20 Years After ‘Episode One: The Phantom Menace’

Star Wars Episode One The Phantom Menace
20th Century Fox

At least we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi fandom. At last we will have revenge.

Take a look back. You’ll find that The Phantom Menace wasn’t as terrible as you’ve been conditioned to remember. On May 19, 2019, it will be twenty years since the release of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace. In a world where chronology is, well, chronological, that might seem like a lot of years or not many. It will be forty-two years since my first Star Wars movie. A fissure happened when The Phantom Menace was released. Fandom survived, but the fissure began to grow with each new prequel release. By the time the sequel trilogy reached the penultimate episode, fandom was fractured. The Last Jedi was the linchpin that saw the wheels fall off. No longer would The Phantom Menace take the blame. It was a split of two sides. One dark and one light.

From a certain point of view, each saw the other as the dark side. Fandom fractured. It wasn’t a clean break and no cast will fix it. Well, maybe the cast of The Mandalorian, but I suspect that’s just the hopeful eight-year-old in me who wanted as much Star Wars as possible. That’s why the cast’s appearance on the Muppet Show and the Christmas Special weren’t disasters in my young eyes. Sure, there were splinters of disappointment, but they were as elusive as the Kyber Crystal on Mimban. We knew the disappointments sank in the muddy forest beneath the Temple of Pomojema. We let them lie, and made fun of the goofiness as we got older. The same way we make fun of Godzilla being an obvious man in a rubber suit. There’s charm in everything. We just have to learn to find it to enjoy it.

I rewatched The Phantom Menace to make sure I have a fresh take on the movie. It’s not as bomb-bad as you think you remember. It was so highly anticipated back then that many of us paid to see Meet Joe Black just to see the first trailer. I sat through Meet Joe Black, thinking about Star Wars the entire time. Some sense of commitment kept me in the seat after the trailer played. Maybe it was because I dropped ten or twelve bucks on my ticket and didn’t want to waste it. In a sense, I did waste it. Meet Joe Black may have been a masterpiece. I didn’t care. My loyalty was with the version of me who was eight again. I was there for Star Wars only. I hope that guy Brad Pitt got a break in his career. What followed for months, still the early days of the internet, were chat room discussions of who that Hutt was (I believe he showed up in the second trailer), what those tall animals in the fog were, and whether Anakin would turn in the first movie. We sure did disagree on a lot before the film came out. And we disagreed on a lot after its release. I still have a running joke with my wife on how easy it is to tell one Hutt from another, a reference to a heated discussion in one of those threads.

The Phantom Menace came and went. I’d seen it at the Zeigfeld Theater in New York City a few times before opting for smaller and less expensive theaters for follow-up viewings, but I saw it multiple times. It wasn’t unanimous yet that The Phantom Menace was the worst Star Wars movie ever (a title since lost to a different argument), and “prequel bashing” hadn’t even become a term yet. I know people who, today, will tell you how much they hate Episode One, but I can provide anecdotal evidence to each of them how much their opinion was swayed by the wave of disapproval that was about to inundate fandom. Some people who hated The Phantom Menace saw it three or four times before deciding that’s how they felt. I don’t know about you, but I doubt I’ll ever see Prometheus again. I hated it, and got past it. My opinion might be wrong. I had my reasons for hating it. I just let it go and moved on. There is way too much good content out there to harp on any franchise’s failings. There’s no reason to be disappointed for long. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to fan service. And that just makes everything worse.

I’m about to say something that would be considered to be very unpopular. I didn’t like Darth Maul. Not after Episode One anyway. He didn’t strike fear. He looked like a cast off member of the Insane Clown Posse to me. All the Samurai influence that went into Darth Vader’s incredible design trickled down into various costumes in Episode One, but our active villain took on the design of a Halloween Demon. He didn’t shock or scare. He just made me think, “Wow, greasepaint and spirit gum plastic horns, huh?” But that was ’90s character design. That was Spawn. That was Carnage. That was Deadpool. That was The Crow. I’m not talking about the content of the character. I’m solely judging by appearance. You may like those designs, and that’s all good. I had to let that go. Not my Sith. But by the time Darth Maul developed through comics, The Clone Wars, and Rebels, I loved his character. It was poetic yet sad to see his demise repeated. The apprentice to The Phantom Menace had survived without my approval, and he died again without my consent.

The Gungans and the kid were not well received after a while, but if you look back at some video reactions of people walking out of the theater, you’ll see how ecstatic the fans were. They allowed themselves to be eight again. There was a vocal hate of Episode One that began to grow. We’d gotten spoiled with massive amounts of Dark Horse, Bantam, and Ballantine content. The galaxy grew up, and we saw the darker side of the Star Wars universe. The extended universe filled our heads with the idea that Star Wars would be our war buddy and our drinking buddy. We yearned for a Star Wars that looked like Saving Private Ryan. Eventually we got that. Probably the reason Rogue One was so well received despite us all knowing the ending before it arrived.

When Disney bought Star Wars, my biggest concern was that content like what we read in the Rogue Squadron series would no longer be available. I did secretly hope to have the comics back in the hands of Marvel, though. I’d hoped to see Jaxxon, Fenn Shysa, and the hoojibs make a return. I devoured Star Wars comics in ’80s, and again when Dark Horse took over, but they put so many titles out I could not read them all. I ended up with Dark Horse Star Wars fatigue. Marvel’s single title line had forgotten to inoculate me. Kids had grown up to be creators and their stories made Star Wars become something other than Muppet-faced Hutts and He-Man chested farm boys. This new content became source material for a new generation of Star Wars fandom. Star Wars was changed. The stories got grittier. The video games got more graphic. It wasn’t George Lucas who had changed. There were already two Ewok movies, an Ewok cartoon, and a Droids cartoon after Return of the Jedi. By the time Star Wars brought us to the beginning in 1999, George Lucas was high on Special Edition success. He either didn’t recognize that Star Wars had grown up in the eyes of the older fans or he didn’t care. Some of us took this as a sleight. Some of us let it go, and reverted to eight when we watched the new beginning of the saga unfold.

I rewatch The Phantom Menace on occasion to find the good in it. There’s something there, but I can’t see it as a kid. Not since that first viewing at the Ziegfeld. I was an adult when it was released. I enjoy it as much as I can, but I’ll never love it. I always expected Anakin to be introduced to us at Luke’s age. But it’s up to me to get past it. I didn’t want to be a contributor to the fandom menace. I went deeper into the novels. Those were for me. The Dark Horse comics were for me. My Truce at Bakura was understanding that I’d be required to revert to a younger brain when I watched the movies. The fandom menace is in not seeing that. Your childhood isn’t damaged by a movie you don’t like any more than some other adult’s childhood wasn’t damaged by a new Mary Poppins movie. If it doesn’t fit in your “I like it cup” then fill your cup with the plethora of other available content.

Get past your disappointment in the Hanna-Barbera Wacky Races, I mean pod races. Get past Luke’s use of the term “laser sword” in The Last Jedi, I mean Anakin’s use of the term in Episode One. Try spinning. That’s a good trick. Get yourself dizzy and watch an episode of Star Wars Resistance. If that’s too young, pick up a copy of Heir to the Empire and re-read that. Soon we’ll have The Mandalorian. Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace isn’t as bad as you remember and it’s not as good as you claim. I’m talking to the influencers. Let’s all allow each other to enjoy what we like in in this great big galaxy. It’s getting bigger, and we’re not going to like it all. Some of us want to go inside the Mos Eisley Cantina to see the severed limbs. Some of us want to to stay outside with the droids.

It’s twenty years since the release of Episode One. Don’t let the fandom menace stop you from doing what we’re all going to do in December. Fans all over will binge Episode 1-8. Some will binge 3-7. I won’t hate on that. Then for one weekend we will rejoice in what we hope is closure to the episodic series, the Skywalker saga, with The Rise of Skywalker. “It is demanded by the gods it is!” (in my best Jar Jar Binks voice). Throw your grappling hook across the chasm to the other opinions. *mwah!* “For luck.”


Related Article: Jedi at 35: The Lasting Legacy of Return of the Jedi

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