High-tech Space Invaders

Rating: 4/10 (14 January 2004)

Unlike most of those who have reviewed this film, I have never seen the original Star Wars trilogy from the late 1970s and early 1980s. This has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, I am free from the need to consider whether it was better or worse than the original films. On the other, there was much about it that I found confusing, but which might have been clearer had I seen those films.
The film tries to combine two genres, science fiction and sword-and-sorcery fantasy. These might be thought to be mutually exclusive, as the first is normally set in a high-tech future and the second in an imaginary low-tech past, but here they are brought together by having the action set in a far-away galaxy `a long time ago' and by using scientific technology in much the same way as sorcery is used in more conventional fantasy films. Some low-tech elements, however, survive; in a society that has developed long-distance space travel it seems illogical that some characters' weapon of choice is the `light sabre,' a device that enables them to kill an enemy standing within about two yards of them (an ability that the human race has possessed ever since the first caveman made a spear by tying a sharpened flint to a stick). The light sabre, of course, has nothing to do with logic; it was simply invented to enable the characters to have hand-to-hand duels in the best swashbuckling tradition.
The plot of The Phantom Menace concerns an invasion by the Trade Federation (which sounds like a businessmen's club but is actually an evil empire planning to take over large parts of the galaxy) invades the peaceful planet of Naboo. Queen Amidala, the young ruler of Naboo, escapes, and continues the fight against the Federation with the help of two Jedi Knights (members of an ancient and mystical brotherhood of warriors), Jar Jar Binks (a member of an underwater race who share Naboo with its human inhabitants), and Anakin Skywalker (a young boy rescued from slavery on a desert planet).

The characters in the film are divided into humans and aliens, and the alien ones (Jar Jar Binks in particular) seem to have caused a good deal of adverse comment. Well yes, I did find Jar Jar with his broken English extremely irritating, and wondered why subtitles weren't provided for his scenes. On the other hand, I was almost equally irritated by Yoda (a bat-eared garden gnome who leads the Jedi) and his peculiar inverted sentences. One have thought would that a character who so wise is supposed to be by now of English syntax the rules would have learnt. In fact, none of the alien characters seemed particularly credible; I have seen more convincing aliens in old television programmes such as Doctor Who or Star Trek, which were made on a tiny fraction of the Star Wars budget. The aliens were all supposed to be either kindly or malevolent, but all of them merely seemed risible.
If the alien characters, however, were unconvincing, the human ones were worse. The acting was of a uniformly poor standard, even from actors such as Liam Neeson whom I have admired in other productions. A special mention has to go to Natalie Portman, whose portrayal of Queen Amidala was distinguished by its woodenness and lifelessness. It is hard to believe that she was the girl who was so impressive in Beautiful Girls and Leon. I am not impressed by the explanation that George Lucas deliberately required wooden acting as `homage' to old science-fiction B-movies. That might shift the blame from the actors to the director, but it does not make the film any better. And why pay homage to something that was rubbish in the first place?

There were many things about this movie that I found difficult to understand. It was never convincingly explained what the Trade Federation was, or why it wanted to invade Naboo, or what its relationship was to the other villains in the film, or the role of another, more benevolent, political institution called `The Republic.' The biggest mystery surrounded the semi-religious philosophy of the Jedi, which centred on a mysterious entity called the Force, something else that was never satisfactorily explained. At times the Force seemed to be regarded as a form of psychic energy that could be used for either good or evil purposes; at others, when the Jedi talked about `the will of the Force', it seemed merely to be another name for God. Eventually, the explanation was given that the Force is connected to the presence in the human bloodstream of micro-organisms called `mitichlorians', although the exact nature of the connection remained elusive. If these matters had been explained, this would have been a better film. (And no, it is not good enough to say that I might have understood the film more if I had seen three other films made more than twenty years ago).

Incidentally, I found it difficult to believe in a boy called `Annie'. In addition, greater familiarity with vulgar British slang might have persuaded the scriptwriter that `Obi-Wan Kenobi' was not a very good name for a character. (Say it quickly and you'll know what I mean).

So what is good about this film? Well, the computer-generated special effects are, of course, impressive, but without believable characters or plot that is not enough to make a good film. The result is merely a high-tech version of those old space invader arcade games, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. 4/10