REVIEW: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

      Kicking off our (narratively chronological) look at the Star Wars films, we start with 1999's entry, Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the first of what is now known as 'The Prequel Trilogy', coming sixteen years after the conclusion of the original films.  By the summer of its release, the hype for Phantom Menace (or 'TPM', as I will refer to it hereafter) was enormous, possibly unparalleled in movie history.   A marketing and merchandising bonanza, it redefined what a summer blockbuster 'should' be from a studio perspective, but ultimately left audience and fans a little bit...spaced.  Let's take a look:

There's lens flare.  On the poster.  J.J. Abrams must have been so pleased.

    Set about thirty years prior to the events of the original trilogy, TPM centers around two Jedi Knights - Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), as they attempt to save young Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) from the shadowy plots of the mysterious Dark Lord of the Sith (the eponymous threat), and his apprentice, Darth Maul (Ray Park).  In the course of the travels, they come across a slave boy, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), who is so strong in the Force that Qui-Gon believes him to be the long-prophesied 'Chosen One'.  As the events of the film unfold, the protagonists get wrapped up in a political conflict surrounding the seemingly-humble Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), whose dark secrets will eventually spell trouble for the Republic.  Samuel L. Jackson appears in a small role as Jedi Master Mace Windu, and the movie also features Pernilla August, Terence Stamp, Silas Carson, Ahmed Best and a pre-fame Keira Knightley, as well as classic-era favorites Frank Oz, Anthony Daniels, and Kenny Baker as Yoda, C-3PO, and R2-D2, respectively.

     It's a little tough to review a movie like this without putting in the framework of the series.  It's also tricky to look at a movie on its own merits, rather than in comparison to other films.  This is a particular problem when 'other films', in this case, are much-beloved cultural icons.  There's almost no way to win - and I would contend that ANY movie would have trouble living up to the massive hype that TPM carried with it.  Even so, it's not a great movie.  I don't know that I could even call it a good movie, though I don't really feel it's a bad one, either.  Faint praise, I know.  It's a watchable film, but one with a number of glaring flaws that render what could have been a decent movie into one that is at best mediocre...and that's not even talking about how it stacks up against the vintage series.  To my mind, there are five specific and separate things driving down the quality of TPM, in order of increasing aggravation:

"One more joke about General Tso...ONE MORE, I'm warning you..."

     #5:  Stereotyping.  It's not surprising to hear strange voices or languages coming from Star Wars creatures.  It was, however, a little bizarre in TPM to hear various races being represented by cartoon-like pseudo-ethnic pastiches.  The goofy Gungan race was made up of characters that all sounded vaguely Caribbean-islander.  The sleazy, greedy Neimoidian race all had broad, Chinese-sounding accents and delivery, like extras in a Kung Fu episode.  Watto, the slave-owning junk dealer, despite being a flying warthog, seemed to hail from somewhere between Greece and Italy.  All of these were played for laughs, and come across as absurd.  It's unfortunate, as taken a bit more seriously these characters could have been seen as noble, vile, or menacing, respectively, but instead, we got outdated stock types that made me start to worry that someone was going to show up in blackface.  It's jarring and silly.

 

Perhaps her expression is simply due to concentration - it must be tough keeping that headdress from causing collateral damage.

     #4: Natalie Portman.  Yes, she was a teenager when they made this movie, and thus perhaps not as well-versed in her craft as her later Academy Award win might suggest she'd become.  That still doesn't excuse the wooden, bored, phoned-in performance we got.  The expression you see on her face in the photo above is more or less the same expression she wears throughout the movie.  On paper, Padme Amidala is supposed to be a surprisingly tough and strong-willed heroine, despite being treated as a china doll.  She doesn't translate that way, though - Portman largely speaks in a monotone, and looks as though she'd rather be anywhere else in the world than where she is.  (Which may, perhaps, have been true...perhaps it was a sort of depression borne from spending most of the movie looking like a cross between a geisha and a fashion-challenged mime.)  She has this dead-eyed demeanor that doesn't say 'stoic' or 'determined' so much as 'ZZZZZZ'.  For a character as central to the story as she is, one could have hoped for a more spirited performance, but then, one would have been disappointed.   In all honesty, Portman's subsequent films have left me with the sense that her range is somewhat narrow, and I have to wonder if the role of Padme was miscast.  I like to imagine the role as Keira Knightley, who plays Padme's decoy, might have played it - I think there'd have been a lot more spark to the character.  Ultimately Padme's dullness is only part of the problem here, but it goes on to become an increasing issue later in the series.

"Well you can tell by the way I use the Force I'm a Jedi man, no time to talk...."

     #3:  The Script.   From a story perspective, I think TPM is serviceable.  It works, more or less.  Some people complained that the movie was 'too complicated', but I've never sympathized with that particular gripe.  I actually like the political maneuvering, and the script does offer us some neat new characters, concepts, and locations.  It's full of clunky dialogue, though, and there are some serious focus issues - characters will babble about details that Lucas apparently thought were interesting but go nowhere, while glossing over important topics.  For example - Anakin is apparently conceived BY THE FORCE, and yet this rather startling information is conveyed by his mother in a twenty-second bit and then completely forgotten, even when Qui-Gon is talking the kid up to the Jedi Council.  It's never delved into again - unless, of course, you're into the Expanded Universe.  But as I've mentioned before in other contexts, you shouldn't have to do the script's homework for it.   The workings of Naboo (Amidala's home planet), the race of Gungans, the Trade Federation, slave life - most of these topics are broached and then skipped over in cursory fashion, which doesn't so much whet the appetite to learn more as it does bemuse the audience.  And then there are the midi-chlorians, a concept about which the less said the better.  Suffice it to say, when even Lucas eventually backs off from of his own stupid ideas, you know it was a stinker.   All told, there are too many "Wait, what?" moments in the dialogue to ignore, and it underscores exactly how badly Lucas needed an editor.  I can't help but think that if the script had gone through even one or two more revisions, it might have been a lot sharper and tighter.

Admit it: you want to punch him.

    #2:  Jar Jar Binks.  Yep, you knew this was coming.  This bipedal frog-like creature is this movie's stand-in for Chewbacca as "semi-animal sidekick", but unlike Chewbacca, Jar Jar just plain sucks, to use the vernacular.  His only function in the movie is to introduce the human characters to the Gungans, which he does twice in the film.  Otherwise, he is entirely superfluous, and tags along in scenes in which he has no place.  What makes him such a problem, though, is that due to some misguided notion of Lucas' that kids needed to be pandered to and entertained (though in the generation of Barney, one could see how he'd make that stumble), Jar Jar is played for laughs...by which I mean he does random pratfalls and slapstick, speaks in a loud, goofy screech, and has meaningless, fatuous one-liners that would be appropriate coming out of the mouth of Steve Urkel.  Jar Jar's antics are constantly going on in the background of otherwise normal scenes, or tacked on at the conclusion of serious moments, and there's absolutely NO reason for any of it.  He doesn't influence what's going on around him, and his bumbling stupidity gets old in his first scene.  What's truly grating is that Jar Jar has more screen time than any other character in the movie.   Lucas has admitted he was taken aback by the sheer loathing Jar Jar engendered - the floppy-eared Gungan alienated adults and kids alike - and Jar Jar's presence gradually decreases after TPM.  That's too late to help this movie, though, and Binks is a distracting, obnoxious presence throughout.  He is not, however, the movie's biggest problem...

 

I keep expecting to hear "Hey Mister Willllll-soooooon!"

    #1: Anakin Skywalker.  The reason this little tyke outweighs Jar Jar is that while the Gungan is irritating, he can actually be tuned out - whereas Anakin is pivotal to the movie.  In fact, he's the most central character in the entire Star Wars saga, which is why I can say with certainty that Lucas failed him utterly.  No disrespect meant to Jake Lloyd, who I think did as well as any non-British young actor with a director who can't direct human beings could have done (and who has since paid the price for his child-stardom, worse than many of his peers).  But I look at the Harry Potter franchise and realize that it is not beyond reason that child actors can be genuine, talented, and compelling.  No, this one's all Lucas's fault - he played Anakin, the star character of the franchise, as a cutesy-little moppet, a super-talented goody-two-shoes whose dialogue is full of darling little Darndest-Things that make this future Dark Lord come across as an ambulatory Precious Moment.  It almost feels like Lucas went along, thinking "How can I make him more Super Cute?"  It doesn't make Anakin cherubic, though -which would be bad enough - it makes him into a dorky little twerp.  I just want to stuff him in the same airlock with Wesley Crusher.   When the character who holds the most crucial role in your series is badly acted, badly directed, and badly written, he drags it down to the point that he's unlikable, unsympathetic, and you just want him the hell off screen.  It's the most major flaw in TPM, because it's simply unavoidable, and unfortunately, it's a problem that only gets worse as the series moves on.

Maybe instead of posing, they should have been polishing the script.

   All that said, strange as it may seem, I do actually kind of like this movie.  That's partially because I still find it charming in its own ham-handed way, partially because I have fond memories of its release, and partially because there are a number of things in the film I legitimately like.

   For one thing, it's visually gorgeous, with sweeping vistas and striking images.  We finally get to see Coruscant, probably my favorite Star Wars locale, after hearing about it in the EU for so long, and it didn't disappoint.  Naboo looks like a Tuscan paradise, and there's a whole parade of creatures that, computer-generated or not, look phenomenal...even the Gungans are rendered beautifully.  The droid armies, while played as inept to highlight the importance of human armies later on, are slick and stylish.  The podracing sequence is fun, well-paced, and different, and the climactic duel between the two Jedi and Darth Maul is elegant and exciting...in fact, getting to see the Jedi as well-trained younger warriors rather than old and dying is still one of my favorite elements of the prequels.  (And it doesn't hurt that John Williams returned to add to his already iconic score.)  The costumes are lush and memorable, and the overall quality is clear, crisp and vivid - as I've mentioned before, as a visual storyteller, Lucas is almost without peer...it is without doubt his greatest strength as a filmmaker.

One of them will cause millions of people untold anguish.  The other one will be The Emperor.

   There are some very engaging new characters, or updates on classic ones.  The Jedi are a particular highlight from me - they're not given a ton to do here, but even on first viewing I was eager to know more about them.  Neeson is in fine form as 'warrior monk' here, likeable, sometimes gruff, and with his usual natural gravitas.  McGregor is clearly enjoying himself - his role in TPM is largely secondary, setting him up for his later central status, but he manages to take awkward dialogue and deliver it with charm and sincerity, redeeming a lot of what could have been plain lousy.  Ian McDiarmid, who through sheer luck was able to return to the franchise at the right time to play Palpatine at the right age, illustrates what a devious and cunning threat the future Emperor is, but with a certain amount of dry humor, making the character that much more enjoyable.  Artoo and Threepio get origins here, and no Star Wars film would be complete without their presence; it's also fun to see a slightly-younger Yoda interacting with other Jedi.  And of course there's Darth Maul - some fans found him to be criminally under-used given how strongly his appearance (and that of his famous double-bladed lightsaber) resonated from the trailers - but ultimately his function was that of henchman, which in the greater scheme of the story makes perfect sense.  He's still a remarkably cool concept, both in presence and in terms of his visuals, and he became an iconic image right off the bat.  Much like Boba Fett, he's only a minor villain, but one who caught the audience's imagination...which in a lot of ways, is the Star Wars success story in a nutshell.

"Ba-da, Ba-da, Ba-da, BA-DA....KORA!  RADDABA!  KORA!!! RADDABA!  Doo-doo-doodle-oo"

      All in all, TPM is something of a prequel to the prequels...it's set ten years prior to the rest of the narrative, so it is something of a standalone.    It's there to introduce audiences to the latter days of the Republic, and set up the characters we've all come to know and love, showing how Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda, R2-D2, C-3PO and Palpatine came to know each other, and set the stage for the later films to answer questions fans had been asking about the Star Wars universe for years.  It doesn't flow into the story the way Episode 2, The Clone Wars, and Episode 3 do, or the way the classic trilogy does, so it's easier to look at it on its own.

"Check it out!  This was half-off at Spencer's!"

   Unfortunately, while slick, fresh, and somewhat eager-to-please, TPM falls far short of expectations - though it was still a box-office smash.  The overdone pandering to 'kiddie' entertainment, the forced and uninspired direction, the unpolished script, and the overall lack of spirit that so electrified the original series all crash together, which left most fans disappointed, or at the very least, underwhelmed.  While there are elements to like about TPM, it suffers from critical problems that more care and thought - which as venerated a concept as Star Wars is, it had the right to expect - would have mitigated.  I happen to like it well enough in spite of its problems, but your mileage may vary.  I will argue, though, that it is not the worst of the prequel era....that joy is yet to come.

FINAL RATING:  4 PAWS (OUT OF 10):

Up next time: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones....