***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Brian Blessed, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Frank Oz, and Terence Stamp.
Directed & written by George Lucas.
1999 PG
It hasn’t quite been a long time since our last visit to a galaxy far, far away (just over fifteen years, actually), and not much there has changed. This is a good thing, because the genius of the three original “Star Wars” pictures—“Star Wars” (1977), “The Empire Strikes Back” (1981), and “Return of the Jedi” (1983)—wasn’t so much the stories or the characters, which were indeed entertaining, but in the seemingly boundless imagination that filled up the “Star Wars” universe: aliens and spaceships and cities floating in the clouds and mind control and telekinesis and slugs the size of stadiums, and so on and so forth, as far as the eye could see. It’s conceivable that you could run amok in the “Star Wars” galaxy and never see the same thing twice. George Lucas’ new edition to the series maintains this same cosmos, and expands it with the help of tremendous advancements in digital animation.
“The Phantom Menace” is one of the best-looking films of 1999, and its high points include a planet that is entirely covered by a city, a high-speed powered-sled race that can only be described as Ben-Hur on acid, an underwater city of bubble-domes, and a giant reactor whose purpose is never explained, besides a good place to have a fight. All this is done digitally, so it looks sharp and colorful and is glorious to behold on the big screen, but lacks some of the depth of old-fashioned models and miniatures. One of the happy accidents of many non-digital effects is that their very lack of reality requires them to be hidden somehow, and the ensuing blurriness or shadow makes the effect seem more real. Digital effects artists work in the opposite direction, becoming so proud of their creations that the thought of casting shadows on them is unthinkable. They have forgotten that Leonardo de Vinci’s greatest contribution to art was sfumato, that is, a particular smokiness and lack of clarity that make his paintings more mysterious, and more realistic.
But maybe realism isn’t quite what Lucas wants. Read interviews about many of those involved with “Star Wars” and you’ll see words like “mythology” and “legend” crop up a lot, like “Star Wars” actually carries some profundity. It doesn’t, and the refreshing thing about interviews with its creator, Mr. Lucas, is that he hasn’t been sucked into believing his own made-up mumbo-jumbo. Yes, the original “Star Wars” trilogy were among the best movies ever made, but one of the differences between film and literature is that a movie can be considered great while serving no end besides an enormous amount of fun.
On to the story of “The Phantom Menace,” which you’ll notice is more complicated than any of its three predecessors. “The Phantom Menace” is set some forty years before the original “Star Wars,” but still in the same far-off galaxy in which humans and all manner of aliens have been living side-by-side for so long that no one gives it a second thought. Space-travel is the same way, a technology so ancient that it’s taken for granted. Ruling over the galaxy is the benevolent Republic, sort of an interstellar United Nations, with representatives from all the known worlds. Keeping the peace for the Republic is the Jedi Council, which has mastered a magic they refer to as the Force. “The Phantom Menace” follows two such Jedi (Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor) who are sent to settle a trade dispute on the planet Naboo, only to end up in the middle of warzone created by an invading army of androids. They rescue the queen of Naboo (Natalie Portman), as well as her personal entourage, and they flee from the Trade Federation in a stolen spacecraft. Their adventures take them first to the planet Tatooine, where they rescue the young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) from slavery, then to the capital planet of the Republic, and eventually back to Naboo to try to oust the invaders. There’s political intrigue at the capital, space battles and swordfights on Naboo, evil Jedi stirring up trouble in the background, and a giant race on Tatooine to win the parts to repair the queen’s spaceship.