Film culture would never be the same after the release of Meet Joe Black.

People bought tickets for the film, where Brad Pitt plays the Grim Reaper, but they were really there to see the trailer for Star Wars: Episode One — The Phantom Menace. Most stayed for the 2 minutes and 12 second runtime of the trailer and then left. Only the brave stayed and watched all 3 hours of Meet Joe Black.

In Australia, senior lecturer in media at Swinburne University and author of Star Wars After Lucas, Dan Golding, was a pre-teen testing the limits of his household's dial-up modem.

"I tied up the phone line for over an hour downloading the teaser trailer for The Phantom Menace on a 56k modem and scrutinised every frame. It was an impossibly mythic moment."

Two decades later, the release of The Phantom Menace feels like a myth. A film too big to fail that lured in fans but left most of them seething. For 20 years we've been coming to terms with The Phantom Menace and how it drastically changed the way movies were made, marketed, consumed and then spat out.

The prequel turned 20 this week and its influence is still felt in CGI-heavy films and the moans of fans dissatisfied with everything from Game of Thrones to the latest adventure in a galaxy far, far away.

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New ships, new creatures, a young queen and small boy

The rise of the internet collided with Hollywood in the lead up to the release of The Phantom Menace and it was the moment when trailers took centre stage. Now we have teasers trailers and teaser trailers for the actual trailers.

After Return of the Jedi, the only Star Wars fix you could get was through novels, comic books and video games. Star Wars fans had waited 16 years for an event they thought would never happen and it was destined to be huge. The trailer for The Phantom Menace was one of the first to go viral online, despite the agonising wait for each second of footage to download. The trailer made it into news bulletins as did the countdown to its release and fans camping outside cinemas for tickets.

One of the first dedicated film websites on the scene was Dark Horizons, based in Australia, run by editor, Garth Franklin.

"It was a big event, probably the single biggest I'd seen since Batman in 1989 in that everyone was talking about it," says Franklin.

"Far bigger than even the recent double punch of Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones."

There was something pure about the reaction to The Phantom Menace trailer and the lead up to its release. In 1977, the original release of Star Wars took everyone by surprise and its popularity became a case of supply not meeting demand. Famously, the toy company Kenner ran out of action figures and offered fans an IOU if they paid upfront and mini Han Solos were mailed out as soon as they became available.

Jump to '99 and no fan was going to miss out on the opportunity to be part of history. People began buying toys and merchandise before seeing the film and fans obsessed over the mysterious villain with a double-bladed lightsaber, Darth Maul. Even Jar Jar Binks — now one of the most hated characters in Star Wars history — was viewed as the new Chewbacca. Spirits were high and wallets were opening. But then the film came out.

The iconic Darth Maul is the villain in The Phantom Menace. ( Star Wars: The Phantom Menace )

A long time ago

"There was an almost palpable sense of mass disappointment due to sky high expectations," Franklin says.

"The letdown was inevitable, and boy did it hit big when it hit."

The backlash against The Phantom Menace took its time because the news cycle kept a medium pace in '99. If you weren't an early adopter of the internet, you'd have to read all the negative reviews and canvass people face-to-face until you found enough people who hated it.

Over time, the more people you spoke with, the more it became apparent that The Phantom Menace was perceived as a dud. Like the success of the trailer, the internet played a part in fuelling the rage around the film. Franklin says the foundations to discuss films online was built in the lead-up to the release.

"Movie news online took off in 1995/1996 so by the time of Phantom Menace there already was a system in place with news outlets, discussion boards, and so forth allowing discourse of this stuff," Franklin says.

Golding thinks the film's writer and director, George Lucas, pointed most of the blame at the internet.

"[Lucas] has often said that it led to a level of viciousness he hadn't experienced before, and that this new era of fan engagement made him want to quit Star Wars more than ever; something he always wanted to do right from the start.

"What it was about the internet that bred such hate is less clear, because this predates social media, bot accounts, big harassment, and a lot of the stuff we now talk about today when it comes to online hate."

Liam Neeson and Natalie Portman star in The Phantom Menace. ( Star Wars: The Phantom Menace )

Fans have always been misbehaving but the reaction to The Phantom Menace planted a seed of discontent within pop culture and a precedent for how to behave.

A lot of it may have been a mixture of great expectations, disappointment and denial but fans would go on to have their guard up about anything. It was no longer cool to be excited for a new Star Wars, in the fear you'd be humiliated if it was bad. The cynical age of fandom had begun.

"The Phantom Menace was perhaps the biggest early flashpoint that set us down the path that we find ourselves on today in terms of a certain strain of fan feeling like they own popular culture," Golding says.

When you see online petitions to remake the final season of Game of Thrones or the harassment of people who don't give fans what they want, it's a symptom of two decades of fans spreading the sentiment to never forget The Phantom Menace.

Green screens forever

The Phantom Menace still made $US1 billion at the box office, which was all Hollywood wanted to hear as it forged ahead with planning the next decade of CGI blockbusters made in its image, which included two more prequels — Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

"The Phantom Menace is one of the most influential movies of the last two decades," says Golding.

"Motion capture performance, green screens, even the word 'prequel' — all of these things owe a huge debt to The Phantom Menace. When I look around at today's blockbusters, I see complex seriality everywhere, I see CGI everywhere, I see motion capture performance everywhere. All of this is the shadow of The Phantom Menace."

Looking back, Franklin says people are beginning to view the film in a different light.

"It's both a cautionary tale and misunderstood. Lucas made the film he very much wanted to make, expectations be damned, and so the auteurism of these films is now being reassessed and appreciated," says Franklin.

"It's especially important now as the last two years has seen the rise of what is a growing issue of the line that filmmakers have to walk between what's good for the story and what's good for the fans."

The Phantom Menace disappointed fans after its long-awaited release. ( Star Wars: The Phantom Menace )

Golding says the distance from the film, and two films continuing the saga, the Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, means the prequel now stands in a different light.

"The Phantom Menace was George Lucas' answer to the way that critics and academics had by 1999 taken the original trilogy to task for its black-and-white morality and simplistic politics.

"The Phantom Menace and the prequels in general tell a story that looks even more prescient today, about how democracies give themselves away to dictators."

Looking back at '99, it ended up being an incredible year for film with The Matrix, Fight Club, The Sixth Sense and Being John Malkovich to name a few in a long list.

Another ground-breaking film on the opposite end of the spectrum would defy Hollywood logic when The Blair Witch Project became a mega hit and deftly used the internet as marketing tool.

Despite the influence of all these films, The Phantom Menace is still the one that resonates when you see action scenes made entirely in a computer, read an article with a trailer breakdown 6 months before a film's release or debate the merits of a blockbuster on Twitter.

May the discourse be with you.