Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

There's an odd thing about The Phantom Menace. During the actual act of watching it, it doesn't really come off as being a bad movie. For the most part the actors range from competent to great, the plot line is intriguing, the pace is good, and there's plenty going on. But, once you stop and think really hard about it, the vitriol comes out and people curse the day they heard the name George Lucas.

Mind you, I can easily name a dozen or more Sci-Fi films that are way, way worse than this. The worst Star Trek movie, Star Trek V, makes this look like Casablanca. And this isn't even the worst Star Wars film ever (hello, Star Wars Holiday Special). For that matter, it's not even the worst of the theatrical Star Wars movies (hello, Clone Wars). But undoubtedly, it is the single most hated film in the franchise.

That's a tragedy since it's actually not a bad movie at all.

Of course much of the hate, besides being directed at Lucas, is directed at Jar Jar Binks, the eponymous comic relief. But as I pointed out previously, Jar Jar isn't even the film's biggest problem. He may be it's most obvious, but not it's biggest.

The biggest issue with the movie is  the same problem that some of the newer James Bond movies have had: it's too much of a cut and paste job. We're not only getting the same basic story, we're getting too many of the same exact scenes. This is most obvious during the film's big finale. It's a mash-up of the finales of the previous three films: the big space battle to destroy the evil Space Base (Star Wars), the light saber duel to the death (Empire Strikes Back), and the primitive planet natives rising up against the evil technologically advanced empire (Return of the Jedi). Mind you, almost all of the sequels and prequels repeat elements. It just comes off as slightly more pronounced here due to the long wait between Jedi and this.

I suspect that the long wait between films is also what doomed it to be a let down. After all, a generation of fans had a decade and a half to wonder what things were like prior to the events of the first movie. How did the Empire rise? What was Darth Vader like when he was Anakin Skywalker? What were the Clone Wars anyhow? Kids played with the toys and imagined their own adventures and had in their minds eye exactly what the prequels would be like.

So naturally when this movie came out and we find out the Emperor rose to power by manipulating a war caused by taxation and Anakin Skywalker was a ten year old who said "Yippee!", a bunch of adults threw a galaxy sized hissy fit. And that hissy fit has only grown in the 18 years since the film first debuted. Screams of Lucas ruining people's childhood have resounded to Dantooine and back by now. Which, of course, is just plain silly. Especially since this film--as almost all of the Star Wars films are--is really a children's film. It wasn't made for 40 year old men wearing Princess Leia costumes and play with action figures. It was made, as the original film was, for ten year old kids who play with action figures and who are far more likely to dress like a Jedi.

But then again, wars have been fought and dictators placed in power over more ridiculous things than taxes. And what exactly did people think a ten year old Anakin would be like? Did they expect him to run around chopping people down with a light saber?

If I sound snobbish and dismissive of the fans, understand that I myself am a Star Wars fan. I'm old enough to have seen the first film on it's original release in the theaters. I played with the toys. I've read some of the books and comic books. I played Star Wars video games on the Atari 2600. I was a member of the fan club and read the fan club newsletter (Bantha Tracks!) back in the day. I even cherished the disco version of the theme song put out by Meco!

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the films had actually been made in episodic order. If this had actually been the first film in the series, would it still be as hated? I tend to doubt it. The action sequences are first rate.
Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, and Ewan McGregor all do first rate jobs. Darth Maul is a menacing enough villain, even if--like Bobba Fett before him--he doesn't quite live up to his potential. Yeah, Jar Jar is a bit annoying, but no more so than any other comic relief character before him.

Am I saying this is a perfect Star Wars film? Of course not. It has it's issues. All movies do. But the grown men in the Princess Leia costumes screaming that this was a rape of their childhood and the worst thing that ever happened to them need to get a bit of a grip. If this is the worst movie you've ever seen, I'm guessing you haven't seen that many movies. And if this film destroyed all happy memories of your childhood, then maybe your childhood wasn't as happy as you remember it being. And if this was the worst thing to happen to you ever, I'm guessing nobody you know ever died.

At the end of the day, we're talking about something that's just a movie. It's not the worst movie of all time or even the worst sequel of all time. Sure, it's the worst of the episodic Star Wars movies, but--like the worst James Bond movie--it's still better than most other series films out there. It's still entertaining. It had one job to do--to set up the other prequels and make you want to see those prequels. It succeeded in that. It actually did make me curious to see where the story would go. There's a lot of serials I can't say that about. You really want to see a sequel that systematically sets out to destroy everything you liked about the original film? Try Jaws: The Revenge or the Smokey and the Bandit sequels. This film looks like the greatest film of all time compared to them!

About Jar Jar Binks...

Over the summer, I happened to go to the opening night showing of a little movie you may have heard of called Avengers: Age of Ultron. The last of the 20 minutes of previews before the movie was for the forthcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The audience absolutely lost their minds seeing that preview, especially cheering when a particularly geriatric Han Solo showed up in the last shot of the trailer. Make no mistake, I'll be sucker enough to go on opening day as I did for every movie in the prequel trilogy. But it struck me as a strange case of deja vu. After all, wasn't it just 17 years ago that people lined up for Meet Joe Black to see the trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and then walked out of the theater? Wasn't there a strong sense of kid-like excitement, adults playing with their action figures and dressing up in costume for the movie on opening day? And when it came out, what was the reaction?


Sheer, unbridled, near unreasonable anger, hatred, and fury--much of it directed at two people in particular: the very real George Lucas and the very CGI Jar Jar Binks.

I'll save the debate over Lucas and the merits or lack of same of Phantom Menace for another post. I plan on rewatching the six films, quite possibly in episode order again, in the run up to Episode 7. But for now, I want to specifically address the much maligned Jar Jar Binks character.


I come not to defend him per se, nor to praise him nor to bury him. But to provide a little insight into just what went wrong with him and why in the grand scheme of things, he's not as worthless as you may think.


First, let's understand something about movies in general. A movie made in 1999 is not actually made for an audience that was around in 1977. A movie made in 1999 is made for the all-important 18-35 crowd, with a special emphasis on the lower end of that scale. If you were a teenager in 1977, Episode 1 wasn't made for you. I was six when the original Star Wars came out, so I can barely say it was made for my age group. More to the point, Star Wars in general always skewed young. It effectively is made for children. Hence the toys. Forty year olds presumably don't play with action figures (maybe they do?). So the first point in understanding Jar Jar is the fact that he wasn't made for adults; he was made for children. Guess what? Know who likes Jar Jar? Children.


And that's the way Star Wars has always been. There were characters in the original trilogy simply created for action figures. Seriously, did almost any characters in the cantina scene actually do anything? No, but they all had their own action figures. I know because I had (have) those action figures.

The second thing to realize about Jar Jar is what exactly he is and what Star Wars in general is. Star Wars is, in fact, a serial. Rumor has it that Lucas's original idea was to remake Flash Gordon. He settled on an original property, instead, and at one point planned to make 12 episodes. In other words, an actual 12 chapter serial. What serial fans know about but the average movie fan doesn't is that the serials had a habit, especially in the 1930s, of tossing comic relief into the action. Republic serials, generally considered the best serials in the business, were also uniformly the worst at comic relief. From 1936-1938, they tried again and again, mostly with Smiley Burnette or a pair of yokels called Oscar and Elmer. Time and again, the problem with these characters came to the foreground. The serial would be moving along at a nice clip and then it would come screeching to a halt for the so called comedy act to do their shtick for two minutes, then things would continue. The comedy bits would nearly ruin otherwise great serials like The Painted Stallion. Certain B Westerns (Durango Kid) would have a similar problem with the film stopping dead for bad Country tunes to be sung.


Jar Jar was obviously built around those type of comics. That seems to be a primary reason why the story seems to stop for him to do some schtick or another. I will give Lucas this, however. Jar Jar's routines are infinitely shorter than Oscar and Elmer and there's at least an attempt to integrate his routines into what's going on.


Finally, there's the fact that he's not as totally useless as you may think. He does do some stuff in the trilogy beyond be a goof. He leads the heroes to the Gungans in Phantom Menace, which helps set up the battle of Naboo. He also ends up making Palpatine the Emperor by giving him Emergency Powers in Attack of the Clones. No, that wasn't a good thing for the heroes, but it does help explain how Palpatine becomes Emperor. Compare that to the character of Alfrid in The Hobbit trilogy: here's a character who does absolutely nothing but snivel and act cowardly and greedy. He has no redeeming moment saving Bard's kids nor does he end up dying like we pretty actively hope he does. Compared to that, Jar Jar is the greatest sidekick in movie history.

Interestingly, going back to point two for a moment, there were comic relief sidekicks in serials who did occassionally do something smart. Smiley Burnette fumbles his way through the first Dick Tracy serial, but does save Tracy on at least one occassion. So yeah, Jar Jar is clearly based off that type of character.


So lighten up. Besides, Phantom Menace has worse problems than just Jar Jar. But like I said, that's for another post.