Consider This from NPR - Critics hated 'The Phantom Menace.' It might be time to reconsider

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

When Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace hit screens across the country in 1999, Return of the Jedi felt like ancient history to Star Wars fans. But after 16 long years, the movie let down fans and critics alike. Twenty-five years have changed how a lot of people feel. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Every generation has a legend. Those are the first words that appear over a black screen in a trailer that teased one of the most anticipated movies in Hollywood history. 25 years ago this month, George Lucas gave us Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace. The movie promised to tell the origin story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. This month, George Lucas gave us Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace. The movie promised to tell the origin story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. You refer to the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the force. You believe it's this boy? It was the first Star Wars movie in 16 long years. When it came out, Return of the Jedi felt like ancient history to Star Wars fans.

There are all these stories about people buying tickets to go see the movie Meet Joe Black because Meet Joe Black had a Phantom Menace trailer on it. So they would go and buy a ticket to the Meet Joe Black, go watch the trailer and then leave the theater. And so all these other movies had these like these like box office bumps just because people wanted to see the Phantom Menace trailer. Journalist Eric Schwartzel is writing a book about Star Wars, and he can trace the way blockbusters are marketed and promoted today back to the excitement around the Phantom Menace. I remember like the Pepsi cans, and I remember the Pizza Hut campaigns, and I remember there being so much around it, the anticipation of it. Star Wars Episode I cans, collect all 24 this summer.

In 1999, local news stations across the country treated the movie release like breaking news. They talked to fans in brown robes and braided hair and big plastic helmets, fans who had camped out for days, sometimes even weeks, at movie theaters to see the film on opening day. The original trilogy was just so phenomenal. People have been awaiting this for like 16 years.

It's going to be one of the many wonders of the world. There are now eight wonders of the world. One of them being this movie. Are there any of you that think this is going to be a lousy movie? No! Well, NPR sent two critics to see the film and provide their response, and no, Tom Shales did not like it. The new Star Wars movie, Episode I, The Phantom Menace, is a menace. It's not about storytelling and it's not about people. It's about effects and technology.

It's a computer movie through and through, by computers and maybe for computers. NPR's Bob Mondello took issue with one of the film's most infamous characters, Jar Jar Binks. What could he have been thinking, you say to yourself, as he introduces a race of idol-worshipping primitives who speak in Caribbean accents and behave like refugees from Amos and Andy. The backlash

did not stop there. Even some of the hardcore fans complained. People didn't like the idea of a nine-year-old Darth Vader. I'm a pilot, you know, and someday I'm going to fly away from this place. They didn't like all of the talk of taxes and trade embargoes. You will not be so pleased when you hear what I have to say, Viceroy. Your trade boycott of our planet has ended.

You start to see just like this absolute, this very loud wave of backlash. After 16 years of waiting and hoping, a lot of the fans were not amused. There's this pretty loud, angry reaction. Consider this. For many of those who remember the heady excitement they felt from the original Star Wars movie and the cherished characters developed over the first trilogy, The Phantom Menace was, to put it graciously, a disappointment. But with the 25th anniversary upon us, maybe it's time for another look.

I'm NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. The Phantom Menace came out 25 years ago this month, and to commemorate that anniversary, the film is getting a re-release in theaters. So I thought it was very important, for journalistic purposes of course, to go see it with the biggest Star Wars fan I know, NPR's senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.

I met her outside of DC's Alamo Drafthouse Theater. Why don't you just tell us what you're wearing, Tam? I'm wearing a shirt that says, May the Fourth Estate Be With You, and some Star Wars-themed earrings, maybe. Because you're a reporter and you like Star Wars? Indeed. Indeed. Let's start with this.

What do you remember about The Phantom Menace when it first came out? What did you think about going to see it? What do you remember your first impressions were? I was in college. It was a very big deal. We picked the movie theater because it was the theater in San Francisco that allegedly George Lucas had optimized the speakers in

to make his movies most enjoyable. Stood in line outside for a very long time to see this movie. And I did not like it. So now I'm kind of like, I feel on the fence about it. But at the time, like, I remember walking into the theater. I remember the excitement of seeing The Crawl. And I remember leaving feeling like that was a good movie.

I remember it was mostly positive. And it was only after the fact, years later, that the haterade kind of came into my head on this. We settled into our seats, ordered a whole lot of popcorn, and re-entered a galaxy far, far away. And as much as we both like Star Wars, we both tensed up and cringed when Jar Jar came on the screen. It's the Mesa that just kills me. I just can't do it. I just can't abide.

I feel like this is the top thing that I want to know, like with anyone telling George Lucas anything was a bad idea in this movie. There was a little bit of redemption. We've been hating on this movie here and there, but I feel like the best part of this movie just started, and that is the music and this fight scene between Darth Maul and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. And the double-sided lightsaber, which is just, like, mind-blowing. As Tam and I left the theater, I asked her if she saw anything differently this time around. I mean, it was everything I remembered.

I remember being excited for the exciting parts and absolutely appalled at some of the other parts. And that continued. Continued. After the movie, I piloted my pod racer back to the NPR newsroom and called up Eric Schwartzel to talk more about the legacy of The Phantom Menace. Schwartzel covers the film industry for The Wall Street Journal, and he's writing a book on the cultural juggernaut of the Star Wars franchise called Empire. Do you remember what your initial thoughts were about The Phantom Menace when it came out in 1999? Do you remember going to see it in theaters? Did it register for you in that moment? You know what I remember and what's so interesting to look at now is I remember just a lot of the noise around it. I remember it was it's really like looking back, I think the first example that I have, and maybe that the film industry has,

of like the movie almost being beside the point, because there was so much anticipation with every trailer drop. I mean, I think one thing that I've been trying to do is put myself in the mindset of a fan, you know, let's say like a 28 year old fan, the year that this is coming out, like the anticipation must have been absolutely almost like crippling to, to fans who had waited so long for a new Star Wars story. Like I remember I just read this story about a guy who was trying to get a licensing deal at Lucasfilm. And so he grew out a beard so that he could dress as a Jedi to the pitch meeting.

Did it work? I think it did. Yeah, he got it. Yeah. So I think we'll get to the response and the backlash in a moment. But I think that certainly set that up because the expectations were so sky high. And then the movie comes in and it's just so wildly different than the original Star Wars movies.

But let's tap into your reporting here. What can you tell us about what George Lucas's goal was when he set out in the mid-90s to write and direct The Phantom Menace and basically do it all himself? Well, George had been saying for years, really since the start, that this was going to be a much bigger project than just three movies released in the 1970s and the 1980s. But that there were stories he wanted to tell and ways he wanted to tell them that just were not available to him yet. And so really one of the real pivot points in his career and in movie history really was whenever he saw Jurassic Park for the first time. Because Jurassic Park and the special effects used in Jurassic Park really convinced him that the technology had caught up to his vision. And so when he started work on the prequels, and he always

knew that he would be going back in time to tell the story of how Star Wars came to be, he knew that the technology was there to really populate the world with the creatures and the planets that he wanted to populate it with. How would you characterize the initial wave of response and how that response changed over time? Because I feel like performatively hating on the Phantom Menace is such a big part of Star Wars fandom at this point. It is. Yeah, it's become a bit of a punchline. Although I do think that's changing a little bit, and I'll explain why. But I do think that there is this arc that you can see. And there's this real dramatic irony because there's, because like, you know, what's going to happen. And you hear these people talk about, about this being the greatest day of their life.

And then the critics, the first, the first indication that there were some problems, you know, started whenever the critics started to take a look. And the critics were actually, I think, even tougher, maybe than some of the fans were um really just saying this is uh this is a very weird film it's very dry it's very boring the acting is like is you know this side of public access and and really just start just knocking it down and that's when the record scratch starts to happen and there's all these interviews like of you know like man on the street interviews like outside the theater like what did you think and there's all these people just like, you know, like man on the street interviews, like outside the theater, like, what did you think? And there's all these people just like, they sound like more like confused and like they're trying to figure out what's happened to them over the last two and a half hours.

And they're trying to sort of talk themselves into liking it or explaining it. And then you start to see just like this absolute, this very loud wave of backlash. And now I think we've come to understand that maybe that might have been, I wouldn't say like a vocal minority, but like an outsized voice in the reaction. And this is the perfect place to talk about Jar Jar Binks, who became like the avatar of all of the feelings about this movie. On my warning, girl, Dungeon's no liking outsiders, so don't expect a warm welcome. Yeah, it was a huge part of the conversation pretty immediately, actually, with a lot of critics saying that Jar Jar's behavior and speech patterns like really called to mind, like a history of like Hollywood's dark history with minstrelry and with these like racial stereotypes. And Lucasfilm would

always, you know, Lucasfilm doesn't really engage too much with fan reaction traditionally. But that was one thing they would always come out and deny was any kind of like racial motivation in the character. But it was something that really, it seems like, took hold. So here we are in 2024. We are living in this world of endless Star Wars content and merchandise and theme parks. And I don't know how many movies and shows have been produced since then. How much credit do you think The Phantom Menace deserves for this world of Star Wars as this multi-generational juggernaut? I think it actually, I've come to really appreciate its role in building Star Wars into this kind of multi-generational juggernaut. One thing I would say is, as you said, like, we have this kind of fire hose.

After fans had to wait 20, 25 years for a new Star Wars story, we now have, like, more than you could almost possibly keep up with since Disney bought Lucasfilm 12 years ago. But what's interesting to me is that I think even when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, there still was this kind of stink on the prequels. And that like, as I said, it was sort of seen as this punchline or this evidence that maybe George Lucas had lost his touch. But what you have seen since then, if you look at a lot of the TV shows that Disney is producing, a lot of them lean very heavily on the era of storytelling that the prequels explore, and even the characters that they explore, right? They bring back a young Obi-Wan Kenobi, Hayden Christensen, who, you know, maybe was second to Jar Jar in the beating he took

from fans over the prequel. He's now popping up in streaming shows time and again. And in fact, when I was at a different fan convention last year in London, and the longest line for autographs by far was for Hayden Christensen. And so I think, like, since then, we do have to acknowledge that, like, that era and those characters is actually what's kind of sustaining Star Wars at a time when fans aren't getting new movies or new breakaway storylines. The last thing I wanted to ask you is that you have been working on the sprawling look at the Star Wars universe, and I mean that in a good way.

And you've got, like you said, about 50 years to take in. How much of your brain has focused on the Phantom Menace compared to all the other aspects of the Star Wars universe as you have done your research? I would say it's, you know, I mean, I think, you know, when I'm putting the book together, I think about what are the hinge points. And there are always obvious hinge points in a narrative like this, and then less obvious ones. And this is a huge hinge point because for all the reasons you enumerated here, right, it really showed us evidence of the machine. In some ways, I think it did define Star Wars fandom, because it allowed fans to find one another and, you know, find common cause, whether it was in anticipation or outright criticism of it

um i think it's become absolutely this like undeniable pivot for for the franchise and and even though it it wasn't the experience that so many fans wanted it to be even the fact that it was as controversial as it was, I think, has contributed to Star Wars taking on this massive presence in our culture. Because if anything, it's allowed fans to debate something. It's allowed them to rank. It's allowed them to criticize. It's allowed them to engage with Star Wars in this almost kind of like scriptural way, right? It's like something you can argue with and you can volley back and forth over. Eric Schwartzel covers the film industry for the Wall Street Journal. And right now he's working on a book about Star Wars called Empire. Though I cannot let this interview end without saying that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Eric and I

were rival bloggers covering the Pennsylvania fracking industry. Journalism. It'll take you to crazy places. Thanks so much, Eric. And when you're done with the book, come back and we'll talk about it. Absolutely. Thank you, Scott. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers. It was edited by Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. Before we go, a quick thank you to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the show. Your contribution makes it possible for NPR journalists all around the world to do their jobs, which sometimes involves going to see a movie at 2 o'clock on a Friday. Supporters also get to hear every episode in even less time with no sponsored messages.

You can learn more at plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.