Ranking the "Star Wars" Movies: #8 - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

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*Wakes from nap* Oh hello, sorry I dozed off. I must've left my Blu-ray player going and fallen asleep to the movie I was just trying to watch, Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I wonder how I could've been so silly to have fallen asleep to such magic movie like Star Wars? It may be associated with many things, but certainly not being ass-numbing and boring to the point where you're begging for a car to crash into your living room just to liven up the mood.

Yes, Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace is notorious among the internet and movie fans for being boring, awkward, weak, poorly-acted, poorly-directed, and while being exceptionally well-written a fun way to utilize background noise while you do more constructive things with your life... like cleaning, it doesn't hold up... wow, twenty-one years later this May. God I'm getting old. Anyway, let's take a look back at how the first Star Wars movie in a sixteen year gap since Return of the Jedi in '83 was the most hyped and somehow the most ill-received entry in the franchise, even today. As with the previous post, Episode II, I have a list of prime and centric nitpicks I made in a post about three years ago. To read more detail about things in the lore, plot, and filmmaking behind Episode I that rustle my jimmies and razz my berries even to this day, click here. Let's begin... SIDE NOTE: You can call your doctor and cancel your sleeping pills prescription. This movie and Star Trek: The Motion Picture both will knock you out faster than you can say "The negotiations were short."

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Thirty-two years before the Battle of Yavin at the end of Star Wars, the Trade Federation upsets order in the Galactic Republic? How? By bombing marginally effective races at will? No. By taking it upon themselves to assassinate high-ranking officials that are proposing sweeping legislation that will effectively limit or even remove their trade franchise entirely? Not even close. By blockading the planet Naboo in preparation for a full-scale invasion for... a reason? Nailed it. Never fear, though, as the Republic's leader, Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum (Terence "Why the Fuck am I here?" Stamp) dispatches Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) to negotiate with Trade Federation Viceroy Nute Gunray (Silas Carson). Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid), a Sith Lord and the Trade Federation's secret benefactor, orders the Viceroy to kill the Jedi and begin their invasion with an army of battle droids. The Jedi escape and flee to Naboo, stowing aboard separate ships, possibly getting split up by tens if not hundreds of miles. During the invasion of Naboo (which began on the opposite side of where they needed to go), Qui-Gon saves the life of a Gungan outcast, Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), from being run over by a droid transport, effectively derailing the narrative by bringing this computer-generated imbecile on the adventure? Why? Indebted to Qui-Gon, Jar Jar leads the Jedi to Otoh Gunga, an underwater city of Naboo. The Jedi try to persuade the Gungan leader, Boss Nass, to help the planet's surface dwellers but are unsuccessful. However, the Jedi manage to obtain Jar Jar's guidance and underwater transport to Theed, the capital city of Naboo.. traveling through the planet's core. I guess that's the express lane? They rescue Naboo's queen, Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), and escape from the blockaded planet on her Royal Starship, intending to reach the Republic capital planet of Coruscant.

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The ship is damaged, as the world's easiest to shoot shield generator is shot as they pass the Federation blockade and the hyperdrive is caught in the crossfire, rendering it useless, but the shields are returned thanks to the arrival of a convenient R2-D2. They land for repairs on the outlying desert planet of Tatooine, situated beyond the Republic's jurisdiction. Qui-Gon, Jar Jar, R2-D2, and Padmé—disguised as one of her handmaidens—Surprised? No, you shouldn't be—visit the settlement of Mos Espa to purchase spare parts at a junk shop. They meet the shop's overtly Jewish-bat owner, Watto, and his nine-year-old slave, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), a gifted pilot and engineer who lacks in not making this mouth-numbing dialogue sound like he's basically reading it from a cue card.We also find out that Anakin built a protocol droid, C-3PO (Anthony Daniels). Qui-Gon senses a strong presence of the Force within Anakin, and is convinced that he is the prophesied as "The Chosen One". Unable to acquire the required hyperdrive parts due to the Republic's currency being worthless on Tatooine, Qui-Gon risks the narrative as he wagers both the parts and Anakin's freedom with Watto in a podrace. This at least certifies that Anakin will win... because if he doesn't, the whole movie won't happen. Sure enough, Anakin wins the race and joins the group to be trained as a Jedi, leaving behind his mother, Shmi (Pernilla August). En route to their starship, Qui-Gon encounters Darth Maul (Ray Park, voiced by Peter Serafinowicz), Darth Sidious' apprentice, who intends to capture Padmé. A duel ensues, but Qui-Gon quickly disengages and escapes onboard the starship before he introduces Anakin to Obi-Wan, a fateful meeting which gets ruined by the dorky response of "Hey, you're a Jedi too? Pleased to meet you." Sure, he was ten... but... come on. Not "I've always wanted to meet a Jedi" or something like that?

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After leaving Tatooine with Anakin, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan escort Padmé to Coruscant so that she can plead her people's case to Valorum and the Galactic Senate. This is where what little momentum the movie had falls off dead and the narrative stops dead in the tracks. For forty minutes, we get nothing but talking, standing and talking, walking and talking... and more talking along with talking on top of the talking. We see Qui-Gon ask the Jedi Council for permission to train Anakin as a Jedi, but the Council refuses, concerned that Anakin is vulnerable to the dark side of the Force. Undaunted, Qui-Gon vows to take up Anakin as his new apprentice. We also see Naboo's Senator Palpatine (also Ian McDiarmid... wink) persuades Amidala to call for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum to elect a more capable leader and to resolve the crisis. Though she is successful in pushing for the vote, Amidala grows frustrated with the corruption in the Senate and decides to return to Naboo. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are ordered by the Jedi Council to accompany the queen and investigate the return of the Sith, whom they had believed to be extinct.

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If you're still awake by this point, we return to Naboo where Padmé reveals herself to the Gungans as Queen Amidala and persuades them to join in an alliance against the Trade Federation. She goes with the plan of letting the decoy come, getting her all dressed up, and then letting her speak for sixty seconds before blowing the whole charade for no reason. During their battle prep, Jar Jar is promoted to general, also for no reason, as he holds zero battle experience, and joins his tribe in a battle against the droid army, while Padmé leads the search for Gunray in Theed. During a battle in the starship hangar, Qui-Gon tells Anakin to wait in the cockpit of a vacant starfighter. Meanwhile, in a cool scene and fight, Darth Maul has infiltrated the palace and engages Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan in lightsaber combat. Anakin inadvertently triggers the starfighter's autopilot... giving us our FOURTH final battle to try and pay attention to, traveling to the battle against the Federation droid control ship. Maul mortally wounds Qui-Gon with his lightsaber, but is then sliced in half, or "mauled" if you will, (Zing #HireMeHollywood) by Obi-Wan and falls down a pit that goes somewhere. It's weird, they're already in the deep underbelly of Theed palace, somewhere deep underground, and yet there's a pit that goes somewhere even deeper. Probably the septic tank or something. Anakin blunders into the control ship's hangar and causes its destruction from within before escaping, deactivating the droid army in the process.

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As he lies dying, Qui-Gon requests Obi-Wan to train Anakin, setting in motion the next eight episodes of mayhem that vaguely follow a storyline and claim to be a large, epic story... and dies in Obi-Wan's arms. Palpatine is elected Chancellor, and Gunray is arrested. Yoda (Frank Oz) promotes Obi-Wan to the rank of Jedi Knight and reluctantly accepts Anakin as Obi-Wan's apprentice. During a celebratory parade, Padmé presents a gift of thanks to Boss Nass and the Gungans to establish peace... peace they didn't need since they weren't at war with each other, just had a "no liking da Naboo" policy, but hey... so ends The Phantom Menace.

So... does Phantom Menace continue bore and tire audiences twenty-one years later? Not as badly as it did. The opinion has subsided a little bit, but upon rewatching the movie again for the release of The Rise of Skywalker, I have to say it still is pretty dull and yawn-worthy at many points. By the end of the podrace and their arrival on Coruscant, the movie feels like it stops dead in its tracks. I don't know if its because I'm getting older or what but the scene where Palpatine is convincing Padme that democracy doesn't work is just so, so dull. No noise. I always doze at that part. Good God. Apart from that? There's not really a whole lot more I can say in this post that I haven't said in countless other posts I've made about it. The acting sucks, the dialogue is quirky here and painful there, the CGI is at that awkward 1999 state where it was groundbreaking then, but now it's just so obviously rubbery and clashes with the sparsely-used realism. This movie was the first movie George made without a committee, a movie where he called the shots on everything, had complete financial and critical freedom to do what he wanted to do, to tell the story he wanted to tell, and to give us what he thought was going to kickstart a whole new legion of Star Wars fandom... and don't get me wrong, it did; but not without pissing off everybody else. What drives a lot of people's ire against this movie is that it could've been so much better, but if you read George's original draft for Star Wars that he wrote in 1975, that was going to basically be the same kind of movie. Boring, political shit that George made for kids... creatures who have the attention span of a jumping bean. Yeah... well, thank God we got the originals first, because if we got this one first, Star Wars would be nothing more than late-night Syfy channel fodder you'd find at 3a on a Sunday morning trying to find your pants after getting home from the bar. Could have been so much better... and less of a snoozefest.

Check out the linked post above for my complete list of nitpicks, gripes and complaints. Onto the next one!