The saga begins (sort of)

Rating: 2/10 (27 September 2006)

40 years before the original Star Wars, the decaying Old Republic governs the Galaxy, under the watchful eye of the Jedi Knights. A shadowy figure uses the invasion of an innocent planet to propel himself into a position of power. As two Jedi - Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor) and Qui-Gon Jin (Liam Neeson) - step in to save the planet's queen, Padme (Natalie Portman), they flee and encounter a young prodigy along the way. A young slave boy named Anakin Skywalker...
Episode I took the planet by storm in 1999. A worldwide fan-base had scarcely dared to dream of a new Star Wars film, surviving on a diet of games, novels and comics of wide-ranging quality. Finally, the news broke, a massive - some would say unfair - hype built up, and this materialized on screens around the globe. Lucas was in full control, the cast was intriguing, what could possibly go wrong?
It turns out you can throw a lot at a film: great actors, masterful visual effects, a powerful brand, all this can be undone by a script hastily scribbled on legal pad and a director utterly uninterested in the acting process. Episode I stumbles gracelessly from story point to confusing story point, somehow building on the misguided notion that a tax dispute was the grand way to open a space opera for all ages. Our bland Jedi pick up cinema's most misguided comic relief character and a 10 year-old Anakin along the way, which, with Portman's almond-paste flavored queen amounts to a leading quintet that will have you yearning for the simple but strong Han-Luke- Leia dynamic of old. It's important to note that until the very end, it is unclear who our protagonist is.
Along its bumpy path, Episode I provides little of the global prequel plot but many of its narrative inconsistencies. Set on turning Star Wars into The Legend of Darth Vader, Lucas rakes up the mythical connotations as any good student of Joseph Campbell would: Anakin is given slave origins, precocious talents, and even divine conception, the latter tentatively given the silliest scientific explanation in the history of cinema. With so much wasted effort thrown at Anakin, Ewan McGregor's Obi Wan Kenobi and Liam Nesson's Qui Gon Jin are left with vague character sketches. The former defaults to an Alec Guinness impression and the latter manages to give his lines more weight and dignity than the material deserves.
In this context, Jar Jar Binks is not the hateful monstrosity many would have you believe. He is almost at home in a movie with much larger problems, particularly one of tone, something even hinted at in the last moments of Lucasfilm's promotional making of doc. Episode I never knows what it wants to be: action fantasy? Political thriller? Kid flick? In trying to mix all of those, it fails in every respect, and all that is left is nostalgia value, and though it is considerable and proved easy to milk back in 1999, it goes a long way to showing why time has not been kind to the prequels or to this episode in particular.
You probably don't need to see this, but if you do, take it as an interesting exposé of all that can wrong in the filmmaking process (or let the hilarious Mr Plinkett review do that for you and vindicate your wasted time). Quality is a subjective thing, so we can at least credit George Lucas with one amazing feat: he made a truly, objectively bad film.