Jan 25, 202312 min read

The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy Retrospective

This is a portion of an article I drafted about the entire Star Wars movie franchise thus far, however it's been in my drafts for son long I decided to cut it down to the prequels because, despite how much they've been discussed: they're the most fun to discuss!

Especially as kids like me who grew up with the films are now aging into their twenties and thirties, the reappraisal of the film's particularly is worth examining, as well as Star Wars' unique place in culture at the time of the late '90s to early '00s.

The Phantom Menace

(Episode I)

1999

"EVERY GENERATION HAS A LEGEND. EVERY JOURNEY HAS A FIRST STEP. EVERY SAGA HAS A BEGINNING."

Director: George Lucas

Writer: George Lucas

Starring: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd

Brief Synopsis: Anakin Skywalker, a young slave strong with the Force, is discovered on Tatooine. Meanwhile, the evil Sith have returned, enacting their plot for revenge against the Jedi.

The Phantom Menace is without a doubt one of the highest profile filmmaking embarrassments of all-time. Bear in mind George Lucas had planned this prequel trilogy since he was developing The Empire Strikes Back in the late '70s, dubbing it Episode V implying that we always had three more films to come. However, Lucas didn't have many ideas for this trilogy until the '90s and only supplied a first draft script a few months before shooting.

Released in 1999, 22 years after the first Star Wars and 16 years after Return of the Jedi, suffice to say the return of one of cinema's most loved franchises was enticing audiences. It ended up being the most successful film of 1999 and the second highest grossing film of all-time, after James Cameron's Titanic released a couple years earlier smashed box-office records and would hold that record until James Cameron's next film Avatar released in 2009. So while financially it was a hit, it was impossible to ignore that Star Wars' grand return was not as inspiring as many had hoped, even looking objectively past the immense hype.

However, while it's obvious this film doesn't land, there's something to be said about its ambitions. George Lucas deliberately waited until special effects were advanced enough that he could try new things for his franchise and let his imagination go further. It's a transitionary film for Hollywood's switch to digital filmmaking and arguably the first 'digital epic', paving the way for blockbusters in the years to come. I'm sure in 1999, the scope and effects would have been incredibly impressive.

But therein lies a large issue with The Phantom Menace. When the spectacle dies down, what is left? Well for the first time since the original Star Wars we have George Lucas back in the director's chair and he's the sole writer on the screenplay. Lots has been said about how the original Star Wars was saved in editing and this film where Lucas has total creative freedom proves that maybe having somebody to restrain you a little bit is necessary when crafting such a big film. To be fair, Lucas approached Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard (who would later go onto direct a Star Wars film with Solo) and proposed to each if they would direct this movie, but they all passed on the project deeming it too daunting.

George Lucas's screenplay for this film is pretty poor for numerous reasons and needed to be challenged in order for this film to appear more functional as a story. The ambition is there, the story is not. A large flaw is that the film's balance of A and B plotlines feels misjudged. The primary plotline involved trade negations between planets, which barely involves many of the lead characters and generally isn't very compelling. It's poorly constructed, exposition is dumped at regular intervals and it's all tell and not show.

Then there's the puzzling question of who the main character of this film is. No doubt, given the way the sequels play out, it should be Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan. However, he's a sidekick who doesn't even take part in much of the plot involving a young Anakin Skywalker. Instead, the pseudo-lead of the film is played by Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon, who is Obi-Wan's Jedi master. Issue here is, he's not particularly interesting and when the sequels to this film focus on the friendship and mentorship between Obi-Wan and Anakin, it seems obvious in retrospect that Obi-Wan should be in place of Qui-Gon for this film's screenplay.

However this could be ignored by a lot of the casual movie going audience as the effects are ground-breaking (for the time). What a lot of people couldn't ignore however, was the poor writing for the characters and the fact that while a lot of people had grown up with Star Wars, Star Wars had not grown up with them. In fact, it was more childish than ever before. Return of the Jedi's introduction of the cuddly Ewok teddy bear alien characters had nothing on the infamous Jar Jar Binks.

Jar Jar Binks, a computer animated comedy relief character shows up near the beginning of the movie and doesn't leave. A clumsy buffoon with a grating voice and a platform for the most childish humour that the franchise had exhibited until this point. Star Wars was always for kids, but enjoyable for all ages. Jar Jar was inherently for the kids and clashed with the main plotline being about galactic trade disputes, which kids obviously would not understand or care about (and adults neither to be honest). Even more unfortunate, Anakin Skywalker, who will eventually turn into the fearsome Darth Vader is introduced here as an innocent 9 year old unfortunately played by Jake Lloyd.

It's important to not that the dialogue in The Phantom Menace is consistently poor and even baffling at times. Prestige actors like Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor can't even make a lot of this work, so placing some diabolically bad dialogue in the hands of an actual 9 year old, while you're also renowned for not exactly being an actors director, spells disaster.

So it's unfortunate for the young Jake Lloyd to receive much of the blowback to this film as his performance just isn't good. Maybe it's a case of poor timing as the second highest grossing film of 1999, The Sixth Sense had one of the best child performances of all-time in it, courtesy of Haley Joel Osment (which even netted him an Oscar nomination). Combined with Jar Jar, a poor child acting performance which also makes up a central part of the film, makes The Phantom Menace unfortunately annoying to watch pretty consistently.

This isn't even mentioning certain things that feel minor in the scheme of things, but in another movie would be major short fallings. Darth Maul looks really cool and woah, a double edged lightsaber? He's so cool, so it's a shame he is worthless as a character and given no personality or even any dialogue for the most part. He nonchalantly appears about halfway through the film and then completes his mandatory "badass" duel for the ending.

The ending is also a mess, with four separate events coinciding of varying importance and intended emotional weight. As George Lucas says in behind the scenes footage, reacting to the first cut of this ending: "I may have gone a bit too far in few places". There's an overwhelming sense that somebody on the production needed to be there to challenge Lucas more firmly and reign him in.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

NO! But the ambition on show cannot be faulted and it is as at least as fascinating as it is terrible. I think it's the worst Star Wars prequel, so for that you could say it's only up from here (though, not as high up as you'd ideally want). John Williams did his magic on the soundtrack at least! But mostly, this is pretty bad, especially as with age we take these sort of digital effects for granted. So the story, characters and script are center frame in our mind and it's impossible to ignore how sloppy this feels. Considering the overall quality of the prequel trilogy, you could skip this one and move straight onto Attack of the Clones and you won't have missed much beyond a few character introductions that you can infer.