Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

United States, 1999
Directed by George Lucas

It's difficult to know how to review a Star Wars film. They are among the most widely-seen, beloved, and (in the case of the prequel trilogy) notorious films of all-time. There is so much hype and passionately held opinions surrounding these movies that it seems impossible to view them separate from their cultural influence, as stand alone stories. But I'll give it my best shot.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace begins a new prequel trilogy, one that is strikingly different than the original Star Wars trilogy. The original films very closely follow the Hero's Journey template outlined by Joseph Campbell. The Hero's Journey begins with an ordinary man with an unexceptional life - like Luke the farmer on Tatooine. Our hero hears a call to adventure and is taken under the wing of a mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. He then crosses the threshold into a whole new world and is thrust into a grand battle of good versus evil, the Rebel Alliance against the evil Galactic Empire. After being severely tested and tempted, he defeats the forces of evil and restores peace and balance to his world. The prequel films are an equally archetypal and classical form of storytelling, the tragedy. Our tragic hero is Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father. He is a man who rises to greatness as a Jedi Knight, but falls to the Dark Side and is transformed into Darth Vader. Anakin fits the model of the tragic hero outlined by Aristotle - he is a basically good man whose fall comes about not by vice or depravity, but character flaws and errors of judgment that lead to destruction. The Phantom Menace is the beginning of this tragic tale - Anakin Skywalker is an innocent child just discovering his great powers, and the Galactic Republic is experiencing the first stirrings of dissent that will lead to war and the formation of the Galactic Empire.

Considering the darker and more complex nature of its story, you would expect The Phantom Menace to be a more nuanced or adult Star Wars. Yet The Phantom Menace is actually the most child-oriented, lighthearted film of the entire saga. In itself, this is not really a problem - after all, Anakin is still an innocent child in The Phantom Menace, the characters have little sense of the tragedy to come, and good storytelling accessible for any age is all too rare. But in execution The Phantom Menace is bizarrely at odds with itself. The simplistic characters, declarative and nuance-free dialogue, and goofy slapstick humor place The Phantom Menace firmly in "kiddie movie" territory. But the plot centers around an intergalactic trade blockade that is actually a front for the future Emperor Palpatine to secure power, and the discovery of the boy who will become Darth Vader and kill two of the film's major characters, Padme and Obi-Wan. I'm not claiming that George Lucas shouldn't have tried to make The Phantom Menace fun or accessible in the face of its dark subject matter - of course he should have, it's Star Wars. But The Phantom Menace never strikes a good balance. Dry political discussions are followed by manic slapstick action sequences, making for an unpleasantly schizophrenic experience. I'm not sure whether George Lucas vastly misunderstood his own story, or was making a misguided attempt at appealing to children out of commercial concerns and in the process alienated many adults. Either way, The Phantom Menace is a disappointing missed opportunity - an elemental story rich with potential, told in a broken, awkward way.

The poor storytelling extends to the characters, who are uninteresting at best and at worst...um, we'll get to that in a minute.

Let's start with Anakin Skywalker himself. Bringing Anakin to life would be no easy task for a writer or child actor. He is just a young boy, but one who must show potential for greatness - for good and for evil. But Anakin in The Phantom Menace is a complete failure of a character, like the star of a cornball 90s kid movie anachronistically plopped into an epic space opera. It wouldn't be fair to put the blame on Jake Lloyd, just a kid who was likely acting as he was directed to. But, sadly, he never convinces on any level, leaving a vapid blank space where an engaging main character should be. Since the core of the prequel trilogy is Anakin's transformation, this is a big problem.

Bland characters are the norm in The Phantom Menace. Talented actors like Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor are adrift playing personality-free ciphers. Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn is the most engaging, due to Liam Neeson's authoritative screen presence, but is just as poorly written as the rest. An invaluable ingredient of the original trilogy's success was the characters - Han Solo, Leia, Luke and the rest of the crew had vibrant individual personalities, and delightful chemistry when put together. The protagonists of The Phantom Menace are wooden and dull, never giving us a reason to care. But they're nothing compared to this...

...the unholy monstrosity known as Jar-Jar Binks. Everything about Jar-Jar is off-putting. Starting with his design - the lanky body, the yellow cat eyes perched on crab-like stalks, the duck bill with incongruous human teeth - he is intended to be the lovably goofy comic relief, but is too much an uncanny nightmare of a creation to be anything but unnerving. His personality is even worse than his appearance - he is a screeching idiot who destroys all in his path, tagging along with the heroes for no discernible reason. Even if he had attempted to do so, Mr. Lucas could not have concocted a more perfectly obnoxious character than Jar-Jar. Every minute of his screen-time (which add up to a mercilessly large number, considering his unimportance to the narrative) is painful.

The Phantom Menace mishandles the Star Wars mythology just as much as it botches the characters; which is, perhaps, an even more crushing disappointment. The Star Wars universe is expanded very little, or only in uninspired directions. The new worlds lack the lived-in, authentic creativity of the various planets in the originals - Naboo looks like a fantasy world screensaver and Coruscant is just a bland futuristic cityscape. The Jedi Order never is as awe-inspiring as it should be - they seem less like mystical warriors and a force for good, and more like dull, humorless bureaucrats. And the introduction of midichlorians - "microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force" - is an unwelcome, mystique-deflating explanation of how the Force works. The mysterious spirituality of the Force is what made it so awesome in the first place!

The amount of time The Phantom Menace spends explaining Trade Federations, blockades, peace treaties and the Galactic Senate, without making clear what's actually at stake or why any of it matters, is baffling. The political turmoil of the Republic, and the sinister scheming of Palpatine behind the conflict, could have been gripping if told coherently and with an appropriate sense of dread and tension, but in The Phantom Menace all the plotting is relayed through tedious, confusing exposition dumps.

Yet there are bright spots amid the gloom. Brief moments of The Phantom Menace tap into the gleeful excitement that is classic Star Wars - where pulpy, old-school science fiction meets grand, mythic storytelling. The clear highlight of the film is at the end, when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight Darth Maul. Although Darth Maul has limited screentime he is the most memorable figure of The Phantom Menace, with his tattooed body, demonic horns, and that double-sided lightsaber, which every 10 year old boy thought was the coolest thing ever. They battle in an enormous metallic hall that looks like a set from Metropolis, as operatic singing blares on the soundtrack. In a few minutes there is stirring heroism and tragedy, and the type of exhilaration that only the best high fantasy can provide. A shame that the film surrounding that terrific scene is so lifeless.