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Pacing stops 'Episode I' from soaring into hyperdrive
Sunday, May 16, 1999 By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor
Suppose the "Star Wars" trilogy had never been made. Imagine that "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" really was the first movie in the series. Alas, I doubt it would ever have inspired a sequel, much less the six films that will make up the "Star Wars" canon by the time George Lucas releases the last one in the year 2005.
'Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace'
Rating: PG for sci-fi action/violence.
Players: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor,
Natalie Portman.
Director: George Lucas.
Critic's call: 2 1/2
Granted, my scenario is somewhat unfair. To a degree, "The Phantom Menace" presupposes our knowledge of the "Star Wars" saga. It doesn't feel the need to explain Jedi knights or the Force, for example. Inevitably, much of the movie must serve as exposition, setting up the back story for the tale we have come to know. "Phantom Menace" would have been a different film if it were the first of its kind.
But because it is not, it is obliged to meet certain standards established by its predecessors. A "Star Wars" movie should always start with action, never with talk -- especially by creatures you can barely understand. A "Star Wars" movie should never get bogged down, especially in such matters as politics. A "Star Wars" movie doesn't need its characters to be subtle; it needs them to be vivid.
"The Phantom Menace" violates each of these tenets. The film looks great, thanks to the new generation of special effects. But neither the story nor the characters prove particularly compelling. The liveliest creature of the lot, an amphibian called Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), proves to be a bumbling babbler whom kids will love. Many adults will find him annoying enough to wish someone would slice him in half with a light saber.
Writer-director Lucas maintains that the "Star Wars" saga is aimed primarily at kids, the equivalent of a Saturday-afternoon serial. But the previous films appealed to the child in all of us, young and old -- in large part because they used mythological and religious elements common to most of the world's major cultures.
Lucas always expressed frustration that the available movie technology could not transfer his vision to the screen. With "Phantom Menace," he says he got just what he wanted. Maybe that's part of the problem. Limitations can stimulate the ingenuity of a great artist. The lack of them has, in this case, exposed a certain banality. This one really is skewed toward kids, deficient in both the philosophical and romantic resonance of the earlier movies.
The movie's chief problem is an uneven pace that sometimes slows to a crawl, which may be the result of a story that seems to lack a sense of urgency. The film takes place 30 years before the previous "Star Wars" sagas. It starts with a dispute instigated by an outfit called the Trade Federation, composed of (literally) little green men. It is never quite explained who they are or where they come from, but it is clear they are being used to carry out an invasion of the planet Naboo, ruled by the teen-age Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman).
Jedi knights Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and our old (now young) friend Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), unable to prevent the invasion, escort the queen on a mission to demand help from the Republic.
There is no empire yet -- Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is merely a senator with a smooth, vaguely unctuous manner. Other familiar faces include Yoda, R2-D2 and C-3PO. As for Samuel L. Jackson as Jedi knight Mace Windu, don't blink or you'll miss him. His role amounts to a cameo -- one assumes he figures more prominently in future installments.
Neeson projects the air of mystic calm appropriate to a mature Jedi, but it hardly makes him distinctive. McGregor makes Obi-Wan a tad headstrong, but nothing like, say, Han Solo. Queen Amidala speaks in a regal monotone. You get the idea. Maybe Jar Jar's hyperactivity is meant to make up for the rest of them.
A repair stop on the remote desert planet Tatooine results in the Jedi knights meeting the child Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), who will figure so prominently in later events, and in the film's most exciting sequence, a pod race. The movie excels in its landscapes, especially the underwater city of Jar Jar's species and the futuristic, skyscraper-filled, traffic-intensive capital city, Coruscant.
By movie's end, the characters have started on the paths to their destinies, as related in the later films. "Phantom Menace" leaves us intrigued to learn how they get from here to there, which we will discover in the two remaining installments.
But for now, unfortunately, too often it's hurry up and wait. A "Star Wars" movie should never hurry up and wait.
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