{"id":6291,"date":"2012-02-12T08:54:39","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T13:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=6291"},"modified":"2012-02-12T08:54:39","modified_gmt":"2012-02-12T13:54:39","slug":"on-defending-the-phantom-menace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=6291","title":{"rendered":"On Defending The Phantom Menace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, writer Peter David blogged that he took his daughter to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3-D<\/i> and… she liked it<\/a>. She really liked it.<\/p>\n

His reaction to his daughter’s reaction? “Holy crap. Holy freaking crap.”<\/p>\n

I know it’s fashionable for people to pile on The Phantom Menace<\/i>, but I won’t. I can’t<\/i>. I’m largely in agreement with his daughter on The Phantom Menace<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I don’t hate the film at all. I think it’s the most enjoyable of the Prequel Trilogy. By comparison, I think Attack of the Clones<\/i> is appalling, and Revenge of the Sith<\/i> is an atrocity.<\/p>\n

Why do I like Phantom Menace<\/i>, which fandom hates, and revile Sith<\/i>, with fandom thinks is the only worthwhile film of the Prequel Trilogy?<\/p>\n

It’s a simple thing, really.<\/p>\n

The Phantom Menace<\/i> has the freedom to do something original. We’re some period of time before the Star Wars<\/i> films we know, and anything can come before it. Lucas has a blank canvas to work with in Phantom Menace<\/i> and he takes advantage of it. We get Naboo! We get giant land battles! We get monstrous spacecraft! We get undersea cities! We get Coruscant! We get Qui-Gon Jinn!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, once Lucas shows us the canvas of The Phantom Menace<\/i>, we know that that canvas has to join up with A New Hope<\/i> and so we can figure out much of what needs to come in between. There needs to be clones, because we know there’s a Clone War to come. There needs to be an Anakin romance, because we know that he fathers twins. There needs to be a falling out between Obi-Wan and Anakin, because we know that Anakin succumbs to the Dark Side of the Force. Attack of the Clones<\/i> avoids much of the expectations game (and based on the novelization there’s a decent story under there, but Lucas isn’t a decent director to get at it), but Sith<\/i> cannot avoid it, and thus it’s a movie in which nothing unexpected happens for two and a half hours because Lucas has to make sure that his canvases join together.<\/p>\n

I won’t say that The Phantom Menace<\/i> is good<\/i>. I have no intention to see it in 3-D. But I don’t think it’s the total disaster as a film that it’s widely considered to be. If on pain of death I had to watch only one of the Prequel films, Phantom Menace<\/i> is the one I would opt for every time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, writer Peter David blogged that he took his daughter to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3-D and… she liked it. She really liked it. His reaction to his daughter’s reaction? “Holy crap. Holy freaking crap.” I know it’s fashionable for people to pile on The Phantom Menace, but I won’t. IContinue reading “On Defending The Phantom Menace”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[4114],"class_list":["post-6291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-wars","tag-star-wars","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}