Star Wars Episode I: The Phatom Menace

Okay I’m sure you’ve read thousands, if not tens of thousands of poor reviews/rants about this film but if ever a movie deserved to be mentioned on this site, its Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

 

Now before I start picking it apart, we’re going to take a little trip.  It’s Summer 1999 and around the world, kids and teenagers, as well as more than a few adults, are buzzing with excitement.  There’s a new Star Wars movie coming out and it’s going to be great.  It ought to be since the teaser trailers were out six months earlier complete with Yoda’s hilarious monologue.  Ever since then kids have been jokingly quoting it, businesses have been wondering how much they’re going to lose from workers having sick days and a few of the more dedicated fans have been planning their trips camping outside the local cinema so they can be among the first to see it.

 

All the newspapers have been covering it while every sci-fi magazine on the shelf is running a special edition; the Star Wars magazine (in the UK at least) even comes with four different covers to choose from.  Yes it’s going to be a great summer.  Except, as we all know now, it was anything but.

 

The film came out, people went to watch and then realised they were disappointed.  Why?  Well for starters this was a Star Wars movie waiting to happen.  By that I mean that the flaws in the writing, which are barely evident in the original trilogy, due to both the types of story being told and Darth Vader, are exposed here because the story barely exists.  Worse, given the next two films after this, Episode I is little more than an intro movie telling us who the characters are.  Not too bad for an opening thirty minutes or an hour, but an entire movie just to introduce people?

 

However, to summarise the plot the evil Trade Federation (often referred to simply as the Federation, in what must be a dig at the far superior, Enterprise aside, Star Trek franchise) has decided to get around disquiet over its tax-dodging by blockading the world of Naboo.  Backed by Darth Sidious, who is obviously Emperor Palpatine, the Trade Federation invades with a droid army easily conquering the pacifist and somewhat boring Naboo. 

 

However a couple of Jedi, Qui-Gonn Jinn (Liam Neeson – big star 1) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor – big star 2 - doing a decent impression of Alec Guinness) were sent by Chancellor Valorum (Terence Stamp – big star 3) to negotiate and try and save Queen Amidala’s bacon (Natalie Portman – big star 4) along with her considerable wardrobe.  They manage that but not before they fall in with Jar Jar Binks (Public enemy number 1 that year) and the only character the film should actually have killed off.  While his part in the following films becomes smaller and smaller, he was still thought to be funny when this film was being made.

 

Anyway, after lightsabering their way off Naboo they end up on Tatooine where they met the future Darth Vader, who’s just an irritating nine-year old you’d like Vader to force choke.  Of course that won’t happen and we have to put up with the annoying twerp for the rest of the film. 

 

By this point you may have stopped watching to do something more interesting like cleaning your bathroom.  Well stick with it a bit longer since the pod race is actually quite interesting.  Once it’s finished though, feel free to turn off this film so can pour some harpic down your loo.  Once they’ve left Naboo, after a brief tussle with the much-underused Darth Maul, they head to Coruscant, a planet covered entirely by a city in a concept that’s hardly original.  We then get to see the fantastic action of a no confidence vote on Chancellor Valorum’s leadership (exit Terence Stamp) before listening to Yoda’s monologue (which is nowhere near as funny when it doesn’t have Vader music backing it up).

 

Anyway Queen Amidala has grown bored or simply run out of new clothes to wear, so she decides go back to Naboo to reclaim her extended wardrobe from the Trade Federation.  Unfortunately Star Wars has never done Cabaret so we don’t get to see a drag act, which might have made this film something near mere rubbish rather than total crap.

 

Back in the Jedi Chamber Yoda and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson rounding off the film’s famous five) tell Qui-Gonn that he can’t train Anakin, but he takes the boy back to Naboo anyway.  Once they land the find the Gungans (Jar Jar’s equally annoying people) who unable to feed them to giant unconvincing CGI fish like they tried near the beginning of the film, decide to help the Queen.

 

Cue the big battle with the droid army replaying the Conquistadores vs Aztecs battle by kicking the Gungan army’s organic ass.  However this lets the Queen and the Jedi infiltrate the palace to rescue her wardrobes.  After a bit of a stand-off they manage this while Anakin accidentally sends himself up to fight a space battle and manages to send a couple of Proton Torpedoes into the droid control ship’s reactor, destroying it and deactivating the droid army. 

 

The Jedi however have been lured away by Darth Maul and in a scene that makes little sense, both he and Qui-Gonn are killed.  Afterwards Obi-wan tells Yoda that Qui-Gonn asked him to train Anakin and he’ll honour this request even if the council disapproves.  Yoda, like any modern politician, caves and in a move he’ll spend two decades regretting on Dagobah, agrees to let Obi-Wan train Anakin.

 

After Qui-Gonn’s body is burnt, watched over by the now Chancellor Palpatine, Yoda and Mace Windu talk about how they are always two with the Sith.  Once that’s done we see a victory celebration where the Gungan leader shouts ‘Peace’ in a way that compares to what Neville Chamberlain said in 1938.  The film ends, the credits roll and you begin to figure out how you can get your money back.

 

When the film came out reactions were mixed, but even compared to the two films that follow, this is a bad film and since they were at best, a pale reflection of the original trilogy that should tell you how bad this film is.  In fact, to underline how bad this film is, I’m going to finish with this.  Don’t watch the film, just watch the trailer instead and skip ahead to Episode II.  You won’t be missing anything.

 

Really the problem, besides the writing, is that this film is a prequel.  Like all prequels you already know what’s going to happen so unless you’re focusing on a very specific part of the story, the prequel becomes little more than eye candy.  Here that eye candy is sour and never more so than the point where Darth Maul whips out his fancy double-edged lightsaber, which however cool it may be, is not something we ever saw in the original trilogy, so why is it in this film since it’s set 32 years before the original?

 

Furthermore while Darth Vader’s backstory was only hinted at in the original trilogy, it retained an element of mystique that made Vader a much more interesting and menacing character.  Explaining it in detail never made any sense.  Had George Lucas gone for something bolder like setting Episode I during the Knights of the Old Republic period, four thousand years before the original trilogy we would have possibly received a much better product as a result.

 

Only he didn’t and we didn’t and Episode I remains an appalling example of hubris in the film industry, though far from the only one.  Still I’m going to be blunt.  The overall rating for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a straight zero.

 

P.S. Sorry again about the weird lines between the paragraphs.