Review of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) by Colin F — 15 Dec 2017

While not the strongest of the Star Wars films, it hardly deserves some of the harsh reviews many have given it when it came out. Much of the expectation was much too high and it could never have lived up to the hype.

There are plenty of annoying scenes such as the pod race which was overly long, and Jar Jar Binks. However it has some epic battle scenes (at least the Gungans lost the battle vs. Ewoks in Jedi) including an excellent lightsaber battle between Maul, Qui Gon Jin, and Obi Wan.

The fact of the matter is that the movie has to spend alot of time laying the groundwork for the later movies including the originals so the quality hurts somewhat. That said however, on its own, the movie is good and does tie into the later films quite well.