Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - Part 4

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the penultimate part of my Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace article! If you'd like to read one of the earlier parts instead, click the appropriate text: PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE.

One thing I can appreciate about the Star Wars movies is that they're still using the same logo as the first film, even though it was introduced way back in 1977. Sometimes you want things to change, I like it when TV series get different opening titles each season for instance, but this logo is exactly what people wanted to see on screen in 1999 and they were just as happy to see it when The Force Awakens came out in 2015. I can't think of another movie series that's been so consistent with its typography, certainly not Star Trek. It helps to bind the films together as one complete saga.

Okay, I'm about an hour and a quarter in at this point, and I'm going to be writing about a half-hour chunk of the movie in detail, so there will be SPOILERS. I'll almost certainly end up spoiling something that happens in the Original Trilogy as well, because I can't help it. I know some people start with Episode I, but I want to compare things to other things!

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Previously, in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace:

The good news is that Force-sensitive podracer Anakin Skywalker has won his freedom from slavery, along with the hyperdrive parts that Queen Amidala needs to continue her journey to Coruscant, capital city of the Republic. Everything else is bad. If the queen can't convince the Galactic Senate to take action and stop the Trade Federation's invasion of Naboo, her people are going to starve.

And now, the continuation:

Hey, it's Governor Bibble!

Viceroy Nute Gunray is riding around the Naboo royal palace on a weird spider chair reminding Bibble about how terrible things are for him. His people are starving to death for one thing, and he's going to die even sooner than they will. Bibble tries to explain that Naboo is a democracy and the people have decided... but he's interrupted before he can finish so we never learn what they decided. Did they decide not to be invaded? To not starve to death? To continue the taxation of trade routes to the outlying star systems?

Actually, I've got a better question: is that Queen Amidala's chair or did Gunray bring it down from his ship? Either way, it's weird and I don't like it. Anyway, we learn something important in this scene: the battle droids have started searching the swamps for the Gungan villages. So it turns out that Boss Nass was wrong and the Gungans really weren't safe from the Trade Federation.

Back on the queen's ship, Padmé finds Anakin shivering in the corner. He's used to living on a ridiculously hot planet and the ship's a bit cold for him, so she brings over a blanket for him. Jar Jar's there too, but he doesn't get a blanket.

Anakin's thinking about his mother and Padmé's thinking about how the queen is worried about what's going on back home. The queen will have to try to get the Senate to intervene, but she isn't sure what will happen. Padmé isn't sure, I mean.

In happier news, Anakin's carved a multifunctional pendant for Padmé. It'll help her remember him and it'll bring her luck. Obi-Wan would say there's no such thing as luck, but he isn't here right now and Padmé's grateful for the gift. 

Awesome, they've finally made it to Coruscant!

Here we finally get to meet Senator Palpatine and Supreme Chancellor Valorum in person, and it turns out that Valorum is played by Terrance Stamp. So that's cool.

The two Jedi are going to the Jedi Temple on Jedi business, so Anakin's going with Padmé for the time being. And Jar Jar coming too obviously, can't leave him out. In cinemas, the film jumped ahead here to show Amidala sitting in a fancy office listening to Senator Palpatine giving her even more bad news, but these days the film takes a minute to show them getting into an air taxi and flying across the city. The current version of The Phantom Menace has enough extra footage to run about 3 minutes longer than the theatrical release, I think, but this was the last extra scene that George Lucas edited in.

I like the way the sun flares as it peeks through the gap in the buildings, it really helps to sell the shot. 

The scene gives us a good look at one of the most important worlds in Star Wars and doesn't last long, so I'm giving this edit a thumbs up. Lucas could've inserted a bunch of goofy creatures doing goofy things, or maybe added a musical number, but he didn't. In fact, look how quiet and reserved this place is. All the slapstick comedy and funny alien designs are just gone. Even Jar Jar's behaving himself now. In fact, all we see of him here is Anakin dragging him away in the background.

There they are on the right. No place for those two in this serious political plot. There's no sign of Padmé either, though the queen has had another change of clothes and she's being played by Natalie Portman again.

Senator Palpatine explains that these days the Senate's full of "greedy squabbling delegates" and Supreme Chancellor Valorum's influence is limited while he's dealing with (baseless) accusations of corruption. He suggests that they get a new supreme chancellor voted in, even though this guy's been on their side from the start and was the one who sent two Jedi to help them out. The dude even has 'valor' in his name!

The guy playing Palpatine's great by the way. His performance is like an optical illusion: sometimes he seems slimy and manipulative, but change your focus slightly and he's suddenly he's a supportive ally who's talking a lot of sense. Basically, he's a politician. But he's the senator for Naboo, so he's our politician.

Hey, it's the Jedi Temple! A bloody massive building right in the middle of the galaxy's biggest city. Of course, the city covers the entire planet so every building is in the middle of it... but the point I'm making is that the Jedi aren't exactly getting in touch with nature here. Or humility.

The novelisation claims that there are about 10,000 Jedi, and I'm not sure if that means the building's too big or too small. All I know is that there are a lot more of them around at this point in history than there are in the Original Trilogy.

The film cuts to inside one of the four towers around the outside to show the Jedi High Council sitting around in a circle, a lot like the Gungan Council likes to do. Except the Jedi have got far more interesting chairs.

Damn George, you think you've got enough spaceships in that background? Here's some fun background trivia for you: this was an actual set with a bluescreen behind the windows to make it easy to composite the CGI in around the actors. But after filming Lucas decided he wanted the windows to be bigger, so ILM had to do the work of cutting around the Jedi's heads to remove a bit of the wall. 

There had been five Jedi in the Star Wars movies up to this point (Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Luke, Qui-Gon), so these two walking into a room with twelve other Jedi sitting in it just increased the number dramatically. It's also increased the number of female Jedi we've seen from zero to three.

We're finally getting to find out what the Jedi were like! Turns out that they're big fans of brown robes and being really sceptical about stuff. One of them, Ki-Adi-Mundi, thinks it's impossible that the bloke with the red lightsaber was a Sith as they haven't been seen for a thousand years, and Mace Windu isn't convinced either. At least Yoda's seems more open-minded.

Oh right, I should mention that Yoda's on the council! It's nice to see a familiar face, though the version of him you get depends on the version of the film you're watching. It turns out that I've been watching the DVD version all along, so I've got the original puppet version, and unfortunately they didn't pull him off so great this time around. He's not bad, but he's awkward enough that there wasn't exactly an outcry when he was replaced by a CGI version for the Blu-Ray release 12 years later.

The council also features Mace Windu, one of the two most badass humans in the galaxy. Well, I assume that he is anyway, as I can only see two humans on the council and these are the strongest Jedi there are...

...also he's played by Samuel L. Jackson.

I'm thrown off a bit by Jackson's performance however and I'm not sure whether it's because he had trouble making Lucas' dialogue sound good, or because it's such an unusual role for him. He had to dampen all his natural charisma. Also, that light wrap effect, the glow from the window, is distractingly unnatural somehow.

Windu assures Qui-Gon that they'll put all their resources into finding out who the mysterious lightsaber guy is, and says "May the Force be with you," to indicate that he can go now. Qui-Gon's not done yet, however, as he mentions that he's encountered a vergence in the Force in the form of a 9-year-old with mad podracing skills. He reveals that Anakin's cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians he's seen and it's possible that he was even conceived by them.

He thinks Anakin ticks all the boxes to be the chosen one foretold in prophecy who will bring balance to the Force. Yeah, I'm not keen on the light wrap in this scene at all.

Windu does an incredibly obvious sigh and says "Bring him before us, then". There are many ways to react to the news that someone's found a kid foretold in prophecy who was basically born from the Force and has more potential than any of them, and he decided to go with 'I guess we're wasting half an hour on this bullshit then'. He's very dismissive, in contrast with Qui-Gon who shows a bit of curiosity and clearly gives a damn about things, and Yoda who has a 'we shouldn't rule anything out' attitude.

Honestly, the council didn't come out of this scene looking so great.

Nice statues. Would it have killed them to have a bit of a park though? A bit of greenery? I'm starting to wonder if trees are banned on this planet. Yeah, I know that there's even more city underneath, you'd have to dig a long way down before you hit soil, but you can have gardens on top of buildings.

This massive mushroom is the Galactic Senate, the heart of the Republic's government. It's where people sit around in a circle. It's a pretty big circle this time though, with representatives from every planet in the Republic sitting in hover pods. 

The Senate was first mentioned early on in A New Hope, when Princess Leia tried to use her status as a senator to avoid being taken away by Darth Vader. So we're finally getting to see where Leia worked!

It's not a great place to be if you suffer from vertigo. It's also kind of dark and oppressive, not to mention echoey. I can't say it doesn't look cool though; those are some proper sci-fi visuals. It's a bit more impressive than the galactic councils we've gotten in other space opera franchises. I think.

I should probably check.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Here's Star Trek's Federation Council by comparison, as seen in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. That's the one with the whales in it.

It's equally as grey and dreary as the Star Wars senate, but it's on a much smaller scale and it's not even circular. Though I feel that the people in this room likely get more done. Maybe it's because I've been told that the Galactic Senate is mired in corruption and caught up in endless debates, or maybe it's because there's something like 2000 fewer people in here and they're sitting close enough to actually see each other.

Babylon 5 2-20: The Long, Twilight Struggle

Meanwhile, Babylon 5's council is like a tiny scale model of itself. One Galactic Senate pod would basically fill the room; you could seat maybe 20 people in here. But sometimes it's not the quantity of the aliens but the quality of the alien makeup that matters, and these guys are surprisingly good for the budget they were working with. Plus the room is circular!

Anyway, Senator Palpatine flies over in the Naboo pod to address the Senate. He points out that they were just having a bit of a disagreement over the taxation of trade routes to the outlying star systems, when suddenly the Trade Federation took things too far. Queen Amidala gets as far as saying "The Naboo system has been invaded by the droid armies of the Trade" before the Trade Federation senator comes over to say 'Nope, didn't happen, there's no proof,' and recommends they send a commission over to check.

Hang on, they really have no proof that they've been invaded? There's no evidence on the queen's ship? What about that fake hologram message from Bibble telling her to come back... oh wait, that was fake. Man, it's a shame the two Jedi ambassadors that the supreme chancellor himself sent out are busy right now, plus that R2 unit that records everything. 

Palpatine whispers to Amidala that the bureaucrats are whispering to Valorum to tell him what to do, as they're the true rulers here. Also, they're on the payroll of the Trade Federation. Poor Amidala looks a bit upset by the whole thing.

The chancellor concedes the Trade Federation's point and asks Amidala "Will you defer your motion to allow a commission to explore the validity of your accusations?" Man, how is this the same movie as the one where Jar Jar stepped in poop and got farted on?

Amidala will not defer! People are dying right now and they need to sort this out immediately, not wait for a commission. In fact, she goes straight to declaring a vote of no confidence in him! Valorum looks pretty shaken by this; I don't think he saw it coming. He only asked her if she'd defer her motion! The Senate starts yelling 'vote now!' so I guess this is happening.

It's sunset now and we get a bit of a chat between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon about Anakin. Obi-Wan feels that there's no way that 'the boy' will pass the Council's tests as he's 'too old'. Man, I guess Yoda wasn't lying in Empire Strikes Back when he said that the 20-something Luke was too old for training.

I like how the Jedi Council isn't just the 'Good Guys Club', as they've got some weird traditions. Like taking babies away from their families to train them in their religion.

Qui-Gon says he doesn't care what the Council says, he'll just train the kid anyway, and Obi-Wan points out that he'd be on the Council by now if he'd just stop defying them. So we've seen the most powerful Jedi being aloof, we've seen the most powerful Republic leaders being useless, and now we're seeing a man who'll turn power down in order to do what he personally believes to be right.

Cut to Windu giving Anakin an ESP test, looking at objects on a screen and having the kid tell him what they are. The ones we see are 'ship', 'cup', 'ship' and 'speeder' so if anyone ever gives you a Jedi test, answer "ship" every time and they're going to think you're at least half a Jedi. Unfortunately, this council of telepaths sees right through him as well, realising that he's afraid to lose his mother.

Yoda points out that this is bad because "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." He said in Empire Strikes Back that fear and anger are the dark side of the Force, but here we're getting a whole chain of emotions. Funny thing is, this is probably the most fearless 9-year-old in the galaxy. Personally I'd be terrified here on this strange cold alien planet, standing in a room full of a stern adult strangers who are going to determine my entire future based on criteria only they know.

Here's the thing that's bothering me right now though: the setting sun is directly behind Anakin, so why is he being lit from the right? This ain't Tatooine, Coruscant only has the one star.

Hey, it's night now.

We're getting all the memes in this next scene. It starts with Jar Jar asking Amidala "Yousa tinking yousa people ganna die?" and goes to Senator Palpatine saying "A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one".

This is actually Jar Jar's most important scene in the movie though, as he reminds Amidala that the Gungans have an army and won't go down without a fight. It's not news to her, he mentions it's probably the reason the Naboo don't like them, but it's useful information that no one else could've reminded her of.

Senator Palpatine and Captain Panaka arrive with good news. They've learned that he's one of the three people nominated to become supreme chancellor, the other two being Bail Antilles of Alderaan and Ainlee Teem of Malastare... hang on what happened to Bail Organa of Alderaan? Did Antilles marry an Organa and take his wife's last name? Anyway, if Palpatine wins it'll be the best possible outcome for them, and he's pretty certain he'll win. The occupation of Naboo will gain him sympathy votes.

This still isn't happening fast enough for Amidala however. It's become clear to her that the Republic doesn't function so she's going to head back to Naboo herself. Which is something Palpatine doesn't want to happen, as she'll be forced to sign the treaty.

So to summarise:

1. Amidala went to the Senate and asked for their help.
2. The chancellor, her biggest ally, said 'can we send someone to check if you've been invaded first?' so she got him fired, in the hopes that he'd be replaced by someone better.
3. Things went better than expected, as it seems like their own senator might get the job!
4. Amidala declared the whole Senate hopelessly broken and went home.
   

I mean she may not be wrong, we don't know, but it's only been one evening! She just came in, wrecked a man's career and then strolled off again the same day.

It's getting really dark at this point, and now we're getting a good look at the outside of the Jedi High Council's tower. Seems the room takes up the entire floor, and the columns between the windows continue on through the roof to form spikes.

It's our third visit to the High Council today and... hang on, that's a corridor on the left. The room's entirely circular and takes up the whole floor, so how is there a corridor? Where does it go?

Anyway, they've determined that Anakin definitely has Force powers... but they're not going to train him as he's too old. What was the point of all the tests then! Or is 'too old' just another way of saying 'too attached to people outside of the Jedi Order'?

Qui-Gon says he'll train him then, and they say 'Nope, can't do it, you're already training Obi-Wan'. Obi-Wan says he's ready to take the trials and finish his training, but Windu is really keen for them to get back to the Sith plot instead. They're pretty sure that mysterious lightsaber guy is going to go after the queen again, so they're going to be sent with her to find out who he is. The council said earlier that they were going to put all their resources into determining his identity and it turns out their resources are Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.

Qui-Gon decides they're going to take Anakin with them, so he can hang around and take notes. You might think it'd be a bit dangerous to take a 9-year-old on a mission to Occupied Naboo to look for a deadly Sith Lord, but I guess from a Jedi's point of view if he's too old for training then he's old enough for it.

Obi-Wan thinks that it's Anakin who's dangerous, in fact all the council does, and he doesn't get why Qui-Gon can't sense it. Qui-Gon didn't sense danger on the Trade Federation ship at the start either now that I think about it. He's all about being in the moment while the others are more mindful of the future.

It's at this point that Qui-Gon explains midi-chlorians to Anakin. Turns out they're a lot like mitochondria, symbiotic organisms that live inside the cells of basically all life. Maybe midi-chlorians share the cells with mitochondria, maybe they don't have mitochondria in this galaxy, we don't know.

A New Hope said that the Force was generated by all living things, this adds to that by saying the Force can also be accessed by all living things... to varying degrees. The midi-chlorians tell people the will of the Force and it seems like having a lot of them makes you strong with the Force. Or perhaps being strong with the Force makes you have a lot of them; I don't know, I'm working with limited information here!

The important thing is that a lot of fans absolutely hate this, presumably because it adds a measurable biological aspect to something that has to this point been very spiritual. I mean we've always known that Force sensitivity can be passed down through a family, Luke's father has it, he has it... his sister has it, but this takes some of the mystery out of why. This isn't something anyone wanted to be explained in any way, especially not 16 years after Return of the Jedi. I mean there were folks who already had 'Jedi' listed as their religion, and now their bible was being updated!

Personally though, my reaction when I saw this scene the first time was 'oh, okay'. It doesn't contradict anything established in the previous movies, so I'm cool with it. Continuity is my religion.

The heroes pile into their shiny spaceship and fly back to Naboo. They're in basically the same situation as they were when they left, except now they've got a young podracer in the cockpit learning how to fly a ship. Also, the blockade's gone, leaving a single ship to control the droids.

Qui-Gon's still a bit confused about what Amidala hopes to achieve here, but it turns out that she was paying attention to Jar Jar during his "Yousa tinking yousa people ganna die?" scene. This must be why she gave up on the Senate so quickly: they don't need to get a Republic army, as they have an army at home!

The army at home is all Jar Jars.

Jar Jar does another useful thing, leading them to the Gungan sacred place, where they keep all their old half-buried statue heads. They're not Gungan statues though, interestingly. This was a physical miniature I believe, with CGI Gungans composite in.

Amidala and her entourage are brought up before Gungan leader Boss Nass, but the Jedi aren't allowed to use their power to mind-control him this time. For some reason.

Keira Knightley is playing Amidala again for this scene, with Natalie Portman back to playing her handmaiden Padmé, though not for long as she reveals that she is the real queen! The other one is a decoy and bodyguard. Okay, I thought it was weird that they had a 14-year-old as a queen, but it's maybe even weirder to have a 14-year-old bodyguard protecting her. And I thought the Jedi were reckless with their children!

I don't know if this was supposed to be a surprise to Qui-Gon, who's been saying things like "The queen doesn't need to know," to Padmé all through the Tatooine chapter, but he definitely looks a bit surprised to me. And there's no doubt that Anakin's mind has been blown.

The trouble with this twist these days is that everyone can recognise Natalie Portman and some people get Keira Knightley as well, so they pick up the switch early on. Then they either predict that the other one is a decoy, or they start to question their own memory. Was that really Natalie Portman in the first scene of the queen at the start of the movie??? 

Anyway, Queen Padmé Amidala wins over Boss Nass with a bit of begging, convincing him that they don't consider themselves superior to the Gungans, and now they're all working on the problem of their planet being occupied. Boss Nass's contribution to the preparations is to make Jar Jar Binks a general, which is amazing because they've actually met before. Boss Nass knows Jar Jar, he knows what he's like, and he understands exactly what he's doing here. I don't understand it though! Does he have a bunch of soldiers that he wants him to get killed or something?

Also, how are these two the same species? Nass's eyes aren't even on stalks!

Amidala has a plan and it involves a decoy. They're going to use the Gungan army as a diversion to lure the droid army out away from Theed, giving her and the Naboo underground resistance a chance to use another diversion to get into the palace. Once inside they just need to get to the throne room and captured Viceroy Gunray.

Oh, plus they'll be sending all their pilots to blow up the droid control ship.

Back at the palace, the viceroy is having to walk as Sidious's hologram is using the spider legs for a bit. He's wobbling down the hallway on a walking projector. Also Darth Maul is there, in person this time.

Sidious gives us the iconic line "Wipe them out, all of them," as he instructs them to kill the 'primitives' assembling in the swamp. 

The Gungans' primitive CGI army rides out of the mist onto a Windows desktop wallpaper. Then they activate the advanced shield generators mounted on the backs of giant animals. Oops, it turns out that actually have some very good technology and the Trade Federation just assumed this was going to be an Ewok situation I guess. I have a question though: where did the animals come from? Do they keep them underwater in the city?

Meanwhile, Amidala and the others get into the palace as a resistance speeder keeps the tanks busy. Anakin's still tagging along with them on this covert raid, but their ship was discovered so I guess he has nowhere to be. I guess the safest place to be in any situation is going to be right behind two Jedi, though Qui-Gon tells him to find a place to hide as they enter the hangar for the second time in this movie.

There's a whole bunch of multicoloured R2s in the corner, which is good because the pilots are going to need them for their ships. These N-1 Naboo Starfighters are a bit like X-Wings in that they have a port for a droid co-pilot... and R2 deliberately/accidentally gets grabbed and pulled up into one of them. Anakin decides to follow him, thinking that a cockpit would be a great place to hide.

I love Naboo Starfighters; they're so sleek and Art Deco and they barely look a thing like Anakin's podracer until you look at them too long. They look like they're from a more civilised time (or the 1950s), and they belong to a better-equipped space force that can afford to keep them clean and well-maintained. They don't even have any panels missing, they're breaking all the rules of Star Wars spaceship design!

Now that the fighters have launched, these two simultaneous battles just became three simultaneous battles. It's doing the Return of the Jedi thing again!

The trouble is that there's no one we know in the space battle and no one we care about in the Gungan battle. Also, this whole thing is entirely CGI and feels like it. This was supposed to be a big highlight of the movie, an amazing spectacle, but I don't think it really works.

The droids eventually give up trying to blast through the impressive Gungan shields and offload their troops instead. The droids just march right through the shield, like the AT-AT walkers did in Empire Strikes Back... also Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon did it at the start of the movie when they entered the underwater city.

One of the Gungans says "Ouch time," and it's not even Jar Jar.

Suddenly everyone can hear boss music as the hangar door opens to reveal Darth Maul! It's the legendary "Duel of the Fates", the best new Star Wars theme to come out of the entire Prequel Trilogy.

Amidala's troops see the mysterious man in black standing there alone, without even a squad of Stormtroopers backing him up, and they understand right away that this route is a dead end. The Jedi say that they'll handle it, then take their robes off and get ready for the rematch, while the others wisely take the long way around.

It turns out that Amidala is surprisingly adept with a pistol and she's leading her troops into battle without the Jedi's help. Unfortunately, she's blocked by droidekas with blaster-resistant shields, so now she's in a bit of trouble.

Then Darth Maul finally fires up his full double-bladed lightsaber and the audience goes crazy! Especially when the guy takes on both Qui-Gon and Anakin at the same time with zero fear or hesitation. So now three simultaneous battles just became four simultaneous battles.

At this point in 1999 no one had ever seen a different kind of lightsaber or a two vs one battle, not in the movies anyway, so this would've been pretty amazing. 24 years later though it's a little less impressive and... actually no, it's still awesome. Right now this looks like it's going to be the most spectacular fight scene in the Star Wars films so far. In fact the film is promising a visual effects extravaganza beyond anything audiences had ever seen.

But I've already written too much, so I'm going to have talk about the movie's epic climax some other time. Sorry.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART FIVE

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COMING SOON

Next, on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the last 20 minutes of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace! At least, I'm hoping they're the last 20 minutes. If the film keeps going any longer than that I'm just going to have to call it done and move on, as I've got other things to do! I've got more Star Trek and Babylon 5 to write about, for instance.