9 Movie Mistakes & Plot-Holes Confirmed By The Creators

4. The Editing Was Poor - Star Wars Episode One

There's some suggestion that George Lucas thought that The Phantom Menace was somehow his modern magnum opus. That he'd meticulously constructed his ideal launch-point for the new Prequel trilogy and every brush stroke was carefully placed. That's why he gets so much heat for Jar Jar Binks and the very conscious decision to appeal to younger, more willing to spend audiences.

But it turned out after The Phantom Menace that Lucas knew he'd made a mistake. He should probably have realised he'd made several, to be honest, but a start's a start. As captured in a making-of featurette included on The Phantom Menace DVD, Lucas reacted to seeing a rough cut of the movie by saying he "may have gone too far in a few places."

Ordinarily, that would be fine, but by this point, it was too late. After editor Ben Burtt talks about how jarring it is to go from lamenting Qui-Gon Jinn's death and watching Queen Amidala escaping to Jar-Jar Binks being goofy. It's a lot to take, which Lucas seemed to agree with:

"It's a little disjointed. It's bold in terms of jerking people around. I may have gone too far in a few places."

He goes on to say that while it's supposed to be intense, it's done "a little more extremely than I have done it in the past... if it's intense for us, a regular person is going to go nuts."

Baiscally, he spends the period after the screening lamenting the issues with the editing, while admitting it's too late to do anything about:

"It boggles the mind. I have thought about this quite a bit, and the tricky part is you almost can't take any of those pieces out of it now, because each one takes you to the next place. And you can't jump because you don't know where you are."

You can see the screening sequence in the featurette below at the 54:42 mark: