"STAR WARS: EPISODE I - THE PHANTOM MENACE" (1999)

Starring

Liam Neeson

Ewan McGregor

Natalie Portman

Jake Lloyd

Ian McDiarmid

Directed by George Lucas

131 minutes

This review will probably contain spoilers seeing as everybody on the planet has probably seen it and so won’t care what I say. Indeed there are so many reviews of this film out there that you have to wonder why the Internet needs another one. Well, my answer to that is that no other website will have a review of The Phantom Menace alongside the likes of The Wrong Arm of the Law and Fantasia, so I’ll be addressing an imbalance. Plus no other article on a Star Wars film has been written by an automobile.

I like the Star Wars films. You probably do, too. The series has always been the one science fiction stronghold that can be enjoyed by anybody without being labelled a "geek" or some such tedious non sequitur in the schoolyard or the workplace (well, depending on how much you enjoy it, obviously). Whilst Doctor Who has always been the love of my life, as it is yours (isn’t it?), it’s only been recently, with the advent of Chris "Y’ what?" Eccleston mucking about in the title role (and doing it rather marvellously) that we’ve all felt able to discuss our fondness for the show in public; you might even have been able to slip "Well, I’ve been a fan of it for ages…" during a chat on the finer merits of the Bad Wolf conundrum and the Anne Droid with your workmates. I know I have. But, for some reason, Star Wars has always been OK. Practically everybody who’s anybody has sat back and had a gander at Luke Skywalker’s perilous journeys across the galaxy, facing the evils of Darth Vader and his empirical minions. The original trilogy commands respect, even if you don’t like it that much (though most of us do). And, whilst fans seem united in their dismissal of the recent prequels, owing to them being "rubbish", apparently, the new films still did pretty damn fantastically in the cinemas, showing that there’s still a lot of interest in Lucas’s zany universe of Jedi, Sith lords, and gay robots. But you know all this already.

However, I have a bit of a secret. I’ve kept it covered for a long time, for fear of being excommunicated from society and jeered at in the streets by people waving about autographed postcards of Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams, but I feel that here I am safe. I think that I can trust you to hear me out, and to make sure that my words do not reach the ears of those with far lower tolerance levels than your good selves. It’s simply that, well, I have a sneaking suspicion that I prefer the prequels to the original trilogy.

I know. Shocking isn’t it? What has lead me to this unutterable opinion, I hear you wonder. In monotone. Well, after thinking long and hard about it (that’s a lie, actually; it’s taken me about twenty seconds), it comes down to the simple fact that I find the newer films more entertaining. It’s that simple. I find them more enjoyable, and that’s that. Now, there’s no doubt that The Empire Strikes Back is fantastic in almost every way, and retains its position as the best film in the saga, but I’ve never been too sure of the instalments placed either side of it. Even as a kid I’ve always regarded A New Hope as being a little dull. Worthy, but dull. Once Alec Guinness and co. leave the wonderful collection of weird alien folk in Mos Eisley to try and get to Alderaan, my attention begins to wander. I drum my fingers as Luke’s band of misfits "rescue" the Princess, before getting caught up in a trash compactor. I couldn’t care less what’s happening back at Yavin base. Even the space battle by the Death Star seems a bit tame compared to the deliriously over-crowded laser shows we’d get in later stages of the saga. Cushing and Guinness are fantastic, but the former is barely in it, and the latter gets precious little to do during the second half. On the other side of the Tatooine desert, I used to regard Return of the Jedi as the best of the lot when I was 10, but looking back on it now I reckon that that was mainly due to the Jabba subplot, which gives us thousands of cool aliens and monsters to gawp at; certainly the rest of it fails to get the senses tingling all that much. I rewatched it recently and was surprised how segmented it all seems – the first forty-five minutes or so are all about getting events back on the right track before we can deal with another Death Star menace, which seems to come out of the blue ("Oh, I guess we should deal with that Galactic Empire thingy…"), and as such the shenanigans at Jabba’s palace get shown up for the nonsense that they really are – fun nonsense, but a bit inconsequential nevertheless. And then of course there’s the Ewoks. I don’t actually mind them when we’re first exploring the cultures of Endor. At that point they’re just another new life form. It’s when we get dodgy shots of little teddy bears getting dragged along by Imperial Walkers, or getting involved in various farcical misdemeanours during the heat of battle (oh look, that little guy just hit himself in the face with his own catapult – how precious) that I begin to wish that the Storm Troopers would just show a bit of initiative and wipe the little buggers out. And the Emperor’s "Strike me down with all of your hate!" malarkey is a bit tedious too.

I probably sound far harsher than I mean to be. I wouldn’t give any Star Wars film less than 8/10 – if nothing else, they always look slick, and John Williams’s musical scores carry everything along nicely. But I do genuinely find Episodes IV and VI a bit boring, occasionally. Now, the prequels are packed with faults, of varying degrees of magnitude, and there are far more of them than in any of the originals – but they never bore me. I’m always glued to the screen. I might be laughing and jeering at whatever’s going on, but I’m enjoying m’self nonetheless.

The Phantom Menace is not perfect. Oh no. Not by a long shot. But I’m not even so sure that it’s the worst Star Wars film (it’s either this or Return of the Jedi). It’s got a fair bit going against it, which I’ll get to in a moment. In fact, I’ll probably appear to be slagging it off for the majority of this review. But don’t get me wrong – it’s all in the spirit of good fun. Which sums up the movie itself, really: good fun.

In order to review this film I think I’ll simply go through from the beginning till the end, picking up on the most notable or hotly debated aspects along the way. It’s an easy format to work with, plus it means I won’t forget where I am. Which would be disastrous.

The first thing that strikes you as being a bit off is the opening crawl. Whilst the original trilogy began its films with dark murmurings of good being wiped out in the galaxy, and the evil clutches of the Galactic Empire bending entire civilisations to its satanic will, The Phantom Menace begins with some palaver about trading laws. "The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute." You what? There may well be a couple of Jedi trying to sort it all out, but it doesn’t really sound all that sensational, does it? Even our main foe, the Trade Federation (which sounds like a ruthless accountants’ syndicate), is described as being "greedy", which is laughably cartoonish. The line about "deadly battleships" passes you by completely; already they sound far from deadly and dangerous, more "a little bit naughty".

Apparently two Jedi diplomats – our heroes, ladies and gents - are on their way to the Trade Federation spacestation to have a chinwag with the Viceroy. It only really occurs to me now that we never saw many Jedi in the original trilogy; not surprising as they’d all been wiped out, now I come to think about it. Here the Jedi aren’t a theme or a goal – they’re a way of life! I think a lot of those arguments that state, "The prequels have awful dialogue," stem from this. The dialogue of the originals wasn’t spectacular, but was lifted by its actors, who had decent, realistic characters to work with. Han Solo came across like a roguish garage mechanic, Luke was just a headstrong romanticist, Obi-Wan was an endearing old bloke who assaulted people in pubs. They always seemed like interesting people grounded in reality, so you didn’t really notice the unfeasibility of much of the dialogue. The prequels arguably have few real conversations because nobody needs to listen to each other. Characters will talk at each other, but rarely seem like they’re actually conversing. The Jedi are so solemn, preachy and, dare I say it, dull that the dialogue often comes over as fatuous and melodramatic as it probably did written on paper, particularly when every sentence ends with "…my young padawan." Liam Neeson is a good enough actor to pull this off, playing the "wise old Jedi" type of Alec Guinness’s Obi-Wan but in a different way. He seems tired and angry, but keeps it controlled. Ewan MacGregor, on the other hand, isn’t very good at all. He was rather fab in the following two films but here he has nothing to do except agree with Liam Neeson and peer contentedly at monitor screens whilst his master gets to go the races, and as a result he seems like a spare part which his performance doesn’t exactly fight against. Obi-Wan needs to be there so that he seems responsible enough to take on Anakin as his subject at the end but they forgot to give him anything to do along the way. Old Obi-Wan was teaching novice Luke Skywalker how to be a Jedi; Qui Gon just chips in with a few proverbs that young Obi-Wan can nod at appropriately. When MacGregor gets the supposedly funny line, "You were right about one thing, Master – the negotiations were short!" he sounds like a mischievous schoolboy rather than a level-headed, controlled Jedi, which is how he’s portrayed everywhere else.

The Viceroy, comedy accented Nute Gunray ("It is Queen Amidala hersaaalf!"), immediately gets orders to kill off the Jedi scum and sends some droids to do the job. Now, this brings me to one of my major problems with these films: did the battle droids have to be quite so useless? I know the Storm Troopers couldn’t hit a bus station at six paces, but you occasionally had firefights with Rebel Troops in which it seemed that things were at least evenly matched. The droids of the prequels are never made to look anything less than inept. As soon as a Jedi whips out his lightsaber you know that not even 100 of the metal blighters will be able to take him down. Seeing Ewan MacGregor leaping about and decimating entire legions of robots grew farcical by the end of The Phantom Menace, never mind by the time of the third film. I think you see one, maybe two people actually getting shot by a droid in The Phantom Menace. When even a group of about six human troops can blast their way through thirty robots you wonder why the Trade Federation bothered to build the bloody things in the first place, especially as you'd imagine that making/purchasing robot troops would be far more expensive than simply hiring living beings to do the job instead. It doesn’t help matters any that the droids get saddled with silly dialogue like "Roger Roger!" and "Er, um, you’re under arrest!" It would seem that they’re given personality circuits of sorts, like the way that C3-PO and R2-D2 have "feelings" and emotions, but why you’d want to program hardened death machines to have them is beyond me. They even scream and run away! I can’t imagine "exhibiting the concept of fear" as being a good selling point for a droid army. And why are they segregated into ranks? How come they talk verbally to each other anyway?

It’s a pity as the Destroyer Droids are obviously a lot better, seeing as they don’t talk to each other, don’t do anything silly, and just get on with the job of attempting to kill things. However, seeing as the battle droids turn up in a further two films I think I’ve ranted enough about them for the moment, so I’ll speed on events to the forests and swamps of Naboo. And, oh, golly goshers, who should we find there but everybody’s favourite kicky-bag: Jar Jar Binks!

I’m not going to flog a dead horse – I don’t like Jar Jar either – so I won’t talk about him that much. It’s a shame that George Lucas decided to talk down to his child audience by including such a character, given that the same kids love the original films which are free of such obvious walking catalysts of misjudged tomfoolery. C3-PO simply uttered some bad puns and got scared a bit; Jar Jar flaps about like an epileptic turkey, decimates everything he touches and gets farted on by a donkey (horribly enough, that latter example was originally given even more prominence than it was in the final cut, as a deleted scene on the DVD shows the donkey-thing actually screwing its eyes up and shuddering, tears in its eyes, as it manages to force out this great flatulent gasp of komedy from its rear end – sweet Lord in Luton, how we should have been thankful for small mercies). Given how dark and serious events get in Revenge of the Sith it’s even more difficult to fathom just what George Lucas was doing here. I don’t know if kids liked Jar Jar or not, though I can remember both the Beano and The Dandy comics at the time devoting comic strips to their front page characters gleefully playing with Jar Jar Binks Sticky Tongue toys (whilst we kiddies realised that the toy attracted dirt and grime after about five minutes and so was quickly rendered useless). Fortunately, as we know, Jar Jar had a muted role in Attack of the Clones (in which he signed away the deaths of billions across the galaxy) and said nothing at all in Revenge of the Sith so at least a viewer can breathe a sigh of "I only need to put up with him once!" Of course the rest of the Gungans are no better, especially when the captain of the guard says things like "You’re in big doodoo!" and Brian Blessed’s Boss Nass slobbers on everybody. Good God, what were they thinking? Having said all this, I think criticisms of unintended racism inherent in the character of Jar Jar are a bit over the top; you have a better case with the evil foreign-accented Neimodians of the Trade Federation, but then films have been churning out foreign-accented baddies for centuries, so I can’t see the point in complaining about it now. Funnily enough, the accents of Nute Gunray and his pals change from country to country – direct from IMDB: "In the German language version of the film, the collaborating Trade Federation leaders have a French accent, while in the Italian language version they have heavy Russian accents. They also have Russian accents in the Czech version, except for the Viceroy, who speaks fluent Czech for reasons unknown."

Still, onto march! A brief detour into the Gungan city and though the core of the planet (How can you travel through the core of a planet anyway? Especially without, erm, dying?) gets our heroes, and Jar Jar, to the city of Naboo, cruelly invaded by the terrifying battle droids. Fifteen seconds later (no, really - I counted) the two Jedi and the rescued Queen Amidala leave the royal courtyard filled with broken robots and head for the spaceship hanger bay whereupon they leave with little fuss. However, the ship is shot at by blockade fighters and sustains damages that only plucky little astromech droids can fix. Hey, it’s R2-D2!

Look, I don’t care if it’s deemed somehow unlikely that he’d be involved: I love the little guy, and he, along with C3-PO and Yoda, provide me with several of my main joys from these films. Apparently some fans got furious when the droid managed to grow jetpacks and flamethrowers later in the trilogy. To them I say: get a life. I’m sorry, I rarely ever, ever say that, particularly seeing as I’m a nearly 18 year old Doctor Who fan who rarely goes out socially so I don’t have much of a leg to stand on, but when you’re criticising one of the most beloved sci-fi robots for having too many special features then you’re just going too far, in my book. I can accept people cringing with embarrassment during the Yoda lightsaber battles because, yes, they were very silly (and therefore my favourite moments from the trilogy), but spitting with rage because R2-D2 can fly about like a mad thing means you have no soul. I don’t care if R2-D2 never did these things in the original films – maybe he fell into disrepair between sagas because Wedge Antilles was a negligent bastard? I don’t know. All I do know is that when R2-D2 destroyed those two battle droids in Revenge of the Sith with oil and fire, I applauded with a nod of "Top notch!" respect.

Still, dragging myself kicking and screaming back to The Phantom Menace, the pilot tells everybody that the spaceship has to take a landing on Tatooine to make repairs. Rather amusingly the Queen’s guard captain exclaims something along the lines of, "We can’t take the Queen there; the Hutt’s are gangsters!" in a way which suggests he doesn’t like musicals ("No way am I going to sing in a back alley!") They realise they have to nab parts from somewhere within a nearby settlement, Mos Espa, and so Qui Gon decides to have a shufty. Interestingly, whilst he only allows Padmé (the Queen’s servant, who actually turns out to be the real Queen in a not so thrilling twist) to follow him under duress, he seems to have willingly taken Jar Jar Binks with him; is the fellow mad? Jar Jar also doesn’t seem fussed that he, an aquatic, is wandering around a desert, but who am I to question a Gungan? R2-D2 is allowed to follow because he’s Da Man.

I’m not quite sure why George Lucas wanted to blatantly parallel the prequel films with the original trilogy, and particularly so here; we’ve got Tatooine, another "hive of scum and villainy" (in the words of the mighty Guinness), a young lad named Skywalker being coaxed by an old bloke into learning the ways of the Force, and then later the dogfight in space centring around a space station that explodes at the end (followed by an awards ceremony with a bouncy R2-D2). Maybe it was to try and make the new films feel like the old ones by tossing in some recognisable ingredients – at least, that’s the most logical explanation I can think of. The downside of course is that it can make the prequels seem a tad unimaginative and it constricts the size of the Star Wars Universe. Every important event seems centred around the same small group of planets (Tatooine appears in five of the six films) and lots of characters from the original films seem content to pop up in these ones for little to no reason (though this becomes particularly ludicrous in the next one). For me this doesn’t actually matter, as it just adds to the giddy and silly fun of it, but I’d imagine it probably irritates some of the more seriously minded out there. But then they’re also probably people who got annoyed by Jetpack R2-D2, so I’m not sure if I should have any sympathy.

The events on Tatooine bring us to two more Big Issues – Anakin Skywalker and the podrace. I’ve seen Jake Lloyd’s acting criticised really rather viciously elsewhere, mainly on IMDB as I don’t generally visit Star Wars fan sites (Doctor Who ones are scary enough without leaping into those about franchises I know little about). I suppose Jake didn’t have his work cut out for him; he’s a kid. A little kid. In a film. People hate kids in films, on the whole, because they’re usually rubbish. You have to have that special something to evade critical lampooning. I myself reckon that Jake Lloyd is perfectly acceptable and that, to be honest, things could have been a lot worse. At least Jake can emote, unlike the Jedi kiddies seen in Revenge of the Sith (but that’s a trivial irritation for another time). I think the only problem comes at the end with the space battle, in which it’s really hard to swallow that a kid who’s never flown before could manage to infiltrate a space station, destroy it and escape without getting blown to bits whilst those experienced pilots around him can’t even tackle a few fighters on their own. I know this is meant to show how strong in the Force Anakin is, but it comes across as, well, something more at home in a silly kids’ film (which I suppose is what The Phantom Menace is – though it doesn’t sit will with the other five films at all). It’s too unbelievable. It doesn’t help that Anakin yells out things like "Woah!" and "Yahoo!" and "What does this button do?" as he does it. The podrace, on the other hand, is a wonderful technical achievement. It looks fast, slick and spectacular, the variety of alien racers are quite easy on the eye and the music is appropriately dramatic, alternately tense and triumphant as required. The problem is that it’s too long. A three-minute race would have done the trick, but I’m fairly sure that it lasts something approaching ten-twelve minutes in duration. By the time of the third lap you’re just urging the whole thing to be over and done with – you’ve seen the thrills and spills and now you just want to get on with the story. Many people say that this is a problem with George Lucas’s directing in general; an urge to fill the films up with meaningless spectacle. I personally don’t mind lots of flashy special effects and rooms packed full of aliens like some people do – heck, I even enjoyed the weird musical number in the updated Return of the Jedi. But sometimes the scenes of visual splendour go on past their natural finishing point, and the podrace is perhaps the worst offender. I remember reading one review which said that the viewer at the screening left during the race to get himself a drink in the bar, did so, drank his pint, chatted with a friend, went to the lavatory, and returned to the screening to find that the race was still rattling on.

Anyway, as you probably remember, Anakin wins the race and gains Qui Gon the required parts to fix the Queen’s ship so that they can leave Tatooine, Qui Gon having decided to take Anakin with them so that he can train to be a Jedi (leaving his mum behind – sniff!). Before we do go, however, just four niggles I’d like to address:

The Midichlorians stuff. Star Wars fans, both in-depth and occasional, have raged about the Midichlorians explanation ever since the release of this film. To be fair it does demystify things a bit and rather fudges some of the integral themes of the films – mainly that anybody can do anything, even against insurmountable odds, if they just put their minds to it and try (wildly and hopelessly optimistic, but cozy) – by saying that it doesn’t matter what your personal abilities and characteristics may be so long as you just happen to have a high Midichlorian count. However, this only really gets talked about in one scene and I forget about it a few minutes later, so I’m not fussed. I don’t watch Star Wars for deep and spiritual themes, after all – I watch it for classy aliens and robots and old Hammer Horror stars stroking their chins.

Watto the flying alien junk dealer has a stereotypically Jewish accent. I know that George wasn’t intending anything in particular here but you’d have thought that somebody might have whispered a word in his shell-like. An ugly, untrustworthy money-grabber coupled with that accent does conjure up certain unsavoury propaganda images from a long while ago and it probably would have been best to have changed the voice simply to avoid debate and tiresome questions.

The virgin birth bit is of course hilarious, treading a fine line between being ridiculous and actively offensive. Quite what George was doing here I don’t know and I’d probably rather remain unenlightened just to preserve the lunacy of the scene.

And finally a personal and utterly trivial gripe on the part of yours truly: Anakin has a small little alien friend (one of those types that resemble Greedo from A New Hope) who I find unreasonably irritating. "You’re a joker, Anni – haw haw!" Whenever I watch this film I keep wishing Darth Maul will leap in and carve the little bastard up. Whilst scowling, of course. Incidentally, one of the deleted scenes from the film actually has a baby Greedo – yes, the very same, I kid you not - brawling with Anakin in the street, whereupon Liam Neeson wanders over and breaks the scuffle up by talking about democratic rights. Mmm. Scintillating.

So, yes, we leave Tatooine. Wait a moment! Did somebody mention Darth Maul?

Well, yes, I did. And here he is. Menacing blighter, isn’t he? It’s really quite unfortunate that he’s hardly in the film at all, as after the huge advertising campaign for the chap there couldn’t be anything other than a resulting anticlimax. The man gets about three lines of dialogue, if that – in fact he said more in TV trailers and publicity spots than in the feature itself! Of course, the main point of the chap is to engage in thrilling lightsaber duels with our heroes, but since I rarely found the fight scenes in Star Wars to be particularly interesting anyway (yes, I’m a heretic) I don’t care for him at all. All he does is scowl. Twirls his lightsaber. Takes a few steps. Scowls again. Pah! He ain’t no Christopher Lee.

After a brief desert tussle between Liam Neeson and Darth Maul, the Queen’s ship goes to Coruscant, the planet of political wranglings. It’s not Yes, Minister, but then Yes, Minister didn’t have Wookies. I really rather enjoy the Senate chamber scenes, mainly because they look impressive and the idea of lots of alien races discussing things and zipping about in floating chairs is one I find really, really cool.* Lots of people find these scenes interminably boring but I don’t. As I’ve already said. I also like these bits because they have Ian McDiarmid in them, who is simply class in a glass in these films. Senator (and then Chancellor) Palpatine is an instantly magnetic character, so slimy and conniving that you can’t help but like him. The fact that you know he becomes the most evil man in the cosmos makes him even more interesting. The way he manipulates the rather nice Chancellor Valorum into losing his job is quite fun. Pity Chancellor Valorum; even the Wookies hate him, whoever he is. Poor sod.

* = Sorry to be so hip and with-it there, I promise not to do it again.

Actually, it’s only really when you’ve watched the other films that you realise that the only important character in The Phantom Menace is Palpatine. Sure, it may introduce Anakin Skywalker, but he hasn’t yet shown any signs of being a treacherous little oik yet, and Obi-Wan doesn’t do anything really significant either. There’s some Jedi Temple scenes which don’t really amount to anything (and Yoda looks far worse here than he did in the original films – thank God they went to the really rather good CGI version in the next film). In terms of the over-arching plotline, the only story thread in The Phantom Menace that has any significance is that of Palpatine, as here he manages to leap from being a senator on a humdrum planet to being one of the most important men in the galaxy. In the grand scheme of things the entire invasion of Naboo, and indeed the whole involvement of the Trade Federation and the battle droids, were simply footholds to allow Palpatine to reach a position of power – and yet this isn’t even highlighted. It does unfortunately prove that The Phantom Menace is two hours worth of staggering irrelevance. It’s fun but pointless.

My memory of what happens next is a bit vague, though to be honest I don’t think there’s much left that I haven’t already discussed. Queen Amidala (who speaks in a ridiculous accent that constantly wavers between American and British – and just what is up with the change of costume every other scene?) decides that she can’t do anything on Coruscant and wants to go back to Naboo to defeat the Trade Federation. First however she has to convince the Gungans to join the humans, which she achieves remarkably easily by revealing that the person everybody thought was the Queen was actually a decoy. This doesn’t really make sense on two levels; 1) why should Boss Nass be impressed by this, seeing as how the deception, in his eyes, lasts all of three seconds?; 2) Earlier on we saw Padmé Amidala wandering about the spaceship and cleaning up droids and the like, which seems to suggest that the decoy Queen was ordering the real one about. I know some peoples of royalty like to be "hands on" but cleaning up R2 droids doesn’t sound my idea of fun.

Anyway, with all this done we crash home to our four pronged finale, in which we spectate on Padmé and her guards breaking into their own palace, Qui Gon and Obi-Wan having a barney with Darth Maul, Anakin Skywalker whizzing about in a spaceship and blowing things up, and the big, and ultimately pointless, battle between the Gungans and the battle droids. I’ve heard some people describe the constant cutting between scenarios as being a bit confusing but to be honest I think it’s quite competently done. It’s all rather exciting as well, even if the big Gungan battle is tarnished by Jar Jar Binks and his patented comedy antics. Quite how somebody hanging onto the turret of a metal tank can cause it to crash I don’t know, but crash it does. There’s actually one niggle about this scene that I have, and it’s the only one I have in relation to the special effects – the field just looks a bit too bare. It just looks too much like a randomly generated locale on a strategy computer game, like a 3D Age of Empires. But special effects are a silly thing, really; when you see a decent special effect in Star Wars, your mind actually says "Gosh, that was a good effect," not, "Gosh, I really believe George Lucas bred gigantic dinosaur-fishes especially for this film." Yet when we see an effect that’s a bit rubbish we condemn it. Many people criticise the Star Wars prequels for being glorified video games and there probably is some truth in this at times. But for some reason I still find myself drawn into the excitement of it all – I love the closing battle scenes of Attack of the Clones despite the fact that I know it’s a lot of computer generated nonsense. Special effects don’t make a good film but they certainly help. Doctor Who fans say that special effects don’t matter, we enjoy the cheapness, it’s cozy and fun – bollocks. People didn’t just enjoy Dalek because it had some good dialogue between the Doctor and a Dalek – they loved it because added to the dialogue and the story we had some fantastic special effects scenes of the Dalek shooting lots of people. We love good special effects; we’re taken in by them. They’re not the be all and end all, but they can paper over cracks in the story or the odd bad performance, so long as the whole thing is basically sound. I like the Star Wars prequels because the core story is quite good, because John Williams composes fantastic music and because the films look marvellous. I don’t usually care about special effects in other films but they’re never less than enthralling in Star Wars.

So with a hefty dosage of CGI madness the planet of Naboo is saved, and everybody is happy and cheery. Except Qui Gon, because he’s dead. Ahem. Shame that we don’t actually see the lightsaber go through his body – the way it’s shot makes it look initially that Darth Maul has simply punched him in the groin. Still, Ewan MacGregor gets to chew the scenery with a "NOOOOO!" which is always good (well, unless you’re watching the end of Revenge of the Sith), even though his final battle with Maul is a bit, um, wimpy. Still, I was complaining about long fight scenes earlier, so I suppose I should be content.

Qui Gon’s body is cremated, Yoda whispers something gloomy to Samuel L Jackson about an evil Sith lord (who I’ve completely forgotten to mention up till now, mainly because it’s simply a hologram of Ian McDiarmid talking slowly in a robe) and then finally onto our obligatory celebrations scene. Lots of giddy chanting music ("Ya ya ya ya ya!"), Boss Nass yelling "PEACE!" as he fondles one of those electrical spaceball novelty lamps and Jake Lloyd sporting a truly mirth-inducing haircut. Cue credits.

And that’s it. Lots of people hated it. I didn’t. It has major problems. It has Jar Jar Binks. And it has an overlong podrace. But it’s big, silly and fun. It’s Star Wars.

And I can’t believe I forgot to mention my other favourite character, C3-PO. Probably because he didn’t do anything. Shame. He was naked, you know.

Score out of Ten