New Redletter Media video about Lucas

[emersonlakeandbalmer]

I wouldn't mind seeing DXIII debate Raynor (or Elfdart). However, what would the topic be? This thread is kind of all over the place. Also, Raynor has proven himself incapable of addressing actual points.

[Panzersharkcat]

I'd like to see that, too, even if I mostly agree with Raynor. Two men enter, one man leaves!

[Metahive]

Villains, or heroes for that matter, that do things that do not benefit them in any obvious way need to have their behaviour explained. Tarkin let Leia escape with the plans and we promptly are told that he was gambling to destroy the rebel base before they could identify and exploit any weak spot of the DS, a gamble that very nearly paid off. The Trade Federation blocks Naboo because of something something taxes and invades it because of something something hooded guy. Lame!

In the EU it is explained that the Neimodians were indebted to Sidious because it was his advice that enabled them to take over the TF and that's why they acted according to his wishes. That and the mysterious, gruesome deaths of those Neimodians who were acting against Sidious. So there we have it. On one hand Sidious' advice had been of obvious value for the new TF leadership and on the other he had generated a menacing atmosphere around himself that discouraged them from ending their relationship prematurely.

So tell me Raynor, why couldn't those bits be in the movie? Why did the motivation of the TF have to be completely up in the sky? Why are the villains motivations cut from the movie but an overly long, boring go-kart race that feels completely out of place isn't?

A bunch? It was one fucking known tryhard, Metahive.

O shut up. You're about the biggest "known" tryhard on this site.

[Vympel]

If Jim (or Elfdart) and one of his opponents wants to participate in a formal Colosseum debate, either can let me know they've agreed on it and then I'll lock this thread up.

(Gunhead's duplicate post deleted)

[Jim Raynor]

I don't care for a formal debate in the "Colosseum," because I barely care about this thread as it is. It's pretty much a waste of time, and has gone nowhere in the last 20 pages. I don't even respect the other side as genuine debaters anymore, since they keep insisting on embarassing themselves with new and remarkably stupid things. Stupid things that don't just show a momentary mental lapse, but indicate that they're either trolling and grasping for straws, or have basic mental approaches toward things that are completely screwed up. All of which I've called them on already, and have no interest in dealing with more than a couple times a week.

God, just look at this latest nonsense that this thread has diverged into, about Tarkin's decisions at Yavin. It was originally a small point that I made, to highlight the inconsistent attitudes of the OT worshippers/Prequel bashers. To point out that stupidity in movie villains happens all the time (and doesn't need to be "explained"), and that I can be honest about that in movies I like.

...Then a bunch of them knee jerked to defending the holy OT, including Tarkin's stupidity. Now they're claiming that it was "good writing" or whatever because Tarkin's unbelievable arrogance and stupidity at Yavin were somehow consistent with the arrogance that showed in his dialogue early in the movie. Sorry, he's still an unbelievable idiot. The correct, proper arrogant and lazy decision at Yavin, when asked if the Death Star should launch fighters, would have been "Go ahead, wipe them out." No amount of strained excuses can change that. Not like Tarkin would've been flying one of those TIE fighters himself.

Yeah, I know, it's tough when someone bursts your bubbles.

[Jim Raynor]

See, this is another example of the desperation that the RLM fans have sunk to.

He was an idiot, plain and simple.

And that's ok writing because he was a character, instead of an inconsistent plot vessel. If Nute Gunray had a character flaw established that led to him making a bad decision, that would be ok too.

But he has virtually nothing established. That's the problem (again). The prequel people weren't characters. Many of them didn't have motivations, stories, traits, or flaws. (hell in a few cases they barely even had lines lol) They just did what Sidious the plot told them to do.

You strain and reach to explain Tarkin's arrogance with circular reasoning, trying to excuse his unbelievable negligence by saying that he displayed confidence or arrogance earlier in the movie. Yet you seem mystified by Nute Gunray.

Gunray is by no means a deep character. But the movie establishes very early on that he's "greedy," and a coward. However, the Trade Federation holds immense power, and has bought off numerous Senators and is used to getting its way. It was pretty freaking clear (to all the ten year olds and people of average intelligence in the theater), that the Trade Federation already had incentive to use force against Naboo. That Sidious gave them his support, tempted them into action, and prodded them on when they became reluctant.

But nooo, the prequel bashers who feign intelligence even as they decide they don't want to think about anything (or even pick up on what is CLEARLY stated in the movie) think that the Trade Fed was just doing what Sidious "told them to do" for no reason. Up to and including Stoklassa's idiotic review, where he said that the Trade Fed should've just admitted their crimes and screwed themselves over entirely for Sidious's benefit. Pretending not to understand why the Trade Fed would be bullying a smaller world, and even getting cute with crap like "what if the Naboo committed some atrocity against them" or "maybe they're invading to find some magic Gungan mystery orb."

No, the movie quite clearly says that they're trying to force favorable tax laws (something they want themselves, even without Sidious), a simple explanation that the movie didn't care to delve into. Which would've worked the same EITHER way, whether the movie dropped in a throwaway line spelling it out even more, or left it out entirely. As I said before, if the movie had simply started with "the greedy Federation is blockading Naboo," with no mention of the taxes at all, it would've been the same movie.

But apparently that's such a major thing which totally proves that TPM is objectively bad. Good thing we have you guys, the select few, to tell the rest of the world how to "process fiction." This was totally worth whining about for 20 pages.

[Metahive]

I don't care for a formal debate in the "Colosseum," because I barely care about this thread as it is.

You say that after contributing about, what, half of the posts in this thread and launching into yet another angry tirade right after this statement? From now on you shall be called Comical Jimmy, for your magnificent talent to deny the obvious.

[Channel72]

Spare me the same nonsense that you keep going back to over and over again. The taxes are not "plotting." The plot is the actual story that we see unfolding over the course of the movie. The taxes were a line of trivia that need not have been included at all. The movie could have simply said that the "greedy Federation" was "blockading the small world of Naboo" and that would have been that.

I already said, I don't give a shit about the taxes, and any further discussion about them distracts from the real issue. You keep twisting the issue to try and pretend that everyone in this thread has some weird obsession with fictional tax codes.

The real issue is that the Trade Federation are bad guys, and they want to do evil things to the good guys, but we don't ever know HOW the evil things they do connect with their goals as bad guys. Guess what: This isn't normal storytelling, you obtuse moron. Most movies explain specifically how the bad guys' evil actions benefits the bad guys and hurts the good guys. This is basic plotting 101. Even children's movies do this:

Cruella DeVille is vain and wants to make fur coats, so she tries to kidnap puppies. Jafar is power-hungry and wants to rule the Kingdom, so he tries to find a magical lamp with a genie. See, it's like we actually know WHY the villains do the things they do, and what they stand to gain, EVEN IN FUCKING DISNEY MOVIES. Now let's try this with the Trade Federation: The TF is greedy and wants to be taxed less (although even this is disputable... the movie is vague) so they invade and occupy some random planet. Yeah... not much of a connection. How does invading Naboo result in less taxes for the greedy bad guys?

Not only that, we barely even see how the bad guys are hurting the good guys. We just hear talk about suffering, which may or may not be happening off screen. This makes the whole invasion (you know, the entire plot) seem not particularly serious. That's another valid criticism which you just dismiss as if it's nitpicking.

And don't lie and tell me the invasion is just trivia or setup material or something. The invasion is the primary conflict that the good guys have to deal with, resulting in a climactic action sequence where the good guys heroically overturn the invasion.

I pointed out already that even IF Lucas felt the need to spell this out, and dropped in a throwaway line like "We won't release Naboo unless the taxes are lifted," it would change nothing about the story, characters, or action. Everyone agree with that?

The movie would still suck due to other problems like boring characters and pacing, and holding Naboo hostage to force lower taxes isn't exactly the most compelling or logical plot device. But at least we could say the writing was more coherent, and at least we would actually know what the TF stands to gain by their actions, which would make all the countless scenes of them acting evil actually seem somewhat significant.

As I said before, this whole stupid 22 page thread is about the redefinition of normal by certain people, who are blinded to how hard they're grasping to find fault with this movie. I recall a while ago, you and several other people tried to portray me as some kind of abnormal freak (who couldn't "process fiction") for not giving a crap about this line of trivia. How you tried to twist ANH to suit your ends, claiming that the Death Star plans were some critical part of its story, without which ANH would no longer "be a good movie." The Death Star plans that I later showed to be an utterly extraneous plot device, that is alternately redundant, deprioritized, ignored, or even given away over the course of the movie. Are you still going to stick up for that nonsense, the way that other guy threw in his support for that idiotic idea of beating a blockade by hunting wildlife (or eating stores of MREs that were never mentioned, big difference!).

Stop lying. You're shamelessly twisting Destructionator XIII's original point, which was that the plotting in TPM is somewhat analogous to taking the ANH script verbatim, and just deleting references to the Deathstar Plans. But nobody said ANH would "suck" without the Deathstar Plans, or that ANH couldn't be rewritten with some other MacGuffin.

Do you still stick by your previous nonsense about how jamming comms during a military attack needs to be explained?

Stop lying. You very well know the issue there was not about an explanation for jamming comms during a military attack, but rather asking how a communications blackout furthers Palpatine's overall plan of generating sympathy for Naboo in the Senate.

Jesus, it's like you're either a pathological liar or you have absolutely no reading comprehension skills.

[Channel72]

I pointed out already that even IF Lucas felt the need to spell this out, and dropped in a throwaway line like "We won't release Naboo unless the taxes are lifted," it would change nothing about the story, characters, or action. Everyone agree with that?

Also, I should have added in my post above that merely giving Nute Gunray a line of dialogue like "We won't release Naboo unless the taxes are lifted", as suggested by Raynor, wouldn't be enough to clear things up - since not only are we never told what the Trade Federation stands to gain by invading Naboo, we actually have lines of dialogue from the Trade Federation denying that they invaded Naboo at all. So, saying that the Trade Federation invaded Naboo as a bullying tactic to force the Senate to lower taxes doesn't work without rewriting the Senate scenes as well, or at least adding more dialogue explaining why the Trade Federation is trying to cover up the invasion if it's supposed to be a show-of-force/bullying tactic.

[Elfdart]

If Jim (or Elfdart) and one of his opponents wants to participate in a formal Colosseum debate, either can let me know they've agreed on it and then I'll lock this thread up.

(Gunhead's duplicate post deleted)

What exactly is the subject to be debated in the Colosseum? The only quasi-factual claim offered by Stoklassa is that The Phantom Menace was a "massive failure". By every objective standard it was a huge success. His fluffers haven't offered anything other than trolling, or claims that are so stupid that they might as well be trolling.

[emersonlakeandbalmer]

The only quasi-factual claim offered by Stoklassa is that The Phantom Menace was a "massive failure".

Care to put this claim in context with a citation? I don't believe he ever called it a massive failure in the sense you're using. He did, however, call it "the greatest case of blue balls in cinematic history."

[VF5SS]

What from Star Wars isn't a success in some way? I'm pretty sure people still bought Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi even though it was terrible.

I wasted a rental on that!

And the Phantom Menace game too!

[emersonlakeandbalmer]

Now they're claiming that it was "good writing" or whatever because Tarkin's unbelievable arrogance and stupidity at Yavin were somehow consistent with the arrogance that showed in his dialogue early in the movie. Sorry, he's still an unbelievable idiot.

What do you like about movies? Because you don't seem to understand the basic concepts of writing and character. We know what Tarkin wants. We know he's willing to take risks to achieve his goals, so when his over confidence is his downfall it doesn't come across to the audience as a WTF moment.

Gunray's stupid choices have nothing to do with his goals and everything to do with moving the movie to the next action set piece. You can argue that they're both idiots in the end because they lost, but at least one is a well defined idiot and not a vessel to more the story forward.

But please if you think they're equally well written explain to us why you think so. Try using examples from the movie or other movies to make your point.

Also I'm still waiting for you to concede the point that you don't know what or who the taxes are for. I know how much you hate people refusing to recant points.

[emersonlakeandbalmer]

What I'm saying is even the good stuff about tpm is pretty meh. I'd be willing to be more forgiving of it's other flaws if something about it stood out from the crowd.

I feel much the same way. My biggest complaint is the waste of potential. 30 years after ANH and THAT was the best Lucas could do? I would expect it to be because he hadn't made a movie in such a long time, but 2 & 3 were just slightly better. And then he torpedoed Indy not long after that. So he doesn't seem to be interested in good storytelling (even his buddy Spielberg shit on his writing), but his movies are spectacle pieces. So maybe they don't need story, because really Lucas is a businessman first. Although he does love his tech. I just wish he'd let someone else write and direct it.

So they (elfdart and jim) don't want to debate the merits of it being a good story. They have no answer for the "obvious" tax situation because it doesn't matter anyway. Can't answer the how the actions of the TF support the motivation of them being "greedy". Can't connect how character actions on screen help build understandable character flaws. And yet the people shitting on TPM "have basic mental approaches toward things that are completely screwed up" riiight.

[Vympel]

What exactly is the subject to be debated in the Colosseum? The only quasi-factual claim offered by Stoklassa is that The Phantom Menace was a "massive failure". By every objective standard it was a huge success. His fluffers haven't offered anything other than trolling, or claims that are so stupid that they might as well be trolling.

If you and RLM's supporters are game to have a debate in the Colosseum, it'd be best to work out the particulars between yourselves - I don't want to impose anything because I'm not an objective observer - i.e. I find Jim's criticisms of RLM's review pretty much entirely on point.

[Jim Raynor]

You strain and reach to explain Tarkin's arrogance with circular reasoning, trying to excuse his unbelievable negligence by saying that he displayed confidence or arrogance earlier in the movie.

Wait, wait, how is it circular?

It's circular reasoning (at the very least) if someone thinks unbelievably bad arrogance and stupidity is somehow justified by an earlier display of (much more reasonable) arrogance. Again, it boils down to the fact that Tarkin was actively hindering his own mission, for no apparent reason other than being arrogant. He chose to let the Rebels strafe his station and kill his own troops, for no reason. There is no justification for that. If the Rebel leadership just decided to pack up and fly away from the Death Star, the Imperial mission would've failed. Stupid is stupid. I have to explain this how many times now?

The fact that some people keep dragging this point out gives the appearance of insecurity. Movie villains have stupid villains, because there's no other way for the heroes to win when the odds are otherwise stacked so much against them. Star Wars is a adventure for kids and family audiences, inspired by pulpy old movie serials. Does that bother you? Because unlike some people here, I don't have to reach and strain to delude myself about something I like.

Now, a character can be shown (or told) to be greedy or cowardly or whatever by making a bad decision. But, like I said, again, the difference is how this comes across based on what decision it is.

A bad decision at a minor point builds the character. We learn about him early on.

A bad decision at a major point can look like an ass pull, or weak, contrived drama.

The climactic Battle of Yavin is a pretty "major point" to me.

As I said before, if the movie had simply started with "the greedy Federation is blockading Naboo," with no mention of the taxes at all, it would've been the same movie.

As I said, it'd be a slightly better movie.

So something that's a "slight" factor overall is worth whining and moaning for nearly TWO MONTHS and over 20 pages? It's worth all the embarassment that you guys have brought to yourselves, with all the comically bad arguments you've made?

Good writers edit out stuff that doesn't actually contribute.

All the nitty gritty minutia about the tax dispute that several people have whined for here doesn't contribute.

[Jim Raynor]

I already said, I don't give a shit about the taxes, and any further discussion about them distracts from the real issue. You keep twisting the issue to try and pretend that everyone in this thread has some weird obsession with fictional tax codes.

Funny, I haven't gotten that impression from you before. I've mixed you up with all the other RLM fan-clones here. But I'll take you on this, and see how the rest of your post stacks up...

The real issue is that the Trade Federation are bad guys, and they want to do evil things to the good guys, but we don't ever know HOW the evil things they do connect with their goals as bad guys. Guess what: This isn't normal storytelling, you obtuse moron.

LOL! What does the Trade Fed even DO during the movie?
1) Blockade and invade a planet in the first few minutes.
2) Spend the rest of the movie trying to get away with it.

That's basically it. There is an economic dispute, and the movie plainly says that the Trade Fed is using military power to try to get their way. This is not the story of the movie, and it does not go past the surface. You can keep denying and denying, but your post boils down to the same old "spell out the nitty gritty details of the taxes for me."

Most movies explain specifically how the bad guys' evil actions benefits the bad guys and hurts the good guys.

Emphasis mine. Your word choice is quite poor for someone trying to pass off pretenses about himself.

Blockading and invading a planet doesn't hurt the "good guys." Come on, drop the act and stop fooling yourself, because you certainly aren't fooling me. What's next? You're going to fall back to the unbelievable bad arguments of demanding what specific supply was being cut off by the blockade? Or saying that the blockade did "nothing" to the Naboo because they can hunt animals or eat completely unmentioned stocks of MREs?

But at least we could say the writing was more coherent, and at least we would actually know what the TF stands to gain by their actions, which would make all the countless scenes of them acting evil actually seem somewhat significant.

You are SUCH a faker, and this post proves it. After whining about how I had you all wrong and how you really don't care about the irrelevant minutia of the taxes, your entire post outs you for what you really are. You're not saying anything new here (for the hundredth time). We went over this a long time ago.

The Trade Federation with a trade franchise doesn't like taxes on trade routes. Simple logic is that the taxes on trade are impacting their trade business. It wants a favorable change in the taxes...hmm I wonder what that is? PROBABLY lower taxes?

I'm done with your post here, and relegating you back to "people I won't even bother responding to for now."

[Bakustra]

It's pretty blatant what you're on about now. You're convinced, a priori, that "movie villains" have to be idiots, in order to justify something about TPM. Probably that you like it and bristle at the connotation that it's a bad movie. So therefore you dive into "Tarkin was unbelievably arrogant and stupid in ANH!!!!" in order to justify this by dragging ANH down to the same level. Give it up, man. You're not even fucking trying anymore.

But if you really think, in your heart of hearts, that you're the only one making intelligent posts, then surely it wouldn't be a huge effort to show up us dum-dums, wouldn't it? So I'm perfectly willing to take this to the Coliseum, though it won't really solve anything, because I want to get you away from your crutches and your props and drag you out into the open if I can. But I'll settle for a simple answer to a simple question:

You are SUCH a faker, and this post proves it. After whining about how I had you all wrong and how you really don't care about the irrelevant minutia of the taxes, your entire post outs you for what you really are. You're not saying anything new here (for the hundredth time). We went over this a long time ago.

The Trade Federation with a trade franchise doesn't like taxes on trade routes. Simple logic is that the taxes on trade are impacting their trade business. It wants a favorable change in the taxes...hmm I wonder what that is? PROBABLY lower taxes?

I'm done with your post here, and relegating you back to "people I won't even bother responding to for now."

Show how this is more reasonable, using solely information in the movie, than an alternate scenario:
The Trade Federation is upset that some planets are refusing to pay trade taxes on their shipping, which impacts their revenue stream, and so they want a favorable change in the planets agreeing to pay the taxes.
This has the advantage in that it neatly explains what the treaty is for, since it is far more reasonable for Naboo to agree to pay money that it is for them to have authority to cut tax rates, and otherwise I see no conflict. So explain why this is less reasonable, again, using only information from the movie.

EDIT: I'm going to keep asking this question until I get a satisfactory answer, rather than a dismissal. Admitting that you can't come up with an answer counts as satisfactory too.

[Jim Raynor]

You say that after contributing about, what, half of the posts in this thread and launching into yet another angry tirade right after this statement? From now on you shall be called Comical Jimmy, for your magnificent talent to deny the obvious.

Please, I respond to this insipid thread twice a week (partially for a good laugh). I last posted on Thursday, four days ago, and forgot about this entire thread for the entire weekend.

What exactly is the subject to be debated in the Colosseum? The only quasi-factual claim offered by Stoklassa is that The Phantom Menace was a "massive failure". By every objective standard it was a huge success. His fluffers haven't offered anything other than trolling, or claims that are so stupid that they might as well be trolling.

Exactly. A real, intelligent debate deals in objective topics with evidence. This thread is almost nothing of that sort - just people's subjective opinions about the movie. I couldn't care less if some bandwagon elitist geek simply didn't like this movie.

About as objective as I can make this thread is to point out how incredibly minor the tax crap is. Because, as I explained before, it changes practically nothing either way whether it was spelled out more (with a single throwaway line), or not mentioned at all. It's that, and refuting all the pseudo-logical attempts to find fault with the movie, that just shows how ignorant or dense a person is.

If these people would simply say they didn't like the movie on honest subjective grounds, there would be nothing to argue over. But they have to continually ask the dumb question or fabricate problems with the story. I suspect that they can't just settle for expressing their opinion. I suspect that they use their personal taste in movies as a form of self validation (lame as that is), and that they just HAVE to force their opinion on others and try to look superior for it. You see this all the time in geek fandom.

I know, "I wasn't there" so I can't really say for sure. Stoklasa's favorite cop-out.

[Bakustra]

Raynor, plenty of "real debates" are about ultimately subjective topics. Don't be a fucking living archetype of "left-brain-dominated" you fuck.

[Jim Raynor]

It's pretty blatant what you're on about now. You're convinced, a priori, that "movie villains" have to be idiots,

Nice strawman.

But if you really think, in your heart of hearts, that you're the only one making intelligent posts,

No. There's Elfdart, and the couple other guys in this thread who haven't been humiliating themselves on a regular basis.

then surely it wouldn't be a huge effort to show up us dum-dums, wouldn't it? So I'm perfectly willing to take this to the Coliseum, though it won't really solve anything, because I want to get you away from your crutches and your props and drag you out into the open if I can. But I'll settle for a simple answer to a simple question:

The Trade Federation with a trade franchise doesn't like taxes on trade routes. Simple logic is that the taxes on trade are impacting their trade business. It wants a favorable change in the taxes...hmm I wonder what that is? PROBABLY lower taxes?

I'm done with your post here, and relegating you back to "people I won't even bother responding to for now."

Show how this is more reasonable, using solely information in the movie, than an alternate scenario:
The Trade Federation is upset that some planets are refusing to pay trade taxes on their shipping, which impacts their revenue stream, and so they want a favorable change in the planets agreeing to pay the taxes.

You seriously think this is a good argument. You think I care either way. You actually brought out a stupid little thing that was hashed out about 20 pages ago.

Again, EITHER way, it boils down to "The greedy Trade Fed wants to change the tax law to get more money." That is clear to anyone watching the movie. Demanding more details on that is obsessing over the irrelevant minutia of the taxes, exactly what I've been calling you guys on.

[Jim Raynor]

Raynor, plenty of "real debates" are about ultimately subjective topics. Don't be a fucking living archetype of "left-brain-dominated" you fuck.

You are seriously the funniest guy here. The way you keep pounding your chest and trying to look like the big man over the lamest and most nonexistent of things.

A thread which drags out for 2 months and over 20 pages about a subjective topic (or worse, people's silly attempts to justify their subjective opinion with pseudo-objective arguments) is not a "real debate" to me. I call those things what they are: "whiny nerd bitchfest."

[Bakustra]

Hey, you didn't actually give a satisfactory answer as to why your interpretation is so much superior that you feel you can laugh at people for not following it, you're pretending that it doesn't matter when you're mocking people for talking about it in ways that you don't like, and you're apparently too stupid to remember that you posted:

Movie villains have stupid villains, because there's no other way for the heroes to win when the odds are otherwise stacked so much against them.

Or else too stupid to understand what it means. But you didn't even respond to my other challenge, even to confirm your beep-boop robot status.

You are seriously the funniest guy here. The way you keep pounding your chest and trying to look like the big man over the lamest and most nonexistent of things.

A thread which drags out for 2 months and over 20 pages about a subjective topic (or worse, people's silly attempts to justify their subjective opinion with pseudo-objective arguments) is not a "real debate" to me. I call those things what they are: "whiny nerd bitchfest."

yes there is no sincerity over the internet very good on you for figuring that out, now go share this gospel with livejournal or tumblr

you're still using "subjective" as a pejorative, so you are acting in exactly the way I said you were, as a goddamn living robot. you a singularitarian? you waiting for the robot messiah to come take you away? because that's the only thing that might excuse your assholish behavior over subjectivity and objectivity.

[Bakustra]

Also, an addendum: Raynor, you keep going on about how this is unimportant and a silly issue and you're just playing us all like puppets on your string (I've heard that song coming from many idiots before), but you're refusing to acknowledge that a lack of motivation for the antagonists might be a problem with the movie, and that the entire issue with taxes plays into that. There cannot be any moving forward because here and in the bits of your manifesto that people have reposted (I have little desire to step into the abyss of madness and read the whole screed), you demonstrate no ability to understand anything beyond the superficial and so there is no way to discuss the actual flaws with the movie, because all you can think of is "Hurp flurp poop it took 31'43" therefore a complaint about pacing that uses a lengthy, rough estimate is wrong wrong wrong aha i'm so fucking clever i could fuck myself."

That said, there may well be people out there that agree with you yet are not irretrievably ruined, and people that find the whole thing barely comprehensible, so my next post will be a massive one detailing some flaws with the movie as a whole.

[Bakustra]

Some Problems With Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace
As Elucidated By A Man On The Internet Who Is Not RedLetterMedia

In No Particular Order
I. The Basic Structure of the Story

This is otherwise known as the plot. So for TPM we have a plot that is separable into three parts, which I'll call "acts". Each act focuses around a setpiece action sequence. For Act I we have the arrival at Naboo, for Act II we have the Podrace, and for Act III we have the final battle. But this gives us some difficulties right away, because we have the Coruscant sequences. Are they part of Act II, or part of Act III? But I'll ignore that for now. The previous movies all have some marvelous setpieces. Let's look at ANH for now. The first setpiece is the opening scene, with the Empire boarding Princess Leia's ship. Then we have the escape from the Death Star, the attack run on the Death Star... Now, one of the marvelous things about ANH, part of why it's considered a great movie, indeed in the top hundred of all time according to the American Film Institute, is that all the setpieces flow organically and there's a clear reason for them to be there.

There's a clear reason why they try to rescue Leia- namely, Luke is infatuated with her and Solo is looking to get some money. And it serves a story purpose of giving them a way to find the hidden rebel base. So why am I talking about this? Well, let's go to TPM. There we have the Podrace. There's no clear, organic reason why the characters are involved or why they're on Tatooine. The whole thing is contrived and artificial because the only reason they're on Tatooine is so that they can meet Anakin, and the only reason they enter the Podrace is to give the movie a quicker middle.

But there's no reason why they should have to land on Tatooine to repair- after all, we saw all those robots get blown up before R2-D2 fixes the ship! (God bless you, Mr. Green R2-D2.) And the ship afterwards doesn't look damaged at all. And there's no reason for it to be Tatooine specifically. Now, this is something that's easily forgivable, especially on its own. But then we run into the problem that there's no reason why their money is no good, and why Watto should be immune to Jedi mind tricks, except to set up the Podrace. While we can forgive the first half, or the second half, on their lonesomes, all together they add up to "contrived". While you could do some work to remove this contrived status from the movie, it still would be better in the end to fix the root problem and rewrite the movie so that there's an organic reason for a action scene there and organic reasons for how they meet up with Anakin.

Then, too, we have the problem that the movie is paced very poorly when you look at its action scenes. The opening is a lengthy action sequence that continues, with only a minor interruption, until they leave the planet. Then we get a few cooldown scenes until the podrace, and then all the slower-paced scenes come into play and drag on the movie until we get to the final battle. This is bad because the movie starts with a massive bang but we need some slow-paced scenes to establish things (not well enough, but that's another issue I will address later) and these are crammed into the last half of the movie, forming a clumsy four-act structure which left a lot of people complaining about how slow it felt.

These problems, you may note, are structural and deep issues. You can't solve these without essentially replacing TPM with another film, so I'm not going to talk about how to repair the problems created by them in any more detail. But these aren't necessarily dealbreakers- what they do do, however, is require the movie to be good enough to counter them.

Another structural issue, though a minor one, is the final battle, which splits four ways. This isn't hugely problematic in and of itself, unlike the other ones, and it really ties into the characters more so,

II. The Characters

We have, for the forces of good, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Amidala, and Jar-Jar as characters. For the forces of evil, we have Nute Gunray, Rune Haako, and Darth Maul. This is broadening the definition of character in the latter case by a tremendous amount, but whatever. A big problem with the characters is that the only ones with readily definable traits are Qui-Gon and Jar-Jar, and one of those is solely definable through him being fairly annoying and racially questionable. Obi-Wan is eager and young, but only when the script remembers. And yet he's also supposed to be the representative of authority for Qui-Gon to be a maverick against. This can work, but again, he only does this when the script remembers. Amidala is formal and stiff, but not really, it's just an act. Except she does it when around her personal councilors... Anakin is almost human, but not really. Seriously, he's basically a lump and I already wrote a post about how he should have been different, but I'll go over that in a little bit.

The villains similarly are complete non-entities. All we have are vaguely disquieting accents and cowardice. Cowardly, incompetent villains are the subject of comedy and farce, not of Star Wars, where the humor comes from within the picture itself rather than from without it (e.g. all the jokes are ones that would be observable if we were living in the film). And they have nothing other than cowardice. Even their greed is left entirely to the opening crawl and we thus have no idea why they are invading Naboo in the first place, apart from "taxes", which is not a motivation. For what's actually given in the movie, they could be doing it just because Sidious told them too. But it's not like motivations actually matter, right? We all know that.

Maul, meanwhile, is a stunt double with a line and some nifty makeup work. He's not a character, and neither is Sidious, who simply says a few lines. So our primary antagonists fall by default to a pack of idiot cowards with an army that poses no threat to the heroes. In ANH, the stormtroopers managed to inconvenience our heroes. The droid army can't do that, and in ANH, the characters turned and ran from stormtroopers and treated them like a serious threat in decent numbers. The only droids that get treated as threats are the droidekas, who are too far the other way into being essentially invincible. The only threat the droids have is to the pack of mooks at the very end, and even then, they mostly try to arrest them.

The way the movie is set up, though, we need the antagonists to be a credible threat rather than a joke. We could either restructure the movie to make the ridiculous droid army work with the film, or we could make them actually a threat to characters, which should consist primarily of altering character's reactions to them.

Another problem with the lack of any reason to really care about the characters (apart from the one that dies) is that the ending, with its four-way split, is supposed to be an ensemble ending where the disparate parts of the cast each have individual arcs that build up and resolve tension to stack upon each other. Well, we don't have any particular reasons to give a rat's ass about poor little Jake Lloyd, or Ahmed Best's performance that will forever mark his career, or Queen Costumer's Delight. There's only one arc that's relatively interesting. And it has the most actual effort put into it, followed by Jar-Jar, followed by Anakin, followed by Amidala. Interestingly, I've seen some theories that suggest that Jar-Jar is the intended overall protagonist.

The really funny thing is that Jar-Jar is Phantom Menace's protagonist, in a role directly analogous to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars 1. He's the inexperienced outsider with potential, and consequently the audience identification character. He gets arbitrarily promoted to military commander in the exact same way.

Lucas is on record saying that Jar Jar is the key to everything, and I don't believe that was a joke. The Phantom Menace clearly sets up a battle between two different versions of Luke Skywalker: good-but-incompetent Luke (Jar-Jar) and talented-but-evil Luke (Anakin). The final battle is even identical to the Star Wars Death Star trench battle thing, except with Luke's role split between the two characters in separate (but interconnected) setpieces. Looking back on it, it's obvious that the sequels would continue to explore the parallels.

Jar Jar's tragic downfall is clearly meant to correspond with Anakin's rise to power. But then a funny thing happened: one-third of the way into the trilogy, Lucas discovered that fans loathed its protagonist. That's ultimately why the Phantom Menace ended up so maddeningly inconsequential in the rest of the series. It's primarily Jar-Jar's story and so, when Jar-Jar is eliminated later on, the film ceases to have a purpose in the grand scheme of things.

Rather than too much Jar Jar, it was not enough Jar Jar: the character was marginalized from the beginning, to the point that he was readily mistaken as a superfluous comic-relief effect. The only thing that could have saved the prequels would have been to make Jar-Jar more prominent in the later films - 'fixing' what fans disliked about the character by introducing some moral greys to challenge his happy-go-lucky attitude.

Interesting, but it only highlights the overall failures of the film- we aren't ever really sold on Jar-Jar as anything other than a prominent comic-relief character and the film, through its portrayal of Anakin, fails to create any sort of parallels to Luke because he's so uninteresting (largely as a consequence of his age).

But even if you don't buy that, the largest problem with Anakin is that he should be very similar to Luke, to make the prequels truly prequels, pieces of a single story, rather than simply a related one, and to cast new light upon the OT, and to make his fall truly tragic, and to set up callbacks to Owen and Beru and "much like his father". Jar-Jar as protagonist or not, the film fails to do that and so it becomes weaker and more distant from the original movies in critical ways.

III. Other Faults

Another problem with TPM is that, ultimately, the intended motivator is working at cross-purposes with the idea of the movie. Star Wars movies are fast-paced, but political movies are slower, because they need to explain and exposit to get things across. Attempting to be politics-focused distances TPM from the previous Star Wars movies, but it never quite breaks on through to the other side of being an actual politically-focused movie and so it drifts suspended between the two. Ultimately, you can't fix TPM with a "director's cut" or with a reshooting with a new director- there are a number of problems inherent to the script, and so in order to make TPM good, you would have to make an entirely new movie with the same name.

That's why there's little point in disucssing how to fix AOTC or ROTS, because they're built on TPM and making it better requires negating them altogether and potentially mining them for ideas. But I'll continue this later, with some talk about how you could improve/replace TPM. Of course, in order to do that we're gonna have to talk about what Star Wars is and what TPM should have been.