• Domestic Total Gross: $924,317,558
• Distributor: Fox
• Release Date: May 19, 1999
• Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy
• Running Time: 2 hrs. 13 min.
• MPAA Rating: PG
• Production Budget: $115 million

Cast:
Liam Neeson - Qui-Gon Jinn
Ewan McGregor - Obi-Wan Kenobi
Natalie Portman - Queen Padmé Amidala
Jake Lloyd - Anakin Skywalker

1999 Academy Awards® :: 0 Win out of 3 Nominations
Best Visual Effects, Best Sound, Best Sound Editing

It is a distant galaxy eons before the creation of Earth. Societies have evolved among millions of worlds united in a Republic whose capital world is the supercity of Coruscant. Serving as the guardians of order from Coruscant are the Jedi, an order of warriors endowed with super power via self-generated energy fields known as The Force, whose weapons of choice are lightsabers. Within the Galactic Republic exists a collection of imperial-minded worlds united in the euphemistically named Trade Federation, which is engaged in a dispute with the peaceful world of Naboo. Two Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn and young apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi, are sent by Coruscant to Naboo to mediate the Trade Federation's dispute, but when they arrive aboard a Trade Federation base star, they quickly find the trade dispute is merely cover for armed invasion of Naboo.

The biggest feature of this movie is the special effects. There is no doubt that George Lucas is known first and foremost as a special effects wizard and he does not disappoint in this movie. In fact, some of the effects were so well done that I did not even notice them right away. GL's creation of a whole other world/universe was an incredible success and definitely created the illusion of reality. The biggest drawback was Lucas's decision to have the alien creatures speak in english. A far greater effect would have been made if these creatures spoke in their native tongues with the movie subtitled. This was done in the first set of movies and definitely created the effect of realism. By having the alien creatures speak in english, it tended to take away from the SW feel. In some cases, some of the creatures accents sounded a little bit ethnic or to the opposite extreme, a bit too 'American' (one of the announcers in the pod race scene).