A long time ago in a galaxy far, far way, where iPods, high-speed broadband and Blu-ray DVDs were the stuff of sci-fi musing, Star Wars returned to the screen.
With stratosphere high levels of expectation, 1999's Episode I - The Phantom Menace became the first high-profile casualty of the burgeoning internet fan community (who the same year would turn The Blair Witch Project into a global phenomenon) and lost geek street cred to another sci-fi flick called The Matrix.
“George Lucas raped my childhood” entered the cultural lexicon as the atom bomb expression of disappointment, but as proof of Lucas’ business savvy fans returned multiple times to check if the film really was that bad (adding to the film’s $925m global box office take).
Now the spacedust has settled, is The Phantom Menace a failure?
Yes. George Lucas’talent for creating stories outweighs his screenwriting ability and Episode I collapses beneath interminable dialogue scenes of trade and taxation disputes, midichlorians (blood cells that carry the Force, barely mentioned again in Eps II & III…), and a stuttering plot unable to make the jump to hyperspace.
Maybe Empire and Jedi’s co-screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan could have made the Cuban Missile Crisis-like story family-friendly, but Lucas was unable to wed Anakin’s Jedi-awakening, political intrigue, and lightsaber duels into anything that re-captured the old magic.
And Jar-Jar Binks was the biggest flaw since putting an easily accessible exhaust port on the Death Star – a gallumping joke of a toy campaign so villified he was written out of the sequels despite Lucas’ protestations that the kids loved him.
An online recut largely removing Binks was met with some approval, but has long disappeared.
But, Jar-Jar is simply the most colourful target – every Phantom Menace character flatlines, with the artless dialogue and awkwardness of green screen performing wasting such talents as Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor, while Jake Lloyd lacked the spark to make him a believable future Darth (and that Portman is supposed to have eyes for the 10 year old was never going to work).
Does Episode I succeed on any level? Darth Maul makes for a fearsome (though underused) villain, the climactic lightsaber fight between him, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon briefly bottles the lightning, and Lucas expands his universe like never before.
But, the script lazily climaxes its action (Darth Maul falls for an old trick, Anakin triumphs in battle by accident), and the CGI has dated to the point that The Clone Wars movie now looks more realistic.
Maybe the film’s greatest triumph was that it proved a world with a bad Star Wars movie would still spin, made Simon Pegg a hero for legions of disgruntled fans, and became the first DVD worth buying purely for its extras.
Rob Daniel
11:30AM, Apr 01, 2009
