Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace will be 25 years old this spring. (If that doesn’t make you feel old, the original Star Wars will be 50 in 2027.) And naturally we’re getting the thing we often get for such a momentous anniversary of such an iconic film: a rerelease, starting Friday, May 3rd… so, over the weekend of May the Fourth (be with you). It’s unclear yet how wide the release will be, but it’s difficult to imagine that it won’t be as global as possible.
What are your memories of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace as we approach its 25th anniversary?
I wrote about the film twice that summer of 1999 — first a straight-up review, later a geeky rehash — but before that, I reviewed the trailer when it debuted earlier that spring, something I hadn’t done before (Flick Filosopher was already a year and a half old when the trailer landed) and haven’t done since. It’s almost impossible to convey the level of excitement and anticipation if you didn’t experience it, and perhaps you had to have been a kid for the first trilogy for the full impact of the continuous nerd rave that was 1999: We were getting a new ‘Star Wars’ movie!
That’s what I remember best: I was working at Yahoo! Internet Life magazine, where everyone was a huge geek, of course, and the day the trailer debuted, the strains of that famous theme music was all you could hear coming out of everyone’s office. We literally just sat watching the trailer over and over again. We were in our geeky glory.
I was 13. I was excited. I really liked Jake Lloyd in Jingle All the Way. My friends and I literally spent hours sitting in tree branches discussing what we hoped and expected would happen in the movie, based off of what we knew from the original trilogy and a few Star Wars books.
I enjoyed the movie in the theatre. I remember feeling like Darth Maul did too little and died too soon, but I don't remember thinking that exactly: just a feeling. For what it's worth I didn't mind Jar Jar Binks. I didn't like him, but I didn't mind him.
As people got used to it, the negativity started creeping in. People complained about elements that, thinking back on, I didn't remember enjoying myself. Jake Lloyd's acting was sometimes irritating. But he was a kid. Jar Jar Binks became a negative meme.
Then it came out on home video. My neighbor bought a VHS copy the day it was released. We watched it that night and it was the second time I saw it. And I remember thinking, "This is a very fun movie." When we were done, my neighbor said, "It's so good, isn't it?" I agreed and went home.
And that's the last time I ever remember thinking positively about it. Hit high school a year later, everyone thought it was dumb. Episode II came out and was just awful. People started pulling Episode I apart and a consensus formed. By the time Episode III came out I was in college, my friend and I went to see it in Boston, Massachusetts the week of release, and it was all we could do to not walk out of the theatre. The full prequel trilogy got filed away in the "bad movie" filing cabinet of my brain.
I never rewatched any of them again until about three years ago, with my wife. I found it both a curious oddity and better than I remembered. I actually did see more of what George Lucas was trying to do with the political background and what he was trying to do with the new technology he was developing. It didn't cohere, but I could see how he could pour his heart and soul into it. Too bad.
Great question.
I was 13. I was excited. I really liked Jake Lloyd in Jingle All the Way. My friends and I literally spent hours sitting in tree branches discussing what we hoped and expected would happen in the movie, based off of what we knew from the original trilogy and a few Star Wars books.
I enjoyed the movie in the theatre. I remember feeling like Darth Maul did too little and died too soon, but I don't remember thinking that exactly: just a feeling. For what it's worth I didn't mind Jar Jar Binks. I didn't like him, but I didn't mind him.
As people got used to it, the negativity started creeping in. People complained about elements that, thinking back on, I didn't remember enjoying myself. Jake Lloyd's acting was sometimes irritating. But he was a kid. Jar Jar Binks became a negative meme.
Then it came out on home video. My neighbor bought a VHS copy the day it was released. We watched it that night and it was the second time I saw it. And I remember thinking, "This is a very fun movie." When we were done, my neighbor said, "It's so good, isn't it?" I agreed and went home.
And that's the last time I ever remember thinking positively about it. Hit high school a year later, everyone thought it was dumb. Episode II came out and was just awful. People started pulling Episode I apart and a consensus formed. By the time Episode III came out I was in college, my friend and I went to see it in Boston, Massachusetts the week of release, and it was all we could do to not walk out of the theatre. The full prequel trilogy got filed away in the "bad movie" filing cabinet of my brain.
I never rewatched any of them again until about three years ago, with my wife. I found it both a curious oddity and better than I remembered. I actually did see more of what George Lucas was trying to do with the political background and what he was trying to do with the new technology he was developing. It didn't cohere, but I could see how he could pour his heart and soul into it. Too bad.
I don't remember much but I loved the visuals of the underwater city.