Under George Lucas, Star Wars is not for the geeks, no matter how fiercely they claim it. When this film was released in 1999, series creator Lucas was 55 years old and did NOT relate to grown men with sealed action figure collections and beer bellies packed into Darth Vader T-shirts. He doesn’t know why they’re here. He can’t explain them. He’s too rich to need them. He doesn’t seem to like them (and I can’t say that I blame him).
No, Star Wars is for the kids. Always was. Me, I was five years old when I first saw The Empire Strikes Back (the “dark” “masterpiece” of the original trilogy) and I LOVED it. There was nothing essential about it that I didn’t understand. I haven’t read a single professional review of it that says anything that I didn’t get when I was in Kindergarten. It and all of its darkness went down as easy for me, and for all of us kids back then, as a McDonald’s Happy Meal.
That’s part of its brilliance and that’s part of the near-brilliance of The Phantom Menace, chapter uno of the reviled prequel trilogy. The beer bellies REALLY hate this one. It raped their childhoods. Or something. The poor things.
Meanwhile, George Lucas tunes into a whole other signal.
Seeing this film again in my old age, I can see why Lucas got fired up to make a new trilogy. The idea behind this one is tremendously juicy.
It’s about the child prodigy as a future monster. What a great story.
Even better, Lucas doesn’t have to resort to cheap foreshadowing to push his point. We already KNOW the future. So, Lucas has all the freedom in the world to get really nutty and sell the young Anakin Skywalker (AKA, future Darth Vader) as a likable little precocious prepubescent munchkin on the classic Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey (same one that Luke Skywalker took).
Future Darth Vader is a total sweetheart from humble beginnings (he’s a slave put to work in a junkyard/machine shop). He’s kind. He’s smart. We root for him. He’s not some budding psycho who tortures baby Jawas. No, the kid’s charming. He’s got heart. He wants to help people and go on adventures. He’s ready to befriend ET and join The Goonies. Throw in his puppy love crush on Natalie Portman and you’ve got a character to whom the nine-year-old boys in the audience could easily relate.
The terrific action scenes (this film’s frantic pod race in the desert holds up next to the outer space dogfights in the original trilogy) and imaginative character designs further seal the deal on a movie that’s disarmingly entertaining and carries on the Star Wars vision with grace.
Lucas’s biggest misfire: Most of the scenes that deal with the beleaguered Republic and their trade disputes are dry and talky. At their best, they bring a decent taste of “brink of war” tension and set the stage for the evil Empire to eventually take over. At their worst, they play like C-SPAN with CGI. For the kids of 1999 at the theater, they were “restroom break” scenes, no doubt.
My own experience: In ’99, I was in a big music phase and not very interested in this. I didn’t camp out at the theater. I didn’t even go to the theater, nor did I read the reviews. I was the kind of pencilneck who saw maybe three movies a year and a new Star Wars wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t old enough to have much nostalgia for my old favorites. I didn’t even think about that. I didn’t see this until at least a full year later on VHS (it took an unusually long time—like two years, I think—for it come out on DVD) when it was old news on the video store New Release wall, about to be pushed into the “back catalog” shelves any day now.
When I finally got Phantom Menaced in 2000, the film panned and scanned on a small screen and in need of some tracking adjustment on the VCR, it hit me like a dust mite. I didn’t care. I wasn’t into it. I’d even say I was bored. Too bored to even be angry. I didn’t feel betrayed. My disappointment wasn’t a cause. I had no spleen to vent. I didn’t argue on the internet about it. It was just another bad movie. Should’ve rented Stir of Echoes instead, maybe. When I returned the tape to the store, I’d forgotten all about Anakin Skywalker and moved on.
CUT TO: About seventeen years later and I’m now more of a movie buff now than a music guy. I have the sparkling high-definition television and 80s-heavy Blu-Ray collection of a true shut-in old jerk-off. Among that pile of shit is the Star Wars: The Complete Saga box set, which is an impressive enough package for me to forgive Lucas’s monkey business with the old films. It also includes the prequel trilogy breathing in its shadows, teasing me to give a fresh assessment.
And what I bring to The Phantom Menace in 2017 is not just a high-definition presentation, but also a renewed sympathy for George Lucas’s vision of great kiddie entertainment and his indifference toward the entitled “geek culture” creeps. I put this disc in the player and watched it not as an adult who knows exactly how he wants his dick stroked, but as a child, open to anything (my glass of Hess Cabernet notwithstanding). That’s Lucas’s intended audience, so that’s what I decided to be. It was very easy.
And goddamn me and you and everyone else, I dug the fuck out of The Phantom Menace. It’s not as bad as they say.
I even liked Jar-Jar Binks. He’s the classic Disney comic relief. He’s the talking teapot here. He fits right in. Fuck you.