The Phantom Menace

I had planned to blog last week about the above 10 year old film, but stopped as I thought "Nah, no-one would want to read that". Since then Andrew Collins has blogged about it, Richard Herring has tweeted about it, and it has been on national television at primetime. I did not watch it. After all that I decided to dust down the draft and post it anyway. You are free not to read it should you see fit.


It is 10 years since the release of Star Wars : The Phantom Menace. I wanted to write about this because, even after 10 years, it still irritates me for numerous reasons.


The original Star Wars films (the good trilogy) were part of my childhood, as I’m sure they were for many people. Because of this when the new films were announced in ‘95/’96 I was very excited.


Then Episode 1 was released. As soon as the opening titles appeared it was clear that something was wrong. Trade agreements and blockades didn’t sound very exciting, but maybe it would be ok.


No. It would not be ok.


What we got was essentially the plot from an episode of the A-Team (Helpless ordinary folks being bullied by an aggressor, the team come in and help fight them off, everyone lives happily ever after), with a tacked on story about how they found Anakin Skywalker. Or a story about how they found Anakin with an A-team episode tacked on, I can’t decide which plot arc is worse.


But there were worse things than the overall plot. In no particular order:



1. Jar Jar Binks. The much maligned possible racial stereotype CGI idiot. Clearly only there for comedy effect (but without any comedy) and to show off Industrial Light & Magics CGI skills, there was nothing redeeming about him. He did get his own usenet group though, alt.fan.starwars.jar-jar-binks.die.die.die.

2. The pod race. Added nothing to the story, and appeared to be there so they could again show off their CGI skills, have a chase scene (In the absence of proper space battles) and show how smart Anakin was.

3. The spaceships. The ships in the original trilogy were chunky, functional looking machines. A style that has been immitated many times since then (Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Wing Commander, etc) as they look like they fit a purpose. However now, some 50 years or so earlier, we have ships like the sleek vessels of the Naboo and Gungans, which looked completely different. Why years later would the ships look so low tech in comparison?

4. C3PO & R2D2. Why are they even there? There are so many things wrong with this it makes my head want to explode. Anakin’s mother needs help around the house, so he builds her a protocol droid who can speak several billion languages and can’t walk properly or straighten his arms? I’d be grateful and all, but would ask if maybe he could make a cleaner droid or a child minder droid first. And R2D2 belongs to Obi-Wan? Ok that maybe explains why he knows where to go on Tatooine in Episode 4, but it’s still a bit of an awkward way to get a favourite character into the film. It gives the impression Lucas wasn’t confident enough in the new characters he had created (with good reason it turns out). The inclusion of these droids is nothing short of insulting to the intelligence of the viewer.

5. The Imperial Senate. Just how long is spent watching bureaucrats debating trade agreements and sanctions? It saps the life out of the movie and the viewer.

6. Immaculate conception. Turns out that Anakin was an immaculate conception. Seriously? Yes, seriously.



I could go on, but I’d really rather not for fear of injuring myself in a fit of rage. One plus from The Phantom Menace was that it was so bad I quite enjoyed Attack of the Clones by comparison (yes I continued to watch the movies) even though it is completely mediocre. I cannot recall anything about Revenge of the Sith except the hastily revealed Darth Vader at the end, whose low tech costume again stood out like a sore thumb against the sleek look of the rest of the film.


However I will say Ewan McGregor was excellent as Obi-Wan, and possibly played Alec Guinness better than Alec Guinness could have done.



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