'The Phantom Menace'

A rare day in the office, today: I could do with more of them! But that's probably it for this week, apart from a couple of hours on Friday, maybe. 

This evening, I made chilli for me and Dan but Abi only came down to the cottage for a while, after she'd had some tea at her mum's. The only silver lining to this was that it meant Dan and I had time to watch a film together later on. 

With the new Star Wars film coming out next month, I'd previously suggested we should watch the first six to get up to speed and gave Dan the option of watching them in the order they were released or in the chronological order of the story. He plumped for the latter, which meant that, tonight, we started with 'The Phantom Menace'.

In many respects, this film was a bad as I remembered it to be, not least for the clichéd oriental nature of the Trade Federation and the 'uncle Tom' aspects of the Jar Jar Binks character. That said, I was keen to watch it because of a recent theory that has gone 'round on the web that Jar Jar Binks was originally intended to be a Sith lord. (There's a good little video in YouTube that explains this.) That theory did make the film more interesting and the character quite a bit less irritating.

I was worried what Dan would make of the movie. He's grown up in a time where the quality of children's films has been high, as have the special effects. (There's one part in 'The Phantom Menace' where the CGI makes the planet Naboo look like a scene from Teletubbies.) But actually, he enjoyed it more than I thought he might. I think he liked the Jedi Knights and their light sabres in particular. But then, who doesn't?

Having watched the film again and read the theory around Jar Jar Binks, I'm sorry Lucas didn't pursue that angle. We'll be watching 'Attack of the Clones' next, so it'll be interesting to see what else happens with the Binks character (I really can't remember anything about the film at all).

(PS Sorry for the slightly random picture, today. I took it when I pulled up at the office, this morning, and didn't get a chance to take anything more interesting!)