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These worlds are a vision of a Star Wars we’d never seen before, a look at Lucas’s galaxy far, far away before it became the faded glory of the original trilogy. It means the worlds in Phantom, unlike those in the FX-cluttered and endlessly greenscreened Episodes II and III, hold up remarkably well: Naboo a verdant future Venice, its palaces inhabited by a luxuriously attired aristocracy the Gungans' underwater world, a hive of enormous illuminated baubles and Vernean subs Tatooine, a parched crook’s paradise that’s home to Phantom’s podracing sequence, one of the few simple set-piece pleasures of the prequel trilogy and Coruscant, a bustling, planet-size metropolis that's the shining capital of the universe.
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The detail in the world-building is the sort a filmmaker could only buy with a bottomless budget, and Lucas wisely doesn’t bury Phantom in special effects as per subsequent prequels, instead using CGI to complement real sets, models, and miniatures. Moreover, Episode I is a masterpiece of design. But it's bunk executed with earnestness and a stunning level of craftsmanship. Of course, at script level, Phantom is a lot of bunk: Jedi knights Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) discover a precocious sprog who might be the Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), in the midst of an intergalactic skirmish over a trade dispute. The Phantom Menace fits neither category.
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There are bad films that entertainingly fail on every level, like The Room, or bad films made with high technical competence that are borderline unwatchable, like Michael Bay's Transformers movies. Neither can Phantom be, as some claim, one of the worst movies period.
#Star wars episode i the phantom menace movie movie#
Episode I can’t really be the worst prequel of all time when X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as oversized and out-of-control as Logan’s mane in that film, or The Hobbit trilogy, one of the most cynical cash-grabs in movie history, exist. Phantom’s dire reputation, unsurprisingly, suggests something more egregious than what’s really there. The prequels were, for many, tantamount to an attack on an institution, and The Phantom Menace was the unforgettable, unforgivable opening assault. Nuance rarely enters the Phantom Menace debate these days. It so disappointed so many people, in a time before sullying the memory of classic movies with unnecessary prequels was a common Hollywood practice (indeed, the very concept of the "prequel" was first popularized by Episodes I- III), that the film and its two sequels have become shorthand for cinematic betrayal. Since then, negative opinion of The Phantom Menace has ossified.