It’s hard to believe now, a quarter-century later, but there was a time when everyone loved The Phantom Menace. That time was May 18, 1999, the day before the first entry in George Lucas’ trilogy of prequels to the original Star Wars opened. The last day when fans could imagine the movie for themselves, dream up their own visions of the thousand generations the Jedi stood as “the guardians of peace & justice in the Old Republic” before they became “all but extinct;” of Anakin Skywalker as “the best star pilot in the galaxy;” of how “a young Jedi named Darth Vader... was seduced by the dark side of the Force,” helped wipe out the Jedi, & “betrayed & murdered” Luke Skywalker’s father; of the “years ago” when “General Kenobi” served Princess Leia’s father in the Clone Wars; of that more “civilized age” “before the dark times, before the Empire.”
In other words, it was the last day it was their story, not his. The realization that The Phantom Menace was not the movie they had replayed endlessly in their heads for the last sixteen years was slow to take hold, but once it did the backlash was swift & fierce, until George Lucas, in a portent of the curdling & coarsening of American culture that would soon follow, was convicted of raping fans’ childhood. An overwrought, unhinged reaction. But understandable, perhaps. George Lucas took away that most cherished lie of childhood, that our parents are infallible. In this way, if no other, he forced millions of Star Wars fans to grow up. They’ve hated him for it ever since.
Yet if all is not forgiven, there are signs of reconciliation. The movie finished in a surprising second place at the weekend box office when it was re-released in theaters earlier this month for its silver anniversary. More & more fans express their appreciation for the prequels, & when they do, they are far more likely to be greeted with approval than contempt or pity than would have been the case ten or even five years ago. Most of all, the prequels have become an entrenched, indispensable part of the franchise. There simply is no Star Wars without them. All of which is to say that George Lucas is having the last laugh. His vision, in substance if not form, has triumphed.
There was nothing inevitable about this. Hating The Phantom Menace has been de rigueur for almost as long as it’s existed. Its purported crimes, from midichlorians, Jar Jar Binks, & its dialogue to Jake Lloyd & its plot focusing on something as trivial as a trade dispute, have been condemned so often that the charges don’t need to be read again here. The attitude was best captured by The Simpsons, which parodied “Cosmic Wars: The Gathering Shadow” by revealing its titular penumbra to be “senate redistricting” of all things. Walking out of the theater, Comic Book Guy grumbles, “Worst ‘Cosmic Wars’ ever. I will only see it three more times. Today.”
That so many fans spent the last twenty-five years watching The Phantom Menace three times a day is just one reason their love-(to)-hate relationship to it (& the prequel trilogy) has shifted more towards love now. It’s become easier to acknowledge without apology its many merits, such as its relentlessly inventive & imaginative imagery, its ethereal & otherworldly sound design, the best lightsaber duel in the series, the ominous majesty of “Duel of the Fates” & a score that ranks as one of John Williams’ finest achievements, & the exhilarating thrills of the pod race. The film, purely in storytelling terms, is a masterpiece of narrative exposition, laying the groundwork for so much of what would ensue in the remaining five movies. It surely hasn’t hurt its reputation that it’s a rich lode of internet memes & is endlessly quotable.
But then it always has been. The Phantom Menace is the same movie now it was in 1999. There’s nothing different about it. Which, I would argue, is the most important explanation for why people seem to have come around on the prequels. We can finally take them on their own terms because we can finally understand those terms. The prequels didn’t change. We did.
The Phantom Menace arrived at a curious moment, in that brief interlude between when the internet reached critical mass and the advent of social media (Facebook was barely a year old when the last prequel, Revenge of the Sith, opened in 2005). & when it showed up, it did so out of step with the zeitgeist. With its tale of political & institutional exhaustion, its shadowy & “elusive” villains & conspiracies, its overall atmosphere of pervasive decadence, The Phantom Menace is in spirit a movie of a fin de siècle. America, though, didn’t experience the millennium as such. The late ’90s was a time of optimism, especially in technology. The mood in the country was one of hope & anticipation, neither of which is to be found anywhere in The Phantom Menace.
Star Wars, coming as it did after Vietnam & Watergate, debuted at a moment when the country was craving optimism & heroes. It was made for the moment & the moment was made for it. Not so with The Phantom Menace. It was premature. History, though, has vindicated George Lucas. With its lamentations that “there is no civility, only politics” & that “the courts take even longer to decide things than the Senate,” of nefarious forces keeping elected representatives “bogged down in procedure,” & the ultimate judgment that “the republic no longer functions,” he foreshadowed with uncanny prescience what might be described as the unraveling of American politics. According to Gallup’s most recent survey on the subject, Americans’ faith in their institutions has collapsed almost entirely. Something George Lucas saw coming a quarter-century ago.
Another thing that’s more obvious today than it was then is how important The Phantom Menace is to Star Wars. People forget now, when its station in our cultural firmament seems as permanent as the Sun’s in the heavenly, that for a long time, well over a decade, Star Wars, if not exactly forgotten, had gone dormant. Sure, there were cartoons, books, & video games, but there had been no movies since 1983. & the movies are what matters (as the fans lining up overnight to get tickets for the first of the “Special Editions” in 1997 proved). Star Wars wasn’t exactly out of sight, out of mind. But it had receded from the pop culture consciousness. The Phantom Menace brought Star Wars back, this time permanently. The Phantom Menace, therefore, is arguably as crucial in establishing Star Wars as a franchise as The Empire Strikes Back.
Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 on the promise of sequels, but the prequels made the sale viable by proving Star Wars still had plenty of life, that it wasn’t a defunct property to be torn down & redeveloped after being sold on the cheap. No one was shelling out $4 billion for something that had lain fallow since 1983. A case can be made, indeed, that so far the prequel era has been the most valuable part of the investment.
Given the critical & fan backlash to the sequels (which has arguably been even more vitriolic than that endured by the prequels), Disney has made a conscious effort to focus its creative efforts on the prequel era—which, admittedly, is where much of the action in the franchise already was.
The animated series The Clone Wars, Rebels, & The Bad Batch are all set during or after the period depicted in the prequel trilogy. Ahsoka Tano, a character created for The Clone Wars, proved so popular that she got her own live-action spinoff series. She’s now one of the most popular characters in all of Star Wars. When Hayden Christensen, whose portrayal of the adult Anakin Skywalker has always divided fans, returned for the eponymous Ahsoka, fans embraced him in a way they never had before. Andor & Obi-Wan Kenobi, two more series from the Disney Plus streaming service, also tell stories set within the prequel universe. The forthcoming show The Acolyte, set a century before The Phantom Menace, has been described by its star as “a prequel to the prequels.” From being scorned & dismissed, the prequels in many ways now are Star Wars. What was unthinkable two decades ago has come to pass: The prequels have won.
I’ve never been shy about my admiration for The Phantom Menace. To my mind it’s a great movie. It has its flaws—uneven pacing, some of the dialogue really is clunky, the scatological jokes are unnecessary & crude, the four-way final battle is overstuffed—but ultimately they can’t detract from what a significant achievement it is both in cinematic terms & for Star Wars itself. The Phantom Menace brought back Star Wars & created the modern blockbuster with its attendant media & marketing frenzy. It is unquestionably one of the most important movies of the last quarter-century.
& maybe the next twenty-five years, too. Fans who saw Star Wars in 1977 passed on the tradition to their children, who are now passing it to their own children. Like all the great stories, George Lucas’ is the legacy of generations. No amount of toxic fandom or Disney incompetence & mismanagement, of dilution & Marvelization, will change that.
To paraphrase the villain of another Disney property, Star Wars is inevitable. Or at least it has been since May 19, 1999, when we returned for good to that long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
I haven't seen the thing since it came out, but I basically disagree. I could agree with anyone only saying it wasn't as bad as the backlash said it was--but you're claiming much more. I remember quite a few persons thought something along the lines of this at the time: "Well, this and this aspect stinks, the overall feel is flatter than we expected, but there are some amazing parts, and some promising story elements, so let's wait until the next one--Lucas surely has better stuff cookin'." It was the next one--so hollow that I cannot even recall its title--that sunk the rep of the prequels.
My larger judgment--which was basically hostile to the whole franchise idea anyhow, and even before it became evident what the Disney machine would do with its franchises--can be deduced from this, a piece in which I panned the Force Awakens as 'Tired Betrayal.' I was speaking about the fact that even in Empire and Return the magic of the first was waning:
"[Lucas] was trying to create on the fly a literary world that would, in its richness, at least distantly remind one of Tolkien’s, and he just didn’t have it in him. ...the world he could draw out of himself was not a poetically rich one when seen at full unfurling(as the prequel trilogy would make painfully obvious)." https://www.nationalreview.com/postmodern-conservative/tired-betrayal-force-awakens/
I think the nadir of opinion about TPM was the Red Letter Media review. It's often hilarious, though crass, often well observed, though too much on theory -- but above all it made me defend the movie, too much of the trilogy's political & moral depth was mocked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI&list=PL5919C8DE6F720A2D