STAR WARS, EPISODE I:
THE PHANTOM MENACE
The review so big, I had to shrink the type
It is with some bewilderment that I behold the bilious venom heaped upon this film by the usenet community. (this impassioned disdain has sort of ebbed since the opening week when I initially wrote this review) Part of me is not surprised at all - every summer (and winter) (and fall and spring) brings films which become the target of near-unanimous internet disdain, the support for which result in flamings from all sides. But these are generally films that people look forward to hating anyway - there was as much hatred heaped upon, say, Godzilla before it was released as there was after. I don't think I've seen a case like The Phantom Menace before.
Obviously, a case of dashed expectations.
And having seen the same film, having looked forward to it as long as everybody else has, and having enjoyed it immeasurably more (four times now, and so far each time a little more than the last), I have to conclude only that my own expectations were quite different from everybody else's.
There are a lot of complaints against TPM, not all of which are entirely unreasonable. But the problem is, the overwhelming majority of things that are "wrong" with TPM were just as present in the original trilogy. It certainly seems to me that the most devastating criticism that can be fairly levied against this movie is that it offers more of the same (and even then, it's so MUCH more, on such an immense, unprecedented scale). I'm having a difficult time imagining how this movie and its predecessors could have been cut from a more similar cloth.
The plot is a rather meandering construct, hard to sum up in a couple sentences, not unlike that of The Empire Strikes Back. Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor star as Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Ginn and his young apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi, sent to the planet of Naboo to resolve a trade embargo imposed by the greedy Trade Federation. As it turns out, there's more than just the Trade Federation behind this; there's some evil, cloaked figure named Darth Sideous giving THEM orders. Anyway, soon enough, the two Jedis escape the now-invaded Naboo with their young Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), a clutzy alien local (the CGI Jar-Jar Binks), and a bunch of Naboo pilots. But their ship is damaged, and they have to take refuge on the Hutt-controlled Tattooine for repairs. Soon they find that they can't get the parts necessary, until an extraordinarily gifted young boy named Anakin Skywalker helps them out. The remainder of the plot, without giving too much away (it seems so unlikely that anybody reading this has yet to see it, but still...) involves mostly Ginn's relationship with the boy, and Amidala's attempts to free her planet from the clutches of the Federation.
Interpreting the plot is even more problematic, since we know that this is only the first chapter in a three-part arc. (but it's fun, like with Return Of The Jedi, to interpret the various meanings of the title) Is Anakin's mother just embarrassed and nervous about telling Qui-Gon about who the kid's father is, or is she lying to cover up a frightening truth? Just what is meant by "bringing balance to the Force", since the Light side has been in power for about a thousand generations, and we know just what kind of a man Anakin's going to grow into? And for God's sake, will I be cast as Owen Lars? Dammit, guys, I've gotta know!!! This stuff is going to be debated for about three years. Better get used to it.
The actors mostly make appealing characters out of the meager material George Lucas's script gives them. The Star Wars films have never been a stronghold of character development; Darth Vader got all his development in Return Of The Jedi; Han, in The Empire Strikes Back, and Luke in all three. Everybody else was fairly static and flat throughout the trilogy, holding the larger-than-life, shallower-than-a-kiddie-pool appeal of myths. This was partly due to the scripts, but mostly due to the limited abilities of the actors. The Phantom Menace indisputably features a more established and talented pool of thespians than its predecessors.
Liam Neeson does excellent work as the somewhat rebellious Ginn, commanding respect even when we might find his actions reckless. He gets saddled with some clunky lines ("Be mindful of the living Force, young Padewan" and "I foresee you will become a great Jedi Knight" come to mind), and looks a little embarrassed at having to say them, but most of the time he's convincing and authoritative. Additionally, through him and Kenobi, we get to see what being a Jedi Knight is really about. Luke did some pretty impressive stuff in his day, but these guys make him look like a bumbling amateur. In addition to their rapidly-paced lightsaber battles, we also get to see them casually manipulate objects, blast enemies out of their way with but a thought, and leap up for entire stories! Man, these are the kind of Jedi we always hoped Luke would learn to become. One learns awfully quickly why the Jedi are so legendary and revered.
Jake Lloyd is fine as Anakin, though he didn't get much to do, and some of his lines make Neeson's look like Shakespeare. He might not win any awards (well, maybe that cranky Razzie guy might heap one on him), but after seeing him in this movie, it's hard to look at Darth Vader the same way. Some of it is largely expected (it's not too surprising that he wants more than anything to be a Jedi Knight, and it's appropriately prophetic that he says at one point that he wants to be the first person to see ALL the planets), but some of it is really chilling. Anakin is revealed as an enthusiastic boy with a love of the construction and repair of robots and vehicles; that he ultimately becomes "more machine than man" is as heartbreaking a tragedy as his eventual transformation into the doer of evil he's destined to become.
On a character level, only Obi-Wan Kenobi really comes across as a serious disappointment. Ewan McGregor clearly looks dissatisfied with what little he's given to do (which basically consists of hacking up droids, taking phone calls and that climactic duel), and while I think it's appropriate that he is merely a supporting player here, it undercuts the effectiveness of his final oath to Jinn that so little development has so far gone into his character. Whether he or Anakin will be the lead of the next film remains to be seen; either way, the way their fates intertwine is bound to be interesting.
Most notable by a country mile is Natalie Portman as the young, recently elected (!) Queen of the Naboo. (anybody wondering just how a teenager is elected as an absolute ruler of a planet would do well to consider that it's a big, big galaxy, and not everybody's gonna elect a fat old white guy) From her first appearance (a stunningly authoritative warning to the Federation officials to back off), she radiates strength, intelligence, and a magnificent sense of, well, royalty. Honestly, I don't get half of this sense of the regal from the honest-to-God Queen of England. If she wants to run for office up here in Canada, she's got my vote; besides, even Jar-Jar would be a more useful head of state than Jean Chretien. Her outfits, hair, and makeup may appear absurd at first, but beautifully convey an otherworldly sense of alien glamor. And let's face it, she's a fox.
(minor spoiler alert - sweep the following to reveal it) Almost as good is when Amidala is disguised as one of her handmaidens, Padme. The scenes which involve this deception (particularly Anakin's attempted farewell to her on Coruscant) wouldn't be nearly as effective if the audience didn't already know; when it's revealed, it's more fun to see whether or not Ginn and Kenobi knew all along than it is to have the obvious confirmed for the viewer anyway. Even when the lines she delivers seem unlikely, she delivers them beautifully; how ELSE would you explain to a 10-year-old that you meant no offense when you referred to him as a slave? (on a mostly irrelevant note, Amidala is pretty much my sister's hero now; you should have heard our answering machine message last week)
So already, we've got two fairly compelling leads, which already puts it ahead of the first film. TPM isn't nearly as successful with the supporting players, however. There's nobody here that really lives up to Peter Cushing, let alone Alec Guinness (although the casting of Terence Stamp as the beseiged Chancellor Valorum is a nice try). Nobody's going to get a nomination for acting in this movie, though Portman probably should.
Of course, the Gungan character of Jar-Jar is widely hated, and I can't really blame anybody for that one. He's got an endearing, bashful smile ("What's this?" "A local."), and an amusing dialect, but he's used for slapstick ALL THE TIME. There is such a thing as too much slapstick, of course, and Jar-Jar probably would have been a lot more appealing if there was a lot less of him. Comic relief needs to be given a rest for it to work. I could hack him more than most people (most of the laughs he generates are at his own expense), but even I have my limits. He really wasn't all that bad until he was inexplicably promoted to Bombardier General of the Gungan army (a rank whose responsibilities apparently consist of telling his troops to settle down before the battle). Then I just wanted him to die. As did most people over the age of five. Besides, don?t you think that after taking the trouble to make a fully CGI character, they could make one less completely humanoid? This is basically a human with a different head.
The Gungans as a people, however, are quite cool. They speak in a weird English pidgin that's nearly indecipherable on the first viewing (which sometimes works to the film's advantage; all I understood in one of Boss Nass's sentences was "blah blah blah-sa blah sa plaaanet core!" and I thought to myself "uh-oh. That doesn't sound good."). They engage in a method of ground battle that seems bizarre and unlikely to be effective, but no moreso than the use of Imperial walkers in The Empire Strikes Back when you think about it.
Darth Maul, possibly the coolest-looking SW villain ever (and SW has had some cool-looking villains), gets very, VERY little to do, and I can't really say I'm too surprised by that. Maul works primarily on a Boba Fett level - gets about 15 minutes of screen time, looks cool, gets three lines, and exudes that "don't mess with me" thing. Really, Maul IS Fett, except we actually get to see him in action. (Fett, what, got to shoot a blaster ONCE?). That Fett can actually have a following, but people are disappointed by Maul, amazes me. Besides, Maul gets a great, creepy entrance (just kind of sliding into the hologram), and Fett was first seen in a crowd shot (unless you count the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special). It need not be said that Maul gets a better exit than Fett did. Many people were disappointed that Maul wasn't given much to do; they're making the mistake of comparing him to Darth Vader, as a chief villain. He's not, he's a tool, like Fett.
So, for one film, I'd say that this movie is actually doing pretty well in the character department, already well ahead of the original film. There are numerous interesting minor characters which I liked; like Sebulba, Anakin's rival in the pod races, who walks on his hands and grabs things with his feet. Watto, the flying, grumbling junk dealer who owns Anakin and his mother in a relatively benign slavery. Even the sometimes hokey-looking Boss Nass, the leader of the Gungans, was pretty cool, as was the crusty Gungan Captain Tarpals.
Same with the plot - SW plots ain't exactly The Godfather. This movie's plot is kind of all over the place, but there's considerably more going on here than is immediately apparent, especially when the ending is examined and the motives of the villain, Darth Sideous, become clear. Quite sly, really, how the ending pulls off this savage little irony; the celebrants at the film's close don't even realize what it is they're celebrating.
Some have said that the revelation of the Midichlorians, sub-cellular organisms that live within all cells, as the origin of the Force strips the notion of its magic and mystery. I, on the contrary, find the case to be quite the opposite; a Force created by a mysterious being with unclear intentions and unspecified intelligence seems far more wondrous than the simple, generic, all-encompassing Force of the original trilogy. Sure, it was cool, but seemed too much like the kind of shit pushed on me by freaks on the subway. That it was never brought up in the original trilogy makes sense; if the Empire exterminates the Jedi, they'd hardly want Jedi lore well-known in the public. I only hope that George actually does something with this in the future prequels, instead of just leaving it as it is, a sort of half-assed explanation...the Force doesn't need to be sci-fi "legitimized" that way if he's just going to leave it like that.
I also liked seeing R2D2 in action doing what he was built for. (in a particularly intense scene where he rapidly loses co-workers) And that one moment of Jabba the Hutt flicking that little meal of his off the balcony was brilliant, demonstrating that Jabba will indulge himself in cruelty even at the expense of indulging his gluttony. He probably won't even show up in the next two prequels, but it makes me look at him in a little different light now.
The score by John Williams (ah, remember the despair in the world when he declared for a while that he wouldn't be scoring the prequels?) is excellent all around, slyly incorporating motifs from the previous films into various themes for surprising reasons and effects - the most obvious of which becomes REALLY obvious once the movie's over and Sideous' real motivation is revealed. (really, there are numerous clues leading up to this, with varying degrees of subtlety).
I've heard complaints about how this is too kid-friendly - but what, as opposed to Return of the Jedi? Star Wars itself was probably even more kid-friendly than that. I've even heard rather absurd comments about how this was created to sell toys to the parents of rich kids. Again - how is this different than the first three movies? Yeah, it's all merchandised to bloody hell. What does that have to do with the film?
The action was mostly great - the shots of Kenobi and Jinn hacking up droids were a little repetitive, and I can't say I really like the idea of a kid behind a gun coming to the rescue (as I've said before in another review), but really, the action scenes are quite spectacular. The 2-on-1 swordfight at the film's conclusion is one of the finest duels I've seen; the pod race was magnificently done, featuring pod racers and their machines that really look completely unlike anything I'd expected them to (although that two-headed announcer was distracting and annoying) (extra points, though, for the Tusken Raiders taking potshots at the racers simply because it's fun). This movie also trades up the three-ring circus of the climax of Return Of The Jedi for a deft weaving of four simultaneous battles; while it's marvellously pulled off here, I sincerely hope that this isn't an escalating trend.
And the big robot-on-Gungan battle...well, I was mostly quite impressed. I was worried that how everything would look, but George and the boys pulled it off, with hundreds of CGI charaters on the battlefield, all quite splendidly rendered. Besides, have you ever seen a battle fought like this before? Even this, which is not one of the movie's strong suits, succeeded in what I adore SW movies for in the first place: it showed me things I'd never even imagined before. And I'd never imagined a Braveheart-like ground battle fought with blue globs shot from slings.
Special effects - particularly, CGI effects - are also widely derided as used in this film, and I can see the point, although I largely disagree. I don't think CGI effects are quite yet at the level where Lucas thinks they are; CGI characters looked great on their own (and this is the first movie I've seen where stills of the CGI characters look even better than those in the movie) (remember the photos of the SW: Special Edition Jabba?), but when put next to human counterparts, they were shown for what they are. This is most evident with Boss Nass's scenes with Ginn, and when Jar-Jar first takes Ginn and Kenobi to the swamp where the hidden Gungan city is located. Oh yeah, and that cheesy pod racing guy who appears to be all head.
But the CGI effects are what made so many of the wonders in this movie possible, and made them work. The Star Wars movies are primarily about just that: wonders. The creation of a universe that's so convincingly vast that the filmmaker can afford to just casually pan past things about which entire other films can be made. (take the huge, lizard-like marine animal that comes to the sub's rescue. We got a whole movie about just that one guy last year. As was said elsewhere, how can we pretend that this is a big enough deal to make a whole movie around now?)
Such amazing things to set my eyes on - the city-planet of Coruscant, the underwater bubble-city, the Senate chamber, the pod-race arena...I've heard these called "eye candy" before, but that seems to be missing the entire point. Maybe "mind candy" would be more accurate, because these are things that stir the imagination and dare it to think of more possibilities. "Eye candy" is pretty to look at but lasts for about half a minute before you forget it. Maybe "mind candy" isn't more accurate, because what I see in this movie is too, well, nourishing. It's like a banquet for not only the eyes but the imagination. I'll remember the Senate chamber long after I've forgotten, for example, the already-clichéd use of that whole "spinning still" camera in The Matrix. (a movie I largely adored as well)
Man, what wonders. So many things I'd never seen nor imagined before, things that are sometimes over before I've noticed them. That, my friends, is what Star Wars has always been about for me - ever since I was in Kindergarten and had my teacher convinced for three months that my name was Luke. Ever since I got regular report cards that said "STAR WARS CRAZY!!!" from my teachers. It was never about characters, although I?ve always liked them, even Luke when he was whiny. It was rarely about the drama, although there were numerous times when that really worked (and yeah, there were a few times in TPM where the drama worked; notably, Kenobi's oath to Jinn, and Anakin's attempted farewell to Padme). It was about a universe which is so enormous, convincing, and wondrous that you'd almost leave everything you love behind to be there.
Star Wars is a place - a lot of places. Planetwide cities with vertiginous steel canyons, underwater bubble-malls in which live platypus-people, hollow Senate spheres, alien bars, deserts that house giant sessile mouths, floating cities above gas giants, and yeah, even redwood forests inhabited by killer teddy bears. All the Star Wars movies - including and especially The Phantom Menace - set us down in these places and let the willing mind take flight. Jesus, I could spend all day looking at those statues outside the Naboo palace, and another looking at the ones outside of the Republican Senate. This movie would be a richly rewarding experience if all the characters did was sit around and play cards.
I know, I'm gushing, but even I'm not going to sit here and tell you this is a perfect movie. There's an awkward scene where the Queen makes a point of royally thanking R2D2 for saving the ship; is it likely that anybody, let alone a queen, would make such a big deal of thanking a droid that's not actually supposed to have a personality? And Sideous' plan has one major flaw: if Amidala had signed the treaty, which is what he clearly wanted her to do, everything would have gone to shit. Whether what resulted was his backup plan or just bad plotting, I can't tell. The Federation's "battle-hardened army" of droids can apparently be knocked over by a stiff wind, never really coming across as a credible threats (although certain kinds of droids, like the roly-poly Destroyers and one cool kind of quadruped we see only at the beginning, are quite menacing). And while Lucas might be one of our cinematic visionaries, he just can't write dialogue for shit. (he might want to give some serious thought to Timothy Zahn helping him out on the next script) (yeah, George. Call me. We'll do lunch. You're buying.)
While I think we can all agree that TPM left you wanting more (cue the sarcastic chorus of "Yeah, you could say that"), I'll step up and say that it did it in a good way. I can't wait for part II, and not in a "Let's see if they can do it right this time" way. Lucas should be proud of himself. Despite the widespread disappointment I see many fans react to this film with, I'll take The Phantom Menace over any movie I've seen theatrically in four years. (note that I said "seen theatrically". Black Christmas, Fargo, The Hidden Fortress and Terror At The Opera don't necessarily count.) Just a notch under top marks from me; would've been tops with less Jar-Jar, less clunky dialogue and more clarification of Sideous' plan (and I mean TOPS). As it is, it's just astounding.