The Phantom Menace

The Phantom Menace (1999) – It’s got some strengths—great new music from Williams, Darth Maul (the five minutes we get of him, anyway), fantastic art direction, and some cool (if badly choreographed) lightsaber action—but its list of horrendously awful elements is astoundingly long: these include Jar Jar, the kid, the midi-chlorians and the virgin birth, the inclusion of the droids, the bizarre ethnic stereotypes, and the wall-to-wall atrocious dialogue; nor have George’s vaunted CGI effects aged well; it’s bad enough that the film is a dumbed-down, poorly structured, uninvolving, eye-roll-inducing cartoon for small children, but it’s also an indelible stain on a once-proud franchise. 4