Second Genesis: Regarding The Phantom Menace

The rumors were true.

For years on schoolyards, wood-paneled basements, and sleep neighborhood streets, my friends and I had talked about the possibility of Star Wars movies depicting the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the birth of Darth Vader. Obi-Wan and Anakin's epic duel by a volcano. The galaxy-spanning Clone Wars. The demise of the Old Republic. All these things that were alluded to briefly in the movies had become mythologized since the release of Return of the Jedi from little more than back-and-forth what-ifs. After all, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi were labeled Episodes IV, V, and VI. Surely we'd get to see Episodes I, II, and III.

After supervising the post-production on Jurassic Park while his friend Steven Spielberg was busy filming Schindler's List, George Lucas was convinced VFX had caught up to his planned vision for a prequel trilogy. The largely positive reaction to the Special Edition versions of the original trilogy convinced him that an audience was still out there. So he sat down and worked on the story before the story we all knew.

And the rest is critically maligned history.

People complain that The Phantom Menace focuses too much time on a trade dispute and stagnated galactic politics like that's what ultimately kills this movie. Nah, man. What kills this movie is that nobody except Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor here can act. What kills this movie is that most of the film's CGI environments and characters feel so painfully artificial because they are. What kills this movie are the fact that Gungans and the Trade Federation officials are literal racist caricatures. A movie about trade disputes and galactic politics properly executed actually sounds a lot more intriguing compared to what we got. Give me that version of Syriana in a galaxy far, far away.

And replace this guy with George Clooney.

Everyone's go-to supporting arguments for Episode I is that the lightsaber fights are leaps and bounds better than the original trilogy and, yes, the hyperkinetic choreography is impressive in its own right and was what thrilled audiences nearly twenty years ago. But, like the prequels as a whole, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of emotion in those fights. Bruce Lee would say good fighters need emotional content behind each of their moves and we don't get a whole hell of a lot here. The first duel between Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul on the sandy desert of Tatooine is left out of the discussion a lot: It's the most emotional fight barring Obi-Wan's final showdown with Maul on Naboo and should raise the protagonists' concerns to DEFCON 1; the returned Sith are the titular Phantom Menace. But, no, they're just going to try to get back to Coruscant get denied help and blessing in training Anakin and wind up back in Naboo anyway.

Some defenders of The Phantom Menace also cite the podracer sequence that has the future Darth Vader win his freedom in a high-speed race that was George Lucas' riff on Ben-Hur as an entertaining moment; so popular it spun off into its own arcade racing game that was eventually ported to the Nintendo 64. My big problem with it is that runs a bit too long. The speeder bike sequence runs tight; like the rest of the movie, the podrace is overly indulgent.

Because this is Star Wars this guy who only appears briefly and silently gets a whole extensive backstory in the apocrypha.

So what is the damn thing about, thematically? The Phantom Menace is about ignoring the real threat, letting the uncomfortable truths simmer under the surface until they come to a full boil. The Jedi, with noble hubris, write off the return of the Sith even after one of their own lays dead at their feet. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan ignore the dangerous possibility of training Anakin Skywalker because they are too enamored with his potential. Darth Sidious is playing a long game and he has the patience and determination to see his nefarious scheme pay off.

Qui-Gon, we hardly knew you.

While I still contend The Phantom Menace is the weakest of the live action Star Wars films, what it did do was open the franchise to an entirely new franchise so I can't completely discount it for that. I've met people that actually like Jar Jar Binks quite a bit because they were the perfect age first watching this movie as I was when I first saw Return of the Jedi about five years previous. The prequels overall hue closer to the Saturday matinee serials that Lucas grew up watching and was inspired by when first developing Star Wars...the other side of that it makes those movies as lightweight; the prequels are all empty calories for the most part.

It doesn't help when the climactic battle is just different pixels fighting each other.

My relationship with The Phantom Menace isn't complicated: I think it sucks. While it does expand the world and brings in a whole new generation of fans it also signals a whole period of weak Star Wars material. And I'm not even halfway done.