Thoughts on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in 3-D

      May 19, 1999 is a day that I will always remember. It's the day that a new Star Wars film returned to the big screen for the first time since 1983's Return of the Jedi. The Phantom Menace was arguably the most anticipated film in cinema history. Star Wars fans had been clamoring for years for George Lucas to make more films since there was rumors for many years that nine films were originally planned. When word finally arrived that a prequel trilogy was coming, Star Wars fans celebrated and began a wait that seemed like it was an eternity. It seemed like that fateful day would never arrive...and then it did.

     Initial reviews for The Phantom Menace were actually positive. One of the first I remember seeing was Roger Ebert's, who gave it 3 stars out of 4. Others followed with similar praise, with the early consensus being that it was a fun movie, gorgeous to look at with amazing effects, but not as good as the original films. I saw the movie three times on opening day and five times total the opening weekend, after each one of those showings the crowd gave the movie a standing ovation. I had never witnessed anything like it. I loved the movie, especially the podracing sequence and the lightsaber duel at the end. Those two scenes to this day are still some of my favorite in the Star Wars saga. The word of mouth that I heard outside of theaters is that people seemed to really enjoy the movie for the most part. People seemed generally excited that Star Wars was back on the big screen.

     Then something funny happened. After that first weekend, I started hearing some negative things about the movie, most of them centered around the Jar Jar Binks character. While Jar Jar was not my favorite character by any means, I could tell he was put there for the kids and he didn't bother me as much as some people did. Oddly out of all the chatter I heard personally outside of the theaters that first couple of days, I never heard someone say they disliked Jar Jar. I believe it was Jay Leno on the Tonight Show was the first person I heard making fun of Jar Jar and bashing him (this is not a statement against Jay Leno by the way, I'm just stating where I remember seeing the negativity first). After that, it seemed the negative press towards Jar Jar, and the movie itself, really started to take off and it wasn't long after that when it seemed you couldn't hear anything positive about the movie. Over time the negativity spread to the point where it seemed you were an outcast if you liked the movie. Even many die hard Star Wars fans fail to recognize it as a movie in the series they will ever watch again, they are that disgusted by it. In my opinion, it became the cool thing to dislike The Phantom Menace and that attitude would haunt George Lucas as he made the next two installments in the franchise.

     I do not agree with the negativity. While I agree The Phantom Menace is not as good as most of the other films, I still love it and am happy with its place in the Star Wars saga. So when I heard a couple of years ago that they were going to be converting the films to 3-D and re-releasing them in the theaters, I was stoked. I didn't know what to expect as I've never been a huge fan of 3-D but then I saw what the medium was capable of when Avatar was released. I was completely blown away by that movie, most notably in its 3D form. I have seen it on a regular screen, and while I still liked it, it just wasn't the same. That movie was made to be seen on the big screen and in 3D. So that movie really got me excited for what the Star Wars films could be like in that form. Which leads us to present day and the screening I had of The Phantom Menace in 3D this weekend.

      Unfortunately, all that being said, I was not a fan of the 3-D. I just didn't feel it added anything to the movie. It certainly didn't hurt it in any way so I was still excited to see a Star Wars film on the big screen, but I didn't get that Avatar experience I was hoping for. Perhaps if the film had been filmed in 3D instead of post-converted it would be different, but it is what it is. There are definitely scenes here and there where it works and I got an idea of what it could possibly be like. Those scenes were few and far between, but they were there. A lot of the stuff on Tatooine, especially the scenes with Watto, worked. You could see the depth and you felt immersed in the atmosphere, which is what it was supposed to accomplish. Because of that, I do want them to make all of the films on 3D. They will have more time to work on each one so hopefully they can perfect the technique and get it right as we go along. The movie looks like it is going to pull in about $24 million on opening weekend which seems to be pretty good. That should be good enough to green light the rest of the films I would hope. So while I would recommend going to the theater and catching The Phantom Menace on the big screen, do it for the love of Star Wars, not for the 3D.