The Revisit – Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
The Phantom Menace exists folks. I know. It is such a crime. It is almost as if people are treating Episode I today like our parents treated Faces of Death back when I was growing up. I know people who want to keep it as far away from their kids as possible. That, my friends, is ridiculous. Acknowledge its faults -which I am going to do here- but do not treat it as a sort of black eye George Lucas gave you when you went to theaters in 1999. Let them decide for themselves.
Whew. Now that I got that out of the way, let’s get to the movie shall we?
Background: After 1983’s Return of the Jedi came and swooped that year’s box office title with a thrilling conclusion, people thought Star Wars was done. However, I remember reading interviews with George Lucas in the weeks leading up to Jedi‘s release (my mom used to get People Magazine and I would, even as a six year old, go through it just looking for movie related articles) and he was saying he still has ideas of stories he would like to tell about that galaxy far, far away. The problem is that effects standards were not up to speed yet. His vision, he proclaimed, was beyond the reach of what modern technology could handle. In other words, let me make Howard The Duck and Willow before I start thinking about how to progress with plans for a new Star Wars story.
Fast forward to 1993. After baring witness -and even helping with post production while his friend Steven Spielberg was out on location with Schindler’s List– to the Spielberg directed epic Jurassic Park, Lucas was convinced the time to start with new Star Wars tales was upon him. Park‘s realistic computer imagery astounded audiences and filmmakers alike, and Lucas decided to test the computer generated imagery -or CGI- standards by fulfilling his ‘true vision’ of what his original trilogy should have been when he originally filmed it with only 70s and 80s technology at his disposal. After audiences showed up to these re-releases in droves, Lucas concluded that he could now start with his telling of Darth Vader’s back story.
As for me, by the time The Phantom Menace had started production, I kind of wavered in my Star Wars fandom. My toys were put away in the garage, I had just graduated high school, and I was starting to tip my toes in the waters of real life. Believe me, I was in no hurry to grow up. But with filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, M Night Shamylan, and David Fincher out there, at the cusp of their primes and setting new standards with their storytelling ways, Star Wars just wasn’t ‘cool’ to me anymore. Goodbye Star Wars. Hello Pulp Fiction.
I would go to friends’ houses and they would scoop up every magazine cover featuring that spiked red headed figure that they could. But I would turn a blind eye to all of them. I would skim the Star Wars articles to see what this new science fiction story featuring a main character named Neo was all about. Or how a low budget horror movie about a group of kids getting lost in the woods had captured the pulses of audiences so many other directors could not even dream of finding. It was a new era of film, and I still say to this day that has a lot to do with how The Phantom Menace is perceived today.
Still, even with all that ambivalent energy leading up to Star Wars Episode I, I remember seeing its trailer before Wing Commander and Meet Joe Black, and finding that as much as I did not want to admit it, I WAS looking forward to The Phantom Menace. As was my father. So on one hot April day, I approached the box office of our recently opened movie theater and bought two advanced tickets. One for my father and one for me, with a little gold plated heart that I got for a $2.00 donation to charity. There was no escaping now. We wouldn’t be waiting in lines for weeks. But a smile creased my face as I felt a tinge of that excitement I had as a child enter my body like a sneaky thirst.
What I Thought Then: Going into the theater that May evening was sheer excitement. I did not read reviews of the film going in. Though I was a huge Howard Stern listener back then, and as you’d imagine, his on air review of the film the week before its release was not overwhelmingly positive. In fact, it was just the opposite. Yet, this was a night out at the movies with my father. Lightsaber battles were breaking out in the staging area in front of the screen. My father looked at me and thanked me that I was not out there with them. I looked at him and expressed a hearty ‘you’re welcome.’ also exclaiming I would never do that. But something deep down inside REALLY wanted to!
The movie started and when that theme hit those speakers, I was in awe. Here I was, on the first day of The Phantom Menace‘s release, and I was seeing a brand new Star Wars vision onscreen! It was at that moment I felt like the kid I was at Return of the Jedi. Wide eyed, I took in the CGI’d elements, and didn’t even have too much a grip on what the story was. I was enlightened by all the battles, the way the Jedi took out droids with kicks and strokes. It felt like magic had befallen us, and even as a little character named Binks permeated a lot of frames, I was taken into Lucas’s mind of what he envisioned Vader being as a child. The final frames hit, and Dad and I had left, still talking about the awe inspiring images we had seen.
As we left the theater, we came upon a couple college friends of mine who were also in the theater with us. We spoke about what we had seen, and they were convinced it was everything they envisioned and more. I honestly do not remember what we spoke about that day in the car on the way home. But I do remember thinking, something is just not right. Especially when my father brought up the fact that he didn’t remember midichlorians ever coming up in the last trilogy.
I saw The Phantom Menace two other times in theaters. Once with a huge Star Wars fan whose wedding I was three years away from being in. Bet you can’t guess what their theme was? And it was on this viewing where I had the ET scene pointed out to me. Very cool callback to your buddy, George.
Though it was the third and final time I saw it in theaters which told me the most about the film and how much it had failed at what it was trying to do. Though he is now, my (at the time) six year old brother was not a huge Star Wars fan. I took him to theaters to see The Phantom Menace, thinking it was going to be a fun time at the movies for both of us. We stopped by Taco Bell, grabbed some lunch, and sat down to watch the movie. Around the time the story moved to Tatooine, I looked at my brother, the core aimed at audience, and he was fast asleep. The audience Lucas had tried so hard to reach, millennials if you will, had been sleeping away as his new creation Jar Jar Binks was yukking it up onscreen. Here is when it finally hit me. Lucas, for all intents and purposes, had failed in his attempt to reach in and grab the hearts of a brand new audience. Instead, he put them to sleep.
What I Think Now: Look. I am not going to sit here and try convincing people how misunderstood a masterpiece The Phantom Menace is. It has almost none of the magic I would widely relate to while watching the other trilogy. It had none of the characters I loved so much. Oh yeah. Ewan McGregor was lingering around as Obi Wan. But does a new audience really CARE how these people from a trilogy made in the 70s and 80s came to be? I feel that is a massive part of the prequel trilogy’s overall biggest issue. It did not tell us anything we did not already know. Except, of course, for the fact that midichlorians determine a biological reason why you are either born a Jedi or not. So how many midichlorians does Luke have?
Watching The Phantom Menace today, I can still get past a lot of the complaints people have against it. Taken in context of the entire saga itself, I think the film fits in rather well. It certainly has some awesome battles -though I still find some big issues with the final space battle- and seeing the inner workings of how the Empire came to power gets more interesting the more times I watch it. In the final act of Return of the Jedi, we were treated to a ground, a lightsaber, and a space battle. We get all of those once again in The Phantom Menace. You can’t fault Lucas for going for a formula that didn’t carry results.
I still take a lot more positives out of the film than most. I find the podrace to be an exciting and innovative way of showing Anakin’s ability to think his way out of any situation no matter what it may be. I enjoyed seeing Artoo spreading his heroic wings earlier than we had imagined. I enjoyed seeing the magnificent final lightsaber duel, where Obi Wan learns to control his emotions, therefore defeating Darth Maul and saving the galaxy from more of his menace. And before people start messaging me about how Maul should have lived, I will just say let it go. This was not a story about Maul. It was about Palpatine’s imperial plan to rule the galaxy. So, stop with that movement. I don’t care what canon says he has lived, he is done. Enough.
In Conclusion: All of the things people criticize about The Phantom Menace -and all the prequels as a whole- I can certainly make cases for existing the entire saga. It’s just, after a decade and a half, Lucas’s world was now mixed with the likes of Tarantino, Fincher, Zemeckis, Jackson…..
The list goes on and on. But seeing The Phantom Menace today is not the horrible experience people make it out to be. Sure, Jar Jar gets some very uninspired comedy in, and there are not any of the heart tugging moments we saw so many of in The Empire Strikes Back. But seeing Darth Vader as a child, one who rests with the entire galaxy fifteen years away from being his for the taking, is not nearly as bad an experience as, say, a movie featuring autobots and decepticons.