Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace (1999)
March 26th 2008 11:49
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Anthony Daniels, Jake Lloyd, Ian McDiarmid, Frank Oz, Ray Park
Director: George Lucas
Screenplay: George Lucas
Running Time: 133 minutes
BOY oh boy, where do I start on this one? If you’ll indulge me, this is going to be one of those instances where a review takes a turn at being an op-ed piece and almost threatens to be as long as the movie!
Most bloggers and reviewers of movies have many things in common, but paramount amongst them is a love of the moving picture – the different styles, themes, directors, actors, writers etc. If done right, it creates a sense of wonder and fulfilment that is hard to surpass when it comes to artistic endeavour. And for most of us, there was as turning point. A point where movies were more than just another past time amongst many other pursuits you might have. Star Wars A New Hope, or just plain old Star Wars as it was back 1977, was it for me. I remember seeing the trailer at the cinema and the following months of anticipation waiting to see it was almost unbearable. All the boys in my class just talked nothing but the movie. Nothing else mattered. I lived in Auckland, New Zealand at the time and my father tortured me by making me wait a good six weeks to see it because of its popularity. We were already six months behind getting it in the country because of the lack of prints – these days a studio can have a couple of thousand available for a popular movie – no such luck back then. First time around I saw it five times, which was by no means any kind of record even for New Zealand, and still I couldn’t get enough. Today, it’s not unusual for audiences to see a movie multiple times, and with the advent of DVD, you can have your own copy and indulge yourself 24/7 if you wish. But back then, people who just didn’t “get it” thought you a tad strange wanting to see the same movie several times over.
So why did this space opera touch a cord with a 10 year old kid in suburban Auckland back in 1977? Because I believed that in a galaxy far, far away something like this might indeed have happened. Mine was a consciousness well aware of science fiction and all it had to offer. I was aware there were millions of galaxies out there (I now believe there are billions), and the chances of this particular story happening, while remote, might still by some perchance have occurred at some time in the history of the universe. Everybody was just blown away by the special effects – you actually thought the action could have been shot in space – never mind you can’t really hear explosions or that spaceships cannot really light up like they did in the movie in real life – we didn’t care! It was our movie! And then there were the characters. Revisionists say that all the kids wanted to be Han Solo. Crap! We ALL wanted to be Luke Skywalker. Sure, history tells us Han Solo was the cool gunslinger who was calm under pressure and could do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, but Luke was the hero setting out to destroy the Death Star and the evil Darth Vadar. He was da man! We won’t even go into the adoration we had for Princess Leia, or how cute Chewie, C3PIO and R2D2 were. Fantastic!
So where is all this leading to with regard to a review of a movie made 22 years later? Well, it goes something like this: all three movies in the second Star Wars trilogy have received a high amount of criticism. There have been varying degrees of judgement as to the cinematic merit of the pictures, but overall, the reviews were negative. I too, thought the movies weren’t that great, which as you can imagine was of great disappointment considering I saw the original films as the turning point in my opinion of what film meant as an art form.
So are there problems with The Phantom Menace? Yes. Yes, I can see how the character of Jar Jar Binks could be seen as a not too flattering parody of West Indian culture, and yes I agree the members of the Trade Federation’s speech delivery does resemble a stereotypical Asian accent. And yes, the script is clunky and sometimes delivered in a monotone way. But there was something nagging in the far reaches of my brain when I watched the movie and was aware of what people were saying. When my four year old son saw the first movie, it all clicked into place. What the critics and I had been missing was this: George Lucas hadn’t changed, we had! I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to say this, but it was a revelation at the time. He was still making films for 10 year olds, while all us Peter Pan’s of yesteryear had grown up. We wanted him to make the second trilogy for us. He didn’t. He made it for our kids. You want proof? My now 6 and 8 year old boys love this movie. Not like, not think it’s “ok, they love it. We have a tonne of movies in our DVD collection, but all things being equal, if it’s a rainy day and it’s DVD time, more often than not a Star Wars film gets put in the player. So all you nay-sayers out there, take of your myopic glasses and look at the movie through the eyes of a kid. You’ll see what I mean. So with my rant over, on to the review.
In a convoluted way this first film in a trilogy gives us the ground work as to how Darth Vadar came into being and ended up one of cinema history’s most recognisable villains. As mentioned, the script is clunky, and to be fair, if I was a 10 year old kid I’d find it hard to follow, on that note the critics got it right. The nasty Trade Federation is blockading the space port on the planet Naboo due to some perceived tariff indiscretion. Naboos’ leader, Queen Amidala (Portman) with the aid of two jedi knights (Neeson and McGregor) escapes from the planet in order to plead her case in front of the Senate on the Republic’s capital planet Coruscant. Along the way they pick up a young Anakin Skywalker, who as anybody worth their salt knows, ends up as Darth Vadar. What nobody knows is that the Trade Federation is being used as a pawn by Sith lord Darth Sidious in an attempt to gain control of the Senate and then the Galactic Republic.
What The Phantom Menace lacks in the delivery with the script more than makes up for it with the special effects and battle sequences (which kids love! And what I loved about the originals). ILM come to the party big time with deft touches of brilliance that make the fights alone worth seeing. Most of the leads seem to be going through the motions, with Park the pick of the villains as the dual light-saber specialist Darth Maul. If you’re like me and a member of the generation that saw the first three at an impressionable age, lower your expectations a little. If you’re anywhere between the ages of 5-12 and have yet to see it, sit back and enjoy the ride.
1.5-2 stars out of 5 (for adults)
4.5 stars out of 5 (for kids)
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