Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace (1999) Review
Main Character
Liam Neeson plays Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin and he is okay in the role, it is interesting seeing a confident Jedi in what could be assessed to be a golden age of the order compared to what they would become in the original trilogy. Luckily for the role Neeson has a real natural charisma so he manages to rise a little bit above the script and make you care a little bit but honestly he is a boring character. There is just nothing too him, nothing phases him and there is no interest in his character as he is very bland and generic with no flaws at all it seems which I am sorry just makes him quite boring and a lesser actor would have got nothing from the role.
Supporting Characters
Ewan McGregor plays a young version of Obi-Wan Kenobi and even though he would go on to do stellar work with the role it wasn't evident in this role. He just isn't involved in the film that much and similar to Neeson he is given really no character at all, but unlike Neeson at this point McGregor didn't have the charisma to rise above and was just a generic supporting character that you wouldn't care about at all if he wasn't called Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now a younger Natalie Portman plays Queen Amidala in the film and I really feel she was the one performer that was really hindered by the awful script. You know she is a great actress because of other work she had done at the time but the dialogue written for her is so terrible and she doesn't add much to the role and in this film she was again a very bland character who would improve in future films. Ray Park plays the villain in the film Darth Maul and I am going to say something quite controversial, he is a really dull character in this film. Yes, he is great in the action scenes and he looks great but there is no character to him and you learn literally nothing about him in this film which when you have seen the evolution of Darth Vader in the previous trilogy it makes you realise that Maul literally has no character in The Phantom Menace. Now onto the depressing part of the cast, first of all the absolutley annoying Jar Jar Binks, this character is so annoying and so grating that he pretty much makes the first half of this film impossible to watch. But I must say the actor Ahmed Best does not desreve all the horrendous abuse that he gets as I believe this was more a George Lucas problem then his. Then we get to Jake Lloyd as young Anakin Skywalker and wow this is a bad child performace, he is such a bad actor in this film and you just find him really annoying a whiny throughout. But again Lloyd shouldn't get as much abuse and hopefully he can get back on the right track of life.
Story
The story is incredibly dull, when you see in the scroll of text at the beginning amd words such as taxation and debates you know you are in for a different type of Star Wars film. This film focuses way too much on the political parts of the film and lets face it is just really boring, the film thinks it is smarter then it is and literally for about 40 minutes the film goes nowhere and the slow bits don't add anything to the film and are just slow filler. Also the last confronation is all over the place, there are four stories going on at once and it is clear as day that two of them could have been cut out of the film and it would have been much more interesting and tense.
Script
Now the scripts for the prequel films have been seen as some of the worst ever and this one is no different, the dialogue is truly terrible and it is either way too convoluted or just unrealistic dialogue with pretty poor performances to match.
Style
Now the one highlight for me with this film is the style, the lightsaber film that everybody reveres between Maul, Jin & Obi-Wan is fantastic and exciting to watch and it is very different to the battles we see in the original films. For me it doesn't feel as personal as any of those but from a pure fighting standpoint it is clearly better then the original films for sure. You also have to take into account this film came out in the late 90's and the CGI was revolutionary for the time and still pretty much holds up with some interesting choices that work for the most part. Though I will admit the best part of the film for me is the Podracing part, it is thrilling to watch and looks absolutley brilliant with John Williams score really adding to it and the lightsaber fight too.
Overall
Overal, this is a really bad Star Wars film, with a few standout moments. Honestly, if you are a Star Wars fan then you have seen this this film but if you aren't then I would say not to bother as it doesn't provide enough to be worth a watch.
Rating - 3/10
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