Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace 1999 123movies

Watch: Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace 1999 123movies, Full Movie Online – The evil Trade Federation, led by Nute Gunray is planning to take over the peaceful world of Naboo. Jedi Knights Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi are sent to confront the leaders. But not everything goes to plan. The two Jedi escape, and along with their new Gungan friend, Jar Jar Binks head to Naboo to warn Queen Amidala, but droids have already started to capture Naboo and the Queen is not safe there. Eventually, they land on Tatooine, where they become friends with a young boy known as Anakin Skywalker. Qui-Gon is curious about the boy, and sees a bright future for him. The group must now find a way of getting to Coruscant and to finally solve this trade dispute, but there is someone else hiding in the shadows. Are the Sith really extinct? Is the Queen really who she says she is? And what’s so special about this young boy?.
Plot: Anakin Skywalker, a young slave strong with the Force, is discovered on Tatooine. Meanwhile, the evil Sith have returned, enacting their plot for revenge against the Jedi.
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Ratings:

	6.5/10 Votes: 804,744
	51% | RottenTomatoes
	51/100 | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 12708 Popularity: 28.967 | TMDB

Reviews:

If it were the first “Star Wars” movie, “The Phantom Menace” would be hailed as a visionary breakthrough. But this is the fourth movie of the famous series, and we think we know the territory; many of the early reviews have been blase, paying lip service to the visuals and wondering why the characters aren’t better developed. How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story “Nightfall,” about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.

“Star Wars: Episode I–The Phantom Menace,” to cite its full title, is an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking. If some of the characters are less than compelling, perhaps that’s inevitable: This is the first story in the chronology and has to set up characters who (we already know) will become more interesting with the passage of time. Here we first see Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda and R2-D2 and C-3PO. Anakin is only a fresh-faced kid in Episode I; in IV, V and VI, he has become Darth Vader.

At the risk of offending devotees of the Force, I will say that the stories of the “Star Wars” movies have always been space operas, and that the importance of the movies comes from their energy, their sense of fun, their colorful inventions and their state-of-the-art special effects. I do not attend with the hope of gaining insights into human behavior. Unlike many movies, these are made to be looked at more than listened to, and George Lucas and his collaborators have filled “The Phantom Menace” with wonderful visuals.

There are new places here–new kinds of places. Consider the underwater cities, floating in their transparent membranes. The Senate chamber, a vast sphere with senators arrayed along the inside walls, and speakers floating on pods in the center. And other places: the cityscape with the waterfall that has a dizzying descent through space. And the other cities: one city Venetian, with canals, another looking like a hothouse version of imperial Rome, and a third that seems to have grown out of desert sands.

Set against awesome backdrops, the characters in “The Phantom Menace” inhabit a plot that is little more complex than the stories I grew up on in science-fiction magazines. The whole series sometimes feel like a cover from Thrilling Wonder Stories, come to life. The dialogue is pretty flat and straightforward, although seasoned with a little quasi-classical formality, as if the characters had read but not retained “Julius Caesar.” I wish the “Star Wars” characters spoke with more elegance and wit (as Gore Vidal’s Greeks and Romans do), but dialogue isn’t the point, anyway: These movies are about new things to look at.

The plot details (of embargoes and blockades) tend to diminish the size of the movie’s universe–to shrink it to the scale of a 19th century trade dispute. The stars themselves are little more than pinpoints on a black curtain, and “Star Wars” has not drawn inspiration from the color photographs being captured by the Hubble Telescope. The series is essentially human mythology, set in space, but not occupying it. If Stanley Kubrick gave us man humbled by the universe, Lucas gives us the universe domesticated by man. His aliens are really just humans in odd skins. For “The Phantom Menace,” he introduces Jar Jar Binks, a fully realized computer-animated alien character whose physical movements seem based on afterthoughts. And Jabba the Hutt (who presides over the Podrace) has always seemed positively Dickensian to me.

Yet within the rules he has established, Lucas tells a good story. The key development in “Phantom” is the first meeting between the Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and the young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd)–who is, the Jedi immediately senses, fated for great things. Qui-Gon meets Anakin in a store where he’s seeking replacement parts for his crippled ship. Qui-Gon soon finds himself backing the young slave in a high-speed Podrace–betting his ship itself against the cost of the replacement parts. The race is one of the film’s high points, as the entrants zoom between high cliff walls in a refinement of a similar race through metal canyons on a spaceship in “Star Wars.” Why is Qui-Gon so confident that Anakin can win? Because he senses an unusual concentration of the Force–and perhaps because, like John the Baptist, he instinctively recognizes the one whose way he is destined to prepare. The film’s shakiness on the psychological level is evident, however, in the scene where young Anakin is told he must leave his mother (Pernilla August) and follow this tall Jedi stranger. Their mutual resignation to the parting seems awfully restrained. I expected a tearful scene of parting between mother and child, but the best we get is when Anakin asks if his mother can come along, and she replies, “Son, my place is here.” As a slave? The discovery and testing of Anakin supplies the film’s most important action, but in a sense all the action is equally important, because it provides platforms for special-effects sequences. Sometimes our common sense undermines a sequence (for instance, when Jar Jar’s people and the good guys fight a ‘droid army, it becomes obvious that the droids are such bad fighters, they should be returned for a refund). But mostly I was happy to drink in the sights on the screen, in the same spirit that I might enjoy “Metropolis,” “Forbidden Planet,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Dark City” or “The Matrix.” The difference is that Lucas’ visuals are more fanciful and his film’s energy level is more cheerful; he doesn’t share the prevailing view that the future is a dark and lonely place.

What he does have, in abundance, is exhilaration. There is a sense of discovery in scene after scene of “The Phantom Menace,” as he tries out new effects and ideas, and seamlessly integrates real characters and digital ones, real landscapes and imaginary places. We are standing at the threshold of a new age of epic cinema, I think, in which digital techniques mean that budgets will no longer limit the scope of scenes; filmmakers will be able to show us just about anything they can imagine.

As surely as Anakin Skywalker points the way into the future of “Star Wars,” so does “The Phantom Menace” raise the curtain on this new freedom for filmmakers. And it’s a lot of fun. The film has correctly been given the PG rating; it’s suitable for younger viewers and doesn’t depend on violence for its effects. As for the bad rap about the characters–hey, I’ve seen space operas that put their emphasis on human personalities and relationships. They’re called “Star Trek” movies. Give me transparent underwater cities and vast hollow senatorial spheres any day.

3.5/4

-Rodger Ebert

Frankly, this film is terrible, and the producers were obviously banking on the original Star Wars coming back all excited, and didn’t bother come up with a good story.

What’s wrong? Well —

(1) The virtuous Obiwan Kenobi talks an admiring young boy to participate in a dangerous race so that he can bet on the boy and win the money he needs for his mission. Sounds like the later movie HUNGER GAMES, except that in HUNGER GAMES we’re expected to despise people who bet on children’s lives.

(2) The young boy befriends a teenage girl who is presumably 6 or 7 years older. Come the next movie, they’re suddenly the same age so that they can have a love affair. Are they of different species that age at different rates, or did the writers simply not plan ahead?

(3) The boy’s mother tells Obiwan that she gave birth to the boy without having sex. Having introduced this bizarre Christological symbolism, the writers promptly forget it.

(4) And there’s a character named JarJar, who apparently has no function in the movie except to irritate a lot of the critics.

Love this film
Honestly I don’t get it why so many people hate this movie I can understand it is a bit too long but its not the weakest in the series, the weakest one in the series would have to be episode 2 Attack of the Clones, having too much romance in it. But I think this one is a lot more better then episode 2 in many ways. And also I think Jar Jar Binks is a rather underrated character I know he can be annoying at times but he did play a large role in this film which fans are missing the point. The pod race is problay the best scene in this whole film as it was rather enjoyable to watch over and over again on youtube. Soundtrack is amazing and very well done for this movie. I know some people hate this movie just because of one character but come on give this movie another chance it will surprised you in many ways.

overall Episode 1 is rather underrated and needs another chance

8/10

Let’s stop playing games – bad is bad
The main line of defence seems to be: lighten up, it’s just entertainment / just a kid’s movie / just a special effects flick. Pausing awhile to note that people who run this line of defence have all but conceded that the film is, in fact, bad, let’s take these points one by one – shall we?

As entertainment it’s poor. Dialogue is flat and perfunctory (don’t expect to be dazzled by repartee); the story lacks the beauty of the first Star Wars film and the tension of the second … and then there’s the magical `character development’ everyone complains about. We must distinguish character development from character delineation. The former is nice, but the latter is absolutely essential, and it’s the latter that’s missing from `The Phantom Menace’. Jar Jar, the young Obi Wan, Darth Maul, Armidala, Annakin – all are scarcely characters at all, and are very difficult to get enthused about. Jar Jar in particular is a collection of mannerisms, nothing more. This lack of character doesn’t just prevent the film from becoming the darling of the intellectuals – it makes it dull. There are hundreds more entertaining films. Only those people who entered the cinema carrying plastic light sabers, grimly determined to enjoy themselves, failed to notice this.

It’s a kid’s movie. Well, yes, in a sense – but not a good sense. Good children’s movies form a proper subset of good movies – simply because adults have access to all childhood emotions and desires, but not vice versa. So in one sense a `kid’s movie’ is just a movie that can be understood and apperaciated by children (as well as adults). Is this a kid’s movie in that sense? Maybe. But it’s also a kid’s movie in the bad sense: it’s deeply witless, and inexperienced children might – I say, MIGHT – fail to notice just how witless it is. Children may – I say, MAY – ignore the fact that Jar Jar Binks is a deeply irritating non-character because he is all colour and movement and he speaks funny. Is this really all we want?

Special effects. These aren’t so hot, either. George Lucas has fallen in love with computers and failed to notice that his digital animals don’t move at all in the way that real animals move – worse still, they don’t move like any kind of physical object at all. Nor do most of the alleged physical objects. Compare the trundling white juggernaut at the start of `Star Wars’ – a convincingly solid model – with the insubstantial collection of pixels that darts past us at the start of `The Phantom Menace’. The special effects have actually deteriorated, and to make matters worse, there are more of them.

So the defence that `The Phantom Menace’ is allowed to be a poor movie because it really wasn’t trying to be something great in the first place, just won’t wash. Especially so, given the ludicrous claims George Lucas has arrogantly made, again and again. So Jar Jar Binks is the first digitally created main character? Rubbish – the dragon in `Dragonheart’ predates it (and, one might add, is at the very least a genuine character). So George Lucas is pioneering a new kind of filming-making, more like painting and less like photography, than the old? Absolute twaddle – Walt Disney did THAT in the 1930s. I’ll tell you what IS new. Never before has there been so much sizzle, and so little sausage.

Other Information:

Original Language en
Runtime 2 hr 16 min (136 min)
Budget 115000000
Revenue 924317558
Status Released
Rated PG
Genre Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Director George Lucas
Writer George Lucas
Actors Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman
Country United States
Awards Nominated for 3 Oscars. 26 wins & 69 nominations total
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio 2.39 : 1
Camera Arriflex 435 ES, Hawk C-Series Lenses, Arriflex 535B, Hawk C-Series Lenses, Sony HDC-750
Laboratory DeLuxe, Hollywood (CA), USA (prints), Rank Film Laboratories, Denham, UK, Monaco Film Laboratories, San Francisco (CA), USA (dailies)
Film Length 3,460 m (Italy), 3,794 m (7 reels)
Negative Format 35 mm (also horizontal) (Eastman EXR 50D 5245, Kodak Vision 320T 5277), HDCAM
Cinematographic Process Dolby Vision, HDCAM (some scenes), Hawk Scope (anamorphic), Powerscope (anamorphic) (underwater scenes), VistaVision (some scenes)
Printed Film Format 35 mm (Kodak Vision 2383, Vision Premier 2393), D-Cinema (Texas Instruments DLP 1280 x 1024, 1.9: 1 anamorphic)