The latest in our series of writers defending maligned movies is a plea to revisit George Lucas’s loathed Star Wars prequelWith the levels of global hysteria that had built up around the 1999 release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, it was always destined to disappoint.Initial reviews of the film were actually sort of positive.
Critics picked up on the fact that a story about trade taxation was a bit flat, in the same way a date with a bank manager is a bit flat; that the dialogue was ripe; that Jar Jar Binks – the CGI comic relief intended to give the toy companies something to sell – was, unforgivably, not funny.
But it had Jedi, spaceship battles, it looked staggering, and the consensus was that it had set up a fresh trilogy fairly ably.
Job done, then.
Or so it seemed.
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