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
Reactions After Seeing The Film - contains spoilers
5/19/99
What is it with Kids and
Starfighters?
So, you clicked on the offered link because you realized I could not say all that much in a spoiler-free review. If you should happen to be from a region of this planet where Episode One is not "Playing at a theater near you" at the moment, may I make a simple recommendation?
Hit your back button. Now.
In fact, stop reading any and all spoilers on the web. If you have already purchased books and comics adapting Episode One, hide them. If you have not been following all of the spoilers until now, don’t start!
Really, don’t worry about it. The review will still be here in a few months. But you can only be spoiled once.
Right…now, for the rest of you, I hope you've already seen the movie, otherwise you will hate me later. Technical stuff I discussed well enough without spoilers so here comes all the plot commentary.
Perhaps the best place to start would be this grand political brouhaha, which send Qui-Gonn and Ben Kenobi to Naboo. It took me both showings to figure out how Palpatine engineered that and boy, that was one good piece of political backstabbing. I am hoping for more of the backstory on his rise to power to come out in the future, but it takes a lot of nerve to engineer a crisis in which you use the monarch of your own homeworld to destabilize the government you are supposed to maintain so you can take power.
Ahem, let's just put the rest of that thought on hold here while I attend to Beef #1: Queen Amidala, newly elected Queen of Naboo. An elected Queen? Perhaps the head of a constitutional monarchy, which could be elected, but the Queen herself? It sounds to me like a contradiction in terms. Putting even that aside for a moment, if she was elected, why so young? Did she campaign? What was her platform? Who was her competition? Did she have competition?
The questions of her power base aside, Amidala does acquit herself well in the true legacy of regal females in the Star Wars universe, even if she does become little more than a political pawn towards the end. I'm hoping to see more of her in the prequels. I am also hoping to see more of Palpatine's political power grab, maybe including how he possibly supported the tariffs in order to entice the Trade Federation into occupying Naboo too?
Now, let's talk Jedi.
Ewan McGregor more than met my expectations for his role as the young Ben Kenobi. His character did seem somewhat monotonous or emotionally detached at times, but I can only assume that is the result of his character trying to avoid those aspects of emotion, which can lead to the darkside.
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gonn Jinn was a real treat and I, along with nearly half of the theater I went to for the first showing, cried when he was killed. I find myself wondering however, why did his body not disappear as Ben Kenobi's would in ANH?
And this brings me to Beef #2: Anakin Skywalker.
The boy is sweet and cute and all, but really, even with being the 'chosen one' of Jedi lore and having R2D2 as a co-pilot, how the hell did he manage to fly a starfighter. Not only that, but how did he manage to fly it well enough to destroy the Death St- er…droid control ship? To paraphrase a famous Corellian smuggler, "Flying a starfighter 'ain't like racing pods, boy." While I could see the necessity of not having Anakin sit on the hangar deck the entire time, if he had to end up in the space battle, I would have seen him more trying to destroy key droid fighterships, rather than the station. But that's just me.
Once the end credits did start rolling, I was very impressed with the movie, and do not regret for a second the sacrifices being a spoiler virgin required of me. Jar-Jar Binks was not half as annoying as people have been trying to tell me for months now, although he is not very high on my 'favorite characters' list either. Darth Maul, while a severely underdeveloped character was just plain creepy. I wonder if the Star Wars universe had a cure for being sliced in half with a lightsaber back then. I would not mind seeing more of this sneaky Sith in the future. In Episodes 2 and 3, I am also hoping we finally see the rise of the empire, the birth of the rebellion and all of the important characters involved thereof.
Still, Episode One will keep me satisfied for now. I am willing to give George Lucas the time he needs to make the next two the best he can. I don’t want him to rush on my account, my curiosity will hold.
I've kept it in check this long, haven't I?
(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.)