Episode One was somewhat an entertaining movie. Unfortunately there was some things (IMO) that stopped it from being in the same class as the classic trilogy.
Now how about a version of the movie with all those things gone, no more Jar Jar and his Funniest Home Videos-esque "humor", no more annoying child actor and his "yippies" (are we suppossed to believe that the saga is based around this kid?), no more two-headed race announcer, no more stupid Asian accent for the aliens, and so on.
Think of the possibilities! I want your ideas people!
And hell, it would definitely work with other movies, Speed 2 anyone?
(Actually, Jar Jar HAD potential for being a great character. Too bad they tried to make him "funny", in the most loose sense of the word)-- mrkillboy, Dec 01 2000 Episode One: The Good Edition http://dvd.ign.com/news/27251.htmlIGN DVD's take on this. They have some excellent points. [mrkillboy, Dec 01 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004] Editors.net: The Phantom Edit http://editorsnet.c...,7220,27857,00.html"A mysterious video cassette containing a re-edited version of George Lucas' "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace" has started circulating around Hollywood. Called "Star Wars Episode 1.1: The Phantom Edit," the "special corrector's edition" challenges the vision of the original film." [jutta, Dec 01 2000] Review of The Phantom Edit http://www.zap2it.c...59,-5--6904,00.htmlSo professionally done, some point the finger at Kevin (Clerks) Smith. [mrkillboy, Dec 01 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) More Edit news http://members.onec...lywood/phantomedit/Apparently Mr Lucas would like to see it too.... [Spidergoat, Dec 01 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004] Korah Rata...right. http://www.jediparadise.com/dotf.htmLyrics to Duel of the Fates, phonetically [Deity, Dec 01 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004] StarWars: Designer Edition http://www.justinsp...arwars/swintro.html"Gone are the earth tones and tattered accessories. The new Chewy is fun, funky, and fabulous!" [jutta, Dec 01 2000] Title of Epidsode II http://www.starwars...8/news20010806.htmlExpected intial reaction: "WTF?!" [Lucky_Setzer, Dec 01 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004] Killer Clowns From Outer Space http://efilmcritic....e=2986&reviewer=258In space you can't eat ice cream. [mwburden, May 13 2002] Why don't you just write George and tell him you're not happy with the way he made your movie?
Bunch of whiners.-- centauri, Dec 01 2000 He was only actively in the movie for like 15 minutes. Him and JarJar both only existed to sell toys, because people wouldn't stand for more of those low-budget teddybears...-- StarChaser, Dec 02 2000 In Return of the Jedi, Lucas apparently changed the inhabitants from Wookies to Ewoks, probably as they were more marketable. But I don't really mind, an environmental disaster caused by the Death Star II explosion killed them off anyway.
On a similar note, the Falcon and Lando were meant to DIE while trying to escape the Death Star II, thus Han's line "It's like I'm not going to see her again". However a bad test screening changed all that.
Hmmm, the things people do to keep the patrons happy.-- mrkillboy, Dec 03 2000, last modified Dec 04 2000 The screen-testers were upset that Lucas was "trying to keep the brotha man down."-- AfroAssault, Dec 03 2000 The verison of the ewoks I heard was that the Wookiee suits were too expensive...Doesn't make sense, though, as twice as many teddybears and having to hire midgets to 'man' them...-- StarChaser, Dec 03 2000 Some of these annotations are like VH1's "Pop-up Videos". Kind of interesting.-- amadeus, Dec 04 2000 I like IGN DVD's idea of making an alternate soundtrack; indeed, spent some time with friends working out an alternate plot to match the original syllable by syllable. We wanted a CJ Cherryh script, basically: moral dilemmas, the Clash of Empires, internally consistent aliens.-- hello_c, Dec 05 2000 I don't think all of the comic relief characters are dumb, just overdone...I think they could have a scene where two jedi are on a stealth mission and to ease the drama make a goony character say, "hey, check this out," and do the rubber pencil trick with his lightsaber. They should have all of the characters be a bit humorous, even if it was subtle...not just some goofball.. When Jar Jar was about to get his ass kicked by Sebulba, I laughed my ass off! I liked Jar Jar...I think most people did too and didn't even recognize him as annoying until they read about someone else hating him. I don't know what you people expect from a Star Wars film...they gave you everything! I mean that pod race was awesome!!! And you still hated it! Darth Maul was awesome! And ohhh, he died too early...The whole series was about Anakin and Vader...It's like Boba Fett, "he couldn't have died like that!"...he was in two movies! Oh, boohoo! How come you're not upset that Qui-Gon died? The finale scene in the hangar was cool as crap! Darth Maul takes on two of the universe's greatest jedi knights, kills one, outrages the other..did you see the fight? How fast Obi-Wan was? That was awesome! Did you catch the over the head-behind the back block? And Darth Maul's spin pose? And the music!! Oh, that music was enough! The screen could have gone blank and you would have known exactly what was happening! I had chills the entire time! The interaction with the two other scenes was great too! Anakin's ship has gone down, the Gungan's shield generators have been destroyed, and Jedi Master Qui-Gon has just been killed! That was a great movie.-- Nashemon, Jun 16 2001 "How come you're not upset that Qui-Gon died?"
Because the character had all the depth and resonance of a Shaun Cassidy 45. He might as well have had 'I AM GOING TO DIE' painted on his forehead...Not just foreshadowing, but an actual total eclipse.
I wasn't really annoyed by Jar-Jar so much...he was actually a better actor than most of the 'real' ones in the movie. As Mr Cranky put it, when they went into Anakin's home, the humans walked in like "Here we are, walking into soundstage #351, 'Anakin's Living Room'.", where Jar-Jar dug sand out of his ears and shook his head like he'd actually BEEN outside in a sandstorm.
I've always said, if the story sucks, all the special effects in the world won't save the movie. But in this case, they did actually make it almost interesting.-- StarChaser, Jun 16 2001 I was incredibly annoyed by Jar Jar, but that was partly because the cinema I saw it in first had crap sound so I couldn't understand a word he said.
As for the music in the fight scene, well a lot of people singing something that sounds like "Steve McManaman, Steve McManaman, Steve McManaman, Zola... Cantona" just turned it into a bit of a joke for me. (For those that don't know, Steve McManaman, Gianfranco Zola and Eric Cantona are/were football/soccer players. I'm fairly sure there were a few other words in that bit of music that sounded like famous players' names, but I'd have to give it another listen to find out.)-- CoolerKing, Jun 17 2001 The most disappointing thing about Phantom Menace was that it wasn't really any different, in essence, from the original stuff. Did it really take George Lucas et al 25(ish) years to come up with the same old thing? Now that's what I call disappointing. Especially having suffered severe buttock failure after watching the original trilogy in one sitting.-- DrBob, Jun 17 2001 From what I heard, Ewoks replaced the Wookies because during the first two movies, Chewie had become too advanced and intellegent a character to represent the innocence and primitivity that Lucas wanted to triumph over advanced technology.
[Coolerking], the music, "Duel of the Fates", is sung in sanskrit - see my link. It comes from "The Battle of the Trees" by Robert Graves, originally in english. The excerpt used in the song is, "Under the Tongue root, A fight most dread, while another rages behind in the head."-- Deity, Jun 18 2001 He wanted to be able to make as big a leap in special effects as the original was, before he did the next/previous movies.
It came out as pretty much the same, as you said...-- StarChaser, Jun 18 2001 Wasn't there a scene where Qui-Gon and ObiWan are trying to buy a replacement part for Queen Amidala's ship, and Qui-Gon tries to use the Jedi mind trick to try to get the shop owner to give them the part? That seems like an underhanded trick that would be beneath a noble Jedi. Maybe that should be taken out as well.-- PotatoStew, Jun 19 2001 Deity: Ewoks replaced Wookiees because cute and cuddly sells more toys.-- sirrobin, Jun 19 2001 Hmmm... Jar Jar was bloody annoying. It was him specifically, the rest of the gungans have definite potential. The culture and "islander" dialect are fairly appropriate for an aquatic race of badasses. As for Annaking, at least we see where Luke gets his whiny little bitch personality. Most the movie seems as though Lucas and Company are trying too hard to appeal to the younger set, bring a new generation their own slice of Star Wars. The rest of the prequel trilogy cannot possibly be as "cute" as Menace; as the majority of characters introduced will die. We've got the Clone Wars and Palpatine's efficient, focused, all-but-complete annihilation of the jedi order coming to us!
Something else that's just a wee bit annoying is Lucas' renunciation of 25 years of canon. According to [Lucas Arts'] own press, the majority of stories, comics, etcetera published after "Empire" are viable and a part of Star Wars history. Menace takes that and tosses it out the window. The 200-year-old C3PO becomes a (eventually) 30 year-old model kit. Like I said, slightly annoying.-- vorpalcarrot, Aug 08 2001 Edit to preceding annotation: Per George Lucas (and his ineptly-named second chapter in the Star Wars series) all mention of "clone wars" shall be replaced with "Attack of the Clones"
See the link. *Not responsible for weeping and gnashing of teeth*-- Lucky_Setzer, Aug 08 2001 Obligatory Obscure Reference to a REALLY bad movie: Would this make EII be, "Killer Clones from Outer Space"?-- mwburden, Aug 08 2001 *Obligatory answer in reference to the bad title of EII* I'm "horrified" to find myself answering: Yep-- Lucky_Setzer, Aug 09 2001 Hey! Wookiees *are* cute and cuddly. At least comparted to, say, Jerry Falwell.-- jester, Sep 25 2001 [Posted here because otherwise it would turn into a 20-paragraph rant of an idea]
Could we also have a version of AI without the final 20 minutes? Never have I seen a film so badly ruined by its ending. If they'd left it with the kid at the bottom of the ocean, it would have been a good ersatz-Kubrick finale.-- -alx, Sep 25 2001 Agreed, -alx. It was absolutely awful. <overshare>Not to mention that that's about when you begin to realize that you really have to go to the bathroom, but you tell yourself, "Well, it's just ending, I can wait another few minutes and it would stink to miss the ending." Unfortunately, those "last few minutes" turn into the last 15 or 20, but you don't want to leave because you don't want to miss any of it. I thought that I was going to wet my pants...</overshare>
Of course, that wouldn't be a problem if you watched it at home, but I saw it in a theater, so I couldn't press "pause."-- Galileo, Jan 12 2002 <feverish rant> With less than a week til release of Episode II, I thought it fitting to re-read how we all felt about The Phantom Menace so we could recapture some of that raw emotion. Remember what Lucas did to us! He betrayed us. Don't let him hypnotize you with special effects, man. It's all Jedi mind tricks! </feverish rant>-- Lucky_Setzer, May 13 2002 They should've re-cast E1 without Jake Lloyd and instead put Haley Joel Osment in his place. I would've loved to see him, instead of asking Qui-gon 'what are mitichlorians?' confess to Yoda and the Jedi counsel 'I see dead people...'-- RayfordSteele, May 13 2002 [vorpalcarrot] At what point ever was C3PO 200 years old?
There are a few things about Episode 1, including its slotting into the whole Star Wars history thing that piss me off. 1) Why oh why does C3PO or R2D2 not recognise the name "Skywalker" when they are purchased by Luke's uncle Owen, and then say something like "hey we knew your Father" (obviously C3PO is the only one capable of saying this so don't tell me that). 2) Everything looks to high tech, I know that it would be wrong to have made everything on the same budget, using the same sort of stuff that they used in the first trilogy. But the lack of loads of toggle switchs, Atari style computer graphics, and general "this is how things will look in the future, as we view it in the seventies" look does just make it feel like it was done in a galaxy far, far away, where technology evidently gets crappier over a generation. 3) Theres some reason why Qui Gon Jin doesn't fit in with Obi Wan's history, but I can't remember why.
Ithink thats it but can't be sure. I do like the look of Episode 2 however, and wish the media would stop taunting me by putting up posters advertising its imminent approach all around my homem town.-- kaz, May 13 2002 I still don't like this proposal so I'm going to fishbone it, my above anno was just an excuse to air some of my opinions-- kaz, May 13 2002 I alos just read an anno by someone who said that 'attack of the clones' was a bad idea for the film. Allow me to contradict that. Its practically the only one he could have used, seeing as all the other Star Wars films have stupid names that explain the films. Episode IV: A new hope, Luke skywalker discovers the force and sets himself up to save everyone. Ep V: The Empire strikes back, after having their asses whooped the evil guys get some revenger by stealing one of the good guys, and cutting off another one of the good guy's hands. Ep VI: Return of the Jedi, Hmmm lets think Luke finishes his training and becomes a Jedi, and on a smaller scale Darth/Anakin becomes good again, and thus stops being a Sith lord I guess and a Jedi again.-- kaz, May 13 2002 You mis-read the anno. I was making a pun on the title of a really, really bad movie from 1988 called "Killer Clowns from Outer Space". (See link for details).-- mwburden, May 13 2002 Hmm! I just checked out jutta's link to the 'Designer Edition'. Please, no-one tell quarterbaker about that picture of Chewbaca.-- DrBob, May 13 2002 How much $ is it worth to you to not let quarterbaker find out?-- thumbwax, May 14 2002 You can have all the dollars that I own, 'wax old boy.-- DrBob, May 14 2002 I've already started my script. But I should tell you that it's almost entirely different, because there wasn't anything i liked about it. The worst thing about JarJar is that being so annoying he distracted the audience from the fact that it was bad overall. I figure the first one has to be made at a loss, copyrighted but not sold in any way. Then if popular enough there is a possibility lucas would be willing to negotiate on licensing further movies.
Having seen it only once I can't remember everything but here are my complaints in no particular order.
1. Scientific explanation for the force 2. JarJar. 3. Bad computer animation 4. pointless ben hur ripoff (the searchers ripoff is similarly pointless) 5. bowl haircut (anytime a kid in a movie has this haircut the movie sucks. Exception: "about a boy" but they seem to be aware that its a dorky hairdo) 6. Cannot stand alone. 7. No protagonist. 8. no character arc. 9. I'm not sure how to make a high speed scene work but the pod race sucked in a way the speederbike sequence didn't. 10. Anakin as a child 11. Shouln't the movie be about how obi-wan becomes a jedi that will defy his leader. 12. Clearly contradicts ROTJ in that yoda approves of anakin as a student. 13. serves no purpose but to introduce characters and settings for following movie. 14. what was the point of the whole underwater journey scene thingy. OH right special effects my bad 15. Watto is a business man, not a gagnster, not a gangster's lackey, and not the gestapo, it is totally immoral and unrealistic for a jedi knight to use the jedi mind trick on him. On the other hand it is something that a jedi brat might do. 16. it's so flawed its 3am. i have to go to bed.-- davidcreede, Jul 21 2003 Has the half-bakery just become a 'sounding board' for aspiring young film-critics. These aren't ideas you geeks, these are observations. "Episode one without the annoying things." How about halfbakery without the annoying things, poof, you'd all disappear. I'm the only good thing about this site anymore and i haven't been the slightest bit interested for almost 2 years. Come on guys, lets guy back to the original halfbakery, where quantum physics and DNA string theory were the buzz words. Shame on you Dr Bob for taking part in such a crass debate.-- garlic twins, Mar 09 2004 I think Star Wars was a rewritten Shakespeare - Richard III.-- Rodeney, Oct 22 2005 //It's like Boba Fett, "he couldn't have died like that!"...he was in two movies! Oh, boohoo!//
Fett's more of a legend than you'll ever be.
I think I started writing a story 2 days after I watched that happen to salvage him. I forgot about the story until years later after moving out when my sister told me that she found it in a desk drawer & quite liked it.
The expanded universe revived him & did it with much fewer deaths & more intriguingly than I did.
If you're already a published Sci Fi author & don't like it, write your own revisionism/coloration. They won't take unpublished authors, though. (& demand adherence to the timeline.)
'I rode w/ him once ... In a Firespray
Only for a couple of minutes
but it seemed like a couple of years.'-- Zimmy, Oct 22 2005 I enjoyed Episode I for the most part. There were a few annoying parts to it, but I mostly liked it because it preserved the look and feel of the original movies. One of the big reasons I didn't like II and III was because they didn't have the same visual style as the originals, as [kaz] points out. That, and the bad acting and plot holes.
Thank you, [vorpalcarrot], for pointing out that Lucas completely ignored the different plot lines various authors had come up with over the years. It seems I am the only one who thinks George Lucas is wrong.
[kaz]: I think you mean that Obi-Wan said in the Empire Strikes Back that it was Yoda who trained him, not Qui-Gon.
[Zimmy]: Yes, it always annoyed me that Episode II didn't follow Boba Fett's original story. Wasn't he some kind journeyman Mandalorian or a prisoner before he became a bounty hunter, not just a clone? And wasn't Boba Fett an alias? Oh, now I have to go back and read all those stories. I wonder if I still have those...-- discontinuuity, Oct 22 2005 Note about Sci-Fi: one published Star Wars story I have read, "The Longest Fall," is a blatant rip-off of the story "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge," set during the American Civil War. The basic premise is the same, just one is about Darth Vader choking someone with the force, and the other is about a spy being hanged off a bridge. Just thought I'd point that out.-- discontinuuity, Oct 22 2005 I wonder if it makes Episode I - III any more interesting if you substitute characters for real life people.
Bush : Palpatine
Bin Laden : Dooku
Sadaam : General Greivious
Cheney : Tarkin (Episode IV)
Ken Lay : Viceroy Gunray
Jar Jar : Pat Robertson?-- Zimmy, Feb 18 2006 Zimmy, that last line //Jar Jar : Pat Robertson// means that we should replace Pat Robertson in real life with the guy who played Jar Jar?-- DesertFox, Feb 18 2006 I'm cool with the Pink Five version. (even though they're episodes 4-6).-- Zimmy, Sep 29 2006 On June 16 2001, [ Nashemon ], the impassioned sixth annotator in this exchange, applied for and received an account at the Halfbakery, apparently for the sole purpose of posting said anno, since no further annos or ideas were ever posted under that name.-- normzone, Sep 17 2014 random, halfbakery