Predicting
The Future:
Five Different Outlooks On What
"The Phantom Menace" Has In Store
And The Resulting Impressions Of The
Film
Sabrina Fried: Optimistic
Prequel Virgin
Expectations Prior To Seeing The Film
5/17/99
Well, I have been keeping myself all but totally isolated from prequel spoilers for just about nine months now. The last I heard, there was going to be a character by the name of Darth Maul and a lot of the action would be taking place on some planet by the name of Naboo. I have seen both trailers, and briefly skimmed the issues of the Star Wars Insider that have been released in the interim, but have no real wealth of spoiler information to skew this prediction at all.
Despite that, I am totally confident that this movie will be by far, the best SF movie likely to come out in the past decade or so, and will keep that title until Episode II comes out, at least. I am so confident in this that I am going to try and get a ticket to the charity preview showing of TPM that will be happening here in Toronto. Will I get one? It'll be a tough fight, but I will try!
Back to the movie, I predict that The Flanneled One will not disappoint. ILM will have focused their special effects work more on giving their characters a personality than on wowing the audience with their computer prowess, although no doubt the latter will definitely be a result of the former. The computer-generated portions of the new movie will showcase characters that could never be a human in a rubber suit, but at the same time are not immediately identifiable as electronic ego's either. In this new Star Wars universe, a fully trained Jedi--with just a bit of a nudge worth of help from ILM--will be able to do all sorts of delightful things to thousands of battle droids with a wave of a hand. Whether or not the Jedi happens to have a lightsaber in the hand at the time is irrelevant.
Ewan McGregor, who already looks the part in Jedi robes (but a good Ewan picture is not a spoiler if no one explains it to me!), will provide an excellent performance so reminiscent of Sir Alec Guiness as to make audiences wonder if the latter didn’t dye his hair and trade places with the younger actor a few times. Anakin will definitely tip this movie's cuteness gauge up a few notches, but at the same time he will find some way of reminding us why he grew up to become Darth Vader in the first set of movies.
May will bankrupt me with the flurry of prequel merchandise that is certain to come, and this income siphon won't stop until…well, I have no idea when it will ever stop. Accordingly, five minutes after the world's first public showing finishes, the Internet will be flooded with analysis of even the tiniest scrap of stuff showed in Episode 1, and I will not be able to participate in any of it until I have seen it for the fortieth time myself.
Five minutes later, I will have to crawl back under my rock
to start avoiding all of the Episode II spoilers. Someone knock on its top to let me know
when a release date is announced, would you?
Reactions After Seeing The Film
Episode One - Spoiler Free Review: Seeing it again for the first time
I've seen Episode 1 twice now, yet I really only feel as though I have seen it once.
The first showing I attended, I was completely taken in by the simple fact that Star Wars, and new Star Wars at that, was flickering up there on the screen in front of me. This was no restored print of the classic trilogy, or a simple re-release with a few new scenes. This was something new and different, yet at the same time, it was good old Star Wars too.
Visually speaking, the movie is captivating and nothing short of a feast for the eyes. And not just the scenes that have Ewan McGregor in them either. Although there is no shortage of computerized doctoring in this movie, I came to the conclusion that the technical wizards at ILM were using their skills as much to enhance scenes and give them life in a way other special effect methods would not have allowed, as they were trying to wow the audience with shiny things that have blinking lights on them. Things as simple as computer generated birds which scatter as a ship lands, or the rustling of tall grass under the repulsorlifts of a heavy assault vehicle do more to separate you from the world outside of the movie screen than a full hour of big explosions and fake slime. Not all of the special effects created for the movie were subtle, in fact I would say the majority were not, but all of them were very creative, making the best use possible of all that wonderful FX technology, while remembering that these creations must serve a purpose in the story too.
But I did mention that I saw it twice, did I not?
During the second showing, I was able to pull myself away from the purely visual aspects of Episode One long enough to pay attention to what was really going on. Throughout the entire movie, I had to keep somewhere in the back of my mind a reminder that there are still two more parts on their way. Within the first few minutes, Episode One lays out enough potential story for at least those two movies - or maybe five. Yes, as so many professional critics have said before, this does cause the movie to drag a bit, and without interior monologue requires almost too much talk. But you know what? I like it that way. Sci-fi or Sci-Fantasy movies do not have to be defined by action scenes every 2.5 seconds, or characters unable to speak more than a few unintelligible grunts.
Episode One, without revealing any real spoilers here, focuses on the political uprising with eventually will lead to the rise of the Empire. In fairly equal parts, it also begins to tell the story of the Boy Who Would Be Darth Vader. Two hours and change are not nearly enough to tell either of these stories alone, much less together, but the movie does not even try to anyway. As a result, when its finally time for the movie to finish, it really doesn’t feel like much of an ending. It really feels more like the movie is saying "Okay, we'll stop here while we let some other people into the theater; what say we pick this up again in, oh, three years or so?"
When the house lights did rise again, and I filed out of the theater with my brain still trapped in the Galaxy Far, Far Away like everyone else, I decided that there were a few things I had beefs with (but for those, read my review with spoilers), however I still thought that Episode 1 was one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. It was also one of the few which was willing to lower its EPS (Explosions per scene) score in favor of REAL CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! I've gone to too many movies in the past simply for one of John Williams' scores, only to be disappointed when the wooden characters on screen put me to sleep before I can hear his music. At least in this movie, I get a great movie and an excellent score too.
So is Episode One worthy of the Star Wars name? Most
definitely. But will it surpass Episodes 4 through 6? Well, the senate is
still debating that one.
Read Sabrina's Full Review (Contains Spoilers)
(When Sabrina Fried is not busy trying to AVOID reading too many prequel spoilers online, a grand feat within itself, she is busy sacrificing pens to the deities of fanfiction, or driving the local bookstores crazy trying to find obscure science fiction books in sections which seldom carry anything more than a year old. Oh yeah, and then there is that whole university thing.)