Red Letter Media’s ‘The Phantom Menace’ Review
Folks it is ten years since The Phantom Menace was released. Funny hunh. Seems so long ago.
An impression perhaps reinforced due to the divorce between our expectations of the film and the eventual result. This abiding sense of disappointment has become something of a joke in years since, with pop culture shows often riffing on the fanboy rage that followed. Everything from Tim Bisley’s anti Jar-Jar rant in Spaced, to Liz Lemon interrupting a date to express her distate for Attack of the Clones in 30 Rock, is testament to the bemused contempt with which the Star Wars prequels are now viewed.
Simon Pegg has always been a very vocal critic of the films, using Spaced as something of a platform for his love/hate relationship with the franchise. So it is no surprise that he was behind my discovery of last night. Retweeting a message from Lost’s Damon Lindelof containing a link to a youtube video said to be ‘life changing’, I found a seven-part review of The Phantom Menace, released by Mike from Red Letter Media.
The identity of the reviewer himself is never revealed during the video – for reasons that become apparent later – which is composed of multiple freeze-frame gags and scenes from the prequels narrated in a monotonous voice, dripping with weary contempt. Scifiwire.com gives an early article on the proceedings here.
As the ‘review’ progresses, which is more a diatribe on Lucas’ seeming inability to recapture his glory days and his failure as writer/director to establish such basics as plot, character and structure within the prequels, disturbing hints as to Mike’s identity emerge. He makes reference in his deadened voice to several bizarre acts and a troubled family life, until we discover he is a fully fledged homicidal sociopath.
At this point the review is transformed into an all-out satire on Star Wars fandom and the excesses encouraged by Lucasfilm itself. Footage of fanboys screaming as they launch themselves into the cinema screening the first prequel is all-too-reminiscent of Twifans. We also have samples of interviews from Rick Baker and Lucas himself discussing the seeding of background characters in the films, for later toy-franchising. Then we cut to a younger, trimmer Lucas in the 1970’s discussing how special effects should only be used as a tool and that the importance of story is paramount.
The comparison is clear. The earlier films are again and again shown to be the product of passionate imagination and a desire to tell a story that is compelling to audiences. The prequels, fatally, focus on expanding the franchise, with a plot composed more out of box-ticking exercises, thinly fleshing out the mentions of Obi Wan and Anakin’s penultimate duel, or the often-speculated upon Clone Wars.
They say revenge is a dish best served cold. This is a poison letter that was ten years in the offing. Watch all seven episodes, they are seventy minutes of surreal wonderment.
Tags: 30 Rock, Attack of the Clones, Clone Wars, Damon Lindelof, fanboys, George Lucas, Jar-Jar Binks, Liz Lemon, Lost, Lucasfilm, Mike, Red Letter Media, Revenge of the Sith, Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Part 1 of 7), Rick Baker, scifiwire.com, Simon Pegg, Spaced, The Phantom Menace, Tim Bisley, Twifans, twitter, youtube
December 19th, 2009 at 9:07 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Issy Phelps, Issy Phelps. Issy Phelps said: @spacetweek It's great isn't it? #Red Letter Media http://www.somnopolis.net/2009/12/18/red-letter-medias-the-phantom-menace-review/ [...]
December 19th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I got to watch the clip at last. Freaking hilarious. I love the aspect of trying to describe the characters in “Phantom Menace” at the end. Can anyone describe the characters? I thought I could. Isn’t Padme a protocol droid? Isn’t Qui-Gon an awful sword fighter.
I submit again that Lucas’ influence is 40s and 50s films, serials, melodramas, and pulps. He doesn’t try to update the storytelling, just use them, and that’s why we see PM as a flat boring movie.
I love how the clips point out that we *don’t* have a main protagonist, which is crucial in film. As an ensemble it fails greatly.
December 20th, 2009 at 9:25 am
If you watch until the last episode, there’s a great bit when Lucas, McCallum and the editor sit down and watch the final cut.
The dismay is palpable, until Lucas begins to insist that actually the chopping and changing of the action towards the end is ’stylistically bold!’
December 21st, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Watched all 70 mins. Wonderful. Not only does he dissect in an alarmingly well-researched way the entire movie with all assertions backed up by clips, but he even has Lucas’s number in a broader sense. By distancing himself from studios, and giving himself total control, he ended up surrounded by yes-men, who never reined him in. When you are all-powerful, you end up all-corrupted.
Rubbish movie in every possible way.
Personally, I took a long time to come to terms with this. I remember coming out of the cinema and thinking it was awesome, as did my friends. A few days later, I encountered a guy in work who had an argument with me about how it sucked – and proceeded to list all the ways it had sucked. By the time I accepted his points – Obi Wan was unconvincing (played by a nationalist Scot with a faux-English accent), Qi-Gon was just horrible, Jar Jar was despicable, the plot was boring and political, the silly Jim Henson-style aliens were out of character with the originals, there was too much use of CGI, the battle scenes were too cluttered – I was left with only one conclusion, but even then it took the thoroughly awful second and slightly-better third installments before I could bring myself to admit they’d been a triptych of disaster.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Yes I remember I was with you for the Sith screening. If memory serves the only reason we survived that afternoon with smiles on our faces was due to our walking in to see Ong Bak immediately afterwards.
Watch the other Red Letter Media reviews. They are not as strong as his Star Wars entry, but his take on the generally endorsed Star Trek: First Contact is also very cutting and hard to argue with.
A pizza roll loving psychopath is somehow an incisive film critic. Hunh.