Part II: What Rough Beast - The Second Coming of Star Wars
As I said, we had waited a long long time for the “new” movies, almost as long as the third Boston album or the rebirth of
Doctor Who, and most of us probably thought they would never happen. Afterwards, we probably wished they hadn’t. Well, in fairness I’ve seen each of these movies only once, but I remember being singularly unimpressed with all of them, bare the last. I think the whole point about the “prequels” was that they were totally new, with new characters (well, some of the same but younger) and none of the ones we had by now become familiar with. No Luke Skywalker, no Han Solo, no Princess Leia, not even Darth Vader, though we would see how Annakin Skywalker became the galaxy’s most feared and well-dressed villain, and of course a young Obi-Wan Kenobi was there too, but it was a real cosmic shift for most of us.
Prequels in every sense of the word, the new movies took place during the time of the Old Republic, and before the rise to power of the empire. Hell, we even got to see a young emperor, though he wasn’t exactly pushing kids around the playground with the Force or anything. In fact, he was only a senator, but then, every megalomaniac has to start somewhere, right? In my opinion, if you look at the three movies as a sort of lead-up to one of the most interesting backstories in the Star Wars universe, the origin of Darth Vader, they’re just about necessary, but you have to wade through some crap to get to the good stuff, and a lot of it, if I remember, especially in the second movie, is damned boring.
Be that as it may, I suppose we were all stoked to see a new chapter of the Star Wars story, though I seem to remember I wasn’t that bothered. Hey, it was nearly a quarter of a century ago, you know! My memory is not what it was. But I don’t remember the kind of excitement going through me that I felt when the second and third of the original movies were released. As well as that, the novelty value of having - at the time - unknown actors play the main parts was gone. Now that Star Wars was big business it needed big stars, and so we had the likes of Ewan MacGregor and Liam Neeson taking the roles of the Jedi Knights, with Samuel L. Jackson eventually becoming the one and only black Jedi in the second movie. Time, and the franchise, had certainly moved on.
Speaking of having moved on, seems Lucas was finally dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century (almost) as he was forced to admit that there were in fact more than a handful of women in the galaxy, and so we get, finally, some proper female characters with heavyweights like Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley able at last to show that even a long time agao in a galaxy far, far away, sister were in fact doing it for themselves. There were also, despite my comment above, a few old favourites. Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker reprised their roles as the two lovable droids, Frank Oz stuck his hand up Yoda’s arse again and we even had the orignal actor who played the emperor, Ian McDiarmid, come back to play his younger self.
I: Birth of a Jedi, Birth of a Sith Lord: The Path to the Dark Side Begins
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Title: The Phantom Menace
Year: 1999
Format: Movie
Broadcast Chronology: After
Return of the Jedi (if two decades after...)
Universe Chronology: Set 32 years prior to
A New Hope and 13 years before the rise of the empire
Basic premise: The planet of Naboo is being blockaded and Jedi Knights come to negotiate, stumbling onto a full-scale invasion. They end up on Tatooine and hell you know the rest.
Starring: Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Natalie Portman as Queen Padme Amidala, Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker, Anthony Daniels as C3PO, Kenny Baker as R2D2, Ian McDiarmid as Senator Palpatine, Ahmed Best as (sigh) Jar Jar Binks
Directed by: George Lucas
General reaction: Lukewarm (sorry)
Personal reaction: Meh
Rating: 4/10
Okay, let’s be honest here (yes I do that a lot, what of it?) - when the familiar “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” comes up, the logo and the fanfare, you kind of think YES! But compare the scroll to any of the first three movies. Then, it was a time of galactic civil war, with the brave rebels taking on the evil empire. Now, it’s, well, it’s a trade war. Taxes. Embargos. Battleships are mentioned, sure, but only in a blockade kind of way. Negotiations? Tariffs? Agreements? Congress? Endless debates? These are hardly the elements that comprise an exciting science fiction/space opera movie, now are they? Hell, the words even look guilty and embarrassed as they slink up the screen, their older brothers in the original trilogy scoffing “My how times have changed! Is that the best you can do?”
Not a good start, but it should get better. Shouldn’t it? Well there’s a half-hearted attempt to link back to the original movies when one of the first sentences, which comes out of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s mouth, is “I have a bad feeling about this.” You and me both, pal. Okay, well give it its due, like the previous movies it’s fairly quickly right into the action, and it is good to see two Jedi Knights at the peak of their powers take on a bunch of robots. Also good to see Obi-Wan as other than a doddering old fool. Guess Han Solo wouldn’t be so smart now huh? Well, he’d be making ga-ga noises, wouldn’t he? Might not even be born yet.
Let’s also take time to sneer at the title. I mean, what? The Phantom Menace? Doesn’t that sound like every horror or science fiction B-movie you’ve ever watched? “You’ll scream! Your heart will freeze! You’ll run away in terror from… THE PHANTOM MENACE!” Christ. Not that the second movie’s title was any better. But come on: Lucas says it refers to the machinations of Senator Palpatine (soon to be seen falling down a power shaft near you, trailing ectoplasmic electrical tendrils of Force power) as he moves the pieces behind the scenes, setting things up for his rise to emperor and the destruction of the Republic. Well all I can say about that is bollocks. Makes no sense. This title is rubbish, and frankly, not worthy of a Star Wars movie.
Battle droids, eh? That’s cool. So is the invasion fleet. What’s not cool is that Qui-Gon Jinn (I’m just gonna call him Jinn, Neeson’s character, Obi-Wan’s Jedi Master) saves what will turn out to be the most hated Star Wars character ever, as we are forced to meet, and unfortunately not bear witness to the - preferably gruesome - death of Jar Jar Binks. What were you thinking, George? How to possibly manage offending a whole culture with one character? How to bring proper racism into your universe? How to ensure you got banned from the Caribbean forever? Well at least the underwater city is good.
It’s quite a clever move really. WIth droids the only things being destroyed you can’t really class it as violence or carnage or even murder; you can enjoy the lightsaber attacks (can’t call them fights; the droids just get knocked apart) without agonising over any deaths or feel you’re revelling in mindless violence. It is in fact almost funny, given the metallic voices of the droids.This is I think the first we ever hear of the Sith, the, for want of a better phrase, dark Jedis. In the original trilogy all we were told was that Vader had turned to the dark side. Now it seems the dark side has its own Jedi knights, and they’re called the Sith. We have Darth Sidious and Darth Maul, which also shows us that Vader’s first name is a title rather than any sort of, um, first name. I guess it’s analogous to lord or master, so every big cheese in the Sith is Darth this or that. Interesting.
Strange to see R2D2 on his own, separate from C3PO, but I guess they haven’t met yet. More racism in the character of the trader Watto, who has an unmistakably prominent nose and speaks, and acts, pretty like a caricature of a “greedy Jew”. Here we meet Anakin Skywalker for the first time, just a kid, having been lost in a bet to the Hutts, the gang who control Tatooine, a planet we have not seen since the last movie. Whether Jabba the Hut is here or not I don’t know; no idea how long these people live. Oh right, he is: there he is, opening the race. I have no idea why Binks had to accompany Jinn into Mos Eisley (is it Mos Eisley? Not sure) - he was no help, got in the way, nearly got himself killed, and the only slight advantage of his being there was to get Jinn introduced to Anakin, leading to our meeting C3PO for the first time. Seems Anakin built him, to help his mother. And so the two droids are introduced to one another.
Now we get this pod race, another godsend to the computer video game industry, and the only part of the movie I actually remember. It is good to see that Anakin is being brought up by his mother on her own, whereas Luke had both uncle and aunt looking after him. A real modern interpretation. Okay so wait just a damned minute here. C3PO was created on Tatooine, yet he didn’t realise, when he was brought back and
bought by the descendants of the boy who built him that he was home? He must have known what planet they were on, and even if he didn’t, how many families named Skywalker are there that live on desert planets in the arsehole of nowhere?
I have to say, whether it’s the role she’s been given, or her acting ability, Kiera Knightley as the Queen’s decoy comes across as about as emotional as a service droid. Flat, toneless, expressionless - I mean, this is a woman, a ruler who is supposedly watching her people die under an enemy occupation, and she seems as upset about it as a hangnail. Not, to be fair, a lot for Obi-Wan to do either; Neeson steals all the best scenes and the film revolves pretty much around him. I suppose it’s easy to say it when we know what’s going to happen, but you can see how Amidala is being manipulated by Palpatine into elevating him to power, and we know where that leads. Yoda’s right too: Anakin is all ready made for a trip to the dark side - I wonder how Samuel L. Jackson feels about that phrase?
It’s ironic, and hubris of the greatest kind that Jinn goes against the advice of the Jedi Council, who see all too clearly what Skywalker is destined to become. Well, not clearly but they have an idea. Even Obi-Wan thinks it’s a bad idea. Everyone will have cause to regret the Jedi’s decision in the years to come. Can’t say I agree with the idea of making the Force dependent on these midi-chlorians or whatever. It was supposed to be all mystic, godlike, divine; now it’s a scientific process? Meh. Teaming up with the Gungans smacks to me of Ewoks from the second movie, and is I guess a lame attempt to show people that the “whites” have to rely on or team up with the “blacks” in order to defeat the bad guys. Again I say, meh. The revelation about the queen not being the queen is a good one, though. But the Gungans’ relationship to some wild African tribe is further reinforced when the Jedis and the queen and the rest of the party come to their “sacred place”, which looks like nothing so much as a native settlement in the jungle, complete with wooden huts. And not Jabba ones either.
I must say, the Gungans’ force field isn’t much use is it? The droid army just walk through it. Now we get the classic battle between Darth Maul and Jinn and Kenobi. I do like his lightsaber staff, very cool. Again though, the idea of almost exclusively droids being shot and killed is I think a step backwards, perhaps a concession to those who believe movies of this type are too violent, but in ways I think it is a self-defeating move, desensitising kids to violence and making all the battle scenes more like a video game. At least in the original it was real men, stormtroopers and rebels, who got killed. Here it’s like, so what? They’re droids. Who cares? Also, their less than human aspect does raise a troubling issue here: if something looks that mechanical is it a life or is it just a piece of machinery to be destroyed? What, I wonder, would Data say?
Another question: how are the two Jedi jumping as if it’s zero-gravity almost? They’re not superhuman, no matter how well trained they may be, but Obi-Wan Kenobi just made a jump UPWARDS of at least fifty feet! How did he do that? Jinn’s death at the hands of Darth Maul was a little telegraphed, especially when he got cut off from Kenobi, but it’s basically a retread of the fight years later between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader isn’t it? Not quite sure why Jinn knelt down when the force field went up; maybe he was gathering his strength? Praying to the Force? Needed a breather? Looked weird anyway. A good foreshadowing when Palpatine looks at Anakin and says he will watch his career closely. Another viking funeral I see, and an ending that very closely mirrors the end of the first movie. Think they might have done something different.
Overall, what do I think now, after having watched this for only the second time? Admittedly, it’s not quite as bad or forgettable as I remember (so to speak), but is it a worthy successor to the original trilogy? Was it worth waiting for? Did it whet my appetite for more? In my case, the answer to all three questions is no. I think the main issue I have - and perhaps that many people had - is not just that these were mostly new characters and not the ones we’d known for , at this point, twenty-two years, but that even the one we did know, albeit a younger version, had really very little to do in the movie, the whole thing being concentrated mostly around a new guy we had no history with. Not taking anything from Lliam Neeson’s performance, which was great, but you know, who was this guy? Sure, we’re told he was Obi-Wan Kenobi’s master, but we haven’t heard of him before, and so when he dies (and as I say above, it’s no great surprise after the death of Kenobi) it’s not the same emotional shock as it was in the first movie, not to me.
The attempt to inject too much humour into the movie annoyed me too, mostly because it’s orchestrated through the figure of Jar Jar Binks, and for me it never ever works. His patois is annoying, his clumsiness even more so, and the idea of his being elevated to a general in the Gungan army is, frankly, about as easy to swallow as a beachball. The young Anakin works well, though for a child I think it’s also a little hard to believe he can not only fly a spacecraft but also destroy the home base of the Federation, but the fact that we know what’s coming tended to have me waving at the screen and saying “No! No! Don’t train him! Listen to Yoda and Mace Wotsit!”
I did think we might find out something about who Anakin’s father was. His mother says “there was no father”, but this is just her speaking metaphorically, I have to assume: she didn’t get herself pregnant, so who did? I feel if we knew that, then surely that might be a major piece of the puzzle and the solution to the mystery as to why he’s so loaded up with, well, Force fuel, as it were. Maybe it goes into that more in the next two movies. As I say, I remember little if anything of either. I also have to wonder why, like C3PO and R2D2, if he grew up on Tatooine, Anakin in the guise of Darth Vader doesn’t recognise the planet when he returns there in the first movie, and why he doesn’t have any connection to his brother and sister. Sure, he’s evil now, but still. A lot of plot holes there, methinks.
It’s building a backstory, of course I understand that, and the introduction of the Sith is at least something interesting, as is the rise of Senator Palpatine to the eventual role of emperor, and it will be good to see how the Republic collapses and the empire comes into being, but though it has its good points, I just felt mostly the film felt, well, flat for me. It wasn’t the return I’d hoped to see: in fact, I was one of those - and pretty much remain so - who believed the original trilogy should be left as it was. If Lucas wanted to have other adventures for other, unconnected characters in the Star Wars universe, fine, but he should have left our heroes alone.
I think the second movie only reinforced that belief in me.