The Shadow of the Phantom Menace - A 20 Year Reflection

What does it mean to be Star Wars?

Anakin casts a long shadow, because of symbolism

I was initially planning to do something different for my first real update, but as it turned out May 19th was the 20th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on such a big day.

The Phantom Menace is a weird movie. Eventually, I want to comment on the original films and trilogy structure, but as a quick peek of the third entry to that series, Return of the Jedi left the franchise in an interesting state. While Empire Strikes Back was set on giving us material starkly different from A New Hope, it was in Return of the Jedi where we saw the establishment of a lot of tropes that still plague the franchise. We return to Tatooine. There’s another Death Star. There’s a distinct redemption arc. The good guys win big and sacrifice little, and the stakes are often undermined by humour or silliness. And while this all works decently well in Return of the Jedi, it still represents a shift away from new risks and towards well-worn mechanics. Our beloved dreamer George Lucas took a step back after the release of Jedi in 1983, apparently burned out and uninterested in expanding the universe as he originally intended. With Lucas out of the picture, others stepped in. In 1991 Timothy Zahn published Heir to the Empire, the first book of his ‘Thrawn Trilogy,’ and the novel-verse of Star Wars exploded. The relatively simple universe created by George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan and Richard Marquand (and John Williams and Marcia Lucas and all the other people who saved those movies time and time again) had been exponentially expanded by a host of new authors all creating new corners of the galaxy. Many of them took these old tropes and repurposed them a dozen times over (go on, count the number of superweapons. I dare you) and re-worked familiar arcs in new and exciting characters. By 1994, Lucas took note of the resurgence of his franchise, and the advancement of technology, and decided a story detailing the backstory of Anakin Skywalker might actually have some merit. A few years later, in 1999, the movie was released, sixteen years after the previous installment in the franchise (Yes, there’s been more time between us and TPM than TPM and RotJ. Let that sink in a little).

The release of this movie and the discussion for the twenty years since have been… mixed, to say the least. Everyone has their opinion on the Prequels and what they did to the Star Wars franchise. And there’s a lot I could say about the development of these movies, things that have already been said by a lot of bigger people than me. I could talk about how Lucas didn’t actually want to write or direct the movie – about how he went to Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg and how they turned him down and wanted him to pursue his own passion. I could talk about how Lucas’ growing fame and notoriety seemed to lead to a decrease in criticism, or how the advancement of CGI led to a greater interest in risk and spectacle and a lesser interest in coherency. But I’d rather talk about the effect all of that had on the structure of Star Wars as a whole. How do you follow up on one of the most beloved trilogies of all time? How do you follow up on sixteen years of developing interest? How do you follow up on Return of the Jedi, a film which is both a smooth conclusion but also a studio rehash of themes and ideas? What is Star Wars, and how do you reflect that as you open a new chapter of that universe? These, of course, are all terribly relevant questions as we look at the present discussion around the ‘Sequel Trilogy’ films and their development, not to mention the broader reboot culture we’re living in. So, today, I re-watch The Phantom Menace with an eye on the past and an eye on the future.

I don't even think five minutes pass before the action kicks off. I'm as confused as Neeson.

The opening act of this film is one of the busiest first acts I’ve seen. By the fifteen minute mark we’re already in the Gungan city, and ten minutes after that we’re already leaving Naboo. It’s an entertaining half hour, but a really confusing one. I think the Opening Crawl trope has dug Star Wars into this weird hole where the writers don’t think we need gentle exposition. To that end, The Phantom Menace shares some of the same problems with The Force Awakens – they very quickly set up the political situation in the crawl and jump us into the action. The film never really expands on who the Trade Federation is, or why they have a seat in the Senate and a full army at their disposal. All we’re really told is that ‘the taxation of trade routes […] is in dispute,’ whatever that means, and that the Federation hopes ‘to resolve the matter with a blockade.’ Uh, alright. Sure. And we really don’t yet understand the Senate and how the Jedi are connected. The opening crawls work in the Original Trilogy because the plots and politics are pretty simple good-vs-evil schlock, but here we need a little more set-up with the characters before jumping into the fighting. Yet, despite the muddled opening and how fast the action progresses, this section is actually a lot of fun. For the first time, we get to see the Jedi at their height, acting as intergalactic councilors and knights-errant all in one. The stakes are contained and straight-forward. For thirty minutes we have a mini-movie of the Jedi entering a political situation, everything going to trash, and the subsequent escape. And then we spend the next forty-five minutes meandering in the desert.

I draw attention to all of this because, for our introduction to this time period and our re-introduction to this world as a whole, the structure here is super weird. The structure, the pacing, the tone, all of it. A lot has been said about the inconsistency of the dialogue and the directing, but what baffles me here is how this movie essentially can be broken into four different movies. We have our opening action intrigue, Liam Neeson and all. On Tatooine, we delve into a sort of fantasy kids film, with Jar Jar and C-3P0 (who both so don’t need to be in this movie) feeding us comedy while Qui-Gon hatches his absurdly complicated plan to free the slaves with a big race. And once we get to Coruscant, we step into a political thriller as Palpatine pulls strings and we begin to peak into the Jedi world. Lastly, we have a big action fantasy finale. All of these ‘movies’ honestly are pretty decent unto themselves, and all succeed in their individual goals. But they don’t mesh together, and they don’t form a coherent story. In fact, each section of the movie seems to have a different protagonist, meaning we don’t have any singular character we’re focusing on over the plot. By the time the film ends, nobody has really had any development. Qui-Gon died but we really don’t get to see what sort of effect that will have on Obi-Wan. Maul is almost set up to be an interesting antagonist driving Obi-Wan’s arc forward, but he’s quickly dispensed with. Padmé spends a lot of time in the desert with a slave ring, but it never seems to change her perspective on leadership or people. Anakin leaves his entire life behind but seems to take it in stride once they get to Coruscant. Which, I mean, is okay – this is the first film, we’re just introducing characters, and re-introducing them. But we see all these characters go through what should be life-changing shifts, and none of them are really affected. And this is all exasperated by the fact that our focal character keeps changing. One of them is dead by the end of the movie, the other only appears forty minutes in, and a third is wearing a mask of some kind in most of her run-time (I mean, like, playing as Padmé or playing as the Queen, neither of which are fully her. I realize she also has, like, more literal masks and wigs and make-up and- nevermind). We’re never really given the time to just sit with a character and explore them.

Here we have the three genres of this movie mashed into one shot.

Contrast this with A New Hope. Our focus character is very, very clearly Luke, and we see him transformed over the course of the movie. While Han is outside our direct perspective, he too has a distinct arc, and we get a sense of where both characters are headed. In fact, we get to witness Han’s character arc from Luke’s perspective. While Leia doesn’t have a clear transformation (and never really gets one…), we do get a clearer understanding of her as a character than we do of Padmé. Our perspective is constantly dancing around in The Phantom Menace. When we first land on Coruscant, the camera squarely puts our perspective with Anakin. The introduction of Valorum is shot low, directed upwards. And that’s great, we as an audience get to step into this unfamiliar territory with a character who is unfamiliar to it. But this inspired piece of direction jars with the rest of the movie, because Anakin’s still a pretty new character, and he wasn’t even our perspective character on Tatooine – Padmé is. Or maybe Qui-Gon. It goes back and forth. And then after we’re introduced to Coruscant, we’re jumping to the Senate chambers and the Jedi council, places where we’re not offered Anakin’s perspective. And it’s never fully clear if we should be following Qui-Gon, or Obi-Wan, or Padmé. Because it can shift from planet to planet or even scene to scene. The Force Awakens, notably, also has two protagonists – but the camera and the direction always make it abundantly clear when we are following Finn and when we are following Rey. And it helps that, while they have different flavours, they are both audience surrogates, as opposed to characters like Qui-Gon and Padmé who should mostly know about their individual worlds. The movie nails each of its individual tones, but the different tones never harmonize, and so the audience is left with something dissonant.

Surprisingly, the character I think could most be called the protagonist here is Palpatine. After all, in the scheme of the trilogy, Palpatine is the one with the biggest win here, except maybe Anakin. And he is the titular ‘Phantom Menace.’ The entire conflict is set up to move Palpatine up the ranks – though that happens before we even get to the third act. Maybe he’s just the protagonist of the Coruscant arc.

Obi-Wan, our most beloved character in this movie, re-entering the plot after being shoved out of it for the past half hour or so.

Now, this wasn’t intended to be a piece against The Phantom Menace, so where am I going with this? Sixteen years after a franchise concluded, we return, but without a clear focus. We are introduced to characters new and old and a flavourful new world, but no clear direction with it. We know that Palpatine will manipulate Anakin into becoming Vader, but we’re never really given a sense in this movie of how that will happen. Admittedly, that’s more of a specific overall direction than we’re given in A New Hope, which just kind of promises continuing good-vs-evil adventures, but A New Hope also gave us more developed characters and settings. And to make matters worse, Attack of the Clones gave us another ten-year time skip, meaning we have to, once again, establish the plot and characters and setting. I enjoy The Phantom Menace enough as a stand-alone plot. As I’ve said, the stakes are streamlined and straightforward and the goals are fairly clear. But this doesn’t feel like the start of a three-act tragedy, if anything it feels like an alright TV pilot where we’ll have a few seasons to develop this cast. And so our soft-reboot starts with hesitancy. It’s not certain what it wants to be, and it’s not certain where it’s going. That is a sentiment that will plague Star Wars as a franchise for the next twenty years.

As much as we’ve grown and changed since The Phantom Menace, in a lot of ways, we’ve never left. Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith have wildly different tones and go in wildly different directions. The movies since the Disney acquisition have been similarly scattered in focus. Sixteen years passed since Return of the Jedi, and when offered the question as to what Star Wars was, Lucas gave us a confused, directionless, yet mildly entertaining ride. It was inconsistent in tone, with an unexplained setting and characters lacking definition or drive. It wants to set up a grand tragedy but feels more like a contained piece of light-hearted action. There’s no real central theme, no call to action or rise of a hero. After watching The Phantom Menace, I’m not sure how I would define Star Wars except that it has lightsabers and is about the Skywalkers. With the Original Trilogy, I could talk about Campbellian structure, of good working together to triumph over evil, about the power of believing in yourself and in others, etc. But The Phantom Menace doesn’t really fit in any of those categories, it’s just sort of a fun piece of half-defined characters rising against a nebulous… trade empire? And the more I dwell on this, the more I think “of course Abrams and Kennedy weren’t sure how to start a new trilogy.” All of the inconsistency within The Phantom Menace bleeds directly into The Force Awakens. People didn’t like the expanded politics in the Prequels, so The Force Awakens goes from barely explaining its setting to not explaining it at all. People didn’t like the hard divide between comedy and intrigue in the Prequels, so the Sequel Trilogy kind of… mashes them into one.

I'm not sure which surprises me more: that I'm just noting the janky CGI here, or that it's held up as well as it has for 20 years.

Speaking of the comedy, it bears noting that The Phantom Menace is also a big step towards Star Wars being a market unto itself. This process sort of began back in Return of the Jedi with the Ewoks (or at least, that’s the claim), but this movie drives in the marketability of this franchise even further. The advertising campaign for this film was insane and was supported by a wide wealth of toys and kid’s products. Then, we have the addition of Jar Jar, a comedy-centric character, as well as the decision to introduce Anakin as a nine-year-old. While the Original Trilogy films were never serious dramas, this is the first Star Wars movie to really feel marketed towards kids, rather than just being family friendly. This decision to focus towards a younger audience still weighs on Star Wars today, despite its increased willingness to take its films to more ‘mature’ ratings. The animated shows all have been designed towards a kid-friendliness, yet have only really found their legs when they embrace darker and more developed themes. The Force Awakens and The Last Jed both have juvenile jokes interspersed with deconstructionist themes that surely go over the heads of younger audiences. So, with The Phantom Menace, we see not just a confusion of theme and character, but of tone and genre. We can critique The Last Jedi for inconsistency, but let’s not pretend the problem started with Rian Johnson. The fact is, inconsistency is the one consistent element in the Star Wars franchise. Writers of the Original Trilogy invent plot points and character relations that were never foreshadowed in the previous films. Current directors offer different and perhaps even contrasting views of the franchise and the characters. And in the case of the Prequel Trilogy, the films themselves have no consistent tone or direction to speak of. While the Original Trilogy held itself together through a lot of love and tireless editing, our first entry into the Prequel Trilogy serves as a dark omen of what is to come for the next twenty years.

Seriously though, this fight kills.

I’ve come down pretty hard on this movie. There is a lot to come down hard with. But despite the blatant inconsistency throughout, I had a surprising amount of fun going back and re-watching The Phantom Menace, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out some of the good it brought forward. Despite the lazy writing and directing, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman shine in this movie. I’m more and more convinced that Portman just gave up by Revenge of the Sith because she’s actually so good here, albeit hampered occasionally by the script. I still really love the final battle, especially Maul’s introduction. I know a lot of people have criticized this finale for being over the top and intricate, but I still enjoy all the layers to it. More than anything, I want to point out what this film does with its locations. Because while it fails to set up its political landscape and the broader setting that this trilogy will play in, The Phantom Menace does a phenomenal job creating its individual settings and locations. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I’m impressed with how natural Naboo and Coruscant feel to this universe despite being nothing like what we saw in the Original Trilogy. I think it helps that we actually spend time living and breathing in these locations. By the time the movie ends, we understand Naboo and we understand Coruscant (and Tatooine too, but we’ve been there before, we’re just seeing another shade to it). I really can’t say the same with any of the planets post-Disney acquisition, and I think it’s because they’re all fairly contained. We get to see one building in Takodana, one building on Scariff, one building on Crait, and one building on Canto Bight. I could go on. We never really get a feel for the cultures or people on these planets outside of base exposition, whereas we spend a lot of our movie on Naboo. By the time the final conflict comes we at least have some investment in the planet and the people, if not for the weird political shenanigans. I can’t say the same for Takodana. It also bears repeating that Naboo and Coruscant are very different from any Original Trilogy planets, both in terms of visuals and social culture. Most of our Sequel planets, however, are visually identical to previous worlds, even if they have different social flavours. While Lucas struggles to write and direct, his world building is still unparalleled in this franchise, and I think we still have a bit to learn from the Prequels.

Wookiepedia calls this 'Freedom Day,' which surely has to be the most generic title for a celebration of liberation. Can we vote to call the 4th of July 'Freedom Day' from now on?

The Phantom Menace serves as a good reminder of where we’ve come from, and where we are. While I generally like where Disney has taken the franchise, it’s not hard to see that the past several movies have been divisive. Some lean too hard into nostalgia, some lean too far away from familiar ground. The movies are either too safe or too philosophical. Everyone has their own opinions of where the franchise should go. Much like Lucas writing in the late ’90s, it seems that there’s no good way to define what Star Wars is. We can’t even say it’s a simple tale of good against evil anymore; Revenge of the Sith gave us a dark tragedy, and the Sequel Trilogy is focused on breaking down binaries like good and evil at every turn. Fans seem to want sharply different things, and the producers want to cater to all sides. More than ever, we see Star Wars descending into inconsistency. And now we have J.J. “Mystery Box” Abrams set to conclude nine films and over forty years of storytelling. It’s a big ask. I can only hope The Rise of Skywalker manages to take all this inconsistency and tie together into something memorable. If there was ever a time to have a clear statement on what this whole Star Wars thing is, it’s now.