Great art and pod racer scene. Unfortunately, it was really juvenile, and had really terrible writing. The directing was decent, but the aforementioned cons make me cringe when I watch it
Ep. 1, worst,
3, second worst
6, 3rd worst
2, 4th
4, 5th
5, best

good points: Obi-wans master, the name of whom I have no chance of spelling, and the music during the final fight Duel of the fates
bad points: Jar Jar (yeck, just yeck)

Perhaps I was spoiled by the books. The original trilogy was as good as the books because it was all pure Star Wars. For the prequels, though, Lucas & Co. were 100% focused on the $, so they made it family friendly with all the boredom, inane comic relief, and dumbed down plot that comes with such movies. If any of the awesome books were faithfully made into a movie, they'd be rated R for all the violence. Star Wars is bad-ass, but the prequels were made only with kids and paying parents in mind.

Episode 1 is to Star Wars fans as the Wii is to hard-core gamers.

i didnt like it too much but it was alright

zhoomout:
I thought the plot meandered around a lot and some things didn't make much sense. Also, Jar Jar Binks is in it. Need I say more?

I liked jar jar - and i remember in interviews everyone thought he was great; i only heard that everyone hated him long after the second movie had come out

urprobablyright:

zhoomout:
I thought the plot meandered around a lot and some things didn't make much sense. Also, Jar Jar Binks is in it. Need I say more?

I liked jar jar - and i remember in interviews everyone thought he was great; i only heard that everyone hated him long after the second movie had come out

I hated Jar jar the first millisecond that he was on screen.

Meesa full of midichlorians boss, Roger Roger.

Mario Kart is not what a Space Epic should be about.

I have a theory that if Jar Jar Binks had had a lower voice that he would have been a lot more tolerable. Try it sometime, do a Jar Jar impression, then do the same impression in a lower register.

Slightly more on topic. The prequel movies in general suffered because they were a different type if story than the originals. Star Wars has long been a story of Good VS Evil, and the story of Anakin Skywalker's descent into evil doesn't gel well with that. Episode one in particular had all kinds of weirdness that made the mind boggle. Midichlorians instantly spring to mind, but Anakin being a virgin birth was just as bad.

Add in the incredibly irritating Jar Jar Binks and a much too young actor for Anakin, ropey dialogue and wooden acting and you have a recipe for disaster. It's quite telling that almost eveyone's favourite parts of the film were the Pod Race and the Lightsabre battle at the end, two action sequences where nobody speaks.

EDIT: Added an 'OK' option to the poll

Funny...i don't see "deplorable" as an option

Isaac Dodgson:
Funny...i don't see "deplorable" as an option

That would be covered by 'bad' I believe.

I thought it was okay. Clone Wars is by FAR the Star Wars movie I hate the most, followed by Episode 3. At least Episode 1 had Darth Maul and some really awesome lightsaber dueling.

Yes, the Podrace was awful, yes, Jar Jar needed to die, and yes, it's still not a GOOD movie. That said, I can actually go back to Episode 1 and have fun with it.

Echo3Delta:
Perhaps I was spoiled by the books. The original trilogy was as good as the books because it was all pure Star Wars. For the prequels, though, Lucas & Co. were 100% focused on the $, so they made it family friendly with all the boredom, inane comic relief, and dumbed down plot that comes with such movies. If any of the awesome books were faithfully made into a movie, they'd be rated R for all the violence. Star Wars is bad-ass, but the prequels were made only with kids and paying parents in mind.

Episode 1 is to Star Wars fans as the Wii is to hard-core gamers.

I'm glad somebody else actually read the novels. Was it just me, or was the Episode 3 novel really AWESOME? Anakin's gradual shift to evil actually felt well-documented and the character's motivations weren't so plot-convenient.

nilcypher:
That would be covered by 'bad' I believe.

Yes...but... It just doesn't quite cover it, you know?

nilcypher:
The prequel movies in general suffered because they were a different type if story than the originals. Star Wars has long been a story of Good VS Evil, and the story of Anakin Skywalker's descent into evil doesn't gel well with that. Episode one in particular had all kinds of weirdness that made the mind boggle. Midichlorians instantly spring to mind, but Anakin being a virgin birth was just as bad.

Oh my good grabbity god damnability, I completely forgot about that... and in fact I still don't remember it, possibly because it strikes me as one of the most awful ideas ever. Which one was that in?

coldfrog:

nilcypher:
The prequel movies in general suffered because they were a different type if story than the originals. Star Wars has long been a story of Good VS Evil, and the story of Anakin Skywalker's descent into evil doesn't gel well with that. Episode one in particular had all kinds of weirdness that made the mind boggle. Midichlorians instantly spring to mind, but Anakin being a virgin birth was just as bad.

Oh my good grabbity god damnability, I completely forgot about that... and in fact I still don't remember it, possibly because it strikes me as one of the most awful ideas ever. Which one was that in?

Episode one. The dialogue goes something like:

Qui-Gon: Who was the father?
Shmi: There was no father.

EDIT: One quick Google search later...

QUI-GON: The Force is unusally strong with him, that much is clear. Who was his father?

SHMI: There was no father, that I know of... I carried him, I gave him birth... I can't explain what happened. Can you help him?

God it was awful. You take this great trilogy, this absolutely fantastic heroic fantasy about a small group of friends and allies, a trilogy that's otherworldly, mysterious and understated, in which the fantastic and the spectacle are used sparingly for greater effect, and turn it into an absolutely terribly conceived sort of political thriller for small children where everything has an explanation and rationalization and there are so many lights and explosions that the special effects become mundane within the first few minutes. You take the iconic characters that have been seared into our culture's consciousness and replace them with a bunch of brats who are either incredibly irritating or incredibly boring. Basically, this movie took everything that was great about Star Wars and crapped all over it.

Aardvark:
This topic wasn't discussed to death a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?

If you watch The Phantom Edit, it doesn't suck nearly as much.

How long is the edit?

I liked Phantom Menace but the kid ruins it. When he jumps off Watto's counter and says "Yippee" I want to ring Lucas' neck. How many takes did you give this kid to get so little emotion.

One take Jake (Lloyd) that what's they call him. No they don't and he hasn't been in a film since. Or has he...
Didn't he have a cameo as a tree in house of flying daggers?

Hate that kid, he probably doesn't even know how bad he is.
oh, and JarJar. The cause of the Empire's oppressive regime taking power - what a douche.

nilcypher:

Isaac Dodgson:
Funny...i don't see "deplorable" as an option

That would be covered by 'bad' I believe.

mad props, nilcypher; mad props.

Personally i dont think any of the Star wars films were that good, all they did was turn the interesting and often thought provoking ideas that typify science fiction into a boring yarn of 'good vs evil' to bring in the main stream public. Wells, Herbert and Asimov must be turning in their graves

I thought it was amazing, but I was a kid at the time and the whole 'It needs to prove itself worthy, else it can fuck off' motive hadn't even settled down in my brain yet.

/vote hate

Its bad, like as bad as rape.

Has jar jar been in a film since, ha, see

90% of the actors in that movie don't know what the hell they are doing. This might be the fault of the script since it is utter crap. And the entire movie I wanted to murder jar jar binks in a brutal and very painful way.

the kid ruined it for me. i still watch it. but the kid ruined it.

The casting person for the prequel trilogy needs to do some serious career re-evaluating. Too young kid for young Anakin, too old actress for Padmé (hot as she was in the eyes of the audience), and this generation's Keanu Reeves for Angsty Barbie Anakin.

At least the virgin birth of Anakin made for an amusing moment in Stargate: SG-1. That's got to count for something. Not a lot, but...something.

I loved all of the Star Wars movies, long time ago I saw them tho, you just gave me an idea to do when i'm bored ;)

As the prequels go, Phantom Menace was the best. Only because Liam Nisan made the experience little more fun than cutting my femoral artery with rusty nails.

The reason I like it the most out of all the prequels is because it was the first time we saw a real lightsaber fight that was between two warriors in their prime, not just and old man and a half robotic human.

Ep I is terrible. I mean, that kid who played Anakin is the WORST. Although, I solely place blame on George Lucas and his terrible direction/writing. As a matter of fact, I feel that all the prequels aren't any good--including Ep III (waiting to get flamed). The "love" scenes are so uncomfortable. And the writing and pacing is so bad. Ugh.

Although, the Magnoliafan edits of the prequels make them fairly watchable. Removes all the lame yippees of the first one and improved the pacing of all of them.

maddog015:
As a matter of fact, I feel that all the prequels aren't any good--including Ep III (waiting to get flamed).

Noone who's watched Episode III recently is likely to flame you. I tried to watch it, retched at the quality of the acting and line delivery, tried to just skip the talky-scenes (try it - they alternate almost perfectly with the action scenes like a game of tennis) and realised that even the action fails. I had great memories of the opening space battle, but on re-watching it there were so many mistakes, the most glaring of which was the damage done to the Separatist command ship: Its engines go off, so what happens? The bow starts to sink. Of course, yeah, so much sense for a space ship to sink o.0.

Not content there, as the ship angles towards the planet, EVERYTHING FALLS TO THE FRONT. WHY?! Did the artificial gravity fail all along with the engines? If so, that planet must have a SERIOUS gravity well, cos it looked like standard gravity was pulling at them even though they were in orbit.

Even there they were still not happy raping basic physics: By firing the retro thrusters to check the ship's descent, they manage to brink the nose back up, despite it being very clearly shown that this process was all done using the rear exhausts. If the ship mounted ventral thrusters sufficient to raise the nose of the ship regardless of the rear engines, why didn't they use them to right the ship before?

Gah, that rant is just over the mistakes in one 5 minute section that anyone with a basic knowledge of momentum and gravity should have been able to pull off better. If that's meant to be the better of the first three (and I thought it was until I watched it again) then only the Force can save Star Wars in the future. Not even Samuel J was able to save it :'(

elgringobandito:
I voice my feelings through Simon Pegg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUkCJDkG3fg

Jar Jar Binks makes the ewoks look like f-ing Shaft.

Episode 1 was just an advertisement to slap on a Mcdonalds cup.

The movie had potential, and it threw that down the infinately long hole of doom. Darth Maul: Awesome!! Jar Jar, Podracing, and midichloreans *shudder*: Ugh...

I used to think it was awesome but I saw it a while ago and just thought, damn, this is kinda crap. However the podracing bit was pretty cool. Now there's an under used movie license. At least the other two made up with some cool action and less jar jar. Still not as good as any of the originals.

I loved the Gungan Underwater City
I loved the big Light Saber Duel
I loved Qui Gon Jin
I loved Darth Maul despite his lack of lines
I liked the Battle Droids
The pod race while cool looking served almost NO purpose in the plot.

Everything else was either meh or crappy.

My ratings go as follows...
#1 Empire (Best Dialogue, Best Story)
#2 New Hope (So mythic and classic)
#3 Jedi (Everything but the Ewoks was fan fucking tastic, and even the Ewoks were okay)
#4 Return of the Sith (The duel on Mustafar redeems this movie)
#5 Phantom (The Core Reactor Duel and the Underwater City redeem this movie)
#6 Clones (Nothing can save this film)

photog212:

elgringobandito:
I voice my feelings through Simon Pegg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUkCJDkG3fg

Jar Jar Binks makes the ewoks look like f-ing Shaft.

Wow that clip was amazing! Is that all of it?

urprobablyright:

I though the movie was exceptionally original, had great artwork, had a good story and rich locations.

...uh? What...?

...You do realize that it was just Episode IV except with everything nice about it dumbed down and more CGI...right...?

...Seriously... what?