by Rich Elias, May 20, 1999

• 132 Minutes
• Rated PG
• 2 Stars

But it isn't with Lucas in "Phantom Menace." Granted, the three earlier movies can't be beat. Like other directors, Lucas faced the problem of how to go beyond his earlier triumph while satisfying viewers who want the same old thrills again. "Phantom Menace" accomplishes this by inventing some new characters along with old familiar names (but not faces -- we get a teenage Obi-Wan Kenobi and a six-year-old Anakin Starwalker, the future Darth Vader). The special effects fulfill Lucas' wish that if he had the budget in the first "Star Wars," he would have made the bar scene on Tatooine more elaborate. The effects in "Phantom Menace" are far more elaborate -- more exotic creatures (and more of them, thanks to computerized image cloning), racier spaceships, fuller sound, and so on. But so what? It's just more creatures, more vivid spaceships, and wraparound sound. Beneath the new dazzle, the special effects are not different in kind than the ones in the 1987 movie.

And the new movie is dull. Long stretches of it challenge the viewer's patience because the movie is filled with a sense of its own importance. The movie opens thunderously with John Williams' famous "Star Wars" theme and the "crawl" of text that introduces the plot. Uh oh, the first paragraph mentions a controversy in the intergalactic republic concerning trade tariff rights on outlying routes. You get the feeling Lucas, a young upstart in the 70s, spent the 80s and 90s huddling with his accountant. This is not a subject that grabs the imagination. Nor does Lucas stick with it except fitfully. The real story concerns a senior Jedi named Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) who, with his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), becomes embroiled in this dispute between the republic and a renegade confederacy led by a senator who, as fans know, will eventually become the evil emperor. Accompanied on a mission to Tatooine by young Queen Amidala (isn't that a gland?), they encounter a slave child named Anakin Skywalker whose vibrations encourage Qui-Gon to propose him as a future Jedi. But the council of Jedi leaders (including cameos by Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson) read the vibrations differently, sensing a troubled future for the child. (Got that right!)

Thanks to fast cuts and sloppy writing, Lucas manages to get three plot lines moving in the same direction, toward a climactic battle scene which thrashes back and forth on the assumption that motion, fireworks, and noise will overcome tedium, confusion, and deja vu. Hey! We've seen this before, and I mean it. Many scenes reprise the most daring moments from the first three pictures. As with the special effects, not much is new here.

What's missing, in the end, are characters who engage us. Neeson is doomed to sound oracular every time he opens his mouth while McGregor begins every speech with "Master." Natalie Portman as Amidala has to sound serious too, although she gets into the action when it's time to right wrongs. Still, she's no Leia, and what's missing too is a Han Solo, someone who's been there, done that, and survives by luck and a dry sense of humor.

An op-ed I wrote in 1987 argued that the first "Star Wars" trilogy was a hit partly because Lucas projected several ideas popularized by the counter-culture of the 60s into outer space: the hip young rebels taking on an illegitimate government that maintains control by monopolizing technology, the struggle which promises both personal and political redemption, an affection by "Return" for what used to be called "alternative technology," and so on. The first movie embraced these ideas vigorously, but by the time Lucas made "Return," he had become ambivalent. One reason is that between 1977 and 1983, Lucas, the Hollywood outsider, had become one its most powerful figures. It's not so easy to fight the establishment once you ARE the establishment.

The turnabout in the characterization of Darth Vader is critical here. The first series saw him change from the personification of the evil empire into a tutelary spirit blessing his son Luke as the boy topples that empire. "Phantom Menace" continues this softening process by presenting Vader as a young child. It's impossible not to think young Anakin is cute and spunky. It's also impossible to feel any sense of dread that should arise from our foreknowledge of his fate. He looks like he should be posing for cereal box pictures. Years ago critic Peter Biskind claimed that Spielberg's and Lucas' movies "infantilize" the audience. Who could have predicted that more than a decade later Lucas would transform one of filmdom's great villains into a near-infant himself?

In 1987 I speculated that no new "Star Wars" movies were likely because Lucas "can't look back on the 70s and 80s to find an ethos that connects personal rebellion and public good." I was wrong to claim Lucas would not return to "Star Wars," but my reasoning is still good: "Phantom Menace" is the work of a creator who has lost touch with any realities except those he has created. Nearly a quarter century after the first movie, Lucas has come to believe that The Force is with him. It isn't.