Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures it's the second part of my epic five-part article about Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace! If you want to go back to part one, CLICK HERE.

You might be wondering why I'm covering the film in five parts instead of four, or three, or one. Well, I did start off with one part, but then I just kept finding more and more to write about. George Lucas had a similar problem when he was coming up with the first Star Wars, as he found that he had enough story for a trilogy. Or a trilogy of trilogies in fact. I mean he didn't have the whole Prequel Trilogy written down in 1976, but he had backstory figured out that could be used as a foundation for more movies. Plus he called Empire Strikes Back 'Episode V', which was a definite hint that he had prequel episodes in mind.

I get the impression that people have gotten a bit wary of prequels, the shine's worn off the idea a bit, but I don't think they were much of a thing back in the 90s when this came out. In fact, I have a suspicion that The Phantom Menace is what really kicked off the trend and it's probably not a coincidence that a couple of years later Star Trek suddenly came up with its own prequel, Enterprise. The thing about Star Wars though, is so much of the story was still untold. We'd never gotten any hint about the origins of Darth Vader or the Empire, or who Luke's mother was etc. So unlike a lot of prequels, this trilogy was far from redundant. But was it any good? I'll let you know what I think, and you can me know what you think afterwards.

There will be SPOILERS here for Episode IV, Episode V, Episode VI and Episode I. Like major revelations about a character's identity you might not want to know.

---

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

Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute. Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo.

The Supreme Chancellor sent two Jedi over to sort the situation out. Five minutes later the Neimoidians had invaded the planet with an army of robots and the Jedi went on a perilous journey with a clumsy Gungan called Jar Jar Binks to reach the royal place and get Queen Amidala out of captivity. They ran the blockade with the Naboo royal starship, but the ship took damage and will have to set down on Tatooine to get refuelled and repaired. Unfortunately, the Neimoidians are secretly working for the mysterious Darth Sidious, who's sent his apprentice Darth Maul out to find the queen and get her to sign a treaty that'll legitimise the invasion.

And now, the continuation:

Droids never got a lot of recognition for their heroism in the Original Trilogy, but the Naboo apparently have more appreciation for their synthetic servants. The astromech responsible for repairing the shields and saving the ship has been brought up to meet the queen herself!

Captain Panaka says that he's an extremely well-put-together droid (even for a mechanic on a royal starship), and his name is... R2-D2! It's nice to see the guy again and to learn that his build quality is exemplary, but it's going to get a bit absurd if we keep running into familiar faces like his. Not that R2 has a face.

Also, I can't take this scene seriously anymore as the amazing Auralnauts dub has ruined it for me (YouTube link). I keep thinking that Keira Knightley's going to say "Thank you magic trash can." Oh, she's taking over playing the queen for this section of the film by the way, with Natalie Portman now playing her handmaiden Padmé. They look the same, it's fine.

The queen sends Padmé to clean the droid, just like how Luke was sent to clean him in A New Hope! Except this time there's no secret message from royalty. I wonder if this kind of thing is one of Padmé's hobbies. I mean, there has to be a reason why she was the one the queen picked to do this job.

Jar Jar comes down to chat, explaining that he's getten berry berry scared... and that's the scene over. I guess Lucas thought we might be missing him and wanted to give him a little extra screen time, even though he's an incredibly expensive effect that required a team of animators to bring to life.

R2-D2 wasn't cheap either, mostly because all the remote-controlled props they'd built kept screwing up and ruining takes. The producers eventually tasked two separate teams to come up with a better R2 that could make it across sets and sandy locations without it falling over and its head rolling off, in the hopes that at least one of them would have some success. I think they mostly got there in the end.

Speaking of mechanical failure, it turns out that the jump to Tatooine has finished off their hyperdrive, so now they'll need to buy a new one while they're here. On the plus side, this means that we get to see what a hyperdrive looks like, or the generator at its core at least. It slides up from the middle of the floor; you can see the hatch in the screencap above.

The two Jedi are going to split up, with Obi-Wan staying with his ship while his master goes shopping. He's wearing a cowboy disguise over his Jedi robes so that no one figures out he's a Jedi... which is kind of ironic seeing as when Obi-Wan wore his robes in A New Hope, they seemed like typical Tatooine desert fashion.

They land the ship in the outskirts of a settlement and I'm going to make a guess that this is probably the physical miniature we're looking at this time. It definitely wasn't a full-scale prop, as all they had built here was a ramp hanging from some scaffolding.

This scene was filmed on location in the middle of the Sahara desert. Well, the very northern border of the Sahara desert really, roughly 15 miles outside of Tozeur, Tunisia. The temperatures were apparently ridiculous, about 140°F, which makes it amazing that they had Ahmed Best there in a Jar Jar Binks costume, suffering for his art. In fact, it doesn't really make any sense why they've brought a clumsy eye-catching aquatic creature to a scorching desert world when they're trying to avoid attention. They should've given him his own poncho, or some sun tan lotion at least.

Padmé's also coming along, because the queen is curious about the planet. She wants one of her handmaidens to see it for herself and report back.

Hey, it's the first appearance of a Gozanti-class cruiser. These things start showing up in the TV series later. There are also some swoop bikes back there, as seen in the game Shadows of the Empire a few years back. Oh, and there's a bantha peeking out on the left.

I might have mentioned this before, but one thing I really like about Star Wars is how consistent it is with its props, vehicles, aliens, animals and architecture etc. They haven't tried to reimagine, reinvent or retcon Tatooine, so for people who've seen the earlier films it feels like they're returning to an actual place they already know. Using familiar designs like this helps an audience know where and when they are.

Unless it's a familiar design from an entirely different movie, like this EVA pod from 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's just going to confuse people.

Anyway, Tatooine's shown up in two of the movies so far, but this is the first time Lucasfilm had returned to the planet in years. Two years to be precise, as the 1997 Special Edition of A New Hope had enabled Lucas to throw distracting CGI comedy aliens all over the streets of Mos Eisley, forever. Fortunately, things are a bit calmer where the heroes are now. Also, I don't think it's ever said, but the place they're visited is called Mos Espa. A New Hope's Mos Eisley is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, while Mos Espa is a massive sprawling city.

The production crew used a combination of techniques to realise this city, but they started off by building actual streets out in the desert in Tunisia. These sets are actually still there to this day, though it's a bit of a drive to get to them and they're far less impressive without all the props around and the VFX composited in.

This means you can actually go visit the actual place where Jar Jar steps in poop with bare feet. Though the script claims that it's 'ooze'. Either way, he's going to be walking it around everywhere now. Starting with one of the smaller junk dealers.

Here we get to meet the third potentially-offensive caricature in the movie: the greedy merchant with the accent and the big nose. Personally I'm going to take the producers at their word that he's just a hummingbird alien and there's nothing more to it than that. If I can buy that Star Trek's Ferengi aren't a caricature, even though they're all played by Jewish actors, I can accept Watto.

Turns out that Watto has a young boy working for him and he calls him out to watch the store while he deals with his customer. Padmé's been left behind as well and the kid asks her if she's an angel. So angels are confirmed to maybe exist in the Star Wars universe. They live on the moon of Iego, apparently, and he's heard deep space pilots describe them as being the most beautiful creatures in the universe. Okay, is this 9-year-old trying to chat her up right now?

We're getting a lot of focus on this kid all of a sudden, as he tells Padmé and us his entire backstory. He says he's been a pilot "all his life" and he knows he's going to fly away from this place, someday. His situation's a bit complicated though. Turns out that and his mother were bought to Tatooine as slaves by Gardulla the Hutt, who then lost them both to Watto by betting on podraces. He's a bit touchy about the 'slave' thing though, explaining that he's a person and his name is Anakin.

Everyone watching this back when the film was released knew that the kid was Anakin Skywalker, it was part of the marketing. They gave it away in the trailer and there's an iconic poster of him with Darth Vader's shadow.

But to new viewers who decide to watch the movie after the Original Trilogy, this scene can actually work as a shocking reveal. Assuming they remember that Luke's dad is called Anakin.

It's still a bit vague when the movie takes place, so it's possible for people to assume the kid is Luke at first. He could've even been young Han Solo! But nope, this is biggest villain in the Star Wars franchise. And people watching the films in episode order have no idea.

Of course, Padmé doesn't have any idea either, about anything. She's the handmaiden to a queen, literally from a different world, she doesn't know the first thing about people living in slavery on sandy crapworlds. And Jar Jar is still being clueless in his own way. He goes and does something stupid which knocks over some stuff in the shop, to make sure the kids in the audience are still awake. Though the kid in the shop looks actually appalled by him.

Watto tells the Jedi master that he's the only one in this city with the hyperdrive he needs and I guess the Jedi's just going to take him at his word. The guy is loaded, with 20,000 Republic dataries, but the trader won't accept that currency, and he won't accept Jedi mind tricks either as they don't work on Toydarians. Fortunately, it doesn't seem like he suspects the master is a Jedi so the group's cover remains intact.

You could argue that the master is a bit of a dick for trying to mind-control Watto into accepting money he can't convert on this planet. Though on the other hand... can he really not convert it on this planet? It's a spaceport, there are people coming and going from all kinds of worlds. Hey, maybe they could hire one of them to take them to Coruscant! The queen could go in disguise so no one knows it's her.

The master calls up Obi-Wan to see if there's anything of value on the ship, but the best they've got is the queen's wardrobe, which somehow isn't worth enough despite being infinite. I'm glad they mentioned it though, because it's nice to have an explanation for how the queen still manages to have a different outfit in practically every scene. They don't mention the possibility of selling the Naboo royal starship and buying a cheap transport, but I guess that would paint a target on them instantly.

The master goes off to look for another solution while Jar Jar notices some dead creatures hanging up in a stall and decides he's going to just steal one with his tongue, right in front of everyone. He gets caught and lets it go, sending it flinging off into some other guy's soup. The guy is understandably furious and comes over to grab Jar Jar by the neck. It's a very cathartic moment.

I know people say that Jar Jar Binks is there to entertain younger kids, but I don't think I've ever been young enough in my life to find him amusing. And he's there on screen constantly. Even when he's not the focus of the scene here's doing something in the background. He makes everything Jar Jar flavoured.

Anakin comes over to Jar Jar's rescue and it turns out he knows this guy. He's called Sebulba and they've raced against each other. Sebulba's got a pretty unique design as he walks on his hands and holds things with his legs. But he's raising his fist here, so I don't know if that's going to count as a punch or a kick.

Anyway, Anakin talks Sebulba down and now he's hanging around with the group too. A New Hope took two thirds of the movie to finally put Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie and the droids together, so Phantom Menace has a faster time, but... well, they're not really as fun to watch. There are zero sassy princesses here. The Jedi master does have a lightsaber though, and Anakin notices it.

Suddenly a storm comes in and they have to make a run for shelter. Fortunately, Anakin offers to bring them all to his house, which is kind of weird but okay.

Funny thing is, there actually was a storm one night during production, and it made a real mess of their sets. They had to work hard to get back on track.

Anakin's mother reacts surprisingly well to seeing a couple of strange men in her house. I suppose Padmé's making it less awkward.

The master introduces himself as Qui-Gon Jinn, which means we finally have a name for the protagonist, just 35 minutes into the movie! It's not a problem that he wasn't named, plenty of protagonists remain nameless, it's just kind of weird to wait so long to reveal it when everyone else got named almost immediately. Well, except for Anakin's mother. I don't think we ever learn that she's called Shmi Skywalker.

Then the most realistic thing in the whole movie happens, as Anakin immediately drags Padmé away to see the droid he's building in his bedroom.

It's C-3PO! So yeah Darth Vader built C-3PO as a child. Man, this is like one of those flashback stories where it turns out that Batman, the Joker, Catwoman and Commissioner Gordon all went to school together, or whatever. To be fair it probably seems a lot less ridiculous to people who decide to watch the movies in episode order.

C-3PO doesn't have an outer shell yet, so there was no suit for actor Anthony Daniels to wear this time. Instead, 3PO was a puppet attached to a puppeteer who was painstakingly painted out, while Daniels just provided the voice. The look of it is very convincing, the movement is less so. He's really stumbling around.

So this is the historic first meeting between C-3PO and his counterpart R2-D2, and the very first thing the astromech says after introducing himself is that he's naked and his parts are showing. That's because R2 works on the queen's starship and has the highest standards of construction and C-3PO was built by a child out of junk on a sand planet. R2 is a royal mechanic, C-3PO is the butler to a slave.

Oh, Anakin also has another project going on: a podracer!

Back on the ship, the queen gets a message from Governor Bibble saying that the death toll is getting catastrophic and they need to bow to Viceroy Gunray's wishes. Seems a bit suspicious, seeing as Bibble was the one who encouraged her to leave Naboo and speak with the Senate. Obi-Wan thinks it's a trick to get them to send a reply so the Neimoidians can establish a connection trace and find their location. So they won't be sending any transmissions. This is presumably also why they're not just calling the Jedi to send a ship to pick them up.

Then we get to see the planet Coruscant for the very first time! Well almost, it did make a cameo at the end of the Return of the Jedi Special Edition two years earlier. Plus there's the video games.

Star Wars: TIE Fighter (PC)

The planet was originally introduced in the 1991 novel Heir to the Empire and had been depicted in games like 1994's TIE Fighter and 1998's Rebellion, so this is a rare case of something outside the main canon eventually becoming a major part of the movies.

And it is a really major part of Star Wars from this point on, as it's the capital city of the Republic and later the Empire.

Here we get the very first scene to be filmed on the very first day of filming, all about Darth Sidious and Darth Maul having a chat on a balcony.

Turns out the trace worked, so they know that the queen is on Tatooine. Hang on, Obi-Wan told them not to make any transmissions! Did someone on the ship ignore him and give Bibble a call? 

Anyway, Sidious tells Maul to go to Tatooine and take out the Jedi first. That way he'll have no trouble bringing the queen back to Naboo to sign the treaty. Hang on, the viceroy didn't tell Sidious that the Jedi had escaped with the queen. How does he know about them?

Maul replies "At last, we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last, we will have revenge." He doesn't use his own voice though, as like Darth Vader the character was played by two people. Ray Park provided the face and the martial arts skills, and actor Peter Serafinowicz provided the menacing voice. Hang on, revenge for what? I don't know if we ever find that out.

Then we get to see everyone having dinner at Shmi Skywalker's house. I'm a bit surprised that their house is so big, seeing as they're lowly slaves. We get some exposition here explaining that they have a transmitter placed somewhere in their body and if they try to escape they blow up. So that's a bit dark. Also, Anakin's been trying to make a scanner to detect his implant. The kid's a lot more proactive than Luke was.

Anakin changes the subject to podracing, saying that he's the only human who can do it. Qui-Gon says he must have Jedi reflexes, and then just happens to grab Jar Jar's tongue the moment he goes to snatch someone else's food with it. The kid had already figured that Qui-Gon is a Jedi Knight from his 'laser sword' but Qui-Gon helps put his mind at ease by saying he might have just killed a Jedi and stolen it. Anakin doesn't buy it, as no one can kill a Jedi, they're too good. One thing that Lucas wanted to do in the movie is prove that wrong.

We learn that Anakin had a dream he was a Jedi and freed the slaves, and he's wondering if Qui-Gon's come to beat him to it. That might be why he invited him into his home now that I think about it. But Qui-Gon immediately makes it clear he's not there to free any slaves; he's not stringing anyone along here.

Qui-Gon comes clean and admits they're on a secret mission to Coruscant, but their ship is broken. Shmi mentions that the junk traders all gamble on the races and immediately regrets it when Anakin reveals that he's built the fastest podracer ever. The kid loves podracing and it turns out that there just happens to be a big race he can enter tomorrow on Boonta Eve!

Podracing is an incredibly risky sport and Shmi hates it when Anakin does it, but she has to admit that there's no other way for them to get what they want without her kid helping them. In fact, she feels he was meant to help them. So the plan is that they're going to pretend Anakin's homemade podracer belongs to Qui-Gon and then they're going to put a 9-year-old into a perilous race to win them some parts.

Padmé's not happy about putting Anakin in actual danger for their own benefit, saying that the queen wouldn't approve, but Qui-Gon just replies that the queen doesn't have to know.

Alright, the film may have been slightly confusing so far, especially on a first watch, but here's a scene that you may need a notepad to figure out. I don't know why, it's pretty simple when you see the deal written down, but in dialogue I found it weirdly hard to follow.

What Qui-Gon wants is to get Anakin into the race, driving the podracer he's secretly built. If Anakin wins the race they get the money they need to escape the planet and everything's great. But Qui-Gon can't afford the entry fee and Watto owns his driver.

Qui-Gon tells Watto that he's going to put his ship up as the entry fee. It's not said whether he gets it back or not if Anakin wins, but it's not ideal either way. He also claims he won a podracer in a game of chance, because he's a big damn liar.

Watto says he wants 50% of the winnings for allowing his slave to be the driver. Qui-Gon refines the deal, saying that Watto can have all the winnings, minus what he needs to fix the ship, as long as he provides the entry fee. If Anakin loses, Watto gets the broken ship to make up for the money he's spent.

Yeah that's not complicated at all. Why did I have trouble catching all of that the first time?

Qui-Gon has a chat with Shmi about Anakin, explaining that he appears to have quick reflexes because he has the power to see things before they happen. So in A New Hope when Obi-Wan was teaching Luke how to deflect blasters with his lightsaber and he said "Stretch out with your feelings," he meant 'use your precognitive abilities to predict where the shots will come from'.

We also learn a bit about how they recruit new Jedi in this time period, as Qui-Gon tells her that if Anakin had been born in the Republic they would've identified him by now. It's pretty obvious that the Force is unusually strong with him.

He asks her who the kid's father is and we get a surprising new fact about Darth Vader... the kid didn't have a dad. Shmi is the Virgin Mary and Anakin is Space Jesus. Though actually, looking at him, I think Qui-Gon might be Space Jesus.

The next scene reveals that Anakin has friends here, which is cool. It's nice to know his life isn't all that terrible. Though they might also be slaves, and that is kind of bad.

Turns out that Anakin's been working on this podracer for years and he doesn't even know if it's going to start up, which is maybe a bit of a problem! There's a deleted scene which shows R2-D2 and C-3PO continuing to work on the thing after Anakin falls asleep, which might help explain how it miraculously gets finished overnight. I mean R2's a mechanic on the Queen of Naboo's royal starship, the guy knows how to fix stuff. He's also the one who gives it its paint job.

But in the finished film, the character we see working on the engines is...

...Jar Jar Binks!

It doesn't take the heroes long to discover why you don't let Jar Jar fix stuff, as he manages to stick his head in the beam between the energy binders and make his tongue numb, then drop his tool into the jet engine and get his hand trapped. This is apparently a tense scene for young children as Anakin's preparing to start the thing up. Even though Jar Jar's in plain sight of all the other characters. Luckily Padmé comes over and frees his hand in the nick of time.

Turns out that the podracer Anakin built out of junk actually works! Plus Jar Jar's numb mouth means he isn't going to be able to talk for hours. Really this couldn't have gone better.
 

Cut to Qui-Gon cleaning a cut that Anakin has mysteriously ended up with. There's a deleted scene where he gets into a fight with Greedo (the bounty hunter Han Solo guns down in A New Hope), so it might have been from that, but I'm not sure. All I know is that Greedo isn't in the final film, thankfully! It's okay if every character in Star Wars didn't grow up on the same block.

Qui-Gon takes some of his blood and claims he's checking it for infections. But then he sends it to Obi-Wan to get a midi-chlorian count. A lot of fans really don't like them midi-chlorians and that message was well received by Lucasfilm, as in the last 24 years they've only been mentioned in one other movie and like four TV episodes. But I'll be talking about them later when Qui-Gon gets around to explaining what they are.

The important thing is that Anakin's midi-chlorian count is over 20,000, which is both the highest and the only midi-chlorian count we've ever gotten. All we know is that it's higher than Yoda's count and he's the most powerful Jedi alive.

Then we get to see Darth Maul's spaceship, a Sith Infiltrator called the Scimitar. When it's wings are folded out it looks a lot like TIE Fighter and in-universe it's by the same manufacturer, so we're getting to see how starship design trends evolve over time.

Maul sends out some probe droids to do a bit of snooping around the local settlements for the queen, so there is even more time pressure for the heroes now.

For anyone who was feeling that the galaxy seemed too advanced, clean and well-maintained to belong in a Star Wars prequel, here you go, have some old-school Star Wars-looking technology. In fact,  it's filling the background, making it hard to see the actors against it. I feel like I should've drawn arrows on the screencap pointing to Jar Jar and Watto just so you know they're there.

This was a real set by the way, complete with full-size podracer props... sometimes. They also had a miniature version of the hangar built and I've no idea when it makes an appearance.

Anyway, Watto mentions that even though his slave is in the race, he'll be betting against Anakin's arch-nemesis Sebulba instead. Because he always wins. Watto can't be making much off those bets then.

Then we get another bit of negotiating that's easier to follow when it's written down, as Qui-Gon decides to extend his deal with Watto: If Anakin wins the race, Qui-Gon claims the boy and his mother, if he loses Watto claims the podracer.

Watto will only agree to give him one slave however, and rolls a chance cube to determine which one he gets. Qui-Gon's more into the will of the Force than the whims of chance, so he cheats and uses the Force to will the dice to land how he wants.

Alright here's the final deal then:

• If Anakin wins, Qui-Gon gets Anakin and the parts to repair Queen Amidala's ship. Watto gets the rest of the winnings.
• If Sebulba wins, Watto gets Queen Amidala's shiny ship and Anakin's podracer. Plus money for betting on Sebulba.
  

So that's reasonably straightforward. I suppose Anakin's mostly in it for the thrill of racing, because he ain't getting anything else out of it. Not that he knows anyway.

Man, who knew there were so many people on Tatooine? And these are just the ones who care about podracing. Though the two-headed announcer does say that there's a big turnout from all corners from the Outer Rim territories.

Okay the podrace is just an extended action sequence, so I could just skip right past it and continue on with the actual plot. Save us all some time. Or I could give it its own post and examine the whole race in a horrifying amount of tedious detail. I'll have to weigh up my options and give this some thought.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART THREE: THE PODRACE

---

COMING SOON

The thrilling third part of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace should be up very soon. I'd put it up now for you but it's not been written yet. Sorry.

Man, I should've written about the Auralnauts version of the film instead. It's only 14 minutes long, I could've been done by now!