Star Wars overview I: The Phantom Menace
As soon as the infodumping text begins, you immediately know that the tone of the prequels is not trying to be about in-your-face Manichaeism. It’s no longer something easy to understand, such as good rebels versus an evil empire. Now it’s about some royalists versus some capitalists, which doesn’t have the same cool vibe as good versus evil. For a story that is supposed to be a fairy tale in space, throwing in intrigue is a major problem. People were expecting Star Wars and got convoluted Star Politics, which is definitely not fun and never made much sense in the longrun.
It doesn’t make the two factions greyer. The citizens of Naboo are background characters, and the trade federation is a puppet of a bigger villain. So compared to the sequels, there is nothing to root for, because both sides are unimportant. Having the whole conflict being just a skirmish that is part of a bigger scheme, is making it very hard to give a damn. This is further damaged by how there are no important representatives in the opening scene. The good guys are a couple of generic Jedi with hardly any personality, and there are like thousands of them in the galaxy. The bad guys are a bunch of generic aliens whom you won’t even bother to remember their names. In comparison to the sequels, where you would immediately have princess Leia representing the rebels and Darth Vader representing the Empire, both of which unique in what they do, this was bloody dull.
If you wonder what’s wrong with the Jedi which makes them not having much personality, when they otherwise have a face, the answer is there is nothing wrong with them. The problem with them is that they don’t have any problems; they are Gary Stues. The Jedi in the sequels all had some sort of setback; Obi-wan and Yoda were old, frail, unable to fight, and limited to only being mentors and trainers. These young Jedi on the other hand are nothing like that. They are perfect at what they are doing, which is also what makes them so boring. Some of you complain about me not liking The Empire Strikes Back because it’s not full of dumb action and instead has cool Jedi philosophy, but once you see what it means to be a true Jedi at the peak of your power, it fucking sucks. A super fighter, who controls his emotions, can read the future, and brainwashes people to do his bidding, is not relatable. He is a robot. The fans made a big fuss out of a simplistic concept that is trying to turn people into mind controlling killer robots. Fuck the force.
The way the Jedi fought and escaped the ambush of the droids was laughable. If the merchants wanted to kill them, they could have easily done it when the Jedi returned to their ship. This is once again plot convenience, so the movie won’t end in ten minutes.
We are introduced to Jarjar, an annoying CGI comic relief. The two droids from the sequels were kinda fun, but this one is obnoxious. His reactions to everything are too much and he is hardly as useful.
The Gungan city looks amazing… as background decoration. This part is essentially a rehash of the Ewoks segment where the heroes become allies with the natives and use them against the invaders. The difference is that the Gungan city and its habitants are all CGI. The handmade alien costumes and sceneries of the sequels are very campy by today’s standards but you always feel the characters are there, interacting with them. Computer generated images make everything look spectacular but you never quite feel they are really there, interacting with the setting. It’s pretty easy to figure out they are talking to a blue screen which is then filled with images. If the CGI was used only for explosions, laser beams, and spaceships, it would be fine. But when almost everything is CGI, this tends to break the immersion far easier than knowing it’s a guy with a costume.
The Jedi arrive to the capital and save the queen. Something they would have done immediately, if the trade federation had landed its invasion ships inside the capital instead of the other side of the planet. Why waste so much time going there and losing the element of surprise? So we will have a completely pointless detour where the Jedi go to the Gungan city and then travel with a submarine through CGI monsters. Essentially this part is completely filler.
They take a ship and leave the planet, as they are constantly being fired at by the blockade. And they manage to escape by simply passing through it. Just like with those underwater monsters, it wasn’t piloting skills that saved them, and the droid fixing the shield was just lucky for not being hit than actually being talented at mending things. It’s like everything is done randomly for plot convenience.
Why are they congratulating the droid? It’s a machine doing what it was programmed and ordered to do. If droids have rights and artificial intelligence, this would make sense, but it contradicts the scene in A New Hope where the imperials do not destroy the escape pod the droids were in, because they are not living organisms.
They go to Tatooine and meet Anakin. A big part of the movie is spent on him infodumping what is going on without showing us anything. And sorry to say this but the boy actor playing Anakin is not good at all. I was unable to understand how he felt without him having to say it. There is no soul in his acting, which made the chemistry that was supposed to be built between him and Padme completely lifeless. He feels like a plot device, and a mouthpiece instead of an organic personality, living in a plausible world. This is a major difference with the sequels where a lot of things were based on body language instead of lifeless infodumping.
Then we have a very long pod race, where I didn’t give a shit about what was going on because there was so much CGI I was technically watching a silly videogame for little children. Also, this was just a side mission before the actual plot remembers to come back.
After this, Anakin manages to buy his freedom. But he cannot take his mother with him because they don’t have enough money to buy her freedom as well I guess. And they never bothered to come back a few months later with the money either. When Luke left Tatooine in the sequels, he had nothing to leave behind; everybody he cared about was dead. Anakin on the other hand, had a huge emotional baggage that will be constantly carrying throughout his life. How the hell any of the thousands of wise Jedi didn’t think this would be a problem in the future if it concerns the child of prophecy? The script is bullshit.
So, they go to the Jedi council and they mention Anakin has a lot of midi-chlorians in him, a thing which demystified completely the metaphysical aspect of what the Force is all about. So far the fans believed it was an energy field or god, or magic, or some other shit. No, turns out it’s some sort of a germ, yay. Every fan is shitting on George Lukas for giving such an explanation, but let’s be honest here. He simply gave a more scientific explanation to voodoo magic that is used for plot convenience. Does it make it less divine this way? Yes. Does it stop being used for plot convenience? No. Nothing changed, it just made salty those who made an actual religion out of this bullshit.
Samuel fucking Jackson mentions a prophecy about someone who will bring balance to the force. I hate anything that has to do with destiny, saviors, and predetermined actions. In this case, it was actually cool because, although it is not apparent yet, it turns out that the Jedi were fooled by their trust in destiny. The Sith Lord manipulated events to make it seem it was predetermined, and they fell right into it. Unfortunately, this most clever scheme is ruined by how nobody seems to understand what balance means. You see, a millennia ago, the Jedi killed most of the Sith, who happened to be using the dark force. For a thousand years, there were mostly people using the light side of the force. Guess what balance means. That’s right, killing most of the Jedi, thus restoring the balance. And none of the Jedi seems to be able to comprehend that.
After that, all that is left is the final battle against the droid army. It was pretty spectacular as a whole, but I didn’t enjoy it that much because it was CGI aliens fighting CGI robots. You don’t feel anything when someone dies. With death having no gravity, it’s very hard to care. Many fans still hate the Ewoks, but at least those were using field tactics in a forest. This is just standing in the middle of nowhere and firing at each other. It’s 2 dimensional and boring. And what’s that bullshit where Anakin somehow gets in a ship, somehow goes to battle, and somehow blows up the control center? Did he really do anything alone or was it all an accident? Once again, there was no strategy; it was all a fortunate mistake.
There is also the swordfight with Darth Maul. On one side it was amazing in choreography, on the other there was no emotional attachment. In the sequels, when Obi-wan and Luke fight Darth Vader, there is a strong personal connection amongst them. In this movie, the Jedi are just doing their duty; this is just another assignment for them. And we know absolutely nothing about the villain; he was on every poster, people were calling him the new Darth Vader, and he died after a few minutes of screen time.
And why don’t Jedi disappear when they die in these movies? What happened to all that transcending to a higher dimension and shit? Not enough midi-chlorians for that?
My god this movie was lifeless. That’s what happens when you care more about pretty colors than sympathetic characters. Next time, I will go over the other two movies at the same time, because of how empty they are.