Today I will be doing a spoiler-free review of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. This movie takes place 30 years before this original trilogy. This is definitely one of my least favorite Star Wars films, and easily the worst one that I’ve reviewed so far. There are certain things that this movie does well. The main thing is just the introduction of Qui-Gon Jinn and how great he is in this movie. Liam Neeson was a perfect casting as well. Another thing is the reintroduction of Obi-Wan Kenobi who is currently the apprentice of Qui-Gon. This is where one of my favorite character castings of all time comes in with Ewan McGregor playing Obi-Wan, and he does just such a great job portraying a true Jedi Knight who really shows how a true Jedi lives. You are also introduced to young Anakin Skywalker which was very cool to see. They also start planting seeds with him and Padme which turns out to be a massive part of Anakin’s story.
The villain in this movie is Darth Maul who is my favorite character in this movie. You don’t really get much depth on him or his character but he is just so menacing throughout the movie and he has the most unique lightsaber too which also looks really cool. There is also what I consider the second-best lightsaber fight of the entire franchise in this movie. The fight is at the end between Darth Maul fighting Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon and this entire sequence is just perfectly done. The choreography and music played during this fight really make it feel more cinematic. However, even with these good characters and the one amazing fight scene, the rest of this movie just falls flat for me. There really isn’t anything very interesting that happens building to the end. All of the characters basically feel the same at the end that they did at the beginning too. There is also the introduction to one of the worst characters in the history of the franchise with Jar Jar Binks. I’m not even going to talk about it that much but this is just one of the worst creations that actually came to fruition.
I always rate the Star Wars movies and shows and I rate them based on 10 things in the movie. Those things are: action, acting, cinematography, pacing, score, characters, ending, plot, protagonist, and antagonist. I rate all of those pieces 1-10 and then after that, I add up the scores of all 10 of them and get a total score out of 100. I gave this movie a 68/100, and like I said, even though I talked a lot about how great the characters are, the actual plot, action, and pacing of this movie are all easily subpar. The only things that bring the score this high are the characters, antagonist, and score specifically for the Duel of Fates in that ending fight scene.
