Revisiting The Phantom Menace

Some things never change, and twenty-seven years of merely existing doesn't make a bad movie good. Between their cute but misguided love for the prequel trilogy and their rabid hatred for the intoxicatingly confident The Last Jedi, I'm beginning to think that the Star Wars fanbase and I have different priorities. Rarely is this seen more clearly than in The Phantom Menace, two hours of a breathless and underwhelming sprint to a hollow conclusion that is largely irrelevant to its own trilogy. There are some brilliant sparks of that Star Wars magic to be seen here, and one or two sequences that offer glimpses into the epic that George Lucas obviously hoped to make, but they are smothered by a slideshow of fleeting setpieces that never slow down enough to consider why they matter enough to be in the movie. The Original Trilogy and, to an extent, the Sequels seem interested in justifying their respective existences, but The Phantom Menace is just so much noise working against the tune of its own trilogy.

For the few of you who have never seen it, this is the first of three prequel movies to George Lucas's epic and universally loved Star Wars saga. Take that universally loved part with a grain of salt here, because if the Original Trilogy is like staring up at the night sky in wonder and awe, then The Phantom Menace is a bit more akin to reading a science textbook about it, and not in a good way. A greedy corporation known as the Trade Federation has quietly blockaded the peaceful planet of Naboo, and the Senate of the Galactic Republic has become too bloated to do anything about it. While the bureaucrats get stalled in committee, two Jedi Knights named Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are dispatched to Naboo to mediate the crisis, and they unwittingly set off a dangerous chain of events that are but the first ripples in what will eventually turn into waves of galaxy-wide warfare. But one can only wish that Lucas had picked a larger stone.

Have you ever read one of those visual guides to the Star Wars galaxy? The Phantom Menace often plays like one of those. It is trying to expand on its universe, and on that level, it actually succeeds. It is a big movie that boundlessly adds layers of lore and is never at a loss for ambition, even if it's better at fulfilling it in some areas than others. It makes the galaxy feel big.

The design choices by the visuals department are also fun, and look both the same and different from the Original Trilogy. Lucas's Flash Gordon influences are just as evident here as they were in 1977, but the aesthetic is twisted in some interesting, nearly Renaissance-adjacent ways. The Phantom Menace is far more reliant on computer-generated imagery than earlier Star Wars movies, and though the visual effects can look dated by today's standards, they remain impressive for their time. Many of the inspirations in this movie are also a lot of fun, my personal favorite being a sci-fi-spiked racing scene evocative of Ben-Hur. This motley, distasteful race through the plains and canyons of the infamous Tatooine feels fast and dangerous, adding to the franchise's mythos with exhilarating urgency.

In true Star Wars fashion, The Phantom Menace is about its characters, who are a mixed bag. While the sinister and black-clad warrior named Darth Maul doesn't get much screen time, he makes for a great villain with a quiet and borderline-demonic presence. His double-bladed lightsaber is a fantastic design choice by Lucas and his crew, because on the one hand, it looks cool, and on the other, it makes a lot of practical sense. The climactic battle of this movie is a two-on-one featuring Maul doing battle with both Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, and it's a well-balanced affair because of Maul's weapon of choice. Some have compared him to the Japanese Samurai, and I second the sentiment. He is a visually and emotionally memorable villain who says nary a word.

Darth Maul is a big reason why it's ironic that the movie's characters are where I begin to run out of good things to say about it. The clumsy, fumbling Jar Jar Binks is hands-down the worst character in the history of Star Wars, an unholy caricature of borderline-racist Jamaican stereotypes fused with abusively out-of-place computer graphics. He is wildly irritating, and while actor Ahmed Best didn't even come close to deserving the level of hatred he got for his performance, Jar Jar crossed the line into self-parody. The other performances in this movie are largely inoffensive at best, though Jake Lloyd's young Anakin is another low point. The dialogue is just as atrocious, an unending stream of childish jokes and Pseudo-English that makes me wonder both what Lucas was smoking and why no one thought twice about suggesting rewrites or getting him new cigarettes.

Granted, the visual aesthetic of The Phantom Menace remains ambitious. The physical production design seen here is quite good, with Queen Amidala's palace on Naboo being the regal standout. The movie's locations, some familiar and others brand-new, are all interesting, and the world-building is arguably this movie's strongest element. Still, what's inescapable is the obvious fact that the technology isn't all there yet, and some of this movie's insistence on digitally creating worlds can become tiresome as the CGI grows increasingly weightless, as if it were no more tangible than bubbles floating through the air. That's a problem when the movie would rather have us believe that mechanical weapons of war and fearsome sea creatures are after our heroes.

Ultimately, The Phantom Menace tries to do too much. It moves at a lightning-quick pace, visiting over a dozen major locations and planets in 134 minutes without ever stopping to think about what it's doing. We are always hit with another spectacle before the weight of the previous one is even allowed the time to sink in. This movie is too big, not because it features too many locations, but because too few of them are treated with any real importance. It doesn't take itself seriously enough, and slowly turns into a circus show of spectacle without any real substance to its acts; it's not hard to see the man behind the curtain.

One final word that springs to mind is irritation. The Phantom Menace sometimes plays like self-parody, and it is either wildly unaware of itself or a vast miscalculation by its creators that constantly calls attention to the things that don't work about it. One or two of its major setpieces are memorable, but the movie punishes you on the way there, sometimes with abrasive offensiveness, but more often with numbing mediocrity. It's not familiar enough to be called campy, nor is it daring enough to become relevant. It is but a hollow and overly decorated shell of the Star Wars you remember.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace - 4/10

James 4:13-15