The SmarK DVD Rant for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Episode I was an interesting experience for me, as the world hadn’t seen a Star Wars movie for 15 years and by god I was going to see it opening night or die trying. To give you an idea of the kind of particular lunacy that posses us sci-fi geeks sometimes, in Grade 11 I skipped the latter part of the day and waited in line for six hour to see Star Trek VI. Well, at least it wasn’t V. This record would prove to hold for a shocking EIGHT years, despite First Contact and several Batman movies in the interim. It looked to stand untouched as my geekiest achievement, besides getting a Star Trek book signed by Marina Sirtis at a convention in 1993 and writing about pro wrestling for a living.
Until Episode I, that is.
After fastidiously avoiding spoilers for months and hardly even daring to watch the TRAILER, I made sure that I and ex-roommate Jae had our tickets for the prestigious midnight showing at the biggest theater in the city — the newly built Silver City complex in West Edmonton Mall. Less of a theater than a monument to multiplexed excess in a mall so big that the rest of the city is merely an annex to it, it boasted a Burger King in the concession stand and a separate video arcade. Heady stuff for us poor backwoods Canadians, as you can imagine. Now, apparently sensing the nature of the animal that was filling the theater with the stench of Darth Maul facepaint and retainers, the theater elected to open its doors at 2:00 to allow people to grab seats early and wait for the 12:00 start time. That’s right, TEN HOURS. In a theater. To show you the kind of downtime we’re talking, after staking out my seat and fighting off the other geeks for it (not a hard task, to be sure — just distract a few by yelling out “Janeway could kick Kirk’s ass!” and stand out of the way of the brawl) I was left with the crushing revelation that I had a shitload of time to waste now.
So I did what any self-respecting person would — after touring the mall and looking through every store, I headed to the cheap theater at the other end of the mall and saw another movie while waiting for Star Wars. Due to time and scheduling considerations, that movie happened to be, er, Mod Squad. I’m still not fully healed.
So back at the theater, with four hours to go, and the dorks are getting restless. A guy dressed as Darth Maul was engaged in a mock swordfight with a girl dressed as Qui Gonn Jinn, perhaps in some sort of nerd mating ritual, I dunno. I always tried to avoid dating within my race like that. The phallic overtones were pretty obvious, of course. The theater staff tried to head off the rampant role-playing game organizing and play-acting by doing a singalong to the tune of “Frere Jacques” (with Star Wars characters inserted ham-handedly), but when a bit is so lame that the guys playing Magic: The Gathering on the stage stop to laugh at YOU, it’s not working.
Finally, showtime, as the staff urged people not to make excessive noise, but were promptly shouted down by the cheers for the LucasFilm logo and THX demo. Lucas is the Hulk Hogan of the geek world — people malign him behind his back, but the pop when the logo hits is equivalent to “Real American” playing in an arena every time Hogan has something to shill.
As for the movie, initially I wasn’t certain if I liked it or not. Some things were cool, but after waves of endless bitching from Star Wars fans, it was clearly the red-headed stepchild of the franchise. Until Episode II came out, THEN they had something to bitch about.
Not only that, but it took FOREVER to come out on DVD. It’s funny to think of any movie these days being spurned in favor of VHS, but in 2000 all you get was that format as far as Lucas was concerned. When I bought the tape is was a pretty big deal, standing as the sole exception to my “No VHS” rule after switching formats in 1999. So the tape didn’t get as much as a workout as I normally would have given it, instead standing on my shelf as a collector’s item while I set about waiting for the inevitable DVD.
Fast forward to today, as Episode III actually looks pretty cool. And then, an unlikely catalyst sparked my interest in the movies again, as Lego Star Wars took over my Xbox thanks to a mixture of easy controls and addictive gameplay. However, while playing through the story mode and reenacting Ep I, I began to wonder if maybe time hasn’t been kinder to the maligned Phantom Menace than we realized?
And you know what? I kind of liked it after all.
The Film
For those living in a closet since the 80s, the original Star Wars trilogy was subtitled “Episode IV / V / VI”, as George Lucas insisted that he actually wrote the whole thing as a much bigger trilogy and just decided to do the middle portion instead. So whereas the middle three were the story of Luke Skywalker striving to free the galaxy from the tyranny of the Galactic Empire and discovering that his father was a REALLY bad person, the first three movies intend to show why Darth Vader became such a dickhead in the first place. The other intention seems to be showing how the Empire came to power, but sadly the politics of that are far less interesting than a precocious kid becoming a mass murdering tyrant.
The movie begins with Jedi Knight Qui-Gonn Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, attempting a diplomatic solution to a blockade of the planet Naboo, and quickly realizing that the whole thing was just a trap to get rid of them. After some fairly dull discussions of the politics behind that blockade, our heroes head down to the planet to see what’s up at the palace, and meet the single biggest flaw with the movie: Jar Jar Binks, Lucas’s attempt to create an all-digital character and offend Jamaicans, I can only guess. After a spectacular chase through the core of the planet to get past an army of droids and reach the Queen, the movie moves into it’s central portion, with their escape vessel crashing on Tattooine, the planet that would be so pivotal later (earlier?) in the series. While there, we meet young Anakin Skywalker, who is about 10 years old and working as a slave for a racially-offensive Arab stereotype alien, and we are introduced to his future romance with Queen Amidala via some of the most cringe-inducing dialogue ever to be heard in a Star Wars movie (“Are you an angel?”) delivered in a tone that is stilted and wooden, but oddly better than the delivery of Hayden Christiansen in the second movie.
As our heroes are stuck on the planet and need money to escape, this contrivance sets up the central action piece of the movie, with Anakin having to race in a dangerous “pod race” and win to get them off the planet (and free him from slavery, thanks to some shrewd side-betting by Qui-Gonn). The pod race itself is visually amazing, featuring some of the best CGI work ever seen, and still feels exciting and visceral even today, despite looking like a videogame. Which of course followed. However, Qui-Gonn’s mentoring of Anakin produces the biggest flaw with the movie, as he tests the boy for “midichlorians” and then the movie grinds to a halt as he explains to the kid (and the confused audience) that these are little life forms that are in everyone, but exist in higher concentrations in Jedi, thus giving them their powers and connections with the Force. He even surmises later that they conceived Anakin in a form of immaculate conception. Not TOO subtle, no? However, this hackneyed and ridiculous explanation serves the purpose of killing everything that was wondrous and spiritual about the original movies, as being a Jedi has now been reduced from a state of mind to “good genetics”. It’s a shameful and inexcusable bit of retroactive continuity on Lucas’s part, and it really kills some of the magic of the original trilogy.
Things pick up again storywise from there, as the not-so-mysterious Darth Sidious, who is clearly heroic Senator Palpatine to everyone who has ever watched a movie in their life before, dispatches uber-evil Darth Maul to take care of the Jedi. Darth Maul proved to be another miscalculation on Lucas’s part, as the actual portions of the movie dealing with the Sith Lord are pretty short, but the advertising campaign damn near centered on the guy and his visually-striking devil visage and cool moves. Thus, people expecting the Darth Maul movie in the same way that Empire Strikes Back was the Darth Vader movie were sorely disappointed. After a stop in the galactic senate or parliament or whatever confusing body of government runs things, Amidala (clearly in over her head at that point, a nice bit of acting by Natalie Portman) decides to just give up control to Palpatine and head back to Naboo to try to save things there. This would prove to be the first time that Palpatine has everyone wrapped around his finger, and not the last. I can definitely appreciate the build of the story with a few years of perspective, if nothing else.
When they arrive on Naboo, the story diverges into four simultaneous threads: Obi-Wan and Qui-Gonn fighting Darth Maul, Jar Jar’s people fighting a war with the droid army, Amidala and her generals breaking into the palace to capture their conquerors, and Anakin hiding out in a spaceship that ends up piloting itself into space and right into a big-ass battle. Two of the threads converge as Anakin accidentally blows up the control ship for the droids (overacting the whole way), thus allowing the Gungins on the surface to clean up on the motionless droids. This would actually set up the development of the Stormtroopers in the second movie, showing that robots just ain’t dependable in a pinch. I liked that too. The Amidala raid on the palace is the weakest of the bunch, but the battle of the Jedi is one of the great light-saber fights in the series, with inventive choreography from Ray Park (Darth Maul), and as usually happens, the elder Jedi bites it and Obi-Wan has to channel his anger and kick ass for the cause alone.
Things wrap up with Obi-Wan pledging to train young Anakin despite the whiny and pretentious protests of Yoda and the Jedi Council, as they all but write off the boy’s future because he might become evil later on in life. No wonder Anakin is so pissed at them later on — they treat him like a punk and he didn’t even DO anything yet! The forced happy ending leaves kind of a sour taste too, but I guess he had to send the kiddies home happy before the real downers of the second and third movies.
To be honest, I found the story a lot more engaging years later, and less dull/pretentious/god-awful than most of the Star Wars fanbase would have people believe. Maybe it was the huge letdown of Episode II that made me appreciate this one a lot more, but despite the simplistic plot and convoluted politics, things flowed well enough to allow the amazing special effects to carry things where story couldn’t, and I’d actually place this one ABOVE Return of the Jedi. Yes, I said it.
Of course, the movie is horribly flawed in other ways, though. In addition to the midichlorian debacle, “Clerks the Animated Series” has a brilliant courtroom interrogation of George Lucas, where all the logic gaps of the movie are mercilessly laid bare. In fact, the movie pretty definitely proves that Lucas was making it all up as he went along. Plus the acting is pretty bad, especially from young Jake Lloyd but even moreso from Natalie Portman. Liam Neeson holds his own as the elder Qui-Gonn, but we never really get a chance to know him or care about him, as the movie’s focus is clearly on establishing the relationships between Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Amidala. And most glaringly, there’s no clear villain to root against, which I guess fits into the Phantom Menace motif. Still, I don’t go to movies to feel frustrated about the inaction of the galactic senate, if you know what I mean.
So overall I think this one gets a (not totally undeserved) bad rap, but it’s mostly Lucas’s fault anyway. Still, it’s a better movie than the cutesy and unnecessary Return of the Jedi and sets up stuff for the later movies in the trilogy very well, which is where some of the disappointment came from in the first place.
The Video
LucasFilm decided to go with a standard film transfer instead of a full digital transfer in order to maintain the same “feel” for all the movies in preparation for the release of the original trilogy, so this isn’t necessarily as breathtaking a transfer as you might expect. It’s still one of the best I’ve seen, with virtually no compression problems or color issues, but it still feels like it could have been Pixar-level amazing if they had done a direct digital dump. Plus some of the edges are artificially enhanced, resulting in a distracting halo effect every time someone fires up a light saber. Still, other than those quibbles, it still holds up well even 4 years later.
The Audio
Dolby Digital 5.1 EX, and boy is this one aggressive mofo. Ships are zooming into the surrounds all the time and there’s all sorts of ambient positional audio coming at you constantly, really immersing you into the world of Star Wars. Absolutely top notch.
The Extras
To be honest I didn’t feel like watching 3 hours of extras again, so I’ll note that the commentary with Lucas and his cronies is awesome, one of my favorites in fact. From there, you get another disc of stuff, including (via Amazon.com…)
Exclusive deleted-scenes documentary features seven new sequences completed just for this DVD release: Complete Podrace Grid Sequence, Extended Podrace Lap Two, The Waterfall Sequence, The Air Taxi Sequence, Dawn Before the Race, Anakin’s Scuffle with Greedo, Farewell to Jira
“The Beginning: Making Episode I,” an all-new hour-long documentary film culled from over 600 hours of footage, including an insider’s look at Lucasfilm and ILM during the production
Multi-angle storyboard to animatic to film segment featuring the Submarine and Podrace Lap 1 sequences
Five featurettes explore the storyline, design, costumes, visual effects, and fight sequences
Award-winning twelve-part Web documentary series that chronicles the production
“Duel of the Fates” music video featuring John Williams
Never-before-seen production photo gallery with special caption feature
Theatrical posters and print campaign from around the world
Theatrical teaser and launch trailers, and seven TV spots
“Star Wars: Starfighter – The Making of a Game” featurette from LucasArts
DVD-ROM weblink to exclusive Star Wars content
The documentary is amazing stuff, putting you as a fly on the wall of the making of the movie and really showing how taxing making a movie like this can be. The deleted scenes show a bit better why Anakin became such an angry young man later on, because it wasn’t really clear from the movie. Basically, everything you could want about the movie is here.
The Ratings
The Film: ****
The Video: *****
The Audio: *****
The Extras: *****
