I recently made the effort to watch the original RLM thing. So here are my exhaustive notes from listening to all 7 parts of the RLM Phantom Menace review. You’ll note I did really dig some parts, this isn’t a complete TTF vs The Last Jedi:
I’ll start out by saying the delivery is so deadpan that I can’t really tell if some of what I’m pulling up here is ‘the character’ making the video being flawed or something? (i.e the comment I’ve marked ** below)
I don’t like the ‘Plinkett’ character aspect anyway: tonnes of misogyny “crying like a girl”, “moaning like a woman”, “looks like my ex-wife” the whole basement thing with the woman he’s kidnapped and the stuff about killing his wife? Also the running over a family of Koreans thing. What’s that about even? just seems to be a weird racist thing? I mean I get that he’s trying to make an overall joke about TPM is so bad it subliminally tells him to kill people but it just seems really poorly applied. He gets so into his review the final half makes barely a mention of this side of things so it seems even weirder when he comes back to it at the end.
Anyway:
1 - The characters - the point about how you can’t really describe TPM characters is a good one but it’s slighly hamstrung for me by the fact that he’s clearly cherry picked this a bit. Qui-Gon only appears in the one film and yeah, he’s pretty boring, but trying to describe Obi-Wan from the first film would also be as tough.
He makes his point really when he asks you who the hero is. I note he doesn’t ask people to describe Anakin because they certainly could. I’d also say Leia doesn’t really have a huge amount of character either.
But you know obviously she is a better character than Queen Amidala. Why? Because she has great dialogue and it’s delivered with emotion. The issue isn’t so much that you can’t describe Amidala, it’s that she’s a character designed to be rigidly reserved in a film that already has a bunch of rigidly reserved characters.
Equally we don’t, for example, go from Threepio’s description to Jar-Jar’s. Again, the fact is you’d describe them pretty much identically but Jar-jar is infuriating and the reason isn’t about how well you can describe him in this context.
2 - The Story - this comment on the opening is exactly the sort of thing I hate. I don’t think TPM has a good opening but again this is disingenuous like the character question in part 1: how is the opening of TPM any worse than the opening of Empire Strikes Back? Plinkett opens his video by telling anyone who thinks ESB is too slow to fuck off but here he is making a play for ‘it’s too slow’. What’s the comment about the space station about? It looks unusual, why is it a negative.
And the opening for Return of the Jedi is also actually pretty dull. Vader arrives, delivers some IMPORTANT EXPOSITION camouflaged as threats and then we move to a very slow build up on Tattooine. At this point, Episode IV was the only one to open with a massive bang and frankly TPM gets to some action even quicker than ESB or ROTJ.
** “The prequels should be very similar in style to the originals because I don’t like things that are diffrent.” ← what am I meant to do with this? Is he saying he’s just been talking shit in this last section and actually these points are as ridiculous as I’ve made out? Am I being trolled by someone who loves the prequels actually?
3 / 4 / 5 - I mean the plot is terrible but man, he spends a lot of time belabouring his points. Like the attack on the Jedi is stupid and really it seems completely based on the fact the guys from the Trade Federation are actually really thick. I mean that’s pretty much all you need to say, but he keeps saying, “Why didn’t they do this? Why did they do this?” Basically plots based on a bad guy who’s not at all bright are always shit. He’s not actually made THAT point and it’s really the most important.
Also I think he’s got a bit lost in the fact that technically we don’t know that Sidious and Palpatine are the same character do we? I mean he points out that Sidious wants her to sign the treaty but Palpatine’s ascent is based on her not signing and bringing out the no-confidence. This sort of only makes no sense when you know these two characters are the same but also by the point you know that, you also realise the whole point of Palpatine is to fool the Jedi into thinking he is on their side so… I’m not defending Lucas’s story, I just think this bit of the RLM analysis is losing itself inside its own conceits.
6 - Such an important point: why does the army land on the other side of the planet? More crazy! Love the Lucas snippet saying how pointless the robots are.
7 / 8 - I mean at this point it’s just getting in the nitpicking stuff? Not saying this bit about them getting out of blockade is good but this bit of the analysis just feels like we’ve spent far too many words on something that’s really just pretty standard invented peril from sci-fi fantasy. What makes it fail is the other stufff around it.
9 - Good points about Qui-Gon’s character and Obi-Wan’s characeter’s failings in terms of how it fails the films and the whole setup for the podrace that makes no sense. Including that betting thing for Anakin 
10 - Brutal and specific burn about the Anakin actor’s shitness not helping. The stuff about them saying Anakin is dangerous right in front of him!
11 - who cares about the Sith in the Jedi council. Ha.
- what is this plan of attack? Yeah totally bullshit about the plan for the finalé with three completely fabricated fronts.
- also we come back to the Viceroy being an idiot. Again, why not just stick to the point the bad guys are just stupid and why awful that is in general?
- Lots of good points about the illogical fight stuff with Darth Maul.
12 - I like how much he says the choreography of the lightsabre fighting is bad. I don’t think I’ve ever really considered how bad it is. How maybe it’s part of the why the prequels land so badly rather than just a bit of the film that you could enjoy without caring about how bad the rest of it was. Yeah: the fights should have seemed like the original trilogy. I am officially glad I stuck with it for this bit.
(Also, I am a big fan of the skewering of Lucas with his own comments.)
13 - Interesting point about the different tones in the finalé although this is actually kind of true about ROTJ… Fun seeing George realising he’s screwed it.
Weirdly never realised Yoda’s phrase about fear / anger / hate had come from The Phantom Menace. Got so ingrained I just assumed he’d spouted it along with all his other stuff in ESB. Wow.
