ten reasons that "star wars: episode one" was "teh suck"

Bitter late than never:

1. Jedi's lie | Anakin gets examined by Qui-Gon for midichlorians. When Anakin asks why he's being examined, Qui-Gon lies to him, saying he's just checking for an infection. Why not just say, "I'm looking into something," or "I'm curious about your lucky nature," or anything other than just outright lying to him. And if Anakin's so down with the Force, why can't he tell the old dog is lying to him?
   
2. Midichlorians | The Force that Obi-Wan promoted in 1977 was an egalitarian, come-one-come-all affair that anyone could benefit from. Now it's based on some scientifically quantifiable critter that only a few people possess. So who's in the club, and who's out, George?
   
3. Home Alone Syndrome | Star Wars, the first movie that came out, in 1977 managed to appeal to kids just fine. I know; I was 9. Why do we need to see a little kid's wish-fulfillment fantasy writ large this time, only included to so transparently appeal directly to kids?
   
4. Jedi's lie | Included again for good measure. It's hard to describe how much this bothered me. Though it's not like Obi-Wan was entirely truthful in the first movies, you know, "from a certain point of view."
   
5. Bad tech | The first three movies that were made may have invented some science like "hyperspace" to deal with shooting all over known space without relativity affecting them. And sure, we've never really figured out how lightsabers work, as contained beams of solid plasma. These are high-order mysteries that are beyond the ken of the viewer to judge. Instead of following that high road, Lucas made some simply horrible tech in the prequels. Because Anakin is good with jet-go-carts, he is able to fly a military craft from the surface, into a pitched, multicombatant battle, into the interior of a command ship, and take it out. Okay, no problem. Luke did similar stuff in the first movie, rapidly upgrading from Landspeeder to X-Wing. What kills me is that once the command ship is gone, the Battle Droids and all their gear stop working. Maybe there was some desired symbolism there, but it just looked like stupid tech.
   
6. No one is actually acting | Lucas assembled a number of talented actors, then cobbled them through some inhuman-tech-editing means. There's one scene with Liam Neeson nodding at the words of Anakin's mom. It looks like he has NO idea what he's nodding at. Most of the movie feels this way to me.
   
7. CG for CG's sake | Computer graphics are all over Ep. 1 like white on rice. Except for some of the photo-matting in the original, the analog FX from 1977 don't look horrible today. Not great, sure, but not horrible. Putting so much CG into the movies just because really dates the look of the movie. There is no subtlety or grace in their application. Which brings me to:
   
8. Jar Jar | Perhaps a mandatory inclusion, and perhaps covered sufficiently in both "CG for CG's sake" and "Home Alone" which answers the rhetorical: for what reason was this ass-hat included in the movie? His lighting looks bad, the movement of the body is unnatural, his accent is equal parts offensive and incomprehensible.
   
9. Inbreeding | From the first Star Wars movie onward, the background was lush, and continued getting more complex. Mon Mothma's line "Many Bothans... died... to bring us this information" inspired a slew of backround speculation. Who are Bothans?! Where do they fit in?! In contrast, every scene from Ep. 1 feels like a replay from the first movie. By sending us to Tatooine for most of the movie, it feels more tired than a nostalgic. Why does Anakin have to be C3PO's "Maker"? Every plot turn only serves to make the world seem more claustrophobically confining.
   
10. L.......A.........G......... | George Lucas made us wait 16 years for a sequel, re-released all the Special Editions of the first three movies just to practice special-effect-fu (managing to fuck up the Greedo scene in the process), and somehow screwed up almost everything he'd previously got right.

I think Episode Two was a lot closer to being a "real" star wars movie. Most of the crap in the list above is not present in Ep. 2, so maybe Lucas will go back and cut a Very Special Edition of Ep. 1, and fix it all... Then erase my memories, and help me regain my lost sense of childhood wonder. (imdb)

Update: GL talks about additional changes he will be making to the classic movies for the DVD release.
Update 2: Exclusive, leaked shot of the new footage from SW:ESB Hoth sequence. (via boingboing)