The Worst of the Worst: The Phantom Menace

It had been since 1983 since a Star Wars film was released and fans were beginning to get a bit antsy. The fans began getting desperate for a new Star Wars, but frankly, weren’t desperate enough for the franchise to turn into a pile of shit. In 1999, Lucas released a new installment into the Star Wars franchise: Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. After so much hype and excitement, this movie almost ruined the entire franchise for most fans.  

This movie obviously takes place before our original trilogy. It is the prequel trilogy and begins the story of the Old Republic and the Jedi. The story begins as two Jedi, young Obi-Wan Kenobi and his master Qui-Gon Jinn, are heading into a huge ship manned by a group called the Trade Federation. They are going to speak to the leaders about a treaty I believe. (The story is a little hard to follow, for me anyways.) Well the leaders do not like this and destroy their ship after it has landed and the Jedi are on board. The Federation sends battle droids to kill them but the Jedi, of course, are able to escape and board a ship that is heading down to a planet called Naboo. Naboo is under capture by the Trade Federation in order for Queen Amidala to sign a deal with them. Once the Jedi have landed and escape for the massive droid army, they run into probably the most hated and stupid character of the whole Star Wars universe, Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar is a funny talking, irritating, annoying alien creature that Lucas decided would be a good character to the story. One of his biggest mistakes, and this guy made several. Jar Jar has been banished from his home of the “Gungans” but is able to be given a ship from his people before he is escorted out. This way, him and the Jedi are able to sneak into Naboo’s capital city. Once they into the city, they all flee with Queen Amidala and her helpers. Trying to flee into space, huge Trade Federation ships shoot at the ship and destroys a one of the ship’s crucial parts in order to fly. The ship has to land down onto the planet of Tattooine. Here the Jedi will find young Anakin Skywalker, who will be a crucial part of the rest of the Star Wars story. The rest of the movie contains taking Skywalker back to the Jedi temple and asking Yoda’s permission for him to be trained. A overall sad battle between a villain named Darth Maul leaving Qui-Gon Jinn dead and Obi-Wan in charge of training young Anakin Skywalker. And of course, the planet of Naboo is saved from the Trade Federation.

IMDb gives The Phantom Menace a 6.5/10 and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 56%. I would probably give it a 6/10 which I guess is still technically passing. I do enjoy seeing a younger, more fresh feel of Star Wars but I would have liked George Lucas to have done a better job with the movie or even better, have him replaced. He is almost a cancer cell for the Star Wars movies and you can see that in this newer trilogy. The Phantom Menace could have been a great movie, especially with the better technology which helped greatly with the CGI and making everything look so much better. But none of that matters when you create an awful story and introduce stupid, meaningless characters. Including some bad acting and at times, a horrible script, you just create a disappointing movie. Killing of what could have been an awesome villain and only giving him about 20 minutes total of screen time also ruins the cool factor of a movie. Saying all of this, there are still parts of this movie that I did enjoy and I try to filter out some of the stupidity. It still feels like Star Wars which does help so overall, I can still get some enjoyment out of watching this movie. It does give me much hope that Disney totally scrapped all Lucas’ ideas of a new storyline in the upcoming film! Even before the new director, J. J. Abrams came on board. Hopefully The Force Awakens will be our “New Hope!”

Thanks for reading!

Thanksgiving Rambling and Return of the Jedi

So since it is Thanksgiving, I am going to be posting both my posts tonight. That way I can get them out of the way and try to enjoy part of my weekend. I work around 30 hours over Black Friday weekend so I am going to be exhausted. Some break… I really hate the fact that many big retailers are opening up on Thursdays. It is absolutely ridiculous! Go enjoy time with your family and loved ones, don’t be out shopping! Do that on Friday, but not on the holiday. Honestly, I guess I would be okay with stores opening up later at like 9 or 10 P.M. that way employees can have the day to spend with their families and then once everyone is starting to turn in for the night, they would go to work. As bad as it sounds, I almost wish that our stores didn’t do so well on Thanksgiving this year, that way next year, they’ll hopefully push the opening time later or even make it early Friday. We will see…

So I am going to be doing my posts a little out of order and do this one as mediocre persuasive and then on my next post that will be available tonight, I will go full blown persuasive! This post will be about Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. Released in 1983, it marks the end of the original trilogy and the Star Wars story, until December when the next film is released. Growing up, I always found this movie interesting but I think George Lucas’ last film in the story was a little weak compared to what it should have been. After being frozen in carbonite, stolen by the bounty hunter Boba Fett and given to Jabba the Hutt, Han Solo’s friends are trying to rescue him. Jabba the Hutt is that strange, big, green worm from the Star Wars films. He speaks in a strange tongue and has his own kingdom full of weird and even singing aliens. Strange is good but some of these things is too strange, especially this annoying like rat looking thing. The make things short and as you would probably figure, Han Solo is rescued and Jabba the Hutt is killed. I won’t spoil the whole thing for you, but I was very disappointed how they killed the villain Boba Fett. He was supposed to be a cool villain but was lamely knocked into a pit where he is presumably dead. Now there is construction of a second Death Star and it hovers a planet called Endor. Endor supplies a shield for the space station that way the Rebels can’t destroy it again. An assault team is assembled with most of the main characters and is sent to Endor to destroy the shield, but on this planet, the team runs into another strange habitant. Little fuzzy bears called Ewoks. Well there Ewoks have some crazy rock throwing and archery skills because these little bears are able to take out armored, Stormtroopers. A bit odd, but whatever, still a pretty good movie. Luke is able to defeat Darth Vader and able to take down the Empire, leaving hope in the galaxy for now…

IMDb gives Return of the Jedi a solid 8.4/10 and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 79%. Personally, I would give it a 8/10. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and have watched it many time since I was a kid. It’s a pretty good ride and ending to the beloved story, though some of the acting is dull. Some parts Return of the Jedi just don’t make sense, leaving you to wonder if Lucas will continue directing these movies or let someone else take over. The answer is sadly no which we will see in the prequel trilogy. Thankfully in the upcoming film, Episode VII The Force Awakens, we have a new director and hopefully revive many fan’s feelings about Star Wars.

Post 2 - Fun Weekend and my favorite Star Wars movie

I ended up taking my girlfriend to Silver Dollar City yesterday. It was her first going as she had never been to SDC before and only been to Branson once. Crazy… I know. But it was a lot of fun. If you’ve never been to SDC during the Christmas season, I would definitely suggest it! If you go in the afternoon, there aren’t a crazy amount of people there meaning you can ride pretty much whatever you want without having to wait in long lines. There are also a lot of cool Christmas decorations about and the cool little shops are oriented around Christmas goodies. The stuff is still pretty expensive, but hey, it is free to look! The most impressive part of SDC during the Christmas season is the lights! They claim to have over 5 million lights, which if you walk around long enough, you will figure out it is very true! They also have a huge tree that plays a light show every 15 minutes. So all in all, very fun time.

So now back to what I said I would do in my first post, blog Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. This is by far my favorite Star Wars movie, for now anyways! This one has a perfect combination of action, romance, humor and great special effects and it was release back in 1980. We open up with the Rebels on a remote ice planet of Hoth and the empire is desperately trying to find their location. With the help an Imperial Probe droid which an ugly looking robot making some strange, coded messages, the Empire is able to find the location of the Rebel base. The Empire soon sends huge walking, tanks called the AT-AT. (The AT-AT has always been my favorite vehicle from Star Wars because of how cool it looks and how much destruction power it has.) The Rebels are no match for these huge beast machines and the base ends up being destroyed. Most of the Rebels, including our main heroes Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, C3PO, R2D2 and Luke Skywalker are able to escape. Luke and R2D2 split up from the others to go a planet called Degobah. Here they will meet Yoda, another popular character. (He is the little green guy known for saying “Do or do not, there is no try” –my favorite role model) Here Yoda begins to train Luke. On the other side of the galaxy, Han, Leia, Chewbacca and C3PO are trying to escape from Imperial fighter ships in the Millennium Falcon. They end up in a strange city in the clouds, Cloud City. Little do our heroes know, they have walked straight into Darth Vader grasp who is preparing a trap for Luke Skywalker. This will lead to Luke having to face Darth Vader and Luke will find out a new important detail about the villain. Let me give you a hint: “Luke! I am your father!”

IMDb gives The Empire Strikes Back a solid 8.8/10 and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a solid 94%. Personally, I would give it a 9.5/10. It is by far my favorite Star Wars movie and ranks in my top ten favorite movies. If you haven’t seen it, I would definitely give it try. Even if you aren’t a Sci-Fi fan, there’s so much more to it than just a simple, Sci-Fi action flick.