George Lucas' first love was car racing, and his first student film was dedicated to that love. In that respect, it's nice to see that he involved one of his earliest passions in the prequels, but it's not something that really should have taken up the middle third of a 2-1/4 hour-long film. There are several problems with the pod racing sequence in Episode I, from the artificially raised stakes to deferring dramatic blame, but easily the worst part about it is something endemic to the prequels: we are introduced to a bunch of characters the audience has no time to care about, who are then killed to create a false sense of danger. Certainly, this happens all the time with the original trilogy, with so many rebel fighter pilots getting blown out of the sky, but there's cinematic precedent for this: many of those scenes were shot-for-shot homages to classic cinematic dogfights, bringing us into the cockpit to get that sense of fear and focus that sort of combat inspires. Looking at a CG alien hit a stalactite just doesn't have the same effect. But sometimes the smallest things are the biggest deal-breakers...
I am a writer and musician born and raised in Montana. I have done everything from fixing fences in Glacier National Park to curating the music library at KBGA Missoula. I am also a lazy jerk.
