{"id":18853,"date":"2015-12-16T22:25:26","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T12:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=18853"},"modified":"2015-12-16T22:26:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T12:26:08","slug":"star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=18853","title":{"rendered":"Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace [1999]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagfilm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"phantommenaceposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>George Lucas
\nWriter: \u00a0<\/strong>George Lucas
\nCast: \u00a0<\/strong>Jake Lloyd, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Samuel L Jackson, Liam Neeson<\/p>\nI<\/span> don\u2019t remember the exact moment that the realization set in but it would\u2019ve been about twenty minutes in.\u00a0 Oh my God, this is terrible.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Phantom Menace<\/em> arrived in cinemas in 1999 accompanied by unprecedented levels of hype and excitement.\u00a0 The first Star Wars<\/em> film in sixteen years!\u00a0 The promotional material in the lead up to the release promised so much.\u00a0 The casting of Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman ticked the right boxes.\u00a0 There was that fantastic poster of a young Anakin Skywalker casting the long shadow of Darth Vader.\u00a0 The trailer looked like a million bucks.<\/p>\n

The finished product was an unbridled mess.<\/p>\n

The worst crime that anyone can charge The Phantom Menace<\/em> with is that it is really boring.\u00a0 The musical fanfare accompanying the trademark scrolling yellow text at the beginning of the film describes unrest in the galaxy because of the \u201ctaxation of federation trade routes\u201d.\u00a0 Huh?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t get much better from there.\u00a0 The film moves at the pace of treacle, is an unfocussed mess and is about half an hour too long.<\/p>\n

McGregor and Neeson.\u00a0 Those poor guys!\u00a0 They are talented actors who are given absolutely nothing to work with.\u00a0 Neither the characters of Qi Gon Jin nor Obi Wan Kenobi\u00a0 appear to have discernible characteristics.\u00a0 They just dryly observe their surroundings and explain to the audience where they\u2019re visiting next.\u00a0 Natalie Portman has it even worse.\u00a0 She is afforded none of the spark or charisma that Princess Leia was given and must be glumly staring at ten year old Jake Lloyd and thinking I\u2019m supposed to become romantically involved with that kid in the next movie<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Phantom Menace<\/em> is the poster child for how action films in the Nineties aged more poorly than their predecessors in the Eighties because they eagerly ditched physical special effects and went all in on digital.\u00a0 Not unlike Deep Blue Sea, The Mummy<\/em> and The Scorpion King<\/em>, the computer effects in The Phantom Menace<\/em> lack any sense of heft, presence or believability.\u00a0 The battle between the droids and the Federation troopers at the end of the film feels like you\u2019re watching a poorly rendered computer game.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even understand who the audience is supposed to be rooting for.<\/p>\n

\"jarjar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the same way that everything came together perfectly for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope<\/em>, almost all of the strengths of a Lucas Workshop production abandon George Lucas here.\u00a0 The new ships and droids look lifeless, overdesigned and visually uninteresting.\u00a0 The film is oddly socially regressive as a number of the supporting cast are crude and blatant caricatures of Asians, Jews and Rastafarians.\u00a0 Jar Jar Binks rightly earned the most amount of scorn from the audience because of the mind numbing amount of screen time he takes up but practically all of the other new characters are just as terrible.<\/p>\n

The story is a convoluted mess.\u00a0 They ruin the mystique of the Force with \u2018midichlorians\u2019.\u00a0 The fight scenes are boring.\u00a0 The cinematography is shockingly rudimentary.\u00a0 The characters don\u2019t have any chemistry together.\u00a0 None of the one liners are memorable.\u00a0 Jake Lloyd is irritating.\u00a0 Nothing works.<\/p>\n

I want to be charitable and find some good things to say about The Phantom Menace<\/em>.\u00a0 Thinking long and hard about it, I think the pod racing sequence was okay and Darth Maul was a visually interesting arch nemesis for Obi Wan to fight.\u00a0 Having said that, in another case of \u2018less is more\u2019, the over-choreographed balletic light saber battles in the New Trilogy do absolutely nothing for me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d prefer The Phantom Menace<\/em> didn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 It was unmitigated disaster.\u00a0 It remains a cautionary tale for everyone this week as we eagerly await the release of The Force Awakens<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a film that should be approached with a healthy level of optimism.\u00a0 It looks great.\u00a0 But let\u2019s not get too carried away.\u00a0 There\u2019s always The Phantom Menace<\/em>.\u00a0 You never know when it could strike again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Jedi Knights escape a hostile blockade to find allies and come across a young boy who may bring balance to the Force, but the long dormant Sith resurface to reclaim their old glory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18853"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18858,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18853\/revisions\/18858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}