Inspired, or perhaps deranged, by having watched the History Channel’s work up on Star Wars (in honor of the 30th anniversary and all that), Andrew and I decided that we really should see Episodes 1-3 again just to find out whether they were as stinky as we remembered.
We remembered them as being pretty darn awful, but we only saw (each of) them once, and we were so disappointed by how little they blew us away that we figured the disappointment may have fueled our opinions.

Having finished watching Episode 1: The Phantom Menace for the second (and, let me assure you, LAST) time I am now in a position to say unequivocally that Episode 1: The Phantom Menace was a menace for many reasons and none of them phantom.
The story did have some merit I guess. I won’t go into the hours worth of editing that I think it needed to be a basically decent film, but I think one of the things that bothered me the most was Lucas’ dependence on in-jokes, slang, or jargon that are based primarily in 21st century English. For a story that was written about a time “long ago” in a galaxy “far away” there sure were a lot of spontaneous vocalizations and planned statements that sounded a lot like they came out of a junior high or high school of the early 2000s. Throw in fart jokes, poop humor, *SHUDDER* Gungins, and that noxious little bowl headed sprite that they cast to play Aniken and it was a really bad film.

We are going to continue our odyssey and watch the other two….. I’m not really sure why, probably as an exercise in self discipline, but then we’re going to purchase the un-retouched originals on DVD and try to forget that Lucas ever made the first three in the series. Luke Skywalker may have been a whiny little noodge in Star Wars, but at least Mark Hamil could act his way out of a wet paper bag.