Movie/VHS Review: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

By now, The Phantom Menace has been around long enough that anyone who is a fan of Star Wars knows if they love it, hate it, or are lukewarm to it. It was when it was released, the first new Star Wars movie released in 16 years, Star Wars fans were not entirely sure after Return of the Jedi if there was ever going to be another Star Wars film, and George Lucas was always kind of wishy-washy about whether he was going to make more movies. When the trailer was released fans went apeshit, but when the actual movie was released, reactions were mixed, to say the least.

As most know, Episode I tells Anakin Skywalker's origin story as well as details how Palpatine (who at this point in the story is a senator from the planet of Naboo) rose to power. Lucas made the controversial decision to show Anakin as a nine-year-old and casting an unknown child actor (Jake Lloyd) in the role. The rest of the cast was fleshed out with more well-known (e.g., Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala/Padme), and very well-known (e.g., Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Terrance Stamp, Samuel L. Jackson) actors. A fun fact, a young Kiera Knightly played one of Padme's handmaidens in the movie (a role she barely remembers). Of course, Anakin and Padme would eventually marry and have Luke and Leia. Portman was still very young (16 years old) when the movie was filmed, but she was more accomplished than Lloyd at that point in her career.

The movie does suffer from a lot of things that Lucas has always been criticized for. Namely, his inability to write good dialogue, being more concerned with action scenes than anything else, and coming up with characters geared too much to kids. Yes, Jar Jar was an irritating character, yes, the dialogue can be schlocky,  and yes, the movie suffers from being so special effect driven that it looks very little like the original movies despite being set thirty years before the original movies. Basically, the entire movie was filmed in front of giant blue or green screens and sometimes actors in the same scene were not even in the same place when the scenes were filmed (which reportedly pissed Terrance Stamp off a lot because he only did the movie because he wanted to work with Natalie Portman). Lucas counters these criticisms with the fact that the original movies never looked the way he wanted them to because the special effects technology was limited when they were made, and especially for A New Hope, his budget was limited. And, that the original movies were kids movies, which is why he included the Gungans and Jar Jar in particular.

The best part of the movie for me was Darth Maul (played by Ray Park), and the lightsaber duel at the end of the movie. And of course, John Williams' awesome score. The visual effects were awesome, and we got to see a lot more of the Star Wars universe than we saw in the original trilogy movies. And, for those of us who grew up with the original movies, there is a nice touch of nostalgia with characters like Jabba The Hutt, C-3P0, R2D2, Yoda, and The Emperor.

The movie is old enough that it was originally released on VHS, and this set, if you can get ahold of one, also included a behind-the-scenes documentary, a 48-page collector's book excerpted from The Art of Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace, and a 35mm filmstrip mounted in plastic. Given that the movie has been re-released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and 4K Blu Ray, and streams on Disney +, there is really no reason to get this set unless you really want the collectible stuff. 

I always thought the movie got a bad rep. I saw it in the theater about 20 times back in 1999, mainly to see the lightsaber duel at the end on the big screen as many times as I could. It is definitely not as good as The Empire Strikes Back, or even Rogue One, and I do think some of the criticisms are valid. But, it is clearly setting up the larger story that Lucas wanted to tell in the prequels and thus could not tell every part of the story that people really wanted to see. Realistically, given how much anticipation there was for the movie's release, it was never going to satisfy everyone (given that none of the movies released since TPM has accomplished that, it is not surprising), but it definitely has its place in the overall story arc.