The Phantom Menace

Entry 02 · Chronological Order

1999 · Film · 136 min · The beginning of everything, apparently

A movie that feels exactly like someone handed a genius $115 million and zero notes. For better and worse. Mostly worse. But sometimes better than you remember.

The Take

I went in braced for pain. I came out confused — not because it’s secretly good, but because it’s more interesting than its reputation. The Phantom Menace is a deeply strange movie. It’s slow in all the wrong places and electric in a few right ones, and the disconnect between those two things is jarring every time.

Qui-Gon Jinn remains underrated and I will die on that hill. Liam Neeson is doing real work here — grounded, slightly weary, genuinely paternal — in a movie that mostly doesn’t deserve him. Watching him now, knowing he doesn’t make it to the end, adds a layer that wasn’t there the first time.

Jar Jar is… fine? He’s annoying, yes. But I was nine when this came out and I think the discourse warped my memory of how much screen time he actually gets. He’s not the problem. The problem is the Trade Federation blockade plot, which makes my eyes glaze over like I’m watching a C-SPAN recap of galactic tariff negotiations.

Galaxy Brain Moment

🧠 Never caught this before: Palpatine is in this movie as both Senator Palpatine and Darth Sidious and nobody in the Republic bats an eye. Not because the disguise is convincing — it’s barely a robe change — but because people only see what they’re looking for. Rewatching after Andor hit different. The banality of how evil slides in is the whole point of the prequel era, and it starts right here.

One More Thing

The podrace is still excellent. Duel of the Fates is still a top-5 Star Wars piece of music. The lightsaber fight at the end is legitimately the most kinetic combat in the entire saga. The movie earns none of these things based on the 90 minutes that precede them, and yet here we are.

Gut Check

6/10 — Better than I talked myself into hating, worse than it had any right to be. A flawed foundation that somehow holds up a saga. On to Attack of the Clones, which I am much less optimistic about.