“You were right about one thing, Master. The negotiations were short.”

After having to land on a mysterious planet, Jedi masters Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, along with Queen Amidala of the planet Naboo and her entourage, find themselves having to repair their ship in order to get back to their home planet of Coruscant, where Queen Amidala plans to convince the senate to restore peace to her home. However, Qui-Gon finds a mysterious boy, Anakin Skywalker, who may or may not be the prophesied chosen one. Meanwhile, there is a rising dark presence that hints at the return of the Sith, the darker side of the Jedi.

And to be fair, while the actual premise of The Phantom Menace, the one that’s tied to the opening crawl, isn’t exactly the most interesting, I do find the story to be quite interesting. I think adding this layer of Anakin being the chosen one creates bigger stakes for the original trilogy, and honestly makes it even better than it already was. I also really like pretty much everything about the story, sort of aside from the politics, which I’ll get into later.

The reason I like the story simply comes down to what it does for the overall worldbuilding and lore of the Star Wars universe. George Lucas already created this incredible world full of so many possibilities for different types of stories, and The Phantom Menace completely capitalized on that by making that even moreso. This film might honestly be even more impressive when it comes to expanding the galaxy than any of the other films in the entire franchise. The different planets are all incredibly unique and full of so many different lifeforms and designs, especially Coruscant. My favorite addition to the lore, however, is how Lucas expanded the so-called mythos of the Jedi and Sith (the Sith weren’t even called the Sith until the release of this movie, by the way) by giving them an even more interesting past than the original trilogy sort of hinted at. I know a lot of people don’t like the whole idea of midichlorians, which I won’t spoil just in case you somehow haven’t seen it, but I’ve grown to appreciate the idea of it overall.

Without a doubt, one of the things that really holds this movie together is our two main leads, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, especially Qui-Gon Jinn. Qui-Gon Jinn is this very interesting Jedi master, whom we haven’t really seen anyone like before or since. He’s insanely wise, but the most humble of Jedi, making the force almost more of a faith for him than the other Jedi, which is why he isn’t even on the council. Also, being played by Liam Neeson, one of the greats, definitely helps. When it comes to Obi-Wan, Ewan McGregor was an absolutely perfect casting choice to succeed Alec Guinness. He isn’t in the movie a ton to be honest, but really stands out, especially by the end.

One thing I know the prequel trilogy gets a lot of slack for is the visual effects. I get that these films, especially the two that succeed this one, have some of the heaviest usage of CGI that movies have really ever had, but as a nerd, I really love and appreciate what they did for the industry, and honestly, still think they really hold up for the most part. For The Phantom Menace specifically, since it was the first of these three movies, I think it’s pretty safe to say that it was the most revolutionary when it comes to this area of film. As much as people don’t like Jar Jar Binks, which I completely understand, he was still the very first three-dimensional computer-generated character to interact with humans onscreen, so he still has his place in history. Everything that I said about the worldbuilding also applies to the visuals.

This movie also undoubtedly has some of the best action sequences in the entire franchise, two in particular, and one of which was thanks to the revolutionary CGI. The pod race is pure spectacle from start to finish, and honestly, still one of the most impressive things visually that I’ve ever seen. Even people who say that The Phantom Menace looks bad wouldn’t say that the pod race sequence does, because it is honestly so pitch-perfect in look and action. It’s an absolute adrenaline rush from start to finish. This was also when lightsaber duels really started to take a massive leap, mainly because Lucas really wanted to show how good the Jedi were in their prime. The lightsaber duel at the end is still one of the best in the entire franchise, and when it comes to pure choreography, arguably the very best. The original music track of “Duel of the Fates” also helps; another thing quite literally everyone agrees on is fantastic.

Now, as much as I like this first film in the prequel trilogy, it is absolutely not without its problems. Firstly, there is simply just way too much going on in the story department. As stated previously, I love all of the new worldbuilding and such, but there was arguably a little bit too much. I can easily see this being a bit of an overwhelming watch for first timers, though I’m so used to it that it doesn’t bother me. The big thing that does bother me, however, would have to be the very much overstuffed third act. Lucas decided to take the third act of Return of the Jedi, which had three battles going on at once, and up it to four battles at once, which even the idea of that sounds kind of crazy. In execution, really only two of the four of them are actually interesting to me, and both of them take place in the Naboo palace. The other two are the one with Jar Jar and the space battle, and the one with Jar Jar isn’t very interesting for obvious reasons, and the space battle still pushes my believability quite a bit, and comes off as a little cheesy to me to this day.

I’m also not really a huge fan of the politics, either. Don’t get me wrong, I love politics in Star Wars (not real-life politics but the franchise’s politics), but when your opening crawl states that the whole premise of your Star Wars movie is revolved around politics, it kind of gets off on a bad start (easily the weakest opening crawl of the original six movie saga). The politics in this franchise overall are very interesting, but I’ve never found the ones in this particular movie to be. A big chunk of the middle act is devoted to a political divide, and, eventually election, and quite frankly, it’s just not very interesting and easily the weakest part of the movie.

While I think that Episode I is still the weakest movie of the original saga, I do think that it is still a very good film. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but similar to the rest of the prequels (even more so with the other two), these films simply have way too many highs for me to really even care enough about the lows to not love them, if that makes any sense.