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People saw the news on the TV, hundreds of Star Wars fans lined up out side of movie ticket box office when Star Wars: Episode I- the Phantom Menace just starts showing in theaters. Star War fans waited hours in the line, just to get the movie tickets so they can watch this latest Sci-fi movie. The sneak previews of the Phantom Menace showed many spectacular computer generated scenes, graphics, and characters that gave me an impression that the movie was going to be a very good. Sadly, I was quite disappointed after watched the movie, because the way of storytelling was lame and the characters lacked development. The story in the movie is simply straight forward. Two Jedi's saved a young Anaken Skywalker, and then they help Queen Amidala saving her planet Napoo from Trade Federation s invasion.
The good side about simplicity in this movie is that people can understand it easily without much confusion, but the down side is that the movie plots become lame and hardly trigger much of audiences thoughts interaction. It is because the movie is mainly targeting young audiences, thus spectacular effects and simple plots are the main character of this movie. Digital special effects make up ninety percent of entire movie, from underwater world to the battle between Gungan and Trade Federation, from Jar Jar Binks to Java. All these special effects make the movie looks nothing less than spectacular. Without going more deep in the story that could boring young audiences, the spectacular effects could help keeping young audiences attention. Also, various characters created in the movie can produce huge profit by selling them as toy models.
One other example, the battle between Gungan armies and Trade Federation robot armies, this scenario is purely showing off special effects: a huge light purple-color shell covers whole Gungan armies from attacks; all the blasting over the shell; hundreds, thousands warriors and machines fight each others; unstoppable destroyer that has its own shell to protect itself and same time it can attack enemies. So much for special effects, but what is happening to the story? Since the movie emphasizes in pursuing greater digital special effects, many themes have lost their meaning and life. In the old Star War films, the battle themes had a lot of development in presenting heroes, thrills, suspense, and intelligence.
For example, the battle in snowfield, a bloody battle that Luke Skywalker and his comrades fight empire with their lives. The whole theme is packed with thrills, suspense, and intelligence. In contrast, the battle themes in The Phantom Menace are much softer. Thrill, suspense fate away. In the final battle between Gungan armies and Trade Federation robot armies, the battle setting is unreal and impractical. First Gungan armies were just hiding under the huge energy shells, and doing nothing while the robot armies were keep firing at them, since the energy shells blocked all the firing from enemy.
The battle went nowhere until the robot armies walked through the energy shells which no ammo's and bombs can penetrate. Without energy shells, spear and energy-ball were the only weapons Gungan had to against enemy s laser, tanks, and robots. They were crushed by robots until Anaken accidentally destroyed the mother ship was destroyed. Without the mother-ship s remote control, robots shut down and died instantly. This is worst battle I have ever seen. A battle is fight with best weapons and worst war strategy, plus an unbelievable ending.
Undoute that whole digital animate battle theme is fantastic and eye pleasing, but behind theme is a childish play. Beside The movie spends so much time in special effects, it forgets to pay attention in character developing. For example, Darth Maul, a fearsome creature with a strong dark side force, the film is supposed to show his sinfulness. The only memorable part of this character to me is his horned head, face tattoos and gleaming yellow eyes.
His facial feature is only thing that reflects his evil characteristics. The big problem is that Darth Maul does not give people any thr illness, chillness, badness. He is more like a robot, the one has some unusual face and is specialize in using dual-bladed lightsaber. Unlike the famous Darth Vader, an evil character was created in the previous Star War films. His sinfulness is well developed. Cold black shining metal helmet that eyes cannot be seen through covers the whole head, under the black rope is the black armour, and a pair of black robot hands.
His coldness, strong-ness and darkness has already been showed off and audiences cannot help not to wonder what is the person inside of that black armour. In addition, the flat, deep, slow voice boosts up his chillness what is already built in audiences imagination. Look back Darth maul, beside the cool makeup and an awesome dual-bladed lightsaber, there is nothing else that triggers audient's imaginations about his darkness and evilness. As matter of fact, I do recall that I have heard anything from his mouth.
Even thought the movie present us spectacular special effects, the failure to make story life really hurts this movie a lot. I am kind disappoint about the movie did not expend deeper in the story contents and characters. A thought just my mine. If the Lucas add few more song themes, it will make awesome Disney movie. Hopefully, George Lucas could add more thrill, suspense, and humors in the Star War Episode II.
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