(Spoiler warning, I guess, for those who have been waiting to see Star Wars Episode I...
)
Completely unbelievable/lame/stupid and ridiculously overdone things in Episode I:
1. The "underground and underwater chase" scene where even the actors are bored as a completely ridiculous computer animation scene plays behind them, with too-big and too-fast fish eating each other so quickly that no environment could possibly explain their existance. From a cinematic perspective, these monsters lacked all of the tension, mystery, and timing found in monsters in earlier SW movies. Compared to say, the trash compactor monster, these are just so badly presented. They'd make an OK short animation show off film, but that's all.
2. The pod race. Completely unbelievable and uninteresting on many levels. In the first place, it was simply shown too fast. Everything moved and changed direction so quickly and unbelievably that again, it just looked completely fake and unbelievable. The way vehicles in SW moved
used to be one of the strong points - the movement wasn't strictly explainable in terms of physics in the other films, but at least it looked like there was some logic behind their movements. The racing pods just looked ridiculous, most of all the way they moved, and the speed at which they moved. The reflex requirements would be like 100 times that required for any of the other maneuvers in any of the other films. Also, the deaths during the race had so little tension or "gravity" to them... like the underground/underwater chase, it was just like a bad hallucination.
3. The ground battle. Much less believable and less interesting and with much less sense of tension than the ground battle in The Empire Strikes Back, or the boarding combat in the first movie (or, to be fairer, than the brief CGI opening war scenes in the recent The Fellowship of the Ring). It's OBVIOUSLY a bunch of CGI animation, with extremely overused animation for the Gungan infantry. It just looked like a futuristic RTS computer game engagement - both armies stand out in the complete open, not bothering to take cover at all, etc. Predictable/unbelievable "water versus metal" weapons - argh. No terror or war whatsoever.
4. The Space Battle. Again, the fighter battle in the first movie was the most believable, tense, and interesting. Here the movements are overdone and unbelievable, no one really seems like a person who is facing death, and of course, Anakin. Anakin, the little kid, what, accidentally gets into a fighter and intuitively figures out the controls and becomes a mega-legendary ace instantly? Uh huh. I guess as Darth Vader he just lost his knack at wiping out targets a dozen at a time, or specialized TIE fighters are just a massive step backwards from these goofy Naboonese provincial designs? Then, what, he flies inside the enemy ship ... and manages to "turn off" all the battle droids... mhmm, ya, sure, whatever...
PvK