In case you haven’t seen it, there is a YouTube video deconstructing the George Lucas movie, The Phanton Menace, released in 1999. Menace is the first of the second Star Wars trilogy (this trilogy’s events preceed the original trilogy — a sequel prequel if you will). The movie was awful (as was the second and third installments that followed), but why it was awful has never been so clearly expressed till now.
Some of the reviewer’s humor is not to my taste, and there is coarse language throughout, but that aside, there is much to be appreciated in the 70 minute (broken into 7 segments) video. Even if you haven’t seen Menace or any of Lucas’s other Star Wars chapters, the underlying elements are what matter. The reviewer discusses the essentials — plot, characters, dialogue, perspective, tension — and where Lucas failed to address any of them coherently, if at all.
Have you seen the movie or the review? What did you think?
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