Star Wars Collection

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Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Lucasfilm Ltd.

United States of America

English

Liam Neeson

Ewan McGregor

Natalie Portman

Jake Lloyd

Ian McDiarmid

Pernilla August

Oliver Ford Davies

Hugh Quarshie

Ahmed Best

Anthony Daniels

Kenny Baker

Frank Oz

Terence Stamp

Brian Blessed

Andy Secombe

Ray Park

Lewis Macleod

Warwick Davis

Steve Speirs

Silas Carson

Jerome St. John Blake

Alan Ruscoe

Ralph Brown

Celia Imrie

Benedict Taylor

Clarence Smith

Samuel L. Jackson

Dominic West

Karol Cristina da Silva

Liz Wilson

Candice Orwell

Sofia Coppola

Keira Knightley

Bronagh Gallagher

John Fensom

Greg Proops

Scott Capurro

Margaret Towner

Dhruv Chanchani

Oliver Walpole

Megan Udall

Hassani Shapi

Gin Clarke

Khan Bonfils

Michelle Taylor

Michaela Cottrell

Dipika O'Neill Joti

Phil Eason

Mark Coulier

Lindsay Duncan

Peter Serafinowicz

James Taylor

Chris Sanders

Toby Longworth

Marc Silk

Danny Wagner

Amanda Lucas

Katie Lucas

Richard Armitage

Sacha Alexander

Simon Allen

Paul Bannon

Don Bies

Trisha Biggar

Michonne Bourriague

Douglas Bunn

Ben Burtt

Doug Chiang

Rob Coleman

Roman Coppola

Sean Cronin

Zsuzsanna Cseh

Matt Daniel-Baker

Russell Darling

Philip Delancy

Sebastian Dewing

Andrew Doucette

C. Michael Easton

Andrew Elias

Catherine Ernster

Salo Gardner

Andrew Gersh

Patrice Girod

Ned Gorman

Joss Gower

Raymond Griffiths

Nathan Hamill

Tim Harrington

Sally Hawkins

Jack Hayes

Nifa Hindes

Nishan Hindes

Frank Huseyin

Alexi Kaye Campbell

David Knight

John Knoll

Kamay Lau

Andrew Lawden

John M. Levin

Dan Madsen

Rick McCallum

George Lucas

David Tattersall

John Williams

Paul Martin Smith

Robin Gurland

Peter Walpole

Daryl Tucker

Nick Gillard

Andreas Petrides

Dominic Preece

Morgan Johnson

Ray De-Haan

Rob Inch

Peter Russell

Fred Hole

Rod McLean

Phil Harvey

John King

June Prinz

Ty Teiger

Peter Myslowski

Ann Maskrey

Sharon Long

Meg Speirs

Melissa Lackersteen

Sarah Love

Darlene Forrester

Jim Passon

Gary Burritt

Tom Bellfort

Teresa Eckton

Chris Scarabosio

Matthew Wood

Sara Bolder

Gwendolyn Yates Whittle

Bruce Lacey

Marian Wilde

Kevin Sellers

Steve Slanec

Tony Eckert

Frank 'Pepe' Merel

Dennie Thorpe

Jana Vance

Jessica Bellfort

Kenneth Wannberg

Giles Nuttgens

Gavin Bocquet

Chuck Duke

Christopher Minos

Benton Jew

Iain McCaig

Jay Shuster

Ed Natividad

Kurt Kaufman

Marc Gabbana

James Gemmill

Hermione Ninnim

Kathryn Farrar

Trevor Coop

Adam Dale

Graham Hall

John Midgley

Keith Sewell

Craig Burns

Jason Coop

Shaun Evans

Amanda Bernstein

Rajeshree Patel

Anthony Brookman

Lou Durkin

Helen Mattocks

Neil Murphy

Michael Mooney

Jason Phelps

Brian Blues

Morag Ross

Sue Love

Jan Archibald

Eddie Knight

Stewart Monteith

Gary Colkett

Vernon Connolly

Adam Lee

Mark Thomas

George White

Marypat Plottner

Aura Gilge

Jeff Olson

Heather Smith

If it were the first "Star Wars" movie, "The Phantom Menace" would be hailed as a visionary breakthrough. But this is the fourth movie of the famous series, and we think we know the territory; many of the early reviews have been blase, paying lip service to the visuals and wondering why the characters aren't better developed. How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.

"Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace," to cite its full title, is an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking. If some of the characters are less than compelling, perhaps that's inevitable: This is the first story in the chronology and has to set up characters who (we already know) will become more interesting with the passage of time. Here we first see Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda and R2-D2 and C-3PO. Anakin is only a fresh-faced kid in Episode I; in IV, V and VI, he has become Darth Vader.

At the risk of offending devotees of the Force, I will say that the stories of the "Star Wars" movies have always been space operas, and that the importance of the movies comes from their energy, their sense of fun, their colorful inventions and their state-of-the-art special effects. I do not attend with the hope of gaining insights into human behavior. Unlike many movies, these are made to be looked at more than listened to, and George Lucas and his collaborators have filled "The Phantom Menace" with wonderful visuals.

There are new places here--new kinds of places. Consider the underwater cities, floating in their transparent membranes. The Senate chamber, a vast sphere with senators arrayed along the inside walls, and speakers floating on pods in the center. And other places: the cityscape with the waterfall that has a dizzying descent through space. And the other cities: one city Venetian, with canals, another looking like a hothouse version of imperial Rome, and a third that seems to have grown out of desert sands.

Set against awesome backdrops, the characters in "The Phantom Menace" inhabit a plot that is little more complex than the stories I grew up on in science-fiction magazines. The whole series sometimes feel like a cover from Thrilling Wonder Stories, come to life. The dialogue is pretty flat and straightforward, although seasoned with a little quasi-classical formality, as if the characters had read but not retained "Julius Caesar." I wish the "Star Wars" characters spoke with more elegance and wit (as Gore Vidal's Greeks and Romans do), but dialogue isn't the point, anyway: These movies are about new things to look at.

The plot details (of embargoes and blockades) tend to diminish the size of the movie's universe--to shrink it to the scale of a 19th century trade dispute. The stars themselves are little more than pinpoints on a black curtain, and "Star Wars" has not drawn inspiration from the color photographs being captured by the Hubble Telescope. The series is essentially human mythology, set in space, but not occupying it. If Stanley Kubrick gave us man humbled by the universe, Lucas gives us the universe domesticated by man. His aliens are really just humans in odd skins. For "The Phantom Menace," he introduces Jar Jar Binks, a fully realized computer-animated alien character whose physical movements seem based on afterthoughts. And Jabba the Hutt (who presides over the Podrace) has always seemed positively Dickensian to me.

Yet within the rules he has established, Lucas tells a good story. The key development in "Phantom" is the first meeting between the Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and the young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd)--who is, the Jedi immediately senses, fated for great things. Qui-Gon meets Anakin in a store where he's seeking replacement parts for his crippled ship. Qui-Gon soon finds himself backing the young slave in a high-speed Podrace--betting his ship itself against the cost of the replacement parts. The race is one of the film's high points, as the entrants zoom between high cliff walls in a refinement of a similar race through metal canyons on a spaceship in "Star Wars." Why is Qui-Gon so confident that Anakin can win? Because he senses an unusual concentration of the Force--and perhaps because, like John the Baptist, he instinctively recognizes the one whose way he is destined to prepare. The film's shakiness on the psychological level is evident, however, in the scene where young Anakin is told he must leave his mother (Pernilla August) and follow this tall Jedi stranger. Their mutual resignation to the parting seems awfully restrained. I expected a tearful scene of parting between mother and child, but the best we get is when Anakin asks if his mother can come along, and she replies, "Son, my place is here." As a slave? The discovery and testing of Anakin supplies the film's most important action, but in a sense all the action is equally important, because it provides platforms for special-effects sequences. Sometimes our common sense undermines a sequence (for instance, when Jar Jar's people and the good guys fight a 'droid army, it becomes obvious that the droids are such bad fighters, they should be returned for a refund). But mostly I was happy to drink in the sights on the screen, in the same spirit that I might enjoy "Metropolis," "Forbidden Planet," "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Dark City" or "The Matrix." The difference is that Lucas' visuals are more fanciful and his film's energy level is more cheerful; he doesn't share the prevailing view that the future is a dark and lonely place.

What he does have, in abundance, is exhilaration. There is a sense of discovery in scene after scene of "The Phantom Menace," as he tries out new effects and ideas, and seamlessly integrates real characters and digital ones, real landscapes and imaginary places. We are standing at the threshold of a new age of epic cinema, I think, in which digital techniques mean that budgets will no longer limit the scope of scenes; filmmakers will be able to show us just about anything they can imagine.

As surely as Anakin Skywalker points the way into the future of "Star Wars," so does "The Phantom Menace" raise the curtain on this new freedom for filmmakers. And it's a lot of fun. The film has correctly been given the PG rating; it's suitable for younger viewers and doesn't depend on violence for its effects. As for the bad rap about the characters--hey, I've seen space operas that put their emphasis on human personalities and relationships. They're called "Star Trek" movies. Give me transparent underwater cities and vast hollow senatorial spheres any day.

3.5/4

-Rodger Ebert

Frankly, this film is terrible, and the producers were obviously banking on the original Star Wars coming back all excited, and didn't bother come up with a good story.

What's wrong?   Well --

(1)  The virtuous Obiwan Kenobi talks an admiring young boy to participate in a dangerous race so that he can bet on the boy and win the money he needs for his mission.   Sounds like the later movie HUNGER GAMES, except that in HUNGER GAMES we're expected to despise people who bet on children's lives.

(2)  The young boy befriends a teenage girl who is presumably 6 or 7 years older.  Come the next movie, they're suddenly the same age so that they can have a love affair.  Are they of different species that age at different rates, or did the writers simply not plan ahead?

(3)  The boy's mother tells Obiwan that she gave birth to the boy without having sex.  Having introduced this bizarre Christological symbolism, the writers promptly forget it.

(4)  And there's a character named JarJar, who apparently has no function in the movie except to irritate a lot of the critics.

***Solid return of the franchise after 16 years, highlighted by Liam Neeson***

A Jedi Knight & his apprentice (Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor) escape a blockade with their new Gungan friend, Jar Jar Binks, and the handmaiden of Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman). Upon damaging their vessel, they find sanctuary on a planet where they meet a slave boy, a gifted pilot and engineer, who may be the prophesied “Chosen One.” Meanwhile, the supposedly extinct Sith resurface, including Darth Maul (Ray Park). 

"Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace" (1999) is the fourth Star Wars film and the first of the prequel trilogy, followed by “Attack of the Clones” (2002) and “Return of the Sith” (2005). It marked writer/director George Lucas’ return to the popular franchise after 16 years, the previous film being “Return of the Jedi” (1983).

Star Wars is fantasy packaged as science-fiction or “space fantasy” whereas Star Trek is dramatic science-fiction in a space-travel context. I’ve always preferred the latter because it’s more adult-oriented, but I don’t mind a Star Wars flick now and then and “The Phantom Menace” is entertaining enough. 

There’s a new cast of characters along with a young version of Obi-Wan Kenobi and R2D2, C-3PO, Yoda and Jabba. Liam Neeson stands tall as the no-nonsense Qui-Gon Jinn, McGregor is solid and Portman is attractive at the young age of 17. Also notable is Hugh Quarshie as Captain Panaka.  

I didn’t mind the loathed Jar Jar Binks and I enjoyed the wondrous underwater sequence and the thrilling podrace in the first half (even though the mother allowing her son to enter the life-and-death contest is unlikely, not to mention the Jedi knights condoning it). Unfortunately the climax comes down to the clichéd “big battle sequence” and it’s predictable who’s gonna die in the corresponding duel. Yawn. Still, “The Phantom Menace” is all-around entertaining if you have a taste for Star Wars.          
    
The film runs 2 hours, 16 minutes.

GRADE: B-/B

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Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

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Cast

Liam Neeson

Ewan McGregor

Natalie Portman

Jake Lloyd

Ian McDiarmid

Pernilla August

Oliver Ford Davies

Hugh Quarshie

Ahmed Best

Anthony Daniels

Box office

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