STAR WARS: EPISODE I — THE PHANTOM
MENACE
The rich John Williams score and
the epic vistas carry more Force than the story. Oh, and the film
is racist too.
The most anticipated movie of the decade
is a trailer. Am I talking about the November trailer for The
Phantom Menace? No, I'm referring to the film itself. The
first of three prequels to George Lucas' influential space operas,
as well as Lucas' return to the director's chair after 22 years
of concentrating on expanding his Lucasfilm entertainment empire,
is nothing more than a two-hour-and-11-minute trailer to the
two other films-in-progress.
There's more drama in John Williams'
rich, surprisingly brooding score (the Carl Orff-style "Duel
of the Fates" theme is one of the most exhilarating pieces
ever written for the series) and the lavish futuristic cityscapes
and desert vistas than there is in Lucas' screenplay, which centers
on 9-year-old Tatooine slave Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and
his introduction to the Jedi knights, the mystical peacekeepers
he will later betray as an adult when he becomes the tyrannical
Darth Vader. The effects may have improved and the swashbuckling
scenes may be swifter and more vigorous (the climactic showdown
pitting Liam Neeson's Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and Ewan MacGregor's
young Obi-Wan Kenobi against Ray Park's underutilized villain
Darth Maul is beautifully choreographed), but the series has lost
its way.
Enough has been said about the uninvolving,
disorganized plot about intergalactic politics, the absence of
feisty, colorful character interplay a la Han and Leia,
the misuse of talented actors like Neeson, MacGregor, Natalie
Portman, Samuel L. Jackson and Terence Stamp and the fact that
the film is as cumbersome as its title. (The overproduced, cluttered
Phantom Menace makes one long for the low-budget charm
and innocence of the original Star Wars.) I'm not even
going to go into every critic's favorite target, the grating,
overly cartoonish Gungan comic-relief sidekick Jar Jar Binks,
a CGI effects misstep reminiscent of the cloying Blawp space-monkey
in last year's Lost in Space
remake. It's time to devote some
more attention to The Phantom Menace's worst and least
discussed flaw: the questionable racial overtones, a series first.
The film's racialized universe —
the protagonists are white, while the inept or shady aliens are
given Jamaican, Middle Eastern or Asian accents — will alienate
Star Wars fans of color who pay attention to ethnic stereotypes
in other movies and wouldn't expect to find them in this series.
Lucas has it both ways: the humans are more racially diverse in
this installment than in the first trilogy, but then he turns
around and has the corrupt alien leaders of the villainous Trade
Federation speak in Asian accents. It's discomforting and a bit
surprising to see this coming from Lucas because in his first
feature, 1971's dystopic THX
1138, he audaciously commented that
television in the future would be in worse shape by continuing
to cast blacks as Amos n' Andy-style buffoons and sex objects.
Lucas has become the very type of stereotype-perpetuating media
mogul he criticized in that early film.
He has also made the kind of film he's
lashed out against in the press, the Hollywood blockbuster that
emphasizes spectacle over humanity and drama. The Phantom Menace
is Lucas in prefabricated, pandering-to-the-kids Return
of the Jedi mode. The 22-year hiatus has resulted in a director
who's in more command of his ILM effects and his merchandising
than his actors and his script. Except for the scenes with Ingmar
Bergman veteran Pernilla August, whose performance as Anakin's
neglected mother Shmi (in a clever nod to Citizen Kane,
she resembles Agnes Moorehead's Mrs. Kane) is the only one where
the character is more than just an action figure, the dramatic
moments are all setup and no payoff. The film needs an Irvin Kershner
to give it focus, genuine wit and depth. (The semi-retired Kershner
directed 1980's The Empire Strikes Back, the finest installment
in the series.) Lucas has always been inept with dramatic scenes,
even from the beginning. One of the weakest moments in the first
Star Wars was the scene where Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness) feels
a disturbance in the Force, after Vader destroys Leia's homeworld
of Alderaan. In the hands of an actor's director like Kershner,
that scene would have given Guinness something meaty to chew on.
Instead, Lucas basically abandoned the scene by writing and directing
Guinness to shrug off the deaths of millions of Alderaanites like
they were nothing more than a headache, resulting in a rare bit
of flat acting by the veteran thespian.
In his Showbiz Confidential column
for the Mr. Showbiz Web site, movie-industry insider Jeffrey
Wells argues that the Star Wars franchise is in trouble,
unless Lucas relinquishes his duties as writer/director and hires
much more skilled writers and directors who have the chops to
pull off the complexity and darkness of Episodes II
and III, which will follow Anakin's descent into evil.
Wells is on the money. However, Lucas has already agreed to direct
the next two movies. "I have a bad feeling about this,"
indeed.
© 1999 Jim Aquino