Watching for the first time since it came out.

So, now Amidala's palace has been taken over by trade federation droids. Obi-Wan and Qui Gon rescue everyone. Despite being outnumbered by armed droids, no one dies- not one person!

Amidala, Qui Gon and the rest of the freed people climb aboard a star cruiser and take off. From the palaces, to the under the sea kingdoms, to the star cruisers, to the enemy droids, why is everything in this universe so clean looking? Everything looks like it's just been polished up and rolled off of the assembly line. Why doesn't anything look used?

Thanks to Artoo Detoo and bunch of R2 lookalikes that were blasted apart and thus, didn't make it, Amidala, Qui Gon, Obi Wan and a bunch of Amidala lookalikes blast though the blockade that is surrounding Naboo. R2 is congratulated very woodenly by Amidala. I can't fathom why George went this route with the Queen. She is beyond annoying in her woodenness. She's pretty detestable to be honest. I wouldn't be able to take any kind of instructions from her before falling asleep out of sheer boredom.

Amidala's handmaiden (yeah right!) Qui Gon, Obi Wan and Artoo Detoo (he's a part of the gang now) land on Tatooine and meet Anakin, and some flying bug dude who has a resistance to the force. Anakin meets Amidala's handmaiden and asks her if she is an angel. Then when she asks him if he is a slave he gets mad and tells her that he is a person with feelings named Anakin. The aforementioned and preceding dialog between the two of them is cringe worthy. Also, knowing that these two are going to embark on a romance is just plain odd and creepy. What is up with George and these weird relationship fetishes? Luke and Leia being brother and sister (F'n gross!) and now an 18 year old and a 10 year old?! It's equally gross. What was he thinking? What were the people around him thinking by not calling him out for his weirdness.

I feel bad for Jake Lloyd. He didn't deserve and of the crap that "fans' gave him! He did exactly what George wanted him to do. And seriously, what kid, during that time would have turned down a role in a Star Wars film?! I dreamt about being in a Star Wars film for almost my entire childhood. Don't blame jake, blame George for his crappy dialog and crappy direction.

Jar Jar is beyond terrible. He walks around the village farmers market and steals food and then because of his theft he gets into fights with locals. Yet, for some odd reason, the people who get mad at him for stealing are portrayed as being bad guys. This is perplexing. Why is stealing by a goofy annoying character okay? Why does being an annoying comedy sidekick suddenly make stealing okay?

A storm is coming, and Anakin brings Amidala, Qui Gon and Obi-Wan back to his mother's house for protection. There we meet C-3PO. Anakin is building him. Okay this is getting ridiculous. Anakin is a slave but has access to (most likely) very expensive protocol droid parts and winds up building one of the most reliable protocol droids in the entire universe. Not only that but that protocol droid winds up (along with R2) in the possession of his son some 20 years later.

Why is everything so slow? Why does everyone walk around SO SLOWLY? In the palace everyone walks with the same stride at the same rate. No one walks faster than anyone else. The same thing happens on Tatooine. The cities on Tatooine are supposed to be fast moving space ports/towns, yet everyone walks around like its leisure time. Go to New York sometime if you want to see the pace that an actual city moves at. Heck, out here where I live (Suffolk County on Long Island) there is a faster pace than both Naboo and Tatooine combined. Everyone in this entire universe (so far) walks with exactly the same cadence- across multiple star systems!

Again, the CGI creatures have more emotion and are more emotionally believable than the real people- this is odd. Why are all of the real people so wooden?!

This feels like a grade K-2 version of Star Wars. It's odd to me that the same guy that made this made the original Star Wars and then The Empire Strikes Back.

It's not odd to me that it's the same guy who made Return of the Jedi...

ha ha ha...I have a post about Star Wars in general to make sometime. I've watched Ep 1 again recently. I agree...the first paragraph of the opening scrawl mentions taxation and trade disputes. like you say...not too captivating. it makes more sense to watch Ep 1 as part of a bigger story, not neces as a stand alone film in its own right

Funny post and spot on.

Star Wars ended in 1981.

just because the sequal trilogy is bad it does not make the prequals good. aside from ROTS which i think is a very good movie

So, now Anakin's mother is akin to the virgin Mary?! Ugh. You know, if she had just said that his father had died or that his father was murdered and as a result, the two of them were thrust into slavery, it would have made so much more sense as to why Anakin turned out the way that he did. Not only did he never know his father, but eventually he lost his mother too. It would make more sense as to why he ended up so broken.

So, now the Force can be detected by a simple blood test?! That was dumb when I first saw it and that concept is still dumb today. It really takes away from the concept “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” Instead of that mystical approach, now it just comes down to a simple blood test.

Anakin is fixing his pod racer, and he claims to be a great pod racer, but has never completed a race?!

Jar Jar is being annoying and gets electrocuted and then his mouth goes numb. Then his tongue hangs out of his mouth from temporary paralysis.

It's as if George made this entire film as goofy as possible. Does George have this crappy of a sense of humor? Was he surrounded by so many yes men and yes women that they laughed at everything that he said? Did no one else aside from George go over this script? Even the best script writers have editors. Did everyone tell George that he was so great that he didn't need an editor? It seems so.

Onward to the pod race. We have a goofy looking announcer with two heads that no joke looks like it could have been a character in that old Herculoids cartoon. It's just completely dumb looking. I am amazed that George didn't have it talk like Howard Cossell. Actually, I may have enjoyed that.

The pod racers themselves are an assortment of creatures some are familiar while some (the guy with the goofy @$$ long neck) look like they too could be in the aforementioned cartoon.

The race is okay, but it is so dated looking that I have a hard time enjoying it. It really looks like a bad video game from the early 2000s. I know that George wanted to make this like Ben Hurr, but Ben Hur looks better than this, and Ben-Hur was made in 1959. I am going to go so far as to say that the original Ben-Hur from 1925 looks better than this does. George REALLY got carried away with the CGI. I can understand that. It was a new tool that he helped develop. He was really ahead of everyone else with his special effects company. Unfortunately, it looks fake. CGI just wasn’t there yet. It still isn’t in some regards. It shouldn’t (even now) be the only tool used to make special effects.

Anakin wins and now he’s going to be leaving the planet and going with Qui Gon and his merry little band of wooden actors and jar jar (who has a personality) and R2 (who also has a personality) but he’s leaving his mom behind…

Okay, so this REALLY REALLY REALLY pisses me off. Who the F’ would leave their mom behind as a slave?! Who?! What person who ever existed would do that?! Seriously?! It’s your F’n mom! I wouldn’t leave-Period. And Qui Gon, and Amidala- oh wait sorry, Amidala’s handmaiden actually go along with this $h!t too? For real? Really?! Seriously?! WTF?!

If George didn’t want to bring his mom along why not just have her die? Why not just leave her out altogether. I am sorry, but I have never met a kid who at ten years old would leave their mom!

I’ve had enough for the night. I need a drink and I don’t even drink!

So now Anakin is brought before the counsel in order to determine if he can be trained as a Jedi. And again, we get this goofy @$$ Metaclorian count B.S. and about how he may be one who will bring balance to the force. Not only that, but the counsel tests his force powers using the same test that Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters used to test for E.S.P.!

Here's Pete delivering the test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW8Ua49dCYk

Here's Mace delivering the same test, only this time it's done with a computer and not flash cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kptVj6ptdCQ

YoYo (being a complete D!ck if I may say so myself) criticizes a 10 year old kid because the child is scared about what may become of his mother. How is concern for the safety and well being of someone else a bad thing? Someone answer this for me? Aren't Jedi's supposed to be kind and compassionate? Isn't that what they claim to be? Well, there's no evidence of that is here. All we get is a dumb saying from YoYo that goes something like this "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." This is what a wise enlightened Jedi tells a 10 year old because the child is worried about his mom?! YoYo does not have the social skill enough to teach elementary school, but in this universe he's a Jedi master?!

YoYo looks dumb. He looked like a real entity in Empire and ROTJ. In this film he looks like cr@p. Seriously, why did Yoda look better 20 years ago than YoYo does in this billion dollar film?

Fanwank alert! Yoda senses much anger in Anakin and that he is too old to begin the training. Qui Gon say's that he will train him. Where did this Qui Gon guy come from? If he was so important why didn’t Obi Wan or Yoda ever tell Luke about him?

Padme is looking at a holographic projection of a guy talking about how millions are dying. Where is that happening? Why aren’t we seeing that? It sounds a lot more interesting than freakin’ trade disputes and YoYo talking B.S. At least the guy in the holographic projection seemed concerned.

Anakin comes to say goodbye to Padme, but she isn’t there. He seems really happy that he may never see her again. Amidala, like the block of wood that she is tells Anakin that she will relay his message to Padme.

Amidala talks with an annoying accent- She is awful. Her makeup is still goofy, and she looks like someone punched her in the mouth. Did I mention how annoying she is? Wooden does not describe her! I’d need to invent a new word to describe her acting in this film. How about The Woodnoying one!

Next up we have a large arena of sorts where different races are discussing things that are going on in the universe that are bad. You know important stuff like universal holocausts that we don’t see… The Woodnoying one provides us with even more Fanwank and says “I won’t discuss this as a committee. I won’t condone a course of action that will lead us to war.” I have to be honest that she has kind of ruined Leia's and Han's amazing back and forth banter about Leia being a committee. They were funny and no matter how many times you saw them bicker it was still funny. Now all I can think of when a committee is brought up in Star Wars is the voice of the Woodnoying One. Ugh!

Palpatine meddles in The Woodnoying One’s ear and she votes to have Chancellor Valorum relieved of his position. I can’t say that I am sad about it as this is the first I have seen/heard of this character. Ah Chancellor Valorum, we never knew thee… He actually looked sad. So, for a brief moment there was actually a bit of decent acting in the midst of the wood. Too bad it didn’t mean anything because he was a throw away character.

I can’t say that this has gotten much better. Everyone is still on valium in this universe. Everyone walks at the same pace. Nothing really happens. We hear about things that happen, but we don’t see things happening. I can’t comprehend how people defend this garbage, but they do.

It has become painfully evident that George NEEDED Gary Kurtz in order to reign him in!

Anyway, until next time...