Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor)
A total of sixteen years passed between 1983's Return of the Jedi and 1999's Episode I - the Phantom Menace. The children and teens who grew up with Luke, Leia and Han Solo had now grown up too. Mastermind George Lucas now graciously left the door open for mega-movies like Independence Day and Titanic to fill the role of the Hollywood blockbuster. But there was always the desire to find out the origin of it all. A New Hope had been slyly titled Episode IV, and moviegoers became more and more interested in the rumoured back story after a new series of novels by Timothy Zahn came out. A new Star Wars film emerged, and the hype was surreal. For some, The Phantom Menace has become a disappointment over the years. This is not the case with me. I continue to find it exciting and inspired, regardless of Lucas's motivations behind its release.
This is the one that may have started it all, but it sure doesn't take long to get going. After a Jedi Knight and his Paduwan learner are dispatched to settle a trade dispute, the two are ambushed by a swarm of robots. Light sabers and laser blasts fly through the air barely five minutes into the film, which is a good sign of lots more action and adventure to come. Liam Neeson plays the Knight Qui-Gon Jinn and indie veteran Ewan McGregor plays a young Obi-Wan Kenobi, his apprentice. They stow away on transports to the planet of Naboo, where they must protect Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) from the greedy Trade Federation. They are aided by Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), a member of a race known as the Gungans, who reside underwater. Together, the group heads for the city planet of Coruscant, where they implore the Senate to aide the people of Naboo in their time of need.
The Phantom Menace refers to a shadowy presence known as Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid). His lackey is another Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Maul (Ray Park). Maul looks like the very Devil himself, a villain with red and black face paint and little horns on the top of his head. He is relentless in his pursuit of the good guys, and he's one of those characters that's fun to watch in every scene he's in. This is not as much the case with Nute and Rune (Silas Carson and Jerome Blake), whose narrow eyes and accented delivery may be intended as reverent nods to Asian action pictures, but come off more as defamatory. Much has been made of the Carribean-tinged Jar Jar, and admittedly his Full House comments as he steps into animal poop are distracting, but in the second half of the movie he is a lot more fun as he leads his fellow Gungans into battle with a touch of Buster Keaton-style antics.
Later in the film, there is a fantastic light saber smackdown between Darth Maul, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, but I think my favourite sequence in the movie is the pod race on the desert planet of Tattooine. With a young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) entering a high-stakes contest to save his new friends, an exciting montage develops as Hutts, Jawas, and Tusken Raiders cheer on. Ben Burtt's sound is awesome as racers zoom and vroom across the desert. It makes for rousing entertainment.
The project has been fronted by its director and writer, George Lucas, who took money from his own substantially deep pockets to finance much of the production. The result is a heavy emphasis on computer-generated special effects, but not at the expense of the reality of the look. At times, it tends to be at the expense of its actors, but thankfully not overly so. Liam Neeson is aptly solemn and introverted, Ewan McGregor plays up a tongue-and-cheek imitation of the late Sir Alec Guinness fairly well, and Jake Lloyd handles a lot of his lines with relative maturity. Natalie Portman does her best in what can kind of be construed as a dual role. Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker are back as C-3PO and R2-D2, but only in brief cameo roles.
With the recent release of Episode II - Attack of the Clones, a wave of Phantom Menace-bashing seems to be surfacing. Prime targets include the dialogue as penned by Lucas, who flies solo without so much as a co-writer onboard. But let's face it -- Darth Maul could be baking cookies and we would be captivated until the very last frame. With exotic locales and dozens of self-contained scenes, Episode I moves along swiftly. A little more than halfway through the film, the story tends to get swept away in political debates and it feels like it could venture into monotonous turf at any moment, but this is merely an interlude to allow the characters -- and the audience -- the chance to catch their breath. It's a small price to pay for the fans who had previously waited sixteen years with baited breath.
