Obviously he didnt deserve the harassment he got regardless. Like even if he was dogshit he wouldnt have deserved that. But I just rewatched Phantom Menace for the first time in awhile. Young friend of mine are going through the star wars movies because she was a sheltered homeschooled kid and hadnt seen them. Already did the OT, starting on the prequels.
Other than the obvious “oh wow, the racial stereotypes of literally three different alien species in this movie is insane”, the main takeaway my rewatch gave me is “wow ok, Jake LLoyd is average at worst”. He was just like, a regular kid actor? Nothing to write home about like say, young Maise Williams or something. But absolutely fine?
Lucas went so far into demonstrating the banality of evil and how decaying liberal governments slide into fascism that he forgot that the banality of evil is banal and hard to watch for too long.
He also couldn’t commit to an actual political intrigue plot line with specifics for whatever reason, something complex and philosophical that would please the adults at the very least, even if it bored the children. “Boring” politics can be interesting in the right hands, see The Wire or Deadwood.
If you are going to spend 60% of your run time talking about trade agreements and diplomatic treaties and the like, shouldn’t we have some idea of the specifics involved? The separatists and trade federation are so unexplored, we don’t know anything about them except they are bad. Show their economies, their internal politics, their crises that drive them to following the Sith’s leadership, some backstabbing and jockeying, etc.
Instead we don’t know anything about the trade of this confederation! Or the grievances of the separatists. The topic of slavery is shown but never addressed.