Dissenting
Opinion:
Not Everyone Thinks "The Phantom
Menace" Lived Up To Its Potential
Commentary by Loren
Phillips
5/24/99
Nineteen years.
I waited nineteen years to see "Episode I." No, I'm not making a
mistake in my math. I've been waiting for this movie since 1980, when "The
Empire Strikes Back" was released. Yes, "Return of the Jedi" came out
in 1983, but it was such a disappointment for me that I don't even count it. I
wanted so much to see this new film. You see, unlike most Star Wars fans, I've not
had much else to satisfy my craving, because I'm a "movie purist" - I choose to
stay within the universe of the films. With a couple of exceptions, I've not read
any of the books. I don't read the comics. I have no idea what happened in the
Star Wars universe outside of the original trilogy. "Episode I" was going
to make my 22 years of Star Wars fandom worth waiting to have Lucas himself continue the
story for me.
I even managed to remain as spoiler-free as possible before sitting down in the
theater. As you can imagine, that was no easy task, especially running a Star Wars
website. I had to miss all of the television specials, plug my ears while my husband
watched shows, buy magazines and never open them, and stay out of message boards outside
of Echo Station. I let myself watch the trailers ... that was it. I figured it
was okay, because Lucas wouldn't spoil the movie for me with a trailer, especially
considering all of the secrecy around the plot he'd been trying to maintain. I
wanted to go into the film and recreate the suspense and amazement I'd experienced during
"A New Hope" and "Empire."
When John Williams' "Main Title" theme began, and that yellow "Star
Wars" logo appeared on the screen, I got teary. I looked over at my
eight-year-old son sitting next to me and thought, "now I can share with him what I
felt so many years ago ... now he'll grow up and remember the day he saw that yellow text
scroll across the screen for the first time." I looked at my husband and
thought, "if it weren't for these movies, I would never have found my husband"
in a Star Wars forum. It was emotional for me because it brought back so many
important moments in my life.
I was ready to be floored with utter amazement.
It didn't happen.
In the beginning, I was just confused. I couldn't follow what was happening.
There was much political turmoil, but I had trouble truly grasping the beginning of the
story. Why was there a blockade of Naboo? What was the significance of this
planet? Why were these people victims? Why can't I understand what these
characters are saying? As the viewer, I knew I was supposed to feel sympathy for this
queen and her planet, I just needed a reason behind it.
It became a bit of a theme throughout the movie. I never felt much of a connection
for any of the characters in the film, outside of Anakin. Unlike most people I've
read, I think little Jake did a great job in his acting. Having a son his age may
have made me feel closer to his character, and when he had to say goodbye to his mother,
it was the one instance I felt emotion during the movie. I look forward to this
character developing ... he is intriguing.
The other characters were much more difficult for me. I didn't mind the acting as
much as I'd expected (I suppose because I'd been subjected to "Return Of The
Jedi"; not much could be as bad in my mind), but the characters were so
underdeveloped that by the time Qui-Gon died, I was stunned that I felt nothing. This
should have been a heart-wrenching moment in the film, but because I never really knew who
this person was, I had no emotional attachment to him.
Speaking of the death scene ...
It should have been a surprise, plain and simple. I shouldn't have known it was
coming from Obi-Wan doing a Luke impersonation, screaming "NO" in the trailer.
I shouldn't have seen that death coming four minutes earlier in the scene, as soon
as Obi-Wan was separated from him. What made it worse was Qui-Gon's kneeling, as if
in prayer or meditation. Sure, he may have been "drawing strength," but we
all knew what was ahead. Then the battle ensuing with Obi-Wan unable to help
(explain what purpose those "energy walls" had other than to keep them
separated) ... they should have just written "death scene" on the bottom of the
screen. It would have been less obvious. If the stabbing had been an utter
surprise, I would have at least felt shock, but with that emotion taken from me, I was
left with nothing.
Obi-Wan obviously cared about this man, but again, I was left wondering why. When
Ben Kenobi is killed in front of Luke, we feel his pain as he yells "NO!"
Ben is the only person Luke has left to hold on to, after the death of his family.
He has latched on to this man as a father figure, because he actually knew Luke's
father. We knew what this boy was feeling inside. Qui-Gon's death, however, is
different. His relationship with Obi-Wan is a mystery, and therefore, we cannot know
what he is feeling. As a viewer, I could not feel the sympathy I should have.
Many people have said they felt Liam Neeson's acting was "wooden," however as I
watched his mannerisms and speech pattern, I very much saw shades of the older Ben Kenobi
in "A New Hope." I could hear Alec Guinness in Neeson's acting, and tend
to feel he was going for the style of this more experienced Jedi with which we are
familiar. I also am quite aware of how extremely difficult it must have been to act
well with a character that is nothing but a blue screen. His numerous scenes with
Jar Jar and Watto must have been unbelievably difficult.
Ewan McGregor did manage to convince me that he was young and inexperienced, but I would
have liked to see him freed a bit from the stale lines he was given in the script. His few
moments of humor fit him well, and this character was again very underdeveloped. One
of the best scenes I remember from the film is when Obi-Wan is about to confront Darth
Maul after the death of Qui-Gon. As he waits for the "energy wall" to
open, he bounces like a prizefighter, as if his anger is flowing through his body, and all
he wants is revenge. This, to me, was one of the few moments where I felt an actor
was permitted to "humanize" a role, and I feel this was most likely the addition
of the actor himself, rather than a scripted move.
On the whole, I enjoyed Amidala/Padme for the simple fact that a female was finally
presented in a true role of leadership and strength. Unlike Leia, she seemed more
fitting to command, perhaps because Natalie Portman more effectively achieved an air of
authority, despite her younger age. She also showed more flexibility of emotion, in
her dealings with Anakin and the senator, and as an actress I think she handled it
well. They never mention her age in the film, and I thought she was around seventeen,
but I'm told that she was younger.
Queen Amidala was fairly intriguing, but I was continually distracted at the thought that
this young child was an elected official. A fourteen-year-old girl, though obviously
trained in the skills of diplomacy, was elected? How did this come to be? How
was she raised? Throughout the film I kept drifting off in my mind, wondering what
it was about this girl that would make her so special that an entire planet would elect
her ruler over numerous qualified adults. I honestly kept expecting her to be shown
as force-sensitive, because in the world of "Star Wars" it is these type of
people who seem to always be the accomplished individuals. I was certain it would be
her utilization of The Force which resulted in her unusual political position. This
never came to be, of course, and this disappointed me, because no alternate reason was
provided.
I somehow feel she could NOT have been proven to be force-sensitive because then she could
not have trusted Palpatine so blindly. The end result was a great deal of puzzlement,
and the sense that the only reason this young girl was used in the role was for the simple
marketability of the actress. An older, wiser, queen would have been a much more
appropriate character, but certainly wouldn't have resulted in the number of titillated
male fans I have seen swooning over this girl. I can understand the marketing,
but it would have been so much easier to have made her a ruler by birth, than to leave us
questioning her election.
I'm not even going to get into Jar Jar. I could write an entire article on how much
this character detracted from every scene for me. I'll leave it at the fact that my
son laughed at him, and dismiss him to "The Ewok Factor" which I see will be in
every Star Wars film from now on. Watto was perfect, had a proportionate amount of
screen time, and could have easily fulfilled the comedic needs of the movie.
The bad guys just really weren't bad enough for me. The Trade Federation's blockade
leaders were portrayed as bumbling idiots, which was a great disappointment. Their
Japanese accents made it nearly impossible to understand what they were saying. It
seemed an unnecessary use of known culture, especially considering the Japanese influences
portrayed with Queen Amidala. Why such similarity with such vastly different alien
races? Yet again, it seems Our Heroes can only escape the clutches of infinite
ineptitude, rather than worthy adversaries.
Yes, all of this was the puppetry of the evil Darth Sidious. We couldn't escape the
neon sign screaming "This is the bad guy everyone," right down to the
"Don't I look like the emperor?" blue hologram and robes. I honestly had
to see the movie a second time before I knew who this was. I couldn't understand the
pronunciation of the name by the Neimoidians. And readers of this may be shocked to know that even
I, who have been a Star Wars fan since 1977, did not make a connection during my first
screening that Darth Sidious and Palpatine were most likely the same person.
I knew they looked alike, but I think I was so distracted by trying to figure out other
parts of the plot, that I was missing entire aspects of it. The voice was purposely
changed, but the face was the same, and obvious if you knew what you were looking for.
We're pretty much instructed by the screenplay that we're supposed to feel sympathy for
the people of Naboo, who we never see. The Queen talks a great deal about
the suffering of her people, but when not one display of "suffering" of any kind
is shown, it is difficult for an audience to internalize this emotion. It didn't
need to be much, but something was too obviously missing for me to feel an attachment to
the people of Naboo.
In the original Star Wars trilogy, the basic character scheme was similar ... three to
four main characters, a sidekick, a couple of droids, a bad guy working for the governing
body, a royal representative of a victimized group rebelling against the governing body,
and legions of warriors no better than cannon fodder. And yet, in the first
movies, we are immediately drawn to the characters for varying reasons. We see
Luke's family killed by the evil Empire. We see Leia's entire home destroyed by the
evil Empire. We see Han being hunted and trying to find a means of escape.
Vader is shown bringing an interrogation droid in on the princess and killing his own
officers. All of these are ways for us to see why the good guys are good and the bad
guys are bad.
In "The Phantom Menace" everything is much too remote. As I said, we are
simply told by a Queen that "her people are suffering," but never see a single
person. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are engaged in what basically comes down to a security
mission, so when they defend themselves against attack, it's really no more than action in
the line of duty. We have no reason to believe they have any personal stake in what
happens to Naboo. Jar Jar is banished from his people for being "clumsy"
(his dialogue about the exact circumstances was undecipherable), so basically it was his
own fault, and not much of a sympathy winner. We see a hologram of what
appears to be a younger Emperor orchestrating the blockade of Naboo, and sending his
apprentice, Darth Maul, to Naboo. And what happens with Maul? The ONLY thing
this guy does is fight the Jedi. It's his job, and he does it. So why are we
supposed to hate him so much? What's the difference between Darth Maul and Boba
Fett? Nothing in my eyes ... they're both nothing more than guns for hire. The
audience is never given the opportunity to form an opinion of Maul to say "Okay, now
this guy is really evil."
Darth Maul is severely under-utilized in this film. The phenomenal lightsaber duels
are the sole reason I want to see the film repeatedly. I was impressed that Ray Park
expanded on the duels to include the kicking and punching which add so much to the
choreography. John Williams' score brings the scene to the ultimate level by giving
the viewer the impression that this is truly a battle between good and evil. Both
Ray Park and Darth Maul should have had much more screen time.
The pure volume of marketing behind this character led everyone to believe he would be the
next true bad guy, as Vader was. Maul had the potential to be so much more, but is
barely given an opportunity to speak. We are forced to endure what I'm told is
nearly 80 minutes of slapstick by Jar Jar, and yet the one character everyone wanted to
see, Darth Maul, is demoted to less than ten minutes of screen time. I'm not saying
we needed to know his entire background, because I understand that's part of the mystery
behind the story, but just as we never knew who Vader was in "A New Hope," we
were still treated to a great deal of the character. Darth Maul could easily have
taken over the blockade and orchestrated an "invasion" of Naboo, which would
have solved both the "lack of sympathy for the Naboo natives" problem, and given
Maul a chance to live up to his potential. The film could have left the wasteful
"trip through the planet's core," a concept we shouldn't be forced to try to
accept, on the cutting room floor, and spent that amount of time developing the character
of Darth Maul. Visually he was definitely the most impressive character of the
entire series of films, but this excellent visual development is wasted on a character
given no chance to expand. Every great scene with Maul was in the previews trailers.
Nothing new was left to enjoy in the actual film.
Which leads me to my biggest problem with "The Phantom Menace" ... the lack of
surprise. As I stated, I remained as "spoiler-free" as possible going into the
film. I refused to expose myself to anything other than the trailers. But
after seeing the movie, I realized that every good scene in the film was IN the
trailers! I was shocked, to say the least.
By general consensus, the best movie of the entire Star Wars saga was "The Empire
Strikes Back." There's a couple of reasons for that. First is the adult
focus of the film. The story is about a struggle for power, and not cluttered with
silliness like Ewoks, dancing girls and alien rock bands. There were no distractions
from the story. The second and most important reason is the eye-opening, edge of your
seat, "I can't believe it" surprises in the film.
Think about it. I remember seeing "Empire" for the first time, and as the
rebel soldier looked through his binoculars and caught site of an AT-AT, we all thought,
"what IS that thing?" We had no concept of what he was seeing, which
worked perfectly in the film, because we felt the confusion and alarm of the rebel soldier
seeing what they did. When the camera finally gave us a view where we could truly
comprehend the sheer size and power of those Imperial Walkers, everyone in the theater
thought to themselves those were the scariest, coolest looking moving weapons they had
ever seen. It was a great moment in the film, and one I'll always remember as
much as seeing that never-ending destroyer passing the screen in the opening scene of
"A New Hope." But the only reason we were able to enjoy that moment in the
theater was because we'd NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.
This same reaction could have easily been accomplished, and powerfully used, when Darth
Maul extends the second half of his lightsaber. This shot should never have appeared in a
trailer, and they should not have released the toys before the movie. The shot was
so well done in the film, with Maul holding his single lightsaber, pausing almost as if to
taunt and say "guess what I have in store for you", then slowly extending the
second blade. The audience would have been out of their seats!!! But we'd all
seen this so many times, over and over, in every promotional ad for the movie, that the
effectiveness of the scene was totally lost. Even the extremely well-done lightsaber
duels, the most impressive moment of this film, if not realistic in their execution, were
all in the promotional trailer.
The Battle Droids could have even been used as a surprise as well. The visual
presentation of those thousands of droids being lined up to attack the Gungan could have
been left to shock us out of our seats. It would have been necessary to eliminate
the ridiculously stupid "sense of humor" these droids were given, and make them
the true, battle-focused drones that they would have been. It was painfully obvious
that in Lucas' attempt to stay "politically correct" he replaced human
stormtroopers with robotic soldiers, so Our Heroes could knock them off by the dozens
without actually killing anyone. The problem is that if you're going to have
high-tech robotic soldiers, you can't have them miss every time they shoot. No
one would have invested the unbelievable volume of money that produced millions of battle
droids if the things couldn't hit anyone. We could write off the ineptitude of
stormtroopers because they were fallible humans, but battle droid targeting systems would
have been extremely accurate and certainly resulted in some deaths. Instead, they're
shown to be even more inaccurate than stormtroopers, and easily destroyed with one blast
of a laser by the Good Guys. Battle droids made of something that can't withstand
one shot? Add to that the number of scenes where the droids never fire a
single shot despite being attacked at close range, and suspension of disbelief only goes
so far.
The Destroyer Droids were handled much better. No emotion was seen from these very
impressive machines, although again I wished they'd been left as a surprise in the movie.
I did wonder how the Destroyers were able to shoot through their shields, if incoming fire
was blocked. They were very menacing droids, and truly seemed to be designed for
nothing but battle. But the problem I had with these droids is that they seem to
have been so blatantly stolen from the Playstation game "Oddworld: Abe's
Oddysee." The game, released in 1997, had characters called Sligs, which were
soldier creatures with the same shape and stance as these Destroyer Droids, shooting their
weapons in the same manner. The "Oddworld" game also includes the main
character rolling in a ball to travel across the screen, just as the Destroyer Droids do
in "The Phantom Menace." I'm not saying Lucas stole the concept from the
game himself, but I'm quite certain someone on his staff has played this game and was
influenced by it. (The final parade scene also seems terribly familiar from the cover of
"Dinotopia" I see in the bookstore. Click
here to read an exclusive interview with "Dinotopia" author James Gurney
regarding the events between Lucasfilm and the production of the Dinotopia film/)
(Author's note 6/11/99: A reader wrote the following to me, which I felt was
appropriate to include here in relationship to my paragraph above: "When I saw the
Destroyer Droids, I realized they looked and acted exactly like one of the
player-controlled droids in the Super NES game "Metal Warriors". They rolled to
travel, then stuck out legs to anchor themselves and stuck a gun out from their center. I
think they even had short-lived shields." This game was developed during
1994 by
Lucasarts for a company named Komani Co. Ltd. The developers for Komani's game
"Metal Warriors" was Big Ape Productions, the same team developing the
Playstation game "The Phantom Menace". So it appears that the Destroyer
Droid concept may have been originally purchased by Komani for their game.)
Another great surprise of "Empire" was the kiss of Han and Leia. Understandably,
being the second movie, these characters were given a chance to develop, however this
scene was still a surprise. No one expected it to happen. I relate this to
the scene with Anakin asking his mother, "Will I ever see you again?" This
powerful moment was lost on the audience as well, because it also appeared in the trailers
we'd seen over and over. This young child being forced to leave his mother could
have had a strong immediate emotional affect on the audience and caused a
"bonding" between Anakin and the audience, but their senses were so dulled by
having known this would happen for months, that the one moment they could have attached
themselves to this boy was gone. Pernilla August did a fabulous job with her minor
role, as opposed to the stale performance of Samuel Jackson. It really is possible
to have a small role and do a great job. I hope to see her again in the next film,
and most likely will, considering Yoda spoke so specifically about Anakin's fear of losing
his mother leading to the Dark Side.
The most notable surprise in "Empire" was, of course, the moment Vader said,
"Luke, I am your father." This five seconds of film will go down in
history as one of the most powerful moments in film ... ever. There will never be
another moment in ANY Star Wars film that will match the feeling the theater audience
experienced at that time. And I would like someone to explain to me how, if Lucas
could manage to keep that huge revelation a total secret from moviegoers, he couldn't
manage to keep a single secret in "The Phantom Menace." If the pre-release
marketing explosion is so vastly important that he's willing to sacrifice every savory
moment of the film, then there is simply no hope for those of us trying to recapture the
experience of seeing the original trilogy.
All in all, I can't say I'm not glad this film has been released. It is only the
beginning of a trilogy for which many of us have waited a very long time. I am told
that to truly know the story of "The Phantom Menace," one must absolutely read
the novel, where the plot and the characters are presented in such a way that we can
understand their motivations and background. On this advice, I am awaiting the
delivery of the novel, and hope that this will more help me to enjoy this newest episode
in the Star Wars saga. I regret, however, that I couldn't have the whole story
related in the film, where it would have been more powerful.
Perhaps for Episode II, Lucas will learn some lessons from the mistakes he made this time
around. Get rid of the comical aliens, George ... having Tweedledum for a pod
racer, and slapstick characters for commentators, does nothing but show a lack of
conceptual creativity. If you're going to have Ewoks turn into Gungans and give them
high-tech weapons, then don't make them launch them with slingshots and animal-driven
catapults. If you want to make a children's movie, then get it rated "G" and
don't make the plot line so boring that every political scene bores the heck out of an
eight-year-old because he can't follow the story. If you want to make a film for
Star Wars fans, have some technical experts tell you what's scientifically possible, and
listen to them. Make sure you talk to the authors of your books to stay within what
we already know of this universe you've let them create. Limit your "comic
relief" to the level which the main characters gave us in the first trilogy.
Rather than using a lot of screen time to show us how good your special effects can be,
use the film to tell the story, instead of leaving that to the author of the novelization.
And please, George, I beg of you ... let us be surprised by something next time.
(Loren Phillips is webmaster of EchoStation.com, along with her husband, David)