Did anyone really ask for this?

I can't imagine anyone asking for this, but I went to the movies and saw that they're re-releasing Star Wars Episode I (Jar Jar's back, yippee), in 3D no less, in February 2012.

Phantom Menace is rubbish ... except for this part (lower right), which is brilliant, in the same way that the first 10 minutes of the Road Warrior are brilliant. It's about pacing, restraint. Sure the sequences are all about action, but the action is doled out in doses with clarity and significance. In the case of the Road Warrior, those few (wordless) minutes define the character of Max and his world.

In the case of The Phantom Menace, it's as if some other director stopped into the studio just for that day and created something cool instead of something lame. The force-field door sequence that separates the two Jedi is an original take on the classic samurai sword battle (which is what all the Star Wars light sabre battles are at their core).

Why don't they just re-release those five minutes. Or maybe combine the good 20 minutes from all three Star Wars prequel films into one good highlights film. At $2 a ticket, that might be an okay idea.

Somewhat related: Hopefully, Christopher Nolan took the well-earned criticism of the action sequences in the last Batman film to heart when making the new one. The Dark Knight was an okay movie, but the action sequences were a murky indecipherable mess. Just really bad actually.