Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

What everyone remembers fondly from this movie is Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor as Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Maul and their climatic duel. Sadly, there isn't more than a few minutes of Maul and instead we are given Jar Jar Binks and Jake Lloyd as a needlessly young Anakin. Along with these characters the movie is burdened by a general tone that's directed at children and an over reliance on still developing CGI technology.

It looks bad, it sounds bad(kudos to the actors who make this dialouge sound good) and the best aspects are too brief. The Phantom Menace has been lapidated by audiences and its kind of understandable: passionate Star Wars fans can look past the flaws but to the average viewer it can be very offputting.

But hey, look at what you got now.

Well, after waiting 16 years for his next installment, George has given us "The Phantom Menace". As a Star Wars fan I got what I expected - another chance to immerse myself in the Star Wars universe - a film whose sole purpose is essentially escapism. But as a movie fan, and judging it as I would any other movie, I frankly feel mildly disappointed. Any movie that's made can always be improved upon but I feel that this SHOULD have been better. Firstly the good points :

1) The visuals are stunning - a lot of love and hard work has quite obviously gone into the effects and the people involved can quite rightly be proud of their work

2) All the performances by the main cast were good. Particularly Natalie Portman and Pernilla August.

3) The Pod Race was exciting and amusing.

4) The final sabre duel was quite fantastic : Darth Maul prowling up and down like a caged tiger was a particularly excellent touch - it added real tension and anticipation to the scene.

5) The music as always was magnificent. The Star Wars saga would lose much of its charm and intensity without Williams' scores.

And now the negatives :

1) The pacing was too fast in parts! The first half hour of the film just left me cold - you weren't led into the story. You were dumped straight into the action. On paper I'm sure the first half hour looked fantastic but I found myself sitting in the theatre going - 'hey, great special effect shot there!' I wasn't involved in the story and the scenes lacked tension and danger.

2) The film only truly started for me on reaching Tatooine. I finally got a chance to get to know the characters. However there still was not enough character development in the film as a whole. For example, Obi Wan had nothing to do or say throughout the movie except flash his light sabre around from time-to-time. Who is Obi Wan??? After seeing the film I'm none the wiser. And the final sabre duel (good as it was) would have been infinitely better had the relationship between Qui-Gon and Obi Wan been explored past the mere mentor-apprentice motif. The final sabre duel lacked emotional involvement as a consequence.

3) Why did they make Jar-Jar so incomprehensible?? I found myself becoming annoyed at having to strain to understand his nonsensical utterings! (Having said that, he wasn't as annoying as I'd been led to expect) Why George used easily identifiable racial accents for his alien characters completely puzzled me. It just shows a lack of imagination!

4) Not enough Darth Maul.

5) What's with the biological exposition on the Force! Was that necessary? The first three films pointed to links between the Force and genetics but I don't need tiresome cold scientific explanations as to the Force's origin, thank you very much! It just ruins the mystique.

6) Can we have less of the mindless gaffes that occur in the final battle scenes (You know the ones that save the day!) Its an insult to the audience's intelligence (In a full theatre I swear I didn't see a single soul who looked under sixteen! - has George forgotten about the original fans). In the original trilogy there was none of this cringeful embarrassing material (Ewoks excepted!!)

Well I think I'll stop there. To summarise : a good movie that could have been a whole lot better. Perhaps there was too much story to cover in two hours? In which case the plot should have been shortened on the adage that "less is more". I've always thought that episode one was always going to be the lamest of the new films so I await the next installment with anticipation and hope .....

Positives:

• Planets design
• Some of the action scenes
• Darth Maul
• Musical score

Negatives:

• Story
• Pacing
• Characters
• Acting
• Writing
• Dull cinematography

Let's get it out of the way here. Jar Jar Binks is really annoying and outside of "there's always a bigger fish" I don't find even a single one of his scenes funny. Outside of that, he contributes practically nothing of value to the story (he tells Qui-Gon how to find the Gungans but that's it.) Almost any criticism levied against Jar Jar is one with which I agree. (Yes, I know he was a character created to appeal to kids.)

Midichlorians were an entirely unnecessary introduction though they're not as frustrating as Positive Probability Ions.

But the rest of the movie, I like. Palpatine, the Sith, Darth Maul, the Jedi Counci, Qui-Gon, even the child characters. (The Rule of Two is pointless and arbitrary but I can accept it.

Does this movie have flaws? Yes not more glaring flaws than those of its predecessors. Is this the best Star Wars movie ever? No but it's still pretty good.

Star Wars: Episode 1- The Phantom Menace is definitely worth a watch, but I do think it is one of the weaker movies of the Star Wars saga. I will admit I wasn't expecting much after reading some very negative reviews on IMDb, but I do think this particular instalment did in some ways exceed my expectations and disappointed as well. On a visual and technical level, it looks absolutely fantastic, with splendid special effects, stunning cinematography and fine scenery and costumes. The script is fairly decent, perhaps lacking the sophistication of Empire Strikes Back or New Hope, but does have some memorable lines. The action is constantly exhilarating, and Darth Maul, well played by Ray Park is a very good villain. Of course though, Darth Vader is better. Most of the performances are very good, especially Natalie Portman as Queen Padma who looked stunning and Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker who shone with his confident charm. And Jar Jar Binks is okay on the most part, and you have to love Yoda. And the music score by John Williams was outstanding, definitely one of his best works. The quality of sound and direction are also impressive. However, there were things about this film that did disappoint. One is despite the awesome visuals, strong music score and good characters, the story never quite distinguished itself. It did take a while to get going, and when it did try to get going and you could tell it wanted to, it was further disadvantaged by the uneven pacing. Liam Neeson is a fine actor, his performances in Kinsey and Schindler's List are proof of that, and I do like Ewan McGregor. But as Qui-Gon Jin and Obi Wan Kenobi, both stars give unusually wooden performances, and at times looked even embarrassed. And as I said, the pacing is very uneven, there are some slow moments, and one or two scenes felt rushed. All in all, maybe disappointing for fans of the saga, but it cannot be denied that visually it is an accomplishment. 7/10 Bethany Cox