I'm not sure how to review Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Watching it was, for me, a little like finding an old love. It's fairly easy to speak intellectually about my memories, like it was to review the original trilogy, but sitting there in a darkened theater on opening day with the darkened lights, seeing the words `Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace' scroll up the screen, I had that kind of inner reminder of how much I love the `Star Wars' series.
I was on the edge of my seat through nearly the entire movie, stressing and cheering and laughing along with the characters and the plot, exactly the way I should.
The controversial elements, Jake Lloyd's acting, Jar Jar Binks, etc. all worked out for me. The things Jar Jar said that seemed so obnoxious, didn't seem so in context and Jake Lloyd's performance as the young Anakin Skywalker was quite good, I felt. The only major complaint I'd offer is with the underwater sequence, which I didn't think did much to move the story along and lacked any sort of dramatic tension. It merely felt like it was there to keep some `action' in the film and to introduce the `There's always a bigger fish' philosophy, which was something of a running theme.
The level of sophistication, which is the key issue people take with the film is a more complicated subject. Reducing a movie that hinges on complex political plotting to a `kiddie' movie somehow doesn't make sense, yet it would seem equally ridiculous to try to pretend that a movie with Jar Jar Binks and a child prodigy military pilot is some kind of new Manchurian Candidate. It fits into a very strange gray area that I think is part of what makes the `Star Wars' series such a delight.
A lot of the information that comes in layers, but you have to be paying attention. The story of Queen Amidala and Padme is woven carefully through the story, using both Lucas' storytelling and Natalie Portman's acting, developing her as an interesting, believable and well- rounded heroine – and ultimately among the smartest characters in the movie.
The villainous background scheming, which being the `phantom menace' is of more importance than the foreground dueling and droid battling, is a delight, but still feels incomplete. We've clearly only begun to learn the whole story of where this goes…
But all of that is to somehow neglect the ass-whuppin' Destroyer Droids, the mighty fighting Gungans, which I think manage to more effectively do what the Ewoks were meant to, the breathtaking views of Coruscant, the dazzling effects, the highly engaging pod race scene, the assorted fun characters and the best light saber duel ever. The action moves quickly and intensely, but that should go without saying… although I guess some are saying differently.
And then there's Qui-Gon Jinn, the Jedi played by Liam Neeson with a level of cool just below the level with which Alec Guinness played the old Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is the focal character. He leads the story to where it's going and he is the gel that holds it together. He has a calm that feels very real and plays well off the younger Obi-Wan and his attempt to accomplish that state. Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan is a brilliant step of a brash young man trying to become the Obi-Wan we saw in the later films and a promise of what he will do with the part in the next two films.
I think that's the problem that haunts judging this film is that it's like trying to judge a long prologue to a book. It can seem at once shallow and sophisticated and it will be impossible to judge properly until 2005 when I can watch all six movies and see how all the pieces fit together.
As for my movie-going experience in itself, loving something the way I love this series can blur one's ability to judge properly. Sometimes they look and feel better than maybe they are, but this I can say for sure. The Phantom Menace is more fun than The Empire Strikes Back but not quite as fun as Star Wars. The writing is deeper and more sophisticated than the writing for Star Wars but not so much as the writing for The Empire Strikes Back. The sum of that equation is that it's definitely right in there in the middle of the best of the series, but isn't quite as good as either of them overall.
That'll do for now, I guess.
When does the line form for Episode II?
Thanks for listening… … and may the force be with you.
N.S. -- The Bleeding Tree http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/3271/
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