The Phantom Menace Revisited - One Year Later

One year ago this morning, I stood outside the McClurg Court theater with my dad and a few of my best friends, and waited in line to see Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace for the first time. I had camped out the night before, and a week before that, I had camped out three nights to buy tickets for the first showing of the film. My dad and I heckled former Chicago Bulls star Norm Van Leer. My friends and I joked nervously about the film, and tried to mask our excitement behind ironic commentary, but it was impossible to completely belie our true moods. We were excited. Really, really fucking excited.

One year ago this afternoon, I left the theater, having seen Episode I for the first time. I felt a massive thrill, but also a nagging disappointment, which I quickly disregarded. After all, what could live up to the massive hype that I'd built inside me? Nothing, I figured. Any disappointment would only be my exhaustion--and my huge expectations--talking for me. This was a great movie, I immediately began to convince myself.

I saw The Phantom Menace four more times in the theater that summer--with other friends, with the same friends who'd joined me the first time, even by myself on one rainy Friday evening. And every time I saw it--EVERY time--I dozed off during some portion, usually somewhere in the middle. I could not keep my eyes open. But each time, I would blame it on my lack of sleep or my familiarity with the film. It's still a great movie, I whispered to my inner conflict--sure, it has problems, but from a certain point of view, it's genius.

On April 4 of this year, I was among the first to pick up my widescreen video copy of The Phantom Menace at my local Best Buy. I tossed aside the lousy packaging--who the fuck needs a film slide, anyway?--and placed the tape near my TV. A week later, I tried to watch it.

This time, I had no problem staying awake. I had no trouble because I stopped the film every five minutes or so to rant to my roommate about some flaw, either major or minor, that I'd just percieved for the first time. I also had no trouble keeping my lids peeled because halfway through the film, I shut it off. I could take no more.

Not only is The Phantom Menace not a great film, it is not a good film. It is not a mediocre film. It is a flagrantly awful film, one of the biggest BAD movies in the history of the medium. It is a massive "fuck you" from George Lucas to his millions upon millions of fans. It is a toy commercial, an incomprehensible mess of a story and is populated by vapid, poorly-developed characters. It sucks.

Now that my eyes have been opened, what is the biggest problem with The Phantom Menace? It has no dramatic drive WHATSOEVER. The film's flaccid drama is built in from the opening scroll: "Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying systems is in dispute."

Every time I see that scroll, I have to stop for at least ten seconds and figure out what the fuck it means. That's the first problem. The second problem, and ultimately the more damning one, is that once I've decoded Lucas' piss-poor phrasing, I simply don't care. Taxation of outlying trade routes? Who really gives a shit?! You could follow that first sentence with any one of a thousand other factoids--"Queen Amidala's pizza is late," "Jar Jar's ex-lover has returned for his Sy Snootles records," "Obi-Wan has slipped into a coma due to abject boredom from his scant role in this movie"--and it would be more exciting. Instead, it boils down to a trade dispute, which is uninteresting to the extreme.

But here's the tricky thing. Lucas has SAID that the Republic is in "turmoil." Therefore, he must expect the audience to believe it. He then takes his viewers on a two-hour-plus journey through a series of largely unrelated events that just seem to HAPPEN. The Jedi are on the Naboo ship, they leave the ship, they wind up underwater with Jar Jar, they encounter three dangerous fish, their submarine inexplicably breaks down, their starship also breaks down and they wind up on Tattooine--and on and on and on. All of it packed to the gills with clunky dialogue and weak characterizations, and all of it built on top of the flimsy plot foundation of a "trade disupte."

Throughout, he expects that we'll watch with bated breath, because in Lucas' mind, these events are important simply because he has dictated that they must be presented on the screen as part of HIS Star Wars mythology. They are not interesting or dramatic because there is anything interesting or dramatically engaging within them. They are important because George Lucas says so.

Imagine a film with many of the same plot and character deficiencies as The Phantom Menace--but written, directed and produced by a neophyte director. Imagine a virtual no-name proposing that two mystical warriors should fight to protect a planet that has been captured FOR NO DISCERNIBLE REASON. Imagine that as comic relief, the young talent envisions a computer-generated foppish cartoon who speaks in gibberish. Imagine that the film's big, sinister villain has about fifty words of dialogue, and is never even questioned by the bad guys as to why he's doing all these evil things. Let's face it--as the product of any filmmaker other than Lucas, Episode One would be a direct-to-video release, starring Jimmy Doohan as Qui-Gon, Rutger Hauer as Darth Maul and Rip Taylor as Yoda. Yet because it is a Star Wars film from the mind of George Lucas, it is assumed that we will lap it up as nectar from the cinematic heavens.

What hubris. Lucas has honestly reached the point where he cannot summon any ability to create a film with any dramatic merits on its own--we should all accept it because it is a Star Wars movie, not because it is a good movie. He's grown mindbogglingly lazy--and that's being kind to the guy. To believe that, you must ignore the decadent disdain for the viewer throughout this film--in the writing, in the direction, and even in the editing, which is where Lucas used to truly shine. It's less a writer/director crafting a film and more a holy prophet handing down the sacred word. No, strike that--it's more like God himself handing down his sacred word, because I honestly believe that's where Lucas places himself in the pantheon of film.

God complex, megalomania, hyperegotism--call it what you will, Lucas has got it. The Phantom Menace reeks of it. And yet, it will always occupy a place in my heart. Part of that is because I adore the original films so much. Another part of it is that Menace will always bask in the glow of the events surrounding it; the months preceeding that film are filled with fond memories, especially the line itself, and I'll always treasure those. Yet another part is the tiny bits of classic Star Wars that somehow managed to make it into the movie, almost in spite of Lucas' efforts--John Williams' score, Watto the cagey junk dealer, the occasional dialogue snippet or brilliant visual. There are just enough of those moments to redeem the film for me as a Star Wars fan.

But as a lover of film in general, I cannot abide The Phantom Menace. It's aggressively bad, constantly setting new standards for its own awfulness--and all of that badness stems purely from Lucas' disconnection from any filmmaking finesse he used to possess. I could dissect the film more closely--perform an autopsy on its bloated, stinking corpse--but why bother? The bottom line is that as a filmmaker, Lucas has completely lost it.

While I am excited for Episode Two, I also dread it. Because if he hasn't learned any lessons from the critical backlash against The Phantom Menace, it will just be another foul screed passed down from Lucas' high throne over all of pop culture.