![]() It should come as no surprise then that the plot, the first George had written since his 1983 divorce from his wife, Marcia, concerned the discovery of a miracle child who was passed from his biological mother to an adoptive parent. There is a reason for all this, and his name is Jett Lucas, the adopted son of George, who was around the same age as Jake Lloyd’s Anakin Skywalker when the film was being made. ![]() The opening of The Phantom Menace, then, is not very good, although once it gets going it is slightly superior to the film’s second act, where our intrepid heroes venture the barren desert planet of Tatooine to haggle with a junkyard dealer over faulty engines as the fate of the galaxy, we’ve been told, hangs precariously in the balance. That could be the point, of course, but I suspect not given the lack of self-awareness Star Wars exhibits elsewhere. As a matter of fact I’d argue that a pulp space-adventure like Star Wars has no real use for a Trade Federation at all, much less a Republic Senate, and most particularly not one which grants relatively easy membership to the one-note comic-relief sidekick character whose singular defining characteristic is stupidity. I’ll concede, though, that an opening in which the laser-sword-wielding heroes are led to a waiting room while the insidious villains video-conference about the legalities of invading Naboo isn’t exactly helping my case. No, not “good”, in the traditional sense, but the idea of enshrining The Phantom Menace as some kind of life-ruining travesty of moviemaking is somewhat absurd considering it isn’t even the worst Star Wars movie. ![]() ![]() My long-held theory that The Phantom Menace would have been quite favourably received and promptly forgotten about were it not a Star Wars sequel seems truer today than it ever was, especially now that people are returning to it in their Disney-smiting desperation and seeing what I saw all those years ago – it’s a so-so sci-fi movie with an overlong second act, some extraordinarily irritating characters, and some bone-headed narrative decision-making, but it’s otherwise alright. ![]()
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