It's so fascinating to see the different sides of the spectrum. Over on the prequel forum at TFN, you have people who absolutely love those movies. And on the other side, you have Squiggly's thoughts about them.

Personally, my feelings on them can be summarized as "disappointed". I don't think they're bad (except AOTC) because I am able to watch them and be entertained (again, except AOTC). They certainly don't stack up to the OT in my book and I wish they had been much better. However, I do stand by my opinion that Qui-Gon does actually have a personality other than "stoic"; but if you don't even want to accept the premise that TPM can be analyzed as a movie, then I get why you'd dismiss and not even entertain claims like that.

Well I don't follow the EU, but that was the impression I got from just that movie. And when I say "beliefs", I mean more so that he has strong opinions and stands by them despite what anyone says. Here are some examples:

1.) Trusting their fate to some boy they met on Tatooine who has never once even finished a podrace. Despite Padme objecting and saying the Queen wouldn't approve, he does it anyway and suggests that the Queen not even be informed about this. This tells me that he's formulated an opinion about the situation and will stop at nothing to see it through, even if it means keeping the Queen in the dark about this.

2.) Insisting that Anakin be trained. Even though the council says that he should not be trained because they sense danger in his future, Qui-gon insists that he is the Chosen One; he then proceeds to defy the council by taking Anakin on as his apprentice. Even Obi-wan tries to tell him that he's gone too far but Qui-gon is having none of it. This, again, is another example of Qui-gon standing by his opinion and not really caring that other people don't seem to agree.

In addition to having strong opinions, I also think Qui-gon is a "ends justify the means" kind of guy as evidenced by his willingness to deceive the Queen and his use of the Force to make Watto's dice roll in his favor.

Yeah, I liked the film in terms of the interesting characters it set up. But I had major problems with the pacing, which made it feel like some modern action flick rather than a Star Wars movie. I also felt the movie seemed to lose focus once Han Solo came into the picture. Like up until that point, everything was so tight; Luke is missing, Rey finds the droid with the map to Luke, Kylo Ren is tracking them down, and basically the movie seems like it's a race to see which side can get to Luke first.

But once Han Solo is introduced, it seems to veer off course a bit. And speaking of Han, the movie waits 17 whole minutes to acknowledge why Han is even in the movie. Like he comes on board the Falcon and we get no clue as to why he's there, how he found them, or why the story is now about escaping the CGI tentacle monsters. It's only after landing on Maz's planet that the movie thinks we deserve some explanation. Once on Maz's planet, the movie really seems to lose focus. What happened to the urgency in finding Luke? And it also seemed to bit odd to me that Maz just randomly had Luke's old lightsaber. It just seemed like the movie was telling us to not think about it too much and just accept what was happening.

Things pick up again towards the end on Starkiller base but again, the Luke storyline is nowhere to be found. But this part is still interesting due to all the character stuff with Han, Kylo, Rey, and Finn. Overall, I think the film's biggest success was setting up interesting characters that we want to see more of and learn more about. Like I wanted to learn more about Rey's backstory, Kylo's backstory, and what made Luke disappear. But as a film on its own, I just wish it had more focus, less random occurrences, and better pacing. So I still enjoyed it, but I'm hoping Episode 8 is a more intimate and focused film where we can explore the characters more, kind of like TESB but with a completely different plot.

Would you guys at the Extended Edition also be able to snag Ryan Wieber for a commentary? It'd be cool to hear his thoughts as well since he worked on the VFX for TFA.

The super-important question though is: will we get another FIYH podcast for TFA once it's released on Blu-ray???

I've always rationalized it as midichlorians are drawn people who are strong with the Force. And so they can be used to measure Force strength and provide empiric "knowledge of the Force" but aren't what actually determine Force strength. To me, that's the only way midichlorians can somewhat fit Obi-wan and Yoda's description of the Force in the originals. Still, I don't understand why they were even introduced into the prequels to begin with.