Thread by @Darren_Mooney

#NowWatching “The Phantom Menace.”

Because I figure I should watch all the “Star Wars” films again before “The Rise of Skywalker.”

Hey kids, it’s Branagh Gallagher.

Interesting production design touch: the Trade Federation ship bridge looks a lot more like the bridge of a Star Destroyer than anything designed by the Republic.

Which is actually a nice red herring, in terms of audience expectations of how the Galactic Empire would emerge.

Given the production design of the Trade Federation ships, the obvious alliance with soon-to-be-Palpatine and the army of generic troops with bad aim, “The Phantom Menace” wrongfoots the audience to think that the Trade Federation will birth the Empire.

Instead of what happens.

“Yousa goen tada bosses. Yousa in big dudu dis time.”

Dear goodness, “The Phantom Menace” goes all-in on the racism incredibly quickly, doesn’t it?

The Trade Federation and the Gungans are absolutely terrible, in concept and execution.

You can see why George Lucas did this. He’s homaging the (also horribly racist) pulp adventures with which he grew up.

Without any real introspection or consideration. There’s no sense that Lucas put any thought into that, despite how much thought he put into everything else.

There’s theoretically a good idea behind the Gungans.

Like the Ewoks, they are Lucas playing out postcolonial anxieties, a “primitive” culture defeating a technologically and militarily more advanced force.

We still haven’t left Vietnam behind. Which is prophetic in 1999.

“Ex-squeeze me?”

Jar-Jar is an awful character. Because he’s a racist caricature, not because he’s silly or stupid.

Indeed, he’s transparently a character from a children’s film. Like the precocious and earnest Anakin.

I wonder if a lot of fandom’s... extreme reaction to “The Phantom Menace” is down to the way in which it is transparently and unashamedly a film aimed at kids.

And whether that upset the fans who had watched the originals as kids, but approached the prequels as forty-year-olds.

Lucas had always envisaged “Star Wars” as a franchise for kids, even telling Mark Hamill that when the actor thought that the conclusion to “Return of the Jedi” was “too pat.”

There is nothing wrong with children’s entertainment, although it does make older fans uncomfortable.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”
“I don't sense anything.”

Even by the start of “The Phantom Menace, Qui Gon Jinn is a spent force.

He is the lost hero of a bygone age, whose best years are behind him. A failure, a shadow of his former self.

Qui Gon was once a great man who made the universe a better place.

Now, however, he is just somebody has made terrible choices that have put the younger generation in a terrible situation.

He’s taking low-priority missions, and messing them up.

It’s basic “Star Wars” structure. The older generation fails the younger.

It’s the same role that Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda played in the original trilogy.

And which Han Solo and Luke Skywalker play in the sequel trilogy. Because history is cyclical like that.

“You're a slave?”
“I'm a person, and my name is Anakin.”

Again, if “The Phantom Menace” were a better (or even competent) film, it land that point with in a much stronger fashion.

The Republic deserves to fall, because it allows slavery to thrive of the edge of the frontier.

“Had he been born in the Republic,
we would have identifed him earlier.”

This is the tragedy of the prequels in a nutshell.

Anakin just happened to be born in the wrong place, and the entire universe paid.

If the Republic has ended slavery, things would have been different.

“Can you help him?”
“I don't know. I didn't actually come here to free slaves.”

It’s not an abstract question.

Qui Gon and Obi-Wan can liberate a planet almost alone. They help lead a revolution on the prosperous Naboo.

But they stand by and let slavery thrive on Tatooine.

Qui Gon isn’t just passively complicit with systems of slavery.

He’s actively participating in it. He accepts that Anakin is a person who can be traded and treated as a commodity.

He treats Watto’s property rights on Anakin’s mother as something to be respected.

It’s interesting to contrast “The Phantom Menace” with “Star Trek: Voyager.”

Both are deeply flawed, but also very clearly products of late nineties American prosperity, and engaged with the global superpower’s obligations to developing and emerging nations.

“Voyager” tended to feature worlds similar to Tatooine; desert worlds with primitive populations, unstable and built on inequality.

“Voyager” often defaulted to a shrug, arguing, “It’s not our problem.” And then the crew moved on, and forgot about the lives of those suffering.

“The Phantom Menace” is pretty bad.

But at least it understands that any more powerful actor who responds to slavery and suffering with a shrug and “it’s not our problem” holds no moral high ground.

In terms of treating slavery as the a major theme of the larger “Star Wars” franchise, Lucas’ decision to foreground it in “The Phantom Menace” makes a certain amount of sense when one considers the emphasis that “Star Wars” places on the droid characters.

And for all the issues with Disney’s ownership of the “Star Wars” franchise, “Solo” deserves credit for at least connecting the dots between Lucas’ portrayal of slavery as a core sin in “The Phantom Menace” and his use of droids throughout the series.

And even “Solo”, the most middle-of-the-road “Star Wars” film ever, deserves credit for pointing out that Luke Skywalker was effectively a slave owner.

Which isn’t exactly out of character for Luke, who had always had a somewhat fuzzy moral compass.

After all, Luke would very happily have flow for the Empire before the death of his adoptive parents.

He was so eager to get off Tatooine that he would have become an enforcer for a military dictatorship.

“His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians... I have seen in a life-form.”

The mido-chlorians remain a very, very stupid idea. A pseudo-scientific explanation for something that doesn’t need an explanation.

“Your thoughts dwell on your mother.”
“I miss her.”
“Afraid to lose her, I think?”

While everybody remembers the “fear leads to anger” bit, an interesting recurring motif in the prequels is the suggestion that *any* love leads to the dark side.

There’s probably an uncomfortable sidebar here about how the one big exception is Luke’s love for his father, meaning any love *for a woman* leads to the dark side.

Which is a read which is pretty awkward, especially with the racial stuff already baked into the series.

This is quite consistent with Lucas’ filmography, dating back to “THX-118”, where there’s a weird discomfort around “sex stuff.”

Even by the standards of sci-fi, there’s a lot of weird warped sexually coded imagery in “Star Wars”; monster penises and vaginas dentata.

“Attack of the Clones” and “The Revenge of the Sith” make the argument that Anakin’s romantic love for (and the fact that he has sex with) Padme plays a large part in him becoming evil.

Whereas, in contrast, there’s a very high chance both Obi-Wan and Luke are virgins.

The climax of “The Phantom Menace” illustrates the curate’s egg that audiences have been served.

The space battle is lifeless. The Gungan war isn’t as funny as it wants to be. The palace siege is pretty solid. And the lightsaber battle to “Duel of the Fates” is amazing.

Ah, Darth Maul.

Yet another addition to the “Star Wars” franchise’s cool-looking-but-highly-disposable-plot-functions-with-which-fandom-are-obsessed.

I hear he’s in a bridge group with Boba Fett and Supreme Leader Snoke.

I do quite like that “The Phantom Menace” offers a super-happy-fun ending that deliberately evokes the similar endings to “Star Wars” and “Return of the Jedi.”

As if to point out that those endings were no more significant or meaningful than this one. Because time is cyclical.

The effectiveness of that closing image in “The Phantom Menace” comes from the juxtaposition of the characters’ assumption that they’ve actually won and the savvy audience’s understanding that there are still five films to go.

Nothing ever ends.

Anyway, “The Phantom Menace” is still a mess. It’s still the second worst “Star Wars” film.

It’s still overlit, horribly racist, tin-earred, stilted, confused and cluttered.

But it is also filled to the brim with interesting ideas. Even if they don’t all come to fruition.