I saw the Phantom Menace in theaters when I was 15, really geared up. I remember feeling that the film was very hollow and flat, with a big glaring inconsistency in regards to the first trilogy: Qui-Gon Jinn. I like Liam Neeson well enough, liked him in "Darkman" and "Michael Collins" etc, but Qui-Gon was not really all that necessary. As pointed out the on the 78 Reasons to Hate Episode I list hosted by Chefelf's Nightlife site, Qui-Gon was basically a carbon copy of Obi-Wan, and he ended up being a continuity error because he was shown discovering Anakin, befriending him, freeing him, taking him to the Jedi Council, lobbying to get him accepted, etc. This was all stuff that Obi-Wan Kenobi should have been doing. Anyone who's seen Return of the Jedi has heard the ghost Obi-Wan's speech to Luke "When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot, but I was amazed at how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong." So really Episode I should have had Obi-Wan Kenobi discovering the young Anakin, befriending him, freeing him, lobbying for his right to study the way of the Jedi, etc. But instead, Obi-Wan Kenobi spent the bulk of the film lurking in the background as a 2nd banana when he should have been leading the bloody film. Had George Lucas remembered his own continuity, he would have remembered the ROTJ speech and had Obi-Wan finding Anakin etc; if he could have at least followed that the film would have been at least slightly better than it was. Because Lucas couldn't remember this, or remember the fact that Anakin's friendship with Obi-Wan is somewhat crucial to his turning to the Dark Side, Episodes II and III are even weaker; it's hard to believe they're really friends in any of their scenes because we never saw the formation of the friendship.

Jar Jar Binks, of course, was just annoying. Don't know what Lucas was smoking when he thought up that elongated waste of special effects money. The whole fight between the Gungans and those ridiculous looking robots, sort of a cross between a dog and an anorexic Daffy Duck, was just a rehash of the fight between the Ewoks and the Imperial Stormtroopers in ROTJ, yet not as much fun (assuming you enjoyed the earlier brawl).

Darth Maul might have been silly looking, but killing him off after all the hype they put into him was kind of stupid.

Pernilla August, who played Anakin's mom, looked more like the mother of Natalie Portman. Miss Pernilla probably had more chemistry with Liam Neeson than Natalie Portman had with Hayden Christensen in the follow ups.

I had nothing against Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu. Didn't have anything against it then, don't have anything against it now. I just can't find the hate for Jackson's presence, which I've seen in other corners of the net.

Jake Lloyd... meh. No fun watching that kid, though he seemed more into it than his successor Hayden Christensen. Kind of insulting how he just blew up that giant ship that looked like a donut with a hole in the middle by accident. Those star fighters weren't much to write home about either.

Ian McDiarmid seemed more restrained in his brief Sidious moments than he did in ROTJ where he seemed to be going for the highest ham factor possible. Unfortunately, that did not help the film (I still like Clive Revill better).

Looking back at it, I think Natalie Portman might have shown more feeling in her non-queen moments of Episode I than she did over the entire course of Episodes II and III.