Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Director and Writer: George Lucas
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Samuel L. Jackson
Reason for watching: Showing my wife the Star Wars movies.
Number of times I’ve watched it: At least six
***
Alright let’s start here, this is not the worst Star Wars movie. Yes it’s a major let down from the hype built up for it. But nothing could have reached that level of quality that was anticipated. And if there is one thing we know about Star Wars fans, it is that they hate everything that isn’t from the original trilogy. Seriously, it’s upsetting. And that’s what this movie had to go up against: the love of the original movies. You cannot defeat nostalgia when it comes to movies. It is difficult to come to a reasonable baseline of judgement for a movie that has this much to live up to. So of course the opinions are often skewed when it comes to this one.
But let’s talk some positives. In general, one cannot criticize George Lucas’ creative imagination. We all wanted to know more about the world before an evil emperor took over. Fans had so many questions. What was the galaxy like pre-empire? What was the Jedi order like? Who was Vader before he was behind the mask? And Lucas had a lot of room to operate. The movie delivers in a lot of respects. I love Ewan McGregor in the prequels and appreciate how much he put in this performance. The action is exciting in the second and third acts as well. And I gotta be honest, I like some of the new elements. New worlds. Young Kenobi. The Jedi council. A DOUBLE-LIGHT SABER WIELDED BY A SITH!! Tie that in with probably the best lightsaber fight in the entire saga and a dope score over that fight, and I’m down for all of that.
But therein lies the problem. Aside from the above additions, the rest are only good in concept. And then when it comes to execute those ideas, they fall flat. Midichlorians are the easy example here. It’s intriguing to think about the biology of the force and what gives a jedi or sith their power, but it becomes ridiculous once Qui-Gon Jinn samples some of Anakin’s blood to find out what his Midichlorian count per million is. Perhaps a more controversial example here is Padme. knowing who Luke and Leia’s mom was a necessity to the prequels. She’s mentioned only once in the original trilogy, and such a character would need screen time. But is there a single well-done moment of character development for her in the entire trilogy? Nope. She’s there to pump out Vader’s babies and then die of a broken heart. And that is a shameful use of Natalie Portman’s talents. If a video game prequel did it better than you, you did it wrong. There’s some other issues like the outdate CGI and the crappy dialogue, but those are easy pickings.
There’s an underlying problem here though that I think goes back all the way to the original trilogy and extends into the sequels. Star Wars was never just George Lucas’ vision. Of course he wrote the original and directed it too, but he had lots of help with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. And the most critically successful movies in the series were not written by a single person. And that’s because with Star Wars it is easy to fall down a rabbit hole, get lost in the weeds of the world building, and forget to tell a good story. And that’s what happened here. We did not get enough genuine connection time with Qui-Gon or Anakin or Obi-Wan to really be sold on the story. Too much screen time was devoted to political hearings, negotiations, and impeachments. There’s too much here. It’s spread out far too thin.
Overall, I give it a 4/10. It’s still enjoyable if you turn off your brain and ignore the details or if you just watch the pod racing scene or the final lightsaber duel. Ewan McGregor is still good.
Until I see another one.
PS - For clarifications sake, Jane has seen most of the Star Wars movies but only in bits and pieces. So there’s no spoilers for her. She’s making fun of the movie with me and calling out dumb crap when it happens.