{"id":6578,"date":"2010-01-02T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=6578"},"modified":"2010-01-02T08:02:28","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T12:02:28","slug":"star-wars-the-phantom-menace-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=6578","title":{"rendered":"Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I found this gem via the <a href=\"http:\/\/rampantgames.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/funniest-review-commentary-of-star-wars.html\">Jay Barnson<\/a>.  It calls itself a review of the Phantom Menace, but it&#8217;s more like a complete deconstruction of the characters, plot, and cinematography.   The voice used by the author is one of a crazy old man on an angry incoherent rant, but occasionally you&#8217;ll see gaps in the persona and see the disappointed filmmaker \/ Star Wars fan underneath. <\/p>\n<p>I agree with Jay that part 2 was the weakest part of of the review.  I think it crossed a line and went from &#8220;edgy satire&#8221; to &#8220;goofy and disturbing&#8221;.  But that&#8217;s just me.  <\/p>\n<p>Warning: Bad language.<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FxKtZmQgxrI&#038;feature=PlayList&#038;p=BBC605FBC8F4B6D7&#038;index=0&#038;playnext=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI&#038;feature=PlayList&#038;p=BBC605FBC8F4B6D7&#038;index=0&#038;playnext=1'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>You could probably cook up some justifications for Palpatine&#8217;s behavior to explain why he so often acted against what were ostensibly his own goals.  You could construct a larger scheme and then just say that what he did in the movie was what he improvised when the Jedi intervened and brought back the queen.  But that just means that the plot was too large and complex for a movie.  In any case, if the audience has to retcon in their own fixes in order to get the thing to make sense, then the story isn&#8217;t working.<\/p>\n<p>It was strange at the end when he basically had Lucas critique himself.  When young George Lucas talked about how empty special effects are when they don&#8217;t have a good story behind them, and when you contrast his later work against Star Wars, it does sort of make you wonder what happened to the guy. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the eternal George Lucas question:  Did he have it and then lose it, or were his classics just a fluke? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found this gem via the Jay Barnson. It calls itself a review of the Phantom Menace, but it&#8217;s more like a complete deconstruction of the characters, plot, and cinematography. The voice used by the author is one of a crazy old man on an angry incoherent rant, but occasionally you&#8217;ll see gaps in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream-cast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}