Obviously he didnt deserve the harassment he got regardless. Like even if he was dogshit he wouldnt have deserved that. But I just rewatched Phantom Menace for the first time in awhile. Young friend of mine are going through the star wars movies because she was a sheltered homeschooled kid and hadnt seen them. Already did the OT, starting on the prequels.

Other than the obvious “oh wow, the racial stereotypes of literally three different alien species in this movie is insane”, the main takeaway my rewatch gave me is “wow ok, Jake LLoyd is average at worst”. He was just like, a regular kid actor? Nothing to write home about like say, young Maise Williams or something. But absolutely fine?

  • AmericaDeserved711 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    36·
    2 months ago

    His performance isn’t good but neither are most of the performances in the film, even by talented, well-established actors. The writing and direction is really to blame here. It’s hard to be a good actor when you’re delivering terrible lines in front of a green screen, talking to a tennis ball on a stick.

    As a side note they really should have aged up Anakin to around 13 or 14 instead of like 9. It would have allowed them to find a more charismatic child actor, and removed the weirdness of the Padme age gap.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      There were multiple academy award winners and multiple future winners throughout the trilogy. They all had shite performances. Samuel L. Jackson played the most bland dude possible who’s only interesting feature was having a purple lightsaber. That’s a colossal fuck up all on its own.

  • buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    31·
    2 months ago

    Yeah the kid was fine and of course didn’t deserve the hate.

    The whole movie would have worked better if it just started Anakin closer to the age he is in attack of the clones though. The Jedi are already calling him too old anyway, and it would have made the hotshot piloting fit better and also the start of the Anakin/Padme thing less weird.

  • adultswim_antifa [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    19·
    2 months ago

    Unless he wrote his own dialogue, he’s absolutely not the problem with the movie. It’s actually kind of a fun movie in a shitty bad movie kind of way.

    • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      18·
      2 months ago

      The pod race is genuinely a blast. As are some parts of the final battle. Jar Jar is mostly annoying and definitely a racial stereotype, but some of his lines got a chuckle out of me even today.

        • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          10·
          2 months ago

          As a kid it was my favorite part for sure. But I was pretty into the whole thing. I liked a lot of little things like the design of the Naboo starfighters, the stunning ball weapons the Gungans used, I actually did find Jar Jar funny as a kid, Darth Maul as another person mentioned was super cool. Ect.

        • Smeagolicious [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          8·
          2 months ago

          Heyy lets not forget, kids (me included) loved Darth Maul. People complain about the choreography being “impractical” and “unrealistic” now but the final battle is so damn hype with Duel of the Fates blasting…

          • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            6·
            2 months ago

            Darth Maul looks sick as fuck, but it’s weird how he pops out of nowhere and is basically not a character but a plot device. We don’t know his motivations or story or anything. Pretty weird for the main antagonist of a film to just appear at the end for the final battle without actually doing anything villainous throughout the plot of the film

            As a kid I was just pretty confused. Who is this guy? It’d be like if Darth Vader came on screen for the first time in the 6th film right before throwing the emperor down the hole

            The mystery around him was pretty intriguing but it never paid off in the movies. We never get any reveal about who he was or his race of people or faction or anything like that. No consequences or plot further on involve Maul. It’s like he came and went without any relation to the overall story. Qui-gon needed to die, and the movie needed an interesting end fight scene so he exists, but for no other reason really.

            • Smeagolicious [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              3·
              2 months ago

              Oh he’s 100% a wasted character and an underwhelming plot device - wish he had more compelling ties to the story and characters, but purely from an aesthetic and action perspective he’s very well done IMO. Kid me was already on the shit that I currently love doing with fiction: I assumed he was just “some new dark jedi” that surely must have been doing evil somewhere in the huge expansive universe, and that his story had only started intersecting with the main characters’ now. Obviously it didn’t turn out anything like this lol.

              We never get any reveal about who he was or his race of people or faction or anything like that.

              On the one hand I love expanding the scope and feel of a setting by making it detailed and fleshed out but having a bit of mystery is key, otherwise you end up like a lot of new star wars, mcu, trek, etc. media that just has to explain every little thing you’ve ever seen on screen

    • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      13·
      2 months ago

      Episode One was pretty bad, but the healthy reaction to it would have been “awh that stinks, had potential. Oh well. Hope the next one is better”

      Instead, because these manbabies had made their entire identity “Star Wars Fan” they had to do these extremely unhinged and out of pocket reactions to demonstrate that this isn’t what they meant by Star Wars Fan.

      When one eats too much of a treat, the treat begins eating into you.

      • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        It had been 16 years, like if some franchise in 2008 had been the defining moment of their lives… I guess if Half Life 3 came out today and was just kinda ok

  • MF_COOM [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    Being an average child actor is sort of by definition bad. Child actors have not had years to train to convey or even honestly learn a broad array of human emotions. There are sometimes good child actors and they are unusual and, for this reason, noteworthy. (And FWIW I think Jake Lloyd was below-average child actor, but it’s not necessary to agree for my point to stand.)

    Jake Lloyd was terrible, but like it’s not his fault - he was a child. It’s Lucas’s fault for unnecessarily trying to start his story at childhood, not waiting until a genuinely natural child actor came along and not giving Lloyd (or anyone) natural dialog to work with.

    • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      Given that some extremely good actors gave very hollow, wooden and terrible performances for the prequels I am going to blame it on the director as he’s the common thread.

      Samuel Jackson, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman all sucked extremely bad in these too. It takes effort to make these actors boring and flat.

    • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      I’d say the last part had a bigger influence than the kids’ actual ability shrug-outta-hecks (the natural dialog part). And direction problems too probably. With kid actors I think direction matters a significant amount more than talent.

      Anyway obviously I disagree that he was in any way noteably bad. A few lines were wooden but again, I feel that was a direction issue. |

      I do think its hard to imagine his story not starting when he was a kid though. So that part I definitively disagree with.

  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    He was one of the least offensive parts of the movie tbh, I think people just didn’t like that there was no “main character” to self-insert as.

    Anakin is a weird genius messiah-figure slave child, not really relatable and only comes into the movie halfway through and is given very little screen time outside of pod racing (pod races were the best part of the movie though).

    Obi-wan was a weird aloof nerd who kept whining about the rules and never expressed any emotion outside of annoyance.

    Qui-gon was pretty funny, but died part way through (spoiler). He kinda rocked, as an old burnt out dude who doesn’t give a fuck about the rules anymore and has to deal with this annoying hall monitor kid nipping at his heels.