Nothing like spotlighting a movie that clearly hasn’t gotten enough attention in a franchise that isn’t talked about regularly on the internet. Discourse on the Star Wars prequels and the franchise in general has evolved significantly since their release and the subsequent Disney acquisition of the IP. While the overall opinion of the original trilogy hasn’t changed, Star Wars has developed a weird “Us vs Them” status where, as far as the internet is concerned, people are either die-hard fans of everything in the series just because it has lightsabers in it, or they detest everything about it because of it becoming the product of soulless oversaturation. It's those two starkly contrasting opinions that make talking about the series exhausting, especially with the Sequel Trilogy. This is all to say…I revisited the prequels, and I have no idea what prompted it.
Just some quick background on me: I grew up with the prequels, I saw Episodes II and III in the theater—come to think of it, I think Attack of the Clones might be my first theater-going experience—so I have nostalgic ties to the trilogy, but I like to think that I have the capacity to recognize the faults in the films and look at certain things objectively with the benefit of adulthood and a better understanding of movies than when I was first introduced to them. The last time I watched the prequels was before The Force Awakens came out, and that confirmed my fears that they wouldn’t hold up, and I hadn't watched them since. But for whatever reason, I gave the movies another shot and uh…it came back around for me.
I’m not going to be one of those people who praise The Phantom Menace as a misunderstood masterpiece, since, to me, it’s in the same vein as people who say it’s completely terrible and there’s nothing good about it. One side seems incredibly naïve and unwilling to let nostalgia uncloud their judgment, and the other seems overly harsh and reductive. After this most recent rewatch—and this will go for all of the prequels—I’m almost exactly somewhere in the middle in that the movie is…okay.
There’s stuff that’s good and stuff that’s bad, but I feel like going to polar ends of the spectrum on its quality deflates any real conversation of the pros and cons of the film. Also, what I have to say isn’t a play-by-play of the movie as a whole. It’s more about the new things I noticed upon revisiting. Like Trudy from Pulp Fiction playing the captain of the ambassador ship in the opening scene…that might mean absolutely nothing to you, but I’d like to think somewhere in the world, the sound of glass breaking is occurring in someone’s head upon hearing that news.
I’ll try to avoid the complaints that everyone has about the film, since there have been 26 years for people to stew in the negativity over the same points of discussion. I won’t touch on midichlorians or the bad performances of two specific actors since they’ve been through enough.
That being said, I will say the Gungans are probably the worst part of the movie, and if people claim otherwise online, it’s likely just clickbait or an attempt to get a rise out of others. Even their coolest moment of stepping through the fog before the battle is less badass when you realize it's a rip-off of the grasshoppers’ entrance in the third act of A Bug’s Life.
A question that kept popping in my head after this most recent rewatch is, does anyone in it actually grow as a character? People have gone on about how the movie doesn’t have a main character, and I can’t disagree. My bigger narrative problem is that nobody in the film has any form of an arc. Some goals get accomplished, but nobody seems to grow as characters, and nothing really of consequence happens that would necessitate its own cinematic chapter in a trilogy.
I actually remember growing up and liking this one the most of the three films because of that aspect. It’s just a standalone space adventure. In hindsight, I think that works against the trilogy since it feels so detached from the other two films.
I was thinking about it, especially regarding Anakin. The ending obviously mirrors Luke destroying the Death Star with Anakin destroying the Trade Federation ship, but it felt oddly hollow, and I realized it was because he had no agency in what was going on. He destroys the ship (by accident) after his ship sent him there (via autopilot) after he was told to hide from the action that was taking place on Naboo.
Everything was out of his control, rather than a deliberate choice to step in and help, so the victory feels unearned. Not to mention redundant, since, if we’re going by the underdog template, he already proved himself halfway through the movie when he won the pod race, demonstrating that even a slave could accomplish something great. This was the result of his skills, ingenuity, and resolve to help others, and he gets rewarded for it.
After that, he has nothing to do for the rest of the movie. He’s just someone to feed exposition to, and to be used as a plot point for the Jedi. Though I always did like the detail that he’s cold the first time he goes into space, since he spent his entire life on a hot desert planet. They did something similar with Rey inThe Force Awakens, when she sees a forest for the first time, and in both cases, it’s a nice humanizing moment.
Now that I ripped off the band-aid of what’s bad about the movie, I’m going to point out the good, because there are legitimately good aspects to it. What was most surprising about this most recent rewatch is Liam Neeson’s portrayal of Qui-Gon. Growing up, I always thought Qui-Gon was pretty boring, and his main memorable trait was having a green lightsaber.
Seeing him now, he’s probably the most consistent performer in the entire movie. Not only does he make George Lucas’ dialogue sound surprisingly natural, but his dry demeanor and attitude lead to some of the funnier moments in the movie.
I’ll make it clear that I don’t find Jar-Jar funny, but the sheer frustration and annoyance Qui-Gon has towards him, I would argue, is pretty comical since he feels like a surrogate for the audience. At no point in the movie did I ever feel like there was a burgeoning friendship between them. It’s like Qui-Gon brought him along purely because he knew that Jar-Jar would’ve been killed or tortured if he left him with the Gungans, but he also immediately regretted the decision. Their dynamic is very much like Eddie Valiant and Roger Rabbit…if Eddie never rediscovered his sense of humor and then died by the end.
Beyond that, Neeson also manages to find warmth and likability in his performance. A problem with actors playing Jedi is that it seems very easy for them to fall into the trap of portraying being zen and emotionally level-headed as monotone and stiff, similar to actors playing Vulcans in Star Trek. Qui-Gon seems more laid-back than anything, and similar to Captain Barbossa, he behaves as if the Jedi Code is more a set of guidelines than actual rules and it makes him more rebellious among the ranks.
His willingness to clash with the Jedi Order is one of the attributes that make him interesting and make it fun to theorize about hypothetical scenarios of how the story would’ve played differently had he been around to train Anakin. Especially when you consider how often he goes by the logic of the ends justifying the means. I mean, he uses the Jedi mind trick multiple times, threatens Jar-Jar with violence to get him to help them out, and does so many things behind the Queen's back (as far as he knows) to get off Tatooine. He also jokingly claims to have a lightsaber as a result of killing a Jedi and taking it from him, which is a fun dark joke, but he says it so matter-of-factly that there's part of me that's like...okay, but did you?
(Just a side note, Liam Neeson was a respected actor at that point in his career—having received an Oscar nomination for Schindler’s List—and he’s on record about making lightsaber noises while filming action scenes. Knowing that makes me like him even more.)
Speaking of action and lightsabers, I’ll briefly touch on the end duel (because everyone does). There’s not much I can add to it that hasn’t been brought up on either side countless times, besides the technical aspect of it. For as much as people love to praise or putdown the fight for being overly choreographed—though, no one in their right mind would besmirch ‘Duel of the Fates’—it’s still a well-choreographed fight scene where you can actually see that it’s the actors doing the work because it’s framed primarily in wide shots and you can make out everything that’s happening.
Considering there was a point where using shaky cam and quick cuts in action movies became the norm for a while (and it’s steadily making a comeback, for some reason), it’s so refreshing to watch a fight scene where everything is laid out cleanly. You know where everyone is, what everyone is doing, and that it involves actual performers, rather than CGI renderings of them.
The last thing I’ll bring up is that I’m torn on the blockade angle that sets the plot in motion. On the one hand, I like the idea of Naboo being invaded—keeping up with the World War II homage that was always present in Star Wars—and the Jedi and Queen Amidala’s goal being ultimately to free the planet and reclaim it from its captive state. When it’s stripped down, that’s the focus of the story, and it sounds simple enough to be the focus of a Star Wars movie. However, like many people, I think the film's focus on galactic politics grinds its momentum to a halt.
I vividly remember watching the movie growing up and actively dreading the Coruscant portion because I knew I would be bored and didn’t have the better sense to just fast forward through it. As an adult, I can appreciate Palpatine manipulating the queen by literally whispering in her ear—because Palpatine is the best, even if his first name is Sheev—but as a kid, it was a drag.
For all the faults of the previous hour and change of the movie, at least you get these fantastic establishing shots of the visually distinct worlds. On the ground level, Naboo has Jedi action, the locations are colorful, and it has varying locations (the capital city, the swamp, the underwater set piece, and the Gungan city), which is different at that point in the saga since all planets were previously based on one topographical aspect due to budget and technological restraints. Naboo feels like a fully lived-in world.
Then with Tatooine, you get some varied alien designs (both CGI and practical) and the pod race (though even at age 5, I recognized it went on for too long). Coruscant is just so bland, and for a planet that’s a giant city, it feels oddly desolate and lifeless. A fact that would be fixed in later entries, but in here, it’s just people talking in monotonously-colored rooms, excluding the senate chamber (which still looks great). The 20 or so minutes of the movie are a good example of many people’s issues with the prequels, as it feels so disparate from what one would want in a Star Wars movie.
To wrap this up, I was surprised by how much of the movie I still enjoyed, and how certain aspects improved upon revisiting (while others remained just as bad, and a few were worse for different reasons). While I don’t think the criticisms towards this movie are unfounded, because there are a lot of problems, I do believe there are a lot of positive attributes that shouldn’t be overlooked.
The Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores are emblematic of retrospective opinions of it, considering both are almost precisely at the 50% point. I wouldn’t say it’s amazing, and I wouldn’t say it’s the worst movie ever made; I would just say it’s… fine. If for nothing else, at least its existence gave us Fanboys.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is available to stream on Disney+.