grainger said:

CO said:

While the duel is action packed, and John Williams music is great, it pretty much sums up what is wrong with the PT: There is nothing more to it then that. What makes a great duel from the OT was the action AND the dialogue, and Duel of Fates lacks any dialogue. In a sense, Lucas chose style over substance for the PT again.

To be fair, the force fields did show us a little about the Jedi characters - Qui Gon's patience vs Obi Wan's impetuousness, so there was an attempt to have some depth in the fight.

However, the scene didn't tell us anything meaningful about the conflict itself - both sides just agreed to fight each other because they were "the enemy". There was nothing personal at stake, and we knew absolutely nothing about Darth Maul - he was just a costume.

This is it exactly. I remember reading a synopsis of the first draft to TPM, where the generator room was actually the planetary shield generator. If Maul was guarding the generator and the Jedi were fighting for control of it to stop more Federation craft from landing, it would have integrated into the movie far more. But the battle itself would have remained impersonal.