I went and saw the Phantom Menace on it's premiere day, today here in Melbourne, Australia. This film suffers terribly from more real flaws than I can name. Let me count the ways...
The main and over all thing plaguing the Phantom Menace is that its storyline is meandering, obscure, and unfocussed. It drifts from one largely uninspired sequence to the next, punctuated here and there by only a few real action sequences. If you were going to cut out everything that was boring in it, my guess is it'd only run for about 30-50 minutes at the most, and would be completely disjointed.
The second thing, and something that numerous other critics have picked up on, is of course Jar Jar Binks. Binks is intended to provide comic relief to a film that really doesn't need it. The reason why this film doesn't need comic relief is because there's really nothing in it to relieve us FROM. I personally didn't find Binks' dialogue as bothersome as many, but tht was because of two reasons related to me personally. The first thing is that linguistic comprehension is a strong point of mine, and the second thing is that I adopted the philosophy that R2D2 was always impossible to understand, too. However, those two things aren't going to be true of most people, and I'm guessing they're going to find Jar Jar damn annoying. Binks is occasionally very vaguely amusing, but for the most part he just doesn't really need to be there at all. His bungling through the battle between the droids and the Gungans in particular is stupid and contrived.
Another major nitpick would be the complete (and I do mean complete) lack of character development. Neeson and McGregor are our two lead roles as Qui-Gon Jinn and a young Ben Kenobi, respectively. Their roles basically consist of fairly boring dialogue, with the odd deflection of laser blasts with light sabers, and knocking over life-sized toy robots with the Force. Neeson plods along adequately enough, not really doing anything awe-inspiring, but managing to be sufficiently likable. McGregor unfortunately doesn't really get a big enough role for us to like him or hate him, but for what little he does say, he's reasonable.
The two kids of the film, Natalie Portman and Jake Lloyd, are also passable. Natalie Portman does pretty well as Amidala, giving her lines with suitably regal/authoritarian tones. Jake Lloyd is also ok for what he does, and is believable as the young Darth Vader both in the pod racing sequence and the droid-controller destroying sequence at the end of the film. As an afterthought, Anakin's mother Shmi is a royal pain in the neck for my money.
And the bad guys? Bor-ring. Darth Maul didn't scare me any, but maybe that's just cos I was brought up on reading about parapsychology and UFOs. Sidious isn't as much of a mumbling pain as some reviewers have made him out to be, but he doesn't really say anything interesting, it's true. Palpatine is sorta, well, flat. A bit cowardly, a bit power hungry, and a bit manipulative, but none of these traits are really dominant over the others.
To summarise with the characters...These are all good actors, and could have had the potential to be really great characters. Unfortunately though, they just weren't given enough to do. Liam Neeson is too quiet and conservative, McGregor isn't given enough of a role by half, and Darth Maul was played by a guy who might have been a great acrobat, but didn't come across as a real actor. These characters are all flat. Two dimensional, not fleshed out, underdeveloped.
As the rest of the movie goes, yes, the computer generated stuff is the main selling point. The scenery is gorgeous, including the Gungan sea-city, the forest, Amidala's palace, and Coruscant in particular which is very snazzy. The creatures are very reminiscent of Jim Henson's muppets...The only real difference is that they're computer drawn now rather than being marionets, etc. My one and only major gripe about the computer generated stuff is those ridiculous battle droids. They look like they're made out of plastic, and sound exactly like it when they hit the ground, too. The initial scene of the ground battle sequence between the Gungans and the droids is impressive though, and gives an appropriate feeling of massive scale.
True fans(tm) will find a large number of what you could at least call
attempts to link to the first three films here, with a large number of
references to characters in the first three films.. We find out that C3P0
was a childhood project of Anakin's, and he has a small part on Tatooine.
R2D2 also keeps showing up at irregular intervals right throughout the
movie, and Jabba the Hut appears very briefly at the beginning of the pod
race, as well as the Sand People who we saw in the first film. Yoda is
also back, in all his Eastern/New Age glory, speaking in his
characteristic start-in-the-middle manner. My favourite cameo bit was
where 3PO makes the comment "Jar Jar Binks is a very strange creature." I
found myself wishing at that point that Mark Hamill would show up in the
white he wore in the first film, and say to Anakin and crew,
"Who the hell are you people?"
This of course leads us to the
all-important question. Does this film have "the feeling(tm)"? Is it a
bona-fide Star Wars experience? It is possible in certain parts early on
in the film, to feel as though this IS something remotely related to the
earlier three films, if you're willing to invest some emotional effort.
This is something that's definitely a case of not finding it unless you
look for it, though.
Surely another requirement of the gen-u-ine Star Wars experience is a
sufficient amount of Yoda pontificating about the Force, and we certainly
get that here, helped along with Neeson talking about mitichloreans and
Jackson mentioning something about "the will of the Force."
The latter is an inconsistency. Is the Force an impersonal energy field
that we all generate, as told by Guiness, or is it an actual being like
God, with a will of it's own, etc? Make up your mind, George!
The other major selling point is the action sequences, a few of which actually are pretty good. The pod race in particular is quite spectacular, suitably fast paced and punctuated with the odd subtle bit of alien humour. The Sand People taking pot shots at the pods is funny, as are some of the antics of the racers themselves. My only real grizzle with this particular sequence is that it's made a bit too contemporary by the cheesy two-headed commentator. Apart from that tho, it's great.
Then of course there is the obligatory end game light
saber battle with the man who looks like a particularly fanatical
supporter of the Essendon Football Club, Darth Maul. (Australian joke there)
We finally actually get to see Neeson come out of his shell here. He
proves that he can swing a light saber as well as the next Jedi, and
McGregor is convincing enough in that area as well. Ray Park as Maul
manages to make up for his lack of pure psychological scare also with a
good fight here, and the two-ended light saber is rather cool, too. It's
not pulse pounding, but it will get you to sit up in your seat a bit and
take notice. The end movie droid-controller battle however is actually
pretty boring and contrived, with Anakin taking off from the planet,
flying up to the droid controller, and blowing the thing into its
component atoms, all quite by accident.
In a nutshell:-
This movie *barely* scrapes in as an acceptable first chapter to the
soon-to-be-six-part Star Wars saga. The argument offered by fans that we
can give it the benefit of the doubt cos it's the first part of a trilogy
doesn't wash, either. Episode 4: A New Hope was also the first part of
that trilogy, and it was an infinitely superior film to this one. There
really is no excuse for this film to be as lukewarm as it is.
It's essentially a special effects feast, people. If you want computer
generated eye candy, then go and see this, but if you want decent acting,
well rounded characters, and a coherent story, you won't find those things
here. My advice on getting your Star Wars kicks would be to go and get the
original trilogy from the local video shop, or check out one of the
extremely good Star Wars PC games that have sprung up in recent years. If
you want to see a really good contemporary movie also, I'd recommend The
Matrix.
On a scale of 1 to 10, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace gets 4.5.
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