I wish I could rate it higher, but my The Phantom Menace review is a 1.2 out of 5, and this is probably the biggest disappointment of my adolescent life. I waited in line like a lot of other people for the midnight showing and the launch, and it was one that really hurt me. After sixteen years of nothing, this was meant to be the film that brought it all back. It was just so annoying, and I walked out wanting to like it a lot more than I could. I’m not writing this to be negative for the sake of it. It’s that I wanted this to be good so badly that a bad film feels worse than it would from anyone else.
Below is a full recap of the story, spoilers included, then what I thought of the main pieces (Jar Jar, the midi-chlorians, the podrace and the cast), and why I came out of it with a score as low as 1.2. If you’re planning to see it, you might want to stop here and make up your own mind.
The story so far: Naboo and Tatooine
The story goes back thirty-two years before A New Hope, with the Trade Federation blockading the planet Naboo. Two Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi, get sent to negotiate and end up running into a droid army instead. The Federation’s leaders try to have them killed, and the two Jedi cut their way through to the planet below, where they meet a clumsy Gungan outcast called Jar Jar Binks. He leads them to his underwater city, and they borrow a transport to rescue Queen Amidala, the young ruler of Naboo, and flee the planet.
Their ship gets damaged on the way out, and they end up stuck on Tatooine, where they have to find a part to fix it. That’s where they meet a nine-year-old slave boy called Anakin Skywalker, who’s strong in the Force and who builds his own droid, C-3PO, out of spare parts. It’s a lot of political set-up to get through before the story gets to anything exciting, and it’s the reason so much of the film felt slow to me.
On Tatooine the Jedi find a junk dealer called Watto, who owns Anakin and his mother Shmi and who isn’t impressed by the Republic’s money. Qui-Gon strikes a bet with him, Anakin’s freedom against the ship part they need, with the podrace deciding it. Anakin has a good heart and a head for machines, and he’s friendly to everyone he meets, and you can see why Qui-Gon takes a shine to him. It’s the right sort of start for the boy who’s going to turn into one of the biggest villains in movie history, and I’ll give the film that. What I couldn’t get over is how long it takes to get anywhere, and how little I cared when it did.
Along the way a dark, hooded figure with a red face and a double-bladed lightsaber turns up, and that’s Darth Maul, a Sith lord who’s been sent to hunt the Queen down. He’s easily the coolest thing in the film, and he’s barely in it, which feels like a waste to me. He appears, he stares, he leaves, and then we go back to the next conversation about trade routes. I wanted more of him and a lot less of everything else.
Jar Jar and the blood counts
The whole thing with Jar Jar was the first problem. He’s in the film constantly, clumsy and loud, and the gags made me wince more than laugh. I know he’s meant to be the comic relief, but every time he turned up I felt the film slow down and talk down to me. And the Gungans are a big part of the finale, so there’s no avoiding him. He leads the Naboo and the Gungans into the final fight against the Trade Federation, and I just couldn’t take any of it seriously.
The stupid introduction of midi-chlorians made no sense to me at all. Qui-Gon explains that the Force comes from tiny life forms in your blood, so being a Jedi is basically a blood count. When Qui-Gon takes a sample from Anakin and finds his count is higher than even Yoda’s, I couldn’t believe they’d gone there. I don’t want the Force explained, and I definitely don’t want it explained like that. It takes something mysterious and turns it into a medical test, and I didn’t understand why anyone thought it was a good idea. The Force was always the thing that made Star Wars feel special, and now it’s reduced to a number.
The podrace and Coruscant
Qui-Gon wins Anakin in a podrace, and I know the podrace is the part a lot of people are going to point to, and I’ll say it again that it didn’t work for me. Anakin is a nine-year-old slave boy who builds his own pod and races it in the dust of Tatooine, and Qui-Gon bets everything on him winning. The racers fly around the canyons at crazy speed and there’s a lot going on, and the effects are impressive. But for me it was loud and busy and went on a long time, and I wasn’t invested in who won. When the whole thing is hanging on a child’s race, I want to be thrilled, and I just wasn’t.
After that the story slows to a crawl. Qui-Gon takes Anakin to the Jedi Council on Coruscant, and the Council isn’t convinced. They think he’s too old and too dangerous to train, and that’s a big moment, but it didn’t have the effect on me that it was supposed to. The Council sits in their big round chamber talking, and Queen Amidala goes to the Senate while Palpatine, the senator from Naboo, works the room. It’s meant to set up the bigger story, and I can see that, but it didn’t make me care. I’d been hoping for adventure, and I got meetings.
What was good
I’d agree that Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor were good. Qui-Gon is the one character who feels like a proper Jedi, calm and a bit stubborn, and Ewan McGregor as the young Obi-Wan is exactly what I’d hoped for. Whenever the two of them are on screen together I started to enjoy myself, and then the film would cut away to something else. They’re the only two people in the whole film who made me feel like I was watching Star Wars.
Seeing Yoda and the other Jedi again should have been a thrill, and the planet-wide city of Coruscant looks incredible. But there’s nothing to hang any of it on. The characters I wanted to care about are standing around waiting for the next plot point, and the whole time I kept thinking back to how much happened in A New Hope in the same amount of time. That film made you fall in love with its people straight away, and this one never gave me the same chance. The Empire Strikes Back managed it twice over, and I never once felt I was waiting for the film to start.
The finale
But the pod racing and everything else was just bad. The podrace, the Naboo battle, the duel with Darth Maul at the end, none of it landed for me, and the whole story around it just left me flat. Back on Naboo, the Queen and the Gungans march out to draw the Federation’s army away from the palace, while Padme, who turns out to have been disguised as a handmaiden all along, leads a team in to capture the Viceroy. Anakin ends up in a starfighter and destroys the droid control ship, more by accident than anything, and the droids all shut down.
Meanwhile Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan take on the Sith lord Darth Maul in a three-way duel, and Maul kills Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan kills Maul and promises to train Anakin. I felt nothing watching any of it. I’d waited all that time for it to be good, and it wasn’t. Everyone celebrates at the end, with Palpatine now the Supreme Chancellor, and I was sitting there wondering where the film I’d been waiting for had gone.
Why it hurt so much
I think the reason this one stings is how much I wanted it. I grew up on the original films, and I’d been told for years that there was going to be a new one, and when it finally came I was standing in a queue with a lot of other people who felt the same way. The excitement in that line was real, and so was the let-down afterwards. A mediocre film I could have shrugged off. A film that took everything I loved about the series and replaced it with politics, a blood test and a clumsy alien sidekick was harder to forgive.
I’d still say Neeson and McGregor are worth a mention, and Maul looks great for the few minutes he’s on screen. If you’re a fan, you’ll probably go and see it anyway, as I did. I just wish I could tell you it was worth the wait. Rating: 1.2 out of 5. It really hurt, and I’m still not over it.