Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Star Wars prequels should have been a trilogy to match the scope of the original, heralded as new classics to stand proudly beside the old in telling the story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker as he becomes Darth Vader.  Instead, the trilogy begins with The Phantom Menace, a cartoonish mess of a movie littered with creative missteps, shoddy screenwriting, and an apparent stubborn insistence on annoying the audience.

Here’s what we know, though you’ll have to muddle through some truly murky exposition to get there:  Two Jedi Knights, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), are sent to Naboo to mediate a trade dispute between the Trade Federation and Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman).  When negotiations go sour, the Jedi and the Queen escape to Tatooine, where they meet young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) while the power of the Dark Side gathers around them...

Perhaps The Phantom Menace was a case of superlative expectations; the promise of the untold story of Darth Vader, arguably the most recognizable character in all of cinema, is a tantalizing one.  Perhaps we asked too much?  Unfortunately, no:  on rewatching the film with my ambitions severely lowered, I still found myself disappointed by The Phantom Menace.  The film is cluttered with dispiriting indications that George Lucas had lost his touch.  To begin, the film has no central protagonist, nor a clear antagonist (we never learn, for example, what “the phantom menace” actually is).  There’s a sense that Darth Sidious, master of the Dark Side of the Force, is the primary villain, though his motives and behavior are baffling.  It seems that his plan is to guarantee that he becomes the Emperor in time for the events of the Original Trilogy, which doesn’t actually make logical sense since these are prequels.

I could stop the review right there, because that sentence tells you everything you need to know about The Phantom Menace.  This film, and indeed the entirety of the Prequel Trilogy, proceeds very much like a paint-by-numbers series of events designed to set the stage for Episode IV, with little to no investment in the narrative itself.  There is no passion, no enthusiasm, no attempt to engage the audience beyond the superficial and frankly alienating special effects.  Little in the film seems real (more on that later), and consequently nothing seems to matter; Darth Maul aside, the film’s villains provide no threat to its heroes, and the whole movie proceeds like a very thinly written cartoon designed to sell toys rather than advance a plot.

If there is any passion in the film, it’s in Lucas’s love affair with his computer.  One senses that Lucas is truly astonished by the technical capabilities available to him – and rightly so.  As foul a character as Jar Jar Binks is, the digital effects used to create him are really quite amazing, even fifteen years after the fact.  He remains, however, the film’s greatest sin, an entirely useless character who exists solely to annoy the audience.  Jar Jar Binks serves no plot function and stumbles through the film via sheer dumb luck; more problematic in a narrative sense, he’s very close to an invisible friend, because most of the characters seem irritated by him and often choose to avoid him.  You could digitally erase him from most scenes and not tell the difference.

There are, to be fair, a few things that The Phantom Menace does defensibly well.  The first of these is the stellar score by John Williams, which I’ll argue throughout the day is the real star of the Prequel Trilogy.  When the film falls flat, as it often does, Williams’s music comes in to give us a sense of humanity, of breathlessness, of the personality the film so desperately lacks.  Williams creates a musical universe with plenty of new elements but with enough leitmotifs from the Original Trilogy to be recognizable.  In fact, that’s the template the entire Prequel Trilogy should have followed.

The film also includes two solid and memorable action sequences – the podrace and the climactic lightsaber battle.  The former shows a successful use of the CGI technology to create an engaging setpiece – which, to be sure, it is, being largely tangential to the plot but finally a relief after all the political posturing that precedes it.  The lightsaber duel is probably the best part of the film, though you’ll have to wade through nearly two hours of plodding politics; it’s exciting, it’s something we hadn’t seen before (Darth Maul with the double-bladed saber especially), and the Williams track “Duel of the Fates” is first-rate.

But a few good pieces aren’t enough to make The Phantom Menace a success.  In fact, it’s really only required viewing for the completist, and at any rate it’s certainly not the Star Wars film with which to introduce the franchise.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is rated PG for “sci-fi action/violence.”  There are explosions, laser blasts, lightsaber fights (with two deaths, seen clearly but not graphically), and a thrilling chase sequence in which several racers are presumed to die in explosions.  Most of the violence deals with robots.

We’ll be back in two hours with Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones!