1. Jake Lloyd comes off like a tactless, unsophisticated, insecure, overconfident child… which is the role, right? He's playing a precocious nine-year-old and those are kind of obnoxious.
2. Jar Jar is a bad character, he crosses the line from comic relief to irritating joke at "I spek ", which is about his third line, and then he gets 700 more cringy chances. There's no getting around this.
3. The plot is actually doing something. They are telling a story of intrigue that is going to lead to the corruption of the galaxy. That winds up being kind of compelling when you're expecting it. Not as much if you go in expecting a straightforward "Good defeats evil using laser swords" story, but not necessarily bad.
4. Darth Maul isn't developed but he's cool as all hell
5. The 14-year-old queen concept doesn't make sense in an electoral system, but she's a stand-in for the people of Naboo. In that context she makes sense as a symbol of innocence. The virgin princess is a powerful symbol in mythology.
6. The movie has two key drivers of tension. One is a mystery plot, the other is is the suffering of innocents under a blockade. We never actually see a citizen, so it ends up feeling a bit contrived, more exposition than story. No one suffers on-screen aside from the Gungan soldiers, but all the tension and gravitas are drained from those scenes by the cartoonish CGI and slapstick absurdities of Jar-Jar.
7. I still think midichlorians were a mistake. It's the opposite of "luminous beings are we"; it turns out that the Force is fully explained by crude matter.
8. The idea of Jedi doing whatever it takes to pass through the corrupt world of the Hutts, gambling and tricking, using a small child, is dark. I'm used to thinking of the Jedi as good, but they really aren't in the prequel trilogy. Even knowing and accepting that, it's hard not to feel like Lucas was "getting it wrong" when you're watching, and I think that may have been a subtle but powerful contribution to the dislike of the PT.
9. It still doesn't really feel like much is at stake in the movie, we already know who is around in 32 years later and everything immediate is cartoonish. But this gets back to my thorough irritation at all 8 movies since ROTJ being either backstory or painfully self-conscious in the way they copied or refuted the OT.
2. Jar Jar is a bad character, he crosses the line from comic relief to irritating joke at "I spek ", which is about his third line, and then he gets 700 more cringy chances. There's no getting around this.
3. The plot is actually doing something. They are telling a story of intrigue that is going to lead to the corruption of the galaxy. That winds up being kind of compelling when you're expecting it. Not as much if you go in expecting a straightforward "Good defeats evil using laser swords" story, but not necessarily bad.
4. Darth Maul isn't developed but he's cool as all hell
5. The 14-year-old queen concept doesn't make sense in an electoral system, but she's a stand-in for the people of Naboo. In that context she makes sense as a symbol of innocence. The virgin princess is a powerful symbol in mythology.
6. The movie has two key drivers of tension. One is a mystery plot, the other is is the suffering of innocents under a blockade. We never actually see a citizen, so it ends up feeling a bit contrived, more exposition than story. No one suffers on-screen aside from the Gungan soldiers, but all the tension and gravitas are drained from those scenes by the cartoonish CGI and slapstick absurdities of Jar-Jar.
7. I still think midichlorians were a mistake. It's the opposite of "luminous beings are we"; it turns out that the Force is fully explained by crude matter.
8. The idea of Jedi doing whatever it takes to pass through the corrupt world of the Hutts, gambling and tricking, using a small child, is dark. I'm used to thinking of the Jedi as good, but they really aren't in the prequel trilogy. Even knowing and accepting that, it's hard not to feel like Lucas was "getting it wrong" when you're watching, and I think that may have been a subtle but powerful contribution to the dislike of the PT.
9. It still doesn't really feel like much is at stake in the movie, we already know who is around in 32 years later and everything immediate is cartoonish. But this gets back to my thorough irritation at all 8 movies since ROTJ being either backstory or painfully self-conscious in the way they copied or refuted the OT.
