STAR WARS: Episode Ⅰ – The Phantom Menace (1999)
directed by George Lucas
★★★½☆
Fans often malign The Phantom Menace as the worst of the franchise, criticizing its slow pace, stunted dialog, wooden performances, and over-reliance on CGI spectacle. Its focus on unfamiliar characters, economic politics, Jar Jar Binks, and an innocent, 9-year-old Anakin Skywalker are particular points of dissent.
And while many of these complaints are fair, to a point, the good mostly outweighs the bad in this retroactive first chapter of the Skywalker Saga. Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman put in good performances, despite occasionally opaque dialogue. Ian McDiarmid in particular stands out as the ambitious Senator Palpatine.
The Phantom Menace also delivers a few of the more memorable moments of the film franchise, such as the pulse-pounding podrace and the climactic lightsaber battle, set to one of John Williams’ best film cues, Duel of the Fates. While much of this film teeters between great and good enough, there are particularly cringe-worthy elements that hold it back, especially Jar Jar Binks, whose cartoonishly rubbery animation clashes with the tone of the movie and detracts from what is otherwise a spectacular feat of photo-realistic CGI. The character himself contributes little to the plot and doesn’t even have any real development over the course of the story.
Sadly, Jar Jar is the film’s primary source of levity, as the absence of the neurotic C-3PO, save for a brief inconsequential cameo, and the lack of a snarky sidekick like Han Solo, leaves only the solemn Jedi and royalty as the main characters, with the more colorful characters like Boss Nass, Watto, Yoda, and Darth Maul limited to just a few scenes.
As far as the plot is concerned, regarding the trade disputes, politics, and gee-whiz naïvety of future super-villain Anakin, this is all forgivable, as Episode Ⅰ is just an introduction. Lucas wanted us to see his galaxy and characters before their decline. While much of this film could have easily been condensed into the first half of a film with a darker story, the child-like innocence of The Phantom Menace harkens back to the first Star Wars in 1977, when the story was just about heroes and magic triumphing over evil and power, without all the pathos future entries would introduce.
