> The problem I have with this is that it's -already- inconsistent with what occurred in episodes IV through VI... unless C-3PO gets his memory wiped at some point, which is a cheesy dodge at best. How come he didn't recognize Obi-Wan Kenobi's name (neither he nor R2 apparently had ever met or heard of him)?

Watch Phantom Menace again. C3PO never did meet Obiwan, and R2D2, we infer from Episode 4, DID meet Obiwan at some point.

> Why is it that he didn't know Darth Vader was Luke's father? Why didn't he even -mention- any of this to the rebel folks? They might have been able to use his knowledge of his creator's mind against him. There are dozens of questions like this.

What does this have to do with episode 1? Luke's not in it. The only thing C3PO could have possibly had to connect the two (so far as we know without seeing episodes 2 and 3) is the same last name. And in all probability he had no idea Darth Vader was really Anakin until very very late in the trilogy, so what reason would he have had to associate Luke with his supposedly long dead creator?

Again, all I'm asking you to do, in the name of simple common sense, is to reserve judgment.

> It's just too obvious that Lucas didn't intend for this relationship to exist until he started writing Episode I.

So? What the heck difference does *that* make if it turns out to be a good story in the end? Do you have any idea how many accomplished and respected authors and screenwriters write that way?

> Every time he does this, the droid's weapon fires, taking out a killer droid that was about to wax him. This goes on for a couple of minute, and it was just dumb.

You're taking Star Wars way too seriously, I think. It's not like this is a scene from 2001. You're right -- this scene was probably not the wisest decision in the world, but making stuff like this "almost sink" the movie for you is way overboard. Phantom Menace has more vision and color and spectacle and the all too rare sense of innocent fun, escalated to unmatched extremes, that it's unfair to dwell on its scant flaws to the point of nearly not forgiving it at all. I guarantee you, were this the first Star Wars movie ever, just as many people would have gone to see it (though perhaps not so quickly), and none of this would have ever been debated with such overblown ferocity.

> It also bothered me that they only had one controller hub for this whole army. But that's a seperate issue, and not that horrible anyway (maybe they could only afford one or something).

This bothered me somewhat the first time I saw the movie, because I thought it was such a deus ex machina that they'd all just deactivate on the spot. On the other hand, I excused it in part because this was supposed to be episode 1, and it is entirely plausible that it was that very battle that taught the advantages of a distributed architecture of some sort, which is why that problem does not occur again. The ineffectiveness of the droids also, to my mind, provided a brilliant impetus for the upcoming clone wars, clones being the suspected personnel under those Stormtrooper masks. In that battle, droids were shown to be ineffective, and so the Emperor-to-be started manufacturing a more effective army on his own.

For that matter, that also could explain why droids are looked down upon by the cultures portrayed in episodes 4-6 ("We don't serve their kind here."); if droids were used en masse to kill thousands in battle, that would be the expected social reaction.

Did Lucas intend that? I have no idea. I don't think it necessarily matters, either, but in any case, it's more fun to pursue these kinds of trains of thought than nitpicking how TPM could have been better.

> > So train your ear to pick up his speech better.
>
> No. :)

The smiley is noted -- but a refusal to accept a movie on its own terms means the movie can hardly be fairly expected to live up to the missed expectations that result.

> > Where in the movie did you see where it says ALL members of this
> > race are "money-grubbers"? There was what, three of them in the
> > movie?
>
> There was the whole crew of the mothership (although only a few are featured with speaking roles)

That's a big "although." You have nothing. Nothing. For the very few that did have speaking roles, one would accept them to speak with a single voice, whether that's the voice of their race as a whole or not. And again, even if it does, I still don't believe that constitutes racism. Hollering that it is falls somewhere between shooting at shadows and having the reverse affect of straining racial relations further.

> I don't. We have no other information about the race than what is shown in the movie, and when -every single character from a race- in the movie is presented in one way, we have to draw certain conclusions.

No, you don't. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is the crux of the problem. You CAN'T. If you don't know something, you don't know. If the movie doesn't make itself absolutely clear that it intends to make a racial slant and stick by it, it isn't there. People are so obsessed with finding hidden agendas. Why? It's contrary to every basic principle this country (well, I'm assuming you're from the U.S.A. as am I) was founded on, right down to "innocent until proven guilty."

> Alright. Here's where it's time to bring Greedo back. He was a badguy (albeit a minor one), and if he was white I -will- eat my hat. But he wasn't obviously a member of some other earth race, either. As for equal time, it would be nice if there was even a -tiny- voice of dissent in the evil race. Just some indication that there was a particle of resistance to the badguys' agenda. I don't think that's too much to ask for.

Too much to ask for is not the question. What the question is, how much should we *require* -- not ask for, *require* -- from some fictional work that is not our own? It is absurd and very petty to require this kind of "affirmative action" in fictional works, where if members of one race are portrayed in any negative way without counterbalancing "good" characters of the same race, then the work earns are "justified" condemnation, as if that automatically means the author was out to get somebody. Sheesh. Let's get some lives here. In the case of Star Wars, it is similarly ludicrous to ask that all badguys not bear any resemblance to humans at all (or at least if they do, that they resemble white males, because it's ok to bash them).

This whole racist paranoia makes me physically ill.

> Um. Ok. I guess I can't disagree about what you do and don't see. But I'm not alone in perceiving things this way, so it's obviously not something that just popped into my head because I'm deranged.

I don't think you're deranged. I don't think you're stupid, either. I really don't know anything about you to make these kinds of judgments. But I do think that in this specific manner of thinking, you are a product of our times -- our times in which the pendulum of racial relations has swung from one extreme all the way to the other. And I think with every effort make to push that pendulum further, the more energy it'll have to swing back in time. Better to fight the battles that matter than pick on escapist movies with at most ambiguous intentions.