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Which film was worse...The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones?

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Neff

Member
Ah yes, the DCEU defense.

I don't know what this is.

Honestly, the only ambiguous parts are Anakin's parentage in TPM (later strongly hinted to be directly created by
Sidious
), and the identity of Sifo Dyas, who was basically a fall guy.

The fact that the moral motivations behind the PT's opposing forces are muddied is entirely deliberate- "There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere." And yet, it's easy to see who is being duped and why, like I said, if you pay attention. It's all in the movies.

That's how bad those films where. Lucas thought it was credible to put this utter moron in charge for fuck sake. Jesus H Christ.

Isn't that kind of the point? Even an idiot can get into politics, especially if they're a decorated war hero. And they can make catastrophic mistakes, even if they think they're doing the right thing.
 
That's because Padme was a freak.

FAw0iMP.gif

I'm laughing WAY harder at this than I should be.
 

Morat

Banned
Phantom Menace had Duel of Fates. Attack of the Clones had depressing monologues about sand.

True, TPM had better music. Bad as AOTC was, I'll take the cringey badly acted love story over obnoxious child Anakin. Both films were terrible in different ways.
 
To paraphrase RLM: "Heroes on both sides?" How the fuck does an army of soulless, emotionless robots even have "heroes?" It would've been cool if we met some of these so-called robot heroes, but no, once again Lucas only tells, and doesn't show.
 
I never at all understood the hate for Child Anakin actually. He was cool talented, and I thought it made sense that Darth Vader was a regular nice kid. Hayden Christenson's Anakin on the other hand... I can't think of any point I liked him and all his teenage angst and just plain stupidity and mental weakness.


Anyways, yeah as my answer should be obvious from that alone - Clones is easily the worst, and I'd say THE worst of all. A number of time I try to watch it I just completely fall asleep, it's an uninteresting bore. The only part I liked was chasing around Jango Fett, because my Mandalorian bias.

Revenge of the Sith is right between the two. Although it's probably the most engaging of the three, it's the one that just makes you the maddest. Particularly with Anakin having the absolute worst teen logic ever and the flick of the switch change to killing Younglings and I BELIEVE THE JEDI ARE EVIL. Just so frustrating, the whole prequel trilogy's goal was to show Anakin changing to the dark side and they just completely dropped the ball on it.
 
Phantom Menace is the only one that is literally unnecessary. It is completely unneeded as a film. AOTC is awful but there's shit that happens that actually adds to star wars

Actually Which movie has the fucking diner scene in it because that one is the worst, full stop
 

sphagnum

Banned
AotC is worse because its execution is all off. TPM is fun, despite dragging a little on Tatooine. AotC is literally difficult to watch during any Anakin/Padme scenes.
 

Surfinn

Member
Phantom Menace is the only one that is literally unnecessary. It is completely unneeded as a film. AOTC is awful but there's shit that happens that actually adds to star wars

Actually Which movie has the fucking diner scene in it because that one is the worst, full stop
That's AToC. My God I forgot. Talk about immersion breaking..
 

JB1981

Member
They are both so effing bad but I guess if I was forced to choose I would say Attack of the Clones is actually worse
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Phantom Menace is actually a fun kids movie. Some great imagery there. It kind of reminds me of some juvenile anime. If you can turn your brain off, you might have a good time.

Attack of the Clones is a cringe machine. I feel embarassed for everyone on screen and I feel embarassed watching it. The Anakin-Padme romance might be the worst ever committed to film (er, digital). The Obi Wan detective plot is a dreary fetch quest where he goes from embarrassing character to embarrassing character and eventually ends up at a conclusion that didn't even justify a mystery plot. Dreadful.
 

Fury451

Banned
I really never got the people that thought Clones was worse.

Phantom had a terrible kid actor, Jar Jar Binks, boring dialogue, nonsensical plot, and rather terrible action to top it off.

Clones was just as bad, but it wasn't quite as dull at least.

Then again I haven't seen either film in close to a decade
 

Redd

Member
Clones was farrrrrrr worse. Hamed in Love Story and a crappy 1 minute yoda fight. Phantom Menace gets too much hate imo.
 

Neff

Member
To paraphrase RLM: "Heroes on both sides?" How the fuck does an army of soulless, emotionless robots even have "heroes?" It would've been cool if we met some of these so-called robot heroes, but no, once again Lucas only tells, and doesn't show.

I should know better than to quote a post referencing RLM, but Grievous sincerely believed the Jedi were at fault for enabling and even endorsing the Senate's wrongdoing and corruption, and sought to stop it. Count Dooku likewise. Other systems left the Republic and joined the Seperatists.

No side in the Clone war is purely virtuous, and no side is wholly malign. It all depends on perspective, or even a 'certain point of view' as the OT stated. Of course, none of it mattered. Everyone was played like a chump to suit Sidious' Machiavellian ends.

The PT movies are perfect examples of Lucas and Walter Murch's shared 'cubist' theory, where viewpoints are considered from all sides.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Clones is worse, but at the time I actually thought it was an improvement. Self delusion.
I did too. We all make mistakes.

At the time, AOTC gave us what we thought we were missing in TPM... "Darkness" and serious lightsaber battles and shit.

But then the dust settled....
 

Ennosuke

Member
I like them all and Attack of the Clones had pontential from a story perspective, but the execution is bad. Kind of the opposite of TFA, where the execution is great, but the story is meh.
 

Schlorgan

Member
Nah bro. Say what you will about the film, but it at least has likable characters and a compelling villain with clear motives and characterization, things the prequels generally lack.

Nah bro, you gotta be more edgy. Jurassic Park 3 was way better than Jurassic World, Star Trek Nemesis was way better than Star Trek Beyond and the Star Wars PT was way better than The Force Awakens.

/s
 
Attack of the Clones had stuff I really liked but as "whole" product it was not as good as Phantom Menace. I actually don't have that big of a beef with Episode 1 as most people do.
 
Nah bro, you gotta be more edgy. Jurassic Park 3 was way better than Jurassic World, Star Trek Nemesis was way better than Star Trek Beyond and the Star Wars PT was way better than The Force Awakens.

/s

Is it sad that I actually do prefer JP3 to JW? I mean, they're both bad IMO, and both are self-aware that they're basically modern B-movies, but at least JP3 is mercifully short and fun, while JW drags on for far too long and is kinda boring.
 
Clones is worse, but at the time I actually thought it was an improvement. Self delusion.

At the time, I thought the same

But at the time, I was like 11 years old, so the fuck did I know.

I rewatched them all recently before TFA. Its actually worse than I remembered. Its really amazing how George honestly thought he was making space Gone with the Wind. Hayden Christensen's performance is like he just figured out the whole "walking and talking" thing on set. And Natalie Portman is, honestly, actually worse!

He has no facility with actors. Absolutely none.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
There's a Simpsons gif for everything.
DG1RsXS.gif
^ Jesus h christ...that is so specific.

Lol at people suggesting that TFW is a)a bad film by any measure of film critique and b)even remotely as awful to watch as any of the prequels.

Attack of the Clones is like a power fantasy for every awkward and creepy teen ever, Anakin is a self insert edgy kid who's creepy as fuck, (even says m'lady), yet hangs out with a woman wearing borderline lingerie. It's such a bad film.
 

joms5

Member
The Phantom Menace always.

The movies got slightly more tolerable. AOTC is still fuckin awful. But nowhere near TPM.
 

Schlorgan

Member
Is it sad that I actually do prefer JP3 to JW? I mean, they're both bad IMO, and both are self-aware that they're basically modern B-movies, but at least JP3 is mercifully short and fun, while JW drags on for far too long and is kinda boring.
I like a lot of the practical effects in JP3, but that script is awful, even worse than JW. XD
 
Are there are people that seriously hate The Force Awakens more than the prequels or would rather watch the prequels over TFA? Just curious because the gap in the quality is simply immense, even if one was disappointed by the movie.

Best wishes.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Attack of the Clones. It's bad while simultaneously being extremely forgettable. It's like Suicide Squad and Thor 2 had a baby, went back in time and dropped that child in 2002, and then a young Looper raised it to maturity.

The only thing I remember about Attack of the Clones is Natalie Portman's midriff and the Yoda fight scene. The former because she's is amazing and the latter because I remember people laughing during the screening I was in.
 

Ogodei

Member
I'd put Attack down at the bottom of all seven movies so far. The Phantom Menace definitely feels the most unnecessary of any of the movies, but it also feels more like the original trilogy structurally and this helps its cause, it's still largely an adventure story out on the fringes of the galaxy with only a bit of the Coruscant kind of Beltway Drama (to put it in American political parlance), Clones was overwrought and trying to be too serious. Revenge was also overwrought but the stakes were high enough that it ended up working (i'd put Revenge over ANH, even though ANH is by far the more influential movie, it's also the only Star Wars movie to really show its age and this works against it). Revenge was also dragged up by Palpatine's delightful scenery-chewing, and he was still hiding out in Attack.
 
Are there are people that seriously hate The Force Awakens more than the prequels or would rather watch the prequels over TFA? Just curious because the gap in the quality is simply immense, even if one was disappointed by the movie.

Best wishes.

Yeah pretty much lol
 

Shaanyboi

Banned
Attack of the Clones. Anakin murders a village, and Padme still wants to bone him? Not to mention all his stalkerish advances. It's the creepiest most nonsensical romance ever put to film.
 

xealo

Member
I saw all 7 films again earlier this year after buying a blu ray collection + TFA on disc.
With that recent perspective in mind, id say attack of the clones is much worse. The CGI have aged badly in both, but the absolutely good awful puppy love dialogue in Aotc was as hard to watch as ever.
George Lucas have no idea how to write dialogue that feels natural, especially in moments meant to be intimate.

I can kinda deal with PM when going in knowing it's a pretty bad movie, AOTC is a step below that.
The clone wars tv series later fixed just how much AOTC stumbled with Anakin in between AOTC and ROTS, but I guess that's a separate discussion.
 

Mahonay

Banned
Yeah I'd agree that Attack of the Clones is objectively worse.

But for me personally, The Phantom Menace was many times worse, because it destroyed my love for Star Wars in one fell swoop. My little 12 year old heart died in the theater that night.

I haven't really cared much about Star Wars since that point. Even The Force Awakens didn't do that much for me even though I enjoyed the movie. The magic of Star Wars is forever gone for me.
 

itwasTuesday

He wasn't alone.
Remember that part where anakin went back to Tatooine and found dying shmi. Then decapitated those Tuskens and the bass lfe channel went all VUUFUMP. That was cool on the .1 of the 5.1.
Same with those space bombs. It was the drop of the star wars universe.

So I give AOTC .1 out of 5.1.

Episode 1 had R2D2 shoot gas and light it on fire. So in my mind that is more than .1, I'm not sure what number but it is more, that I can be sure of.

TPM = (X.XX>.1) out of 5.1
 
It has been years since I properly watched any of them, but I think Clones was a worse movie.

When I think of The Phantom Menace, I immediately think of two cool Jedi leads, Pod Racing, Darth Maul and Duel of the Fates. Those things are all very prominent in my mind as 'good' aspects of the movie.

When I think of Clones... I'm struggling to remember one great thing or moment to define it. It has a lot of stuff crammed in that should have been fun or cool, but ultimately it all just fell flat.
 

injurai

Banned
AotC by far. 1 is an alright movie, but it has almost no bearing on the rest of the series other than some trade federation politics.

1 & 2 can be pretty much replaced by

Star Wars: Clone Wars
and Star Wars: The Clone Wars
 

Ogodei

Member
Attack of the Clones. Anakin murders a village, and Padme still wants to bone him? Not to mention all his stalkerish advances. It's the creepiest most nonsensical romance ever put to film.

There's evidence to suggest she was a bit screwed up from her upbringing too, in politics by the age of 12, leader of a planet by 14, she was only 24 and had been a Senator for multiple years.

Not that i disagree it was still bad writing, but the in-universe justification is there.
 

Morat

Banned
Yeah I'd agree that Attack of the Clones is objectively worse.

But for me personally, The Phantom Menace was many times worse, because it destroyed my love for Star Wars in one fell swoop. My little 12 year old heart died in the theater that night.

I haven't really cared much about Star Wars since that point. Even The Force Awakens didn't do that much for me even though I enjoyed the movie. The magic of Star Wars is forever gone for me.


This is exactly how I feel actually. Was a massive SW nerd until that film, and my love for it kind of died afterwards.
 
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