Episode I: The Phantom Memory of Childhood

Inconsistent. Other than “disappointment” this is the best word to describe the new Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. That’s inconsistent within itself, and inconsistent in tone and content with the other Star Wars films.

I’m a pretty rabid Star Wars fan. I grew up playing with the toys, inventing my own back stories and creating my own scenarios with friends—always in the very same spirit in which the films were imbued. I can remember having more fun as a six year-old, playing with action figures than I did watching this brand new Lucas-helmed project last night. A great deal of the appeal of this new effort is in its nostalgic pull on those old enough to have been influenced by more than the video, cable, and the recent theatrical re-releases. This movie was a piece of my childhood, and a piece, which in its current incarnation, betrays some of those memories. And that’s the biggest disappointment, and the harshest criticism I can offer.

Star Wars was always envisioned as child-inspired entertainment, but it never condescended to its audience. This new movie is filled with so many goofy little touches and outlandish stabs at comedy, it feels more like a well-drawn Saturday morning cartoon than the great human and alien space opera it once was. At times, I felt like I was watching the product of a little child who got into his mother’s Industrial Light & Magic drawer and started playing $120 Million dress-up.

It looks great, moves fast, but at the expense of story-telling and character-building. And even if the original movie succeeded in telling only the simplest of stories and building cheesy archetypes for characters—it was a simple, time-honored and time-tested story and the characters were archetypes for a reason. They were easily and quickly identifiable, and they spurred the imagination. There is no such craftsmanship in these “new” characters, even though many are earlier versions of those same once-successful archetypes. The characters still have mythic resonance, but now lack emotional resonance. This is the fault of writing, and not acting—since these people just have nothing important or meaningful to say to each other. And Mark Hammil couldn’t act, either.

In this story, we are supposed to witness the formative years of the child who will become the most menacingly evil presence in the galaxy—The Adolph Hitler of a long time ago and far, far away. And in Lucas’ movie this amounts to a carefree, starry-eyed giddy little tike with the world’s most cushy enslavement by a lovably comic rascal of a slavemaster and a loving, if not reticent and slightly moronic virgin mother. Their slave quarters on Tattoine is bigger than my apartment and half of my neighbor’s apartment together. Young Anikan has plenty of free time for friends and to build and race his pod-racer. If Hitler were reared in such an emotionally stable and supportive environment, he’d have grown up to be a fastidious haberdasher or a singing telegram.

So what is Lucas telling us, by focusing on a child so gosh-darn wholesome that he trots offscreen belting out an ecstatic “Yipee!” when told he is going to be taken away for Jedi training? [Yeah. Like I ever pictured Darth Vader saying Yipee. No dark lord of the Sith should ever be the kind of person to say Yipee. That’s just fact.]

He is telling us that in the great tradition of Lando Calrissean, any character can be swung 180 degrees in the opposite direction at the toss of a hat with absolutely no foreshadowing, rhyme or reason. Whatever provides a weak surprise, whatever serves the plot will do.

That kind of stuff might be fine for a secondary character like Lando, but if one sets out to make three films describing the seduction and corruption of a great villian, one would hope that progression doesn’t turn on a dime. And since there is no evidence of his evil potential in this first film, why even make it at all? Why not start the story when it starts to get interesting? When it feels as though something is at stake, as opposed to making a glorified kids’ film without any hint of the obvious. My mom (never a huge fan of these movies) left the theater and called to tell me she didn’t know until someone told her afterwards, that the kid grew up to be Darth Vader. That is exactly what’s wrong here. If someone can somehow be as uniformed on this matter as my mom and walk away from the film without any sense as to that inevitable fate, then the film has failed to do anything except pass the time. Which it does in passing entertaining fashion, but the obviously belabored point is that it could have, like its predecessors, been so much more.

There is just no consistency between the ultra-positive tone of this film and the ones that preceded it (in actuality, not fictional chronology). Characters don’t bond, bleed, have any emotional stake in any bit of the action, or—except for C-3PO and R2-D2—resemble in personality, their later selves.

Speaking of C-3PO, in this movie, we get to meet his creator on Tattoine. How come if he was built on Tattoine, does he seem so out of place and curious when his escape pod lands back home at the beginning of Episode IV? And why is he so negative about his home planet in the beginning of Jedi—with no indication he’d ever spent a great deal of time there? This wink at the later chance encounter between the droids and Luke is creative, but it violates story continuity by ignoring what we already know about the future. This movie is filled with these Star Wars universe anachronisms and drastic inter-movie mood swings.

Like, why is the technology in this movie—supposedly 40 years before the action of the original—so much more advanced and trouble-free than it appeared in 1977? Luke’s land-speeder looked like a broken-down flattened Camaro with the funky Trans Am spoiler shaped into a triple-tiered engine foil. Part of the appeal, was the everyday nature and imperfection of the fantastic technology we saw then. I know computers can make cooler devices, weapons, and spacecraft than the pre-ILM techies could 22 years ago, but that doesn’t excuse them for abandoning the films’ uniform style and accuracy. Anakin, as a slave, built himself a suped-up flying monster truck funny car and 40 years later, Luke is zipping around in a beat up old Buick. All the spaceships in this film are far more advanced and provide a smoother, less mechanical ride than anything seen before—which is of course many years after the events have taken place.

As for the much maligned Jar Jar Binks, let it merely be said that Mush Mouth from “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” does not belong in a Star Wars movie.

There was plenty I liked about this movie, but there is nothing I feel as strongly about as I do the shortcomings. The art direction and imagination that went into the look and feel of this picture is unprecedented, but I couldn’t help but wish it was all used to stage a better, more character-driven story.

Darth Maul isn’t nearly as menacing as he could be. He just kind of shows up and wreaks havoc for a little while. No big deal. They never show him doing anything really bad—doesn’t strangle his co-workers, doesn’t torture princesses, doesn’t speak or breath cool. He’s got too much to live up to, and Jake Lloyd, with Lucas’ bland script nonexistent acting ability, doesn’t muster any of the Vader we crave. Judging by tone alone, this movie could just as easily been the first chapter in the Greedo story.

I’m not sure what more I can say. Most writers know that severe character changes need to be foreshadowed if they want their audience to buy into it. Without the proper preparation, major shifts in motivation and morality of a character we thought we knew can be jarring since one can only suspend disbelief so far. If everything we know about a character in Act 1 says that he is X, but then in Act 2 or 3 something happens and he bang turns into Y, we feel cheated. The writer needs to show a little Y before the change so we can believe it when it happens. Maybe Lucas is hoping that by the time his second movie comes out, we will have forgotten this one. And Y we felt cheated.