The Best and Worst Things about ‘The Phantom Menace’

A long time ago… in 1999, director George Lucas unleashed "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace" onto the world. As the first "Star Wars" movie since 1983's "Return of the Jedi," the hype surrounding "Episode I" was enormous. Fans lined up for weeks to be the first to see the film and audiences flocked to theatres. The film was a cultural event of epic proportions... and boy, was it a let-down.

Now, that's not to say that there weren't any redeeming qualities to the film -- there were. But the bad far outweighed the good. In honour of today's 3D re-release of "The Phantom Menace," here are some of the best and worst things about the first of the "Star Wars" prequels.

Best: Liam Neeson as a Jedi — Long before Neeson defined his career with name-taking, wolf-punching roles in films like "Taken" and "The Grey," the Irish actor got to play one of the biggest bad-asses in the galactic history: a Jedi Knight. The morally grey Qui-Gon Jinn slices and dices droids, uses his Jedi powers to cheat and manipulate, and chooses to train a force-sensitive kid (Anakin) whom he knows might be bad news, just so he can stick it to the Jedi Council.

Worst: Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker — You can't really blame a precocious child actor for turning in sickeningly precocious performance. After all, that's what Lucas hired young Jake Lloyd to do. Between his poorly delivered lines and with Lucas's cringe-worthy dialogue, viewers won't know whether to laugh or cry when Lloyd is on screen.

Best: The Pod Race — The sci-fi equivalent to the chariot races of Ancient Rome, pod racing is one of the most dangerous sports in the galaxy -- so why not let an 8-year-old child participate! Two giant engines towing a tiny cockpit behind at nearly supersonic speeds, looping around a deadly track full of obstacles. The race is a blast and one of the film's standout sequences. With the addition of 3D (and an extra lap previously only found on the DVD/Blu-ray) the pod race just barely justifies the re-release.

Worst: Space Politics — One of the major subplots of the prequel trilogy is how the humble Senator Palpatine of Naboo became the evil Emperor of the galaxy. But when you're selling audiences on a new "Star Wars" movie, they go in expecting one thing: swashbuckling adventures in space. What they aren't banking on — and what you definitely shouldn't be giving them -- are boring galactic senate hearings, overwrought trade negotiations, and behind-the-scenes political machinations. That's not "Star Wars," that's C-SPAN in space!

Best: The Duel of the Fates — Say what you will about the rest of the film, but the climactic three-way lightsaber battle at the end of "The Phantom Menace" set the bar by which all other sword fights are measured. It was a battle for the ages and one of the few things the film does right. Experienced Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his plucky apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) take on the acrobatic and lightstaff-wielding Darth Maul in a fight to the death. Lucas let's the lightsabers (and not his awful dialogue) do the talking.

Worst: Racial and ethnic caricatures - It might be lost on the kids, but "The Phantom Menace" is full of terrible ethnic and racial stereotypes. Despite not being human, comic sidekick Jar Jar Binks, junk dealer Watto, and the hapless Neimoidian Trade Federation representatives are all unfortunate, and very human, caricatures of real life minorities.

Best: Darth Maul — The silent Sith Lord was disappointingly underused by Lucas in the first prequel, but what's not to love about the horned and tattooed dark-side user who rocks a double-bladed light saber? His untimely death by bisection was a crime, Mr. Lucas.

Worst: The convoluted climax — At most, many films have two intertwining plots to close out a film. "The Phantom Menace" had four, each more uninteresting than the last: the duel, the space battle, the land war, and the battle for the palace. The shift in tone between these plot lines is a jarring experience for the viewers. It's hard to find the "hilarious" wartime antics of Jar Jar Binks funny when you've just seen Qui-Gon Jinn get cut down by Darth Maul.

Worst: The Script - There's something to be said for Hollywood's practice of polishing a script. Several writers usually work on a single screenplay before it's ready for the big screen, and there's a reason for that. When left in the hands of a single person, screenplays are often terrible. It takes a fresh pair of eyes to point out the shortcomings present in a labour of love like a script. "The Phantom Menace" script is all Lucas, and it's painfully obvious. Lucas reportedly brought in screenwriter Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Walking Dead") to give him notes on the script, but it didn't seem to help much.

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