Just saw The Phantom Menace.
Without going into much detail, let me just say
that it sucked.
It wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but
it was pretty lame. A three or four out of ten.
Special effects were better than I expected--
except the underwater sequences, which were completely
unconvincing and cartoonish (nearly as bad as the underwater
scenes in The Matrix).
The plot was nonexistant. There was no plot (singular).
There were wfifteen mini-plots. Each mini-plot was introduced
with the scarecest attention to logic or plausibility, then
followed for three minutes at a time, then resolved with little
drama.
The entire climax was atrocious. The "big
plan" was to capture the Viceroys. Why? What will this
accomplish? The film's reason: "Because once we capture the
viceroys, the enemy soldiers will be without direction." Um,
okay. If you say so, George. But killing a general has never
stopped a war in progress.
It didn't stop the war in the film, either. The
war ended for a wholly different reason. So-- it would appear
that not only is the "capture the viceroys" plan rather
implausible, but then the film also abandons this implausible
premise rather quickly.
Meanwhile, ( MINOR SPOILER)
Annikin manages to blow up the "control
ship" (BTW, it was never mentioned before that this was a
"control ship") by ACCIDENT, which then leads to the
robot armies turning off, for some bizarre reason. Robots in Star
Wars have never needed "control" by anybody else to act
independently-- except here, where Lucas needed a quick way to
wrap up the ground battle bloodlessly, so all of a sudden robots
"turn off" if the "control ship" is destroyed.
I wouldn't have minded this quite so much if
they had introduced this premise as part of their plan. I.e.,
"We've got to knock out that command ship. That will render
their ground droids harmless. Good luck, men, and may the force
be with you." It still would have been utterly stupid (and,
quite frankly, a rip-off of the stupid "virus" premise
of Independence Day), but at least the film would have introduced
us to this concept earlier. Then we would have known what
precisely those fighter pilots hoped to achieve, other than
racing around and shooting ineffective (but pretty) green laser
bolts at the ships.
Instead, Annikin accidently destroys the "control
ship" and Abracadabra, hocus pocus, the robot armies turn
off without any warning. Yay! The conflict was resolved by pure
accident plus a little deus ex machina. What drama. Aristotle had
some interesting advice about resolving a conflict in this matter:
"Don't."
Meanwhile, of course, Jar Jar also managaes to
destroy quite a few robots with those blue electric-balls ,
completely by accident yet again.
