Middling Menace

Assessing the Empire's new clothes

by Peter Keough

STAR WARS: EPISODE I THE PHANTOM MENACE. Written and directed by George Lucas. With Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Pernilla August, Ian McDiarmid, Ahmed Best, Ray Park, Samuel L. Jackson, Kenny Baker, and Anthony Daniels. A Twentieth Century Fox release. At the Harbour Mall, Holiday, Narragansett, Showcase, Tri-Boro, and Woonsocket cinemas.

Darth Vader conceived via virgin birth? The Force passed on by infectious organisms that are like a Neo-platonic AIDS virus? These and an underdeveloped C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), a racist amalgam named Jar Jar (Ahmed Best) who's part Disney's Goofy and part Stepin Fetchit with a Rasta lilt, and the most expensive flatulence joke in the history of cinema (may the farts be with you?) are some of the more intriguing elements in a film that is largely irrelevant after the marketing campaign that preceded it.

That hype now makes it hard to recall the original innocence and exuberance of the Star Wars phenomenon. Not only did the first trilogy offer the escapism of "a galaxy far, far away," but the bland Joseph Campbell soup of its pop psychology notwithstanding, the Force had the pull of the Dark Side -- the enigmatic charisma of Vader, the Oedipal ambiguity of Luke's lineage. Here, though, at the story's supposed origins, the dark side is the down side. The movie has no heart, dark or otherwise, only state-of-the-art accouterments.

As for the story, the prospects dim with the unscrolling of the torturously written introduction -- trade routes? tax disputes? bickering congress? It's like recent headlines without the sex scandals. The planet of Naboo on the galaxy's fringes is at the focus of a nebulous conflict between the blundering Republic and the Federation, the corporate precursor of the evil empire to come. Sent to negotiate the dispute are the Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson, more dispirited than detached) and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor as the younger Alec Guinness seems more sour than tart). But the noseless, mandarin-like Federation representatives (shades of the green menace) have a covert invasion and more in mind, and the Jedis must flee with kabuki-coiffed Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman, lost in ornate costumes, hairstyles, and a pointless subplot lifted from Kagemusha) to the familiar desert planet of Tatooine.

How to combine an update of the Ben-Hur chariot race, a cameo from Jabba the Hutt, and the appearance of the future Darth Vader? Strapped for cash to repair their ship, the Jedis decide to bet that nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd, more Dennis than menace) can win a "pod race" held by the obese, slug-like crimelord. Qui-Gon notes that the young slave boy has an overdose of the Force and decides that he is "the Chosen One" who will restore balance to the universe, a conviction supported when Anakin's mother (Pernilla August) shrugs her shoulders in answer to questions about the boy's paternity. When the skeptical Obi-Wan objects to his master's affinity for the precocious stranger, Qui-Gon points out that there is no such thing as coincidence, at least not in a movie with such a contrived plot.

Be that as it may, the resultant race is one of the film's most thrilling sequences, and aside from the phallic and vaginal imagery (whether he knows it or not, Lucas rivals David Cronenberg in that regard) on of the most gratuitous. But it does gets Qui-Gon and company off the ground, and what follows is a multi-front engagement, related in laborious parallel editing backed by a portentous John Williams score (though his climactic Carl Orff-ish and Wagnerian strains are memorable), that's a reconfiguration of The Return of the Jedi. While friendly fighters attack a prototype of the Death Star, the Jedi and Queen Amidala sneak up on the Federation usurpers in the throne room, and Jar Jar and his Gungans -- a Caribbean version of the pseudo-African Ewoks -- wage primitive warfare (Lucas's anti-technology message consists of delivering a neutron bomb with a catapult) against hordes of android warriors (like the skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts, but less scary).

One major development from the previous episodes is that, except for some mano a mano between the Jedi knights and bad guy Darth Maul (a charismatic Ray Park, whose red-and-black-patterned face and horns make him look like Satan or a cheap carpet), no humans are injured in the course of this movie. Menace's reliance on computerized creatures not only lets Lucas get away with the racial stereotyping of Jar Jar, the Asian-inspired Federation bad guys, and a big-nosed housefly of a slave trader who seems like an outtake from Aladdin, it also lets him engage in wholesale slaughter with impunity. Legions of androids are dismembered, many by young Anakin at the controls of what looks like the galaxy's greatest video game. Given the kid's destiny, not to mention the recent nightmare in Colorado, this Phantom might be more menacing than it seems.

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Of Stars and Stern

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