conception"-card. And it didn't work, at all, I laughed really hard when Shmi tried explaining that Anakin didn't have a father.
14. The dialogue! I can't put my finger on it, but the dialogue in this movie was just weird. It all culminated in this comment by Shmi, delivered by a great actress, - "You have brought hope to those who have none". On the page it looks like a good comment, but in the movie it was just weird. Also strange comments like Obi-Wan's "I have a bad feeling about this" when they reach Naboo, when in fact, he should have had that bad feeling at Coruscant since that's where the mischief was (both the Emperor and Darth Maul). Anyway, it was just odd comments like that.
15. Delusion of grandeur ! After the success of the original SW movies and the Indy movies Lucas seem to be suffering from some case of delusion of grandeur. He can't do things small and efficient, but has to overdo everything in a big big way. And I'm usually a big supporter of the "accuracy by volume" concept, but things in this movie was just too much. Take the Coruscant landscape - too much stuff, too high buildings. The senate - too big. The hole Maul fell down in - too deep. The droids - too many. And the marketing of this movie? Too big! The production cost of this movie? Too big. The production time of this movie? Too long! And the entire "Anakin was concieved without a father" is another symptom of that.
    Learn a lesson from the success of Episode IV - bigger and more isn't necessarily better!
16. Jar-Jar. 'Nough said. Sean, a friend of a friend, agreed with me and fixed this picture for me :)
17. Jake Lloyd. I've never liked kids in movies and TV, they are just too nice, sweet and unreal. Yuck! And this kid symbolizes all of that! The few exceptions is Newt in "Aliens" and Mathilda (ironically played by Natalie Portman) in "Léon". Although I wish I could give you an example of someone he should have used instead, I can't think of any. But Jake Lloyd was annoying as hell!
18. Cheating! As I've said over and over, I'm a pretty big f/x supporter. But I feel f/x should be used as a tool to tell a story. Not used as extensively as Lucas did in TPM (and from what I can tell, even more in "Episode II"!). Rick McCullum have said "every single frame has some digital effect". Isn't that downright cheating? True, it's hard to tell a space saga without the use of f/x, but why do it so extensively?!
19. Natalie here, Natalie there, Natalie everywhere! During the first hour of this movie I was constantly thinking "where's Natalie, is she the queen, and if she is the queen why is she also over there?!" And now I can't see it without trying to identify if it's Natalie or Keira playing the queen. And that's bad because it distracts me from the movie and the ever so great dialogue.
20. How fast is a Jedi? During the battle on the station with the droidekas, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon turbo-escapes out of there. ??? Don't think I've seen this particular Jedi trick before. Anyhow, later when they have just arrived in Theed they are crawling on the second level looking down into the courtyard. They see the Queen and her entourage walking by. Then theY walk 5 meterS, go around a corner and then look down. All of a sudden they are 20 meters ahead of them. So they jump down and kill all the inept droids. Just have fast are these Jedis!?
21. Bad tech ! I know Star Wars is more towards fiction-fantasy than science-fiction, but I just can't help to criticise it for the lack of technology. When the Bongo looses power, Obi-Wan (who 2 minutes earlier didn't even know what Bongo was) just rips out two wires, connect them and they got power again? Same thing when Anakins pod-racer brakes down, he just flips a switch and all back to normal. Same thing when R2 is fixing the Royal starship, he just hooks two wires together and they are fit for fighting again. And besides, who places such a cruicial circuit on the outside of a spaceship?! Must've made NASA laugh!
22. Was Lord Sidious and Palaptine the same person? I'm usually not slow at getting plot points in movies, but this thing about Lord Sidious (i.e the Emperor) and Senator Palpatine being the same person went totally over me head! Some people knew it before they saw the movie since it's one of this canon-Star Wars history things that you're just suppose to know? Well, I didn't and quite honestly, when are you suppose to get it? If you look at the story and dialogue there's nothing there to hint at it. And if you look it up, you'll see there's a slight height difference between the two characters in the SW.com database (Sidious 1.78 m, Palpatine 1.73 m), which raises the question - aren't we just suppose to think he is? I got it in the last burial scene when they zoom in on Palpatine, saying "there's more to this character than what meats the eye". Still a weird plot-point!
23. Always a bigger fish! DUH! Really, that entire water scene is nice and all, but completely unnecessary. And there was atleast one too many fish-attacks! Btw, they were meant to go through the planet's core? So the core was made out of water? I don't think it's impossible to have a planet core consisting of water, but it sounds like a stretch.
24. The humor! Agreed, Lucas isn't famous for being a funny guy. But where was the humor in this movie?! Where were all Han-Solo one-liners? What happened to the jokes?! Jokes like "The negatiations were short" and "Qui-Gon told me to stay in the cockpit, so that's what I'm going to do" was oh so predictable and lame. Slap-stick comedy works, unless it's a CGI character like Jar-Jar. What fun is there in a computer generated character being slapped around? NONE!!!
25. Midiclorians ? One of the good things about the original trilogi is that it let things like science and stuff go unnoticed, no questions asked and specifications given. And I liked it, I never questioned how the force worked, or how it can be measured. And so Lucas goes and ruins it with the talk about midiclorians. Way to go.
26. R2-D2 ! I realise he had to be there to maintain some kind of Star Wars continuity, but some things about him is just weird. Like when he goes out on the ship to fix a broken wire, and should be commended for doing what it's programmed to do? And why does the real Queen clean him up? And how come he got in the fighter before Anakin did, how did he know? And why couldn't he take control of the ship when Anakin obviously didn't know what he was doing?
27. What's a lasersword? I'll admit this, I got this one from a friend - the canon word for a Jedi's weapon is "lightsaber". That's what they've always said. Except in this one when Ani says "lasersword"? Might be a deliberate comment to make Ani seem like a cute little kid, but it's still wrong!
28. The space battle. Ok, it was nicely done, nice f/x and whatnot. But to have a battle like that, with all pilots and ships and stuff, won by a little brat in that way he did it! I can accept that Anakin was suppose to be a great pilot. But then he should have been a great pilot, no going all around the place "I'll try spinning, that always works" and "which button does what", not to mention that "it'll get us both killed"-comment. And he flies through the starbase's shields, in through the hanger, stops, turns around, fires a torpedo that knocks out the reactor and flies out again, all without knowing what tha hell he's doing... JUST BAD!!!!
29. Darth Maul's make-up. Again, totally over the top, too much!!