Star Wars: Episode I: Jar Jar's Last Stand (1999)

[superhippie2000]

Talk about Episode 1 here.

[costas22]

That title.

[darkphoenix21]

The one that shan't be named...scarier than any sith

[KSiteTV]

It was a kind of sithhy movie.

[Glove]

Actually, this movie should be given the same respect as the others with the proper title on the thread The Phantom Menace.
I appreciate the entire franchise front to back.

[jon-el87]

Oh, boy... Where to start?

The whole thing on Tatooine was just stupid. Surely, there is somewhere there where Qui-Gon could've exhanged his republic credits for local currency. Seriously, the whole thing with the pod racing wasn't needed. Just have Watto point Qui-Gon in a place, where he can exhange his money.

There are also plenty of scenes, that feel like one take (I refuse the believe, that they "did 20 takes and that was the best one").

The droid soldiers where quite inconsistent. Throughout the movie, they seemed to have individual thoughts and actions. However, in the battle against the Gungan army, suddenly they're controlled by the trade federation ship and automatically shut down, when it's destroyed.

And then there's Jar Jar, the comic relief. Sure, you had C-3PO serve as comic relief in the OT. However, he still had a function, being R2's counterpart and acts as a translator, when dealing with Ewoks. Jar Jar is just there for comic relief. And it's not like he's trying to fill a void, as C-3PO is in the movie. The droid soldiers also acted a bit like comic relief. Did this film really need more comic relief? I like the idea of him being banished, not for being evil, but for being a screw up. Sadly, the film doesn't go anywhere with this. Take Han, in New Hope, as an example. When he first shows up, he's only looking out for himself. However, he ultimately decides to help Luke take down the Death Star. Jar Jar starts out clumpsy and ends the movie clumpsy. The film could've spent some time on why Jar Jar is clumpsy and, through the help of his new friends, gets past this in the end.

I liked the lightsaber battle, during the climax.

[costas22]

Best part about this was the lightsaber duels. Perfectly scored by John Williams. Everything else was so boring and forgettable. I read somewhere that you can watch the episodes in the Machete Order and you can completely leave out The Phantom Menace because it doesn't really mean a lot in the overall trilogy. Of course there's Anakin meeting Padme and Obi Wan and Palpantine becomincg Chancellor, but those are mere footnotes in this movie. What a waste of Liam Neeson.

A really (Jar)jarring movie to sit through. 3/10.

[mbozzo]

Episode 1 is the start of the prequel series. We meet many of the characters of this series in this one. The one bad thing is that we meet Jar-Jar in this movie.

[jon-el87]

The whole thing on Tatooine was just stupid. Surely, there is somewhere there where Qui-Gon could've exhanged his republic credits for local currency. Seriously, the whole thing with the pod racing wasn't needed. Just have Watto point Qui-Gon in a place, where he can exhange his money.

I think this is one issue that I picked up somewhere (when I was younger, I made the mistake of listening to those Youtube reviewer types). This assumes that there is such a place there. Tatooine is established as a world controlled by the Hutts (gangsters). There is a difference between me going to Norway, and wanting to exhange my money for local currency, and me going to North Korea (and wanting the same). There might not be any banks, because of the criminal element. If there are (which would then likely be as controlled by the Hutts as the rest of the planet), Qui-Gon might not be able to go in and exhange over 20,000 Republican credits, without attracting unwanted attention (assuming that they'd even follow the proper exhange rate, and not screw him over), from the Hutts (which is made clear that they don't want). In A New Hope, 10,000 credits are said to almost be enough to buy someone their own ship. The two scenes are set 33 years apart, so you have 33 years worth of inflation (making Qui-Gon's 20,000 credits a lot more money in his time).

The droid soldiers where quite inconsistent. Throughout the movie, they seemed to have individual thoughts and actions. However, in the battle against the Gungan army, suddenly they're controlled by the trade federation ship and automatically shut down, when it's destroyed.

This is more cleared up in The Clone Wars, where it's established that the earlier B1 model was controlled by command ships, while the newer B1 droids have more more independence. You wouldn't scrap the majority of your vast droid army, just because you found a way to make an improved model. That would mean that you would have to start your army from scratch. One moment, you have five million battledroids, the next you just have fivehundred, because you didn't account for the amount of time that it would take to manifacture an entire army of these new and improved B1 battledroids.