Was Episode 1 that bad

No, episode 1 of the I.T. crowd was great. You vague jerk.

No of course not, most of the dislike generally stems from the Jar Jar Binks character I'd imagine.

In my opinion the movie itself has the best Lightsaber fight sequence out of the star Wars Movies with one of the most memorable antagonists, Darth Maul. And the story itself is pretty decent.

No I don't think so. Personally I really enjoyed the prequels.

@Treflis: I agree about the fight. Redlettermedia complained that it was too perfectly coreographed. But, assuming this was the Jedi in their prime and not some kid recently introduced, they would be superior swordsman. Unlike 2/3 as well, it's much more grounded.

The pod race scene is also excellent IMO.

It was mediocre.

Not completely horrible but not that good either.

Plinkett makes a great case to say why not. I never liked it, went and saw it opening day with my friends and we all thought it sucked. Ewok Adventures are more worth watching IMO.

Maul had the high ground.

It was mediocre, making it quite disappointing for many.

Episode 1 felt like a kiddie movie. I didn't mind. It was a movie about Vader being a kid. Same with the other two prequels.

The Hobbit book read like a children's fairy tale. But, the movie wanted to be more serious like the LotR.

As entertainment, I found both sets of prequels okay. I wish movie makers would quit doing the prequel thing, though. It looks weird when some characters look older in their younger days, like Legolas, for example.

So, this is about star wars? Way to be clear TC.

@speedfreak48t5p:

I originally thought this was about Half-life and it was just put in the wrong forum

Now this is thread making.

Yes it certainly was. The truth hurts. It wasn't good enough to be good or bad enough to have comedic value.

Remove Jar Jar Binks and it'll still be a terrible movie. The politics in the movie makes no sense for a number of reasons (sign the treaty to make the invasion legal, what?), the plot was convoluted, and the characters were boring and uninteresting. Oh look, fight sequences look cool! Yes. they are cool but lack emotion and power. Plinkett did an amazing review on it as well as II and III. Check it out and understand why the prequels suck.

A little side note, while the politics in ep1 was unbearing and confusing, The Force Awaken's politics was actually interesting, although not as explained which has caused confusion among those who have watched it.

Seriously though, the prequels suck. I said it before and I'll say it again: Remake the prequels.

It wasnt good. Not as bad as 2 but worse than 3, a little

It was unbelievable. The prequels are way ahead of the times.

Phantom Menace though? Amazing. Everything about it. People at the top of their game. Great lighting. Great visuals, great art design, great music, great characters, great dialog, great locations, great sets, great miniatures, great costume design......the fckng film does not have one bad shot. I laughed out loud when someone showed me the RLM video. I'm thinking...."this dbag can't follow. ...or maybe he thinks its great and is just ragging on it because its the cool thing to do."

@Fairmonkey: The tonal difference between 1 and 2 is jarring. Ignoring Jar Jar Bink's it's like he's trying to do a dry Kurosawa movie with long extended still shots of dialogue, and then in II he changes it to The Crusade, Gladiator and space Lord Of The Rings, it's all over the shit.

Bad movie, perhaps better than the second movie but that doesn't say much.

As far as The Hobbit movies, it should have been 2 movies, not 3. I didn't bother seeing any of those movies at the theatre just on principle.

@drunk_pi: Want a Sidous prequel. Given Disney will milk this shit for all it's worth, would be no surprise, their doing one on Han Solo (boring)...

Speaking of which, I hope Ian McDiarmid makes an appearance in Rogue One.

I think it was probably the best of the prequels... and then when I think hard about the movie, it was still pretty horrible.

@AFBrat77: I'd also like to point out that that was one of the problems with the Star Wars prequels too. There was actually some interesting stuff in the prequels (most of it in Episode III), and I think that an actually good movie or two could have been made out of the prequels (provided that they also got someone to go over the script and redo some of the cringe-inducing dialogue).

But unfortunately, the shit had to get stretched over three movies, and there just wasn't enough stuff there to sustain that. I don't remember a whole lot about Episodes I and II (I just didn't find them that memorable), but I do remember watching those movies and just having a general feeling that large parts of the movies weren't actually going anywhere. That it was just sort of trying to waste as much time as possible in order to get to the part that anyone cares about. And yeah...its entirely George Lucas' fault because he's the one who decided that that story arc had to be a trilogy when there just wasn't enough material to sustain it.

But I seriously think that's one of the biggest problems with the prequel trilogy. I actually didn't mind Episode III that much, and I think that the story arc could have made for one or two actually GREAT movies. But there just wasn't enough stuff there to fill three movies, so a lot of it felt like a waste of time and nothing worthwhile was actually happening.

Jar Jar is love, Jar Jar is life.

The only thing I can say about The Phantom Menace is that Darth Maul was the best thing that made this movie worth seeing but I do gotta agree with everyone here, Jar Jar Binks was the main problem in the movie. I'm not sure why everyone is bashing Episode One, I have said this so many times, Episode 1 & 3 were really good in my opinion, Episode 2 flat-out-sucks, big time. Episode 1 had:

• Pod Racing
• Darth Maul as the first non-human Sith to appeared in Star Wars movies and was a mystery Sith
• Space Battles was good
• Getting to know Young Anakin as a kid and why/how he becoming a Jedi

Just remember that this film came out in 1999, GL wanted to do something NEW at that time, I for one will say that GL did something NEW, while Disney just made Episode 7 A New Hope 2.0 which was borrowing from Episode 4 and GL didn't need to scrap from the original Star Wars movies.

Not as bad as episode 2

Pretty much. And I'm gonna likely make myself highly unpopular with this next statement but the story in the prequels were decent, not fantastic but decent. And it were atleast more creative then the story in the recent one, Force Awakens.

For the sake that they displayed a origin story of Darth Vader along with how Palpatine swayed the Republic using a war to gain control and nearly destroyed the Jedi's. Force Awakens however is more or less a sort of " We tried with a Death Star twice and failed...So let's try again but make it bigger."

Granted it's only one movie of what I assume will be another trilogy so story may pick itself up.

I have mixed feelings on the Star Wars spinoffs. I am excited for Rogue One (idk why), but the Han Solo, Boba Fett spinoffs make no sense.

Star Wars has a massive universe in which so much can be done. And speaking of Ian McDiarmid, he was actually a pretty good actor in I, II, and III. It was obvious who he was later on but still played a great villain in an otherwise terrible prequel.

No

No

No

No

That Darth Maul fight scene was one of the best in the series (and certainly way better than any fight scene in The Force Awakens). But the rest of the movie was boring.

So what Episode 1 are we talking about here? All of them? Star Wars? The Hobbit?

Star Wars was shit. The Hobbit was good.

At least Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith had a cohesive story to them.

That highly-choreographed wankery was not lightsaber dueling. There was no passion or tension. It was just three guys dancing. Luke against Vader at the end of Jedi was a duel. There was incredible passion and incredible tension. You were at the edge of your seat the whole time.

Darth Maul v. Obi-wan and Qui-gon was dull despite the flashy nature of it all.

I have a feeling you saw the prequels before the originals, no? Those kinds of people tend to prefer those duels to the more simpler, tenser ones of the originals. I loved the Rey/Ren duel in The Force Awakens. It hearkened back to a time when the duel was about so much more than dancing.

I want a Plagueis prequel. Seeing him grow up and mature under Tenebrous then move onto his role as master.

That, or a full on Darth Bane epic.

it was clearly made for children , Lucas wanted to make something comical that children would enjoy , and thats not bad tho , but he forgot that many people who watched and loved the original trilogy were above 25 years old in 1999 and of course they were going to be disappointed .

I think he should've gone with a bit darker and more serious theme for the prequel trilogy with better acting , better and darker design , better effects , something that could appeal to both Children and old fans .

The second big problem with Episode 1 ( and the whole prequel trilogy ) was way too much CGI and not even good CGI ! it totally cartoonish . The use of amazing and difficult practical effects was one of the main reasons that the original trilogy is so damn good .

I don't hate Episodes I-III...I hate Hayden Christensen. That prick killed those movies. As a result, I can stomach Episode I (because of his absence), but not II and III.

Your guess is incorrect. I saw the originals first as a kid in the early '90s, and then watched the prequels in the '00s.

Even if there wasn't any real urgency or drama to it (because the story sucked), Dark Maul vs. Obi-wan & Qui-gon was one of the most well choreographed fight scenes in the series. The 2v1 and team-work added a whole new dimension to it.

I didn't like the Rey vs. Ren fight scene. The fight choreography was okay but not very interesting, and it could've been better without the psychic stuff... And I was hoping it would be a 2v1 fight, with Rey & Finn teaming-up against Ren.

Eh, problem wasn't the fight itself but the movie around it.

It has all the ingredients, Darth Maul clearly superior, a dramatic pause mid fight with a learner unable to help his mentor, Obi pumped up to kick as (and yes he is pumped up and going for it regardless of what RLM says) and the point where he looks totally screwed.

Imo the resolution sort of sucks, he just beats him with no "use the force" inner voice shit.

The fight is a picture frame holding nothing.

See, that's my problem with the "choreographed" fights. They SEEM choreographed. The fights between Obi-wan and Vader in E-IV, Luke and Vader in E-V and E-VI, and Rey/Finn and Ren in E-VII felt UN-choreographed. They felt REAL as if those people were FIGHTING one another. Unpredictably throwing out moves and the other person having to counter.

That's what dueling is. Have you ever watched fencing? Their moves are incredibly fluid but there is still a high level of unpredictability to it, and the winner is the one who can out-maneuver the other. Some bouts last a matter of seconds. There is supposed to be an air of incredible danger and tension with lightsabers... it's not supposed to look like a couple of guys smacking sticks together.

The wankery in the prequels, especially Revenge of the Sith, is just over-the-top for the sake of it... and in my opinion, has lead lightsaber dueling into an athletic territory it was never intended to go originally.

It's pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as Episode 2 is.

Good to know.

^This. The choreographed fight sequences felt weak and lacked emotion.

@Jag85:

Here is the Obi-wan v. Vader fight from E-IV in Kendo:

They should have have used a 4 minute montage to "no easy way out" when Qui Gon died.

I haven't seen the movie since 2003 and i just remember Darth Maul, Jar Jar and the Battle Droid saying "roger roger".

I liked the droids...that's my revew of this movie, so bby.

Best way to know if it's truly as bad as people say is to compare it to episode 7. Both are the first of a new trilogy in the star wars series, and neither have had the time to be lifted up as the second coming of great cinema like the first.

no.. man children like to hate on it because of Jar Jar but that character was made for kids. It was a fun movie and i still enjoy it. The pod racing scene was cool, It gave us Darth Maul, one of the best lightsaber fight scenes of all time, and Duel of the Fates is probably the best song from John Williams in a Star Wars movie. It wasnt perfect by no means, but it gets too much hate.

@themajormayor: "We know you're an idiot already. No need to shove it down our throats."

So his opinion holds no merit?

@foxhound_fox:

The problem with The Force Awakens is that it tries too hard to stay faithful to the original trilogy. It doesn't try to do anything different, but is just retreading A New Hope all over again. Much of the story and the action scenes are lifted straight from the original trilogy. The only thing new the Kylo Ren fight did is the psychic wank, which ruined the fight. And the fact that Rey beat Ren without any training at all, was complete nonsense, which they try to explain away with the psychic wank. Luke got whooped and lost a hand the first time he faced Vadar, yet Rey beat Ren the first time she picked up a light-saber without any training at all.

Episode 1 at least attempted something different. The story is garbage, but at least it's an original story. The Darth Maul fight scene may not be to your liking, but at least it was original and felt fresh, with things like fight choreography, crazy acrobatics and 2v1 battles making it look different and interesting to watch. And the fact that it took two Jedis to take on Maul made him look very tough, whereas Kylo Ren looks weak and pathetic losing to someone with no training at all.

@PSP107: of course not.

@themajormayor:

lol