Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) Review

 Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) 6/10

Hello everyone and welcome to another movie review. Today, I’m starting on the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, starting with The Phantom Menace. This movie was originally released on May 19, 1999, with the movie being written and directed by George Lucas, the mastermind behind the Original Trilogy. Upon the film’s release, both critics and general audiences weren’t too thrilled with the film. Some loved it while others hated it.

I was 1 years old when this movie came out. I don’t think I saw this until a bit later, but this is the kind of Star Wars that I grew up with. Even with all of the film’s issues and weird moments, I still love this movie mainly because it reminds me of simpler times. I’ve seen Phantom Menace and the rest of the prequel movies countless times. These are essentially comfort movies for me, but for the longest time I’ve always felt I never truly saw their true colors. So, I’m fixing that and it’s time for me to see The Phantom Menace in all of its glory. Let’s begin.

As the trilogy suggests, this is a prequel to the original Star Wars movie (now dubbed A New Hope). In the age of the Galactic Republic, trade routes are disputed by reigning political parties, nations, and corporations. The planet of Naboo is disputing trade routes (such as tolls and taxes and other fun stuff) with the Trade Federation. Because of this, the TF has imposed a blockade on Naboo until negotiations are signed. Chancellor Valorum of the Galactic Senate has secretly asked two Jedi Knights to act as ambassadors to get this situation resolved. These Jedi Knights are Qui-Gon Jin and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Aboard a Trade Federation cruiser, both Jedi are met with hostile aggression and discover that the TF is planning on invading and occupying the planet to strongarm the Naboo government into signing negotiations that aren’t fair. As things spiral out of control, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan must rescue the Queen and travel to Coruscant, so she can make a plea towards the Senate. However, things take a turn for the worse when their ship has engine problems, prompting the crew to make a pit stop at the desert planet Tatooine, where they have a fateful meeting with a young boy who will alter the course of the galaxy forever. 

One of my biggest issues with the movie is that it doesn’t feel like a concise story, unlike the original movies. Everything that happens here just feels like stuff happening. There are themes of fate and corruption at play here, but the movie definitely needed better writing overall. Lots of cool ideas and concepts, but needed better execution. Like how does the galaxy’s government work? I get it’s a republic with a senate, but on the scale of an entire galaxy? There definitely needed some explaining to be done, especially for the younger audiences who don’t understand something as complex as government. Like when I was growing up and watching this movie, I thought the Trade Federation was another nation like Naboo or Coruscant, not a corporation like Amazon or Meta that has access to its own private droid army.

There are individual moments that kinda ruin the experience too. Biggest offender being the infamous Force Speed thing at the start of the movie. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are fighting off some droidekas and then they RUN away at incredible speed. This is never shown again and is a blatant plot hole in the movie. If these two are capable of such a feat, why didn’t they do this later on in the movie? When Qui-Gon first lands on Naboo and he’s running away from those droid carriers, why didn’t he use this to get away faster and save Jar Jar a lot easier? During the duel with Darth Maul, why didn’t Obi-Wan use Force Speed to catch up to the fight after he got kicked off the platform? This would have evened the playing field and even had Darth Maul beaten without Qui-Gon dying.

I also need to bring up Mr Jar Jar Binks, the Gungan that Qui-Gon saves at the beginning of the movie. I like Jar Jar. He’s an idiot who cracked me up with this clumsiness. People got WAY too butthurt over Jar Jar back in the day. There are two things about him that I have to ask though. First off is when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are talking to the Gungan leader (Boss Nass). Qui-Gon Force manipulates Boss Nass into releasing Jar Jar into their care as they need a navigator to guide them through the planet’s core. Like 5 minutes later, Qui-Gon tells Obi-Wan, who is piloting the submersible, to “go over that way. The Force will guide us.” WHAT WAS THE POINT OF BRINGING ALONG JAR JAR IF YOU WERE GOING TO FOLLOW THE FORCE AS A GUIDE!?!?!? What’s weird is that you can see Jar Jar telling Obi-Wan where to go by pointing in certain directions prior to Qui-Gon saying this. This random line really bothers me. My second question is WHY DID BOSS NASS MAKE JAR JAR INTO A FUCKING GENERAL DURING THE BATTLE OF NABOO!?!?! This is the same guy who got BANISHED because of how clumsy he is and you make him a leader in your army? That makes absolutely no fucking sense at all!

Let’s see what else I can complain about. Oh I know, how about The Battle of Naboo. The Battle of Naboo is separated into four parts: The Great Plains (Gungans vs Trade Federation Army), Palace Invasion (Padme and her royal guard), the Space Battle (Naboo Starfighters), and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan vs Darth Maul. The Great Plains front, although looks cool, could have been better, and I mainly blame Jar Jar for this. His dopey shenanigans kinda ruined the seriousness of the fight. I was also hoping to see more warfare here, but I guess I couldn’t set my expectations too high. The Palace front (with Padme) is probably the most boring part of the battle. Yeah there’s lots of shooting and explosions, but everything else was more entertaining. I do need to ask: the fake Queen (not-Natalie Portman), why did she keep her headdress on during the battle? I understand that she’s a decoy for Padme, but you’d think that headdress would get in the way. It was kinda goofy seeing her trying to take cover and she has this massive thing on her head, making her a bigger target. If she wants to continue being the Queen, that’s fine, but make yourself battle ready at least. You can keep the makeup and royal garb on, but get rid of the headdress. “Oh but that’s her hair. If you remove the headdress, her hair will be all over the place.” BULLSHIT! She could easily put her hair in a bun or three to keep it from getting in the way. It’s such a tiny detail, but it bothered me more than it should have lmao. The Space Battle was cool too as this is the third space fight we’ve seen from the series (first being the Battle of Yavin and second being Battle of Endor). Although not as cool as those fights, this space battle was entertaining too. I do have a question regarding the command ship for the TF. Why does the captain/navigator (the alien with the things in his eyes) have a button that directly turns on the droids on Naboo? You would think all control operations regarding the droids would be in a separate part of the ship, not on a dedicated button on the captain’s chair. This little detail is just weird to me. I do have another nitpick here, this will go into Anakin.

Anakin is a prodigy. We can clearly see that with how he handled the Pod Race on Tatooine as well as his affinity for machinery (bro built C-3PO and a racing pod from literal junk). When Anakin boards the Queen’s ship, one of the pilots is showing him around the controls and he catches on to the controls pretty quickly, even impressing the pilot. So why is that when Anakin gets into the Naboo Starfighter, he doesn’t understand anything? He’s just randomly pressing buttons, which engages the autopilot. You would think with his ability to learn controls pretty quickly he would not have done anything that would trigger the ship to go. Now, knowing Anakin, I could totally see him wanting to help his friends and join the space battle. That would make more sense than randomly pressing buttons and getting himself thrown into space. Also, what is up with that autopilot? Autopilot means that that vehicle is driving by itself with no added inputs. In real life, an airplane on autopilot would be a plane flying from point A to B, usually in a straight line. The autopilot on the starfighter was having Anakin take off, fly into space, join a dogfight, and do complex movements all without Anakin’s input. How did the autopilot know to fly towards the space battle? I don’t think the autopilot would have even worked even when on the ground. Anakin would need to get the ship flying first and then it can trigger autopilot. Thai whole autopilot thing really confuses the fuck out of me because it’s unnecessary. As I said earlier, it would be within Anakin’s character to want to help his friends. It would have been easier to write Anakin like this instead of this dumbass autopilot business.

Anyway, back to the Battle of Naboo. The final part of this battle was the lightsaber duel. Honestly this duel is so cool and probably my favorite lightsaber duel up until this point. I love what the originals did with Luke vs Vader 1 (on Bespin) and Luke vs Vader 2 (on the Death Star 2) as there is a lot of symbolism with Luke’s character in those fights, but from pure choreography, Maul vs Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan was sick as fuck. The high intense movements, the kicks and use of Force powers. It’s so cool. I do have to ask, what exactly was that room with the red shields? I get that the room after that hallway was some sort of energy/fuel deposit, but what’s with the shields? If there was like actual energy flowing through that hole when the shields were active, I could understand to help contain the energy, but they were just randomly turning on and off. And this is one of my biggest problems with the movie. I kinda mentioned this earlier, but the movie doesn’t fully explain everything. There were moments of exposition, but there wasn’t enough to fully flesh out the story that needed to be told here. And I know the original trilogy didn’t explain every little thing in their movies, but at least there was some sort of idea behind each room and the design choice of the different locations.

Another problem I have is the fucking Jedi Council. Yoda, Mace Windu, Ki Adi Mundi, and the rest of these idiots need to be smacked in the face. They do realize that Anakin is the fucking Chosen One from the prophecy right? You would think that something as grand as that they would take a lot more seriously. If one of your Jedi Knights is telling you “I encountered a vergence in the Force and I believe this boy I found is the Chosen One”, you should take that seriously. “The boy is too old. We won’t train him” has got to be one of the dumbest excuses I have ever seen. And I can already see the argument that Yoda said the same thing to Luke in Empire Strikes Back, but here’s the thing: Anakin is 9 years old. Luke was, what 18-20 years old? But even then, Luke still learned what needed to be learned and still saved both his father and the galaxy. From the council’s point of view, I can understand where they are coming from if this was any other child, but for the supposed Chosen One, they should have made the exception and given Qui-Gon special permission to train Anakin. And I also believe that Obi-Wan was not ready to become a Jedi Knight, at least not yet. To keep with the lore, at some point Obi-Wan will have to train Anakin, but the way this whole thing went, it could have been so much better. Also, the Jedi Council should take special care to address Anakin’s fears and even go the extra mile and rescue his mother. With her safe, Anakin would be able to focus on his Jedi training. She doesn’t need to be present, but at least put her in safe hands. But instead we got incompetence. To paraphrase Qui-Gon Jinn, “Fuck the council.”

And this is exactly why the Duel of Fates was so important. With the knowledge that we have with the original trilogy, Anakin will become Darth Vader later on. The lightsaber duel on Naboo wasn’t just good vs evil, Jedi vs Sith, but it was also to determine Anakin’s fate. Had Maul won, I’m pretty sure he would either flat out kill Anakin or he would discover Anakin’s Force affinity and bring him to Darth Sidious. If Qui-Gon survived, Anakin would be in good hands. But since none of that happened, Obi-Wan took on teaching Anakin, which will lead into what’ll happen next.

There’s a few more things I want to go over with the writing: midichlorians. I know this was (and still is) super controversial. Midichlorians, as explained by Qui-Gon, are microscopic organisms that detect the Force. They reside in all living things and allow the Force to be detected by living beings and quantifiable by machines. Personally, I see this as just a way to scientifically explain The Force, or a way to detect the Force that is. It reminds me of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5 when manga author Araki decided to scientifically explain how Stands come to be. You don’t have to fully agree with it, but there is an explanation for those who want one. I don’t really care about the whole midichlorian thing as the movie has plenty of other stuff that needs to be addressed. As for the midichlorians themselves, I like them. Again, it’s just a way to scientifically show off how strong one’s connection is in the Force. (Also quick shout out to that one shot of Obi-Wan looking at the midichlorian count as it reminded me of the movie Akira lol).

The movie also needed some better dialogue. The movie is full of dumb one-liners that I love for the memes, but don’t like for the context of the movie. “There’s always a bigger fish”, “Now this is pod racing!”, “Ah, victory”, and other lines. But the most annoying line is The Queen CONSTANTLY saying “but my people are suffering and dying!” I swear to God she says this like 5 times throughout the movie, all the way up until she leaves to go back to Naboo. Instead of repeating this, why doesn’t the movie show us a concentration camp or people suffering. You don’t have to show the killing as this is still a family movie, but my God there was no reason to have her say this so many times lmao.

One last thing I want to go over is the pod race. I have always loved the pod racing in this movie. I know some people were complaining that it feels forced and out of place, but everything regarding the pod race was awesome. I’ve actually been asking for more pod racing for years. I would love a whole movie based on it. Don’t have it be connected to the greater Star Wars story. Just a random guy trying to crawl up the popularity ladder and reach the top. Make it in the style of Redline, Speedracer, F1 Movie, and maybe even Wacky Races. Go all in on the ridiculousness and I promise you it’ll make bank. Closest I got to this was both the Pod Racer game and the swoop races from KOTOR 1.

As for the rest of the movie, Phantom Menace looks great. There aren’t too many notable moments of cinematography, but there are some great panoramic shots. Theed, Gungan Capital, Coruscant, Great Plains, the pod race track. The movie looks great. And we can’t forget Darth Maul’s iconic second lightsaber. I also love the 3D CGI for the movie. It looks dated by today’s standards, but it also adds a special charm that you can’t get nowadays. All the droids, the ships, landscapes, aliens, and everything else look great. And what’s a Star Wars movie without the music? John Williams returns to give us one of his best works yet. The best track in the movie has to be “The Duel of Fates”, but I also love the other music plus the callbacks to the original trilogy. Great soundtrack overall.

The acting isn’t as bad as everyone made it out to be. Idk what the hell was wrong with all of those people back then, but sending death threats to a fucking child actor has to be the lowest thing a person can do. Jake Lloyd (Anakin) and Ahmed Best (Jar Jar) were great. Jake Lloyd played a young kid who is finally exploring the galaxy. Kids are going to be a bit annoying and a bit cringe. That’s what they are. And Jar Jar, from the get-go, was supposed to be the comedy relief character. He’s supposed to be clumsy and irritating. That’s literally the whole reason why he got banished in the first place. Ahmed was literally just playing the character perfectly. Also shout out to Liam Neeson (Qui-Gon), Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan), Natalie Portman (Padme), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Kenny Baker (R2-D2), Brian Blessed (Boss Nass), Ian McDiarmid (Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidious). Frank Oz (puppet Yoda), Samuel L Jackson (Mace Windu), Ray Park/Peter Serafinowicz (Darth Maul, voice of Darth Maul), and Keira Knightly (fake Queen).

Overall, The Phantom Menace, at this point in Star Wars (with only four movies), is the weakest one. It’s not as bad as the internet makes it out to be, but it’s not the grand movie that I once thought it was. Overall, the movie is an above average experience. Despite the movie’s numerous flaws and weird decisions, I still love it to pieces. I’ll be going over Attack of the Clones pretty soon, so stay tuned for that.

Thanks for reading.

This is Zorgak, signing off.