The Phantom Menace

George Lucas admits The Phantom Menace sucked

considers apologizing for slavery, Return of the Jedi, as well

This from Yahoo

A confidential Lucasfilm marketing pitch about part two of the new Star Wars trilogy, obtained by Newsweek, promised that "Attack of the Clones'' will be an action-packed movie with ``no silly characters or kids.'' It also plainly states, in bold type: "The last movie did not live up to expectations.'' (click to read full story)

Scoopco Industries has learned the following additional details unknown to Newsweek:

Lucas is also planning to bring in Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann to do some "really cool musical numbers" to take advantage of the fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi is a good singer and dancer. "We think you will love the dancing Ewok chorus", enthused Lucas, "because these are the best musical midgets since the Wizard of Oz".

Lucas's marketing director intoned, "You will love the dancing Ewok chorus. These are not the droids I am looking for".

Actually, here's what we really found out about Attack of the Clones:

http://www.darkhorizons.com/reviews/t020128a.htm - spoiler summary of the film

http://www.prequel-spoilers.com/script.txt - an actual draft of the script (unknown how close this is to the shooting script, but see below for Harry Knowles's overview on that subject)

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=11796 - meanwhile, that Ain't it Cool guy has actually seen the film (not completely finished), and raves on and on and on about it in great detail. He also says, "basically that stolen script has the structure right, and sometimes the scenes are exact, but .....". Read his notes for details.

DVD info from Amazon

• Commentary by writer-director George Lucas, producer Rick McCallum, editor Ben Burtt, animation director Rob Coleman, and visual effects supervisors John Knoll, Dennis Muren, and Scott Squires
• Exclusive deleted-scenes documentary features seven new sequences completed just for this DVD release: Complete Podrace Grid Sequence, Extended Podrace Lap Two, The Waterfall Sequence, The Air Taxi Sequence, Dawn Before the Race, Anakin's Scuffle with Greedo, Farewell to Jira
• "The Beginning: Making Episode I," an all-new hour-long documentary film culled from over 600 hours of footage, including an insider's look at Lucasfilm and ILM during the production
• Multi-angle storyboard to animatic to film segment featuring the Submarine and Podrace Lap 1 sequences
• Five featurettes explore the storyline, design, costumes, visual effects, and fight sequences
• Award-winning twelve-part Web documentary series that chronicles the production
• "Duel of the Fates" music video featuring John Williams
• Never-before-seen production photo gallery with special caption feature
• Theatrical posters and print campaign from around the world
• Theatrical teaser and launch trailers, and seven TV spots
• "Star Wars: Starfighter - The Making of a Game" featurette from LucasArts
• DVD-ROM weblink to exclusive Star Wars content
• Widescreen anamorphic format
• Number of discs: 2

The Critics Vote

General consensus: three and a half stars. Ebert 3.5/4, Berardinelli 3.5/4, BBC 4/5, Apollo 79/100

Rotten Tomatoes summary. Eight articles on file

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 6.9/10, Apollo users 60/100

with their dollars: a mega hit, with a gazillion dollars in gross. Actually, it grossed $670 million worldwide, on a $115 million budget. And that's before promotion and merchandising. According to published reports Pepsi pressed 8 billion cans with Star Wars themes - approximately one case for every man woman and child in America!

IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a C. High in sizzle, low in steak. High in tech, low in soul.