The Phantom Movie

By RICHARD CORLISS

To get in, you needed a ticket, more precious than a passport out of Kosovo, and a fluorescent handstamp with the 20th Century Fox logo. Security guards, as imposing as the Fruit of Islam, eyed you through four separate checkpoints. Inside the theater, an official requested that audience members turn in anyone who might be camcording the event. George Lucas' Star Wars films may celebrate the spirit of communal rebellion, but the first critics' screening of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace in New York City last week had a sulfurous scent of the Empire about it.

Precautions may be indulged for the most avidly awaited, assiduously hyped film since Gone With the Wind. But they may also boomerang, by setting up expectations that few films could satisfy. That too was evident at the screening. Robust cheers greeted the first words of the sacred text ("A long time ago...") and the blast of John Williams' brass as the title Star Wars appeared. Later there was mild applause at Yoda's arrival. By then the impulse to ecstasy had been diluted into rote nostalgia. For whatever reason, the audience was quieter at the end than at the beginning.

All right. We know that critics aren't human. And those rabid fans who sneaked into screenings last week, then peppered the Internet with their indifference, are not Kevin and Katelyn Moviegoer. But the early murmur of unrest dented The Phantom Menace's doctrine of infallibility. Recall that last year's highly hyped, sure-hit fantasy adventure--Godzilla--was out-grossed at the North American box office by such modestly budgeted frippery as There's Something About Mary, The Waterboy and Rush Hour.

Somewhere beyond the critics' dispassion and the cultists' disappointment lies the likely response of the multiplex masses when the film opens May 19. As one woman said upon leaving the screening, "What do you want for $9?" What you get in The Phantom Menace is a panoramic entertainment with several terrific set pieces of action, stalwart acting from the Brits (and some very raw work by the kids), a precise, luscious visual design, a multilevel climactic battle and a funeral pyre that echo Return of the Jedi, and a triumphal coda from the first Star Wars film (1977). All that, and a lot of talk.

The plot is familiar to anyone with access to a computer or magazine. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), hoping to settle a dispute between the flabby Republic and an insurgent Trade Federation, find Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) on the planet Naboo. Diverted to Tatooine, they meet the boy Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), who has a mysterious force--perhaps the Force. They amass for a fierce face-off against battle droids and the malefic Darth Maul (Ray Park).

The plot is more complicated than this--and much chattier. Even the opening is talky. "Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic," the now familiar trapezoidal text-crawl tells us. "The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute." Immediately one is perplexed. A summary made sense in the earlier films; they were episodes IV, V and VI in the grand fable, and as continuations of an initially untold saga, they required some elucidation. But what's the need for back-story text in a tale that is just beginning? Can it be that Lucas was unable to dramatize these events, so he put them in the crawl? That would explain the gobs of dry exposition, devoted to blustering, filibustering debates on taxation and elections. It's all very edifying. Like...school.

This is the work of Lucas the compulsive chronicler of his own imaginary galaxy. But there are other Lucases. One is the grownup kid who loves wise heroes and fast cars. That Lucas created a terse, looming Jedi knight in the person of Qui-Gon, and orchestrated a spectacular, turbo-thrust drag race through sculpted desert rock that consumes 12 minutes and most of the audience's adrenaline supply.

There is also the Lucas who wants to dazzle filmgoers with his luxurious bestiary. The Gungan klutz Jar Jar Binks, who talks (sometimes unintelligibly) like a Muppet Peter Lorre and walks as if he had Slinkys for legs, is more annoying than endearing. But the junk dealer Watto is a little masterpiece of design: cinnamon stubble on his corrugated face, chipped rocks for teeth, the raspy voice of Brando's Godfather speaking Turkish, hummingbird wings that give him the aspect of a potbellied helicopter. He, Jar Jar and the other computer-generated critters are seamlessly integrated into live action--a superb technological achievement for Lucas' team.

One suspects that Lucas was more interested in the aliens than the humans, and in the art direction than the direction of actors. The vistas of the imperial city Coruscant and the Gungan sea kingdom have a suave rapture; but some of the dialogue scenes are way too starchy, as if the actors had been left to their own resources while George minded the computerized menagerie. (The line readings of Portman and Lloyd are often flat, or flat-out wrong.) Neeson gives Qui-Gon a flinty dignity; Pernilla August, her weathered face streaked with love and foreboding, brings heft to the small role of Anakin's mother; and Ian McDiarmid is all oily ingratiation as Senator Palpatine. Ah, Palpatine: his name could be a hill of Rome, or a palpitating volcano--one that we know will explode in later episodes as he devolves into the dark Emperor.

We know so much in this first chapter--and not because of the prerelease hype. We know that plucky Anakin will grow up to be Darth Vader, so the crepe of Fate hangs over his ascendancy. We are meant to root for the boy when he finds himself in a plane cockpit during the climactic battle (he could be a kid sneaking a drive in his dad's Lamborghini), yet we know that the budding hero will later be a super-villain, as if Aladdin were to grow up to be Jafar.

We know too--anyway, some of us do--that the original Star Wars was at times a stilted enterprise, and that, as secret alliances and bloodlines were revealed, the series matured, grew into emotional resonance. For now, The Phantom Menace is a phantom movie, the merest hint of a terrific saga that the final two episodes of the new trilogy may reveal. At least, that's what we, and Hollywood, want to believe. Hype, after all, is just moviespeak for hope.