Subject: Review: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

From: "Wallace Baine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 May 1999 06:14:43 GMT

The Force not with "Phantom Menace"
by Wallace Baine
Santa Cruz Sentinel

One of the enduring truths in the “Star Wars” cosmos is that the Force
cannot be manufactured. It’s either with you or it’s not. You can take
steps to attract it and manipulate it. But the Force defies mortal control.
In the filmmaker’s lexicon, the Force is that ineffable magic that
separates mere entertainment from the deeply satisfying stories that strike
something deep in the collective psyche. That cultural “aha” moment is the
Force and, I’m sad to report, “Star Wars: Episode 1, The Phantom Menace”
just doesn’t have it.
Granted, expectations are impossibly high for the most hyped pop culture
event since Moses dragged the stone tablets down from Mount Sinai. But in
between the predictable reactions sure to follow from both the Skywalker
idolators and the resentful grumps with the light sabers aimed at George
Lucas is this one inescapable truth: For all its technical wonders,
“Phantom Menace” -- which opens on 2,500 screens nationwide a minute after
midnight on May 19 -- is severely lacking in the human appeal that burned
the original “Star Wars” into our imaginations 22 years ago. In this case,
the ghost in the machine is missing the ghost.
Let’s weigh the successes against the failures, but first a bit about the
story: As everyone over the mental age of six knows by now, “The Phantom
Menace” is the first chapter in a planned trilogy that precedes the
original trilogy in history by about 30 years. 
A trade dispute between a giant, malevolent organization called the Trade
Federation and the proud queen of the planet Naboo results in the
Federation’s de facto invasion of the small planet. Two Jedi knights from
the governing Galactic Republic are sent to mediate the dispute only to
find that the Federation has no plans to talk to them. Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam
Neeson) and his young sidekick Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) quickly
become fugitives. With the help of Jar Jar Binks, a clownish outcast from
the bizarre Gungan tribe, the Jedis find the planet’s queen (Natalie
Portman) and spirit her away to Corsucant, the planet that serves as the
Republic’s capital.
Problems with their spacecraft, however, lead the heroes to the
out-of-the-way desert planet of Tatooine. There, in an effort to score
spare parts, Qui-Gon happens upon a nine-year-old slave boy named Anakin
Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) who, the older Jedi believes, is the “Chosen One” of
Jedi mythology (He is, in fact, the future Darth Vader). Qui-Gon shrewdly
wagers with the boy’s owner, a pot-bellied hummingbird-type creature named
Watto, to win both the spare parts and the boy’s freedom.
With the boy in tow, the Jedis and the Queen’s retinue finally make it back
to Corsucant where the Queen pleads for her planet’s safety to the Senate
and Qui-Jon tries to convince the skeptical Jedi Council that young Anakin
is the Chosen One. Eventually, the action shifts back to Naboo where the
stage is set for combat between Republic and Federation forces and between
the Jedis and the film’s dark lord, the evil Darth Maul.
The good: While George Lucas hasn’t directed a film in 22 years, his
animators at Industrial Light and Magic has been honing their chops for
about as long in dozens of lesser movies with hopes of producing something
transcendent in new “Star Wars.”
Under the Lucas’s supervision, the wizards of ILM have created no less than
four magnificent worlds: the white deserts of Tattooine; the claustrophic,
super-urbanized, vertically oriented cityscapes of Corsucant (imagine a
futuristic Tokyo that covers an entire plant); the lush Xanadu of Naboo;
and, perhaps most spectacularly, the underwater world of the Gungan, a
series of warmly lit, fairie kingdom bubbles hidden under the surface of an
otherwise anonymous lake on Naboo.
Many of the more stunning effects are, in fact, grace notes to the film’s
central themes. For instance, in a too-brief sequence when Qui-Gon and
Obi-Wan are cruising the waters of Naboo in search of an underground
passage to the planet’s other side, they are pursued by a number of
mind-boggling sea creatures. Just when it looks like the ship is about to
be snapped up by some disturbingly ugly serpent so big it makes a whale
look like a bath toy, here comes another even more immense creature to
dispatch that creature. “There’s always a bigger fish,” says Qui-Jon wryly
and indeed, the sense of scale of the underwater monsters is convincingly
rendered. “Jaws” will never scare you again.
The film’s computer-generated animatronics, virtually non-existent in the
first “Star Wars” triology, takes a giant step forward. Instead of actors
in wooly Chewbacca suits, Lucas this time opts for alien characters created
wholly from ILM software. The goofy Jar Jar Binks, a tall, floppy-eared,
horse-faced sidekick whose exaggerated gait suggests a drunk marionette
puppet, is convincing enough to blend in with the backdrop of his human
counterparts. Also impressive is Watto, a grubby, gambling Tatooine
junkdealer whose fluttering little bee wings labor to keep aloft his
bowling-ball belly. In the race to create wholly artificial live-action
characters, “The Phantom Menace” is a significant advance.
Also, this prequel gives “Star Wars” fans glimpses of those moments that
form the basis of the “Star Wars” mythos: We see the point when the famous
droids, C3PO and R2-D2, meet. When Qui-Gon introduces Obi-Wan to the boy
who would become Darth Vader, the moment will give you the thrill of fate
enjoined.
The not-so-good: The failures of “The Phantom Menace” seem niggling in
isolation. But taken together, they point to a frustrating lack of that
undefinable something that made the original movies -- particularly the
first “Star Wars” -- such a cohesive whole. They are, in the end, failures
of writing and serve as strong evidence that suggests Lucas is more
talented at marketing than storytelling.
For starters, the plot is built around an arcane dispute over trade policy,
not exactly a subject known for its sexiness. As a result, the reasons that
the Trade Federation moves in on Naboo are never clearly spelled out. The
planet’s stately queen, bedecked like a kabuki diva, intones about the
suffering of her people, but we see none of that.
More importantly, the story sorely lacks the kind of swaggering appeal and
defiant humor that Harrison Ford’s Han Solo gave the first trilogy. Han’s
rough-and-tumble cowboy ethos, which served as a nice counterweight to
Luke’s boy-scout earnestness, is nowhere to be found. Both male leads carry
the erect, humorless bearing of seminary students. Ewan McGregor, the
wild-eyed and charismatic indie-film star (“Trainspotting”), is
particularly gelded in his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is left as a weak,
me-too lieutenant to the older Qui-Gon, who himself is Jedi nobility
personified (read: dull).
So many of the thematic elements of the original are missing in action --
the sexual tensions, the loyalties, the relationships, the
this-is-never-going-to-work desperation -- with nothing to compensate but
stiff political posturing and quasi-mysticism. Even the evil is a pale
comparison: the horned nemesis Darth Maul, whose satanically painted face
makes him look like a comer in the WWF, is given hardly any screen time to
really scare you. His menace is measly compared to the labored, artifical
breathing under the black mask of Darth Vader.
Ultimately, however, this is the boy’s story and young Anakin is given a
chance to strut his Jedi fighter spirit in a prolonged set piece called a
“Podrace,” a no-holds-barred drag race through the desert vistas of Naboo.
The race predictably leads to Anakin’s first combat mission (an accidental
one, actually). It is here where the “Star Wars” cosmology gives way to
adrenaline-soaked, video-game sensation that quickly becomes tedious and, I
suspect, a stand-in for any kind of grand design.
Then there’s Jar Jar Binks who is clearly meant as the film’s comic relief.
The character’s braying pidgin English and exaggerated mugging never get
beyond annoying and the cast, as if sensing the thing is a flop, don’t seem
to get anywhere near him.
Finally, I think, “The Phantom Menace” is hurt by lazy thinking. The reach
into religious allegory is more than a little ham-handed. Young Anakin is
not only tabbed the “Chosen One,” he’s also the product of a virgin birth
(born as a slave in a dry desert landscape, no less).
What’s more, the Lucas worldview seems tainted by, if not racism, at least
ethno-centrism. Is it a conscious decision that the “Chosen One” is a
tow-headed white boy with nice Americanized vowels? The boy’s grotesque
owner, who speaks an Middle Eastern-sounding dialect, is a fat slob with a
lust for a good bet. Offensive to Arabs? The strange pidgin spoken by Jar
Jar and his fellow Gungan sound suspiciously like native Asians trying to
master English. Offensive to Asians?
George Lucas, the lord of Skywalker Ranch, clearly has a God complex and,
considering the astounding deference given him the last 20 years, who can
blame him? But George is as human as the rest of us with the same amount of
hours in his days. In the four-plus years since “Episode 1” has been in the
works, he has supervised the effects, controlled the marketing and
publicity as well as having written and directed what will be another
triology. Something had to give. “The Phantom Menace” shows the fruit of
his hard work and how he spent his energy. Unfortunately, it also shows
what he neglected. This time, the Force wasn’t with him.