Review: Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace

I have many reasons to revisit the Star Wars saga, most prominent being that I haven’t seen the films is a while and with Episode 9 coming out soon I figured I’d get some quick reviews in before then. Why do it numerically, well I have seen them all so I figured I’d get the story told in order to see if that makes a difference, starting off with Phantom Menace and it’s not the best starting point, Phantom Menace has a lot of problems and some of them are excusable, most of them aren’t.

Let’s start with the plot. I’d like to say the plot was terrible but I can’t, because there was no plot, not that I could see anyway. What I got out of the film was that the planet of Naboo was under bloackade by the Trade Federation in response to them being taxed for something, I don’t know. Scared for her people Queen Amadala travels to Coruscant to plead her case and save her planet. Along the way the ship suffers a malfunction and has to land on the desert planet Tatooine where upon JedI Knight Qui-gon Jinn meets young slave Anakin Skywalker, and thus begins the tale of Darth ‘Yippee’ Vader.

I really did not like the plot to this film, it was too flimsy, too focussed on politics and boring filler to be of any interest. It wasn’t clever but it was so obviously trying to be and in the end that just made it look dumber.

The characters weren’t much better, yeah some of them were pretty cool but there were some really annoying ones as well. On the good side there was Liam Neeson as Qui-gon, a Jedi Master who goes with his gut instinct more times than most Jedi and while this does mean he’s right more times than most he can also make grave mistakes because of it. With him is his padawan Obi Wan Kenobi played by Ewan McGregor, Obi Wan doesn’t have a large role in this film but he plays well against Qui-gon, respecting his master and even sharing some of his techniques, however he is not afraid to call Qui-gon out when he thinks the master is wrong, he’s a headstrong young apprentice and will do well as a Jedi.

Supporting them is Natalie Portman as Padme Amadala, the queen of Naboo who spends most of the film in hiding. I didn’t think much of Padme at first but as the film went on and she realised that she had to play dirty in order to win, then she became a better character, joining the fight for her home was a great move on her part. Against them is Darth Maul, while not on the same level as Vader or even Boba Fett (small pathetic role that he has), in terms of a first movie villain - I know, work with me here - Maul is actually really cool, from his unique look, his near silent performance and his matrix style stunt work to his double-edged light sabre, he has all the makings of a great villain just without the proper motivations, he’s a pawn, a great pawn but there’s always someone moving the pieces.

In terms of bad characters I can name two off the top of my head. First off is Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker, now I’m gonna give wee Jake a LOT of leeway on this performance, he’s a kid, probably not acted in a lot of films and he’s going up against greats like Neeson, McGregor, even Portman had a name for herself at his point so bad acting against good acting will make the bad look worse. Also he’s given some really bad dialogue, the whole angel thing was really silly and not a good way to introduce the dark lord of the sith. I liked a couple things about his performance, namely his doe-eyed innocence which - when done right which admittedly was rare - shows how far he will fall when he becomes Vader. He’s far from the worst thing in this film but the combination of shit just made for a terrible character.

What is the worst thing in this movie, Jar Jar Cunting Binks. God in fuck was this motherfucker the worst thing Lucas has ever created, I mean the Ewoks were silly but at least they had the common fuckin decency to kill stormtropper, what does this fuck-tard do? NOTHING. He is useless, he is comic relief on the lowest fuckin level, every time he opens his mouth I just want to cunt-punt his fuckin face off and stomp on his head until it turns to gloop. Fuck this cock-faced as swipe of a so-called character.

Ahem, sorry.

The direction from Lucas is a mixed bag, he’s great at some things and terrible in others. For one the pacing in this movie is terrible, some of the worst I’ve ever seen. The film starts off with fight scene after fight scene after fight scene, it’s all too fast, too explosive, the film never gives you a chance to rest and take in the story and so for the first half-hour you’re lost and confused. When the film does finally slow down - half an hour into the film - it doesn’t so much as grind down, more slams on the brakes and sends you flying forward and we spend the next 40 minutes on Tatooine doing absolutely nothing of interest just waiting for that pretty neat Podrace scene, which I will admit is a good watch, it’s tense, acti-packed but still with enough light humour to keep things going. After we finally leave Tatooine there’s another 15 minutes of political bullshit that was just useless before we finally get to the last quarter of the film and it exactly gets rather good.

Lucas is either a genius or a mad man to leave the best parts of this film to the last half-hour because those final minutes made up for a lot of previous problems I had with this film, I was given it a 6 until then and just those last scenes jumped the score up. The Gungan battle with the droids was pretty CG heavy but still nice to watch with the electric balls and difference between Nature and Machine. The space battle had some cool moments and the Droid control ship explosion was a nice precursor to the Death Star. But of course the best part of this film and one of the best in the Saga is the Duel Of The Fates, Qui-gon and Obi Wan face off against Darth Maul, with some of Williams best work singing us through this expertly choreographed and brilliantly imagined fight, if the whole film was two hours of these three battling it out I would’ve given it a much higher score.

One thing I want to mention, I don’t hate the overuse of CGI, I do love the model work that the original trilogy did but the CG in this film allowed Lucas to build up this world he created many years earlier and make it even more expansive and impressive, maybe not as impressive as the first three films and maybe he did overdo it but I was fine with most of it.

In all honesty,The Phantom Menace is a film that should just be an average flick but it saves itself just at the end, the story is shit, the characters are a mixed bag, the pacing sucks but you just can’t deny the greatness of that last half-hour. If there ever was a case of the sum being more than the whole (or however that saying goes) it’s this film.

7/10