Or was the hype too big, they forgave the faults?
shareThe hate took a while to fester. Especially for Jar Jar. Which is just classic how mad people get over that character.
I found the frogs language to be more annoying.
The prequels that followed were worse.
They should’ve stopped with ESB.
Yeah the Core problem with the Phantom Menace and the PT in general is the poor development of Anakin.
I disagree with the idea that villains can't have a backstory. A backstory can be great if it's believable and if we can relate to it on a human level. I'm thinking Magneto's backstory in the X-men as a good example.
However, Anakin's development just doesn't make any sense.
In PM, Anakin is 100% good. Why is Yoda sensing in him trouble? Because he says whoops a lot? Because he's a slave? How is a slave really supposed to act? Is he supposed to be Mr Spock and just have this rather neutral expression on his face all the time? The PM needs to begin with a teenage Anakin and teenage Padme and Anakin needs to do some things that are "concerning". Maybe not evil yet but sow the seeds a little.
Once again in AOTC, same problem. Anakin is 95% good. What's his only failure? The Sandpeople are basically portrayed as Evil throughout Star Wars and they kidnap and torture his Mother to death. Ok sure this isn't the path of the Jedi. But at the same time, it's not as dark as it needs to be. Anakin is behaving the way a lot of people would at the thought of losing a loved one through violence.
And then finally it's time for ROTS and we know what HAS to happen. Movie begins and Anakin is just arrogant but still 95% good. And then it's like Anakin loses all intelligence. He turns into "Big Moose" from the Archie comics. "D'uh I can go kill a bunch of kids and have amazing powers, D'uh that makes a lot of sense". His fall as a Jedi is just too sudden and simple.
You're right on the money. Lucas didn't create a believable, gripping, insightful character arc and, as you point out that was the point of the PT: Anakin's turn from good to evil. We should be watching Breaking Bad or Macbeth, but we are definitely not doing that...
The PT also layered on top of that a bunch of half-baked monk cliches in place of anything interesting going on with the Jedi, and then some political bloviating in place of - what should have been - Aaron Sorkin-type machinations.
SPOILERS BELOW.
To your point of Anakin being 100% good: I think Phantom Menace should have ended with Anakin sneaking along with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. At the end of the dual, Qui-Gon is dead and Obi-Wan subdues Maul, but Anakin force-pulls Qui-Gon's fallen sabre into Maul's neck and decapitates him. He's angry that his father figure is taken away. Is it pure evil? No, but it's a real nasty harbinger of doom...
To your point on the age gap: yes, Anakin and Padme should both have been teenagers. (Padme should have maybe had some personality, too...)
AOTC is just such sloppy writing we don't buy the romance, Anakin's development oscillates between whiny brat and noble hero, and the politics are - as always - half-baked. The big sin here, with Anakin, is tell-don't-show as Lucas mostly uses Anakin's dialogue to on-the-nose say megalomaniacal things. He's just had a bunch of "evil's-a-brewin'" cliches dumped into him and he parrots them every other scene.
You're dead-on with ROTS losing intelligence. Lucas also cranked it into weird territory with the slaying of children. He went THAT evil THAT fast?