Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - Part 5

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the epic finale to my Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace article! Part five of five. You can jump to one of the earlier parts by clicking the text: PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE, PART FOUR.

It's hard to say what disappointed or confused fans the most about The Phantom Menace, but you could claim that the first thing to really trigger a wave of negativity was the title. From what I can tell, internet polls at the time showed that roughly 25% of people didn't entirely hate it! Fans had been hoping for something that sounded epic and cool, something like Balance of the Force, or Guardians of the Force, or Children of the Force ('the Force' seemed to show up a lot in rumoured titles).

By comparison, The Phantom Menace sounded cheesy, childish, hokey, and old-fashioned. Some people loved it because it sounded like a chapter in a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers serial from the 30s, others hated it for the same reason. Some were even convinced that a title that bad had to be a hoax, maybe caused by someone hacking the Star Wars website, maybe planted by George Lucas himself as part of a cunning deception!

Personally, I have no idea what I thought of the name when I first saw it. At this point, it's just the title of the film for me and I wouldn't want it to be called anything else. And I have a feeling most of the people who hated the name eventually accepted it and moved on... to complaining about Episode II being called Attack of the Clones.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to write about the ending of the film and then share my thoughts about the movie overall. I'll also be spoiling things about the Original Trilogy films, but nothing about the Sequel Trilogy, the cartoons or the TV series. I won't spoil anything about the Ewoks movies either, but that's just because I don't actually know anything about the Ewoks movies.

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

A tragedy has occurred which started with the taxation of trade routes and has now engulfed the planet of Naboo in the oppression of the Trade Federation. Queen Amidala escaped to Coruscant to get assistance from the Galactic Senate, but even getting the supreme chancellor replaced with Naboo's own senator has done nothing to help their cause. So she decided to return home to free her world herself, with the help of two Jedi who are tagging along to investigate the surprise appearance of a Sith Lord.

Right now her trusted ally Jar Jar Binks is out on a grassy plain leading an army in a diversion to keep the battle droids busy, while Amidala leads her own forces on an assault on her palace to capture Viceroy Gunray. It was all going well until Amidala got pinned by a pack of shielded droidekas and the Jedi ran into the fearsome Darth Maul.

And now, the conclusion:

Every lightsaber battle in the movies so far has had a lot of emotion behind it. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan has a final battle against Darth Vader, his former friend and apprentice. In Empire Strikes Back, Luke goes up against the man who killed both his father and his mentor. And in Return of the Jedi, Luke's put through the wringer as he and Vader each try to turn the other to their side.

Here Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are fighting against some guy they've met once and know nothing about! But the movie makes up for the lack of emotional stakes by having amazing choreography and "Duel of the Fates" on the soundtrack. Plus it helps that Maul is a menacing son of a bitch with that face paint.

The choreography's not flawless though: if you go through it frame by frame you'll see a ton of strange moves and mistakes. Like here, where Obi-Wan's lightsaber doesn't actually come close to touching Maul's blade, but he acts like it was a hit. Fortunately, there's a way to fix this: don't watch it frame by frame.

Meanwhile, Amidala's squad is rescued by Anakin, who starts up his Naboo Starfighter and starts demolishing the droidekas with its heavy-duty blasters.

I should probably have a problem with a 9-year-old kid getting into a space fighter and skipping the 12 months of training to go straight into saving the day, but I'm going to give it a pass for a few reasons. First, we already know that space fighters aren't that complicated to fly. Luke went from flying his T-16 aircraft to an X-Wing without any training, and Anakin did at least have some basic instruction on the way here. Second, Anakin's an incredibly bright kid with Force powers who understands how to pilot a podracer. Third, all he's done so far is press all the buttons until he found the one that worked! That's basically how I play space sims and it's a technique that works, as long as you're not pointing the guns towards any friendly space stations when you do it.

I'm just glad that this is something that he intended to do and he's not just succeeding through pure luck and the Force. Because that would suck. Though he didn't intend for the autopilot to hijack the controls and send him off to join the other Naboo fighters in orbit. That's complicated things a bit.

Jar Jar's also right in the middle of combat right now. In fact, he's got a severed battle droid stuck to his foot and every time he leaps around like an idiot the gun it's holding miraculously shoots an enemy and not one of his own people. The Force is working overtime to keep this guy alive; it's like he can't die until he's fulfilled his destiny! Or maybe he's just here to entertain the kids in the audience with some dumb slapstick. Either way, I hate it.

On the plus side, we do get two seconds of reality to look at!

I mean I don't know for certain how they did this shot, but that has to be a dude wearing a Jar Jar boot dragging a battle droid prop around some actual grass, surely.

Over in space, the Naboo pilots have survived the initial droid fighter onslaught. Unfortunately, they're having a bit of a problem destroying the movie's Death Star, the droid control ship, as the deflector shield is too strong for their weapons to penetrate.

Anakin yells "This is tense!" in a way that people generally don't, and tells R2 to sort out that autopilot already as it's "gonna get us both killed". It bothers me how he puts so much emphasis on the word 'both', like it's inevitable one of them will die. Fun fact: this is one of those lines that recur in the movies, as Leia says it in the trash compactor in A New Hope and it comes back again in Revenge of the Sith.

Funny thing is, Anakin's not even freaking out. He's an experienced podracer, he's used to keeping his calm in ridiculously dangerous situations.

R2 deactivates the autopilot and then we get one of the few R2 lines in the movies we can actually translate, as he puts a message up on his screen in Aurebesh saying "Anakin turn the ship around and go back home right now." Because he's a responsible droid who's trying to look after the child that's in his care. It's just occurred to me that it's really unusual for a droid in Star Wars to tell a human what to do. One that's not holding a gun anyway.

Anakin declines to go back to R2's home, as Qui-Gon told him to stay in the cockpit (he conveniently forgets that Qui-Gon also said "Find a safe place to hide.") Well, at least we know now that Anakin can read.

Now that Anakin has control of his fighter he does a lot of weaving around the droid ship, trying to avoid being shot by the droid fighters or turrets. Then he tries spinning, as he believes that it's a good trick. Personally, I find that if you hold the stick diagonally back, you can fly in a corkscrew and enemy fighters just don't know what to do about it. At least that's what I used to do in TIE Fighter when I needed a break from being shot.

Meanwhile, Amidala's squad shoots out a window and uses their ascension guns to pull themselves up the side of the palace like a vengeance of Batmans (that's the collective noun). It's okay, it was a really fake-looking window... or maybe it was just a fake-looking sky behind it. I don't know why but every scene with a blue sky in this sequence just rings false to me.

These guys must have a strong grip to be able to hold onto their pistol as it pulls them up. I don't think I could do what they're doing here. I mean I could probably hold onto a gun, it's the 'hanging off the side of a palace' part that bothers me. It's a long way down.

Speaking of a long way down...

The epic lightsaber battle continues into the palace's, uh... okay what does this room even do? Is it the palace's hyperdrive? All I know is that it seems like the Empire got its iconic 'grey walls and chasms' aesthetic from the Naboo.

It's hard to get an idea of the layout of this place, even with a panorama stitched together from a few screencaps. It was probably even harder for the actors who were fighting on a circle and a bit of walkway in front of a bluescreen. Though they did have a little model built as a reference for the people on set, and it shows that it's a semi-circular room with two arcs of glowing cylinders.

I wonder how many people have fallen over the side of one of those walkways. I know it's higher than one at least, as Obi-Wan gets kicked over and plummets several stories. Fortunately, he slams into another walkway and he's still alive enough afterwards to grab the ledge and pull himself to safety. Maul goes over the side as well and lands on his spine, but he's fine. These Force users are resilient.

Obi-Wan jumps back up to give Qui-Gon a hand with Maul, but he's a little too slow and the three fighters are separated by a weird forcefield airlock thing that activates on a timer. I have no idea what purpose this area could serve, I only know that if someone went to this much effort to keep something from getting through at certain intervals, then I don't want to be on the other side of it when they all close.

You know, I don't think I really appreciated just how shiny that floor is. They're basically standing on mirrors. It's also never occurred to me that they could just stick a lightsaber into the emitters to break the forcefields. Probably not a good idea though. Plus what they actually do here while they're waiting reveals a lot about their personalities and mood. Maul tests the field with his blade and then starts pacing, Qui-Gon kneels and meditates, and Obi-Wan's clearly eager to get in there.

Things are currently going very badly for the Gungans, who are in retreat after the droids took down their shield generators, leaving them vulnerable to the incoming fire from the tanks.

Jar Jar tries to climb up onto a cart carrying energy balls for their catapults, and ends up opening the back of it with a comedy slide-whistle sound effect, sending the balls rolling into the enemy vehicles to devastating effect!

A nearby blast throws him up into the air and onto the barrel of a tank. What incredible luck! His comrade throws him a grenade to use, which he inadvertently throws directly at the driver behind him. Another accidental kill, like all of them so far. His buddy comes over to save him, but Jar Jar manages to drag him off his space horse instead.

Man, this is just a cartoon, and I'm talking Road Runner, not Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Actually, that's not fair or accurate; Road Runner cartoons tend to be really funny. Though I have to wonder if making these Jar Jar interludes hilarious would've actually helped. I have a feeling that they'd still feel like bizarre video game cutscenes inserted into an otherwise dramatic climax.

This is the first film in the series to stumble at the ending and it's (almost) all Bink's fault! This whole sequence probably cost a fortune but all it's doing is subtracting from the movie. Well, unless you're a five-year-old perhaps. I never watched the film as a five-year-old though so I can't say.

This is one of those 'everything goes wrong for everyone at once moments it seems, as Amidala's group is intercepted by droidekas again and this time Anakin's not around to bail them out.

Back in space Anakin's mostly avoiding being shot and R2's trying to keep his own screaming to a minimum. But they eventually get hit and end up spinning out of control towards the droid control ship's hangar. Or maybe they're spinning in control, I don't know.

All I know is that the hangar turret that blew up the Jedi's ship at the start of the movie does not make an appearance in this scene, so the two of them can make it inside without being blasted.

Anakin gets the ship to stop before slamming into the wall at the end, but now the fighter's too overheated to work and they're surrounded by battle droids. It's like the bit at the start of the podrace where his podracer stalled and he had to flick switchers to fix it. Except this time it's a race against robots coming to kill him.

Down on the planet, the forcefields deactivate for a moment, giving Qui-Gon and Maul a chance to resume their duel (of the fates). Unfortunately, Obi-Wan forgets that Force Dash ability he used at the start of the movie and ends up trapped behind another forcefield as they all close again.

There's basically no music at this bit, just the sounds of lightsabers as Qui-Gon and Maul fight their one on one battle. Though it comes back when Maul puts his blade through Qui-Gon's gut.

Turns out that it is definitely possible to kill a Jedi, and to be honest I think a lot of viewers probably saw this coming the moment the forcefield blocked Obi-Wan's way. I suppose it was sadly inevitable; at its core Star Wars has always been about the little guy triumphing against something bigger than them, and Liam Neeson is 6ft 4.

It is kind of strange though, to kill the film's protagonist with 10 minutes of movie left to go. It kind of sucks too, as I really liked Qui-Gon! Obi-Wan definitely isn't happy about it, as he lets out a long "Noooooooooooooooooooooo!" Like when Luke yelled at Obi-Wan's death in A New Hope. It appears that Obi-Wan was a bit attached to his master and he doesn't seem to be taking his death like a Jedi. In fact, he's looking a bit rageful.

On the plus side, those reflections look great. It really appears like the lightsaber is an object in the room with them. Well, except for the way it isn't casting light on anything. That's something they fixed in the Sequel Trilogy with glowing lightsaber props providing interactive lighting.

Meanwhile, the Gungans have been defeated and little robots are piling the bodies into heaps. Though it's pretty much all dead droids as far as I can tell, so things could've gone worse. The thing is, they were told to 'wipe them out, all of them', so either the droids are getting their Gungan prisoners lined up nice for the firing squads, or they failed their one job!

Back in the palace, Queen Amidala is brought before Viceroy Gunray in her own throne room. He wants her to sign the damn treaty already and end this pointless debate in the Senate. Wait, what debate? Is this still about the taxation of trade routes? But she doesn't even get a chance to say no before Queen Amidala arrives at the door with a second squad!

So what happened to all those droidekas?

Never mind, what's important is that Amidala's decoy is a crack shot even when she's balancing that wig on her head, and she takes out two droids before they can blink. I mean I don't think these battle droids can blink, but it was still really fast.

The viceroy's confused, thinking that the Amidala he captured must be the decoy and he sends his troops out after the fake queen. So Amidala opens up a secret hatch on her throne and pulls a pair of pistols out! You know, I'm starting to think she's not as much of a pacifist as she seemed to be at first.

I mean, she takes down a pair of battle droids with one shot each, without even flinching as a blaster bolt misses her head by inches. This woman has had combat training for sure. Sorry, I mean this 14-year-old girl has had combat training, and she's just taken her throne room back.

I like smart people solving problems with their heads, but it doesn't feel entirely earned here because that hasn't been Amidala's character so far at all. She's been an ineffective queen, a naïve tourist, and an easily-manipulated politician, so when she suddenly switches to being a tactician with commando skills leading a raid on her palace it comes out of nowhere. Sure it mirrors how Leia was captive and helpless at first, then suddenly started firing guns, but that was because Leia was a captive, and then she got a gun. Amidala is free for the majority of the movie but is basically stuck saying 'well... I don't approve' for the most part. I think her issue is that she can't be a proper character until after we get the reveal about her identity.

Though I love this shot. There are so many scenes in movies where you see the good guy firing their gun, then it cuts to the bad guys popping out of cover to fire their gun, and so on. Here though we can see the hero and the bad guys she's aiming at all in the same shot, so there's no doubt at all about the geography of the scene. This is good filmmaking.
 

Alright, they've captured Viceroy Gunray! So that's done then. Now she just needs to get him to shut down the droids.

Oh, incidentally, I'm pretty sure they're in a real location right now, so the view through that window there is entirely legit. It definitely looks a lot more realistic than the one in the hallway earlier. We're also getting some authentic light wrap here (I assume) and it's much better than what they put onto Mace Windu and the rest of the Jedi High Council.

The movie's not quite done yet though, as Obi-Wan still needs to deal with Maul. The whole reason he was sent here was to discover his identity, but it doesn't seem like he's keen on asking questions right now.

I love this bit, it's so fast. Obi-Wan's not messing around anymore; he's showing off just how skilled he is and it's shot in one take so we can see it all clearly. In fact, it takes him about 15 seconds to slice Maul's saber in two and kick him to the ground. Maul gets up and kicks him back, but Obi-Wan does a backflip and lands on his feet!

Obi-Wan soon has him cornered, and it seems like going rage mode and bringing out a bit of the dark side is going to let him win the fight. But nope, Maul has him right where he wants him, and Force pushes him into the hole in the middle of the room! Maybe he should've tried a bit of Qui-Gon meditation to calm himself before the fight instead.

Meanwhile, Anakin's starfighter is still in one piece, having been ignored by both the droids and the hangar guns long enough for the shields to come back on. They even become visible for a moment, for maybe the first time in Star Wars history. You can allegedly see glimpses of starship shields in later Star Wars stories, but they're definitely a lot more shy than Star Trek shields, so enjoy this rare sight.

Anyway, Anakin starts blasting droids again and manages to accidentally shoot torpedoes at some piece of machinery. Turns out that this is the ship's weak point and destroying it blows the whole thing up! In A New Hope, they had to analyse the plans and discover the weak point, they didn't just fire at stuff randomly, but for this ship it's kept at the back of the hangar, for convenience. Anakin even says "Oops" afterwards, which is something a hero should never say after doing the thing which saves the day. This is horrible storytelling! He was adapting to situations and coming up with solutions all over the place in the podrace sequence, what happened?

Also, this is entirely unrelated, but I don't like how R2's neck has to extend upwards to fit into the droid slot. It can't be very comfortable for him. Just had to mention that.

Fortunately, the kid does have to use some skill to escape the place before it explodes, as he swoops through the explosions and closing doors on his way back out. He quips that "Now this is podracing!" which is fair I suppose. Racing through a narrow corridor that's blowing up would give you a proper podracing adrenaline rush.

It's also a lot like Luke's line "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home" in A New Hope. The two Skywalkers both relate space combat to something they're familiar with, which just happens to be zooming through Beggar's Canyon for both of them.

And then the ship blows up, killing everyone inside. Yay, Anakin saved the day... entirely accidentally! It would've been nice though, if he'd actually figured out how to do this himself. Maybe R2 could've told him, or one of the other pilots! I just want the heroes to make choices, solve problems and achieve things themselves. There's already one too many Jar Jars in this climax.

Okay, so how many evil space balls have been blown up in an epic battle at the end of a Star Wars movie now? I think we're up to three now, after four films. This was the least impressive of the battles, to be honest. The visual effects are better than ever, but it's really lacking the tension.  

Though Obi-Wan still has to solve his Maul problem. Maul's not going to go down there and get him, so he stands at the top and runs his saber across the floor to shower him with sparks to get him to fall off or something. It looks pretty bad, but Obi-Wan was actually really lucky here that he fell down right next to something to hold onto. If he'd fallen just a little to the left or right there would've been nothing there to grab.

Incidentally, they didn't have those things on the actual set, because that's pretty much where the bluescreen was. The walls were real, the floor was real and the pit was real, but it was only maybe 6 feet deep.

It's going to take more than luck to get Obi-Wan out of the hole he's ended up in; he's going to have to actually solve this problem with intelligence and skill! So he jumps out while simultaneously pulling Qui-Gon's saber into his hand. He's already flipped over Maul's head twice in this fight, but the third time's the charm as he cuts the guy before he's even realised what just happened. Learn how to use Jedi reflexes, Maul!

As Maul falls down his body comes apart, revealing that Obi-Wan just sliced the guy in two! So that's a bit of a gruesome death for a movie that Jar Jar Binks exists in.

This sequence reminds me of Empire Strikes Back as Luke surprised Darth Vader by leaping out of a hole in their epic lightsaber battle. He also surprised Vader by dropping into a different hole at the end... and surviving. Luke only lost a hand in that battle though, not his entire lower half.

It's not unusual for the hero to kill a bad guy at the end of the movie, but Maul's exit may have been a bit surprising considering that he was set up like he was going to be the Vader of the Prequel Trilogy. We never even got to learn a damn thing about the guy. Maybe he had a son out there who could've brought him back to the light!

Hey, Qui-Gon's not quite dead yet! He hangs on just long enough to make Obi-Wan promise to train Anakin. The actors haven't had much opportunity to really play emotion in this movie, but Ewan McGregor goes for it here, his voice actually breaking. It's interesting that Qui-Gon doesn't disappear, as Obi-Wan and Yoda both did in the Original Trilogy. I suppose Anakin didn't either.

I really liked Qui-Gon; he was one of the few characters who had his own personal agenda beyond 'save Naboo' or 'serve the Jedi Council', he always did what he thought was right, and there was a real chaotic energy to his plans. He'd seen something special in Anakin and the kid must have really made an impression on him if his dying words were about him. It makes it a real tragedy that he didn't survive to raise him as a master/father figure. Even though taking him into a war zone and leaving him in a starfighter cockpit was maybe bad parenting.

Alright, I think that's it. All four simultaneous action sequences are now over. But Empire had two things going on in the ending (Leia escaping while Luke fought Vader) and Jedi had three (Ewok battle, space battle, Luke vs Vader rematch), so I'm expecting five in Attack of the Clones, six in Revenge of the Sith and nine in Rise of Skywalker.
   

This was originally the first appearance of CGI Yoda in the movie, as they wanted to have the guy walking. In the theatrical and DVD versions he switches back to a puppet for his close-ups, but these days he's all CGI.

Yoda promotes Obi-Wan from Padawan to Jedi Knight, but he's really not keen on him taking on Anakin as his Padawan, because "grave danger I fear in his training". He even snaps at him, saying "Qui-Gon's defiance I sense in you. Need that, you do not." Backwards talking, fond of he is. Perhaps that's how everyone talked 900 years ago when he was a kid.

Though hang on Yoda, we don't do fear here. Fear leads to anger and anger leads to hatred. You're already losing your cool with Obi-Wan! You need to stop this before someone ends up suffering. It's funny, as Obi-Wan's actually been on Yoda's side when it comes to Anakin. But when your dying master tells you to do something, you do it.

Obi-Wan makes it clear that he'll carry out his promise, so Yoda changes his mind and says the council agrees. Wait, is Yoda the whole council now? Shouldn't he ask the others first? Did they already agree and he was the one holdout? 

Then we get Qui-Gon's funeral, as he's burned on a pyre just like Anakin was in Return of the Jedi. Except with more of an audience. Even Windu and Yoda are there, though they're lurking in the back, discussing the mysterious warrior that he died fighting. They're pretty sure now that he really was a Sith, but Sith traditionally come in pairs, a master and an apprentice, so which one was he? The camera pans over to the three heroes... and then lingers on Palpatine.

What are you implying here movie? That the evil guy in the hood who keeps telling the viceroy that he'll do stuff in the Senate is actually the senator who got a promotion to supreme chancellor out of this crisis?

I'm not going to confirm or deny this, because that would be spoilers, but I'll say what people knew at the time. They knew that the Emperor in Return of the Jedi was called Palpatine in its novelisation and on trading cards etc. They also knew that they were played by the same actor. But Lucas just pulled some sneaky misdirection with Padmé actually being Queen Amidala, so after this film we don't know anything for certain.

There are lots of shots that tilt or pan across the scenery in the ending and I can't resist turning them into panoramas.

The Gungans are marching in a parade down the streets of Theed, while crowds of grateful Naboo cheer. Yay, this horrible conflict has brought the Naboo and the Gungans together! A friendship forged in fire.

These particular Gungans are Augie's Great Municipal Band and they're playing an upbeat version of a traditional Naboo tune called 'The Emperor's Theme'.

Here's Obi-Wan and Little Obi-Wan together in another seamlessly composited image. Anakin's Padawan makeover is one last reveal for the audience. I wonder if Qui-Gon had survived and become Anakin's master, would the kid have had a little beard instead?

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan's lost his braid, as he's not a Padawan anymore. R2's dome remains unchanged, however. He's not experimenting with a wig or anything like that.

Jar Jar has one last moment of public embarrassment as he gets his foot stuck while disembarking his animal. Then Amidala hands over the plasma globe of unity to Boss Nash and everyone's happy! She even smiles at Anakin, which is the first time she's actually smiled while playing the role of the queen. It reminds me of how Leia smiled during the award ceremony at the end of A New Hope.

R2 doesn't get a medal this time either by the way, but that's fine as he got his kudos earlier after saving the queen's ship. Everything else is pretty much wrapped up as well... to an extent. The scene does leave you with a feeling that there's much more story to tell, and this is only the prologue of an epic saga about the chosen one, the Republic and the Sith. But thankfully it's not telling it right now, so this two-hour movie is finally over!

Though if you leave it on a little bit longer and watch through all the credits there's the sound of Darth Vader's breathing at the end, just to creep you out.


CONCLUSION

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Every generation has a legend...

Every journey has a first step...

Every saga has a beginning...

Everyone hates Jar Jar Binks.

Okay, to be more accurate I should say that Jar Jar inspires strong emotions. No one is indifferent to him. Some people find his antics to be hilarious and the way he talks cracks them up. Some people even went out and bought his horrifying merchandise. To other people, though, he's like George Lucas is kicking the back of their chair the whole movie.

Even my spell-check software has an opinion! I'm sure this isn't any great revelation to you though; the internet's thoughts about Jar Jar have been documented thoroughly. I did a bit of research and it seems like roughly 99.2% of the web pages that sprung up during 1999 were about why Jar Jar Binks should die and it appears he hasn't improved with age, as new viewers seem to dislike him just the same. In fact, his presence here really raises the question, who is this movie actually for?

Though before I get into that I want to apologise for making you read so much text. I'm well aware that the world didn't need a five-part review of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, especially because the world already has YouTube. But there's a good reason this turned out to be so long in the end: I don't have an editor. I don't have someone with experience and a fresh pair of eyes pointing out when I'm dragging things out too long, or when I'm focusing on things no one but me cares about. The result of this is that I have unlimited creative control and I don't know when to stop. It's one of the few things that George Lucas and I have in common.

But I wouldn't say that the problem with Phantom Menace is that no one told George Lucas 'no'... not entirely anyway. This is definitely one of the rare examples of a big-budget blockbuster that was also an indie project where the creator could go nuts and do whatever he wanted, but it was still a very collaborative process. Lucas got a bunch of talented and creative designers and animators together, and then he told them 'yes'. Yes, you can have Jar Jar clowning around in the background, yes, you can have a random scene of Jabba flicking a bird off the ledge etc.

It's no wonder that the film's full of so many moments of visual comedy, especially on Tatooine. The trouble is that it's not really the kind of comedy that Star Wars has done up to this point. Well, aside from in the 1997 Special Editions, where Lucas threw some random slapstick in, to the delight of apparently no one.

The classic trilogy brought together elements from so many kinds of films, like Westerns, samurai movies, World War II films and 30s sci-fi serials, and for The Phantom Menace, Lucas added a couple of new genres to the mix. The film spends a surprising amount of time on the big race, and this is actually one of the highlights of the movie. Huge success there! But he also added Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin slapstick and based on the evidence so far it doesn't look like this particular blend works.  When Jar Jar does his wacky Disney sidekick animal thing and survives it turns Star Wars into a cartoon and breaks the universe's own particular kind of reality. Also part of what makes Jackie Chan-style physical comedy work is that it's impressive. I'm not saying that what the 3D artists pulled off here isn't amazing for the time, but it doesn't leave you wondering how the actor even did that. This is part of the reason why the fantastically choreographed lightsaber duel at the end works so well by comparison. The other part is that the duel is about choices and actions and not about accidentally pressing the 'oops I blew up the Death Star doughnut' button.

One thing I can appreciate about the movie is that it brings back the classic Star Wars style, with cheesy screen wipes and all. Well, almost. The film is set in a more civilised age so it's generally cleaner and less cluttered. It has less of that 'used universe' lived-in realism to it, less 70s grit. It hasn't lost any of the scope though; put it next to a 90s Star Trek film and it seems properly epic by comparison. It's a space movie where people actually go to strange new worlds and when it visits a new location it really gives you the tour. Well okay a lot of it is set on the desert world they'd already visited twice before, and I can't say City World and Europe World are really pushing the boundaries of what we've seen on movie screens, but everyone likes Underwater Bubble World.

There's no point in me saying that this huge blockbuster pushed visual effects forward as that's what all huge blockbusters do, but it really was kind of unmatched when it came to spectacle at the time. It helps that they brought Ben Burtt back to do the sound effects and John Williams to do the soundtrack. The movie finally gave the world some brand new Star Wars music... to the relief of people who played the video games and had already heard the original soundtrack 500 million times coming out of a variety of sound chips.

I can also very much appreciate that the film doesn't ruin anything about the Original Trilogy for the sake of a surprise twist or just because they didn't care about continuity. Sure, it comes close at times, with things like Darth Vader building C-3PO (and people do have issues with midi-chlorians), but overall the film only adds to the mythology. It adds to the universe as well, as it introduces new ships and scenery when it can instead of relying too much on the established iconic designs. It does have lightsabers and droids, but there are no Stormtroopers, X-Wings or TIE Fighters, and there's absolutely no Millennium Falcon. It's not afraid to give people something different and new, instead of being a safe retread or remix.

Okay, to be fair you could make the argument that there is something a bit familiar about the plot. A Jedi's called upon to help a royal leader, so he recruits a kid called Skywalker on Tatooine to make the trip to a core world. Going there doesn't lead to the outcome they wanted, so they need to have a fight against space ball. The Jedi dies in the big lightsaber fight and their apprentice yells 'No!', but Skywalker does some fancy flying and saves the day so they have a big ceremony to celebrate.

Happy ending! People love to quote Lucas talking about making story elements rhyme like poetry, and parts of the movie do rhyme with A New Hope. But it really is a new story, setting up a new set of heroes and the era they inhabit. It also sets up the villain, though honestly I still don't get half of what he's after here. He seems to genuinely want Amidala to sign the treaty and legitimise the occupation of Naboo, but why? It's only Palpatine that really gains anything from the occupation and his rise to power is aided by Amidala escaping and going off-script.

Anyway, the movie's respect for the existing mythology allows it to benefit from its place within that mythology. It feels important, and anyone watching the film for the first time already knows that the story's going somewhere. I don't know if many people would argue that you have to watch Star Trek V or Moonraker as you're going through those franchises, but the only debate about Phantom Menace is when it should be watched. After doing tireless research and investigation I've actually come up with an answer for that: it should be watched as the fourth film, right after the Original Trilogy. Or it could be watched first. Or maybe it could be watched fifth if you want to start with Rogue One. As far as I can tell it works whichever way you want to do it, as long as you watch each trilogy in order and don't begin with Return of the Jedi like I did as a kid; that was an objectively wrong place to start with the franchise, never do that.

This time around I'm coming at the movie from a very different place than the first time I watched it, back when it was shiny and new, as I've seen close to 300 TV episodes and two additional movie trilogies. It doesn't have impossible hype to live up to anymore, but now I have the best of The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian, Andor etc. to compare it to and honestly, it doesn't rank too highly for me. I realise that they were going for a classic style of movie here, but it's pretty clear at this point that they didn't have to make the dialogue quite so blunt and the acting so wooden. It definitely has the best podrace in Star Wars though, and the most Qui-Gon, and there's a lot to like here. The movie's probably the best epic space opera of the 90s in fact, not that it has a whole lot of competition. There's The Fifth Element maybe? Lost in Space? Stargate can definitely rival the movie when it comes to the amount of sand on screen at least.

But who is The Phantom Menace actually for? 9-year-old boys? 14-year-old girls? 40-year-old veteran fans? All of the above? Personally, I think it probably clicks most with parents who can watch it with their young kids. That's where I think Lucas' head was at. Parents are the ones that would get the pain Shmi's going through when she chooses to let her son go and live his dreams, parents would stay awake through the serious Senate scenes and care about a cute little 9-year-old blowing up his first Death Star. And Jar Jar's as awful as any dad joke.

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COMING SOON

Star Wars will return at some point, probably, but next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's classic Star Trek: The Original Series episode Arena! I know I promised this a month ago, but I caught a bad cold afterwards and it really inhibited my interest in getting it written.