Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace looks better than ever in 3D

Dave Burrows reports from the London premiere of the first 3D Star Wars film which opened at Shropshire cinemas today:

It was always going to happen. As soon as the new generation of 3D got a foothold in cinemas, it was inevitable that George Lucas would once again revisit his space epic.

Let's face it, he's barely stopped tinkering with it since the idea seed for the second set of films was planted. Not all of the tinkering has been good.

And so now we have Star Wars 3D. Curiously, the latest version of the saga gets its cinema release with Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

• See more pictures in our gallery to your right

Now the uninitiated may be saying: "Well, of course Episode I comes first," but any Star Wars fan will tell you that the correct order in which to watch the films is original trilogy first, then the new ones. And this isn't simply because the original films are head and shoulders above the prequels.

There are shocks and reveals in the original films which lose ALL of their dramatic impact if you watch the newer movies first. Alright, most people probably already know what they are, but the thing about Star Wars is there are new people discovering the films all the time. Why should they be deprived of the "No way" moments?

Anyway, I digress. The point is Phantom is first and we just have to live with it. So what of it?

Well, it seems to me that Lucas, the master of the repackage, may have seen what was on the horizon when he made Episode I. Look at the pod race. Filmed because advances in CGI meant it could be. But can you really tell me that Lucas didn't know how jaw-dropping that would look coming out of the screen?

Now I'm no fan of 3D. I have yet to see a film in which I have found it necessary and I see it as just a gimmick. I am even more unsure about retro-fitted 3D, but have to accept it is here to stay. And what Lucas has done is, as you may expect from a master of the technical, pretty marvelous.

The 3D impacts from the get-go. The famous crawling text looks wonderful pulled out of the screen with the stars as its backdrop (even if the actual preamble about taxation of trade routes still sounds like a geography essay).

http://youtu.be/8ZxGQbL4DrE

If you know your Star Wars, the highlights of the 3D version are exactly what you might expect them to be. The aforementioned pod race is spectacular. The downside being you may well find yourself waiting for it to happen, to the detriment of all that goes before it.

Then there is the final battle between the Jedi and the criminally under-used Darth Maul. With John Williams' epic Duel of the Fates blasting out, this is more thrilling than any lightsaber battle you've seen before (until Episode III arrives in 3D).

In fact all the final battles benefit from the new technology. As Anakin and the Naboo battle in space and the Gungans take on the droid army on the surface, the action is enhanced.

There are still plenty of faults, however. Jar Jar Binks was annoying enough as a two-dimensional, one-dimensional character. Here, his traits are magnified and detract from the film even more (even if he does have less screen-time than I remember).

And all the technical wizardry in the world can't make up for the bad acting and fairly turgid plot of this film. Or the things that grated with Star Wars fans when it first came out, like the plot holes, continuity errors between the new and old trilogies and the awful miscasting of Jake Lloyd as a (far too) young Anakin Skywalker.

The original version of The Phantom Menace looked pretty but lacked substance. The same is true here. But having said that the 3D makes it much, much prettier. The good bits are now fantastic and, although that makes the bad bits worse in comparison, they are easier to live with.

This is the first film I've seen where 3D really does improve the experience. But I'm still not sure of the impact it will have on the original films.