I still have all my Blu-Rays and DVDs in boxes in a closet. They’re also all on a NAS. Thing is, at the time that I ripped all of 'em I didn’t bother with subtitles. Now my partner is someone for whom english is a second language, so we watch everything with subs, rendering my Plex station rather useless. Oh well. At least I’ve got everything still.
Honestly, I was slightly let down by the experience fidelity-wise. Because of the CGI used, many elements were blurry here and there and because of the composite shots combining real elements with CGI, there were some moments where for example Jar Jar Binks would be blurry but the background would look normal. Also there were these weird pixelated colored dots that'd appear onscreen every five minutes or so.
But hey the audio was fine and the movie is WAY better than I remember.
It was my first time watching it on the big screen since it’s initial release which was an interesting experience as my expectations were much lower, so I wasn’t as disappointed and I have chewed over the faults on so many levels that I was partly immunised to them (apart from the the highest level issues - it made me think how the scope and scale of it was just too big and how different starting off with a more focused story could have really helped).
So, yes, it has issues, but it also has some great scenes and the Duel of the Fates is peak Star Wars.
Plus we got a preview of The Acolyte afterwards and that looked great on the big screen - it’s showing a tonne of promise.
I haven’t seen this theatrical re-release but I saw it when it opened back in '99. There was no way it could live up to the hype of a brand new Star Wars film after about 16 years.
I bought the DVD and watched it a couple more times and then forgot about it. I bought the Blu-rays in late 2020, and watched the prequel trilogy again for the first time in over a decade.
I think Phantom Menace held up the best, possibly because the healthy amount of practical work. The CGI of the sequels hasn’t held up so well.