A little background - I was a huge Star Wars fan as a kid. I didn't think about them, I just enjoyed the hell out of them and that was enough. I loved the prequels mostly (not so much the third) and I've always felt they were good films, although I do find the backlash and the prequel bashing quite humorous as with the brilliant Star Wars rifftrax series. However it is often petty, coming from disgruntled fans of the original trilogy who couldn't look past how different the new films were in style and look. I probably spent more time with the merchandise than I did with the films, especially the games, and when looking back posited to myself that it was the universe and not so much the films I was into, as the prequels didn't hold my interest throughout even as a kid. Except Natalie Portman, but that's another matter. Now looking freshly at The Phantom Menace and discarding the cynical jibes of the satirists I've come to the conclusion that not only is it an excellent sci-fi fantasy film, but an effortless work of art. Of course film critics and buffs, so enamoured with form and technique pick it to shreds for the flat performances and the complicated plot and whatnot, but seeing in the guise of persons of a chosen path they fail completely to see the larger picture.
Lucas understood metaphorical storytelling. It's there right from the start, on multiple levels, from the hero's journey to ideas more esoteric. In A New Hope, Luke Skywalker lives a simple, free wheeling, hippie-ish life that he feels is obscure, of little consequence and restrictive. He years for a greater freedom, for a role to play, and a series of events leads him into outer space with a wise old man, a smug smuggler and a big wolf man. The old man guides him and they find themselves aboard a large technological super weapon, a giant labyrinthine ball, no doubt a symptom of the Empire's stiff insecurity. Lost in this ridiculous thing the freedom fighters are split from the wise old man as he goes to confront the burned man in character armour. They duel quite unimpressively and as Vader taunts Obi-Wan about how he's a big powerful man who knows what he's doing, one gets the impression from Alec Guinness' looks that he doesn't care and is just going through the motions. Eventually, he tricks Vader into thinking he's won, that he's achieved something as he just allows himself to die and slumps to the ground and dies so gracefully he turns into everything. Luke, lamenting the literal death of old Ben, is distraught but goes into battle against the techno terror, which has a tiny weak spot hidden amidst a mess of turrets and trench. The beast defeats them one by one by fooling them with all its many functions and orifices, until Luke, hearing the disembodied voice of his supposedly dead master blows it up without even making an effort by letting go of his own technology and letting things take care of themselves. Alas the beast is blown back into the million tiny fragments of stardust that made it and life and death become as one and everyone gets medals and corn flakes. Great film, and Empire and Return of the Jedi expand on the themes and make it a perfect trilogy.
Looking at Star Wars in this sense, The Phantom Menace becomes an entirely different beast and complaints about the look of the film, the cartoonish characters and plot (whose plot?) seem irrelevant and take a back seat in a film that takes the ideas of the original trilogy and plays upon them in multiple very inventive ways that are at testament to the creative vision of Lucas and co. This time instead of a simple story of a humble hero discovering his power and facing his dark side the scope is broadened and we have a whole space society complete with politics, factions, sports and third worlds and first worlds. The trade federation are a technological terror unto themselves, an elite of very deliberate, elitist traders who hide behind armies of droids they control through ranks and by proxy with orbiting control ships that they've formed into a blockade to block trade to and from the peaceful green society of Naboo, a planet of two cultures divided, one an ancient indigenous species of amphibious like lizard creatures who live in vast organic underwater cities beneath the surface and the other a more conventional, civilized, society of humans that lives in massive, hard stone cities under the light of the bright blue sky. So already there are three levels of civilization, two on the planet that are estranged from one another and yet as Obi-Wan states astutely form a symbiotic relationship. Then there is this seemingly malevolent and oppressive higher level of lifeless skeletal droids controlled by cowardly control-freak bureaucrats that suddenly invades for reasons unknown. It must be the Naboo for although unaware they and the Trade Federation also have a symbiotic relationship, manipulated from within by an insidious instigator who wants to take charge of it all for his own ends.
The Naboo seek the help of outsiders, two powerful but arrogant Jedi to intervene and negotiate with the trade federation, but the federation fearing threat try to kill them, only for them to slip into the ventilation shafts and sneak down to the planet. One on Naboo they make contact with the key to everything. Literally. Lucas is often quoted by satirists who make fun of Jar Jar as saying "Jar Jar is the key to all this," while conceiving the storyboards for the film I believe. Unfairly called an incompetent idiot like his creator, Jar Jar is a powerful force user, no Sith Lord but an unthinking master of accident, like all great Jedi. It is an old Jedi teaching to disregard thoughts and turn on and tune with a quiet mind, so Jar Jar fits the bill perfectly. Strangely hypocritical for Qui-Gon to call him "brainless" and think of a life form in such a materialist way, but I believe Lucas wrote the Jedi to be arrogant, thinking themselves above the primitive lifeforms that thrive by the force. Jar Jar is an idiot savant demonstration of the kind of surrender that led Luke to apparently fluke the death star's destruction. Putting aside his major contribution to the events of later episodes, Jar Jar unites the two Naboo cultures effortlessly and turns the tide of the final battle, saving the lives of his comrades by falling around in a disorganized panic. A "pathetic lifeform" indeed and look where he ends up, a general and then a senator while the "higher-minded" Jedi walk blindly into genocide. Jar Jar is indeed the "key to all this."
The Jedi lead the Naboo in an escape from the blockade and they find themselves adrift in the outer rim and to Tatooine, the home of humble, obscure slave boy Anakin Skywalker, played by Jake Lloyd who is not nearly as annoying as I remember and actually does a pretty good job for his age. He is a slave, bound to winged junk dealer Watto, who has the parts needed to fix Queen Amidala's starship. It's a very different world from Naboo, as Padme (Natalie Portman) points out. Here symbolic money holds no value as Qui-Gon finds out, and the Jedi haven't the power and status granted to them on other worlds. It's a world of obscure nobodies, of scumbags, drifters and gangsters, not considered important by the imperialistic republic. Anakin doesn't see himself as a slave as he points out angrily, stating that he's a person with a name. He is free spirited in the same way Jar Jar is and just seems to appear in the right place and the right time, leading Qui-Gon in a leap of faith to gamble both his ship and the freedom of Anakin and his mother on the Boonta Eve podrace Anakin takes part in. This is one of my favourite parts of the film, as it sees Qui-Gon test his faith in destiny and gamble with fate. Watto rolls a chance cube with two colours on it, red and blue (this came out in the same year as The Matrix, WHOA), and Watto entranced by the cube's dance across the sand fails to notice the hand of Qui-Gon guide it to the one choice, the freedom of the boy and not his mother, as "no pod is worth two slaves" as Watto puts it. The podrace, often considered tedious filler, is one of the best parts of the movie. It is Anakin's initiation, in which he casts aside the childish cartoon competitors and Sebulba, his nemesis. He triumphs, but has to leave his mother behind.
They then head to coruscant where they have to debate on...stuff about what to do about the Naboo invasion. A far cry from the quiet simplicity of Naboo or the desolate, slummy Mos Espa the Senate is filled with indecisive squabbling delegates of a thousand species of use to no one, and the more complex and frustrating the process the clearer the way forward becomes. So the queen heads back to Naboo and the two cultures team up, the subterranean gungans and the fashionable surface Naboo of many dresses. Playing the Trade Federation at their own game of deliberation they form a plan of diversion and entrapment, the gungans diverting the army while the Naboo security forces storm Theed to capture the scheming Neimodians. However it all hinges on the destruction of the Fade Trederation control ship out in outer space, from which all the droids are controlled. As the Neimodians find themselves vulnerable and panic, Anakin accidently flys into space to the droid control ship and his trusty auto pilot leads him to the heart of the droid forces, the droid control ship. At the last minute he breaks free of his auto-pilot, from a red screen to a blue screen, and he purely by accident destroys the droid control ship and ends the so carefully planned and plotted invasion in one chance blow, and the Neimodians are trapped and they too are forced to lose control completely and surrender. Meanwhile Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon battle the double-edged deviant Darth Maul relentlessly, until there can be only one, and the master is defeated. Obi-Wan is now on his own and must let all of his force go to defeat Maul, and he shafts him.
The film ends happily but provocatively, as Mace Windu and Yoda wonder which was destroyed of the sith menace, the "master," or the "apprentice." Which is which in all of this? The trade federation represents a false, unnecessary pseudo-control force that is automatically defeated by the power of the force, the real control force.
I feel like I have a lot more to say about this film and will when I rewatch it once again, as this viewing was very rewarding. So now I see that the much maligned Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is actually a brilliant take on religious, metaphysical and societal ideas about control, freedom and fate, and all wrapped up in a neat, fun fantasy film. I actually prefer the lack of emotion or drama or tension, I feel that would only distract and take away from the story and themes, as I feel it did in Episode II and III, although considering how much my view of The Phantom Menace has changed I will be rewatching those soon too. I still don't think there was any point in changing Yoda from a puppet to CGI in the subsequent releases of the film, but Lucas has a habit of doing things like that and I can't say I want to nitpick. I'll edit more into this review with subsequent viewings, and I really can't believe it came full circle like this. I loved this film as a kid for the battles, aliens, droids, ships, colourful locales and Natalie Portman, and now after all this time it's been reborn to me.
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