Actually I find the movie really bad, SW or no SW. I find the effects mostly bad, the acting awful and the story pretty boring (wich I admit might be because its SW). But I agree some of the jedi fights are decent enough. Maybe It'll be more decent when I get the Bluray pack since theres zero expectations this time.

If it wasn't a SW movie it wouldn't have sold at all. Bad acting, annoying characters, confusing story and leading into a sequel with even worse acting, even more annoying characters, and no progression of the story.

Yeah, the action was better, but in the first trilogy they didn't have those special effects. The final battle between Luke and Vader just couldn't have been fought with them jumping around like Obi-wan and Anakin in RotS. And the effects from PhM are already out of date and look kind of meh next to say, Dark Knight.

Lol the 3 things myself and friends agree is good about the Phantom Menace

Qui gon
Darth Maul
And all their fights :D

I don't mind the prequels as much as many fans do. I actually watched it in the theaters at least twice. However, I don't think I will watch these because I'm tired of the 3D fad. I've watched several movies in 3D (including Avatar, Rio, Alice, maybe some others) and got almost nothing from it. I don't feel like paying extra to wear some clunky specs.

I'll hold out for Blu-Ray edition containing the unaltered original releases... who knows how long I will wait for that. Hopefully it comes out sooner than Zappa's Roxy DVD which has been teased for about 11 years now.

Fun Fact:

Did you know that [url=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0461136/ ]Keira Knightley [/url]was playing Padmé. The stand in for Natalie Portmann/Queen Amidala

I just noticed that a couple of weeks ago ....

oh my, I had not noticed that

So im not completly alone here then :)

A few years back, there was this colleague of mine who was a big movie buff and he had the opinion that Star Wars fans were just upset because the new trilogy was not more of the same and he basically said to be "okay explain to me how they were bad movies" because he was convinced that, without the original Trilogy to compare them to, they were good movies in their own right.

So, I began to consider everything and was astounded at how bad the movie really was when you didn't consider the Star Wars nostalgia:

- Jar Jar Binks

- the movie was unfocussed and couldn't decide whether to be proper a kids movie, a tense sci-fi movie or a Pixar 3D one. The movie went from super-serious to over-the-top silly and it just felt wrong

- the backdrops lacked character and felt too 3D and too wrong for viewers to feel part of the world and for a movie like that, you have to feel immersed.

- Jar Jar Binks

- Anakin was a real shitty brat in the first movie and was simply unlikeable - when the character you're supposed to root for is a spoiled bitchy cunt, it's hard to enjoy the movie don't you think?

- the relationship between the characters felt mostly flat. The movies went through the motions of saying "look, they love eachother" but you never truly FELT it. It was too artificial, too fake. Like the backdrops and crappy 3D. Han and Lea made 210321654 times a better couple and there was none of the magic between any of the characters. Just no passion.

- the movie jumped all over the place and they crammed far too many different scenes and places into it, making it feel incoherent and a whole mess of different parts. They simply wanted to do too much in just three movies. Whereas the original trilogy spanned a year or two, this spans 20 years and it shows.

- Jar Jar Binks

Seriously, I could go on and on, but really - not a single thing about these movies feels right except that they had high production values. But there was no PASSION - you had brilliant actors saying hammy lines on green scene sets so no wonder the end result was bad.

The second movie I quite enjoyed as a popcorn flick when I went to see it, and it was definitely the best of the three, but even there, they HAD to add stuff that made people facepalm. Yoda who was brandishing a lightsaber when Star Wars lore already said he used the force as weapon due to his small size ...... really? If it wasn't for the horribly added scene of Han Solo and Jabba with Jabba overlayed onto the original human actor, this would easily qualify as the worst scene out of all the movies and that's saying something because they're riddled with scenes that make me want to stock up on barf bags.

Actually I also kinda liked the prequels. In a "I just don't care, brain on vacation" kind of way. The main reason I was sometimes suffocation was the sheer predictability of the franchise up to that point. 4-6 had some inspirational filmography, 1-3 was bland and relied too much on special effects. Oh, and Jar-Jar. How I hate to feel neutral about that goon.

As for 3D, yes please. My brain hasn't really hurted in some time now.

Maybe this is a good time to link to the Harry S. Plinkett video reviews of the Star Wars prequels again, for the two or three people who haven't seen them yet:

http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/star-wars-episode-1-the-phantom-menace/