I’ve been rewatching The Phantom Menace with my son. I know folk have been saying it’s not as bad as you remember, but dear god it’s dull with some breathtakingly flat performances from gifted actors, but...

There are flashes of absolute brilliance and what might have been. Williams’ score is just amazing and the design and world-building is proper eye candy and it created a universe that has spun off into some fab cartoon series.

But lordy, that whole middle section on Coruscant is a snooze-fest. Who cares? And it means it takes an hour and fifty minutes to get to the good bit...

Time has not been kind to some of the CGI and there are some well-dodgy cultural stereotypes, and the dialogue... good grief.

But anyone blaming this on poor Jake Lloyd or Ahmed Best are misguided (I quite enjoyed JarJar actually, he provides some much-needed fun). This is all on his George-ness, whom I love and admire, but he really needed a Gary Kurtz to curtail his indulgences.

But hey, a lot of kids who grew up with it absolutely love it, so what does this grumpy old goat know? Next up: Attack of the Clones...

Okay, onto Attack of the Clones and blimey this was like wading through treacle, mainly due to the choice to make Anakin a sullen teen from the off...

Emotionally, he’s got nowhere to go. Imagine if he’d been a little more happy-go-lucky and how much more tragic his arc would have been and his romance with Padmé would have been charming and not totally creepy...

Obi Wan as detective is a nice thread and the visuals, score, design, costume are all top notch, though tjere a whole sequences that are pebbledashed with confusing VFX...

Christopher Lee is the big highlight. He really gets it and is magnificent, but even he is not enough to save the film. If you want to see the Clone Wars done well, check out the cartoon series. It’s huge fun.

Next: Revenge of the Sith...