The Phantom Mess -- Lacks either a Phantom or a Menace, Instead just a Mess -- Overall Bad Film-making

Rating: 2/10 (4 February 2008)

Let me preface this review by saying I am a huge fan of the original three movies, particularly the first two. If George Lucas' name and the title "Star Wars" were absent from the poster and ads during the pre-release hype of this film, this overlong wasted 2-hours-of-your-life masquerading as a movie would have miserably bombed at the box office. The best way to sum it up is this: it is as if the filmmaker didn't know anything about Star Wars, except the filmmaker was the writer and director of the original Star Wars films. The result is what you might expect if the Star Wars franchise was turned over to a different production company, as was done in Superman III. However, Lucas did not trade his gold mine for a billion dollars, but instead he may have killed the golden goose. This is probably one of a half-dozen of the biggest disappointments in film history, given the hype, the expectations, and the name surrounding this movie. Sure, it would probably not live up to the originals, even if it was good, but it doesn't work even modestly well as a story. The script needed only about 14 rewrites.
The story is supposed to chronicle the early life of Anakin Skywalker who eventually becomes Darth Vader, the baddie from the original movies. A potentially noble endeavor, I guess, in that it would tell in more detail the story of the Clone Wars before the rise of the Empire. The Empire is chronicled in the original 1977 movie beginning with the renamed fourth episode, "A New Hope". Even aside from the story of this prequel, of which about 98% makes no sense, there are serious continuity problems in how this film fits in with the original three films, aka episodes IV-VI.
Several aspects of the "story" are a jumbled mess. When we first meet young Anakin Skywalker, he is supposedly a slave. And yet he gets tons of free time to work on, guess what?-- a droid called C3PO. First continuity problem: in a "A New Hope" C3PO is programmed as a "protocol droid, versed in all the customs of different races of aliens. When he meets Luke Skywalker (son of Anakin) in Star Wars IV, C3PO knows nothing about Luke and vice-versa. He doesn't even know about R2D2's mission. Further, what would a slave be doing making a Protocol Droid, versed in all the customs? Not to mention that slaves normally have NO free-time, the whole thing makes little sense. It seemed Lucas wanted an excuse to bring C3PO back. I love C3PO, but this was not the way to bring him into the story.
Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor play Jedi Knights, and they are wearing beige-colored robes similar to those worn by Obi-Wan Kenobi on the desert planet. Well, that makes sense, doesn't it? Obi-Wan aka Ben Kenobi was a Jedi, right? Well, if you remember, Luke's uncle also wore the same type of robe: they were robes for the desert! I never once thought in the original movie that the beige sand robes were Jedi uniforms! Qui-Gon Jinn was sort of an interesting Jedi who was at odds with the order, and I would have liked to understand better why he was in conflict with the other Jedis. And Samuel Jackson as another Jedi was a terrible casting choice. I admire the work of Jackson about as much as any actor, but he seemed like his character had been spawned from Planet East Los Angeles.
Then there is the race competition that might liberate young Anakin from his bondage as a slave. At the time, I thought, OK, he'll lose the race, and then we'll really have a story. Nope. He wins the race. Of course, the race only lasts about four hours, showing off all the neat CGI affects. This is no story. There's no obstacle for Anakin. His slavery really didn't seem that bad, and now he is liberated easily. I also missed what the Phantom or the Menace was, except for a red-clad dark Jedi called Darth Maul who seemed, for reasons not entirely explained, to like to beat up on Jedis. It seemed the movie needed a baddie called "Darth" somewhere, and he was it.
Ultimately, a wasted opportunity, as Lucas probably got 200 million to make this thing. What the film really needed was a script editor. Or maybe a better storyteller. Lucas really made five and a half good films (maybe six and a half at most if you liked THX 1138), American Graffiti, Star Wars IV: A New Hope, Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi (really about half a good film, all the Ewok adventures seemed completely at odds with the rest of the film), The Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Maybe this Star Wars movie wouldn't have been so bad if it had been written by someone who was truly dedicated to Star Wars. Lucas didn't seem up to the task.