BlogalongaStarWars: Episode 4: Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace

We reach the guaranteed nadir of BlogalongaStarWars with this upsetting exercise in fanboy childhood molestation: a film which, because I am a Star Wars fan and an idiot, I have seen maybe fifteen times now, and each viewing has been less enjoyable than the last. After watching it for this ill-judged exercise in blogwaffling, I promised myself this would be the final time. Life is too short to fill rewatching a small boy repeatedly shouting "yippee" at high volume and cinema's most teeth-grindingly irritating character being a cackhanded cunt. No more, George. No more.

Hard to believe this wouldn't quite work

It's taken me a long time to learn to actively dislike The Phantom Menace. In 1999 I was just happy to have a new Star Wars film, and I embraced it, bought merchandise and happily paid for it on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray in the following decade-and-a-bit. I actually called myself an apologist for a while, although if pressed I would have struggled to articulate exactly why every print shouldn't be sealed in a vat of acid and fired into the sun. Now, though, I find it impossible to defend. It has one great scene (for which you must first sit through over a hundred minutes of bad ones), a fantastic score and a handful of fun touches, but otherwise stands as a rusting monument to one man's misplaced self-belief and calamitously poor judgement as a writer and director.

The Phantom Menace's flaws are legion, so where to begin? At the beginning, I suppose. The opening crawl, with its coma-inducing talk of trade routes and the unwelcome news that, in the old days, Jedi knights were in the business of solving tax disputes like some kind of intergalactic ombudsman, sets the sludgy tone perfectly. Before long Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor are delivering George Lucas' undeliverable dialogue as if they're playing a joke on him, never dreaming for a moment that these would be the actual takes he'd end up using.

Within minutes we literally run into Jar Jar Binks, and immediately wonder if he will do anything useful or, indeed, watchable in the next couple of hours. The answer is no. His sole impact on the plot is to take the Jedi to the Gungans, who will later do a spectacularly shit job at helping fight off the invading droid army. They don't even beat the bad guys: on the point of defeat and the verge of sweet, blessed execution, an 8-year-old who can barely see through his fringe does that for them from hundreds of miles away. So Binks' contribution is purely to bumble around as the least successful comic relief character in history, tagging along like the kid nobody likes and getting bits of himself stuck in things with disappointingly non-fatal results.

Please just fuck absolutely and utterly off

Enough about that bastard though. Lucas' script is arguably more offensive, its core padded with emptiness like a memory card packaged by Amazon in a sofa-sized cardboard box full of bubble wrap. The Jedi are attacked by an underwater monster which is eaten by a bigger monster, thereby saving them; minutes later they are attacked by an underwater monster again, which is eaten by a bigger monster again, thereby saving them again, as if Lucas forgot he literally just did that. Those two huge CGI sequences do precisely nothing to advance the plot or affect the characters, and The Phantom Menace is full of scenes like them. Later on, fifteen minutes - 12% of the film's running time - will be spent on the podrace, which may be a cracking workout for your home cinema system but otherwise exists only to tell us that Anakin is a good pilot. You may recall learning the same about Luke Skywalker in A New Hope when it mattered, i.e. during the climactic battle.

Then there's the shoehorning in of C-3P0 and R2-D2, who were such well-conceived and executed guides through the adventure of A New Hope but who don't seem entirely sure why they've been invited to appear in The Phantom Menace. R2, for one, keeps looking around nervously like that poor bugger who turned up at the BBC for a job interview and inadvertently found himself on air talking about Apple Corps vs Apple Computer. And those midichlorians, ugh, what even? It's almost as if Qui-Gon knew he was talking into a lady's razor so just said something appropriately absurd. Also, while we're talking about that scene, how did Anakin get that massive and convenient gash on his arm that allows Qui-Gon an excuse to steal his blood? IT DOESN'T MATTER LOOK AT THE PRETTY CG BACKGROUND

As if all this wasn't enough, and on top of howling honkers like "Are you an angel?" and "Always remember... your focus determines your reality" (LITERALLY WHAT THE FUCK), what we're dealing with here is a film populated entirely by supporting characters. NOBODY wants to step forward and have this film be about them, and who can blame them? Where's this film's Han Solo? Its Princess Leia? Hell, even its Luke Skywalker? Top billing goes to Neeson and McGregor, who play two of the lowest-key heroes in science fiction, taking the Jedi code of never showing emotion to its entertainment-unfriendly extreme; the villain is vague and intangible, like some kind of phantom menace, and the one character we're actually meant to be interested in is manifested as a mop-headed brat too annoying to care about and too cute to hate. Well, almost.

Wait, don't go! We're just getting to the good bit! Oh there it was.

Eventually the finale arrives, like the cool guest at a dreadful dinner party who rocks up during dessert, shags the hostess on the table and fucks off. Again displaying selective amnesia, Lucas repeats Return Of The Jedi's three-way climax with an awesome lightsabre fight (the main reason why people still admit to this film's existence), a space battle (this one a dull retread of Episodes IV and VI) and an unlikely face-off between the bad guys and the indigenous twats on the surface below, which here is just embarrassing. And then, thank Yoda, it's over. Five minutes of story spread expensively over two hours, like those soul-destroying meetings that should only ever have been an email.

Why Lucas felt his prequel trilogy needed to be entirely Anakin-based is a mystery. The whole father-son / Anakin-Luke thing is fine, but the parallels are too thin on the ground to justify six hours. The storyline concerning Palpatine's machinations and the long-game overthrowing of the Republic are far more interesting, and I'd happily have had Baby Vader's journey to the dark side told as a subplot rather than the other way round. But then where would the hilarious Jar Jar Binks fit in?

John Williams' score

John Williams' score is great.

Darth Maul

Darth Maul is great.

This shot

This shot with the battle droids being unpacked is good. I like the way they rock back and forth.

That's it

That's literally it

Episode 1: Episode IV: A New Hope

Episode 2: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 3: Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi
Episode 5: Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
Episode 6: Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Episode VII: The Force Awakens

What is the point of all this? I'll tell you. (short answer: no point)
Header pic by dark lord of the Sith Olly Moss

I have a bad feeling about this: introducing BlogalongaStarWars

Loyal and long-suffering victims of The Incredible Suit may recall the groundscratching exercise in group bloggery that was BlogalongaBond: a mass attempt to revisit and re-evaluate one James Bond film every month in the run-up to the release of Skyfall. Literally some bloggers took part (all 547 articles published can be found here) and it was roundly hailed as the least significant cultural event since the Renaissance.

Since then, other Blogalongs have surfaced under the stewardship of more hardy bloggers than I (Kinnemaniac's BlogalongaRusskie tackled the next obvious target for a mass blogging retrospective: Andrei Tarkovsky), but the original project left me a spent, dried up husk of a man, and I haven't felt the need to attempt anything so ambitious since.

UNTIL NOW.

Well, hang on, it's not that ambitious. I'm far too lazy to go through all that again. But the fact that there are seven months to go until the seventh Star Wars film comes out is too much to resist, so if I can be arsed, I think I might try and find something new to say concerning six films which between them have generated enough hot internet air to float Harry Knowles to Endor. I'm sure I'll fail, but if you have some kind of "web presence" and fancy joining in, feel free. The only rule I've set myself, which you can follow or fling out the window for all I care, is to do one blog post per month on each Star Wars film, in release order, beginning with Episode IV: A New Hope this month and ending (duh) with Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith in November. I neither know nor care if that's the best order to do them in but it's my blog and I'll do whatever I want in whoever's underpants I like.

Do let me know on Twitter if you fancy taking part and when you've posted something; I won't be setting up separate social media accounts like I did with BlogalongaBond but if I'm feeling generous I might share your efforts, provided they're not better than mine. Hashtag your stuff with #BlogalongaStarWars if you like and if it doesn't obliterate the 140-character limit.

May the force be ever in your favour.

Award-Winning Idea #219

Having recently endured enjoyed the SingalongaGrease experience at London's Prince Charles Cinema, it occurred to me that there are massive gaps in the market for further interactive movie experiences in which cinema audiences can join in with the on-screen fun from the comfort of their seats.

And so, without further attempt to explain why I bothered with any of this, here are eleven suggestions for the future of cinema. All ideas are © Me so don't even think about it.

MumblelongaTrueGrit

Every time Jeff Bridges opens his mouth, the entire audience mumbles along incoherently, with helpful subtitles and a bouncing ball.

Any patrons who want a taster of what this experience might be like should watch live coverage of the House Of Commons.

RemovafacealongaMission:Impossible2

On entering the screening, each audience member is given several full face masks to put on. Each time an actor removes their face in the film, the audience does too. Special care must be taken to ensure each patron has enough masks and does not inadvertently remove their own face.

AmnesialongaMemento

Audiences at this event will be able to join in the fun by having the last ten minutes of their memory wiped at ten-minute intervals in order to truly immerse them in the world of Memento's protagonist, Leonard. When they leave the cinema they'll have no idea where they are or why they're there but will be only too happy to watch it again.

BustaballsalongaGoodFellas

Every time a character makes reference to balls being busted and/or broken, audience members must bust the balls of their neighbour. This can be done with repeated verbal needling or, if it's Robert De Niro doing the complaining, customers are entitled to physically break the balls of whoever they wish. Screenings are to be held in venues with nearby A&E facilities.

DisappointalongaPhantomMenace

Whenever an audience member is disappointed by an annoying moppet or let down by an atrocious CGI character, they must themselves trample on the hopes and dreams of a loved one. A pre-screening demonstration will show patrons how to rape someone else's childhood or stamp on the toes of a friend's fondest memories.

FalsendingalongaReturnOfTheKing

Every time it looks like the final Lord Of The Rings film is ending, the entire audience picks up their coat and bags and shuffles politely out of the auditorium, into their cars and drives home. Just as they're getting into bed they are phoned by the cinema and told they have to come back to see the rest of the film. This happens with every potential ending. Screenings are expected to last approximately two days.

FightalongaFightClub

The Rules Of FightalongaFightClub

First Rule: You do not talk about FightalongaFightClub.

Second Rule: Every time a character fights, the audience must fight too.

Third Rule: If someone goes for a wee or some more nachos, FightalongaFightClub is over.

Fourth Rule: The entire audience must fight each other.

Fifth Rule: Multiple fights at a time are compulsory.

Sixth rule: No shirts, no shoes. You too, fellas.

Seventh Rule: FightalongaFightClub will go on as long as it has to.

Eighth Rule: If this is your first time at FightalongaFightClub, bring your last will and testament.

RepeatalongaGroundhogDay

Groundhog Day is screened without incident, but is then screened again and again, on an eternal loop. All exits will be locked to prevent escape until all audience members learn to be better people and convince Andie Macdowell to shag them.

DreamwithinadreamalongaInception

As each dream level is reached in the narrative, audiences must discover a deeper level of their own subconscious in which to have a mind-boggling action sequence. Ushers will be on hand to deliver "The Kick" if it looks like any patrons are about to die, but they'll probably be distracted by the fit girl serving the popcorn so keep one eye open. Audiences must provide their own totem.

DosomethingpointlessalongaTronLegacy

With every pointless or incomprehensible event that occurs on screen, the audience must also undertake something useless or baffling. Examples may include waving a stick around and impersonating David Bowie, delivering motivational speeches to their PCs and describing the sun as "big, round and yellow".

SurgicallyattachalongaHumanCentipede

Chloroform, handkerchiefs and sewing kits are taped under a quarter of the seats in the auditorium. If an audience member finds this goody bag, they must render three other customers unconscious at the same time that it happens in the film, and then continue to imitate the actions of the film's mad doctor. The fun really begins when detectives burst into the auditorium and start shooting.

HamalongaHopkins

In this special season of screenings of every Anthony Hopkins film, audiences must devour an entire ham every time the great man speaks, moves or thinks. If, by the end of the season, patrons are still hungry, they may begin chewing the scenery.

Shagalonga9Songs

Sorry, every screening of this has already sold out.