Hope that clears things up.
George Lucas' mega-anticipated Skywalking epic played to its first audience cross-section Tuesday night in industry screenings in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Toronto. The security-tight V.I.P.-only events were for theater owners, studio execs--and, apparently, Internet spies.
The first reviews from people claiming to have attended a Tuesday showing popped up on the Net yesterday. One cybercritic, identifying himself as Star Wars fan Ronald Epstein, compared Phantom Menace, quality-wise, to Return of the Jedi--regarded by Jedi followers as the weak-sister entry of the original trilogy.
While he didn't pan the flick, Epstein didn't flat-out rave, either.
"If [Lucas] continues making these almost kiddie-movie type installments, he is going to lose the audience that made his first three movies a success," Epstein opined in his self-proclaimed "first Internet review" (http://www.hometheaterforum.com/starwars/phantom.html).
So, Lucas' latest won't go down in history as the world's first universally loved film. Is this cause to freak? No, says noted Internet movie geek Harry Knowles on his Ain't It Cool site (www.aint-it-cool-news.com).
"A few reviews that don't exclaim that 'IT'S THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE!' and you begin weeping about it?," Knowles writes. "Come on folks. Grow a pair. Find your tantric center and be at ease."
To give the Force faithful reason for hope, Knowles today posted two upbeat reviews from readers who swear they caught the flick in Detroit and Atlanta, respectively.
"This is the greatest film that I've seen yet," wrote one Sithslayer, the Motown correspondent. "I can't bring myself to cut it down in any fashion. I'm still in awe at the absolute beauty in which everything was looking."
Issuing the sort of proclamation that makes Hollywood producers weep with joy, Sithslayer says he expects to see Phantom Menace "at least 25 more times."
Chimed in JawsGeek from Atlanta: "HOLY COW! What a fantastic, fun film."
As for the industry types, ones corralled by the Los Angeles Times loved it ("There is so much going on, I got dizzy," New Mexico theater owner Ricardo Medina said in the paper); ones collared by Daily Variety didn't ("There was polite applause, kind of tepid--not the sort of whooping and cheering you'd expect," an insider reported from the Gotham screening).
The most common complaint is that the film suffers from Jedi-itis: Too kiddie, too cuddly. To carpers, a chief offender on this count is Jar-Jar, the newfangled computer-animated sidekick of Liam Neeson's Qui-Gon Jinn Jedi master. (By the way, aside from the odd "he's wooden" notice, young Darth Vader Jake Lloyd isn't drawing near the heat you'd expect for a kid maligned as "Mannequin Skywalker" in early press.)
The most common rave is that the pod race is really, really cool. ("I thought the battle scenes were terrific," Dwight Morgan of Edwards Theaters said in the Times.)
For the record, Phantom distributor Fox is happy with the feedback it's heard.
Said Fox film chairman Tom Sherak in Variety: "It went very well as far as we're concerned."