Originally posted by: CO
I remember sitting there opening weekend in 1999 next to 2 friends I grew up with as we were experiencing SW all over again, and then I heard the first words from this new CG character, "Meesa Jar Jar Binks........" I leaned to my friend, "I got a bad feeling about this....."

Yup same for me. I went to see the first week. I was really enjoying it, Star Wars was back! The minute the crawl hit the screen I could hardly believe it. I did think the color of the crawl was a little off though, but that would only be the beginning of the problems that film had. The Nemoidians suck, but I was ready to over look them. It was still awesome. Two Jedi bouncing around and slicing up droids. Then all of a sudden this odd CGI creature pops up on the screen, maybe I could look past it. Then the odd CGI creature opened him mouth and began to speak... and I suddenly felt incredibly disapointed. It was at that moment I realized this wasn't going to be the film I was looking for. Just about the time I was adjusting to Jar Jar enough to think maybe I could look past him, suddenly were are in an underwater city filled with Jar Jars, and in an odd twist of events we meet Boss Nas, and fatter, dumber looking, and equaly annoying version of Jar Jar... d'oh! More and more awful things like this pop up along the way, but in the end there was a fantastic lightsaber duel. Say what you will about it, but I really like the fight. And the music just hit home, it wasn't any Star Wars tune we had heard before, but yet it rang fresh and new and still 100% Star Wars. That lightsaber fight reignited the flame of excitment the whole idea of three new Star Wars had always lit in me. There were still two more to films to go, the first one was a bit of a miss, but it had some excellent moments. As the story progressed, and Anakin became an adult and the clone wars began, there was no way it wasn't going to be awesome, no amount of ridiculous CG characters was going to ruin this... it was Star Wars... as Jimmy Fallon had put it on SNL a couple of weeks before (sung to the tune of "Every Morning" by Sugar Ray), "I just can't believe it, George Lucas is a genius,
Star Wars is back again... first I'm gonna see it, and then I'm gonna see it again..."

Little did I know, I was in for one hell of a disapointment...

I definitly fit into the camp that thinks The Phantom Menace was the most authentically Star Wars of all of them. It just had its moments. Qui-gon was cool and IMHO Obi-Wan was spot on, Maul was a great villian, and seeing Darth Sidious, who we all knew was Palpatine played by the same actor from ROTJ, really gave it a nostaligic feel. And the score throughout (with the exception of the scoreless and over long Podrace sequence) just couldn't let you forget to be excited about the fact that you were watching a NEW Star Wars movie. Though now that the other two suck as bad as they do, the prologue that is The Phantom Menace just isn't worth watching by itself.