Review of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) by Ashton L — 28 Sep 2017

With Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi coming out in a few months, I took it upon myself to go through all of the Star Wars canon material that Disney deems critical to the story in chronological order.

This means all of the comics, books, movies, television shows, and video games which Disney has stated is the canon of Star Wars. This begins with the Darth Maul 2017 comic and then moves on to this film.

I've seen this film before, many times in fact, I've watched all of the Star Wars movies (minus the animated Clones Wars films) many times over. But time and time again, this one never fails to disappoint me.

It is, in my opinion, the worst film of the three prequels which have garnered hate from fans for years now. The acting is stale, save a few performances like Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson) and Obi-wan (Ewan McGregor).

The performance of Keira Knightley as a decoy for Padme Amidala (whom we see in that role for most of the film) is of particular importance to me as she personifies the acting issues in my opinion. Her character has no emotion anywhere whatsoever.

She is blank faced, never smiles, never even shudders her vocals a bit. It is as if she, and many other actors in this film, are reading the script out loud for the first time. This doesn't even touch upon Jar Jar Binks which is a whole travesty on its own.

the only saving graces this film has is the music, Qui-Gon, and Darth Maul. Honestly, I wouldn't even put Darth Maul on the list of positives as he has, at most, 3 lines in the entire film. The only claim to fame Maul has is his fight with Qui-Gon, his sinister appearance, and his unique light saber.

Past that, he has no personality or character at all. This is truly a shame since I read the 2017 Darth Maul comic just before watch this. the comic for Darth Maul gives so much more depth and context to the character that otherwise has no character at all.

It's a shame it took 18 years for Maul to gain a comic of this caliber. This part of the Star Wars saga will undoubtedly go down as my choice for worst Star Wars film and it gets worse every time I trudge through it.

I only hope my slightly higher opinion of Attack of the Clones (emphasis on "slightly") does not sour more, for I do not know if I can handle suffering through another Star Wars film of this magnitude.