Terrible disappointment (Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (DVD))

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (DVD)
Date:	12.04.01 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: erm... Natalie Portmann's kind of cute

Disadvantages: Pretty much everything

Like most kids of my generation I loved the original trilogy. I fanatically collected the figures, read the comics, had the bedspread and so on. I've seen the films so many times that I can recite huge chunks of the dialogue off by heart. Even now I'm grown up I can stil enjoy the films for what they are - great action movies with innovative special effects and fun characters.

Obviously I was aware that when I saw The Phantom Menace it couldn't possibly live up to the earlier films. I'd seen them as a child, and so the sense of excitement and wonder that I got from those films would never be repeated. I was, however, expecting to enjoy it. And I didn't, at all.

There were a couple of good bits - the initial fight between the Jedi Knights and the robots was good, and so was the final lightsabre duel. But that was about it.

All the other action sequences seem to have been thrown in simply to showcase the special effects technology. That bit with the sea monster is probably the most blatant.

I don't think I can really list everything that's wrong with this film, so I'll just list the few points that vex me the most.

Jar Jar Binks - obviousy very annoying. Don't think I need to justify that, although the fact that he's computer generated doesn't help, as you don't get any sense that the character is really present in the scenes he has.

The shameful waste of good actors - what is the point of having Terence Stamp in a film if he's only going to appear in two scenes? Likewise Samuel L Jackson. In Star Wars Lucas got a couple of heavyweight actors (Guinness and Cushing) in to bring a bit of gravitas to the film, and it works, because you get to see plenty of them. They're allowed enough screen time to turn in the kind of quality performances that they were hired for. Not in the Phantom Menace. And why hire Brian Blessed and them superimpose a big frog thing over
him?

The glaring unsubtlety of it - every time Palpatine appeared, he kept saying things about how devoted he was to peace and unity. Oh, how clever, because he's going to turn into the Emperor.

The racism - Jar Jar again, and his entire species of crudely stereotyped African frog friends. There are a few other examples, but these will do fine. It's notable that in the final battle they're basically just used a comic diversion to attract the attention of the baddies while the white heroes get on with the important business. In Return of the Jedi the Ewoks were presented as extremely primitive, but they were still allowed to beat the Empire. Jar Jar and his gang are useless and are only saved from annihilation by the destruction of whatever it was that was controlling the robots.

The betrayal of the premise of the earlier films - well, that sound a little hysterical, but I think it's justified. In the original films the Force was something you could learn. The idea was that with the correct training any humble farm boy can become a great hero. Which is cool, especially when you're a child. Now it turns out that it's genetic. Only the chosen few can become Jedis (which brings racism back into it again). And at the end of the film little Anakin wins the space battle pretty much by accident. Luke had to use the force to destroy the Death Star, but this kid just has to crash into the mothership by mistake. Preivously, good overcame evil because the good characters were more resourceful than the bad. Now good wins just because it's meant to, however unrealistic.

The lack of simplicity - the earlier films worked because, plotwise, they are very basic. The plot here is far too complicated - something to do with trade embargoes, too much political dealing, all that business about the council of Jedi and the chosen one and so on.

It hardly seems necessary to add my opinions so late on, but the memory of
this film still infuriates me to this day. OK, I'm not a kid anymore, maybe children would love it. But I do remember that my dad used to enjoy the films when he took us kids to see them. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have enjoyed this one. I certainly didn't.

Summary: