# Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

### reviewed by
Paul-Michael Agapow

    [film] "The Phantom Menace"
    A Postview, copyright p-m agapow 1999

An even longer time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...

Imagine a world different to ours. Imagine a world where in the mid 90s George Lucas falls on hard times. Desperate for money, he is approached by a shadowy corporation. The rights to "Star Wars" change hands. From their sweaty, crowded offices (based in a remote tropical country for tax and legal conveniences), the new owners hatch their plans for a quick buck. Using evidence carefully accumulated over the years (photos of adolesents, movies on no-one's resume), several A-list actors are blackmailed into cooperating. The cast is completed by extras who are willing to pay to get into the film. Large quantities of special effects are ordered and shoehorned into the film, primarily to cover up for the sullen acting. Those who refuse to cooperate are tranquilized and lead through their scenes. The production takes a single month. Direction is done by members of the local cinema club, editing by the corporate accountant. Journalists are leant on, critics bribed, fan groups lead along. Anyone who asks for a merchandising license is given one. The whole world eagerly awaits "The Fandom Menace".

A question: could this film be distinguished from the one that was released in our world?

    I doubt it.

The original "Star Wars" trilogy is a flimsy hero for all the monuments that have been built to it. The storyline is thin, the acting only passable, the direction competent, the universe simplistic (and, "Chasing Amy" jokes aside, astoundingly white Anglo-saxon). It contains nothing that has not been done before in SF/F. But that's largely the point: if you're going to make a dumb swashbuckling space opera, it had better swash and buckle. For better or worse, that is what the original trilogy did. The passion of the most fanatic "Star Wars" fans is inexplicable, but it is a durable piece of escapist entertainment.

And then we come to "The Phantom Menace", which is not a terrible film, but is terribly disappointing, banal and disjointed even by the subterranean standards of fandom. A movie only a marketer could love, its central problem is simple: it is badly made. The acting tanks, the dialogue is terrible, the script (there is no other word for it) sucks. It is disorganised and careless, a dumb film trying to be meaningful, an adult film unable to explain itself, a child's film that is pretentious.

The plot is best left untold, lest the malevolent demons that had apparently possessed the script-writers during production are invoked. At best it's pedestrian (about a tax dispute!) and sprints from scene to scene with hurried explanations. At worst it becomes deliriously stupid, a few gems being:

* Anakin building, in his spare time from bits and pieces, the fastest podracer on Tatooine which he races and wins in, untested.

* A sub-Duchovnian explaination for the Force, which sounds like an amalgam of the ideas that L Ron Hubbard and Wilhelm Reich rejected.

* The virgin birth of Anakin, which is either a gobsmackingly wide Christ metaphor (which makes no sense) or a desperately lateral attempt to avoid mentioning sex and so get that family rating certificate. (Actually I don't think anyone in the Star Wars universe has sex - the only person we meet who ever has is Darth and he's batting for the other side. Which is to say, he's a figure of ultimate evil. Go figure.)

* Jar Jar Binks, a cringing Uncle Tom figure with an impenetrable accent who walks like he has a specific gravity less than cotton candy. Even during the somber scenes, he's dancing about in the background doing pratfalls. This demonstrates how advanced the "Star Wars' universe is: Instead of prejudice towards non-white, non-male humans (not that there are very many in "The Phantom Menace"), there is prejudice towards aliens.

Even those in the cast who usually turn in strong performances (Neeson, McGregor, Portman) are terrible. The suppporting cast is hideous, especially the utterly resistable Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker. (Or "Ani", as it's pronounced in Tatooine mallspeak.) With lines like "Yippee!" and "But Mom, didn't you tell me the problem with the universe is that noone wants to get involved?", I don't wonder the Jedi don't want to train him. He'd spend every morning at Jedi High getting his head flushed in the toilet by other students.

However, the worse thing about "The Phantom Menace" is its lack of imagination, Lucas literally self-cannibalising from the original trilogy: Anakin (Luke) flying in and destroying the robot control station (death star) with the help of R2D2, the Gungan natives (Ewoks) fighting a delaying battle as the Jedi try to shut down a vital installation; the death of the old Jedi and passing of the flame to the new Jedi. Pop has not only eaten itself, it is smacking its lips and clammering for dessert. So eager is the director to connect to the original story that it becomes almost autoerotic as old characters are rushed by the camera: R2D2, C3P0, Jabba, Greedo, Yoda. Even Obiwan doesn't have any real reason to be in this film. He spends most of the film looking worried and doing the Jedi equivalent of pumping his fist and shouting "Yeah - what he said!"

Is there anything good about "The Phantom Menace"? Some of the sets are impressive, for the scant seconds we see them. Some action scenes like the podrace and lightsaber fights come to colorful life, unspoiled by brain-damaged dialogue. It is interesting to note that these scenes would have been under the control of the SFX director and action choreographer.

How come "The Phantom Menace" is bad? How did the most anticipated and tightly controlled movie of all times get to be so bad? For many, the villian of choice is creator Lucas, guilty of fathering the "blockbuster movie", the dumb, hyper-merchandised and rigidly formulaic films that pollute our screens each year. This accusation seems hollow to me. The marketing of any of the original "Star Wars" trilogy comes nowhere near that as is now routinely practiced. Even if there is a direct causal chain from the "Star Wars" to "Independence Day" and "Wild Wild West", it couldn't have been foreseen. The vast bounty that Lucas has made from Star Wars is as much a historical accident as anything. Conversely, it's difficult to blame the makers of the over-hyped films that followed, the Emmerichs, the Spielbergs, the Sonnefelds. When the success of a movie is so ruthlessly bent to marketing, can they be blamed for saying "I want some of that?"

Similarly, it's very easy to accuse Lucas of just milking the public for squillions of dollars. No doubt he will do well out of TPM, and certainly the hype and control exercised by him were extraordinary. But this falls far short of evidence for avarice on his part. (And realistically, just how much more money could he use?) No, I think Lucas is sincere and the juggernaut way he controls his creation is just a mark of how much he cares about his product, how much he wants to enthral people, to create a phenomena.

And he doesn't have the skill. The lumbering script is evidence of that. The cannibalisation of everything he has seen, including his own movies, is evidence of that. The incoherent, leaden direction is evidence of that. Lucas is the reason "The Phantom Menace" is bad, but this can't explain how it was allowed to become bad.

The culprits, I fear, are us, the audience. We've allowed ourselves to be fired-up by publicity, to be dragged along to see a "Star Wars" film, no matter what it is. We'll go and see a lousy movie, just so we're not left out of loop of conversation. This is why marketing is everything and quality is nothing. Ask yourself just how bad "the Pahntom Menace" would have to be before you wouldn't see. People could be dropping dead in the aisles or driven blind by the sheer badness, and most of us would still say: "Well, the death rate is down in recent sessions, so maybe we'll wait until the weekend ..."

"The Phantom Meance" is crap, but then that's what movies are now, and always will be. At least while we keep going to them. It may be a futile gesture, it's unlikely to make you any happier, but skip the next blockbuster, skirt the next load of hype. It's the only solution. [*/misfire] and "like a thousands voices had cried out" on the Sid and Nancy scale.

    "The Phantom Menace"
    Released 1999.
    Produced, directed and written by George Lucas.
    Starring Liam Neeson, Ewan Mcgregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd.
    Based on an idea.

-- Paul-Michael Agapow (p.agapow@ic.ac.uk), Biology, Imperial College "We were too young, we lived too fast and had too much technology ..."

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