The Phantom Menace/YMMV

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• Angst? What Angst?: In this film, Anakin doesn't seem to have any real gripes about being raised as a slave from birth. If anything, he seems to have more angst about being freed, since it means leaving his mother behind. This a bit ironic, considering one of the biggest complaints about Anakin's portrayal in the next two films is that he's too angsty.
  • Ani's just a kid when he leaves; he doesn't know any better. When you tack on years away from Mom with no contact, Obi-Wan's less-than-warm personality during training, and Ani's natural teenage whininess, his later attitude makes more sense.
  • He is, but it's quite subtle. You can see that he's clearly angry when Padme asks him if he is a slave.
• Critical Backlash: Like the whole Prequel trilogy, this movie gets this a lot.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Darth Maul was a coldly efficient badass who takes on two skilled Jedi (who we've seen take on hordes of battle droids) and positively makes them look like amateurs. It is such that his performer, Ray Park, is a fan favorite actor despite only speaking a handful of lines in the movie (that were dubbed anyway).
• Evil Is Cool: Again Darth Maul, for the same reasons (as well as the double-ended Laser Blade).
• First Installment Wins: Though the final one of the prequels ended up being the best received, this is the one people remember the most (the preceding hype helped).
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: Obi-Wan calling Jar Jar a "lower life form" sounds a lot worse after his padawan kills a bunch of Sand People.
  • The False-Flag Operation is a lot harsher after the Truther conspiracy theory.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In Mars Attacks!, Natalie Portman appears in a scene mocking the final award scene in A New Hope. Here she appears, playing the exact same role within the scene, in a straight Homage.
• Hype Backlash: Everyone had really high expectations after 16 years. Many ended up disappointed.
• Magnificent Bastard: In light of later reveals, Senator Palpatine.
• Nightmare Fuel: The journey through Naboo's core features the heroes' Gungan submarine getting attacked by a series of freaky-looking sea monsters. The largest of them all (and the inspiration for Qui-Gon's infamous "There's always a bigger fish" line) even has a built-in Slasher Smile.
• Once-Acceptable Targets: Jar Jar has become this after 2019 where Ahmed Best revealed that he nearly killed himself due to people hating Jar Jar.
• Protection From Editors: Widely considered a reason for the questionable quality (so much that George Lucas even hired co-writers or ghost writers for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith).
• Retroactive Recognition: Keira Knightley is the queen's decoy, since she's an Identical Stranger to Natalie Portman. The disguise is so perfect, people often forget that Knightley had a role in the film at all.
• The Scrappy: Jar Jar is one of the most infamous, and is the Trope Namers in German. Riff Trax calls him "Roger Rabbit redesigned by Satan."
  • Also falls into Alien Scrappy/Ethnic Scrappy territory. He's a Scrappy Casserole, a dish you really don't want to eat.
• Special Effect Failure: There's two major instances, the most noticeable is when Darth Maul falls down a pit after he dies, he's a CG double that somehow sounds like rubber.
  • The animation for Jar Jar has not aged well, especially compared to the other fully CG characters like Boss Nass and Watto.
• Tastes Like Diabetes: The infamous "Are you an angel?" scene, along with several other lines by Anakin.
• Unfortunate Implications: The use of real life accents to distinguish fictional Star Wars factions could play in to unfortunate racial stereotypes.
  • Trade Federation: Japanese Mega Corp. Gungans: Sambos. Watto: Greedy Jew Space Jews.
  • Interestingly, the language localizations changed the Trade Federation to represent different stereotypes each time.
    • Also, Obi-Wan calling Jar-Jar a "lower lifeform".
  • As mentioned above, Anakin's life as a slave is shown as relatively happy and tranquil, and the man who owns him is presented as a decent guy (though he's pretty greedy). And being freed seems to give him more angst than being a slave, since it means leaving his family behind.
    • This isn't entirely unrealistic though, especially the last part. Skilled labor slaves like Anakin were often treated fairly well in the real world, and families being broken up when only some of them were freed actually happened.
• Values Resonance: After 20 years, the prequel trilogy is starting to feel more relevant with declines of democracies and trade disputes.
• Vindicated by History: After the mixed-to-negative reception of the sequel trilogy, this and the other prequels made by George Lucas got a better reception, including its more cohesive story.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: One of the few unanimous aspects of the movie.
• What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: Word of God said so himself...
• The Woobie: Anakin, particularly after leaving Tatooine. But his actor Jake Lloyd is a much bigger woobie because after the movie came out, he got bullied by his classmates, among other people, for being in it, and now he can't stand watching any Star Wars movie, let alone this one, and it made him stop acting altogether.