Episode 6: (32 BBY) The Phantom Menace

Mhysa called Jaja and Binks. Mhysa your humble servant.

Yous are thinking yous are people gonna die?

Monsters are dead, leaking in here, all sinking and no power?

When the yous are thinking wes are in trouble?

Gungan's not dying without a fight.

Wes a warriors, wes a got a grand army.

That's why yous are not liking us Mhysa Dinks.

Exqueeze me! Oh boy boy I love you!

Boom! Getting very scared and grabbing that Jedi and pow! Mhysa here.

It's time to review The Phantom Menace on this very special edition of the 11 Bars Ex Podcast.

Oh! Cobra fish!

Hello and welcome to Podcast 6 of the 11 Bars Ex Podcast.

It is movie night!

We are finally on our first episode where we are discussing a movie.

And I'm here with my usual co-host John.

Hello!

And our movie co-host William.

Special guest. Howdy.

So William's gonna be joining us on all movie review podcasts and it should be fun.

I mean we, so last week we discussed two of the comic books with Darth Maul.

They were both centered around 32 BBY which is technically the same year as episode 1.

The Phantom Menace which we're discussing tonight.

And I guess let's start off the podcast with our usual popping of the tops shall I say.

William are you aware of what John and I do on each podcast?

I've heard there's drinking of alcohol which is the main reason I'm here.

Okay so you really didn't care about Star Wars at all.

Let's go ahead and pop the tops just because I am in need of a little bit of a beer right now.

Absolutely!

John what are you drinking tonight?

Well I'm not drinking anything yet. Can we do the salute?

Yeah okay you want to do the salute first and then discuss?

You've already opened your beer?

No I haven't opened my beer.

Okay open your beer. Ready? 1, 2, 3, go!

That's pretty good. William I did not hear a beer pop.

You heard this?

Okay William what are you drinking tonight?

I'm drinking a very very large White Russian.

A very large White Russian. Okay that's new.

You are officially the first liquor drinker I think on the podcast is that correct?

That's correct. Oh yeah I don't know I guess so.

I'm probably not the right person to answer that question.

No no no. John I believe John has never drank liquor on the podcast.

I've been drinking Sensor the entire time I think.

Yes. John what are you drinking?

Alright so I am enjoying a wonderful beer. A very good beer from Orpheus Brewing.

It's a Lusire IPA.

Oh that is good. Yeah that's a good beer.

Oh you know that one?

Yeah I do. Orpheus they are another Atlanta brewery. You are really just like a...

Drink local man.

I know I agree I agree with you. I'm drinking a basement tonight.

So in honor of... I am not drinking Sensor.

I'm drinking a full big boy beer.

What is it?

It's a basement.

I don't want to say it's anything special because it is special. It's a basement.

Brought to you by our sponsors, scofflaw Brewing.

Yeah seriously.

So William you probably don't know this but pretty much every single podcast

I have been drinking either a scofflaw Sensor or a White Glass Sensor.

And then John is pretty much I think...

I had the POG. I had the Corona.

The f*** Corona.

Corona.

Beep.

Yeah and then you've had some other beers though.

Because I remember we talked about some Atlanta breweries that we've discussed.

It's all a blur.

Yeah it's all a blur.

Hey guys. It's a movie episode.

It's a movie episode.

We're going to call out brands though then I have to say there is only one way to drink White Russians

and that's with Tito's vodka.

Oh big Tito's guy huh?

Oh yeah.

So we've always been an abstract family.

Yeah we've always been an absolute family.

Oh.

Oh boom.

Why are you being absolute?

You can't drink it straight.

Well I don't drink vodka straight but yeah.

That's true.

And that's why you're an absolute family.

Yes.

Are you really an absolute family? Does everyone participate in the absolute coffee?

No the kids don't but my wife drinks absolute.

Yeah we'll drink Grey Goose every now and then but not like a...

I don't know.

And then what's the... Costco has like a brand that's like actually I think it is Grey Goose that they rebranded.

I forget the name of it.

Someone said the Kirkland vodka.

I think it's the Kirkland signature vodka is like a Grey Goose.

I don't want to state that as a fact but I'm pretty sure that I remember somebody saying that it's pretty much the exact same thing.

Tito's is good though.

My parents are big Tito's fans.

John what vodka do you drink?

I don't drink vodka because the point of vodka is to have like no flavor.

What's the point of that?

Well, not if you're making a white Russian.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, if you're Lebowski-ing it up, you're Lebowski-ing it up. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Okay, so that's his nickname for now? Lebowski?

Um...

I have never seen this movie.

What?

I've never seen it. That's always been the ridicule of every place I've ever worked is somehow I've managed to never seen this movie.

They made me buy the movie at the last company I worked and yet I still never seen it.

Welcome to Episode one of The Big Lebowski podcast.

We're going to watch some Big Lebowski with William.

Everybody says to you when you say I want to write Russian, that has to be the first thing they say.

I'm absolutely gobsmacked. You drink white Russians all the time and you've never seen The Big Lebowski.

This is actually the only thing I'll pretty much drink, but yet I've never seen it.

I don't know. Like I said, we own it. My wife's seen it many, many times.

And I don't know. I've just never seen it.

And I actually like to hang out in bowling alleys. It's even more fun.

So I've got two movies that I've never seen that I vow to never see and that's Gone with the Wind and the Titanic.

I've never seen those two movies and I vow to never see them. I go out of my way not to watch them.

I don't care about Gone with the Wind, but why Titanic?

I don't know.

That's an achievement of cinema.

Yeah, I don't know. I remember making the decision one day being like, I'm not watching that movie.

You're just mad because you know how it ends. Is that what it is?

Yeah, true. I already know it.

Also, too, I've never seen the Fast and Furious movie, which I try really hard to do.

Not quite the same level as Titanic.

Yeah, but there's like 1,762 of them and I'm trying not to watch any of them.

It's just hard, especially when they start hitting the airwaves. I mean, the regular TV.

I'm with you on Fast and Furious. That crap's so overhyped.

Yeah, I've never gotten into it. I'm a huge car fan. I love cars. I love automobiles. I love racing. I love all that.

But I've never gotten into those movies.

Alright, guys. So I'm going to pepper some questions in on this podcast.

I like to listen to John all the time, William. I like to just ask him a direct question that I know he doesn't have a prepared answer for.

So I want both of you guys to tell me. John, you go first.

I want you to tell me, before we even talked about this podcast, what was your 1 through 100 ranking of Phantom Menace?

And then after this last rewatch, or rewatches in your case, what is your new score?

And I want to see what the delta is. Either way.

Okay, so, sure. In the years prior, I would have given it a score. I don't want to be too harsh.

Maybe around 80.

Okay.

Mid-high 70s, possibly. Depending on what kind of mood I was in.

Now that we've gone through some Dorothy Maul material and trying to approach it fresh for this podcast, it's much higher.

I would give it probably a 90.

Alright, alright. Lebowski, what you got?

I am incredibly confused by John's answer, and it stunned me.

That's why I like this, because I'm interested to know.

Now I don't know.

No, no, no. You can't change your mind. If I would have asked you last year, what would you have given The Phantom Menace?

No, no. It didn't change my answer. It just caused me to go into shock.

It made you question your reality.

It did, because I always assumed that you're... I really expected your first answer to be like 50.

Based on all the conversations we'd ever had before, I thought it was going to be like 50.

So my first answer would have actually been lower than yours, which is why it was so shocking.

I would have probably given it like 70, and maybe now 75.

So it went up. It didn't go up much, but it did get better for you.

Yeah.

And I'm taking out a recency bias.

John, a little bit more with you, just because we have been reading a lot more material related to these characters.

Which is good, because I thought about my answer, and I wasn't trying to get to an exact number,

but I was around low 70s, 70 to 72, I think was before I rewatched it.

And then now I'm back up to about an 80, 82, 83. I think it's low 80s.

I enjoyed it more, and I was trying to figure out if it's recency bias just based on the stuff that we've been reading,

and we know the characters more.

And John, I think with me and you, I've gotten a lot more into Qui-Gon Jinn since we started doing this project.

And I think that his character, I noticed things more about his character in the movie, where I was like,

if it's in, it's like he really was just kind of like a rebel.

No, it really, really helps. Having more information about the characters, no.

I should have asked that question before I answered.

Am I allowed to take in context, like I've read pretty much all the extra new canon books.

Right.

I've read all those books.

Yeah, we've actually, we've.

Give your background of new canon stuff.

I know you've read a lot of old canon stuff too,

but just kind of give like an overview of like where you sit new canon wise.

Because when me and John went into this, like I'd read some of the comics,

but we really hadn't gotten too far into the lore of Disney+ new canon.

Whereas we've done a lot of stuff, you know, we're doing it's chronological order.

So we've done a lot of stuff up to this movie.

We still need a lot more to go.

Interestingly enough, I've never read any old canon book.

Whenever you read some Timothy Zahn stuff and all that kind of stuff.

Well, they've actually written new books.

True, true.

Whenever Disney+ bought Lucasfilms

and bought all the material and basically rebooted everything,

I saw it as an opportunity to get started fresh,

especially since it also gave the authors a chance to rewrite things

from a new perspective, like the Thrawn series.

And I mean, just a lot of the books, they weren't being completely scrapped.

They were just being rewritten

and little, you know, little tweaks here and there.

So I pretty much I probably read about 80 percent of them now.

That's a sizable amount.

Yeah. And I say read, I should say, I should confess that most of them are audible.

And the reason I've done audible is and little

a sales pitch for them, because they're actually I don't know what you call them,

but they're, I guess, audio plays.

Yeah. Dramatized. Yeah.

No, I know what you mean. Yeah.

Yeah. So if you're listening to it, like on a nice stereo system,

you get to hear like Dolby seven, not one, that kind of stuff.

It's very, very cool.

And sometimes they actually have a full cast.

And if they don't, they have a very good voice actor who can do different voices.

Yeah. So whatever.

It's funny you say that, because whenever me and John first started

talking about doing this project back around Christmas of last year,

I said, John, there's also, you know, audio dramas.

And I had to go out and look and see what the difference

between audio drama versus just a regular reading of the book is.

And I think so with Master and Apprentice, one that we already read,

the the person who did the spoken voice on Audible,

which I was probably like 50, 50, 50 percent, about 50 percent audio.

I did tons of really cool voices like he was really good at making it feel

like different characters, like really good at it.

And then we have an audio drama coming up.

I think it's a 25 BBY, which is Doku Jedi Lost.

And I have a feeling that that's going to be exactly what you just described,

which is probably like tons of different characters,

absolutely different voice actors, people reading a script pretty much.

But you're but you're saying that there's

there's actually some books like that, too.

Yes. Well, yeah.

So if I take into context those those those books,

plus the like Clone Wars,

which goes heavy into Qui-Gon in several places.

Right. And then also, so we're still getting up to Clone Wars.

Yeah. And so I won't spoil anything.

And it goes deep into Darth Maul as well.

Then my rating would be much higher.

And that's I say that because you and John both just referenced it.

So that's why I'm asking about that.

Again, without that, without that additional background information,

those two characters have no relevance

watching Phantom Menace by itself.

Yeah, no, I agree with that.

I totally agree with it.

And as somebody that before I read the comics, saw Phantom Menace,

they were cool characters.

I mean, you know, Maul looks awesome and he was great on screen.

Qui-Gon was kind of like this fatherly figure that I was like, OK,

it's like a fatherly figure to to Obi-Wan.

You know, that kind of thing.

I totally, totally agree with you, though.

After John and I have gone back and read the comics and everything

previous to 32 BBY, that it's taken on a little bit different form

for both the characters.

Yeah, especially, you know, Qui-Gon without again, not spoiling anything.

He is fleshed out extremely well. Yeah.

And I mean, just to a masterful level.

Yeah, I would think.

Yeah, a big Qui-Gon fan now.

Definitely a big Qui-Gon fan.

And I would just say that, you know,

knowing all that and then watching.

But unfortunately, the problem is,

did George Lucas know any of that?

Have any of that in mind when he actually wrote it?

Yeah, well, you're questioning Lucas.

No, I'm actually I'm actually agreeing with William.

Don't get me wrong, we haven't gotten into the Filoni era

and all that kind of stuff that's coming up.

But I totally agree with you.

Like, where does that character come from?

And then who fleshed him out?

Was it Disney+? Was it, you know, was it

each particular author, Claudia Gray for Master and Apprentice?

Like each of those different color fun for the comics.

Like who?

Like, I understand that Disney+ has like a storyboard where it's like,

you know, our story, when I say storyboard, I shouldn't say storyboard,

a study story group.

That says, hey, maybe, you know, we should do this, we should do this.

And that that work because it could, you know, mix in with this

and all that kind of stuff.

Do you think that they have the character timelines established

and the of the authors can dress them up, you know,

like this little part over here?

Or are they do they have more free reign?

I think that they say you need to hit on these points and okay your story with us.

But I bet Disney+ is probably like, as long as you hit these five plot points, we're willing to kind of walk with you a little bit.

They're hiring such good authors. I mean, you know, like Claudio Gray was great.

I mean, you got, you know, out of the probably, you know, five or six books that I have read, like the authors are really, really good.

So I think that they have to give them that freedom.

But also I think that there's probably like five or six touch points. And my guess is two.

And going back to that mall comic that we read last week, John, we talked about.

I think that there's probably little Easter eggs that the story group is giving them and saying, hey, get this in there somehow.

You know what I mean? And this, you know, we'll get far more into this. We get to seven, eight, nine.

But I would say the people who didn't follow that would be the movie people.

Yeah. You know, I think.

Yeah, I think Abrams and Johnson. Well, I think all those people have such free reign because of who they are.

Right. And I feel like I need to clarify a little bit.

When I said that earlier, I would have thought of Phantom as like a 70 or so.

That that's what the benefit now of knowing of seven, eight and nine.

Before seven, eight, nine. Yes. Before seven, eight, nine.

Phantom was like a 35. OK. OK.

But seven, eight, nine had to have room at the bottom of the scale. They had to wiggle into the bottom.

And that necessarily floats. Now, Lucas is a genius.

Is that what you're telling me? Stop. Stop. Stop. John. John, you're three years ahead into the future.

We can't get there yet. We'll get there on this podcast. But I understand where you're coming from.

I understand where you're coming from. See, I'm sorry.

So, yes, let us get back to the cinematic masterpiece of The Phantom Menace.

I told you Lucas was a genius. You didn't listen to me. Not at the time. I didn't know I was a child.

You didn't know. I told you you weren't a child. This was 1997. No, 1999.

This was 1999, John. How old were you in 1999?

When John said that Lucas ruined his childhood, I was like, it could get worse. It could be worse.

Fine. You were right. You win. No, no, no, no, no more.

No more prognosticating on seven, eight, nine. We have not watched those movies yet, guys.

I'm saying let's get back to the beautiful. I mean, think about it.

You sit down to watch Phantom Menace, right? That's Star Wars. It was the feel. It was powerful nostalgia.

It felt like Star Wars. The sounds, the smells, I mean, everything, the sights.

It was Star Wars. And it gave me, I have a much greater appreciation of that now.

I have to say that when I rewatched it yesterday and I even told my wife this,

I had popcorn in my hand, I had my soda, and I immediately got goosebumps.

And it felt like Star Wars. I think you nailed that, John.

The initial flybys and all that good stuff, it just hit all the right spots.

I don't know how to say it any more than that. I guess what you just said.

And it kept that.

Can I give you guys my backstory on Phantom Menace and how I watched it for the first time?

Yeah, go ahead.

So, a very weird story. So I was in college in Georgia at the time that Phantom Menace came out.

And me and four or five good buddies drove to Lawrenceville, which is probably about an hour away from Athens,

to go camp out for tickets, which was, I want to say, and I don't remember exactly,

I think it was like 30 days before the movies came out, something like that.

We knew we wanted to get first in line for the tickets because we wanted to go opening night.

We wanted to go as soon as possible.

And we drove out to Lawrenceville at probably like, I don't know, maybe like two or three in the afternoon,

the day before the tickets went on sale, and we got quote unquote in line.

And the AMC, I think it was an AMC in Lawrenceville there, was awesome.

They did a really cool thing. They knew everybody was coming.

They had the parking lot cleared out for people that could park and kind of make it a campsite and that kind of thing.

And then they were really good about, they handed out tickets, numbered tickets.

So right when you got there, you got your next numbered ticket,

and then they pretty much said, you know, just be back in line with this number in this position.

And so I think it was like 10 or 11 o'clock the next morning.

But other than that, go have fun, do whatever you want, go eat somewhere, some bar restaurants, that kind of stuff.

And so me and I think it was like four or five guys went out there, had a time of our lives.

It was a blast.

We went out, camped in the parking lot, stayed up all night.

We had bought a brand new laser tag, so we ran around this huge parking lot playing laser tag,

played Risk, Star Wars Risk, Risk, and then did the Steak and Shake at like 2 a.m.

And it was an absolute blast.

Next morning, everybody woke up. Everybody was really cool.

Everybody was in their exact ticket spots, ticket numbers.

I'll always remember the first guy that – so I had been – I grew up in the Lawrenceville area,

and there was a comic book shop called Galactic Quest.

Kyle was the guy that owned it.

I used to go up there all the time and draw at the comic book shop.

He was an awesome guy, just a really geeky guy, really cool.

He was there, and then a bunch of people that I had known from the comic book shop were there.

And I'll always remember the first guy that got the tickets.

He went up to the window, and he came out.

He bought the tickets, and he comes out.

Everybody goes the first transport is through and everyone like this is literally like

Like two or three hundred people going all the way back online just start cheering and yell

It was it was awesome awesome experience

But that wasn't actually the first time that I watched The Phantom Menace

So the next couple weeks, you know, we're pins and needles, you know

Waiting for the the actual movie to come around everybody got their tickets. We had gotten

Man, I think it was like five of us. We were like, I think we're like 11 through like 16th or 17th in line and

We got in really good seats opening opening night first showing

We brought the maximum number of seats,

it was like four seats per person or five seats per person.

So we had the first two or three rows

that we knew we were gonna have.

And so about three or four days before the movie came out,

I get this buddy, and of course,

we didn't have text messaging or anything like that,

but he calls and he says,

hey, you gotta come over, I've got the new movie.

And I was like, what are you talking about?

He's like, I have the movie, I have the movie,

we can watch the movie.

And I was like, what on earth are you talking about?

And this was the era of Napster

and people downloading everything and all that kind of stuff.

We're on a university network,

so super fast speeds compared to what normally would be.

Back then it was really the majority cable modem,

but a little bit of dial-up still too.

And so I go over there and there's four or five guys

crowded around his computer.

And I'm like, this cannot be the real movie,

it cannot be the real movie.

And then I had to make a decision.

I was like, if it is a real movie,

do I wanna watch it or do I not wanna watch it?

This was, again, this was before it even came out.

And so I go over there and start looking,

and literally this is probably 11 to 12 guys

huddled around a monitor that is like 640 by 480 resolution.

And the movie was not 640 by 480.

It was even worse than that, probably half of that.

And we all, literally all of us stood there

for I think two hours,

in that two and a half hours watching the movie.

And it was the most grainy, crappy,

you could tell what was going on.

I'll always remember the droid battle scene.

You could not, the lasers firing across

and there's so many things in the picture.

And back then too, Weta wasn't a thing,

so we hadn't seen a Lord of the Rings movie really.

We hadn't seen these big battles.

So it's really hard to describe a big battle

in that terrible, terrible resolution.

And I'll always remember we all sat there and watched it.

And nobody, I don't think we really got it.

And I have to admit that whenever I did sit in the theater

the next time when we actually got to see the whole movie,

the experience was so much better.

I mean, you knew it was gonna be tons of better,

but just sound, music, and all that kind of stuff.

And I vowed that day, I was like,

I'm always going to watch the Star Wars movies

in the theater and not ruin anything

about it and make sure that nobody talks about it.

Make sure I get the first viewing

just so that I don't want to hear people discussing it.

I don't want to see anything.

And now you got Twitter, you got all this other crap.

You gotta, like literally for the last two movies,

I think I've shut off Twitter for like however long

it takes from release day or whatever

till whatever actually comes out.

But I'll always remember there's like literally

11 or 12 guys looking at a dorm computer

just staring at this guy's screen.

And it's just, you couldn't see what was going on,

but you could at least hear the audio.

That is too funny.

Yeah, I've actually taken that a step further now.

I won't actually go to the theater now.

I actually wait till I can watch it at my house

with even less interruptions.

Oh, so you wait for video, William.

You wait, you wait.

Oh yeah, okay.

Yeah, John's a little bit different reason.

Now, not going to the theater.

As I've gotten older, I'm not a Friday or Saturday person.

I have gotten to where I like Sundays.

I like like a Sunday afternoon show.

Yeah.

Like I can handle that.

Well, before you go get your pudding.

Right before I go get,

he's your meat, you can't have your pudding.

My backstory, John again, threw me off

because I was completely ready to defend

my score being higher, but since it's not,

this makes even less sense.

But no, I saw, my wife and I saw

self-animated minutes on our anniversary.

Oh really?

Yeah, that was, you know, that's our anniversary.

And that's how we'll always remember our wedding day.

But we saw two movies.

And we would have certainly been in a higher rating.

And we absolutely-

Do you remember the other movie you saw?

Unfortunately, yes.

Which is why it would have been a higher rating.

Oh, okay.

If we didn't immediately follow up that movie

with Black Hawk Down.

And it was a back to back showing.

And I had to escort my wife out of the Black Hawk Down

crying, because that was not the movie she wanted to see

following Star Wars.

In this day, she can, any type of real live,

especially the fact that it was based on a real story, no.

Dramatized, but based on a real story.

Yeah, the fact, yeah.

And certainly did not make her even any more

of a Clinton fan afterwards.

That was actually a pretty good movie.

I enjoyed that movie.

That was a great movie.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty good, I did.

Was there saying that, well, any,

well, any, that's any, I'm sorry, just clarify.

So wait, let me make sure,

William, I wanna make sure I have something clear,

just to make sure in my head that I understand something.

You have gone to see Star Wars, Fantastic Beasts.

In a Menace and Black Hawk Down back to back but have never seen The Big Lebowski.

Exactly. I don't understand how this happens.

I don't understand.

Those are strange life choices my friend.

That is amazing to me.

Like Big Lebowski has this like huge cult following.

And you're a movie guy. I know you're a movie guy because I know you.

Oh I love movies.

That's what I'm saying. You're a huge movie guy.

So it absolutely blows my mind that you have not seen Big Lebowski.

The other movie that I always got really...

I did finally watch it.

And even after I watched it I'm like I don't get it.

The other movie I watched was Blazing Saddles.

Oh all right.

I'll cut the mic off. I'm done.

I'm done.

Oh my God.

I'm done.

Who invited this guy?

I absolutely love...

Mel Brooks.

I love Mel Brooks.

That's like one of the best Mel Brooks...

Oh my God.

I know.

I haven't been in time to do that movie.

The best Mel Brooks movies ever.

No. I know.

I love Mel Brooks.

I've watched History of the World Part 1 at least a thousand times.

I mean I could quote every line in that movie but I don't get Blazing Saddles.

I mean the only thing I can think of is that people like it because it's so risque.

Yeah. That's part of it.

I agree that's part of it.

And that somebody took a chance with it.

And I do think that is one of the appeals.

But man that's still a funny movie.

I mean it's funny.

I don't get it wrong.

I just think History of the World is better.

Yeah.

I agree.

I agree.

I agree.

All right.

All right.

All right.

So let me describe a movie to you and you tell me the movie I'm describing.

Okay.

Okay.

So we're going to open with a confrontation in space.

Okay.

And then the characters that we meet in space some of them are going to go down to the planet.

And we're going to meet some more characters down on the planet.

Okay.

And then they're going to have to flee that planet under fire.

Okay.

Then we're going to have a little side quest.

Okay.

Okay.

Then we're going to finally make it to like a home base if you will.

And then we're going to go out.

We're going to have a big final battle and have a victory parade at the end.

What movie am I describing?

Empire Strikes Back.

No.

Spaceballs.

Star Wars 1?

That is The Phantom Menace and it is also Star Wars A New Hope.

Yeah.

So my point is this feels like Star Wars because it is Star Wars.

It follows the same structure.

So anyway my whole point before John ruined it all with giving it a higher score than me was that being that it was a movie I saw on my anniversary was why I had high memories of it.

But that didn't happen.

So thank you.

Thank God.

Yeah.

You know I just think it's a good movie because it's not utter crap like 7, 8, 9.

Oh stop.

You can't inject future opinions.

You have to wait until you bottomize myself.

What I'm hoping is that these things are so far ahead in the future that you'll rewatch and be like you know what I've read.

I have a new appreciation for.

No.

No.

Not going to happen.

Not talking about 7, 8, 9.

Not talking about 4, 5, 6.

Today we are talking about.

They didn't just ruin my childhood.

They ruined my adulthood.

Stop.

Everybody stop.

Everybody stop.

No.

We're not discussing new movies.

Which we all have differing opinions on.

But let's get back to Phantom.

Okay.

Probably a bad thing yeah.

All right so where should we go?

I mean should we start with the amazing visuals?

Yeah there's no point like we do with the comics and the books and explaining the story because everybody knows the story.

So pick one thing that is your favorite part of the movie and one thing that you hated the most.

And I'm going to go first.

Favorite thing other than Jar Jar.

No one can say Jar Jar.

No no no no no no.

Favorite thing of the movie.

Number one for me.

The John Williams score.

Duel of the Fates.

There is nothing.

You know if you hadn't said that yeah.

Yeah there is nothing better than that first movie's score.

I listen to scores a lot.

I really do.

I listen to them a whole bunch.

I have a whole playlist that I keep on during the day that just flashes back through everything.

And honest to goodness, Phantom Menace has an amazing, amazing score.

I mean I think Imperial March had I think dominated for so many years.

And to be fair with 4, 5, and 6 I didn't listen to the scores that much until I really got back into it.

So like as a kid I didn't listen to them like right when they came out.

You know the remastered versions that kind of stuff.

But once one hit I started listening back to all of them.

And don't get me wrong.

Totally pivotal music and pivotal scenes which is just amazingly well written.

Perfectly done.

Exactly on cue.

Exactly on everything.

Like just nailed it.

But man, Duel of the Fates.

Like the whole Darth Maul fighting.

I mean that is just amazing music to me.

And the way they use the choral arrangement is just oh so good.

Well even like when he's first getting you know lands on Tatooine.

And that sound you know just the only yeah the scores were amazing.

Yeah so alright so that's my favorite part.

I would have said before I rewatched the movie that Jar Jar was going to be my thing that

I liked least.

What?

I was going to say really bad.

I think that the overall quality.

My thing that after re-watching the movie, I think that the thing that I liked least about it is not Jar Jar anymore.

It's the bland delivery of lines.

And it's not just like one or two people. It's like everyone.

Yeah, that's kind of a problem.

And we can discuss this a little bit more when we get into characters and that kind of stuff.

But there is not just one actor that delivers lines bad in this movie.

There's lots of actors that deliver in my opinion.

I definitely want to expand on the characters. I have a theory behind this is why I want to do that.

Okay, what is what is what wait first first off, William, what is your what is your favorite thing about the movie upon re-watch?

What's your favorite thing about the movie? And then what's your least favorite thing about the movie?

My favorite thing upon the re-watch is that I now understand why the Gungans are why they are.

I didn't even understand why they're in.

I didn't understand why they were in the damn movie the first time other than comic relief.

Which, you know, whatever.

But the the reason they had to be in the movie, in my opinion, is well, if the Naboo were were too powerful,

they'd already established that the Naboo were not powerful enough to resist the Trade Federation.

So if the if the Naboo would have been too powerful, I'm not sorry if the sorry if the Gungan had been too powerful,

then then obviously the Naboo would not have been the dominant race.

So that means the Naboo had I mean, it's sort of the Gungans had to have some sort of limitation.

Limitation would obviously have been intelligence.

I think that's what made them a as they pointed out, a kind of like a symbiotic life, you know, relationship or a circle.

I think it's what was it? Yeah.

Well, we want to refer to them as. Yeah. So that's that's that's what that's what their weakness was.

So they did have strength in numbers and they did have use of technology, but they had very, very primitive ways of implementing it.

And I think that's why they were the way they were and why they had to be that way.

And give Pat McCrudden for figuring that out, too.

Like, right. Yes. Even Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan don't really even.

It's like they understand that the Gungans are pretty good, but they don't even make that.

They don't make the connection or idea, which Pat does. I mean, she did it from the very beginning.

She's like, yeah, you know, she bows down to him. It's like, I need your help.

Yeah, I agree with that. And that's what and that's when it clicked on me the second time around.

That's why the Gungans were there. And because otherwise none of it made sense.

You wouldn't have been able to explain how, you know, they were able to, you know, even fight back with the you know,

if the Gungans were that strong, then they would have already they would have overthrown the Trade Federation already.

Or the Nubians to begin with. Nubians? Did I say that right? Yeah, the humans.

Yeah. Nabooians. Nabooians. Nabooians. Nubooians.

So, Jon, what's your favorite and what's your least favorite?

I didn't ask you what my least favorite was. Oh, I didn't?

You didn't ask me what my least favorite was. OK, go ahead.

Do you care? I do. I do. I care deeply. I do. I do. I do. OK.

I don't know now. Hey, William. I think his least favorite thing is being interrupted.

Well, I know. Sorry. Hey, William, what's your least favorite thing about rewatching it?

Probably, you know, obviously I want to say Jar Jar. Jar Jar. I know I can't say Jar Jar, but I mean,

I tried to defend Jar Jar heavily when I first watched it, but I hate it even worse now.

But anyway, it's the fact that it's digital. Oh, interesting. What do you mean by that?

Like, you just mean like... Oh my gosh. It took me everything.

I took everything I had not to start talking about this on Discord, by the way.

Right. So I'm watching this on 4K Ultra HD and holy crap, it looks bad.

It looks like a video game. So this is why they, you know, they went back in 7, 8, 9,

when they actually got right, is they went back to models.

And if you go back and watch every Saturday night, I watch on Twitch.

We go through on Watch Party and we watch all the episodes of Tar Dragon Next Generation

with everybody on Twitch. It's really cool. And the show holds up remarkably well.

I mean, it looks amazingly good. And the reason it looks remarkably good is because

everything in Next Generation was made with models and with real life props.

So it looks good. It holds up perfect. Same thing with the original Star Trek.

Everything after that looks like crap. Unfortunately, Lucas insisted on using digital.

So it doesn't hold up well. So when you start putting this in 4K and in Ultra HD,

you know, as far as, you know, HDR and all that good stuff, it looks like a video game.

And especially when things start moving. I even turned off all motion blurring.

An older video game.

It looks like an older video game. It looks like a video game from 2000.

That's what it looks like. And it becomes very apparent.

I was super excited because it's the first time I ever got to see it in 4K.

I think part of that is that graphics or CGI caught up with where the movie was around 2004-2005.

I did the same thing you did. I watched it with my kids about 2 or 3 years ago. We watched it in 1080.

Even then I could feel like it was a little bit. You could see a little bit of it.

I was like, oh, okay, it feels like a video game from the mid 2000s. And then I, same thing with you, I watched it in 4K this time.

The human scenes, great. Everything was amazing. But I completely agree with you, especially the CGI fighting scenes with the gun guns and the Trade Federation.

You see it aged. It just didn't keep up when it came to the CGI.

Well, even some of the green screening with the humans becomes very apparent.

To be fair, even back then I feel like the green screen stuff was still not ready.

I shouldn't say that because I think now the green screens are so good that you don't notice them.

And then talk about Mandalorian and stuff like that where they have the whole LCD screens behind.

It's so good now that you don't notice it and you really feel like you're involved in it.

But I agree with you, stuff like the Coruscant and the city scenes, you definitely see the green screen. It's very apparent.

I know that it's going to come up later on, but George Lucas is insisting that Yoda be replaced with the digital recreation.

And that's where the green screen is not a good thing because it becomes more apparent.

And like you said, the technology unfortunately has caught up. Whereas if it was actually real, then it never catches up.

It always looks as good as it did.

What if it was Lucas' perfect vision and that he's going to come out with another version of the movie though?

Don't put it past him.

That's what I'm saying.

Wait, wait, wait. Can he still do that? Does he still have it?

No, he can't. He sold it.

But that being said, we could see an updated 4K version with better CGI at some point.

They replaced Yoda because Yoda was originally a puppet in the movie, or at least the chair sequences inside the Jedi Council.

He was a puppet and now he's CGI in the remixes or whatever you want to call it.

So that's good. That's a great con. I like that.

I would have never guessed that digital would have bugged me.

I remember sitting in the theater watching it and being like, this is amazing. Amazing sound, amazing CGI.

And literally less than five to six years later it was out. Not outdated, but the advantage that ILM had, had been negated.

You know what I mean? You could make video games that look that good at that point.

Did you ever play Goldeneye on the N64?

That was like, when I played that, that is so real. It's like photo realistic. Oh my God, I'm in the movie.

Look at it now.

I say that with Forza every year.

Oh, every year. Yeah. And that's the thing about the cadence of those games with Forza.

It's amazing how much we're talking about Forza during this podcast.

But Forza has an on-off year where they're doing Forza Motorsport one year and then they do Forza Horizon the next year.

It's just cadence. And yeah, you can go back 10 years to Forza 3 or 4 and still be like, my gosh, where have we gone?

And back then that was amazing.

And I remember back, I had a 486 back when I was in high school, like a 94, 95.

And there was a game on there called Comanche.

Oh, that was mind-blowing.

Beautiful game. And I remember having to buy a certain amount of high-mem RAM to allow me to play the game.

And I was like, oh, this is awesome.

I remember loading like half my hard drive was filled with this game.

And then I went back about a year ago to play it.

And I was like, oh, my God, this is like, it's below, like it is so, so bad.

Same with Betrayal at Krondor.

I don't know if you guys remember that game. I do. I do.

Yeah, it was just like so amazing at the time.

And I was like, this is real.

And then now you're just like, oh, my gosh.

Yeah. And anything I buy from good old games, I feel like that's what happens.

I'm always like, oh, this is going to be awesome.

I'm going to play the game with my youth.

This is going to be great.

And I'm like, I have this for more than 10 minutes.

Like I can't have I have at least 50 games from from Gog.

Now that I buy them and I load them up and I'm like, nope, not buying it.

Not worth it. Not worth it.

All right. He only paid a buck for it.

I'm going to you this time because William is completely done.

I think. Is he? Is he really? Are we sure of that?

Yes, I think we was. John, what is what was your upon rewatch?

What was your favorite? And what was your least favorite part?

I don't I don't know if this has changed on rewatch.

Pod racing, the pod racing scene is phenomenal.

Agreed. Agreed. Even even now.

I mean, it is such a rush.

The sound, the sound of that scene.

Yeah. Is. Yeah. Fantastic. Yep.

And the speed, of course, it's all about the speed.

The you know, you can see what he was trying to do.

I think it's trying to achieve there. He's trying to knock

you knock your socks off and and even today, I think it

achieves that and and let's be honest. What? Wait, wait,

wait. Hold on. I gotta go. I gotta go back to the potteries

scene. So, I agree totally. It's sound is by far amazing.

The child endangerment of that scene. Oh, yeah. Right. It

really is like like you got a little little kid like a little

like I don't know what's supposed to be eight or nine.

I thought he was almost ten or nine. Almost ten. Okay. I'm

almost going to say ten. Yeah, but he's like he's getting like

like pro racers are throwing tools at him and breaking

pottery. I mean, that is a legit like you don't see that

kind of endangerment to a minor in a lot of movies and then

this is a kid's not until episode three. Yeah, stop. Stop.

We'll get there. We'll get there but we'll get there Jedi

links but we'll get there at some point but that being said

you don't you don't see like you don't like that's like a

for a kid like so so we were all older. We've already seen

that. You know, we're going in there in college and everything

to see this movie but like and and my kids are older so they

saw 789. That was their first movies. If you're like a kid

that's like eleven or twelve, I don't think you see those kind

of movies going in. If that's your first Star Wars movie that

you've seen or or newest Star Wars movie that you're seeing

in a theater. I think that's a big deal to you like can you

name another movie in which a kid's literally in that much

danger like around that same era. I mean kids are flying

guys. That's not the same era. That's like 78. I know that's

but I'm just saying like Goonies. No, but that's 80s.

That's eight guys. This is guys. We are way off the time

scale here guys. Alright, let me let me be crystal clear here.

This is 1999. Kids are not flying black helicopters are

getting shot down. This is 1999. What other movies around

that era because Spielberg's not gone but Spielberg movies like

the kind of Goonies like those kind of like 80s movies are not

there anymore like that. We're in the late 1990s. In my

opinion, personally, we're getting into rehashes or we're

getting into stories that have been done before. I can't think

of another movies in those eras where kids are in danger of

something and that's something that that that the potteries

scene shows and I think that if you're nine or ten in that age

going in to see this movie in 1999 or 2000, that's something

that sticks with you. I think that's a pretty like kind of

cool sense signs. He wasn't no he wasn't a danger. Okay. Signs

maybe I'll give you every yeah. Signs was probably at the same

time every anime movie ever made. Yes, but that's anime

that wasn't here yet. That wasn't people were I totally

agree with you. I told you all those. Yeah, I totally agree

with you there but that wasn't that. Let's just go ahead and

Eric you make a wonderful point. Yes. Yeah. How insightful

oh my god. I never thought of it that way. I said but here's

the thing that we're trying to move on but go ahead. I don't

I don't I don't think that I it's really obvious what Lucas

was doing in there right. I mean he's trying to appeal to

the to the kid market. You know you can be a pod racer. I mean

it's pretty obvious because that's what Star Wars is about.

That's what Star Wars is about. Oh come on when I watch Star

Wars. I was Han Solo. Alright. Occasionally Luke Skywalker on

the off days, but you identify with a 30 year old man when he

kisses because he's the hero. Oh my goodness. I know II. Yeah,

I get it. I'm just saying like it. This was the last hurrah

for Lucas for me in these movies and I feel like he still

made kid movies. I still like it was still aimed at kids. It

was it was still a good kids movie where a kid is if there's

one criticism of of this movie, it is that the aiming at

children was just blatant. I mean totally unsubtle. Yeah,

right. I wasn't wasn't the wasn't the pod racing game

already marketed. I don't remember that. I don't that's

why I don't that's why I wasn't sure about because I love I

definitely love the that's a great question. William is

whether the pod racing game was already being marketed

whenever this movie came out. I feel like I don't think it was

because I think it was it wasn't in 64. Was it? Yeah, it

was was it in 64? So it's 64 would have been later. Okay.

Yeah, it would have been later. Yeah. They would be

watching John. You're definitely right because I knew

it and I now want a new pod racing game. So my least

favorite if I may proceed with the question post my least

favorite is right before the pod racing scene that gaggle of

little snot nose bastards of Anakin's friends. I know I know

screw those guys. I know that that scene has always bothered

me. So there's two scenes in this movie that really really

bother me. Whenever I mean whenever Obi Wan and Qui-Gon

meet Jar Jar on the planet and Obi Wan has to try to look

Jar Jar in the eyes because it's you know. Oh my god. That

is so bad. He looks so like way up and I don't know why it

sticks out in my mind, but every time I watch this movie,

I'm always like look down a little bit dude. Obi come on

look down a little bit. It's just off. It's just slightly

off. It's just slightly off and Qui-Gon's you know Liam Neeson

so tall that like his gaze is like perfect to look in this

guy's eyes, but but yeah Obi Wan's is always Ian McGregor's

just not he's looking up. He's not looking directly up that

always bothers me every time I watch this movie and that's

it.

The second one is the little Greedo like alien that comes out with like the,

it's not a lollipop, but it's like some kind of like drum bang thing.

Like you got Anakin working on this amazing starship or sorry,

this amazing pod racer, like all these crazy mechanics, you know, you got,

you know, lightning flashing through everything. Jar does get burned.

You see, he doesn't know what's going on. And Annie's over there,

just like dialing stuff in, ready to pod race.

And then you got his friends who are just kind of like, whatever, Annie,

how's it going? And then this guy's got like this drum thing in his hand.

And I'm like, what is that? What are you doing with that? Like, what,

what is, what is that drug? Like, is he the stupid kid out of all of them?

Yeah. He's the, he's the slow friend. He's the drum.

I'll get you shine by

and tap on your little drum thing. Well, I win this race for all of us.

It was just a weird seat. And Luke, I think,

I think one of Lucas's daughters is the girl with the braces,

which always sticks out to you. Cause like, it's amazing. Somebody,

yeah, she's got braces. Oh, I did not. I did not notice that.

Now we're looking at the little green kid with his little drum thing.

Now as the redheaded little snot bastard. Okay.

The, the lines are just so bad. Come on. What did you do? One take.

Is that it?

But part of it I think is, I think maybe those kids are like all known to Lucas

and he just want to get that scene in there to show mother. Probably.

I'm pretty positive. The girl embraces his daughter. Uh, she doesn't,

I don't think she even has a line or anything,

but I think all the other kids are probably like, like friends of friends or like,

you know, people in there. But anyways, I just thought that was,

I totally, totally agree with you. One of the worst hits of the movie.

When, when you're, you know, when you have slaves and their kids,

you want them to have nice teeth. So you're going to get some braces for it.

But so help me God, you're going to detonate that thing in their neck.

Oh my. I'll fix your teeth.

I object to everything being said right now.

And by the way, just to change subjects as quickly as possible.

I did have to look it up in Nintendo 64.

Apparently it was out before then. Cause the game came out in May 18th.

Oh, I am way off then. I'm sorry. No, I'm way off then.

Was it really out? Apparently.

Cause it said the game was launched on May 18th.

Yeah. Didn't Goldeneye come out in 97? I had, I had it in 64,

like two years before this movie. I have no idea when it came out.

I'm way off. I'm way off then. Yeah. Sorry.

Oh, now, now you're going to have to make me look that up because you know,

96 it came out. Yeah. No, you're right. Yeah.

It had been out for a while. Man, that machine's old.

Cause I remember Goldeneye like in high school and yeah, that would have been.

We are old people. We are very old people.

The only thing I've watched in the podcast where we look things up.

John's day. I think the only thing I played in 99 was Dreamcast.

I would like to take this time to point out that John is the oldest.

Again. I like these days.

I accept the mantle of wizened and wise one.

Where did we win the pride? For three, what? Three more, three more months.

John is the oldest. I like these moments.

Oh, then you catch up. Yeah. I forgot.

All right. So, so, so John, uh, was the, was the kid senior worse?

That was it? That was by far the worst?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Although you are correct.

The, the just slightly off stare of Obi-Wan is right up there.

It bothers me. It really bothers me.

Like, I don't know why that one scene, like every time I watch this movie,

that is the one thing I look at the entire time, ignore all dialogue, everything.

And I'm just like, Oh, we want to look down, look down a little bit, man.

I mean, it's right there. Just look down a little bit. Yeah. It's okay.

I mean, no movies are perfect. I get it. All right. So I gotta go back to,

I gotta get, you know, I gotta go back to me.

I gotta go back to what I did. Now. All it comes back to you.

It all comes back to me. There are some really bad dialogue in this movie.

And I'm not just talking about the necessarily bad dialogue.

I'm talking about the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the lines necessarily the lines it's the delivery of the lines.

Like there are some that I like, like upon rewatch, I was really cringing at like,

when I had a good news when, when, well, when Amidala is like,

let's, let's, let's work out a new treaty or what?

I forget the exact line is, but I'm just like, yeah, right.

That was so bad. It was, it was badly written. It was like, yeah.

She's trying to pull off the queen voice there.

She totally does. And it just doesn't, it just sounds absurd.

And I liked it. Well, and then it amazingly,

the one line that I probably would have said before I watched the movie was this

is pod racing, which I love to quote all the time. Classic.

And actually it actually, it actually fit in fairly well.

This is pod racing. I actually like pod racing. Yeah, I know.

But it was still, I actually enjoyed it. And, and also too,

whenever Anakin's flying out of the Trade Federation ship that he's just blown

up, there's like some line where the guy's like,

that's one of ours coming out of the middle. And I was like, Oh man,

I was like, that's not a good one either. Wait,

I want to hear the good news, William. Please tell me the good news.

Oh, then it gets worse. I know, I know. I know.

Second movie.

No, we'll talk about those second. Yeah. All right.

We'll talk about that later. But the delivery to, um,

on a lot of the lines too, by the actors themselves.

And they're not bad actors.

No, not at all. I think a lot of them are really good.

And I think this goes back to probably what we've been reading and watching, you know, comics and all that stuff that we talked about on the previous podcast.

I really enjoyed Liam Neeson a lot more in this movie. I really like I never really like I saw him as Qui-Gon Jinn.

But now I'm just like, man, he did a really good job. And even Ewan McGregor's got some like kind of flat lines coming out, which I was just going, oh, OK.

You know what? Here's the thing, though. So think about this. Princess Leia, right? Carrie Fisher. God rest her soul.

In Star Wars says the line, I should have recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.

That's a horrible line, but she says it correctly. Totally agree. Totally agree.

The terrible dialogue. But she but that is well, right. And you're right, because these are good actors.

It has to be that they just they they didn't push back. They just, you know, think, you know, we're in Star Wars and they just went along with whatever Lucas said.

Yeah. Well, and if you watch the interviews with with her and even, you know, I mean, Harrison Ford and all of them that George Lucas even told them, they even ask, you know, how do you want us to do this?

And he had no direction. He didn't know what to say. So they I wrote it. You read it.

Yeah. And so they would actually talk amongst themselves and figured it out.

And I don't think I can guess what you just said is is that they didn't do it. They just read it.

Well, and that makes it one more little facet in which Star Wars has been in the end a victim of its own success.

Yeah. Because back then it was it was what is this movie? You can you can make it work. You can have fun with it. You can work with it. Now there's so much weight.

You know, I think that, well, maybe, you know, the sign of the times to not to, you know, belittle more modern actors, but maybe.

Well, actors were more pressure was on him back then. I guess maybe there was a bigger deal to be a better actor back then.

So. So. So let's take your example. I think that's a great comment.

The thing is, is that most big blockbusters now, like look at the Marvel Universe, the story has been written.

The story's already there. Now, they're they're adding tons of different methods in which, you know, like they're having characters interact differently.

They were never like on an actual comic book page. But the overall arc of the story was there.

Whereas you got to think back with this. There was it was a clean slate. Like there was no there was tabula rasa like no.

They didn't know where the story was going to go. You know what I mean?

So I think there's a little bit difference in comparing it to like I always compare it to Marvel just because it's big money.

It's Disney+ owned. They put, you know, tons of really good actors and really good actresses in it.

They all know what they're going to do. But but but even like, you know, like, you know, the overall arc of the story and how it's kind of going to go.

Whereas Star Wars is not. It's it was all at this time all in Lucas's brain.

Well, no, OK, so he can't give you the direction. Who else is going to tell you? But but you know where it's going to go.

You know where it has to end up. Right. For Episode four. Yeah, you're correct.

They did. No one knew where this story was going. And you just had a general idea of what needed to be done here.

But you could know everything about the story, where it's going, where it needs to go and still have a movie like Thor Ragnarok, where it wasn't most of or a lot of that dialogue improvised.

Yeah. Yeah. It was improvising and very awesome. Like overall. So wait, let's go back, though.

We really know where two of these people are going. Right. Well, Jar Jar becomes like, well, no, it was a power minister.

You didn't know him before the movie started. I'm just saying, you know, where Obi Wan and you know where Anakin are going.

That's really it, though. I mean, there's not it's not like a like there is a there is.

I agree with you. And that does bring it back to Marvel a little bit. There is a total direction where they're going.

But I like if you bring if you bring Hayden Christensen on set to do something like you don't you can't direct him because you're like you're going to be a guy to suit, you know, who utters these really cool lines is really awesome and force jokes people.

But you can't be that guy now. Like like how do you direct that? Like how do you get that guy to get into character?

You know what I mean? Same thing with Obi Wan. I mean, the Obi Wan is totally different characters.

I mean, there are no I didn't get us like hate the movie when he did it like he hated Star Wars.

Oh, absolutely. Like he absolutely silly little space. So, yeah. So like so how do you get Obi Wan or Ewan McGregor to say, hey, you got to get to here.

But like, I don't I'll let you do it. You know what I mean? It seems to me.

So it seems like to me that it would be really hard to direct a movie if the guy that wrote it, the one guy that everything is in his brain can't give you direction.

Like it would be really hard because you can't make him happy. You know what I mean? Like it's a it's a very I don't it's a weird place for a movie, in my opinion, for the character actors.

Not saying they should not have had better delivery of the lines at all, because there are some like horrible line deliveries in this thing.

Like, but unless you have the director that can give you that direction about where your character should be, I don't think it's going to be a good movie.

That's hard. I mean, the best example of this is these actors.

You've seen these actors in so many other amazing things after these movies came out.

You know, or before or before.

Yeah, that's I'm saying it's like it's like these were that was

there are amazing actors. These are established actors.

Yeah, and they couldn't deliver the lines really well because they didn't know how to act.

And not it's not on them.

It's on the person giving them the character.

And I don't think the person gave him the character very well.

Well, that's why I'm wondering is like, you know, you look at like Harrison.

So I said, they had a lot to prove.

I mean, they they were I mean,

they wanted to go somewhere afterwards.

They were not established actors. Right.

Agreed. Yeah. Hungry.

Yep. I think that's the difference.

So they created the character.

They created they created the character to make it stick to them.

And you think about it, they could do the character.

And especially Harrison Ford.

I mean, how many how long did he play that character?

He played that same character in how many movies?

Well, from 77 to 2019.

No, 20, 20, 20, 15.

And not just in Star Wars either.

I mean, I mean, he was that character and, you know, the holiday special.

Yeah. No, I'm saying different movies.

Franchise. Yeah. Yeah.

No, no, no. I get it.

Like that was his persona like that.

That became right.

Yeah, it's just it's just weird.

The caliber of actors.

The dialogue is OK. It's not great, but the dialogue is OK.

But just the delivery on a lot of stuff.

It just seems so stale.

Like it just seems like.

I don't know, it was that that was probably what struck me

the most watching this last time was just really how

how bad the delivery was from really, really good actors.

Yeah, it gets a little much because you can almost hear in your head

how it could have been, you know, to be more fitting of of the moment.

And it's like, why didn't you just do one more take and get it right?

Well, see, and that's what amazes me is I'm not going back to the fact

that we've just been reading tons about Qui-Gon.

Liam Neeson does a very good job, though.

Even with like, you know, you got the spiel that everyone hates,

the midichlorian spiel.

He delivers it very, very well.

Even if you hate midichlorians, you hate the idea of them.

If you hate him explaining it to Anakin about I mean, like him, you know,

radioing, you know, we wanted to say, hey, give me a count and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I think he was drunk at the time.

Well, he still delivers the lines like like believably.

I think that's why the center drawl seemed kind of out of place,

because I think he actually did a pretty good job of delivering his lines.

But it was like delivering it to a wall.

I mean, he just I don't know.

Did you think he did an OK job?

I mean, yes, I thought he did a fine job.

Honestly, I can't criticize his performance.

Last scene. Last scene's great.

We'll be keeping an eye on you, Skywalker.

I mean, that's just like that. Perfect.

Oh, that was at the time in the theater. I love that.

Yeah, but when he was talking to the queen,

I felt like he was talking to a wall or cardboard.

Yeah, it totally was. Yeah, no, I totally. He was a season.

Well, maybe that was because, though, he's like supposed to be the season

politician that is trying to usurp and get the, you know, the throne

of what he's trying to get to.

And then and she's just kind of like, very well, Senator.

I'm glad to see you got your promotion.

It's just like, oh, my God, so horrible.

And it's like, and it's like, and it's like, Porbin is an amazing actress.

It's just like someone had to tell her to do that.

You know, and it's just like when you got when you got a job as a

an actress in a franchise that's going to make you tons of money, tons of fame.

You know, you do it. You do.

I suspect I'm not, you know, assuming, but you do what you're told.

And I feel like the direction had to be.

And it's Lucas. I mean, you know, you feel like it just had to be like really bad.

But in other ways, again, I like the kid aspect of it where he's,

you know, making sure kids have fun time in the movies, too.

So I that's a it's a tough movie.

It's a tough movie.

All right. So let's talk about

the appearance finally in the main franchise of Darth Maul.

So William, just give you a little background.

We've been reading a lot of comics, a lot of other stuff about Darth Maul here lately.

We think he or I think he's a badass.

I mean, he's he's a hunter for sure.

You listen to the previous podcast. You know, he's a hunter.

He is a absolute evil incarnation waiting to kill Jedi.

Is that what you get watching this movie?

Oh, yeah, I do. I get it.

It's good. It's good. It's a good. Yeah.

It's a good set for him. He's got some issues.

Well, the issue issue issues aside,

lobbying off people at the table says issues aside,

the scene where, you know, the red laser deal in his hand

the red laser deal in him and Qui-Gon where Qui-Gon sits down,

which is totally in character with Qui-Gon.

Like like as of now, after reading all that moment, that moment was it takes

on something it takes on something better in the movie.

Now, I really felt like it, like after reading all the stuff about Qui-Gon,

Master Prentice with the comics, like it really takes on a better thing to me now.

Like I'm like, dang, that's exactly what he would do.

Yeah, and he's getting better.

Malik is a Jolt of Fate.

He dies. I saw him. Oh, no, he's dead. He is completely dead.

But that being said, Darth Maul is absolutely dead. He's

beside himself with anger. No, no, no. Darth Maul. No, you

will. I trust you. Trust me, John. John. Um Darth Maul, you

will never see again. So, so good. So, I gotta I gotta talk

about the spray scene. The red scene. Yes, I did not notice

that the first time. I did. I remember sitting in the theater

and cuz I couldn't see it on the six forty by forty screen.

Oh, another Ryan was over. I saw another scene. I didn't see

before. Okay. So, so there was there was whenever whenever

Obi-Wan kills Darth Maul in the theater, I remember they

can't like I guess it was PG or PG. I think it was PG like

they couldn't get like you could tell that it was supposed

to be so kiddish that they had to show that he caught him but

they couldn't show it. You know what I mean? Like there wasn't

like a big huge thing of blood flying up or anything like

that. So, I think that the the uh the middle ground was the

red mist that you barely see whenever he chops him in half

and um I felt like it was a little bit more prevalent in

this version and maybe it's been altered since and cuz PG

is not what PG used to be. You know, I I don't know how it all

works but um I did notice the red mist this time. Like I was

like, oh, there's the red mist. He just cut him in half. Did

you guys really not there? No, I thought that was always

there. No, it's it's been there but I think it's been like less

prevalent and more prevalent at certain points because it had

to be to get the ratings. Oh, okay. But I did not notice any

difference. Yeah, I was just kind of amazed. I was like, oh,

there's the red mist. It's there. He chops it in half.

Clearly see it. I thought that the the whole reason there was

never any blood was it supposed to instantly uh cauterize

cauterize. Yeah.

They're not in space. I mean, they're in space. They're on a

they're on a plant there, right? But no, it's super

hard. Yeah, they burn. You burn. You seal the flesh. Oh, I see

what you're saying. Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah. Space does not

enter into this. Okay. I thought you're talking about

like in outer space itself. I see what you're saying. I guess

so. Yeah, I don't know. There's definitely a red mist. And

definitely a weird CGI scene in which he falls down a tube.

Awesome. It's an awesome scene. It it did not hold up well.

It's kind of a weird. It's kind of a weird bounce like it just

doesn't look. I don't know. Maybe maybe it's maybe it's the

4K that I was watching it on. I was just kind of like oh yeah.

Didn't hold up as well. That being said, I enjoyed seeing

the death scene. I mean, it's pretty good. One thing I was

annoyed by. This is completely weird but Darth Maul, this

hunter that we've been watching or following for you know

comic book after comic book, he knows how to kill people. I

mean, he's killed Rathgard. He's killed everything in the

sun. He's he's he's killed his first Jedi as we noticed like

last week in the comics and he's doing his little pace thing and

he doesn't notice Obi-Wan look over at Liam Neeson's

lightsaber. Yeah, that's like he's looking right at it and

you're like come on. It's Darth Maul. He shouldn't be able to

it wouldn't wouldn't Obi-Wan kind of be feeling it out with

The Force and shouldn't he be able to detect that I to

completely agree. It was like I never really know. I guess I

probably saw it. I just never really registered it whenever I

watched it in the movies previously, but yeah, I was

just kind of like he's literally looking at it and it's

shaking a little bit and I'm like come on Darth. Come on

Maul. You know it's coming. You know what's about to happen

and yeah, I mean yeah, that's that's a conceit. You have to

give it to the audience. I mean you have to show them what

you're about to do so I get it, but right that's true. Yeah. If

he just leapt up and grabbed a lightsaber and you know, he's

like where the lightsaber come from was that who's exactly

yeah. And I have to tell take the audience along with you so

that in that way. It's a conceit. Yeah. agree good work.

Good work. Conceit. Yeah. It's a screenwriting and see yeah.

That's what I was. I was assuming as well. Yeah that he

would. If he was actually doing that that Maul would have been

very aware of it. Okay. So I'm going to bring up the elephant

in the room. We've we've we've shied around it thus far that

glowy ball thing at the end where the glow doesn't quite

line up with the yeah, it is weird. It's like a really weird

lava lamp. I'm like why do we need a weird lava lamp in her

and his one? It's a plasma ball. Yeah. So that actually

was that believe it or not that actually was not it, but

yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. I felt like I

missed something like was that mentioned previously in the

movie and I missed it or no. It was just a mystery of the

plasma ball. Yeah. It's just a big plasma ball. It's like you

got what was the what was the old shop that used to be the

mall man? I forget the name of it. Oh Spencer.

Spencer's. Yeah, it's like a Spencer's electric lava ball.

It's like just Spencer's Sharper Image.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just hold it up.

You know, give it to your friendly neighbor.

Race. OK, Jar Jar.

So I am of the opinion that I understood

Jar Jar's place in the movie originally

to advocate for kids watching this movie

and enjoying it and having comic relief.

He was a little more annoying on this rewatch.

Yep. For me personally.

But he's still not like I get his place in the you know,

I get his place in the Star Wars universe.

You guys hate it. What role?

I mean, what? No, I don't.

Jar Jar's a genius.

He is. Stop.

He is totally comic relief for kids like he is.

This is a movie aimed at kids and he is the comic relief.

This is a this is a story with much gravitas.

And pretty weighty issues.

And you have to balance that with the comedy.

And therefore, Jar Jar had to be fairly buffoonish.

OK, so counterbalance. Yeah.

OK, so so to counterbalance, you have to balance it out with comedy.

I get that. Who is the comedy aimed at kids or adults?

Kids movie kids.

OK, that is a fundamental difference in.

And I'm trying not to go to the latter trilogy.

I'm trying not to go there.

But but that is a fundamental difference in the the first

three movies of who the comedy is aimed at than the last three movies.

I think a good analogy for me is take the movie Up.

Up is a horribly depressing movie for adults.

Agreed. But kids don't see it.

They think it's funny. Yeah.

And they see two different movies.

And it's amazing credit to the author of that movie that the adults

and children can enjoy two completely different movies.

Yeah. You guys remember Animaniacs?

Yes. They were also master.

That was a great version of that, what you just said to you.

Like it was a completely different show.

Most of you watched it as an adult versus if you watched it as a kid.

And and it wasn't I mean, I understood the concept of

and it's kind of what I defended him early on of Jar Jar.

And it wasn't until, you know, Shannon was, you know,

did like after school teaching at the time and how much her kids loved Jar Jar.

And I guess I said, well, I guess that was right then.

But but yeah, they saw a different story.

They saw a completely different movie than we did.

So I guess it's the same way with Up.

And when I saw Up and I'm like, this movie is horrible.

You know, not horrible as far as writing.

Yeah, it hurts. Depressing. Yes.

Well, you have to ask yourself, what role does Jar Jar play in the film?

Well, he's the one that ultimately gets him supreme power.

But in this film, in this film, he didn't even get the plasma ball in this film.

And what role does he play?

He's the bumbling fool, right? Yeah.

Well, he wipes out the joint army.

He helps. So he helps lead them through the tunnels.

They get to the other side.

Well, he introduces Padme to the Gungan.

He is the. Yeah, sure. He does.

He's like an Alingamad.

Like he like he. Yeah, that's that's a good that's good.

Yeah. He actually.

Ambassador.

Yeah, he would not they would not have known to go to the secret place

unless Jar Jar was with them.

All right.

OK, sure.

No, they when they go to when they go to talk to him, they try to.

I'm thinking more of a direct role in the final battle.

What role does he play there?

He bumbles about, right?

He's as a general, as from being promoted to a general.

He then screws everything up, releases all the shiny balls. Right.

But what does it do?

It like wipes out half the army. Yes.

That is Lucas telling us that there is no such thing as fate.

It's all just happenstance. Right.

He has The Force.

Oh, is that what it is?

Oh, no. It's like a disease. Yeah.

You know, he's comic relief.

Yeah. And not much more.

I mean, I. He's comic relief for kids.

That's the best way to say it.

He's the comic relief for kids.

And I certainly and I'm fine and I'm fine with that.

It doesn't bother me like like. Yeah.

I definitely had less of a tolerance for it.

This time I did the first time.

Yeah. And it was it was it stuck out to me.

And I try not to let it stick out to me, but it did.

I thought it was an insightful commentary

on the meaninglessness of existence.

I mean, when Qui-Gon grabs his tongue, that right there just.

That was good.

That life should implode on everything.

I mean, it just, you know, we should all be one big mass ball

about the size of a baseball.

I, I, yeah, I don't know. I.

Yeah, I don't know.

He annoyed me more, but I hated him more.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

I was ready to skip by his parts.

But yet...

What?

I was just ready to move on whenever he was having some kind of dialogue with anybody.

Yet, I understand his place in the greater Star Wars universe.

I would love to talk to somebody that's born in about 1987 or 88 right now.

That's a Star Wars fan.

I would love to hear your take on Jar Jar Binks.

That would put you 10 years old when this came out, right?

Or maybe 12 years old.

And see if it was a character that you really were like,

Hey, that's awesome.

It's kind of a fun universe.

Not necessarily this dark and brooding storyline.

I think ultimately they'll still tell you that R2-D2 and C-3PO end up becoming that comic relief.

So, alright. We got to touch on the R2 award scene.

That was so gratuitous. Even back then I thought it was gratuitous.

Yep.

And now it's just even worse gratuitous.

Makes no sense.

Yeah. It's just so injecting nostalgia that you don't need it.

A scene that I never noticed before, I guess I've always loved in the video games,

there's different Jedi powers.

The Jedi Speed and probably the scene where they're being attacked by the battle droids.

And they run off very, very quickly in the video game.

What do you call that?

Jedi Speed or speed something. I don't know.

Force speed.

Force speed.

Yeah, I think it's been in video games and actually called something in the video games.

Yeah. But I had never noticed that before.

Was that originally in the movie?

That was absolutely in the movie.

And it bothered me at the time because...

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

So the scene immediately after that scene where they're jumping down

and they use force speed again when they're jumping down.

No, they don't. That's called gravity.

No, this is way faster than gravity. This is way faster than gravity.

Go back and look at the scene immediately after that when they jump out of the little...

It's like a big panning scene where they're in the hangar.

I know the scene you're talking about. I can picture it in my mind.

It does look weird.

It is not. It is another weird looking scene to me.

It looks weird because it's digital.

You think that's force speed? You think they use force speed to slam themselves into the deck?

Yeah, they're trying to not get seen. Yes, I agree. It's force speed.

Alright, so name another time when they use it then, Mr. Big Man.

They could. Obi-Wan could have used it at the end of the movie when he wanted to get to Qui-Gon Jinn.

That would be the most obvious example, wouldn't it?

Beat the little laser door thingies.

I mean, we know the laser door things are working like that.

And you know you got The Force speed, but maybe he was keeping it all in so he could...

He could have force sped himself up to behind Darth Maul's back. Boom!

Light sword right out of your chest. Where'd that come from?

I didn't even think about that.

So they establish that they do have force speed, which I'd never noticed before until we were watching.

Yet he doesn't use it then.

Or any other time ever.

That was a critique when the movie came out. I remember people talking about that.

Okay, I had never noticed that.

I think in the movie, Lucas and the CGI overdid that initial jump out of the Droidica's fire ring range.

You know what I mean?

It is so quick in the movie that you're like, why aren't they doing that everywhere?

All the time, yeah.

It's a very jarring exit.

Because it pans down the hallway and they're at the very end of the hallway.

Yep.

And it's one of those things where you're like, holy crap, they have that power?

Why are they not using that all the time?

I remember people calling that a critique.

Why didn't Obi-Wan use it at the end scene?

That kind of thing.

Or why do they not use it when they're sword fighting?

Why do they not use that way more?

And never using the original three movies.

I think I can think of it as a tribute to the video games that came out before that.

Maybe.

Yeah, that's a good...

Yeah, I don't know.

That's a really good point.

That's a reason.

That's a crappy reason, but it's a reason.

Well, I'm just saying, where did Lucas get the idea that he wanted to use it in that specific scene?

And no other.

Because now that you think, I'm thinking back to any movie.

Well, but that happens all the time.

It could be as simple as, let's do something cool to show...

Because we're showing how bad the Jedi are, right?

This is our first...

You've got to remember, this is after how many years?

15 years.

Here are the Jedi, and they are bad mofos.

So this just plays into that.

So many writers just hate it.

You get the jump.

Just drop it.

You get the jump onto the ship, too, though.

You and I have talked about with Master and Apprentice how they have these speed runs,

and they have these kind of jumps into ships.

Qui-Gon does that when he's fighting Maul the original time, the very first time in the desert.

He jumps up into a ship, and you're like, well, why can't Maul just jump up there?

Oh, exactly.

I was going to bring that up.

I don't know if they've mentioned it in the comics or not, but certainly the books and stuff have mentioned it.

And I think through, well, we haven't talked about it yet.

Darth Maul is a Jedi Padawan and is also knows as Snips.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was a Jedi.

Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi.

Qui-Gon was a Jedi.

Darth Vader was a Jedi.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was a Jedi.

Beyond the pod race something that improved significantly upon re-watch.

What was one scene that you were like, okay that was better than I remember it?

Probably just opening scene as well. I can't think of anything else.

I don't know what mine would be other than the pod racing scene.

I think that last scene, I remember at the end of the movie, it's kind of an award scene and everyone is happy celebrating something happening.

Obi-Wan Kenobi gets in front of all the Jedi, which is symbolic because he's like, I'm in front of the Jedi.

He gets in front of the Jedi and he gets off the ship and he's like, Anakin we'll be keeping up with you.

The whole funeral scene where Mace looks over at Yoda and says, which did we kill? The master or the apprentice for the Sith.

I didn't take the entire depth of the scene until that.

That's true and I missed a lot of that because of that really awkward reading of always two there are, Master and Apprentice.

Which did we kill? The Master or the Apprentice?

I don't think I can guess.

A mob stuck up your butt.

I'm just saying they could have let him out of his character a little bit more.

We won't talk about the next movies, but they kind of let him do a little bit.

Everybody was so tempered. All the actors and actresses in this movie were so tempered.

That's a good way to put it.

And I don't understand if it was directionally they were tempered,

or they were just so nervous about being in such a huge franchise that it had the weight on their shoulders.

That's my point. That's what I'm saying. They were hindered.

They had no freedom.

You're saying the success of Star Wars hindered their acting ability. I agree with that.

The weight of the franchise.

Or it was Lucas.

Both.

Wait, I present a third opinion, third option.

What if Lucas wanted you to not like Jedi?

What if he wanted you to think that they actually deserved what was going to happen to them?

That's a good...

I would not have entertained that before I have read what I've read now.

They're pompous a**holes.

Yeah, they're in the wrong place right now.

And John, you and I have talked about this with Yoda.

He's such an a**. He's so wrong.

And one thing I wanted to bring up too, and I actually have this in my notes.

There's the end scene where he's telling Obi-Wan that he can train Anakin.

And he's doing his weird cane thing, or it's weird CGI, where he's walking back and forth across the floor.

And he says, and this is the key,

I do not agree with you training Anakin.

Like he says that. Clouded he is. I can't see where he's going to go.

And then immediately after Obi-Wan says, well I promised Qui-Gon that I would do it,

he says, well the council says that you can.

And it's very interesting to me because I never noticed that before.

That Yoda specifically is saying he doesn't agree with it.

And then he's saying, okay, the council's already talked about it.

Well, that's a perfectly valid reading.

I took that more as he was speaking on behalf of the council.

And because of what Obi-Wan said, he went along with it.

Okay, well, the council says you can do it.

No, he specifically says I do not agree.

Yes, right.

And that's where I'm just kind of like...

Your reading is better. I like your reading more.

Yeah, it's just more like he's saying, I don't give a...

Like everybody else in the council was fine with it.

I don't like it because I can't see what's going on.

Are you saying that because of the scene from Master and Apprentice?

Yes, exactly.

Well, then that's a compliment to Master and Apprentice.

Say what?

That's a compliment for Master and Apprentice because I think that's what she's doing.

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

And I think that she's playing on that scene specifically.

And I think that Yoda can't...

Like Yoda's like so frazzled that he doesn't know what's going on.

He knows something's bad.

He knows something that they don't know is happening.

Like the Sith from thousands of years has now shown up.

And he can't tell what's going on.

And I think he is trying to like...

You know like in a work setting when you have a boss that just is so frazzled

that they latch onto something and just go crazy with it?

I think he's going crazy with the fact that he doesn't know what's going on,

so he's saying no to something.

And I think that he's like just this...

He doesn't know what's going on. He's freaking out.

He's grasping for whatever control he can get.

Exactly.

I like that point.

What do I have power over?

And the thing that I have power over is saying you can't let this kid become your Padawan.

And then Obi-Wan's like, well, I kind of promised Qui-Gon I'd do it,

so I'm going to leave your ass.

He's the tyrant of the break room. Yeah. Got it.

I'm going to do it, even if you don't want me to.

And then Yoda's like, fine. The council already agreed.

That's probably the neatest thing about the prequel trilogy, in my opinion.

And reading the lore up until this point, with me, with Yoda,

you think of Yoda as this wizened man that knows everything about it in 4, 5, and 6.

He's just a guy that's like, whoa, what's going on? I have no control over any of this.

What can I do? He doesn't know what's going on.

Curious, Jon, I'm assuming Eric, you have, the last season just came out.

I guess they waited, what, 10 years? But Jon, have you watched any of The Clone Wars?

No, I have not. And we're going to, William, we're going to.

In fairness, it has been so long since I watched it, I want to re-watch it with you guys.

Okay, we may get you back on some of the shows, because there's going to be a lot of them.

You better.

There's a bunch of Clone Wars shows.

But we've got to be careful, because hopefully we're taking people on this journey with us,

or on this project with us, that are in the same place we are, that we don't know what's going to go on later.

So we're trying to, because William, you know so much about what's going on in the universe, like, later on.

So we've got to kind of make sure that we don't get ahead of ourselves chronologically.

I completely understand. Yeah, The Clone Wars.

Don't tell us your secrets, William.

Oh man, I just.

I know you have cool stuff to tell us, I can tell, like, it's bleeding through my microphone.

I have no video of you right now, and I know it's bleeding.

I just don't remember.

I know you're just waiting to tell us stuff, but we can't.

I don't remember so much of it, I just remember The Clone Wars being so much cooler than most of the movies.

As far as doing it, I don't say cooler, I say it does a better job of explaining things.

Yeah, and to be fair, with movies you have, you know, whatever, the two hours.

Exactly.

And you're not just explaining to fanboys like us, you're explaining to the general public and new kids that are wanting to get into the series.

So you have a lot of different audiences that you have to prepare for, and that type of situation.

Alright, so playing off of that, if this, this is Episode one, right?

Episode one, The Phantom Menace.

What if, here's a wonder for you, what if this truly had been Episode one?

This franchise would not be anywhere near what it is today.

Exactly.

At all. At all.

So, I don't think, and I was born in 1979, there is no, I think it is really hard to say the impact of Star Trek and Star Wars, and science fiction as a whole, and the writers of the 70s, on stories that become mainstream movies, TV, you know, whatever.

You don't get that, like, you know, we see, everything's a rehash now, like everything, there's no, there are some good, like Christopher Nolan, we talked about him on the last podcast, like there are stories out there that are, you know, completely amazing and brand new out of this world.

But had this movie been the very first Star Wars movie, I debate whether you'd have a second.

Well, it's a farcical premise because he would not have had the backing to make a movie like this, you know, no studio would have put the money for this.

And let's be honest with you, George Lucas at the time that he created this movie, or wrote this movie, was already well off, he could live the rest of his life not worrying about anything.

Yeah, he made a couple of coins.

Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of doubloons, but I'm just saying, like, he didn't, you know, there was no, there was no worry about where my next meal is coming from, which I think there was at the beginning of Star Wars.

Which made a better movie.

I totally agree. And I say the same thing with Harry Potter, like Rowling, like she was, you know, not destitute, but she was, you know, she didn't have a lot of money, she had kids that she had to feed.

And I think that there's a story that comes from, or there's chances that you take with a story when you come from something where you really need something.

And, you know, I'm not saying Lucas did, you know, fanservice, I'm not saying Lucas did anything with episodes one through three, but I'm just saying that it's more of a, there's a hunger where it comes from.

Well, that's a well established trope, right? No good story comes from comfort. There must be suffering, there must be strife.

I don't agree with that. I think that you can be somebody that is, you can be somebody that is well off, that doesn't worry about their career and still make a great story.

Name six examples.

Chris Nolan, Tenet.

You haven't even seen that yet.

I'm just saying though that there are people out there that are writing really, really good stories and stuff that are not hunger driven.

They're established. You can still write a good story. Like what was, when C.S. Lewis wrote Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, was that after like screw tape letters and all that kind of stuff?

I think it was. I think it was an already established...

I think he was a very accomplished writer and he came up with that.

Tolkien was not. I think Tolkien, when he did Lord of the Rings, had a little bit of that hunger, like he was younger.

Because he had come back from the war. I'm trying to think of other big stories that I'm like, oh, that was great.

I think you'd put a lot of the sci-fi writers like Asimov in them.

So you've got to remember though, Asimov had like magazine things.

He had lots of stuff going on when he wrote really good stuff.

He was successful just being an astrophysicist.

He's kind of in a category of all by himself.

I mean, he typed in 90 words a minute. He had just nonstop fountain of ideas and great stories.

He's all by himself over there.

So I mentioned it earlier and I want to bring it back up because I think it was a very big sticking point with a lot of people when the movie came out.

But Sleeping Jedi lie, I'm just saying.

Midichlorians.

You said the M word.

Yeah, I said the M word. I personally enjoy it.

It's a way to quantify your status as a Jedi.

It raises way too many questions.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

It's a way to quantify your status as a Jedi compared to other Jedi.

Yeah, so let's harvest the midichlorians from your blood, stick them in my blood, now who's the master?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

We can build ships that have lasers that deflect other lasers.

We can do all that stuff, but there's nobody that says we can do anything about midichlorians.

So the problem with midichlorians.

What if he filter out the midichlorians? Are you no longer a Jedi?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

What is the problem? Is it the yardstick?

Is it the ability to be able to compare the Jedi with other Jedi?

It's pulling out the curtain on the guy behind the great wizard.

The Force was meant to be a mysterious force.

Look at the name. The Force?

I mean, there's no explanation there.

And there shouldn't be.

What about, yeah, and there's certain things that don't even have blood.

I mean, I don't understand how it ties into blood.

That's a, I've never actually thought about that in particular, but yes.

Yeah, I haven't either. That's actually a pretty good one.

Things that don't have blood.

Now that you say that, I'm like, does everything have blood?

Like does the little, little Greedo kid with the lollipop thing and Anakin's thing,

the little drum thing, does he have blood?

I don't know. That's a good question.

That's, that actually is a really good question.

I, yeah, that's got to be, you're saying that with, with midichlorians,

there has to be a universal property of blood and living things.

And now that you say that, I'm like, yeah, that kind of does allude to that.

And that speaks back to the Jedi are lost.

They think that these midichlorians explain The Force and they're dead wrong.

Yes. Yes. That's actually a good point.

Maybe that's the whole thing. It goes back to them being pompous.

They don't know what they're talking about.

That gets back to, yeah, Lucas wants you to see how the Jedi are.

I think we can all agree that based on the lore up until this point,

based on this movie, the Jedi are way far out there where they should be.

They are completely pompous.

Like they are, they are, they are, they are missing everything.

In this time, at this point, how long have the Sith been gone?

A millennium.

Is that a thousand years? Yeah. I keep wanting to say 2000, but I think you're right.

So they've had nothing serious to oppose them for that long.

Of course you atrophy.

And you start thinking the little microscopic bacteria in your blood explain everything.

Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. What if they are right though?

Let's go to the devil's advocate here.

What if they are right and that does determine the Jedi?

I mean, they did say that he was off the charts and he is Darth Vader and he does bring balance to The Force.

There's just too many questions. It just raises way too many questions.

Like the no blood question, like the I'm going to harvest your midichlorians and become a Jedi Master.

I like the no blood question.

Why don't you like to harvest the midichlorians from your blood? What's wrong with that?

I don't know.

We can measure them, but we can't. This is all getting...

Can you kill them? Can you kill those little guys?

Immaculate conception.

Yeah, that's another thing we haven't brought up. The immaculate conception.

Oh, she's lying. Come on.

No, stop.

Oh my God.

They all lie. Everybody lies.

Stop. I don't know.

You know, if there's one part that you can really tell Lucas forced into this thing, that's it.

That is really shoving. Yeah, that's shoving it right in your face.

Chosen one. Chosen one right here.

Yeah, there's just the whole... Yeah, that's... Yeah, that's... It's never really been a problem for me because I understand where he's going to go in the future.

And maybe that's the advantage of making four, five and six at the time that they did.

But still, I'm just always kind of like, golly, the no blood question.

What if Jesus was a bad guy?

Yeah, yeah.

Or what if he's bad at the last point?

Dark Jesus.

It's just like, man, what do I... Yeah.

R2-D2 was a Jedi Padawan and is also knowns as Snips.

Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi Padawan and is also knowns as Snips.

R2-D2 was a Jedi Padawan and is also knowns as Snips.

Jesus Negra

Star Wars

Fan Edit

Lucas

Lucas

Black Hawk Down

Luke Skywalker was a Jedi.

It was a good movie.

We all rated it above 70, didn't we?

In the eyes of people that have gone out of their way to read other Star Wars stuff and taken their own personal time, recreational time, to step away and actually read other Star Wars stuff, we all still think it's a pretty good movie.

I would say that it was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

Agreed. And I'm interested when we get to 789, when we get to other movies, when we get to 2, what do we think of 1 compared to those movies?

I think in the end, we're going to be pretty impressed with 1 compared to everything else.

It's got the most Jar Jar in it, so it's already got that going for it, which is nice.

It's binges. It is so binges-y it's not even funny.

So 2 may end up being the one that's most divisive then.

I think based on this crowd, 3 is going to be pretty divisive.

Think so? Nah.

But we'll see. We'll see. We'll talk about that later.

Later podcasts, we have tons of stuff coming up.

Who sucks?

2 is going to be an interesting...

Quick question, are we going to watch Clone Wars in between 2 and 3?

No. So, William, you may not know about the podcast, but I'll send you the list of where we're going next.

So we've got John and I, I have Obi-Wan and Anakin for a comic series, which I'm really excited about.

It's a great comic series.

We have the Queen's Shadow book, we have the Age of the Republic one-off episodes,

and we have that really weird Doku Jedi Loss.

William, we'll probably have you back on for the Doku Jedi Loss,

because we were talking about the audio dramas earlier, and it's a pure audio drama.

So we'll probably get you back on for that.

And then we have one weird Age of the Republic comic, and then we have Star Wars Episode 2.

So Episode 2 is not far away. We're probably talking 2 or 3 podcasts away.

And then we hit Clone Wars.

Clone Wars.

Goodness gracious, we have a lot of Clone Wars to go before we get to the third movie.

Yeah.

So there's a lot.

What, 6 seasons?

Yeah, like 4 or 5 seasons.

Oh my god.

No, John, I'm not joking around. It is going to be a long time before we get to the third movie.

Oh yeah. You're going to love it.

William, we may have you in for some of those Clone Wars episodes also, because that's a long stretch.

I get bored easily.

You won't get bored, Will.

Well, you won't get bored. Yeah, like I said, The Clone Wars was a good series, so it'll be good.

So thanks for joining us about the first podcast that we did a movie, Phantom Menace.

Next week we're doing Obi-Wan and Anakin comic book series, which is a 6 series arc,

which we'll probably break into 2 podcasts.

One podcast for the first 3 books, and one podcast for the second 3 books.

Again, William, thank you for joining us. I appreciate it. For the movie podcast, we're probably going to have you in for the audio dramas also.

Thank you for having me.

Awesome. We'll see you guys next week, and stay safe.

This is the 11 Parsecs Podcast, episode number 6.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to subscribe and leave us a good review.

Find us at 11parsecs.com and Discord.

I'm Jonathan Smith with Eric Thompson and that Phantom Ace of a Man, William Buchanan.

Thank you for joining us.