ST. LOUIS — Need a good quarantine laugh. Here is one.
We found this hilarious video that someone put together, taking scenes from the Phantom Menace, in which everyone just snubs or ignores little Anakin Skywalker when he's just trying to get a word into the conversation.
What makes this even funnier, in our opinion, is how this episode of the billion-dollar grossing 'Star Wars' manages to be so despised, thus giving someone out there the idea of this.
In order to understand why people hate "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" so much, you must take a minute to understand what we are talking about here: "Star Wars" movies.
They are a polarizing topic no matter where you stand. There are these movies, Michael Jordan versus Lebron James, and Jake Allen's career in hockey as far as endless, debilitating conversations that take place just about every day go. If you say one of the movies is bad, someone will pop out of your pantry and argue with you.
Back in 1999, George Lucas rebooted the epic saga that had concluded 16 years earlier with the satisfying "Return of the Jedi." Things were swell, people were happy, and arguments had calmed to a dull roar across the universe. And then George wanted to make more movies and money. And let me be clear here: love or hate, "The Phantom Menace" was a box office smash hit. Made for $150 million, the film grossed over a billion dollars. It ranks 42nd on the all-time box office list, ahead of other hits from the series.
Expectations didn't sit well with the 1999 film. While people rushed out to see it, the aftertaste wasn't pretty. Imagine seeing that glistening picture of a cheeseburger on Yelp and then seeing a pitiful excuse for it when the food arrived at your door for takeout. It was a "Star Wars" film, which meant if made imperfectly in the slightest, people would hate it.
It didn't help that the movie wasn't good at all. Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor, along with Ray Park's villainous Darth Maul, made the watch bearable but in the end, this film was infamously bad due to one actor: Jake Lloyd.
Have you heard of him? Probably not. He's 31 years old and hasn't acted in a single film or television project since 2001, when he co-starred with Jim Caviezel in a family drama called "Madison." That was a role he most likely scored due to his casting in a "Star Wars" film. He may be the only actor in history to star in a billion-dollar-grossing film and only work once afterwards. These days, he looks fit to portray Edward Furlong in a biopic and little else.
He's so bad that a website made a 64-second video of him being snubbed over in "The Phantom Menace." You'll laugh as Lloyd's young Anakin Skywalker struggles to get a word in with his pitifully weak baby voice as the grown-ups keep speaking over him. You don't get that unless your performance still reminds people of John Travolta's Razzie-winning work in "Battlefield Earth."
Here's another thing. He was playing Anakin Skywalker! You know, the guy who would become Darth Vader, one of the most iconic villains in film history. Even as a kid, you couldn't afford to mess that up. Lloyd did, which is why he's probably advising people on what insurance to acquire at this moment.
"The Phantom Menace" was so bad, the follow-up sequel, "Attack of the Clones," grossed around half of the previous film's total. "Clones" had an opening weekend gross of $80 million, which is supremely lukewarm for a "Star Wars" film.
As it stands, the phantom was more of a menace here, making it the second-worst rated "Star Wars" film, according to Rotten Tomatoes. It carries a 53% rating, which is considered rotten, but not by a lot. The latest entry, the finale called "Rise of the Skywalker," holds the worst rating at 51%. Outside of "Clones," which holds a 65%, every other film in the series ranks at the very least in the 80 percentile.
So, what makes this origin tale the most hated "Star Wars" film? It wasn't an epic finale with Adam Driver, and Jake Lloyd is terrible. More than anything, it's a poorly made film in a franchise with true addicts. Messing up is futile. (Sorry, not sorry, "Star Trek.")
