Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

The Phantom Menace Review

In which the audience is bludgeoned to death with nostalgia

Goodness, the hype leading up to this movie was something else entirely. Even before social media completely took over the world, the news was everywhere; a new Star Wars movie that would show us those legendary glory days when the Jedi Knights reigned! The formative years of one of cinema’s most legendary villains! A guy who looks like the Devil with a double sided lightsaber! The kid from Home Alone 3 as Anakin Skywalker!

…wait, what?

In hindsight, that last part should have been one of the first real alarm bells. Prior to The Phantom Menace, Star Wars certainly had a lot of elements from children’s stories. It was, however, never about eight year old kids out-flying, out-shooting, out-racing and out-forcing everyone around them. There were certainly no grand Space-Jesus prophecies.

(That last part is not even a joke, it’s exactly what the core plot revolves around).

Still, as I said, the series has always leaned towards being more kid friendly than ‘adult’, so perhaps it wouldn’t be so far out of left field. Certainly the announcement did nothing to do dissuade enthusiasm.

When it finally came out, I remember reactions being much the same as they were for The force Awakens. Some people loved it, some claimed to love it because it was Star Wars and that’s all that mattered. Some were confused by it, and some disliked it, but were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and see where things would go. Even its detractors agreed that there were elements at play that turned out well.

So, 19 years later, with the a (ever so slightly) more mature mind, and a more fresh hatred for the recent core movie (I did say only slightly more mature), let’s go back to what is often cited to be one of the worse Star Wars movies ever made (not counting the actual biggest debacle).

The Beginning (of the end?)

It starts off traditionally enough; opening text crawl, a view of the planet where we’ll meet this episodes main cast, an imposing space station, and a star ship flying by. (I’m sure the sphere in the station was totally not meant to evoke The Death Star…).

We quickly meet two Jedi Knights, immediately reminding us that this is before the dark times, before the Empire. They’re here to negotiate.. a….trade blockade over a planet caused by…..something?

The following scenes of the absolutely-not-racist Trade Federation Viceroy’s speaking to another call-back to older films (in the form a not-yet-Emperor’s hologram hissing out orders to them) does nothing to clear up the muddy situation. Nor, really, does the rest of the film. At the end of the day, our set up is that Space East India Company is evil, uses drone warfare (before everyone really became afraid of it, making this an oddly grounded bit of prophetic sci-fi fiction in an otherwise hammy series), and is in league with a villain whose identity we all know.

All right, let’s be fair. We’re watching these movies in chronological order, so we’re going to pretend that we have not seen the originals yet. Thus, the dude in the hologram is just some old guy trying to hide his identity by wearing a cloak instead of just, oh, I don’t know, shutting off the webcam and using voice or text instead.

Anyway, sinister hologram orders the East India Federation to kill the Jedi, despite the viceroy’s protests being delivered in an over the top accent. Or perhaps it’s exactly because of that. It’s entirely possible that Palpa- er, I mean, hooded guy whose identity we totally do not know- just assumed he was being trolled, barely keeping himself from screaming “JUST DO IT!!!”.

Regardless, our money minded alien friends first make a grand demonstration of the degree of brain damage long hours in space has apparently caused them by having security blow up the Jedi’s docked ship. Why creating a massive explosion on their own space station and wasting a perfectly salvageable ship was better than just flooding it with expendable robot soldiers, we’ll never know. Whatever their reasons, the hard-to-miss, station shaking boom alerts the Jedi to the treachery at work, who promptly ignite their lightsabers! Then switch them off. Then switch them on again. Cue battle scene!

Now, barring the cartoony droid voices, this is actually not a bad set piece. It is quintessential Star Wars, with laser swords and blasters galore, and some cool heavy assault robots in play. We even get a demonstration of the near effortless ease with which our heroes are using their mystical powers mid-fight, once more emphasizing the different era we’re seeing.

The very next scene does wonders to make up for that.

Introducing…THE GOOD GUYS

Down on the planet Naboo, we’re introduced to the royal kingdom of wooden people, whose technology has advanced to the point where they don’t look wooden. It says something that the droids on the star ship above project more human emotion than these fabulously dressed, peace loving people.

Oh, and peace loving they are. The movie wants you to know they’re peace loving. They’re so peace loving that they do not have an actual army, but instead a “volunteer security force”.  This is despite there being a somewhat uneasy peace with the soon-after introduced Gungans. (more on them in a moment).  So peace loving that, in the face of near certain invasion, the elected (and possibly under age) Queen Amidala will “not condone a course of action that leads to war”.  This is of course the movies way of saying “THESE ARE THE GOOD GUYS! WOO!”.

Just in case you needed more proof that the bad guys are bad, we next see their tanks and transports landing smack dab in the middle of a forest, just so they can crash through and rip apart the pretty trees and scare the wild life. Keep this scene in mind folks;  knowing that Star Wars was doing the whole “but the poor cute animals!” thing before The Last Jedi‘s casino world will make it more bearable when we get there.

…of course, this is also where we encounter what is almost universally recognized to be among the absolute lowest points in the entire franchise’s history, second only to the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Yes. You know who I’m talking about, and yes, he’s still painful to watch.

….However….

I should note that shortly before this marathon run of the franchise, I got around to finally watching Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, having heard good things about it for years. Watching that, something dawned on me that became increasingly clear as I went through The Phantom Menace,  especially after we got introduced to the Gungans and Jar Jar Binks. See, its biggest problem isn’t the convoluted and senseless plot. It’s not that it cannot decide if it’s a children’s story or in the same universe as The Empire Strikes Back. It’s not even the grating character of Binks himself.

The biggest problem at work here is that Episode 1: The Phantom Menace is a movie entirely written, scripted, and setup in the style of movies from the early 80’s. Films where the visual spectacle was enough to override any weakness in the script or tonal inconsistency.  It is, at the end of the day, an outdated movie, made worse by its reliance on CGI tech (which does not hold up so well in some cases). This brings me to  a little advice for anyone thinking of re-watching this movie;

Don’t do it.

…okay, fine, if you really want to, then watch it like something from before sci-fi movies became mainstream. It makes Jar Jar just slightly more bearable.

Anyhow, back to the show…

Familiar Ground

After that Gungan Style performance, we return to Naboo, were our heroes attempt to rescue the Princess from villains captivity-

…wait a minute…

To the movies credit, this repeat of an old plot thread is not dwelt on in exactly the same manner. Though it does go into more winks and nudges to old time fans, some more trite than others.

Regardless, our heroes naturally manage to get on a  ship and fly out to space, where they have to deal with that whole blockade thing. What follows is one of those trite nudges in the form of an introduction to R2-D2, presumably playing the role of a Mac with the Federation droid-stations being Windows in  a cinematic depiction of the age old feud.  Naturally, the Mac Pro prevails, impressing everyone on board before they escape. Shortly there-after, our friendly dustbin of a robot gets a personal commendation, and is rewarded by having one of the queens handmaidens give him a bath.

Of course, the actual scene of the handmaiden tending to the droids needs is not quite as glamorous as the words “personal attention of a queens handmaiden” might otherwise imply. That doesn’t stop Mr. Binks from being a creepy bugger and trying to get a peak at the action.

After being disappointed at seeing the obvious (a uniformed young lady using a rag to wipe gunk off a dustbin), he resolves to get SOME entertainment (at everyone’s expense) by engaging in conversation.  Let’s note however, that the “everyone’s expense” comment is NOT about Binks. No, I give credit to the characters voice and motion actor for being the only one here who seems to be acting. Padme’ herself doesn’t even seem able to decide what expression to wear, instead resorting to an awkward and ever shifting half-smirk, the kind you give at a dinner party with strangers you don’t particularly like.

Now, we still need another nudge and wink to fans, so our next destination is…TATOOINE!

To dust we return

For reasons unknown, our amphibious spawn of chaos is brought out on the trip to town, probably in some secret bid to have him drop dead of heat stroke. Sadly for our heroes, this plan doesn’t work, and Mr. Binks survives for the rest of the trilogy. 

More importantly, we meet two very important characters here on everyone’s favorite desert planet; Anakin Skywalker and Watto, a creature I almost suspect is based off of Nazi propaganda depictions of Jews.

Elsewhere, we are introduced to the non-hologram Darth Sidious and his apprentice, Darth Maul, who are chilling on a balcony in an at the moment unidentified city. This scene is not especially important, but it is the one and only time Maul will ever speak in any of the films. In fact, out of all the dark Jedi we ever see in the entirety of Star Wars film history, Maul is the only one who doesn’t waste anyone’s time going on about joining the ‘DAAARK SIIIDE’ and ‘POOOWEEERR!’. It’s probably why he ended up working much better than the others in the remainder of the prequel movies, but we’ll get to them later.

The other important part is that  we also get the first ham fisted signs of the future romance between Anakin and Padme’. Which is…. well, it’s weird here. Given that Anakin is just a little kid and she looks to be at least in her early teens.

Oh, another thing; Anakin turns out to be a slave, and also possibly THE CHOSEN ONE.

Nope. We don’t know what he’s chosen to do exactly, other than some nebulous thing about bringing balance and all kinds of goodness. How do we know he’s the Chosen One?

He’s given a blood test.

….I suppose all kinds of ancient prophecies would be easier to sort out this way.

We’re also given a passionate (by the films current standards) declaration about how slavery is bad and the Republic doesn’t like it. Because the Republic are good guys!

What follows is one of the odder segments of any Star Wars movie. Not necessarily bad, just sort of odd.

Introducing…DARTH HUR

Long story short; one thing leads to another, and Anakin ends up taking part in what looks like a mix between Formula 1 and chariot racing. Let’s ignore the convoluted plot, strange willingness of Jedi Master’s to put a little kid in danger for their agenda, and how bizarre an intro this all is to a character destined to be one of the most iconic in all of cinema.  Instead, we’ll focus on the important thing;

The pod-racing scene is actually not bad.

You have to give George Lucas credit here. We could have had a prequel that was entirely what everyone expected;  wars, ships, lasers and magic knights. What we get is all of that, plus a genuinely creative racing segment that we don’t normally see outside of the anime’ genre. The best part; it’s a scene in which none of the main characters are talking! Everyone shuts the hell up (once the race begins) and lets the visuals do their thing, which is a common link with the other memorable scene in the film. Unrelated to the movie, but there’s another reason why this scene is good; it led to one of the more creative Star Wars video games ever made (Episode 1: Racer).

(Oh, and the scene has yet another nudge for old fans by sticking Jabba the Hutt in there).

Moving on; to no one’s great surprise (except the alien from Planet Cartoon-Jew), Anakin wins, he gets freed, then conscripted by our heroes, and the ship parts are gained. Time for everyone to get off this rock-

Or not!

Yes, proving that Darth Maul is one of the only competent villains in the trilogy, he already ends up finding and catching up with our heroes. Qui-Gon runs with his tail between his legs, which is probably wise considering what happens next time.

With the desert and villain behind them, the crew of the…. uh, the….

…did I miss something, or did they never drop the name of the ship? If not, that’d be a first, as almost every sci-fi tale about a plucky band of heroes travelling the starts tends to make a big deal about the vessel.  Again, not a bad thing, just strange that the ship has no real character to it.

Onward!

The group makes their way to Coruscant, the galactic capitol of the Republic, where a lot of things happen. Which is about the only way to describe this segment of the film; things happen.

It’s not particularly exhilarating stuff, nor terribly interesting. There is a little bit of exposition about the Queen losing faith in the Republic because they refuse to do anything about the (still poorly explained) blockade. We get our first prolonged look at Senator Palpatine (while not wearing his gothic bathrobe), his poorly concealed manipulations to get elected Chancellor, and we get to see the Jedi Council do their thing, somehow not looking especially cool or inspiring. To be fair, that might be by design, as the focus of this trilogy is on the degradation of both the Republic and the Jedi Order (insofar as a children’s movie can handle such topics).

Again, the big trouble with this middle portion of the movie is that, while we get a lot of neat visuals, it’s just simply boring. There are chancellors babbling in a senate, and dudes in bathrobes chilling on comfy sofa’s while going on about the Force. This all makes for plot threads no kid would ever be interested in following, and no adult (that I know of) was ever particularly drawn in by.

Oh, and we get introduced to Yoda. My sides were starting to get sore from all the nudging this film did up to this point.

Moving on…

The pointlessness and dullness of this jaunt to Coruscant seems to get to Amidala at this point, who decides to head right on back to Naboo, presumably so someone can just shoot her already. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are assigned to go with her in case someone decides to take up on that silent request.

As it turns out, her plan is not to get shot. No, that would be easy. She has a better idea; she intends to enlist the aid of Jar jar. Because if you’re going to go down, you may as well go down in such a spectacularly embarrassing fashion that generations later will be talking about it.

Actually, she enlists him to enlist the Gangan remnant and muster them into an army to fight back while she and the Jedi lead a team into the palace to capture the  Federation commanders.

Take a moment to appreciate the simplicity of the conflict between Gungans and Naboo. Turns out, the big point of contention between them was all because they both thought the other was making fun of them behind their backs. Thus, a peace and new alliance is formed simply by saying “nah, we don’t think you’re a bunch of ugly fish savages”, and the Gungans going “oh, you don’t? Cool! let’s blow shit up together!”.

What follows is a three (and soon four) front battle; one takes place between the Gangans and droid army, the other in the streets and palaces of Naboo, and one of course in space.

As with everything to do with the Gangans, the battle in the plains feels like something dreamed up for a film in the 80’s, albeit with a visual scale far larger than anything they could possibly have accomplished back then. It has it all; fantastical creatures and sci-fi inspired melee weapons, a complete lack of any actual tactics on display, and a lot of bright colors.

The palace battle by comparison has very little to offer. We see a group of soldiers moving about an environment  we’ve already seen, firing off visually uninteresting blasters.  Similarly, the space battle is perhaps the most uninspired of its kind in all the Star Wars  movies put together. Yes, that includes the ridiculous bombing run at the start of The Last Jedi.

What redeems those two, however, is the first three way saber battle in the franchise.

This scene is probably the biggest reason why The Phantom Menace had any fans at all, and why it is not normally considered the point at which Star Wars died. It is arguably one of the most stylish and memorable scenes in the franchise, and exemplifies everything Lucas seems to have been trying to do with the prequels. It show us something we hadn’t seen before, and make the things we had seen bigger. High energy movement, a grand arena, the unique (at the time) saber staff at play, and an epic background score made for a fast paced yet tense duel. As a final bonus; no one talks!!!

If that sounds really, really cool, don’t worry; the movie does lace in cuts to the Gungan front and Anakin being a kid-ace pilot to bring the awesomeness down a notch.

The rest is just the inevitable conclusion of any battle in a Star Wars flick; the good guys win at the last second, a victory parade is held, and all is well!

The Aftermath

All in all, this start of the prequels was incredibly confusing, and seemingly confused itself.

To date I’m not entirely sure which age group it was targeting. On the one hand, it has all the elements of a kids movie, with the boy wonder tackling deadly challenges that would fell any adult, (not so) wacky aliens, villains with silly voices and costumes, and princess’s in distress. On the other hand, the plot deals with  a convoluted trade disagreement and long scenes in meeting rooms where nothing of note happens. As a result, its neither an especially good children’s tale, nor something to satisfy fans of Empire Strikes Back (often thought of as the defining moment for the franchise).

To the bigger question though; is The Phantom Menace the worst thing to have happened to Star Wars? Well… no, not really. It’s by no means a good movie, and is saved only by a couple genuinely exciting scenes. However, even with all of its constant nudging at the audience and inability to decide who it’s for, the movie is self contained enough that comes off as merely a bad movie. At the time, there was hope that the sequels would improve from there on out. Did they ? We’ll find out next in discouragingly named Episode 2:  Attack of the Clones!