THE PHANTOM MENACE

WATCH REPORT FOR: January 15, 2022

WATCHED: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

SUMMARY: Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn and his padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi are dispatched to resolve a dispute between the Trade Federation and the planet Naboo. The Jedi discover the nefarious scheme of the Trade Federation, and offer to escort Queen Amidala of Naboo to Republic capital Coruscant so she may appeal to the Galactic Senate for help. The escort mission is diverted to Tatooine, where Qui-Gon meets young Anakin Skywalker and comes to believe the boy is the chosen one who will restore balance to the Force. Anakin is brought along to Coruscant, where Queen Amidala encounters bureaucratic obstacles and sets in motion a change in Senate leadership. The Jedi, Anakin and Amidala return to Naboo, under occupation by the Trade Federation's droid army. Amidala forges an alliance with the Gungans, who battle the droid army while Naboo pilots and Anakin attack the droid control ship in orbit and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan lightsaber duel a Sith called Darth Maul. Maul kills Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan seemingly kills Maul, Anakin destroys the droid control ship, and the leaders of the Trade Federation are captured by Amidala. Sheev Palpatine of Naboo becomes Supreme Chancellor of the Senate, and Obi-Wan becomes a Jedi Knight with Anakin as his padawan.

OVERALL REVIEW: The Phantom Menace is, and always has been in my eyes, a mixed bag. I saw TPM in the theater on opening night, after years of unimaginable hype and build-up including the theatrical re-releases of Episodes IV through VI and the advertising and merchandising campaigns for the first new Star Wars movie in sixteen years. I wanted so badly to love it the way I loved the original trilogy. I didn't, but I leaned positive on it, even as I nitpicked bits of it in the movie theater parking lot immediately afterwards.

Obviously in the years since it has become all but impossible to separate TPM from the overall Star Wars/Skywalker Saga, for good or ill. It was the moment where childhood nostalgia and a decade-plus-long wish for more Star Wars met reality with a resounding thud. Most people regard TPM as the weakest of the prequels and possibly the worst of all eleven feature films. Some people consider it disposable, as evidenced in varieties of machete rewatch order which suggest IV-V-II-III-VI, skipping Episode I altogether. Some of this spills over into people feeling that TPM is the moment where Star Wars stopped being good, and it's been all downhill ever since. I never quite reached that negative an opinion, myself. I thought the next two prequels certainly made TPM look worse by comparison. On the other hand, I remember showing Donovan TPM when he was very young, four or five years old, and he loved it, which gave a lot of credence to the theories that Lucas doubled-down on returning Star Wars to its roots as a Saturday matinee for kiddies. It also made me go a little easier on TPM myself. So I don't hate TPM, but I don't love it either. It's ... okay.

Yes, the Gungans and the Nemoidians are still cringey, bordering on racist stereotypes, while Watto seems like an anti-Semitic grotesque. Yes, the plot is overstuffed and needlessly complicated - I'm reasonably proud of myself for the succinct recap above but I fully acknowledge I left some stuff out, like ... sigh ... midichlorians. Yes the director's focus seems to have been on gee-whiz computer effects rather than getting his actors to act. The point is TPM has serious flaws.

But it also has charms. We finally get to see Coruscant! And the Jedi Council! And Obi-Wan as a young man! And R2-D2, secret hero of the franchise! I'm not entirely sure if there's an entire good movie buried in there, but there's good things.

My biggest complaint about TPM is that it has almost no emotional palette to speak of. Liam Neeson plays Qui-Gon as fairly stoic. Natalie Portman plays Amidala as extremely stoic, and Padme as mostly stoic. Pernilla August plays Shmi as a long-suffering stoic. SAMUEL L. M*+^%$-F#$%@ JACKSON plays Mace Windu as a block of stone. Ewan McGregor steals the movie just by hinting at Alec Guinness's mischievous, wry sense of humor as Obi-Wan. Part of the reason why Jar-Jar Binks sticks out like a sore thumb and irritates everyone over the age of seven is not just because he's a comic relief character who isn't funny (and who delivers Michelle Tanner's "How rude!" catchphrase three separate times) but because compared to all the other cold fish in the dramatis personae, he's pitched at a completely mismatched level and tone.

I've long said that the two best parts of TPM were the pod race and the final lightsaber battle. But rewatching this time I was struck by what a mixed bag even those two standout sequences are. The immersive sense of visceral speed in the pod race is still there, but there's very little emotion at play. Since it's the middle of the movie it's a foregone conclusion that Anakin is going to win the race, and poor little Jake Lloyd is given nothing to work with other than being told to twist throttles and flip switches. He never looks scared or exhilarated or angry or determined or anything. Not to mention the entire event is extremely over-indulgent in Lucas's love for souped-up hot rods, engine noises, and the like. I only saw American Graffiti years after I first saw TPM, so at least now I get why there are so may lingering, loving shots of thrusters revving at the starting line, but man. It is a lot.

And the lightsaber duel is, again, physically impressive and fun to watch, plus immeasurably enhanced by John Williams's score, but under the shiny surface there's nothing there. Ray Park was cast as Darth Maul for his acrobatic grace and fighting style, not his emoting. He plays Maul with a seething, cat-like ferocity kept in check, in dare I say it a somewhat stoic fashion. Much like an actual cat. For all of Qui-Gon's calm, rational leadership of the band of misfits at the center of the movie, do we really care when he dies? Or when Obi-Wan avenges him? If we do, it's all thanks to Ewan McGregor drawing us in and making it feel like it matters. The movie itself is so busy introducing new concepts and setting things up for the rest of the prequel trilogy hat it fails to make the climax feel climactic.

So, yeah, a not-great mixed bag. But it's part of Star Wars all the same! I felt like one of the big hurdles to actually undertaking this entire Saga rewatch saga was going to be getting through The Phantom Menace. And we did it! So on to bigger and better things.

SOMETHING I NEVER NOTICED BEFORE: Towards the end of the movie, one of the battle droids delivers a line with an unmistakbly New Yawk accent. The Nemoidians all sound vaguely and problematically Asian, the Gungans all sound vaguely and problematically Caribbean, Watto is the only Toydarian we ever meet, so it's particularly odd that a bunch of droids would have such variation and inconsistency in their speech patterns and inflection. Maybe it was an inside joke of Lucas's. Who knows?