Actually, my complaint with Jar Jar centers on this “comic relief” notion, and has nothing to do with what most of the complaints I have heard about him cite. The problem, quite honestly is this: Phantom Menace does not need any comic relief. There is no dramatic tension to relieve. The only moment of tension, really, is the duel between Maul and Qui Gon.
To draw a direct comparison between episodes I and IV, consider the difference between any supposed comic relief Jar Jar provides and the scene in New Hope where the trash mashers are threatening to cut the story short.
R2-D2: [bleep-blip-tinky-tink-arwooooooooo]
C-3PO: “Comm link? What comm link?”
Some of my problems with TPM, maybe some fans can answer these:
Anakin was a slave, how about showing some oppression? That way, we could see some Vader-ish roots (abused as a child, grew bitter…). It just seemed like a parttime job, where Anakin was let out early to spend time with his stay-at-home Mom.
And just how was the Trade Federation oppressing the Naboo? If the death toll was catastrophic, how about showing some suffering so we know the urgency.
Anakin built an aristocratic, fussy C-3PO. Huh? It would’ve made more sense to have 3PO be the Queen’s droid and scrappy R2-D2 to be built from scratch.
So it’s wrong to use Jedi powers to steal a hyperdrive that will get the Queen on her all-important trip to Coruscant. It’s also wrong to use Jedi powers to whisk away Anakin and his mom from outlawed slavery. It’s also wrong to use Jedi powers to unite Naboo’s forces against the enemy. HOWEVER, it is okay for two Jedis to gang up on a Sith apprentice?
But I guess it was convenient that the bad guy had a two-sided lightsaber: it’s easier to defend yourself while being ganged up on. But wouldn’t it be awfully cumbersome? Since the blade could slice Maul by merely touching him, it seems to limit motion and range.
Were we supposed to feel any suspense when the Jedi’s were hacking at those rickety Battle droids? Were they ever really in danger?
Did the battle droids kill a single Naboo soldier or Gungan? At least the stormtroopers did some damage at the beginning of the first movie on Leia’s ship. The droids fighting Amidala in the palace seemed more like a nuisance than a danger to her. Oh, and how does a robot become “battle hardened?”
A democracy elected a 14-year-old queen?
How does one commend a droid? He was programmed to do something and he did it. But I guess it was special since he was the only one who came back? Maybe if the queen’s ship didn’t fly right towards the control ship, the other droids wouldn’t have been destroyed.
Sidious said to wipe them all out. Why were the battle droid herding the Gungans as prisoners?
Luke dramatically uses the force to destroy the Death Star. Anakin pushes a button on accident to win the day.
I would say that I liked TPM by a preponderance, meaning that at least 49% of it didn’t annoy me. But, there are a few things about it that still bug me. To name some:
• His annoying "Yippie!’ aside, Anakin does one other thing I found strange: when Qui-Gon picks him up to put him in his racing pod, Anakin goes, “Whooooaaaa!” as if this is some major gravity defyin’. Um, isn’t this kid about to start a high-speed hovercraft race, a race of a kind he’s run before, a race that frequently ends in explosions and possibly death? Getting lifted two feet should be pretty low on his “Bitchin’ Rides” scale.
• I looked at Jar Jar for what he was (an obvious pander-to-the-kids character), so I can forgive many things he does. However, some things I cannot forgive, such as the numerous scenes where the characters are basically standing around commenting about how zany and funny Jar Jar is. We get it, George. Next scene.
• And the most unforgiveable Jar Jar-related item of all: on the DVD, we see that they cut a number of scenes. For Christ’s sake, if some cutting needed to be done, why didn’t they START by excising the two “potty” jokes (Jar Jar stepping in some animal droppings, and one of the beasts of burden farting in Jar Jar’s direction before the pod race)? I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Lucas for putting a freakin’ fart joke in a Star Wars movie.
And yet, somehow, the lightsaber combat made up for it, at least in my mind.
Yondan beat me to the The Professional reference. After I saw that film I thought, “That little girls can act. I wonder who she is?” Imagine my surprise when I read the credits and found that she was the same one who played Queeen Yabba-Dabba (or whatever). Had to be the director’s fault.
And what’s with Darth Maul? If they wanted a Mexican Wrestler, why not just buy a mask instead of using greasepaint? That was one of the stupidest-looking aliens I’ve seen since the bad 1950s pulp films.
Well, I have to disagree with you there. The reason they are stereotypes is because they are so often used to represent various racial groups. Were “Amos and Andy” stereotype portrayals? If you say “yes”, then Jar-Jar Binks is a stereotype as well. What? You’ve never heard of Stepp’n’fetchit? Jar-Jar Binks had traits that are often ascribed to one stereotype of Blacks. (Not, as you say, “all Negroids”.)
What about the others? Ever see Casablanca? There’s a scene where an Arab street vendor is bargaining with Ingrid Bergman. Plenty of other films have the same thing.
The nematodes… I mean, Neimodians… seemed Mexican/South American to me. Not because of the way they looked, but because of their accents.
But the reason so many people objected to the stereotypes is not because they have black hearts, but be cause the stereotypes have existed historically for many decades – perhaps centuries, if you think about it.
I felt the same way about The Professional. Natalie Portman was amazing in that movie. Unlike you, however, I knew she was going to be in TPM. That was one of the reasons I was so looking forward to seeing it. Imagine my disappointment at the tenth-rate performance she turned in as Queen Imazombie.
I think TPM suffers most from the fact that it’s 2 hours of exposition for Episodes 4 - 6. Even though every SW fan already knows the backstory, Lucas had to show it. I kept thinking throughout Ep. 1, “alright, already, let’s skip to the good stuff.” Unfortunately, the good stuff probably won’t show up until the end of Ep. 2 at the earliest. A very disappointing chapter in the Saga.
wolfman said:
That’s kind of the point. It’s meant to be a futuristic action serial. Nobody said it wasn’t derivative. Many movies are; Star Wars more so. It’s how well you handle it and make use of the cliches that elevates it to a higher art form. While Episodes 4, 5, and 6 managed, on the whole, to do this fairly/very well, Episode 1 failed miserably.
If the characters from the first three films are one-dimensional, they are redeemed by the joie de vivre infusing the series. TPM takes itself too seriously and is ploddingly pedantic. It’s as if Lucas had forgotten to have fun with a simple story and had fallen into exploring the mythos of Star Wars. A prime example of the tail wagging the dog.
Anakin…Good lord he sucked the monkey ass. Half the people here cant even remember his name (Jake Lloyd) since he has gone into hiding with good reason, nearly 90 percent of the fan base wants to dip him in barbacue sauce and feed his whiny little ass to a Rancor. I mean come on…GOD was his delivery this side of Manos: Hands of Fate or what. Can you believe Haley Joel Osmat did not get this role for that little yuppie larva?
Jar Jar… God help us. No need for explanation but Lucas…you wanted applause? Center a ol Ion Cannon on that mess of cgi the first few seconds of part 2 and blow the shit outta him…slow motion
Dulling the Force…mondochlorians? Come ON! I appreciate the Force for something mystical in all of us. Not because some parasite pisses more in this guys blood than mine.
Padme/Queen…this was the mother of Leia for chrissakes…you know…the one that aced a big honking slug gangster by forefully strangling him with a CHAIN while looking oh so yummy? I mean sheesh, show a little emotion once in a while! If Leia followed in her Mothers footsteps, it would have been curtains for her way before Jedi. Get funky, get naked, blast the shit outta something.
The hype…PLEASE think about it. You would have thought it was the end all be all of human existance the way some people were going off about it. I mean come on, I walked into it expecting a movie, was disappointed with some of it but overall was worth the matinee price. But come on guys, no one could live up to that buildup. I quote my friend
“The only way that movie would have matched the hype was as if Jesus walked off the screen and up the aisle of every showing”
The name of the movie you’re quoting is “Star Wars.” They might have added “A New Hope” to the scrolling title in the VHS release, but I saw “Star Wars” in 1977.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Jar-Jar-bashing.
[/HIJACK]
I’ll be honest; I don’t think The Phantom Menace was a very good movie, but I don’t think Return of the Jedi was very good, either… in fact, in some ways, Return of the Jedi was worse (but it was better in others.)
The main problem with Episode I isn’t the plot, which on paper is rather clever. It’s the characters. There’s not a single interesting one in the bunch.
–Qui-Gon is a cipher with no discernable emotional stake in the entire shebang.
–Obi-Wan is the uninteresting assistant to the cipher. If he had been named, say, John Smith, any sensible screenwriter or director would have immediately cut him from the picture.
–Anakin is presented as a cross between Wesley Crusher on Star Trek and a typical affluent '90s suburban brat, which means it’s impossible to take his alleged problems seriously. (“Oh yeah, I’m like a slave and stuff. Want to see my action figures?”)
–The Natalie Portman character is intentionally bland and boring as the Queen, and unintentionally bland and boring as Padme.
–R2D2 and especially C3P0 were just tossed into the movie as a sop to the fans.
Which leaves you with Jar Jar. Annoying as he is, he at least makes an impression. The fact that all discussion of the movie eventually ends up being about Jar Jar just proves how little there is to say about the rest of the characters.
I gotta say, in this next picture, that wanker Jar-Jar had better blow fire out his ass and drink someone’s blood.
I’m thinking that if we can keep George healthy for another twenty years, he might just come along and completely redo that character so that he’s not so annoying. The miracle of CGI in this series may be the that a glaring mistake has the chance to be corrected.
I just wanted to jump in with another “me, too” post about Natalie Portman. However, As much as I admired her in The Professional, I think her best performance was actually in Beatiful Girls. It’s a hidden gem and not the typical chick flick implied by it’s cover.
As for TPM, I, too, gave it another chance on TV and came away less than impressed for most of the reasons already stated above. I actually fell asleep during the pod race scene. It was as exciting as watching somebody else play a video game.
I did not mean to speak with authority about the future use of Darth Maul, I was just so aghast at the waste of a perfectly marvelous villain that I concocted an idea of my own based on what I knew of the SW universe at the time:
To wit, if I were writing the story, In Ep. 2, I would have had Palpatine/Sidious clone Maul and retrain him, a process taking several years, and paralleling the time it takes Anakin to grow into his own.
Maul comes back, stronger than before, and actually defeats Obi-wan, (but not killing him, of course, unless we’re going to take the cloning thing WAY too far.) Anakin has heard all his life as a jedi-in-training about Maul killing Q-G, and this second outrage only fuels his own dark feelings and desire for revenge. These turbulent feelings are only more disturbed when, in the process of trying to free the slaves on Tatooine, (in direct disobedience to an order from the Jedi council) Anakin is able to confront Maul himself for the first time, but loses, and, as a consequence, his mother (She whose name cannot be mentioned because it sounds like stifled sneeze) is killed, either deliberately or incidentally by Maul. But before Anakin can get to him, they are separated by the tremndous battle raging around them. Incidentally, during this time, Ankain and Amidala have begun to get more appropriate hots for one another, which would have been ridiculous and disgusting in Ep.1.
Ep.3, then, chronicles the blossoming, but doomed romance of Anakin and Amidala, and his terrible descent into the dark side as his obsessive hatred for Maul causes him to lose all sense of balance, and he wreaks a terrible and increasing destruction to his own comrades and loved ones. Their love allows Anakin to father Luke and Leia, but he never learns this, and soon afterward his anger and hatred drive him to tactics which cause the council to expel him, and in striking down Maul, he is seduced totally. In rage, he turns on the council, and destroys them, killing WIndu in a final duel. The closing scenes are of the dispersing few: Yoda, Obi-Wan with Luke to Tatooine, and Amidala to Alderaan.
Broad strokes, and it leaves many things to be developed, but it seems to me a plot which parallels the original trilogy nicely, and sets up the various character traits which touch on the mythic: the tragic love which could not quite save Anakin from himself, and which in fact become the basis for Vader’s twisted, obssessive faith, his fall from grace, and the power of the humblest child to rise from the ashes of his father’s disgrace, to “bring order to the Galaxy” by resisting the very impulse for revenge that destroyed his father.
I don’t understand why people say that Jar Jar is black. Yes, the voice actor is black, but Jar Jar as a character does not seem like a black person. He seems stupid and annoying, but not black.
I would think that the noseless, red eyed Japanese-sounding dudes whose mouths weren’t in sync with their speech [forgot their names] were more of a blatant racial stereotype. I was waiting for the Simpsonesque “haha haha” to follow everything they said.
Oh yeah, they’re the same race. Boss Nass is just older and fatter. Look at the shots from behind or the side sometime; you can see Boss Nass’s long floppy ears tied behind his head, kinda like a ponytail.
Addendum to my earlier post: speaking of the Gungans, I found it very interesting how their pidgin-speak vanished when it was convenient. One minute it’s “You-sa in deep doo-doo!” and the next it’s “The control ship has been destroyed!” I guess even Lucas wouldn’t have been able to stand something like “Beeg shippa all brokee!”
Like most everyone on the list I admired George Lucas and his start from American Graffiti on.
I read his tough luck story on how he had such a hard time with the first (4th?) Star Wars because no one believed that the time was ripe for Sci-Fi movies.
I went to see “The Phantom Menace and nearly left the theater.
I was waiting for it to get better which it never did.
I became throughly disillusioned with George Lucas’ talent and vision.
I will watch the next installment only if James Cameron or John Woo writes and directs it.
I think you’ll find this is a common defence for such thoughtless stereotyping. “It’s all in your own mind. You must be the racist.”
Well I’m sorry, but if I see a character talking in a Japanese accent and acting in a manner commonly used to portray “evil nips” in WWII movies then I can only assume that the director is trying to make use of lazy, offensive stereotypes in order to save having to do any real characterisation.
But I do think that a few people in this thread are trying to make just a bit too much of the plot flaws. Star Wars films are essentially action movies and they don’t have any pretensions at being anything else. Plot will never be their strong point and of course it all rather comes apart at the seams if you analyse it enough. I do think it’s funny, though, that Lucas trys to pretend that he’s plotted a complex series of films with interlinking plots and had them all in mind since the very start in 1977. Everyone knows he’s making it up as he goes along.
