Stoklasa's review of The Phantom Menace was published to YouTube on December 10, 2009, and quickly became popular, receiving over 5 million views since its release. The video was widely linked to by many people across the internet, including celebrities such as Damon Lindelof and Simon Pegg. In comparison to his earlier Star Trek movie reviews, which lasted 30 to 40 minutes, the Phantom Menace review had a total run time of approximately 70 minutes. The review took between seven and ten days to complete. Stoklasa believes that the film has no real protagonist or strong characters in general. He demonstrates this by asking his friends to describe characters from the original trilogy and Phantom Menace without referring to the characters' physical appearances or occupations. Juxtaposed with the archetype and personality descriptions they give for the characters Han Solo and C-3PO, Stoklasa's friends are unable to come up with similarly ardent descriptions for the Phantom Menace characters Qui-Gon Jinn and Padmé Amidala. Stoklasa believes that many of the decisions made by Jinn's character are highly questionable. He further suggests that the character is entirely unnecessary to the plot and overall story save to have a final climactic lightsaber battle. He notes Lucas' attempt to add more concurrent plot elements in each of the successive Star Wars films, which he refers to as "The Ending Multiplication Effect". Stoklasa then illustrates the chaotic and confusing nature of ending the film by pulling together four concurrent plot threads, each with a radically different tone, unclear objectives, and an overall lack of proper character motivation.