BlogAlongAStarWars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

Hello :-)

Here we are again for the fourth instalment of my attempt at The Incredible Suit’s BlogAlongAStarWars; My ongoing quest to become a Star Wars fan and distract myself from the realisation that with every second I am edging closer towards oblivion.

I'm not going to pretend that I don’t know the prequels have a reputation; of course I do, I'm a human who has spent time on the internet. However, as with the original trilogy, I haven’t seen these films for years, so I don’t properly understand why there’s such disdain for them.

The story centres around tax disputes between the Galactic republic and the Trade federation. Jedi Qui-Gon-Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are sent in to negotiate with both parties but things soon take a turn for the worse and they’re on the run. The Jedi hot tail it to Naboo, save Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) from kidnap then, after they’re attacked trying to leave the planet, end up on Tatooine where they meet young slave Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) who may be the answer to all of their problems.

Let’s not mince our words, any way you slice it Phantom Menace isn’t great. As a standalone film it’s boring and when compared to the original trilogy it fails on almost every level. It is not, however, completely without merit.

The trouble is we get off on the wrong foot and the film never really recovers from there. The iconic scrolling text is babbling on about taxation which no one, especially the children in the audience, gives a shit about. Then, in the first scene of the movie, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan whip their lightsabres out quicker than a flasher with his wang. As exciting as that is (the lightsabres not the wang), you can’t escape the fact that this is the opposite to everything we’ve been taught about being a Jedi up to this point.

One of the biggest issues in Phantom Menace is the absence of a main character. This is talked about far better than I could in the infamous Red Letter Media reviews and by the brilliant Michael Barryte at Belated Media; all logic indicates that our lead should be Obi-Wan because that character is the bridge between trilogies. However I’m kind of glad it isn’t because in Phantom he’s an absolute prick. I have an awful lot of time for Ewan McGregor but his character was written terribly, he’s mean with a complete lack of humour. “Why do I sense we’ve picked up another pathetic lifeform?” WHAT?! You’re talking about a child! Stop being a knobhead Obi-Wan!

In fact all of the characters are pitched so weirdly. The acting is uniformly terrible. It’s almost like a weird absurdist art piece because no one reacts to anything in the way and normal person would. Every plot point is met with nothing but solemnity with the exception of the very end where they have a party and Amidala gives Brian Blessed Gungan one of those Plasma Balls you get from gadget shops or Argos.

Qui-Gon has got to be the most un-Jedi Jedi in the history of Jedis. He’s a compulsive gambler and has the oddest way of setting peoples mind at ease. When Anakin asks him about his “laser sword” (fuck off Lucas, you’ve made enough money off their bastard merchandising you can at least take the time to remember they’re called Lightsabres) he says “maybe I killed a Jedi and took it from him” which is such a bizarre statement to make on so many different levels it would take a whole other blog post to adequately explain it.

Please bear in mind, I’m not levelling this criticism at the actors themselves, they have all gone on to prove themselves as exceptional performers in other films more deserving of their talents (except poor Jake Lloyd who, by his own admission, had such an awful time with Phantom Menace that, save for one film in 2005, he hasn’t been lured back to the silver screen since). No, the fault lies at the door of the atrocious script, piss poor directorial choices and the fact that there were many creative professionals in this team who just sat back and watched the proverbial car crash unfold without doing a thing to stop it.

One genuinely positive moment is the podrace. Gleefully lifted from Ben Hur it’s shiny and fun, it looks and sounds great; it feels like it’s accidentally been spliced in from some other movie, one that has a sense of adventure. It’s hard to justify such an extensive use of greenscreen but the Pod race nearly does… nearly.

It’s always fun to explore new worlds and we’re given that opportunity in Phantom Menace. Obviously we’ve seen Tatooine before but Naboo is the first city civilisation we get to seen and, although I’m not a fan of the wall to wall greenscreen, I like the idea. I particularly like the Gungan underwater city. I’m not a fan of the Gungans, especially not Jar Jar, but it’s in keeping with the extreme terrain that inspired the likes of Tatooine and Hoth and it looks good. It struck me as odd that Amidala wasn’t set up to be the ruler of Alderaan though, I mean we all know who her daughter is and it might have made sense to make us care about a planet and it’s inhabitants if you’re going to blow it up in a later episode but I realise this is a tiny niggle in a film with far bigger problems.

Speaking of Naboo, where are all these dying Nabooians (Nabooeans? Nabooese? Nabooish?). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see bodies in the street or anything but there’s just very little evidence that this is a life or death situation. You've managed to get on and off that planet several times so what exactly is this blockade doing? You appear to have plenty of water and land to grow your own food so what is it that that you need to trade so desperately? I don’t want to get all ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ on you but it seems like you could sustain yourselves quite well if you really wanted to.

If there was ever going to be a character to rival Vader in terms of pure aesthetic awesome it’s Darth Maul. The character design of Darth Maul is perfect. The robes, the face, the double ended lightsabre. With Ray Park’s physicality and Peter Serafinowicz’s awesomely creepy vocal performance, he was all set up to be this imposing force across the prequels with his and Sidious’s relationship mirroring that of Vader and Palpatine.

So why oh why did he have to die?!?!

This is, for me, the biggest mistake Lucas makes in Phantom, maybe even across all of the prequels. So much wasted potential, it almost hurts me to think about it. The lovely Ryan Lambie explains it better than I ever could so just read that and pretend I was clever enough to write it, yeah? Cheers.

The fatal flaw in all of this is just how much the film takes for granted. It takes it for granted that you’re so excited to see lightsabres again you won’t care that what the characters are doing directly contradicts what we’ve previously been told, it takes it for granted that we know who Anakin will become and assumes this will automatically make us care about him, it takes it for granted that we love R2D2 and C3PO so much that we’ll ignore that they have no reason to be here,  it takes for granted that our fondness for Obi Wan means we’ll ignore his dickish behaviour, it takes it for granted that we’ll accept toys and computer trickery over actual substance.

It’s hard to separate out feelings of disappointment from legitimate criticism which is why I think some people are so harsh on Phantom Menace, but it really isn’t all bad. Having said that, what it is is a predominantly soulless, lightsabre happy, beige wall of a film. It has it’s redeeming qualities in the shape of the Pod race and (up until the point he’s sliced in twain) Darth Maul but by and large it’s just too dull to care about and from the poor choices that plague the film, it’s evident that the film makers certainly don’t care either.

I am really, really not looking forward to next month…

Final Thoughts 1: “A communications disruption can mean only one thing… invasion”. Or you’ve ran out of data, or you haven’t paid the phone bill, or someone knocked the plug out. I mean on this occasion it does mean invasion but frankly that was a lucky guess.

Final Thoughts 2: Padmé’s decoy is a bit ballsy isn't she? I mean she orders real Padmé to go and clean R2D2, I wouldn’t order my boss to clean a jumped up pedal bin, even if I was pretending to be her…

Final Thoughts 3: I'm just going to sit here and point out the MASSIVE ANAKIN/JESUS PARALLEL that crops up and then is NEVER SPOKEN OF AGAIN (like so many other things… COUGHmidichloriansCOUGH).

Final Thoughts 4: All Hyperdrives are bollocks. They all break all the time, the people in charge of travel in the Star Wars universe need to come up with something more dependable because it’s getting ridiculous.

Surprise Discovery: Is that..? IT IS! It IS Celia Imrie!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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PS: I didn’t want to write about this with the rest of my waffle, but as a result of watching the Red Letter Media review I watched The Beginning: Making Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace. Watching it after the event is a strangely eerie experience. I realise it might be painful for some but I think it’s well worth a watch, if only to see exactly where the train derailed.