no, there won't be any damn spoilers, unless you choose to read them.
So, yes, we saw the movie last night. You would expect any less? Both the Guys and Fernando got us seats for the 12:30am showing at the AMC Burbank 6. We went with the Guys; I hope Fernando was able to distribute our tickets amongst work-mates. (Sadly, because of friction twixt Fernando and the Guys, we were not able to sit together.)
They let us into the theater an hour early--a few people at a time--and ushers all over the place were there to check that you had a ticket stub. It made me crazy. I survived.
It was a raucous crowd: cheering when they saw the Lucasfilm logo, falling dead silent when the scrawl of "Episode 1" started crawling across the screen. They were easy, they could be had for a song, they wanted to love this movie.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to turn out that way.
The Phantom Menace is structured like The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi--lots of stuff going on here, there, and a third place, and we cut between them constantly. The major difference between TESB/ROTJ and TPM, however, is that for the former movies the audience is already invested in the characters. We know Luke, we know Han, and most importantly we know Darth Vader.
I don't know any of the characters in TPM.
Because of my distance from the characters, I don't care about what's going on in the story. As Darin said, all the elements for a compelling story are there, they're just flat and uninteresting because of the characters.
TPM needs a central character--a la Luke Skywalker, but he (not likely it'd be a she) wouldn't need to be as naive as Luke; just a guy central to the story--who experiences these events. Give me something, someone, to be invested in.
The obvious choice in this movie is not Anakin Skywalker, because he's a little boy (the audience, even an audience of tots, is not going to follow a 9-year-old for two hours) but Obi-Wan Kenobi. Who we do not know. We know Ben Kenobi. Obi-Wan is who he used to be. The character we end up spending the most time with is the insanely annoying (and impossible to understand) Jar Jar Binks, who ruins each and every scene he's sketched into. I lost patience the umpteenth time he said, "How rude!" Yeah, I thought, like your presence.
You can spot a key difference between TPM and Star Wars with the entrances given the characters. Anybody here remember Darth Vader's entrance? Sure you do. That's an entrance that has you thinking, This is a bad-ass dude; do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. What's the second thing we see him do? Telekinetically choke a guy across the room. Or how about Luke's entrance? First thing we see him do is looking out to the horizon, yearning. Han's wasn't great, but right after he agrees to fly our intrepid heroes away, he gets into that great bargaining discussion (that I understand was ruined in the The Special Edition by having him draw second--exsqueeze me, Han does not draw second).
Check out the entrance of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan in TPM and you'll see what I mean. Or Darth Maul, who should be the coolest villain--I'm not even sure why I should be scared of him, other than because he looks scary.
There are a few more reasons why TPM isn't a good movie, but since they're more specific I've put them beyond the divider. Read at your own risk.
Spoilers follow.
I'll tell you where this movie lost me: the opening scrawl. Why? Because the first words that appear on the screen are "The taxation of trade routes."
If I want something that's hard to keep track of, I'll go watch a David Lynch movie. If I want to think about taxes, I'll go home and open Quicken.
As in just about any bad movie, the fault in this one lies in the script. Lucas should have called up Lawrence Kasdan and offered him any amount of money to write this. Or called up someone else. Because the script sucks, and no amount of special effects is getting around that.
Basically, because of the taxation of trade routes, the Trade Federation--continually referred to as "the Federation," which kept making me flash onto Star Trek, which is not what you want to do--is blockading a teeny planet named Naboo. The Federation then invades--why they put a bunch of vehicles and armies down on the planet when they could just as well blow the cities off the map is unclear until much later, and only if you think about it. The Federation wants the Queen, Amidala, to sign a treaty making the invasion legal. At this point I'm already wading through waters that I don't care about.
Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi are Jedi knights sent to settle the dispute. Ooo, very sexy opening, no? They show up and the Federation tries to kill them, but they escape and make it to the planet, where they meet the worst character ever devised, Jar Jar Binks, a Gungan who hails from the underwater Gungan cities. (Throughout the movie, "Naboo" refers to the human land dwellers, and "Gungan" refers to Jar Jar's people. Given that the name of the planet is Naboo, we know who's really important around here.)
The Jedi manage to spirit the Queen off the planet, but their hyperdrive's been busted and they can only make it to the backwater planet Tatooine, where they have no money for parts. They meet a young slave, Anakin Skywalker, who decides to enter the pod races to win them the money. Qui-Gon, sensing the Force is strong with this one--and getting medical confirmation thereof: is Lucas kidding?--is going to take Anakin away with them. He isn't able to take Anakin's Mom too, though, and she actually says, "My place is here." Being a slave? The pod race is a great action sequence, even though the only thing that kept racing through my mind is: nothing I'm seeing on screen ever existed in real life.
They get off the planet and get the Queen to the Senate, where she asks for help with the Trade Federation's invasion, and the Chancellor moves to set up a commission to study the Naboo problem. The Queen, at the urging of her Senator, Palpatine (and every Star Wars fan knows who he is...and if you're not a Star Wars fan, you have no idea of what his significance is or where this little scenario is going), moves for a no confidence vote on the Chancellor, allowing Palpatine to use the Naboo sympathy vote to get himself elected Chancellor.
This move--Palpatine getting elected Chancellor--is, I believe, the single most important thing that happens in the movie. This is why the Trade Federation invaded Naboo--to get this sympathy vote. And I could care less. It's too confusing (I have to remember a bunch of politics when I can't keep Al Gore and Bill Bradley straight) and it's too theoretical. I don't know how Palpatine as Chancellor is a great success for the forces of darkness--apparently, that will be explained in another movie. Well, isn't that nice.
The Queen insists on being taken back to Naboo--for plot reasons, I think--and she and the Jedi have to fight their way. Darth Maul shows up and fights Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan with the famed double-headed saber. Why? Plot reasons. I'm like, You have guns, shoot the guy. The Queen gets to the throne room, where she finds the Viceroy of the Federation, just as Anakin and some other space fighters destroy the big spaceship orbiting the planet...
I'd checked out way before this. It's not a good movie. It could have been, if Lucas had given me someone to care about, someone to follow through these adventures. Some review I'd read asked if Lucas had forgotten how to tell a story, and I think it's a valid question. Just because I want to get into this movie doesn't mean I will.
There's some nonsense with the Queen and one of her handmaidens being identical twins, but it's never explained.
The politics in this movie are just stupid. And not just the Palpatine power move. Okay, so democracy is very important, but the Naboo have a Queen who was elected...what? I know we need to get royalty in there because we're going to end up with a Princess, but still. Clearly Lucas has heard the criticism about a bunch of freedom fighters trying to overthrow the yoke of the Empire so that they can throw on the yoke of...who, exactly?...but this nonsense with elected queens doesn't help things.
I'll be very surprised if this gets any repeat business. Maybe someone will go see it to figure out what's going on, but I doubt it. I mean...who cares?
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com