How did you react to Phantom Menace?

[mopkins]

I was in high school. My friends and I all got the Darth maul lightsabers and waited in line for 10 hours. We we're so hyped when the title screen started rolling. It was all downhill from there.

We couldn't figure out why they were fighting. Taxes? Then there was jarjar and podracing. Just a mess

[Bigbazz]

I watched a bootleg VHS tape with my older brother at my house, the quality was pretty bad but I loved the movie. I wasn't a mega Star Wars fan or anything, I remember at the time all the TV coverage about nutcases camping for like 2 weeks for the premiere. It was a movie made for kids, I was a kid and like other kids at school we generally liked it, loads of kids did Jar Jar impressions at school.

[Aurondarklord]

Well I was 12, had a 12 year old's sophistication in movie critique, so I thought it was great, lightsaber fights, big CGI battles, looked awesome to me, I didn't really pay attention to the plot making no sense.

[Dwarfhamster]

With revulsion.

[PACOX]

I was a kid when I saw it. Already a Star Wars fan. I had multiple toys, seen the original cuts on the special editions. Claimed my grandfathers VHS collection. I loved the Phantom Menace as a kid. New SW that wasn't 20 something years old. I get to see one of my favorite movie characters, Anakin/Vader on screen and he's around my age. Cool new SW ships and tech to gawk at. The legendary Obi-wan in fighting form, and a badass villian. Loved it.

It did not age well as I got older though. That applies to a lot of kid-oriented films though, which TPM clearly was. Its the second worst SW movie to me, the worst goes to AoTC in my book. I think it deserves special consideration for being fun when it came out. I always tell people to watch TPM, the Clone Wars series (theres probably a list someone with all the essential episodes), and The Revenge of the Sith to really make that series come alive.

I have a Maul, Battle Droid, Palpatine, Sidious, and I think an Obi-wan action figure from that era. Wanted a pod racer but those were probably too expensive/rare.

SW watching order:

IV
V
I
II
Clone Wars (look up the relevant episodes)
III
VI
Rebels
Solo (actually might flip with Rebels)
VII
VIII
IX (soon).

Screw AoTC.

[Khaza-R]

I think I was 11 years old when this film came out. I was obviously very excited. I saw them with my mom who was never a fan of the old VI - VII, but she loved the Phantom Menace. So something to show those films still have a strong pull for the atypical Star Wars fan

[endersblade]

I was in High School, not sure what year though. Me and a bunch of my friends were totally into it. We bought the soundtrack before the movie came out, because we knew somebody that worked at Hasting's that hooked us up. We listened to it over and over again, just imagining what was happening during each song. When it finally came out we all went to see it opening day, waiting over an hour in line (we lived in a small town, so there weren't all THAT many people waiting). Really enjoyed it. I kept the soda cup I got that hard Darth Maul on it until it had been washed so many times it was just plain white lol.

Unfortunately 2 and 3 were complete garbage to me, and I don't remember a damned thing about them.

[slavrix]

I still have (whats left) of some of the lolly toys that came out with it XD

[Ihavewaffles]

You.. ...you. YOUHAVEAJARJARBINKSTOYDOYOUKNOWTHAT!!!??!!?

This gives me a sad

[Kharadin]

Psssst...

o boy /10char

[Nathreim]

Other than Jar Jar and all the parts with Anakin it was a good SW movie.

The prequels are still miles better thank the money grabbing soulless abortions Disney has given us.

[Leih]

Now that you mention it, I spent forever trying to complete the Phantom Menace playstation game that was basically supposed to be a sort of pseudo scene-by-scene playthrough. Unfortunately my copy was in italian and I had no idea what was going on and would've been too young to understand most English anyway, so even something as basic as saving and loading the game took forever for me to learn.
That meant I was starting over from scratch every time, and that game is very lengthy if you're trying to do a full playthrough in a single sitting as a child without understanding how to play properly to begin with.

It's still a sort of childhood trauma that I never got to complete the game. I honestly frequently think back to playing that game and wondering what the fuck I was supposed to do to progress, but that's likely my autism playing tricks on me.

That game was so broken in so many ways. I played it through to the end and, at the time when I was like 12, I enjoyed it a lot. I recently checked it out again though and holy crap it has NOT aged well, lol!

If you want some laughs and nostalgia, I highly recommend the playthrough from this year's AGDQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg06OeoJRVw

[Kudos]

I walked out slightly disappointed. Not "The Last Jedi" disappointed, but still kind of let down. I still saw it twice at the cinema though.

[Yunru]

o boy /10char

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-Wars-Podracer


Some people missed it.

[exochaft]

Basically this way: https://youtu.be/FxKtZmQgxrI

Haha, that gave me a laugh, and it's not really wrong at all. I think the prequel trilogy suffered from trying to cram too much into three movies, especially the third installment, without allowing enough time for character development and reduced to glossing over things. Add in the over-the-top "made for kids" veneer that was laid on way too thick, and it overshadows what could be potentially fun... you can reference C3PO in the droid factory in the second movie and all his one-liners as a prime example, even Jar Jar was a little more tame than that sequence. Granted this was about the first movie instead of the trilogy itself, but the character arcs tended to happen over the course of the entire trilogy instead of just one movie out of the three. Plus, the plot did make some sort of sense, and there was a defined progression of the story, but as I mentioned earlier it felt rushed in many cases. This film also suffered from terrible child actors on top of hackneyed script, although I think good child actors would've helped immensely. I feel that instead of the prequels being a movie trilogy, it would've worked MUCH better as a miniseries on Netflix or something similar, although such mediums weren't at the levels they are now and wasn't really an option at the time.

All in all, the first movie by itself is not the greatest, but it's not horrid or unwatchable either. I thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack and the final lightsaber showdown was just fun and entertaining to watch. And despite all its flaws, I still find them much better movies than TFA/TLJ, as those movies have similar flaws to the prequels while adding on tons more to exacerbate the films' issues. With the prequels, they're movies I wouldn't mind watching again, while TFA/TLJ don't really make me feel a desire to see them.

As a slight aside... I feel insanely old by how young people in this thread were when they saw this movie in theaters.