STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)
3.5 out of ****
Starring Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd
Written & Directed by George Lucas
Cinematography by David Tattersall
It's not easy being a legend. The STAR WARS movies are, of course, legendary, and bringing out a new film, a continuation of that legend, poses a problem: knowing that you are building on a legend, how do you ensure that you live up to the attendant expectations? George Lucas's answer is to deliver more or less the same goods as he has delivered in the past, but bringing them to a new level of sophistication. He succeeds; unfortunately, his answer is the wrong one.
THE PHANTOM MENACE is certainly a more sophisticated film than the previous three STAR WARS films. The headline performers (Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman) are, as a whole, substantially finer actors than their counterparts in the first trilogy (Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher). The special effects resources available to filmmakers today are significantly more refined than they were fifteen or twenty years ago. The sets and costumes and art design are, as always, impeccable. The dialogue induces fewer cringes. The hokey mystic trappings of the Force are presented in a less adolescent manner. All of which would make you think that THE PHANTOM MENACE would be a better film. It is not.
Something is missing. The earlier movies were, in all respects, more primitive than the latest entry in the series, but it is that primitive aspect that was perhaps crucial to their success. There was a naïveté to the earlier movies--they were innocent. Darth Vader was a comic-book villain, and his Oedipal conflict with Luke Skywalker lacked even the semblance of subtlety, but the crude mythic underpinnings provided a cumulative effect that was remarkably potent--potent not despite its simplicity, but because of it. THE PHANTOM MENACE, by contrast, is not innocent, not simple--it is knowing and slick, painstakingly crafted to live up to its legendary status.
It is, it should be said, very good, in the way that STAR WARS movies are inevitably good: it possesses a visual sweep and an imaginative abundance that shames other science fiction movies. There are multitudes of alien beings and scientifically improbable spacecraft and even more improbable planets and wondrously improbable shoot-em-up set-pieces. All are splendidly conceived: STAR WARS embodies our adolescent dreams, the pulp dreams of the future conceived by writers like Doc Smith and Edgar Rice Burroughs, in a way that other movies have never approached. Still, we expect as much from STAR WARS movies. We also expect more, and it is the "more" that is lacking, and which I think is responsible for the vague sense of disappointment that has been audiences' most common response to the movie thus far.
The tightly knit plot begins when Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Neeson) and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, who subtly and effectively imitates Alec Guinness's manner of speaking) arrive on the planet Naboo, which the ominous-sounding alien-run Trade Federation has sealed off with a military blockade, planning what amounts to the interplanetary equivalent of a hostile takeover. Young Queen Amidala (Portman), however, has no intention of signing the treaty the Trade Federation wishes to impose, and it is her resistance to the Trade Federation (who are acting at the behest of someone called Darth Sidious, who is the Emperor from the previous films, and whose true identity is not difficult to figure out) that drives the movie, as the fast-moving narrative takes us from Naboo to Tatooine to the seat of the Council of the Galactic Republic and back to Naboo, gathering along the way a Naboo native called Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) and a young boy called Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), whom you might have heard of.
Much of what happens is simply a reworking of the earlier movies, with different characters and venues, but with the same underlying patterns. The conflict between Naboo and the Trade Federation repeats the conflict between the Rebels and the Empire. The climactic sequence features a suicidal space assault on a heavily defended enemy craft, recalling the attempts to penetrate the Death Star's defences in STAR WARS and RETURN OF THE JEDI. Tatooine is revisited, and characters and alien species familiar from the earlier movies return.
Dazzling as it is at times, there is a sense of redundance, although this is mitigated by the rousing pace and the weath of visual detail; the film kicks off with a great action sequence as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan battle a horde of identikit battle droids, and never relents. But although it keeps moving, it lacks the inexorable momentum of the original STAR WARS, which was a slow burn, beginning with.a Tatooine farmboy and a mysterious message from a beautiful princess, ending with the pyrotechnics of a Death Star destroyed. In THE PHANTOM MENACE, there is no slow burn; things are always exploding, with pauses for us to catch our breath.
While the central characters are strong and promise to hold our interest through the sequels, the supporting cast is rather weak. Darth Maul (Ray Park), billed as a villain comparable to the incomparable Darth Vader, proves to be utterly dispensable, in more ways than one (although he does manage to get in one very nifty fight sequence). Jar Jar Binks is a constant distraction, both because of his ill-conceived dialogue (much of it employing inappropriate--and sometimes incomprehensible--variations of contemporary vernacular) and because the digital effects used to animate him are so slick that he seems more of a state-of-the-art videogame character than a film character capable of standing alongside flesh-and-blood actors. R2-D2 and C-3PO make obligatory appearances (with C-3PO in particular being superfluous).
THE PHANTOM MENACE is effective as a self-contained movie on the level of good old-fashioned escapist adventure, but it is clear that Lucas is also laying the groundwork for the sequels, and as the story builds, its power may grow. The fate that shapes the proceedings--the knowledge that the Empire will emerge and conquer, the knowledge that innocent Anakin is doomed to become Darth Vader--could be foregrounded to much greater effect, and if the tone darkens in the next movie, as it seems it will, then new legends may be spawned. Fundamentally, though, what is lacking is what science fiction fans and critics call the "sense of wonder." The original STAR WARS and its sequels left us agape in contemplation of new and unexpected vistas of the imagination. THE PHANTOM MENACE does what we expect it to do. It revisits the same vistas. Yes, they're impressive, but after sixteen years, isn't it time for some new ones?
Subjective Camera: Movie Reviews by David Dalgleish
subjective.freeservers.com
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