10 Downright Ridiculous Excuses For Terrible Movies

2. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace - Blame The Fans

The Excuse: It was over-hyped.

An excuse pushed forward by fans and the online community more than George Lucas himself, who was probably blissfully unaware of any criticism anyway sitting atop his giant pile of money - Episode I was doomed to fail from the very outset because of fan expectations. Lucas could never meet those expectations no matter how impressive his fourth Star Wars films was, and the overly negative critical reaction to the film was a symptom of that, as opposed to the actual quality of the film. But I would suggest that new film fans who came to Star Wars Episode I as the entry point weren't exactly overly enamoured with the film, despite having no real exposure to the originals. And yes, while the scope of the film is worthy of praise, and its ambitions, the decision to spend too much time fiddling on about trade routes, and introducing awful superfluous characters and failing to either balance the main characters or get good performances out of the lead actors were all fatal to the films ambitions. So we can bleat on and on about how fanboyism derailed the prequel trilogy, but evaluated solely on their own merits, they are not particularly good films.