Summary: Today we have a review of The Phantom Menace by philosopher Kelley Ross. He looks beyond the CGI and Hollywood glitz to see the underlying themes. There is much to examine. The depth of the Star Wars films accounts for much of their enduring popularity.
Review of Star Wars: Episode I,
The Phantom Menace
Staring Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, and Jake Lloyd.
Directed and written by George Lucas.
Review by Kelley L. Ross,
Posted at Friesian.
Re-posted with his generous permission.
…It is the first movie since Titanic
Liam Neeson (as Qui-gon Jinn), Natalie Portman (as Queen Amidala), and Jake Lloyd (as Anakin Skywalker) are perfect and convincing in their roles. Neeson is what we always needed to see about a mature, functioning Jedi, going about the business of defending peace and justice. He does it most convincingly, right from the beginning, as we might expect from the man responsible for the portrayal of Oscar Schindler. We see quite a bit more of Neeson in Phantom than we did of Alec Guiness in the original Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope)
Perhaps after many years of Homer Simpson, Ed Bundy, and contempt for the 50’s ethos of Father Knows Best
- sexual harassment,
- child molestation, or
- being gay.
Qui-gon’s death at the climax of the film is stunning and moving, the loss of a father figure for both Obi-Wan and Anakin. He is the first person killed in a sword fight, against his will, in a Star Wars movie — Obi-Wan, as all will remember, allowed himself to be killed by Darth Vader. (Luke lays about with his light saber, especially against Jabba the Hutt, but never kills anyone in a sword-to-sword fight.) This is the frightening nadir of the fortunes of good in Phantom. Obi-Wan, obviously agitated, with feelings we have no difficulty understanding, dramatically rises to the occasion, killing Darth Maul in turn, with about the most decisive sword strike imaginable. Thus, the “battle of the fates,” as the sound track calls it, begins with three and ends with only one. We have not seen anything like this in other Star Wars movies, and the sword fight itself is probably one of the greatest in the history of cinema, hard on the heels of the great fight between Luke and Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back
Louis Menand’s thesis is that in the original Star Wars series the relationship between Luke and Han “make those first three movies essentially what Hollywood calls ‘buddy pictures’.” This is nonsense. “Buddies” in “buddy pictures” are peers who hang out together and do things. Luke and Han are not even friends before the end of Star Wars, and they are not even together for the entire length of The Empire Strikes Back after Han saves Luke from the cold at the beginning. This does not make for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
This, indeed, is the theme of the Star Wars movies: fatherhood. Luke’s foster father, “Uncle Owen,” is totally worthless as a real father for Luke: he cannot even protect himself from becoming the only grisly, horror-movie-like corpse shown in the entire epic. Meanwhile, however, Luke has found a true father figure, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who immediately bestows on him his paternal inheritance: the light saber of a Jedi. While Obi-Wan gets Luke started, his status is not permanent. Losing him, Luke gains another father figure in The Empire Strikes Back in Yoda. This is then complicated by the confrontation with and revelation of his real father, Darth Vader. Surviving that, Return of the Jedi
This is the force of Qui-gon’s character in The Phantom Menace: He is a true, albeit spiritual, father in the full, confident exercise of his powers at their height. Obi-Wan is not, as Menand says, Qui-gon’s “side-kick,” but his apprentice. Menand complains that the movie “most glaringly omits” friendship, but he doesn’t seem to notice the regard and affection that Qui-gon and Obi-Wan have for each other, or of Anakin and his mother for each other — something rather more than friendship — or the actual friendship that springs up between Anakin and Padme. But this is not all: Anakin does not have a father at all, and Qui-gon and Obi-Wan become, in turn, fathers for him.
This picks up the search-for-fatherhood theme in the first three movies, as the death of Qui-gon echoes the deaths of Obi-Wan and Yoda. So it is hopeless looking for Butch Cassidy in Qui-gon. He is, indeed, far more like the Robert Young of Father Knows Best (a “stolid” fellow, to be sure). In his eagerness to dismiss Star Wars as “entertainment for eight-year-old boys,” and little more than a license to print money for George Lucas, Menand applies a Hollywood cookie-cutter (“buddy movies”) and overlooks the powerful, consistent theme of all four movies.
Before moving on, I might ask: Does Qui-gon “know best”? Did he do the right thing? After the Jedi Council refuses to train Anakin or allow Qui-gon to train him, Obi-Wan says to him, “They all sense that he is dangerous, why can’t you?” Qui-gon then flatly says that he is not dangerous. We seem to know better, since we know that Anakin will become Darth Vader. We already have a sense that Obi-Wan can see things that Qui-gon cannot, since Obi-Wan’s very first line in the movie — a familiar one from the previous films — is, “I have a bad feeling about this.” Qui-gon senses nothing of the sort. We thus might think that Qui-gon is simply deficient in his clairvoyance and consequently makes a catastrophic mistake when it comes to Anakin.
On the other hand, Qui-gon is substantially responsible for the victory of good in Phantom. Because Qui-gon takes the trouble to free Jar Jar Binks from the Gungans, despite Obi-Wan’s objection, a connection to the Gungans is established that later is exploited by the Queen, bringing the Gungans into the conflict. Qui-gon’s rationale for this at the time is that Jar Jar would be valuable as a navigator, but then he tells Jar Jar himself that the Force will guide them through the planet core. Qui-gon can only have sensed some other need for Jar Jar. Even on Tatooine, Obi-Wan is still thinking of Jar Jar as a “pathetic life form,” putting Anakin in that category also. Qui-gon corrects, if not rebukes, him for that, and, as it happens, it is Anakin alone who is later able to destroy the Federation battleship and render the Federation ‘droid army useless. Whatever happens to Anakin in the future, he is essential to the success of the action, on both Tatooine and Naboo, in Phantom. So, it seems, Qui-gon does see some things that Obi-Wan and others cannot in Phantom.
So what goes wrong in the future? In Jedi, Obi-Wan blames himself for what happens to Anakin. Exactly what happens remains to be seen. Anakin is eventually the one, it must be remembered, who is able to kill the Emperor. Qui-gon, in that respect, was ultimately right. Whether that could have been done more promptly and with less grief (like the destruction of Aldaran) is a question that can only answered in terms of the next movies.
What may confuse some critics about Natalie Portman is the majestas of her character as Queen Amidala, numinous (i.e., a spiritual quality) and commensurate with the incredible, kabuki-like costumes she gets to wear (which some seem to think are ridiculous, having, I supposed, missed Elizabeth and Shakespeare In Love
She does it perfectly, and the movie really depends on her, since the payoff results from her assertion, initiative, and decisiveness. Queen Amidala, to put it without overstatement, saves the day. She makes the crucial decision to abandon reliance on the Republic and the Senate and to go to war; and when no one else can imagine what she can do, she has learned from Jar Jar Binks (or just been reminded) that there is an unexpected army she can appeal to for help. She surprises the underestimations of Lord Sidious, the ultimate “Phantom Menace” (who is never revealed to the protagonists in this film).
Amidala’s character compares favorably with Queen Elizabeth in the recent Elizabeth (1998)
Her willingness to follow Qui-gon’s judgment is reminiscent of Machiavelli’s maxim, “A prince who is not wise himself cannot be wisely counseled.” Amidala displays nothing but wisdom. Confucius says (The Analects
At the same time, it puts Amidala in a further favorable light that, although Padme complains more than once about Qui-gon’s actions on Tatooine, she maintains discipline and does not blow her cover, revealing that she really is the Queen, to try and command Qui-gon. It is hard to imagine most monarchs, or anyone accustomed to command and obedience, to so restrain themselves. Note that Amidala is also a good shot, personally dropping three androids during the shootout in her throne room.
Jake Lloyd’s Anakin …also does a perfect job of getting the character right. Anakin is a good kid. He is smart and says so, but he does not come off as a smart-aleck. He is not the “standard-issue” wise cracking kid. A revealing moment is when he is nearly run over by Darth Maul and Qui-gon shouts to him, “Anakin, drop!” and the boy, without a question or a wise crack, simply does so. He does not want to leave his mother, and much later tells Qui-gon that he doesn’t want to be “a problem.” This does not make for the kind of irritating or insolent child that has become all too familiar from recent movies, but for a very sympathetic boy, whom we can well imagine as a worthy mate for Queen Amidala. His dream that he would return to Tatooine as a Jedi and free the slaves, including his mother, is sure to mean that he will do so in the next movie.
The plotline of Phantom is not {as some reviewers say} “murky” or “impenetrable.” It is as simple and straightforward as the plots of all the other Star Wars movies: We go from Naboo, to Tatooine, to Coruscant, and back to Naboo. On Tatooine, we are delayed by the problem of parts, which is solved by Anakin, who is also added to the company. At Coruscant the Queen decides to return to Naboo and fight. This not confusing. Exactly what the original dispute was about (trade and taxes) is never really explained, but then it doesn’t need to be: That dispute was just a pretext for the blockade and attack on Naboo.
There is, indeed, greater complexity in the ending than in other Star Wars movies. Where the final action of the original Star Wars was just the fighter attack on the Death Star, with everyone else just watching, Phantom ends with
- a fighter attack on the Federation Battleship,
- a land battle between the Gungans and the android army of the Federation,
- the Queen’s attack to capture the Federation Viceroy, and
- the sword fight between Qui-gon and Obi-Wan and Darth Maul.
This is a lot of action, but not anything that is confusing or hard to keep track of. Instead, it is masterful movie making and story telling. It is also an improvement over Return of the Jedi, where the Ewoks did not make a very convincing battle force against a “legion” of the Emperor’s crack troops, and where the confrontation between Luke, the Emperor, and Darth Vader contained a bit more talk than action.
The warmth and “emotional pull” of the film has been noted, just how it could be called “humorless” is unbelievable. The Jar Jar Binks character is comic relief from the beginning, but then, as we later discover, he is much more than that. The two-headed announcer at the “pod” race on Tatooine has got to be one of the most inspired bits in recent memory. Anyone who failed to see the humor of the movie thus must have been out talking on their cellphone.
“Overly reverential” must just mean that the characters are taken seriously. This not a fault. We have not seen anyone quite like Qui-gon or Queen Amidala before in Star Wars, but they are as they should be. They are paragons of virtue, which is to be expected in a story about good or evil. That is what Star Wars was always about. There are not a lot of morally ambivalent protagonists or antagonists here. No anti-heroes. This is the kind of thing that the critics didn’t like in the first place. Cynicism and ambiguity is what we have come to expect in movies. Star Wars was not the place for it, though it has before it the considerable difficulty of representing how the young Anakin can later “turn” to the Dark Side and become Darth Vader. Meanwhile, it is challenge enough to just to deal with people who are as good as Duddley Do-Right but are not meant to be a joke. Instead, there is a depth to what they are.
“Depth” is probably not a word most people would associate with Star Wars. But the religious elements of the story are unmistakable. That Anakin is the result of a virgin birth is at once too obvious and must seem at the same time of unclear significance (it was apparently part of the prophecy about the “Chosen One” — and now we can see that, in terms of the fatherhood theme of the Star Wars movies, it eliminates the need for a “false father,” like Uncle Owen, and sets the story on its path to true fatherhood).
Less obvious but much clearer is the theory of the “Force” and the nature of the discipline of someone like Qui-gon. The Jedi hold their swords like samurai swords, and their views and discipline sound like nothing so much as Taoism or Zen Buddhism, which have influenced the ideology of the martial arts. The nature of the light saber, which reflects back laser shots to the shooter, is characteristic of the “Submissive Way” (Chinese , Japanese judô) theory of Taoism, by which the attack of an opponent is turned upon them. This can all be bastardized and misrepresented (almost unavoidable when dealing with Zen), and we certainly would like some more details and background than we get in the movies, where much of the talk about the Force has become a bit repetitious, but three things stand out.
- The “Force,” even if impersonal, rather than a personal God, can be traced to legitimate, historical, religious ideas (i.e. the Tao, the Brahman, the Buddha Dharma, or the Heaven of Confucius).
- Something of the sort can be taken seriously, even if Lucas himself may not necessarily believe in the supernatural powers of its adepts.
- The “Dark Side” of the Force is something definitely present in Taoism and Zen but which those traditions have not been very good at acknowledging.
The Dark Side of the Force probably owes more to Jung and his theory of the “Shadow” than to the more obvious antecedents. Indeed, the “Dark Side of the Tao” should be taken as an important novel metaphysical theory and religious conception. Further religious overtones of Phantom include Queen Amidala’s name, which looks suspiciously like the Japanese name of the Buddha Amida (Sanskrit Amitabha), and this suspicion is reinforced when we realize that the name of her alter ego, Padme, is Sanskrit for “Lotus” (in the locative case), taken out of the famous mantra Om mane padme hum, “the Jewel is in the Lotus.”
The constant exhortations of Yoda to avoid anger and hatred are consistent, not only with Buddhism, but also with Christianity and with much of the ethics of Hellenistic philosophy. Jesus says, “I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment” [Matthew 5:22]. The Buddha said that what he has taught, “has to do with the fundaments of religion, and tends to aversion, absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, knowledge, supreme wisdom, and Nirvana” (Buddhism in Translations
Now, as it happens, I think this theory is mistaken, and I do not believe that an “absence of passion” is a proper ideal. There is nothing wrong with anger or hatred in themselves, as long as they are directed to their proper objects, injustice and evil, and expressed in proportion to the magnitude of the wrong or the evil. Obi-Wan clearly fights Darth Maul with a great deal of passion. To think that these passions are wrong in themselves is a case of judicial moralism of feeling. Nevertheless, it is not a serious criticism of Star Wars to find fault with that theory, since it is well within the traditions of Christianity, Buddhism, and the history of philosophy. That it expresses the theory at all is astonishing enough in movies that are not taken seriously for a minute by the intelligentsia, or the move critics. Instead, we have the subtle and popular presentation of ideals of religious and moral nobility, instantly recognized by the naive, if not by the sophisticated.
The path to the Dark Side is not through fear or anger but through a vicious will. Such a will may be from an innate character (what Schopenhauer thought), from an improper upbringing, or from bad ideas. It is still not clear whether some people are innately vicious, although sometimes this seems like the only explanation for the behavior and attitudes of certain people. Improper unbringing fails to instill those virtues of conscientiousness, prudence, manners, humanity, etc., that are the proper matters of custom and habit, as described by “Aristotle’s virtue ethics.” Or, a well behaved child can fall in with bad company, especially at adolescence. This may also reflect innate propensities.
Bad company, however, can also mean bad ideas, which corrupt reason and judgment. American military observers with the German Army in World War I (before the United States entered the war), heard a great deal of the sort of social and political Darwinism that had been popularized by Friedrich Nietzsche. Later, enthusiastic Communist functionaries would strip the Ukraine of food, leaving the people to starve, all with the confidence and self-righteousness characteristic of Leftist politics. Thus, the Emperor should not have been telling Luke to let go with his hatred, he should have been telling him, like Nietzsche or Thrasymachus, that justice is the will of the stronger, or even like the Nietzschean Voldemort, that “There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”
Unfortunately, it would not be politically correct of Geroge Lucas to go in that direction, since talk about nothing but power, from a conceputal mash of Nietzsche and Marx, is all too popular among academics and the intelligentsia. Indeed, the economic ideas in the Star Wars movies are bad enough that Lucas in general looks like a willing adherent of the fashion, despite the sins that are occasionally spotted in the triviality of his themes and their [gasp] fantastic commercial success.
The other two Star Wars prequel films.
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About the author
Dr. Kelley Ross retired in 2009 after 22 years as an instructor at the Department of Philosophy of Los Angeles Valley College. See his LinkedIn profile. He joined the Libertarian Party in 1992 and has run several times for the California State Assembly and Congress.
Heis the editor of The Proceedings of the Friesian School website, which has a wide range of fascinating material about philosophy, literature, film, and art.
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Trailer for The Phantom Menace
