Star Wars Prequels Reconsidered, Part 1

I'm hard on the Star Wars prequels. Too hard, some have said. There is a notion out there that criticism of Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Episode II: Attack of the Clones is an insult to George Lucas, coming from a undue sense of ownership. Lucas owns Star Wars, this reasoning goes. He's spent 30 years of his life working on it, and the films have delighted audiences around the world ever sense. The man doesn't owe his fans anything - he should be free to complete his story as he sees fit.

That's all well and good, I suppose. It's essentially the opposite view of filmmaking from my own, though. I think of a man like George Lucas as incredibly lucky. He has crafted a story that has touched millions, and the fame and fortune from his initial work has entitled him to fashion a six-volume body of work unparalleled in film history. No, he doesn't "owe" his audience anything, in the way that your roommate might owe you $5, but you'd think he'd be guided by a sense of immense humility. To be given the job of storyteller to the world has to be a heady experience.

So, anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that, though I bear George Lucas the man no ill will, and though I enjoy his initial three Star Wars films a great deal, I have been intensely disappointed in his present work and have felt no need to remain silent on the matter.

It occured to me recently that I have not seen either of the two prequels in quite some time. I saw Phantom Menace on its opening night, along with several thousand other people at the Fox Village Theater in Westwood. It was a midnight show, and the place was so full of energy, so crowded and vibrant and exciting, it was hard to concentrate on the movie as a movie. The whole thing felt more like an event. So I chalked up my intiail disappointment to a distracting environment, and went back to the theater two weeks later (or so) to formulate a real opinion on the film.

My reaction the second time around was no better. In fact, it was worse. Aspects of the movie that had felt merely irritating during the first go-around now felt ludicrously out of place, amateurish at best and insulting to the intelligence at worst. What's more, I found the pacing deathly dull. This was supposed to be an adventure movie, after all, so why did it feel like sitting through an economics lecture? Where was the fun, the zeal, the exuberance that had defined A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back? Who were the new icons of Star Wars? Please tell me it's not the calypso-talking fish guy and ponytailed Liam Neeson...

Anyway, I never bothered to see Episode I: The Phantom Menace again. I just stopped caring. I figured George hadn't actually directed a film since 1977, with the release of Episode IV: A New Hope, and he'd stumbled coming out of the gate. No matter...if Episode II ruled, this unpleasant opening would be quickly forgotten.

Regrettably, Attack of the Clones hit in 2002 and provided little hope for the future. I knew once again during an opening night screening that it was not up to snuff. It was overlong, tedious, based around a love story with no personality or chemistry whatsoever, and it was intentionally vague and obtuse. I hated the feeling all through the film of Lucas holding back, of waiting forever to reveal small details and never getting around to paying anything off, because he wanted the final chapter to be a surprise. I knew Episode III is coming, sure, but did that mean that I had to sit through two movies merely as a teaser? Why not just make one prequel if there isn't enough quality material?

And that was the only time I have ever seen Attack of the Clones. Seriously. I never went back, I have not rented the film, nothing. It has been 3 years.

So, I currently own a ticket to the Pacific Culver 12 Theater for a screening one week from tonight. The film will be Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I have heard that this film is all the things the other two were not: gripping, exhiliarating, solemn, intense, satisfying. I am more than a bit excited.

I felt it would be unfair, however, not to revisit the previous two episodes. Mainly, I am concerned that I will have forgotten something significant that is paid off in Sith, as Lucas I'm sure considers his fanbase to be up-to-snuff on their Star Wars minutae. Also, I'm hoping to see something that I missed before, during those emotionally-charged first-time viewings. Certain movies definitely improve with repeat viewings, and it seemed churlish of me to insist that Lucas' new Star Wars films must be taken strictly at face value.

So, this will be the first of two columns, revisiting and reconsidering the two Star Wars prequels, leading up to a review of Episode III that will appear on the blog in about a week. In Part I, we'll look at 1999's Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace.



In this entire project of making a three-movie trilogy to explain the backstory to the 70's and 80's Star Wars trilogy, one of the hardest decisions must have been where to begin. From the original three movies, we get a good deal of the actual plotting of the prequels, but what we don't get is a distinct starting point. There was a Clone War, that we've heard, and Obi Wan trained Anakin, we knew that also. Plus, Anakin had to have twins with some girl, and then he had to turn evil, and Yoda had to end up on a swamp somehow.

But when does the story actually start? What is the origin of Star Wars? It's almost an unanswerable question. Lucas wisely evaded it in 1977 by starting his movie in the middle of an ongoing saga. I think the major problems in Phantom Menace, and there are many, probably started with the decision to make Anakin a child in the story.

Mainly, it robs him of a personality. The original Star Wars trilogy was filled with likable, colorful characters, from Han the hotshot smuggler to Chewbacca to Princess Leia, Darth Vader and R2D2. In the prequels, our heroes are mainly Jedi, solemn, monklike men for whom levity and, well, humanity is discouraged.

Now that might have worked out fine if our Anakin was an exciting protagonist. If we watched a brash adolescent come into conflict with these uptight defenders of an ancient power, there might have been some spark to Episode I. It might have some of the original films' outlaw spirit. Remember, they are movies about young people attempting to violently overthrow the galactic government.

But in Phantom Menace, look at the heroes George has given himself to work with. There's Qui-Gon Jinn (Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), two stone-faced Jedis of the monotone variety. Then there's Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), a monarch who appears in pancake make-up and speaks like Vicki from TV's "Small Wonder." Then, there's the spazzy 8 year old Anakin (Jake Lloyd). Lloyd gives a treacly, over-rehearsed "child actor" performance, and it basically killed his burgeoning career dead, but it's not his fault. There's not enough material there to make him the focal point for an epic 2 hour science fiction adventure. He may grow up to be a powerful Jedi, and finally the Right Hand of Imperial Doom, but in Phantom Menace, he's just a kid, and a rather irritating one at that.

And then look at the conflict he's placed these characters in. Because Anakin's just a kid, and we can't deal with any material about the formation of the Empire (because the film is set too early in the Star Wars timeline), the story centers around a dry trade negotiation dispute.

Now, I have read long, well-conceived defenses of Lucas' films as political metaphor. I know people who think of these films as adult thrillers, struggling with issues of government, fascism and the nature of control. I don't really see the depth here. To me, it feels like a filler kind of plot, a random notion Lucas came up with to explain away a few battles and instigate a conflict he had no intention of resolving for two more movies. Again, he couldn't deal head-on with the most interesting interpersonal material in the trilogy (like the love of Anakin for Padme, the internal conflict in the Senate driving Palpatine to power, the rise of the Imperial Army, the turning of Anakin) because he had made the hero too young.

So, in order to keep his movie entertaining in the least, Lucas is forced to overplay his hand, to fashion some sort of "comic relief" to take the dour edge off his film. And it's here that he makes his most greivous errors. And I'm not just talking Jar Jar Binks (although I am talking about him). I'm talking about all the ethnic stereotypes, which I suppose are meant to be funny and engaging but which are only childish and mildly offensive. (The trade federation's officials are so obviously pained Asian stereotypes, it's utterly unbelievable to me that Lucas even tried to get away with it. Aren't there any Asian people at LucasFilm who could have alerted him to this problem?)

I'm also talking about the droids, C3PO and R2D2. In the original film, they are humorous characters, but they are also characters dealt with in a sincere manner. They are beings, they have feelings and emotions, they are "friends" with the heroes and not possessions.

Think of the scene in Jabba's Palace at the opening of Return of the Jedi. This is a sequence I come back to a lot in discussing Star Wars, because I feel the Jabba sequence in Jedi is among the entire original trilogy's best and most iconic mateiral. Anyway, in that scene, the hologram message from a newly Jedi-ed out Luke informs Jabba that he presents Threepio and R2D2 to the crime boss as "gifts."



And Threepio seems genuinely hurt by this news. He's taken to a junkyard where Jabba's droids are refitted and reprogrammed, and he's afraid, dejected, miserable. There's pathos in this scene. And that's the power of Star Wars - it's pure imagination and fantasy, and the level of compassion, personality and detail is unrivaled. We're asked to sympathize with a robot who has been given away.

Now think of how that same robot is depicted in Phantom Menace. As a sideshow, as a joke, as a deliverer of cheesy one-liners. I understand Lucas' intention - he needed something to lighten up his movie, which is a few set pieces and quips away from being a thoroughly dreary, maudlin affair about imminant worldwide war.

Okay, so that's my take on where the movie goes wrong. As I said, all based around one initial decision to make Anakin a kid. You start with Anakin as a troubled teen, already studying to be a Jedi, you open up an entirely new world for the movie. Episode I would have been like Episode II, which in its own way felt like a gear-up, prologue kind of movie itself. Episode II would have been the material currently found in the Cartoon Network Clone War cartoon series, about how Anakin becomes simultaneously more powerful and more dangerously angry during the conflict. Finally, you'd have the same Episode III, with Anakin turning and a dark cloud passing over all that is good and hopeful in the universe.

But this article is called "prequels reconsidered," and I do have some reconsideration to explain. Upon first seeing Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, I declared it a bad film, and have stated this as fact ever since. In truth, after rewatching it the other day, I don't think it's a terrible movie at all. In fact, it's rather enjoyable, for what it is, when given some distance from the emotional connection I feel towards the original trilogy.



For one thing, it looks terrific. It's colorful, detailed, polished and stylish. When I first saw the movie, I found the final battle between CG Gungan warriors and CG battle droids cold and unengaging, but on DVD, the entire sequence kind of came alive. Sure, the lame attempts at comedy still don't play, but it is kind of interesting to see this battle, which feels like Star Wars and yet is so unlike anything else in any of the other movies. It's rural, for one thing, and it involves no humans whatsoever, which is fairly unprecedented. If not for the intrusion of the lame device involving Anakin destorying a space station on accident, this battle might rank as one of the prequel's best.

Another set piece that worked better for me this time around was the pod race. I still feel that the excuse for getting Anakin in a pod race feels labored and overlong, but once the action really gets going, it's quite exciting. And the other racers do provide brief glimpses of the kind of far-out sensibility Lucas used to employ all the time, particularly the villainous, four-armed Sebulba.

Finally, the character of Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) comes across fantastically well in this initial chapter. I can't believe I didn't pick up on this more during my first encounters with the film. McDiarmid is playing the Man Who Would Be Emperor as not just fiendishly clever or mysterious, but as defiantly, enthusiastically evil. He doesn't toy with the Jedi and plot against them as a way of seizing power - he genuinely enjoys lying, cheating and ordering out death.

A scene with him and his apprentice, the underutilized Darth Maul, sets up the dynamic of the remainder of the prequels exceptionally well. We see that these are not simply madmen who have discovered a way to unseat the center of power. They are creatures of darkness who have waited in the shadows for literally hundreds of years, setting up an intricate web that will at some undetermined point ensnare the forces of good. Seeing this material makes me very excited to see what Lucas and McDiarmid can put together for Episode III.

So, there you have it, Phantom Menace reconsidered. I'll rent Attack of the Clones and review it in a few days. I work tomorrow, so maybe then, if there are any copies left in the store.

One final thought: In Phantom Menace, we learn that Anakin's mother has no idea who fathered her son. In fact, she says "there is no father." There was no mention of this at all in Attack of the Clones. Is Lucas really going to leave such a blatant and cheesy Jesus reference unexplained at the end of the trilogy? If you have read the script or seen Sith, don't bother answering, as I've attempted to avoid spoilers, but I have a hard time with leaving this plot point open. But I can't imagine any satisfying way to explain it. Could it be that Qui-Gon is secretly Anakin's father? Or Palpatine? Or Dooku? Or Anakin was a product of The Force, manifested within Shmi Skywalker's womb?

Knowing GL's fondness for twist endings dealing with paternity, should we expect some late-in-the-game turnabout in Revenge of the Sith? I kind of hope not...