Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - Part 1

Written By:

George Lucas

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Directed By:

George Lucas

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Release Date:

1999

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. I've already written about A New Hope and The Force Awakens, so it's only fair that I give the prequel trilogy a turn. In an epic four-part article five-part article!

The Phantom Menace isn't the highest-grossing movie of all time and it's certainly not the most critically acclaimed of all films, but it's got a definite claim to being the most hyped movie ever made. The original Star Wars trilogy was one of the biggest events in cinema history, but then after 1983 it just stopped. Well okay, there were the Ewoks movies etc, but creator George Lucas basically just stood aside and let Star Trek take over as the biggest sci-fi movie series.

But the Star Wars franchise had been kept alive in books, games, and the Special Edition re-releases, so a 16-year break between movies only made fans more anxious to see some actual new Star Wars. People went to see it in droves and when they came back they had opinions, and those opinions were... generally positive I think. It took a while for people to really process what they'd seen.

In fact, it's taken me 24 years to get around to typing up what I think about The Phantom Menace. I could've waited another year for its 25th anniversary and honestly, it was tempting, but I need to get this done already so I can move on... to other stuff that also needs writing about.

The Star Wars movies are a little bit weird with SPOILERS due to the different orders you can watch them in, so I had to make a choice and I've decided that anything that came out before 1999 is fair game. So if you want to avoid knowing anything about A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, you probably shouldn't be reading this.

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The movie begins just as the classic films did a couple of decades ago, with the phrase "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." in blue text. They even kept the same number of dots.

Then the classic John Williams theme kicks in as the classic logo flashes onto the screen and falls off into the distance, to be replaced by this classic opening crawl. They could've given this new trilogy a different style of introduction, but they didn't change a thing. Well okay, they're doing it with computers now, so that's different I guess.

Though this is the first Star Wars movie to begin during a time of galactic peace. No star wars! The opening text mentions that "Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic," but really it's just that the taxation of trade routes is in dispute, causing endless debates. I remember this text being in dispute at the time, as it's not exactly the most dramatic way to kick off a space adventure. I sense a million fans coming into the cinema hyped up, and then suddenly being very confused. Or dozing off.

Fortunately, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly sent a pair of Jedi Knights (the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, it helpfully points out), to get involved and end the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo. Jedis are typically way more interesting than taxation and trade routes, so if the film can stick with them there may still be hope for it.

But who are they going to be? Obi-Wan and Yoda? Obi-Wan and Anakin? Anakin's got to show up at some point.

The first three films all pan down from text to reveal a Star Destroyer. But they weren't invented yet so this time we get a new ship that looks a lot like the Blockade Runner from the opening of A New Hope. It's not the same design, it's got fewer engines, it doesn't have the hammerhead cockpit, it's painted red etc. but it's clearly part of the same design lineage. And it's also a physical miniature, not CGI!

This was a transitional time for visual effects, with movies and TV series switching over to computer-generated effects to give people more elaborate and spectacular visuals... and save a lot of money. It's hard to beat a photograph of something real when it comes to photorealism, and a lot of films of the era still used miniatures. 1997's Alien Resurrection, 1998's Lost in Space and 1999's Galaxy Quest etc. But by 1998 Star Trek was pretty much using CGI exclusively and new TV shows like Farscape wouldn't even think about filming actual models.

We see the ship flying towards that blockade of deadly Trade Federation battleships surrounding the planet Naboo, which is somehow both overkill and not nearly enough. Each of those vessels is bloody huge even by Star Wars standards, and there are at least 20 of them visible at one point. But how many ships would it actually take to effectively blockade 200 million mi² of sky? 200 million maybe?

These ships are physical miniatures as well, but with the exploding popularity of CGI, I expect a lot of viewers would have just assumed they were really good computer effects. But when the ship comes in to land we get a proper demonstration of how far visual effects had come in 16 years.

As far as I know, all the robots in this scene were rendered by a computer. Though the hangar itself might be a miniature. They liked to mix techniques.

That's a beautiful design for the B1 battle droids I reckon. They apparently based them on African sculptures and they look pretty distinctive. The droid fighters are a bit less iconic and memorable maybe, especially compared to TIE Fighters, but how many space fighters do you see that walk on their wings?

The two Jedi ambassadors are met by a droid and brought to a room. They pull down their hoods to reveal... they're Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor!

So there's a bit more star power on screen than there was during A New Hope. Even if they are dressed like monks.

The younger Jedi says that he has a bad feeling about this, so that's one Star Wars tradition out of the way early. The other one says that he doesn't feel anything, which implies that whenever a character has a bad feeling in these movies they're actually using the Force! It also shows that he's not very good at sensing impending catastrophes. He tends to live more in the moment.

We get another new word here: padawan, and from context it means 'student Jedi', which is what the guy on the right is. So the opening crawl just lied straight to our faces when it said that there were two Jedi Knights coming here!

This would be an excellent time for the movie to contrive a reason to give us the master's name, but nope! Though it is revealed that the padawan is the legendary Obi-Wan Kenobi, so that gives a hint at how much earlier this is than A New Hope. It's going to take decades before he's as old as Alec Guinness looked. He also name-drops Master Yoda, so we're definitely in the right universe then. If it had started off with a young Captain Picard talking about Spock I would've had concerns.

Meanwhile, on the bridge, the viceroy is freaking out about the ambassadors being Jedi Knights. He's going to have to talk to Lord Sidious about this. By the way, here's a trick to coming up with a Star Wars bad guy name: pick a word like invader or insidious, something negative, and then take the first two letters off the start. Note: this doesn't work with the word 'inflammable'.

George Lucas was a bit cleverer when he came up with the viceroy's name, Nute Gunray. We still can't be sure if the first name's based on Newt Gingrich, or if Lucas took Ronald Reagan's last name and flipped the syllables for the surname.

The production crew used elaborate remote-controlled animatronic masks on these Neimoidians to give them animated mouths, but the end result isn't fantastic, to be honest. What doesn't help is that they seem to have leaned into it by making their dialogue sound like a badly-dubbed kung-fu movie. That's how you get accused of racism.

The Neimoidians are too scared to go meet the Jedi themselves so they send their protocol droid to bring them some drinks. I don't know if Jedi can sense poison with their limited precognition, but it seems like this could've gone very badly for Obi-Wan over there. Fortunately it's fine.

By the way, look at this silver C-3PO-looking protocol droid. It looks exactly like C-3PO! 16 years and they didn't update the designs for new audiences at all. Instead, they gave us something right out of the classic movies to anchor the two trilogies in a shared reality and reassure fans that the Original Trilogy hadn't been reimagined. Well okay, that's not true, they reimagined the hell out of the films with the 1997 Special Editions, but they kept the designs the same at least!

Lord Sidious appears as a hologram, and he sure sounds a lot like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. He looks a lot like him too with his hood down. The Neimoidians are leaning towards giving up and going home, but Sidious tells them to start landing troops on the planet! They don't need to worry about the legality of this invasion, he's going to make it legal. He also tells them to kill the Jedi. I think Sidious is maybe putting a bit too much faith in his underlings.

This is one of the most impressive rooms in the movie for me as I never suspected that it was almost all shot against bluescreen. It looks more real to me than some of the sets, like the room the Jedi are still waiting in.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the hangar is equipped with gun turrets (well, this bit is at least), and the Jedi's ship gets blasted before they can say "Shields u-". Red spaceships are rare in science fiction and now there's one less in the universe. At least the explosion was pretty. It took a while to get to things blowing up but we're here now.

The Jedi sense the explosion (probably because it was loud), and leap up with their lightsabers drawn! The protocol droid drops the drinks in surprise and then apologises, which really sucks because now I'm feeling sorry for it. The droid didn't do anything to deserve its eventual fate! It probably didn't even know that the Neimoidians were about to pump in poison gas.

Fortunately, the Jedi are able to sense this kind of poison, or at least identify it after breathing a tiny bit in, and they hold their breath. I wonder if holding their breath is a Jedi power...

A squad of goofy B1 battle droids are ordered to go inside and destroy what's left of their bodies, which is a bit dark!

But two lightsabers fire up and the battle droids discover all their own blaster shots getting redirected right back at them. Droids are getting blasted, sliced and just thrown to the ground with the Force, it's really unfair. This is the first time we're seeing two fully trained Jedi in their prime kicking ass, and the droids stand absolutely zero chance against them.

We still haven't got a name for Liam Neeson's Jedi, but right now he's stuck his lightsaber into the door to the bridge and he's cutting a big hole in it. Which is awesome, we never got to see lightsabers do this in the Original Trilogy! It shows off just how incredibly powerful they are. It's like the Neimoidian have a horror movie monster breaking in to get them and even the blast doors aren't going to keep him out forever.

The scene also shows the trust between the master and his padawan, as he's completely relying on Obi-Wan to protect him while he's doing this, and the guy's currently standing in a pile of dead droids.

But then two droidekas roll up to ruin their plan. These droids have rapid-fire blasters and a (visible) shield, making them significantly more dangerous than a standard B1 droid. The Clone Wars cartoon did a great job of using all the different kinds of battle droids and showing the heroes coming up with new tactics to defeat them over time, but this is still early days. They can't deflect shots into them and they can't go over and slice them, so the two of them do a Force-dash out of the way. A power that can only be used once every 9 movies.

The two Jedi head to the hangar and discover a whole invasion fleet parked down there. So they decide to hitch a ride with them down to the planet to see if they can get ahead of them and warn the Naboo. They can't take the ship they used to come here on account of it being a scorch mark right now. That pretty red ship could've been their Millennium Falcon for the trilogy, but no.

The Neimoidians receive a message from the planet on their giant screen that looks like a door. It's Natalie Portman herself, all painted up like a geisha, and she just phoned up to tell them that she knows that the chancellor's ambassadors have arrived to make them reach a settlement. But the Neimoidians deny it.

This is a more civilised time than the Original Trilogy, so Lucas decided they needed to give characters much more elaborate costumes, and Queen Amidala got the fanciest clothes of all. This is probably her most iconic look, as it's what she's wearing on the poster (one of the most famous movie posters ever made), but don't get used to it.

Here's a flaw in the movie however: why do the Naboo have a teenager leading their planet? Who thought that was a good idea? Well okay, that's more of a flaw with Naboo culture than with the film.

Then we get to see the beautiful capital city of Theed, with its salt waterfalls. I mean in-universe they're probably water waterfalls, but you can't make miniature water unfortunately so they had to be creative. They filmed salt being poured against a black background and then composited it into the shot. On this film it's rarely as simple as 'this scene is a matte painting' or 'this scene is CGI'; ILM really used some proper movie-making magic.

Here's something you don't see much in Star Wars movies: the interior of a real building. This is the Royal Palace of Caserta in Italy, and it looks proper decadent. It also dwarfs Queen Amidala and her government, making it look like they pulled some chairs into an art gallery or something. I'm not getting throne room vibes.

Amidala is getting a hologram call of her own from Senator Palpatine, but the signal's suddenly cut off. The governor feels that the Neimoidians must be preparing to invade, and points out that they can't continue negotiations when they've lost communication. Incidentally, if you watch the end credits it turns out that the governor's name is Sio Bibble, and that's amazing.

Captain Panaka tells her that their security volunteers will be no match against a Federation army, and Amidala states that she won't condone a course of action that will lead to war. Uh... what course of action? I'm confused.

Unfortunately, the Federation has begun the star wars without them, and their giant landing ships start dropping troops down all over their, uh, forests. Do they think the Naboo are Wookiees or Ewoks? Also, I've never much liked the design of their landing craft, as the actual bit with the tanks inside is so small compared to the rest of it.

All the troops are robots, this is a Terminator war, but the viceroy has to call them using a hologram to give them instructions. Turns out that they've searched their whole giant ship and found no Jedi, so they want the droids to search the planet for them.

We see creatures running away as the droid tanks start crushing the trees. The animals are all smart enough to get the hell away... all except one.

It's Jar Jar Binks, and he's damn lucky that [unnamed Jedi master] was around to grab him and slam him to the ground just as a tank drove over them.

Even the wise Jedi master is shocked at how dumb he is. He doesn't consider his ability to speak as being proof of intelligence, and honestly the way Jar Jar talks I don't blame him. The character caused a bit of controversy at the time for being a racist caricature (the second one in the movie and it's only 10 minutes in), but personally I just find him annoying. Unfortunately, it's apparently demanded by the gods that Jar Jar becomes his humble servant, so he is going to be stuck with him.

How did Jar Jar survive this long banished in the wild anyway? If you dropped me into a forest I'd starve to death within 20 minutes, but somehow this guy's doing fine. Fortunately, he at least knows where civilisation is and can bring them there... even if they won't be happy to see him.

There were plenty of CGI creatures in the 90s, even TV series like Star Trek: Voyager and Babylon 5 featured computer-generated aliens. Jurassic Park was doing photorealistic dinosaurs in 1993, and Starship Troopers' bugs look amazing to this day. But making one of the main characters entirely CGI was a real milestone for cinema. Sure Gollum looks better, but The Fellowship of the Ring was released two years later, and that was an eternity for technology back then. This came out during the Nintendo 64 era, while Fellowship came out after the Xbox.

Funny thing is, they didn't even intend to make him fully CGI. They had Ahmed Best wearing a Jar Jar costume and planned to just replace his head, but it turned out to be more work that way. Even with all the cloth simulation that's going on. Speaking of clothing, we get a good look here at what the Jedis are wearing and it's basically Obi-Wan's desert hermit gear from A New Hope! So that's a bit weird and disappointing maybe.

Jar Jar does an impressive flip and dives underwater, with the two Jedi following by just walking in with tiny breather gadgets in their mouth. You know, Jar Jar was born to be an Olympic diver. He sucks at literally everything else, but he's amazing at diving. The Jedi, on the other hand, are amazing at swimming with their heavy cloaks on. It's difficult to swim with waterlogged clothes as it is.

The three swim down to a huge series of underwater... pumpkins. This is the Gungan city, the Naboo version of Atlantis. Which I guess makes the Gungans Atlanteans. It's not unusual to see a lot of aliens sharing a world, I mean the Mos Eisley cantina was packed, but two distinct groups is new I think.

I don't know how these guys built a city out of forcefield bubbles down here, all I know is that when a Gungan goes to the toilet, everyone knows about it. Great view of the fish as well though.

It took like 15 animators to bring Jar Jar to life, so it must have taken quite a few people to populate a whole city of Jar Jars. Unfortunately, he only makes it like 5 steps before being stopped by the mounted police. They zap him with a prod for absolutely no reason and lead him to the bosses. Which is good, because I guess that's where the Jedi would've wanted to go anyway.
 

They go to the council room, where the Gungan leaders sit in a semicircle. Though honestly you'll be hard-pressed to find a government that doesn't sit in a circle in these movies.

Here we learn that Jar Jar's speaking an actual dialect, not just being weird, as the Gungan leader Boss Nass talks the same way. Even with subtitles, he's hard to understand. It's definitely not because he mumbles his words, because he's played by Brian Blessed! The man's like a human PA system.

Boss Nass isn't 100% on board with the Jedi's plan to warn the Naboo about the invasion force because folks in underwater cities never like the surface folk, that's just a rule. He doesn't appreciate how they look down on them and I'm pretty sure the Naboo don't appreciate how he keeps wobbling his mouth and letting spit come out. It's gross. He's pretty sure that the Gungans can ignore their crisis and ride this all out underwater. Obi-Wan argues that they form a symbiont circle so their problems will become his problems, but he doesn't really explain why. I mean they literally live inside forcefield bubbles underwater, they seem pretty damn isolated.

[Unnamed Jedi master] changes the subject, saying that if he's not going to help then he should speed them on their way, and the speediest way is to let them drive out in a vehicle. I never caught this until now, but the guy does a Jedi mind trick gesture he says it. The dude's mind-controlling the leader of the Gungans to give him a boat! It works too, as he's going to give them una bongo. Hey isn't that a drink?

Jar Jar claims he's setting them up. The quickest way to get to the Naboo is through the planet's core, which is apparently incredibly dangerous. Though less dangerous than trying to get through Earth's core I'd expect. So hang on, the Trade Federation sent their army to the wrong side of the planet?

The Jedi could just walk right out of here and leave Jar Jar behind to face the punishment for coming back, but the Jedi master decides to help him out by saying he owes him a life debt and they could do with a navigator.

They take the bongo, which looks like a manta ray, and Jar Jar explains that he was banished for being a clumsy disaster magnet. Honestly, I believe it. It's not long before they get bitten by a sea monster, which is then bitten by another monster without them having to do anything. "There's always a bigger fish" the Jedi master sagely comments.

I'm not going to keep pointing out everything that was a physical miniature in this movie... but some of the rocks they go past were a physical miniature.

Hey, it's these two again.

Lord Sidious tells the viceroy that he has the Senate too bogged down with procedures to interfere with their invasion of Naboo. Damn, Sidious seems to have a lot of influence over the Senate somehow.

Sidious doesn't think that dealing with Queen Amidala will be a challenge for the Neimoidians as she's young and naïve. He doesn't know that they haven't even dealt with the Jedi yet! These guys are struggling enough just moving their lips in time with their words. Honestly, Farscape was doing it better with its animatronic aliens. Star Wars got its revenge though, when Attack of the Clones evicted the series from their stages at Fox Studios after season 1 and they had to move their sets.

Meanwhile, the Jedi are still in their bongo, travelling through the increasingly dark water. This is one of the reasons I'm not keen on underwater scenes. Not only does everything move slowly, but you can't see a damn thing. I'm mentally comparing this to the asteroid field chase in Empire Strikes Back and, well, it's not as good.

The master assures Jar Jar that the Force will guide them, which is good because Jar Jar's been zero help as a navigator. He's also zero help when their transport loses power in the middle of a cave in the middle of a planet. Incidentally, the Earth is 8000 miles across, so assuming Naboo is a similar size they'd have to be going 8000 miles an hour to get there within an hour.

Obi-Wan fixes the system with little effort, startling a sea monster just outside the window that starts chasing them... and then gets eaten by another monster. Again. There really is always a bigger fish. Jar Jar freaks out over this, so the master uses the Force to make Jar Jar pass out, which also has the welcome side effect of stopping his mouth from moving.

Back at Theed we find that the Jedi are way too late, as the droid troops have captured Queen Amidala, apparently without a fight. Makes the tanks they brought feel a bit like overkill. In fact, it's weird how small-scale this invasion feels. I guess when you have spaceships you can skip ahead and go straight to the royal palace.

The viceroy comes down in a shuttle with the intention of making the queen sign a treaty that will legitimise their occupation. I'm not sure that's how it works, but he certainly believes that the Senate will ratify it if he can just get her signature. The queen refuses to cooperate though.

The bongo surfaces in a river nearby, looking a bit worse for wear. Fortunately, the forcefield windows never broke while they were underwater, immediately submerging them in the ultra-high-pressure water at the planet's core, thousands of miles from the air. That would've been bad.

Deleted scene

Though there is a deleted scene where it starts drifting over one of those giant waterfalls, and the Jedi master has to save them with a grappling rope. Even parking the boat turns into an epic crisis when Jar Jar's on board!

There's something really weird about this deleted scene and that's that the visual effects are completed. No filmmaker would ever do that, they add the effects after the editing is complete and they know exactly what they'll need.

What happened was that George Lucas thought the DVD special features would be a little more special if the deleted scenes were finished instead of just showing actors on bluescreens. Even the bloopers have finished effects!

The queen and her handmaidens are taken off to Camp 4, to some surprisingly light-hearted music, but fortunately the Jedi get ahead of them and leap down to take care of the droids. In fact, they're so little threat to them that Obi-Wan shows off with a split kick and his master puts his lightsaber away with four droids still standing because he can just push them over with the Force.

The Theed streets in these scenes were actually built for real as a set. Even the walls you can see under the bridge were really there. Not the domed roofs though, those were composited in.

They get to the hangar and the master suggests that the queen comes to Coruscant with them. Which I think is the first time the planet is ever mentioned in Star Wars. It's basically the capital city of the Republic and it'll be showing up a lot in the future.

The queen doesn't want to leave her people but the master is pretty sure she'll be dead if she stays here. What the Trade Federation is doing here doesn't make sense, so there must be something else driving them. Some kind of... phantom menace (he doesn't actually say that). Bibble says that she should leave and plead their case to the Senate and she looks around to her handmaidens as if looking for advice. One of them says "We are brave, Your Highness," and that seems to be the code for going along with that plan as the queen decides to leave for Coruscant with them.

But Bibble's staying behind on occupied Naboo! The dude's a hero.

The Jedi get to work freeing their pilots and claiming their ship: the shiniest royal starship in all of science fiction. It has a chrome finish, which is kind of a nightmare for the VFX team considering all the reflections it has... or doesn't have. I feel like if you fire up a bright green lightsaber under a giant mirror it should really be visible in the reflection somewhere at some point.

Speaking of lightsabers, they look fantastic in this film. I mean they don't light up the environment like modern lightsabers do, but they look very sharp and vivid. And they're extremely effective, slicing up droids like a hot lightsaber through butter. Some people might argue that action scenes are more entertaining when the opponent puts up any challenge whatsoever, but I'm pretty happy with these action scenes as they are. Obi-Wan even gets to do another split kick.

There's a better look at the queen's royal starship for you. It's the opposite of most of the ships in the Original Trilogy, all gleaming and smooth. Which makes sense as it's a royal starship, not a hot rod smuggler ship. It's also suspiciously similar to a SR-71 Blackbird.

I'm pretty sure the hangar and cliff was a miniature for this shot, but the ship itself is CGI and it doesn't quite look right to me. I mean I don't think it's reflecting the building properly as it leaves.

They've escaped Theed but they haven't escaped the planet yet as there's still that blockade to get through. The ship's hit by a million blasts, with the shield generator taking a serious hit.

Four astromechs are sent out to do repairs, but the blaster shots seem to be aimed right at them so three are killed in about a second. They die screaming as well, which has to be traumatic for the one that's left to fix the ship by himself. All his multi-coloured brothers are dead!

But he heroically stays there until the job's done and gets the shield working again. With full shields, they're able to get past the blaster barrage and become the first ship to actually run a blockade in Star Wars!

It's hard to really tell in the movie just how insanely massive these Trade Federation ships are. They're actually way bigger than a Star Destroyer, twice the length. Fortunately, any vessel with operational shields can just slip right past them!

Okay, it may be possible that the Naboo royal starship may have more powerful shields than your typical transport. Especially if they get them from the same place as the Gungans. Oh wait, the shields are invisible like on the ships in the classic Star Wars movies, so I guess not.

The bad news is that they don't have enough power to reach Coruscant as their hyperdrive took a hit and is leaking. So this is one of the rare situations in Star Wars where fuel is an issue.

They need to put the ship down somewhere closer to refuel and repair and Obi-Wan suggests Tatooine. Sure it's run by Hutts and the queen will be in great danger if they find out she's there, but they won't find out she's there.

The downside is that Tatooine suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. It's the sand planet, all that's there is sand, Jawas, Tusken Raiders, scum, villainy, and moisture farms. How do they even breathe there? Where does the oxygen come from? But the Star Wars movies have visited the planet in three of the last four movies and that number's going to keep going up.

Man, I did not realise how shiny this table was when the Jedi were in here. Also, it looks like someone's lowered Darth Sidious's holographic chair and it's hilarious.

The viceroy has to explain to Sidious that the queen got past their blockade, and he takes it pretty well. In fact, he says that his apprentice, Darth Maul, will find the ship for them so it's not even their problem anymore. Hey, it's the spiky guy with the red face from the poster!

We get a word in this scene that's never been mentioned in Star Wars up to this point: Sith. That's apparently what Maul is, though that's all the information we've been given so far. Except that they're good at finding ships.

Bloody hell, how did all that happen in the first 30 minutes of the film? There's too much movie in this movie!

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

At this point in A New Hope, all that had happened was Luke had bought some droids and one had run off. It was still building up to Luke's call to adventure, while The Phantom Menace has already left planet #1. I'm not even a quarter of the way through yet!

Though I'm close enough to call this the end of part one.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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COMING SOON

Thanks for reading! The second part (of five) should be coming soon... but then again I said that about the Star Trek episode Arena and that didn't happen, so who knows? My precognitive abilities have proven to be unreliable.

Leave a comment if you feel like it!