TPM 25th Anniversary Re-Release!

Yeah, the novelty and magic is still there, but they're of a different kind, for and in a different era.

I was speaking to this guy's argument that one should start with the OT, because it has a magic, tone and novelty that is more intact.

That's subjective, and I believe there's equal validity to anyone's opinions on the matter.

He also added that one should start with the OT in order to experience SW for the first time the same way the world did.

Which is cool, and a fair enough point. But at the same time, I ask: is it enough of a reason to opt not to watch it in numerical order? Well, I don't think any answer to that is more valid than another - which is why I commented about his stance.

Star Wars as an entity was well established and integrated into the culture by the '90s, but I think Lucasfilm did a great job of "re"-introducing it in it's own new way, in a multitude of ways. I remember everything about TPM feeling very novel and fresh as I was sitting there watching for the first time. That was one of the reasons I loved it so much. As a SW fan, to see a new SW movie/trilogy and have it be a bold new step in a new direction while still feeling entirely Star Wars-y.

As far as watch order, I've come to believe there's not a one answer fits all. I think it depends on the person. It's just, some people might find out the hard way they did it on a less ideal way for them, haha. But I think if someone starts with TPM, and subsequently decides not to continue at all, maybe the whole saga wouldn't have made much of impression on them either way.

"...is like expecting Jar Jar to turn into Darth Vader." Ha, well, some folks were so disappointed with the PT, they did just that.

I think both OT and PT are pure Star Wars in a sense that they represent what Lucas was concerned with at the respective times of his life. There is a quote in the Mythmaking book for Episode II that more or less says so:
Regardless of for which kind of target group both trilogies were made (essentielly the same), you can tell just by the nature of them that the latter trilogy be made was helmed by a much older man than that who made the first one (who were, ironically, the same man - George Lucas).

I saw that earlier and was gonna post it myself. Saved me a job.

It definitely looks more film-like. Reasonable film colours, a little bit of jitter, etc. HOWEVER... It also looks like they've heavily processed the print/scan and cleaned up grain, dirt, scratches. To the point where it's something of a chimera. It partly has the organic look and feel of film, but it also looks just a tad too antiseptic. Like those bloody 4K OT transfers.

I actually have a bigger bone of contention with Disney/LFL. I mean, with this bloody company, there's always something. It relates, in fact, to the trailer just posted:

Where the heck was ANY promotional material for the re-release of TPM, on the official company channels, prior to this trailer???

Take look on both the official Star Wars and Lucasfilm YouTube channels. There's absolutely nothing.

These are the four most recent video uploads on the Lucasfilm channel (oldest to most recent):

- Indy Fans Engaged on the Red Carpet | Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny | Lucasfilm 21 Dec 2023
- Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle 19 Jan 2024
- Lucasfilm: Story Drives Everything 9 May 2024
- Lucasfilm: Challenging The Impossible 9 May 2024

As you can see, the Lucasfilm channel was essentially dormant after heavily pimping the last Indiana Jones movie (plenty of Indy 5 material preceding the last four videos listed above). Lots of forward momentum on its channel for a key LFL property, and then silence for four months, even as the TPM re-release date approached, came, and went.

On the Star Wars channel, things are even more lamentable. Here are the twenty-eight most recent video uploads on the Star Wars channel (oldest to most recent):

- Star Wars Celebration Japan Teaser 21 Mar 2024
- Star Wars Empire State Building Takeover 22 Mar 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | 'The Harbinger' Official Clip 28 Mar 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | 'Identity Crisis' Official Clip 4 Apr 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | 'Point of no Return' Official Clip 4 Apr 2024
- Tales of the Empire | Official Trailer | Disney+ 4 Apr 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | 'Juggernaut' Official Clip 8 Apr 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | All in Now 9 Apr 2024
- Star Wars Outlaws: Official Story Trailer 9 Apr 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | 'Juggernaut' Official Clip 11 Apr 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | 'Into the Breach' Official Clip 18 Apr 2024
- Tales of the Empire | 'Stay Back' Official Clip 24 Apr 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | 'Flash Strike' Official Clip 25 Apr 2024
- Tales of the Empire | Revenge | Disney+ 29 Apr 2024
- Star Wars: Hunters Launch Date Reveal Trailer 30 Apr 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | Series Finale Now Available 1 May 2024
- LEGO Fortnite | Star Wars - Rebel Adventure 1 May 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | Complete | Disney+ 1 May 2024
- Tales of the Empire | Opportunity | Disney+ 1 May 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch Final Season | 'The Calvary Has Arrived' Official Clip 2 May 2024
- Happy May the Fourth, Star Wars Fans 3 May 2024
- Star Wars Lands in the Fortnite Universe | Gameplay Trailer 3 May 2024
- The Acolyte | Official Trailer | Disney+ 4 May 2024
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch | All Episodes Now Available | Disney+ 4 May 2024
- LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy | Teaser Trailer | Disney+ 6 May 2024
- The Acolyte | Conflict | Streaming June 4 on Disney+ 11 May 2024
- The Acolyte | Plan | Streaming June 4 on Disney+ 18 May 2024
- Star Wars: The Phantom Menace | Remastered Trailer 19 May 2024

I was going to post a dozen, but I bumped it up to twenty-eight because that covers every video of the past eight weeks, fully including April and May, the latter being the month of TPM's 25th anniversary and the month of its re-release. If you look back at older ones, you won't find anything preceding those listed above promoting TPM.

HOWEVER...

Weirdly, there is a "short" video; but, because it's automatically categorised by YouTube as a "short", it only shows up in the "Shorts" section and not under the actual "Videos" section. Here it is:


Title: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace 25th Anniversary
Channel: Star Wars
Uploaded: 4 May 2024
Views: 73,785
Comments: 231

There's also this "short" video of Ahmed Best, uploaded only yesterday:


Title: Ahmed Best | Star Wars: The Phantom Menace 25th Anniversary
Channel: Star Wars
Uploaded: 18 May 2024
Views: 32,957
Comments: 163

Wonderful to see! Rock on, Ahmed. Rock on.

Nevertheless, there are no long-form videos, no trailers, nothing that screams TPM's 25th anniversary in the "Videos" section. So, basically, as on the Lucasfilm channel, there is literally no acknowledgement of TPM's 25th anniversary and re-release, except for a "remastered" version of the original 1998 teaser trailer that was just uploaded to presumably coincide with the date of TPM's theatrical debut, twenty-five years ago today (or yesterday now -- I'm writing this as the clock has just gone past midnight in the UK).

That's... really odd.

But nothing really surprises me with Disney/LFL anymore. 

I say the situation is more lamentable on the Star Wars channel, despite it having a lot more content overall, because a) it's the Star Wars channel (and therefore people's main port of call for any information or marketing material concerning new or legacy projects in the spotlight), and b) they'd clearly much rather hawk all their lesser, third-rate Star Wars content than an iconic film that made the company almost a billion dollars on its original theatrical release. Adjusted for inflation, TPM's original worldwide takings of $924,305,084 come to $1,739,579,894 -- an astounding sum that surpasses the takings of "The Last Jedi" adjusted for inflation ($1,704,533,359) and quite cleanly exceeds the takings of "The Rise Of Skywalker" adjusted for inflation ($1,320,903,439).

That's a very successful movie, especially with tamer production and marketing costs than the Disney movies, that essentially made the Disney movies and the whole sale to Disney possible. So, of course, it gets absolutely no promotion or support on the main channel whatsoever; and even the Lucasfilm channel has inexplicably disowned it.

Maybe the movie is too imaginative for Disney and they were afraid that promoting it would cause their channel(s) to implode.

Bizarrely, it took some third-party channel -- apparently, a media company based in South Africa -- to actually get it right and pull its finger out and do what Disney/LFL couldn't:


And yes, Somny ,this is you again, sharing that trailer, isn't it?

It's like poetry, every stanza kinda rhymes with the last one.

Video stats:

Title: ‘Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (Re-Release)’ official trailer
Channel: Nu Metro
Uploaded: 24 Apr 2024
Views: 282,668
Comments: 1,250

All of those views and comments, while richly deserved by Nu Metro, could have instead gone to Disney/LFL (plus many more) -- had they, y'know, actually bothered to come up with something similar and chosen to support their own damn movie properly, which is also a major foundational piece of the entire Star Wars franchise. 

Back in 2019 (ArchdukeOfNaboo  may remember), I wrote extensively in the comments section on Naboo News (now in archival mode for your reading pleasure) of how Disney promotional materials around the time of "The Rise Of Skywalker" blatantly shunned the prequels (LINK), and I reproduced the bulk of that post on Naberrie Fields in 2020 (LINK).

It's sad to see that it's still happening, that Disney are still engaging in an elaborate form of corporate gaslighting, even as they have the nerve to try and gild the lily of their own questionable Star Wars content by implying it has George Lucas' seal of approval. The chutzpah of this "diversity"-and-"inclusion"-promoting entertainment leviathan is something else.

Disney needs to go home and rethink its life? 

I should just clarify, in my rant above, as I said, there are a few "shorts" available that explicitly acknowledge the 25th anniversary of TPM, on the main Star Wars channel.

But even including those, the film wasn't advertised prior to its re-release on the official channel, which is peculiar. In just the last few weeks, "The Acolyte" has had three trailers promoting its arrival on Disney+, there's been a new "LEGO Star Wars" trailer, and even a May 4th trailer (which, aside from a one-second podrace clip, doesn't have any TPM material within it). Apparently, the revelry is confined to a handful of "shorts", and no new trailer for the movie's 25th anniversary re-release was actually made.

Well, sir, I wasn't even drunk when I wrote it, nor was I on speed!

And I'm already at home, thank you very much. 

Hey, do you wanna buy some death sticks?


On first glance, you would think it must be sourced from Disney/LFL, one way or another. It's certainly slick enough. However, there are strong indications that it isn't, such as the cheap typography used at the end, like the following:



We can bash Disney all we like, but there's no way they'd ever be that cheap and sloppy (the terrible font, the awkward double space between "Experience" and "the").

Maybe it was sourced from some prior Disney clips or something, but if so, it was clearly revised and monkeyed with before being uploaded in its final form. 

Right you are! If you're a blithely misguided cheerleader, it's just possible that I'm a slightly paranoid conspiracy freak.

At least those "short" videos exist. I didn't initially see them, mind you, because they're in a separate section. The segregation of what YouTube deems "shorts" and longer videos really irks me. It should all be one thing (as it used to be). I have a little extension installed which at least plays "short" videos properly, like regular ones, without that horrible interface. Again, this is one company (YouTube) trying to compete with another (TikTok), and not necessarily to any great gain for the consumer. 


Thank you for the compliment. I'd like to revel in it, but it doesn't do well to get ahead of oneself. I only just realised, in my hefty post above, I incorrectly referred to the last Indiana Jones movie as "Indy 4".  Post has now been edited.

Ack, of course -- the official site.

You know what, I haven't looked there in a while, and that's probably why. It was super-depressing to go there after Disney took it over. And not simply because they had control. They could have at least preserved what was there. But no. It went from being a glorious bastion of information, a gorgeous archive positively rippling with material, including fan blogs at one time, to an insipid, bare, hollowed-out corpse. That's not to say there's nothing of value or interest on there. I recall some good stuff going up, here and there, in more recent times: interviews and little opinion pieces and analyses of this sort and that. But there was a wealth of content there before and it was basically erased. And the old interface was much better. The prequel era was really the Golden Age of Star Wars.

"I sense an unusual amount of fear for something as trivial as this trade dispute." -Qui-Gon Jinn

Daft viewers. Clearly, a meta line. The movie is aware it's casting these putative "great" warriors as political mediators in a fairly dry economic kerfuffle. I was barely out of high school when I could be found making this point to some hapless film schoolmates.