Set in opposition to superior backdrops, the characters in “The Phantom Menace” inhabit a plot that’s little extra advanced than the tales I grew up on in science-fiction magazines. The entire sequence typically really feel like a canopy from Thrilling Marvel Tales, come to life. The dialogue is fairly flat and simple, though seasoned with somewhat quasi-classical formality, as if the characters had learn however not retained “Julius Caesar.” I want the “Star Wars” characters spoke with extra class and wit (as Gore Vidal’s Greeks and Romans do), however dialogue is not the purpose, anyway: These motion pictures are about new issues to take a look at.
The plot particulars (of embargoes and blockades) are inclined to diminish the scale of the film’s universe–to shrink it to the size of a nineteenth century commerce dispute. The celebs themselves are little greater than pinpoints on a black curtain, and “Star Wars” has not drawn inspiration from the colour pictures being captured by the Hubble Telescope. The sequence is actually human mythology, set in area, however not occupying it. If Stanley Kubrick gave us man humbled by the universe, Lucas provides us the universe domesticated by man. His aliens are actually simply people in odd skins. For “The Phantom Menace,” he introduces Jar Jar Binks, a totally realized computer-animated alien character whose bodily actions appear primarily based on afterthoughts. And Jabba the Hutt (who presides over the Podrace) has all the time appeared positively Dickensian to me.
But throughout the guidelines he has established, Lucas tells story. The important thing growth in “Phantom” is the primary assembly between the Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and the younger Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd)–who is, the Jedi instantly senses, fated for excellent issues. Qui-Gon meets Anakin in a retailer the place he is looking for substitute components for his crippled ship. Qui-Gon quickly finds himself backing the younger slave in a high-speed Podrace–betting his ship itself in opposition to the price of the substitute components. The race is among the movie’s excessive factors, because the entrants zoom between excessive cliff partitions in a refinement of an analogous race via metallic canyons on a spaceship in “Star Wars.” Why is Qui-Gon so assured that Anakin can win? As a result of he senses an uncommon focus of the Power–and maybe as a result of, like John the Baptist, he instinctively acknowledges the one whose method he’s destined to arrange. The movie’s shakiness on the psychological degree is obvious, nevertheless, within the scene the place younger Anakin is advised he should depart his mom (Pernilla August) and comply with this tall Jedi stranger. Their mutual resignation to the parting appears awfully restrained. I anticipated a tearful scene of parting between mom and youngster, however the most effective we get is when Anakin asks if his mom can come alongside, and she or he replies, “Son, my place is right here.” As a slave? The invention and testing of Anakin provides the movie’s most essential motion, however in a way all of the motion is equally essential, as a result of it supplies platforms for special-effects sequences. Typically our frequent sense undermines a sequence (for example, when Jar Jar’s individuals and the nice guys struggle a ‘droid military, it turns into apparent that the droids are such unhealthy fighters, they need to be returned for a refund). However principally I used to be glad to drink within the sights on the display screen, in the identical spirit that I would take pleasure in “Metropolis,” “Forbidden Planet,” “2001: A House Odyssey,” “Darkish Metropolis” or “The Matrix.” The distinction is that Lucas’ visuals are extra fanciful and his movie’s vitality degree is extra cheerful; he does not share the prevailing view that the longer term is a darkish and lonely place.
