And so here I am sitting around on a Sunday afternoon after watching the Nascar race at Bristol and I decide, "What the Hell, I'm gonna pop in the ol' Episode I disc and watch it. I haven't watched in a while and I'm gonna see if its as bad as it's been made out to be."

Well, I pop it in. And one of the first things I noticed was the overwhelming problem of compression artifacts. The lightsabers had digital noise in them, the Tatooine desertscapes were loaded with digital noise. And just about every other lit area around darker areas. Even darker areas had specks in them.

So I'm wondering, do you think that sometime in the future when the proposed 6-movie box set comes out, they'll remaster the transfer?


Also, I noticed just how dated the CGI was already. Jar Jar looks extremely bad as did most of the Gungans. Terrible color timing for one. It just didn't look like they belonged in the scenes. However, I have to admit, some of the later Corruscant scenes actually looked pretty good. Oh, Waddo looked pretty bad as well.

And as for the suck-meter on the over-all movie, I actually think it's not as bad as everyone seems to remember. Given all the recent rumors about Episode III and the upcoming original trilogy DVD release, I think once the saga is complete, they'll all fit quite nicely together. So for suck-meter, out of a 1 to 10 scale with 10 being the worst, I actually give it a 4.5 I could have been better, but it ain't all that bad either. Kinda has a ROTJ feel to it, ie. opening scene on Trade Federation ship/Death Star II, next scene on Naboo and then Tatooine/Jabba's Palace, next land battle on Naboo, lightsaber duel, & space battle/land battle on Endor, lightsaber duel, & space battle. And maybe you could compare the Corruscant scenes with the Rebel fleet attack planning in Jedi.

puppets > all.

Phantom Menace and AOTC always looked like cartoons to me. Your right, the corusant stuff is really well done though. (I still believe Jar Jar didnt belong in any of the scenes )

AOTC was far better than Menace so lets hope the third is far better than AOTC and completes the prequal triliogy with a bang not a whimper.

Couldn't disagree more! I just watched it not long ago and the effects are incredible. Worthy of their VES and Oscar noms.

http://mobz.org/starwars/bin.boa/1025.jpg

Looks damn good to me.

As a huge Star Wars fan, Phantom Menace is definitely my least favorite - and surely always will be (Ep. III should be better, as Ep. II was). I don't think anything will savage the movie; I'll always think the same of it; even when the saga is complete.

I would like to see a new transfer on the DVD, however. At least the current 5.1 track is reference quality.

Nope, the CG itself is fairly decent, but incorporating it into the rest of the scene is horrible. Like I said, color timing was all off. Jar Jar seemed to have an old sepia-like red-ish sheen to him, while most of the surroundings were cool colored forest scenery.

Don't know what that pic is supposed to be, I get "Page Not Found". But the Waddo image is too clear and not "weathered" enough to fit into the scenes he's in. Plus the compositing looked bad. Almost saw matte lines, if you know what I mean.

Well, you may be right. But I'm just saying that it isn't as bad as it's being made to be.

Definately needs a new transfer. Kinda come close to the original Matrix transfer. The sound is alright, but I found the LFE was a bit weak, as least in the lightsaber department. You don't get that low "Woomp Woomp" sound that you get in the AOTC mix.

I picked up TPM and AOTC a couple weeks ago for $4 each - I haven't seen TPM since opening night(I was extremely disappointed), and I haven't seen AOTC since about April 02. AOTC was just as good as I remembered it, and TPM was just as bad as I remembered it.
I was quite impressed with the DVD's - then again, I'm watching on a 16-year-old 27" TV with my PS2, so I can't really nitpick to begin with. I'm really looking forward to watching AOTC once I buy an HDTV/surround system after I graduate in December. TPM will collect dust until then, and will be shelved following the required viewing...

In honesty, the CGI is still fine.

You want bad? Look at the Jawas and rontos in the SE of EP4.

The video transfer on TPM is very murky indeed, plus it's plagued with some bad edge enhancement. But the audio and extras are out of this world.

Attack of the Clones was the first DVD I watched on my widescreen TV. Incredible picture quality. I finally watched Phantom Menace and was surprised just how bad the transfer really is. It always looked good on my 27" trinitron, but a bigger screen really picks up the artifacting. This definitely needs redone.

As for the movie itself, it's fine, except for the fact that many scenes just go on about 5-10 seconds too long (just long enough for Jar Jar to so something stupid). A little tightening in the editing, and it would have been a muh better movie.

Hopefully once it's time for Episode III to come to DVD we'll get a matching prequel trilogy boxset with remastered transfers. Hopefully they'll keep all the original extras and maybe add a few more (like a 4th disc - or rather actually 7th, since the 3 films are gonna be all 2-disc sets).

My friends know how much I despise, among other things, Jar Jar, so my feelings toward Episode I should be pretty obvious. However, I found out a way to watch it and not be bothered by the actual content of the movie. Recently, FOX was showing this on regular TV, and I became so annoyed by the fact the movie was pan & scan, I no longer even noticed Jar Jar, Jake Lloyd's acting, etc. It seemed like every scene was butchered with an extreme closeup of someone, while someone else offscreen was still talking.

Since I haven't seen a movie shown on TV in years, I was amazed as to how bad this looked. I just kept shaking my head saying, "I can't believe people PREFER this!" Anyways, that was how I discovered a way to not be bothered anymore by Jar Jar in Episode I.

But to comment on the CGI, aside from some of the characters at the pod race, I still feel the effects are top notch and the movie was absolutely robbed of the visual effects Oscar due to the Episode I backlash.

There was a cut on the Internet called "The Phantom Cut." I suppose anyone with a DVD burner could do the same. Anyway, all of Jar Jar Binks was cut from the film, improving it quite a bit I hear.

Well, taking all of the posts above in, I still stand by my feeling of the Jar Jar and Waddo CGI job. Jar Jar looked too washed out and out of place within the scene. Waddo looked too clear with his surroundings too washed out.

The rest of the CGI looks all fine to me.

But another thing I found a bit disturbing, is the seemingly wrong eye-lines when interacting with CG characters. For example, one of the first conversations with Jar Jar in the forest between him, Kennobi and Qui-Gon. Their eye-lines just looked off. It was almost like they were looking at the eye-slits in the Jar Jar mask worn by the actor.

As for pan & scan, I agree with rennervision. When I see a movie on TV when I know what the widescreen version looks like, I cringe. Just looks terrible. I keep wanting to scroll over some how inside my brain.

I hope they go back and re-do yoda in CG. And go back to the theatrical edit (minus the 2nd lap of the Pod Race)

Actually, it was a hatchet job. The flow of the film was made even worse. The score was butchered. Plus about 100 other things were thrown off. It wasn't improved at all, even without any Jar-Jar.

I agree with your sentiments here. I also think the added CG characters in the extended podrace on the DVD were subpar compared to the characters that were there to begin with.

Well, I agree with you that Obi-Wan's eye lines were off. Qui-Gon's I though was pretty good. Jar-Jar was the first major CG character where they had to do sight lines accurately. So it's expect they might be slight off.

Yes, I know Draco from Dragonheart was the first major CG character, but I'm talking as far as sight lines. Draco was about 10 times bigger than Dennis Quaid, so it was damn near impossible to screw up sight lines on that character.

Agreed.

Not agreed. I would think that seeing more of Anakin's high speed hi-jinks would make people more accepting of him flying the Naboo starfighter during the space battle. Certainly improved the film for me (though I've always thought it got a bad rap)

Hmm...well it really weakened the whole sequence for me. Less-than-stellar CG, and the already slow pacing was dragged out even more. I'll have to watch it again though, its been a few yrs.

Really I think both prequels would be better if they were 10-15 min shorter.

How about if The Phantom Menace were 40 minutes long and the first act of Episode 1. AOTC being acts 2 and 3. Then the Clone Wars, then Ep 3.

Oh well, if wishes were horses...

Well, it was added after the fact especially for the DVD. So it's natural that it wouldn't quite be up to par with the rest of the podrace, which was done for the film.

Well, whatever, but could we all agree that the whole movie (Episode I) could have looked better if done by WETA Digital?

I wouldn't agree with that. As much as I love the LotR movies there were many FX shots that just didn't look great. The worst is the end of the Two Towers when they ride their horses up on the hill after the helms deep battle. The bluescreen lighing is so obviously wrong in that shot and there's many others like it through out. If you're comparing Gollum versus Jar Jar then yes but remember that there's years of improvements in technology between those characters. My biggest grip with the SW prequels is there's too much CGI and not enough models and minutures like what was used in the originals. Plus that fact that every shot is too busy with CGI FX cluttering the scene.

No, I don't agree with that. ILM is the premiere effects house in the industry. They've done more groundbreaking effects work than all of the other effects houses combined. Episode I looks phenomenal. LOTR looks phenomenal as well. Both Weta and ILM did a great job on their respective films, but TPM wouldn't look any better if Weta had done it. Fat chance considering these are Lucas films and he owns ILM.

They're just differen't films with different settings, different directors and different visual effects shot counts. Besides, a lot of the folks at Weta came from ILM, including supervisor Joe Letteri.

Star Wars
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Poltergeist
E.T.
The Dark Crystal
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Back To the Future
The Abyss
Cocoon
Young Sherlock Holmes
Labryinth
Total Recall
Terminator 2
Death Becomes Her
Schindler's List
The Mask
Forrest Gump
Twister
Dragonheart
Titanic
Mighty Joe Young
Pearl Harbor
A.I.
Harry Potter I & II
Minority Report
The Hulk
T3
Pirates of the Carribean
Master & Commander


and about 30 more. Not to mention numerous groundbreak shots such as Draco in Dragonheart, the water tentacle in the Abyss, the liquid metal T1000 in T2, the first morph in Willow, and many more. Add to that 36 Oscars, 55 nominations, and 5 of the 7 films in this year's VFX Oscar bakeoff were ILM films. I'm not putting down Weta at all. But you can't get better than ILM. Does this mean they are perfect. Nope! Then again neither is any other FX house.

However, ILM and Weta are entirely different. Weta is a very small FX house. They really can't work on more than one film at a time, nor have they been around as long as ILM. ILM on the other hand is the biggest FX house in the industry. They do as many as 15 different films a year. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

My only criticism of Episode I and II as far as the visual effects go is that Lucas tends to use a bit too much CG. I understand why he does it. Cost and time, because he pays for the films out of his own pocket. If he made these films the way he made the originals, they would cost him 200 million dollars to make.

You also have to take into account that the number of shots that ILM has to do for these films is far greater than what Weta had to do for each LOTR film. Not only that, but ILM didn't have any outside help. Weta did. For example, Digital Domain did the water horse sequence in FOTR.

Sorry for the long winded post. Trying to explain why I disagree with that opinion entirely.

That was my only criticism. However, it must be said that there are more miniatures in both Episode I and II than in any of the original films, according to Cinefex and ILM supervisor John Knoll. There are also 60+ full size sets built for each film. So it's not life the film is 100% CG, the way some people assume. Not even close. They just so dense, that it's hard to notice. But I do agree Lucas uses too much CG. But that CG work is outstanding nonetheless.

However, there are reasons Lucas uses a lot of CG.

- He pays for these films himself, and he's trying to maximize quality with cost.

- A lot of the environments and worlds in TPM & AOTC can't be duplicated with real environments.

- It saves Lucas money to use CG. If he did things the way he did the originals, these films would cost twice as much as they do, simple because of the huge scope and scale of these films. In fact, there are so many gargantuan sets, it's just impossible to build them. These films already cost 120 million as it is. After all, Lucas is trying to make money.

Still, I would have liked to see some extras in clone trooper costumes.

I will say this. Weta did a great job as well, despite some poor FX here and there. No film is perfect, even ILM films.

And Gollum is a far better character than Jar Jar. Jar Jar is so loathed, that many people slam the FX used to create him as well. But technically, Jar Jar's FX are great as well. He just stinks as a character.