Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - Review

Rating: 6/10 (19 September 2015)

I had only seen Star Wars for the first time when the special edition's came out in 1997 but I fell in love instantly. The summer of 1999 rolled around and Star Wars fever was everywhere, the hype was insane and I was just young enough at the time that I enjoyed the hell out of the prequels when they were coming out. I can certainly be objective about them now though, lets dig into the The Phantom Menace.
So here we are, the beginning of the epic Star Wars saga, I gonna start with my biggest problem with this film, it should never have existed. By that I mean that I think the prequel trilogy should have started where Episode 2 did, we didn't need to see Anakin as a child, the film did a good job of showing him as kind and selfless this could have been done another way. The central conflict of the movie, the invasion of Naboo, also comes off as kinda pointless, it's a very contained incident that has little to do with what happens in the rest of the trilogy. The issues are further exacerbated by the time jump between this film and Episode 2. That said though, if you pull your focus in, the story isn't so bad, classic fight for freedom just on a planetary scale instead of the galactic stakes we're used to and with way more boring politics that we're used to as well.
It's really hard to rate the cast in this because they are all saddled with such terrible dialogue most of the time, that being said though I really liked Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn. There was a great nobleness to his character and he was better at delivering the bad dialogue than most. Ewan McGreggor was equally good here, he brought the youthful side to a character that we had only known as old and wise before, his relationship with Qui-Gon was also a highlight. Natalie Portman was alright but what was the deal with her put on Queen voice, it was odd, also I don't buy her as a 14 year old nor do I get why a society would ever elect a 14 year old as the ruler of an entire planet.
Jake Lloyd is about as terrible as child actors come but again, woeful dialogue is to blame a lot of the time here too, he does sell the goodness of Anakin well enough though. Ian McDiarmid is a highlight, reprising his character from the original trilogy, watching his manipulations of everyone around him is one of the highlights of the film and the trilogy as a whole. Anthony Daniels, I think the only actor to be in all six films is pretty good as usual, he knows the character of C-3PO inside out at this point. Having Anakin be the creator of C-3PO though is a huge mistake and an unnecessary attempt to tie the universe together, all it does is make the universe seem smaller.
The best thing about this film, Darth Maul, what a bad ass, he was truly a menacing villain. He didn't say much which made him appear even more scary and the actors martial arts skills really put the action on another level. Speaking of the action, it was pretty good, the final battle was pretty great, it intercut between the ground battle, the space battle and the now famous lightsaber duel much like Return of the Jedi did. That duel is really impressive still, it's not as overly choreographed as some the duels that followed it and it has a great emotional ending with Qui-Gon's death and Obi- Wan's rage fulled assault on Maul, definitely the high point of the film.
Why was Darth Maul killed off though, that has to be the biggest misstep of the film, he should have been kept around for the whole trilogy, what a waste. At least he has since been resurrected in cartoon form.
A big talking point around the prequels has always been the overuse of CGI, and while there was a lot more miniatures and model work than a lot of people realize there is also a ton of CGI. That CGI has not aged well in a lot of places, especially in characters like Watto and Jar Jar.
Jar Jar almost doesn't deserve the dignity of being mentioned but I will, I don't know what Lucas was thinking when he dreamed this guy up. He's supposed to be the comic relief but he is so painfully unfunny and cringe worthy that he's hard to watch. Thank god he had a greatly reduced role in the following films.
The Phantom Menace is an entertaining opening to the Star Wars saga though it is held back from the greatness of the originals with a lackluster and largely inconsequential plot, terrible dialogue and generally wooden performances for the most part.