I had very much looked forward
to seeing this movie that I found quite disappointing. But
since I take no pleasure in reporting my lack of enthusiasm
for it, I will only pass along a couple of observations. In
the first place, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
seemed to me be incredibly tired; in the print I saw, even
the color looked already washed out. Although a
friend rightly admonished me to keep in mind that this is
only the first installment in a series of films to come, my
impression is that George Lucas has painted himself into a
corner. Nor do I
think it helps that Lucas, in spite of having overseen the
production of the previous two Star Wars epics, has
not actually functioned as director since the first Star
Wars, back in 1977. From the very beginning, it was clear
that Star Wars was not just aiming at creating the
basis for a successful series of movies, but laying claim to
the territory of myth. However, even with the help of Joseph
Campbell, it is not very easy to manufacture a myth ex
nihilo--as the example of William Blake, the last great
mythmaker in the history of Western literature, proves. In
fact, Lucas' real myth is one of the movies properly
speaking: the myth of an unending serial, each new episode of
which would be even more thrilling than the previous one. As
myths go, this does not seem contemptible; as a devoted movie
addict since the age of five, I even find it attractive in a
certain crazy way. But unfortunately, a full-length motion
picture is not a twenty minute cliffhanger whose scenario
could be cooked up out of formulas. The content has to count
for something and Lucas' inspiration is beginning to wear
thin, nowhere more evidently than in the JarJar Binks
character. When I first read about the accusations of racism
directed against the character, I wrote them off as another
fata morgana out of the desert of political correctness.
After seeing the The Phantom Menace I am no longer so
sure; at the very best, Jar Jar is a pretty dubious creation,
like something left over from a really inferior Disney
animated feature--and best left to Walt's heirs, if he
belongs anywhere on the screen.
George Lucas commenced his
career with the highly original, if oppressive science
fiction picture THX 1138, an amputated echo of which
continues to live on in the name of the THX sound system. The
movie, produced by Francis Coppola's Zoetrope company but
actually bankrolled by Warner's, proved to be a fiasco and
there were apparently bad feelings on the part of everyone
involved in the project. When Lucas finally returned to
directing some years later, it was with the huge hit American
Grafitti and he went on from there to Star Wars--where
he has profitably remained ever since. But it is
ironic that such an obviously talented director should end up
as much the prisoner of his high-tech invention as the
inhabitants of THX 1138 were of their
subterranean dystopia. I would really like to see what Lucas could do
with something as far removed from Star Wars as
possible. Not that I think his talents lie in the direction
of productions like THX 1138. To the contrary, Lucas
like his peer Steven Spielberg is more than anything else an
incredibly talented creator of popular entertainment, and
like Spielberg, Lucas is a good deal more than an engineer
amusing himself with fancy special effects. Moreover, the
grosses for The Phantom Menace indicate how much of an
audience still exists for entertainment that is not a blatant
insult to everyone's intelligence, and I would be the last
one to shed crocodile tears over those figures. Successful
popular entertainment has not only always been the great
strength of the American cinema but a main financial prop of
the industry. Only a snob who knew nothing about motion
pictures would think that an overweening surplus of bad films
pay for a select number of good ones, but the great popular
hits--and these include important movies directed by the
likes of John Ford, Howard Hawks, George Cukor, and William
Wyler--certainly made possible more adventurous and demanding
works by bringing revenue into the studio till. Would
Paramount ever have given Josef Von Sternberg so much leeway
in the films he made in the early 1930's, if the studio
hadn't been making a ton of bucks from pictures featuring
Jeanette McDonald and Maurice Chevalier or the Marx Brothers?
Would RKO have given Orson Welles carte blanche if it hadn't
made the incredibly profitable series of Fred Astaire-Ginger
Rogers musicals, not to mention a host of better forgotten
B-movies? The day productions like The Phantom Menace
vanish from movie houses, in a time of increasingly marginal
profits from domestic theatrical distribution and exhibition,
the choice will not be between The Phantom Menace and Eyes
Wide Shut or Bringing Out the Dead, but between Armageddon
and something even worse.