The Phantom Menace: was it THAT bad?

The Phantom Menace has the dubious honour of being perhaps the most despised film of the last 20 years. With expectations sky-high following everyone's favourite sci-fi trilogy, Part I, for many, failed to deliver the pure thrill the Star Wars universe promised in the 70s and 80s. George Lucas must have instantly regretted the inclusion of infamous alien rasta Jar Jar Binks.

• In pictures: The entire Star Wars saga

With The Phantom Menace coming to cinemas in a new 3D re-release (The first of all six movies' 3D versions), MSN Movies held a debate. The question: Is The Phantom Menace that bad? Counsels Smith (prosecution) and Crocker (defence) have delivered their statements below. YOU are the judges. Please offer up your verdicts in the comments!

COMPARISONS TO THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY

The Prosecution
The main difference between the original trilogy and Phantom? There's nothing at stake. Where Star Wars began by plunging us headlong into an intergalactic civil war in which entire planets hung in the balance, Phantom involves a dreary trade dispute in which the only things up for grabs are figures on a spreadsheet. The original trilogy charts a young man's rite of passage from humble farm boy to heroic knight. Phantom, to quote Simon Pegg, is "a veiled whine about having to pay taxes". The first three pictures are fun, fast and epic. Phantom is slow, confusing, meandering and dull.

The defence
Choreographed by Brit stuntman/swordmaster Nick Gillard (Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, Henry V, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Wanted), the three-way "Duel Of The Fates" isn't just the best sword fight in any Star Wars film, it's one of the best sword fights in any movie.

Nothing in the original trilogy comes close to watching Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor take on Ray Park while John Williams' score surges them on. Darth Vader and old Obi-Wan suddenly look like crusty pensioners threatening each other with their walking sticks.

THE MAGIC OF STAR WARS

The prosecution
George Lucas was a young man when he made Star Wars. Luke Skywalker was his alter-ego, a restless, impetuous tyro eager for adventure. By the time he made Phantom, Lucas was the Emperor: the head of a vast, monolithic corporation only interested in the bottom line. The magic of Star Wars lay in its exuberant naivety - it challenged accepted notions about what movies were meant to be like and who they were supposed to be aimed at. By trying to repeat what was always lightning in a bottle, Phantom feels false - a mechanical enterprise made for all the wrong reasons.

The defence
If you can shut out the annoyances, The Phantom Menace is full of nice touches. Did you notice one of the rival candidates for Chancellor is called Minister Antilles of Alderan? Just maybe he's the father of Captain Antilles, the first unlucky sod who's crushed by Darth Vader in A New Hope. Or maybe he's the brother of Luke Skywalker's wingman, Wedge Antilles. Few scenes don't hide a detail that might raise an eyebrow or a smile, from the delegation of Spielbergian ETs in the Senate chamber to the cheeky Tusken Raiders hidden on a cliff-top taking potshots at the speeders on Tatooine.

PERFORMANCES

The Prosecution
Ewan McGregor was dead right when he described acting in The Phantom Menace as "a frowning exercise". That is all he and Liam Neeson do as they wander through one CGI-heavy environment after another, spouting turgid dialogue about the balance of the living force and midichlorians. Oh well: at least they don't have to act with a chandelier on their head like Natalie Portman's Kabuki Queen. And neither do they have to run about yelling "Yippee!" like little 'Ani' Skywalker, played so irritatingly by Jake Lloyd we would have been quite happy to see him die in his Pod Race.

The Defence
Seeing the Imperial Senate for the first time might only give the nerdcore something to w00t about, but for the rest of us, it's a dramatic cauldron for Ian McDiarmid's superb performance as Senator Palpatine. He's the best character in the film, shaded in from the doomy villain seen in Return Of The Jedi to be a brilliantly subtle, sinister, sci-fi Machiavelli who manipulates both sides like chess pieces. It looks like Anakin's story, but in fact, Darth Sidious is the real "phantom menace".

JJ Abram's Star Trek prequel couldn't manage one decent baddie. Lucas' Star Wars prequel serves up two. Scary, bizarre and packing an awesome double-bladed lightsaber, Darth Maul is the entire saga's most inspired henchman. Better still, in a movie clogged with CG, martial-artist Ray Park's skills are the real deal. Killing him off was a stroke of lunacy.

Balancing the other side of the scales, Ewan McGregor's genuineness makes him thoroughly believable as the young Obi-Wan. But having watched his persona go through new levels of hardness thanks to revenge actioner Taken and upcoming survival thriller The Grey, Liam Neeson's casting as Qui-Gon looks even better. Smooth, Zen-like and badass, he's the ultimate Jedi Master. For the first time, we get to see "force speed" and how to unlock a door with a lightsaber. Nice.

THE LUCAS ARTS

The Prosecution
Even with its clunky miniatures and shaky matte paintings, the first Star Wars still holds up. Phantom, by contrast,looks too good, too slick and too darn shiny. There is no sense that this Galaxy far, far away actually exists outside of a computer, or that any of its all-digital creations are ever interacting with their flesh and blood co-stars. Chewbacca may have been just a giant walking carpet, but he was there, on set, occupying space next to Harrison Ford. Jar Jar Binks, in contrast, is just a cartoon - and an annoying, stupid and racially insensitive cartoon at that.

The Defence
Unafraid to nod affectionate to the Ben-Hur's chariot race, the podrace is also a swooping thrill-ride that's sure to be eye-roasting in 3D as rickety speeders go roaring and crashing through desert canyons at hundreds of miles per hour. Visual-effects wizard John Knoll (Pirates Of The Caribbean sequels, Avatar, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) also shows us a quieter, grander, more ambitious vision of the Star Wars universe - from the gorgeousness of Naboo to the underwater world of Gungan City.

Nothing, though, compares to... The Spider-Chair. This amazingly creepy-crawling seat takes Nute Gunray scuttling around the Queen's palace on Naboo for one of Lucas' most bizarre, brilliant inventions.

Say what you like about The Phantom Menace. But if nothing else, this movie proved, way before Spider-Pig, that few people apart from Steve Ditko appreciated just how much awesomeness can be obtain by attaching the word "spider" to things.

CLOSING STATEMENTS

The prosecution
Taking over two hours to dramatise a back story Alec Guinness covered in one soliloquy, Phantom takes a cherished mythology and strips it of all its splendour. The characters are impossible to warm to, the story has no emotion and the only humour consists of juvenile slapstick. The only half-decent addition is Darth Maul and he gets dispatched with risible ease. And it's all so dreadfully pompous - a turgid origin story, dissecting the creation of a villain we were all quite happy to take at face value. After all, does it really matter how Darth Vader came by his mask?

The Defence
Poor old Jar Jar Binks. This pitiable freak never asked to be born upriver in the terrifying Island Of Mr Moreau that functions as George Lucas' brain. But here he is. Too weird to live, too rare to die.

A great film, of course, is more than the sum of its parts. The Phantom Menace is less, much less, and that gangly space-Rasta is surely the most mangled piece in the jigsaw. But hundreds of talented people spent hundreds of hours making the good bits in George Lucas' Star Wars prequel. A fan's re-cut, The Phantom Edit, proved there's a much better film lurking inside the 133 minutes assembled by the man who gave us Howard The Duck. Take a kinder look and you'll see what went right.

Below: The Star Wars saga in pictures