Star Wars Episodes 1 & 2

[johntheplamf]

Does anyone else think that the criticism for these 2 films was a little OTT?

[Steph84]

To an extent yeh. They had a lot to live up to and were disappointing but they weren't as bad as all that. Hayden Christensen got a lot of undeserved criticism (and still is) for his performance in Attack of the Clones. I for one thought he was really good. I felt for Anakin so much when his mother died and he started his inevitable descent into the dark side.

[jno]

Nah. They weren't dreadful, but they were really ordinary compared with the original trilogy, and compared with something like Lord of the Rings they looked slow and pompous and unimaginative.

[Mattk]

there are 2 main things that people forget about episode 1 and that is that it is the beginning of a story so inevitably would have to be slower paced and also that it is a kids film !!!!!! there was universal hatred of jar jar binks from grown ups who were children when they saw the originals.

episode 2 was far better.

given time(like the originals) these will become classics.dont forget return of the jedi gave us ewoks ! so maybe jar jar wasnt that bad after all !!!

there are some amazing moments to be had in ep 1 particularly with regards to darth maul who would have scared the crap out of me if i was an 8 yr old seeing him at the cinema ! much the way darth vader did back in '77.

[Aschenbach]

Film critics generally don't praise the 'blockbuster' movies anyway so I wasn't suprised that it was panned. I personally was disappointed with 90% of the content of these 2 films. I think they were aimed at very young children and I seem to have grown up a bit.

What I liked in I was the Darth Maul fight and 'Duel of the Fates' theme music. In II I liked Anakin/ Mother/ Sandpeople scene, the way the third film is set up and maybe er the reduction in Jar Jar Binks scenes?

[QmunkE]

Both these films suffered from atrocious dialogue, and the presence of Jar-Jar Binks. But they both had their good points - as mentioned, the duel with Darth Maul was one of the best choreographed (spelling?) fight scenes I've seen, easily rivalling those in films like Crouching Tiger etc. The pod race was also a great demonstration of the leaps and bounds in which digital effects have come on since their beginnings in films like Tron.

Episode II was also weak - but it was necessarily so in some regards. The storyline had to create Anakin and Padme's relationship, and deal with the death of Anakin's mother, as well as providing the clones and Count Dooku. C3PO's lines in EPII were appalling - he should have been mute in this film.

Yes, the films weren't as good as the originals. No, they weren't both complete piles of rubbish that should be discarded.