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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Serge" data-source="post: 2092555" data-attributes="member: 4049">It's funny you say this because I wrote something very similar to this before.  This gets back to Lucas' inability to understand human motivation in these films.  Even in A New Hope, we can see what motivates Luke.  He's a young adult (what?  18?) who knows (like most of us at that age) that we're made for something better in spite of what our ignorant parents think.  He has the added weight of knowing that his father was someone great who died a long time ago.  The audience can connect with this.  Hell, the audience can connect with all of the mythological motifs in the first film (I don't know if Lucas did this intentionally or not, but they are present... painfully so).In the new films, however, Lucas botches the human element completely.  He also clutters his great story foundation through self-inflicted sabatoge.  In The Phantom Menance alone, we see what could have been... Hell, we see what was there but ruined due to Lucas' inability to delegate.  Lucas should have hired writers and directors who know how to capture those elements and integrate them into the larger story.  The crux of the story is a young boy, a child of prophecy who, due to the ignorance and willfullness of one man, is dragged from the only home he knows and is slowly corrupted by a galaxy for which he's underprepared.  The second protagonist is a queen who parallels the boy in that she, while wise beyond her years, is not prepared for the viciousness of the truly evil people and realities around her; she's forced to grow up quickly and make sacrifices.  This parallel between the two should have been used to explain why this young boy is drawn to the queen and why she -- witlessly -- finds herself interested in the welfare of this boy (if handled properly, this would have been a sibling relationship, not some sort of weird sexual thing).  Simultaneously, we would have had the revelation of a complacent Jedi Order that has grown comfortable in its status, unaware of and perhaps uninterested in the cancer growing right before them.  We would have seen how politics and money have led to an entire galaxy unwilling to make tough choices while injustice is rampant.  While the two principals (and arguably three if Obi Wan was handled better) are forced to mature (and in two different directions if done right), we see a society regressing and declining, but unaware of it, leaving it ripe for manipulation by someone using the same elements the Jedi have abandoned in their complacency to get what he wants.  The movie, although truly about Anakin, Padme, and maybe Obi Wan, is named The Phantom Menace; we needed to see more of this menace, come closer to understanding what is exactly at stake.  How does the military and economic conquest play into this menace's hands?  We never know if this was a ploy that would lead to Palpatine's ascension (which makes Darth Sideous' desire to kill Padme very odd) or if there was another plot that was jettisoned after the failure in Naboo.Of course, Lucas never figures out how to make these things work because he doesn't know how to capture the human elements, doesn't know how to extend the metaphor into the greater parts of the narrative, and doesn't know how to motivate his actors.  He does know how to market toys and tie-ins, so we get plenty wasted minutes of fx that do nothing to promote the story.It's all about the story.  Lucas has it right there, but fails to execute.  I truly hope that he gets it right this time.  Sure, I'll end up liking Revenge of the Sith just as I like RotJ, TPM and AotC, but I want to love it like I love The Empire Strikes Back and most of A New Hope.</blockquote>

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