THE PHANTOM MENACE - 25 Years Later

A long time ago, just a couple miles from my house, I attended the matinee showing of STAR WARS Episode I: The Phantom Menace on the afternoon of Wednesday May 19, 1999. For the first time ever I bought my ticket days in advance so that I could skip school to witness the earliest possible showing of the first new STAR WARS movie since I was 3 months old. I attended alone but the electricity of the crowd created a palpable camaraderie; we were all there for the same thing, we all loved STAR WARS, we all wanted to see that double lightsaber, and we all knew nothing could ever be sillier than the Ewoks. 

If you were alive and aware in '99 you remember what it was like. You didn't have to be into STAR WARS or even see this movie to feel the force of the ad campaign that dominated every corner of consumerism. Outside of the licensed toys there was fast food, clothing, toiletries, trading cards, costumes, personalized checks, and anything else onto which you could stamp a picture of Natalie Portman's kabuki face; every magazine had a cover story, every cable network had a special. Weird Al had a song. I was 16 and from my perspective everyone everywhere was excited and optimistic and happily got caught up in the hype. And then everyone saw it. 

I thought I maybe kinda liked it, that was my initial takeaway. I knew I felt let down somehow, but my anticipation for it clouded any articulate assessment. That + the movie itself was so dry and convoluted that it made it harder to point to specific things to criticize. I knew I was mostly on the same page as everybody else about Jar Jar and the pace and the performances and the political plot, but unlike every other STAR WARS fan who ever lived, I was prepared and capable to accept the movie as is - and what it is is a clunky Science Fiction flick that feels nothing like STAR WARS. I went back to see it two more times (which is something I just used to do with anything I found even remotely interesting) and during the third viewing I was overcome with a debilitating headache which even then I took as a sign that my body was rejecting my efforts to grasp onto any hope I had of actually enjoying this movie. 

And in the following years there were two more prequels and it became evident that Jar Jar Binks was the least of our problems as the sobering truth came into focus that this is just how these movies are: stilted and flavorless and overly calculated to the point that it wasn't much more than a graphic depiction of a spreadsheet consisting of plot points and political science. I revisit them for the moments that are good, which are usually superficial action sequences free of their designated context, but the space around them is ultimately "cringe." But now, so many years later, Phantom Menace still stands tall as a unique and bizarre experience, but also film. 

On May 4th (as in May the Fourth) of this year, I revisited Episode I - not just the movie, but the movie theater in which I first viewed it -- this time with a 5-year-old child who enjoys STAR WARS just as much as I, and is just as apathetic towards the Prequels as I. It's been quite the sociological survey since he got into these films a little over a year ago: without subjective influence, he loves the Original Trilogy, he likes the Sequel Trilogy, and he's mostly unenthused with the Prequels. I suppose despite George's insistence that these movies are made for indifferent children, quality prevails.

I've revisited many movies on The Big Screen that I initially or eventually came to know best on home video and always found that the theater experience demanded fresh attention. Such was not the case with the Menace - it was the same tedious slog it's always been, but I think I finally hooked into its peculiar rhythms and I actually took interest in what is basically the bulk of the movie: the Tatooine sequence. 

At a running time of over 45 minutes the entire "getting to know Anakin" portion of the film is the film, and it's coherent, it's logical, and most often it's quite engaging, and while there's no spike in skillfulness when it comes to the dialogue, it unfolds in a way that's almost as fun as a STAR WARS movie. Even the pod race (which is a fantastic achievement in cinematography, editing, effects, and sound) acts as an adequate finale to this otherwise cohesive "Part One", but instead the movie continues into the next drag of an act involving the Jedi Council and Senatorial debates. 

Man does it get tedious. It's always during this stretch that the weight of the incompetence of this movie really hits me. After the pod race was over my son became so bored he started asking me questions about the architecture of the theater we were in, and I was happy to participate. Granted we'd both seen the film many times, but the sound and vision of the theater environment still isn't strong enough to pull in my attention during the slower bits, and that's mostly due to the fact that the movie is empty of enough nuance or depth to make you wanna look any deeper. Having said that, the prequels are famous for "Easter eggs" and little peripheral animations for the fans, and watching it again on a bigger screen for the first time in a quarter century I took extra special notice of Jabba the Hutt's slave girls. 

Off to the left in the shadows is Diva Funquita and all the way to the right in the famous gold bikini is Diva Shaliqua. For me this is the biggest kinda fan service, as the trollops of Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi are one of the most vivd flagships of my own personal nostalgia (Leia included). The biggest strength of the Prequels is that they're populated with minor characters with no dialogue but full-fledged backstories and elaborate names. Characters like them had more of an existence in the Expanded Universe books and animated series and other spinoffs, but mostly it was to sell toys. You're not a real collector unless you have a Graxol Kelvyyn! 

George's backend came largely from the merchandise, and so more characters = more cash. Once he stepped away Disney didn't follow this model so the sequels were a bit more sparse in characters and weapons and vehicles and I believe they suffered a bit for that. But otherwise, the Disney trilogy has only magnified how cold and rigid and boring these Prequels are - to me at least. In recent years a lotta folks have "come around" on the Prequels, succumbing to the notion that not only are they "not that bad" but "actually pretty good." Poor deluded creatures. These are the kindsa people who give nostalgia a bad name - they're no better than the Boomers. Or, perhaps they actually did like these movies all along and were afraid to admit it. Or, maybe the quality of modern popular movies has dipped so far beneath The Phantom Menace that it now seems superior. 

At any rate, I sat in a mostly-empty theater on a Saturday afternoon in 2024 to rewatch the highest grossing picture of 1999, so apparently everyone cared even less than I. Needless to say the experience was very different than the first time I was there - especially in the moments before anyone there had actually seen the film and there was an audible shriek of excitement when the "long time ago" title card came up. And therein lies its own incredibly layered nostalgia: me, here, reminiscing about a 25 year old movie that sparked a collective reminiscence for a then-22 year old movie. But the biggest nostalgic thing for me is that sense of unity; everyone was openly let down with the Prequels in some respect, but we all took the ride together, and the fanboys remained on the fringes of the internet's infancy. Today we drown in STAR WARS fatigue, and social media is there to remind us of the toxicity of fandom. In hindsight, much of the recent STAR WARS "content" has been superior to George's tiresome origin trilogy in many ways, but his Prequels at least felt fresh, original, experimental. They were spaced out with legitimate anticipation. They were, and continue to be, unique - for better for worse. Hot drive-thru cuisine is sometimes better than reheated leftovers. 

- Paul