Weak

Rating: 4/10 (12 August 2008)

Some thoughts on Phantom Menace.
1. The main thing missing from all the prequels was a sense of emotional connections between the characters. Take Obi Wan. He spends the three prequels performing his various duties as a jedi. What are his hopes? Dreams? Fears? Loves? He has no emotional agenda and no real emotional connection to the other characters. It's true of all the prequel characters, who seem to exist in their own solitary worlds, disconnected from others.
Remember the original Star Wars? Remember Luke and Han, bickering like brothers but helping each other when in need? Remember Luke's father/son like connection to Obi Wan, and the sense of loss he felt when Obi Wan died? Remember the droids, arguing but never less than loyal to each other? That was how Lucas wrote then. Today, I always imagine George sitting in some big mansion, like Charles Foster Kane, rich and very much alone. His movies are emotionally cold and the characters are all estranged from each other.
2. I'll never understand why Lucas chose trade routes and tariffs as central aspects of his adventure movie plot. Was he sitting in his office one day, arranging for a shipment of Star Wars toys to China, and was upset about tariffs and thought "Here's an underutilized idea for an adventure movie." Or maybe he didn't realize that business trade negotiations, although perhaps relateable to him, weren't relateable to a large segment of his audience.
3. Making the force a chemical in your blood rather than a mystical ephemeral power robs the force of a lot of its mystery and fascination. It makes the force mundane. Another thought: Since the prequels take place "before" the originals, how come nobody in the Star Wars/Empire/Jedi films seems aware of this blood thing? 4. It's interesting to have Luke be Vader's son and Leia's brother, but having C3PO be Vader's pet robot as a child seems a little too coincidental.
5. Annikan is a dull kid and his force powers are never really demonstrated. Remember in the first Spider-Man, when Peter Parker was trying out his new powers? He was fascinated and curious and horrified all at once. Annikan should have had a scene like that.
6. Why didn't they bring Annikan's mother along with them? He's a boy and presumably will need a nanny, right? Why can't she be that? It might have been interesting to kill her off. That would give Annakin an early trauma, one that would inform his later dark side conversion. It would also form an interesting corollary with the first Star Wars film, where the death of Luke's aunt and uncle caused him to leave his farm life for a world of adventure.
7. Science fiction writer David Brin wrote a piece for Salon magazine years ago that articulated a lot of basic flaws of "Phantom Menace." Be sure to check it out for an intelligent, thoughtful analysis (some of which I've reiterated here.)