I just got home from going to see The Phantom Menace in the movie theater here in town. They are showing the movie in celebration of the twenty-fifth(!) anniversary of its original release.
It is a movie that has grown on me quite a bit over the years.
Like pretty much all Star Wars fans of my generation, I had extremely high expectations going into Episode I back in 1999, to the point of standing in line to get tickets several month in advance for one of the midnight showings. I saw it four times in the theater during its initial release and by the fourth time, I was fully bought in to the burgeoning “This is a terrible movie” movement.
Nonetheless, I saw the other two prequels in the theater as well when they came out. My feeling at the time was that Attack Of the Clones was even worse and that Revenge Of the Sith, while better than the previous two, was still not good.
I don’t think I watched any of the prequels again until five years ago. My older kid wanted to watch all of the Star Wars movies in preparation for going to see Rise Of Skywalker in the theater. Other than insisting upon watching them in release order, I did my best to go into without telling him what I thought about the movies; I did not want to be one of those parents insisting that my kids had to feel the same way about them that I did.
What I was surprised to discover is that The Phantom Menace has grown on me over the years. It is clearly not without its flaws—some of them major—but there is a lot to like about it. Jar-Jar Binks is silly and annoying, some of the CGI has not aged well (the big battle on Naboo at the end of movie looks to be taking place on the Windows 95 desktop), and some of the performances are rather wooden. Even so, the story is pretty good, I quite enjoy Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, and I think the pod race remains one of the best action set-pieces in the entire series. I particularly enjoy the sand people taking potshots at the pod racers.
It is neat to see Darth Sidious manipulating everyone and I think the movie does a pretty great job of laying out the scope of his plans and the extent of his scheming.
And every time I have watched this movie in recent years, I amazed by how badly the Jedi Council comes across. They are arrogant and calcified, even Yoda and Mace Windu—the seeds of their downfall are all sown in the scenes in this movie. Even Qui-Gon (supposedly the wildcard of the order) can’t be bothered to do anything to help the enslaved people on Tatooine until he figures out that Anakin might be the Chosen One. Then all he can bring himself to do is to get Anakin off the planet. The scene when Anakin has to say goodbye to his mother is thought to watch, and I found myself thinking yep, that’s how you end up with Vader.
So yeah, I think I have come to like this movie pretty well. I will always remain partial to the original trilogy, of course, but I tend to think that is more a product of when I saw them and the sentiment I attach to them than anything inherent to the films themselves.