This is where things get complicated. I thought as well as
exploring the themes and characters of the Star Wars films and especially
recognising why they are great. But this involves looking at every aspect of
this series, not pretending that something doesn’t exist. So without further
ado, here is a review of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
In reality, it’s hard to imagine any film living up to the
hype of the Phantom Menace. There’s so much excitement surrounding the idea of
another Star wars film today but back at that point it was twice as high as it
is this time. The reason for it being half as much today, mainly because of the
Phantom Menace. Fans are wiser and are more fearful of a bad Star Wars film and
what it can do to a person, I’ve seen people be sceptical about every film they
are ever going to see because the tension and apprehension for this film
followed by what had to be a soul destroying let down, especially if you camped
out for as much as a month to see it.
The Phantom Menace just isn’t the same as the first three
movies. The last article of this series focussed on Lucas’ expertise use of
special effects but in this one he just green screened everything, sometimes
building sets specifically to match the eye-height of the actor, where the
unfinished scenery wasn’t visible. A move like that naturally limits your
flexibility with your own story, and many of the best moments of the original
trilogy came from improvising on the day due to difficulties on reality. Worse
still the big budget CGI simply doesn’t hold up as well, already the Phantom
Menace looks quite dated as opposed to the timeless appeal of the original.
As well as this these green screen shots don’t really
inspire good acting. There was a reason to get excited for the Phantom Menace
as from a distance it appeared to have the perfect cast, accomplished actors
who were clearly not chosen merely as a big name, or so we thought. There was
Lim Neeson, Oscar nominee (Schindler’s List), Ewan McGregor, rising young star
on the British indie scene (Trainspotting), Natalie Portman, another rising
star who had proven to handle herself among high profile stars (Heat). This is
a good cast, but when you’re experimenting so drastically with technology that
has yet to be proven or shown to be successful, and does not result in great
acting performances then you have a serious problem on your hands. Today we
emphasise the importance of practical effects over CGI because of Phantom
Menace, because it acts as proof of what happens when you green-screen
everything.
There’s also a definitive lack of a main protagonist. Is it
Obi-Wan, it should be as he’s the character we already have a loose connection
with and will act as the main link between this trilogy and the next. Actually
it would make more sense for Obi-Wan to be the main character as you have one
trilogy focussing on Anakin’s mentor, another on his son and then with Anakin
himself acting as an overarching theme for the whole series. But instead the
main protagonist is Qui-Gon, which makes no sense as he has no major
development, he wants Anakin to be trained, then he dies. That’s it, he never
changes his opinion nor does he go on any development of any kind.
Prequels always have a difficult time building suspense and
making you fear as you already know roughly what characters are going to make
it to the end. Even when you’re caught up in the action you actually aren’t
because the Jedi are raised to superhero abilities against lifeless battle
droids. Though the Stormtroopers missed a lot they were still menacing. Also,
even if you knew a character was going to die if there’s a genuine emotional attachment
you can still feel pain when they bite the dust.
Don’t even get me started on how underdeveloped a young
Anakin Skywalker is, not helped by the bad acting. There’s a humourless and
witless Yoda surrounded by a group of what appear to be elitist Jedi and even
more boring senate meetings. Worse still are the needless details that no one
asked for like Medi… medi… I can’t even say it.
Look not everything about this film is bad, in fact it’s
probably about 60/40 on the scale of bad and good. There’s the cool duel with
Darth Maul and to be honest cool is the only way you can describe it, not
emotional or action packed or thrilling, just cool. There’s that amazing John
Williams score, the pod race is decent (though recently it was pointed out to
me that half the shots are from exactly the same viewpoint, on the right hand
side going from left to right. But I guess it still looks decent but now that I
know it it’s hard to ignore it). It is not bad in the same way that Batman and
Robin is bad or Battlefield Earth is bad. But it is undoubtedly disappointing.
Result: 4/10
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