By The Plaid Adder

Comments: plaidder@mindspring.com

SHORT STORY: It was fun for an afternoon, but I think I may be getting too old for this.

First, the good stuff. The film looks great. Liza doesn't like the computer animation, which she doesn't think looks real enough, and sighs for that "very short window of opportunity" between the Claymation Medusas of Clash of the Titans and digital animation, when things looked scruffy enough to be real. I didn't have that much of a problem with it, although it is true that there was a sort of weightless floating quality to a lot of it that worked fine underwater but was sort of jarring on land. The landscapes are cool--the underwater city, the palace of Naboo, the big ol' city on Corusant--and the detail is good (I particularly liked the market scene on Tatouine with the dangling dead frogs on a wire). And the aliens are certainly inventive, particlarly the mosquito-with-a-gut-on-him that owns Anikin. I have kind of a beef about the characterization of the aliens, but we'll save that for later.

The young Anikin was pretty good--better than he could have been, given the quality of most child acting. And I loved Queen Amidala's wardrobe, impractical though it was. I have a soft spot for underwater scenes, so I did enjoy the Journey To Atlantis. And it was fun to finally get out and see a movie, which is something we haven't done in a way long time. It held my attention pretty well--although I couldn't resist doing some commentary.

And so I may as well get to the bad stuff.

A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY...there was some kind of trade dispute going on somewhere which was not fully explained by the opening titles. As the yellow letters went sliding off into space, I said, "Well, we just lost the kids," and Liza said, "I think I'm lost too." Now, if you take a moment to think about it after it's all over, it's not that difficult: the senator from Naboo, who is also clearly the Master Sith, has manipulated the Trade Federation into a takeover of Naboo so that he will have the chance to manipulate Queen Amidala into calling for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorem, which will then allow him to take over the position and take over the Senate. This is why Senator Palpatine is smiling with that big shit-eating grin at the victory celebration, and why right after Mace Windu (Samuel Jackson) says, "But was it the master...or the apprentice?" the camera closes in on the Senator smirkin'. However, at the beginning, I was thinking, "Taxation? Trade dispute? What?"

But of course, none of that really matters; the point is to start an invasion and to get Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan into the middle of it so they can show their Jedi fighting chops. This is my beef with the plot--basically, it's a thin strand on which are strung a number of very enormous pearls, and it becomes transparently clear pretty early on that basically the plot is an excuse to set up the Big Numbers, many of which struck me as entirely gratuitous. For instance:

• The underwater journey. If you ask me, the whole Gunga plot line could have been excised without much harming the movie. It is true that I would miss Brian Blessed (Exeter in Henry V, King of the Hawk People in Flash Gordon, King Edward V in Blackadder I, Leonato's brother in Much Ado About Nothing, Robin Hood's father in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves…one of those great British actors who has more talent in one ham fist than 10 Hollywood pretty boys, but will also do anything for a buck) as the head Gunga (I thought of him as Toad of Toad Hall; I forget his actual name), but I think losing Jar Jar would more than make up for it. In any case, there was no point to sending Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan through the planet's core, except to show off that way cool underwater landscape.
• The pod race. That takes up, what, about half an hour of the movie, if you count the gambling and the betting and the byplay with Anikin's heroic slave kid friends and the watching Jar Jar get his hand stuck in the jet engine? This is why I say I'm getting too old for this. I know Anikin's gonna win. I know because you know Anikin goes with them, and you know he's got that transmitter that is clearly invented as a plot device to prevent them from just busting him and his mother outta there, so you know the only way for them to get off the planet is for Qui-Gon to win the bet, especially since we've established that Jedi magic doesn't work on the big mosquito. I also know because we see Sebulba sabotage Anikin's pod, and because the pod is built from scratch lovingly like a go-cart, and because Anikin is the scrappy slave kid and Sebulba is a big alien jerk. So I got tired quick of watching the pods go zipping around the desert landscape.
• The battle between the droid army and the Gunga. I am sorry, I know the Gunga are supposed to be a primitive race, but who is drawing up their battle plan? "OK, here's what we do. We march the whole army, in formation, onto a big open field, and then we put the shield up and sit there until they come for us." On the other hand, who runs these droid armies? "Well, so you're designing the droid troop transports. Just one thing--make sure that the process of unloading and activating the droids takes as long as possible and leaves a huge window of opportunity. Oh, don't worry--nobody will fire while you're unloading the deactivated droids. This is a George Lucas movie."

I AM QUEEN AMIDALA: OK, I knew something was up with Padme, because handmaidens never log that much screen time. But what the hell is the decoy--a hologram? An android? A clone? Her twin sister?

I'm glad she got to be a little plucky and hands-on at the end of the film, but she (Padme) was really GRATING on me on Tatouine, and how anyone could possibly not see through the whole "call for a vote of no confidence" thing I fail to understand. And how is it that she's queen but she's elected? Why would her planet elect a naiive 16-year-old to be its ruler? Or maybe the Nabooans don't get any older or wiser than that?

HE IS THE CHOSEN ONE: So, raise your hand if you're disturbed by the idea that the Force is something in your bloodstream. The idea that the number of "mitochlorides" (just call 'em mitochondria, will you) in your cells determines your Jedi ability really lowers the Force in my estimation. "Use the mitochlorides, Luke!" It may just be me...but if the Force is something that shows up on a blood smear, then I don't like this universe any more.

And are we supposed to believe that Darth Vader really was the result of a virgin birth? And if so, why are the assembled loonies of the Christian right not out there picketing this movie?

In general, I was disappointed by the Jedi elements. For one thing, Obi-Wan was an almost total nonentity; for another, there was a serious dearth of chemistry between him and Qui-Gon. He did a good "NooooOOOOOOOOOoooooo!", but otherwise Obi-Wan didn't seem very attached to his master, and Qui-Gon was so damn serene I don't think he was attached to anyone. And Darth Maul...sigh.

It's true that in the first Star Wars movie Darth Vader isn't exactly 3-dimensional and well developed. But somehow he made more of an impression on me than this guy, who barely spoke, and who spent most of his screen time just slicing around with a lightstaff (I said, "Oooh! Look! He's Gabrielle!" when he fired it up). Maybe because there was no real tension--it's not like Qui-Gon is gonna turn, or Obi-Wan is gonna die. Or maybe because he wasn't really a character, but rather a special effect. We don't find out anything about the Sith, except they like to go by Darth, and they like to wear black. I guess that's why they're the Phantom Menace.

JAR JAR NO LIKE THIS: In the MST3K classic "Outlaw of Gor," there is an intensely annoying sidekick character who within moments of the opening of the film is really starting to drive the 'bots up a wall. They start chanting "Kill him. Kill him. KILL HIM." This was how I felt about Jar Jar.

Aside from his sounding a lot like Sesame Street's beloved Elmo, there were a number of things that bothered me about him, primarily the dialect. Whose idea was it to have the "primitive" swamp dwelling beings speak patois? The review of TPM in People analogized his character to Prissy from Gone With the Wind, and I'm not sure they weren't onto something. Hmmm, let's see...Jar Jar's stupid, cowardly, hapless, shiftless, and a bumbling buffoon, and instead of his own language he speaks a comedy garbled version of English. OK, so he's an alien...but something about him just says "minstrel show" to me. (Others have pointed out that the Trade Federation aliens speak like the nefarious Chinese villains of yesteryear, and I have my doubts about that big flying mosquito. Something is clearly up with the aliens team.)

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, or overly analytical...but then if this movie were doing its job I wouldn't have time to be sitting there wondering whether the aliens are coded racial stereotypes or not. If, for instance, there was some real character development, or if the battle scenes were less obviously choreographed, or if I wasn't being asked to swallow whoppers like little Anikin being able to take out the surrogate Death Star, I probably wouldn't be overreading like this. On the other hand, I doubt I would ever find Jar Jar anything other than annoying.

So, there you go. Now, I must step back here for a moment and admit that to snipe at Star Wars is like biting the hand that feeds you. Cheesy as that original movie was, it has influenced all of us, certainly me. I spent a lot of the spare time that this film left my brain thinking about how much of Women on Fire is indebted indirectly to *Star Wars.* (Especially during that little scene where Obi-Wan is telling Qui-Gon about how he could be on the council if he only weren't such a rebel.) And the film did enough homage to keep fans happy (I like it that Obi-Wan's first line was "I have a bad feeling about this") and pump the nostalgia (it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to watch the letters sliding away and think about how much so many of my friends must be enjoying this moment). But I don't think this one is going to stand the test of time. Old Obi-Wan beats Young Obi-Wan, Yoda beats Qui-Gon, Leia beats Queen Amidala, and Chewie *certainly* beats the crap out of Jar Jar. Let alone that there's no Han figure. And the FX just aren't gonna make up for that, over the long haul, because there's always gonna be a bigger and better pile of animation.

I leave you with just a few observations that would not have occurred to me when I was 8:

• Those lightsabers sure are phallic, and that scene with Qui-Gon sticking his lightsaber through those closed circular blast doors was really a little much.
• I notice that auras in the WOF universe have remained faithful to the color-coding of lightsabers in the Star Wars universe (red for evil, blue and green for good).
• Why are there no women Jedi knights? OK, there's that one woman on the Jedi Council, but she says nothing and does less. Is the mitochloride gene on the Y chromosome?