Review of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) by Markus M — 01 Dec 2015

Starting my marathon of all the Star Wars films, in preparation for The Force Awakens, it only makes sense to start off the story chronologically with The Phantom Menace.

Episode I has definitely a lot of hate from many Star Wars fans and while this film definitely has multiple flaws, I still think there's plenty of things to appreciate about it.

Firstly, the flaws should be stated as there is plenty of them. There is an over-reliance of CGI and the film definitely could have benefited from more use of practical effects. Jar Jar Binks is an unnecessary, useless and unfunny comic relief character most of the time. The dialogue doesn't always hit the mark. They could have picked a better child actor for Anakin than Jake Lloyd and there are moments of silliness sprinkled throughout this film.

However, I still think there are plenty of redeeming qualities to this film. For one thing, the lightsaber action is simply fantastic (particularly the Darth Maul fight sequence). Darth Maul himself has an intimidating presence as a villain, even though he only has a few lines in the film. The film expands on the Star Wars universe by making us feel like we're in a different galaxy with the spacious and well-designed settings which have a nice aesthetic to them, even more-so than the original trilogy. The pod-race scene is highly entertaining to watch and I liked the way it showed the whole thing, so I felt like I was a part of the race. The John Williams score is fantastic (especially the Duel of the Fates theme). It's nice to see C-3PO and R2-D2 once again and the overall action and flying scenes are exciting to watch.

So overall, my rating is mainly based on my personal subjective feelings towards this film because while there are elements that I'm not a huge fan of, I think the good elements are still enough to overshadow them as I still had a fun time re-watching this film and I was never really bored at any point (even during the political scenes). Objectively, my rating would be lower.

In my opinion, it's worth watching not just in preparation for Episode VII, but also for the good stuff. Discover for yourself if you enjoy this film more than many others do!