Howard The Duck

Duck To The Future

Howard The Duck
(aka Howard - A New Breed Of Hero)
USA 1986 Directed by Willard Huyck
101 Films  Blu Ray Zone B

I didn’t see Howard The Duck at the cinema when it was first released back in 1986. I probably should have, given some of the similar big budget franchise movies of a certain style I saw that were biting into the box office at the time but the character was not one I was all that familiar with. I’d never read a Howard The Duck comic (still haven’t that I can remember but, you know, that will change) and for some reason this just didn’t appeal to me. It was no tragedy for me at the time when I realised it had disappeared from cinemas, even though the main driving force behind the picture was über director George Lucas, who the world was about to find out ‘could’ bankroll a bad movie after all. Well, it’s not that bad but I’m sure most people reading this will know the reputation of this flick as being right up there with Plan 9 From Outer Space as being one of the worst movies ever made.

The reason I wanted to see this movie was because of the score or, rather, the partially rejected score. I already had a bootleg CD of the original LP release backed up with a bootleg of The Black Hole (both scores have now been commercially released in expanded and properly mastered versions... hooray!) but was happy to replace it towards the end of last year when music label Intrada released a definitive three CD set of, not just John Barry’s full score (including the stuff which never made it into the movie) but also the parts of the score rewritten by the likes of Sylvester Levay, who used Barry’s themes for the other parts to make everything in the final cut of the movie sound pretty seamless. And it’s a nice Barry score, typical of the decade in which he wrote it, sounding like the lush writing of the more romantic side of the composer juxtaposed with that hard hitting, heroic action scoring that the composer used in his scores for the James Bond films. It also sounded like it should be a total mismatch of a composer for that specific kind of project to me... so I wanted to see the film to experience how it was all meant to fit together. And, yeah, I was right... it is a bit of a mismatch in terms of the tone of the film, I think. Barry plays it dead straight a lot of the time when perhaps a more overtly comical score may have suited the material better.

Even so, I’d have to say that the score is absolutely much better than the movie it was composed for... but having seen the movie now I’m here to tell you that, you know, perhaps it really doesn’t live up to its reputation. Or rather, down to its reputation. I’m here to say quite positively, its not even close to being one of the worst movies ever made (I think I’ve seen lots of others which could perhaps hold that title) and it’s actually not all that different from many of the blockbusters which were doing the rounds at the time.

What it has got is an extra ‘adult’ sensibility which is presumably part of the original comics on which it was based but, since it was being released as a family film, the elements of sleaziness and adult humour have been toned down quite a bit. Instead, we have this weird alliance of kiddy flick and sex references that certainly make some sequences rather questionable... at least in terms of today's watered down, 'don’t be offending anyone with your art dude', silliness attitudes to practically everything going on in the world. Honestly, I take a stroll down my Twitter timeline these days and I’m almost convinced I’m living in Victorian times.

So when Howard finds himself a fish... er... duck out of water on the planet Earth, he goes to the employment agency and they give him a job working on maintenance in a local brothel. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. There’s also a scene where the lead female actress, Lea Thompson, finds a condom in Howard’s wallet and a long scene where she tries to seduce Howard in her lingerie. Except, it’s really weird because Howard is fighting her off in this scene and that goes against everything we’ve been told about the titular duck so far in the story. There’s not a lot of character continuity in this film folks, for sure.

I have to give a huge shout out to Lea Thompson in this, though. I’ve not seen her in much and never really thought that much of her but seeing her here where she’s practically carrying the movie and also looking very beautiful too (which is another word I might not have used about her in something like, for instance, her presence in Back To The Future), she really does an absolutely fantastic job. Maybe I should check her out in some other things... if anyone has any recommendations, drop them in the comments box below.

She’s also ably supported by Jeffrey Jones, playing a good guy mad scientist accidentally responsible for bringing Howard The Duck to our dimension, who halfway through the film becomes the host body to the film’s primary antagonist... and also a very young Tim Robbins, who really goes out of his way doing truly silly and embarrassing stuff so, power to him for going with it, I guess.

The film is a bunch of action set pieces, often kinda forced into scenes almost as padding, in between attempts at adult humour (without being allowed to show anything truly adult but getting real close to it on occasion and, when it comes to things like topless duck centre spreads in Howard’s issue of Playduck, I think it’s very much a matter of personal opinion as to whether this film was given the right rating), gazillions of duck puns and... not much else, it has to be said.

And I honestly didn’t hate it. Sure, there are some sequences with scientifically questionable moments filled with silliness that will make you cringe but, honestly, that’s most big budget 1980s movies isn’t it? It’s obviously not as good as, say, Back To The Future or the first Gremlins movie (although Howard walks all over Gremlins 2 - The Next batch, I reckon) but the style and presentation of the content really isn’t all that different from films like these and I have to wonder why this one bombed so badly at the box office. Like I said, it isn’t exactly the worst film ever made.

101 Films have done an amazing job bringing this to us in a new Blu Ray transfer (but why?) and there are a fair few extras on here too, not least of which is a second commentary track by soundtrack guru Charlie Brigden and Dan Whitehead, which is well worth a listen. I discovered from this commentary that, if you don’t count the ‘repackaged for cinema’ TV shows that Marvel had occasionally released overseas, that this was Marvel’s first live action film of one of their comic books. It’s fitting then that the duck in question has been getting a few cameos of late in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films.

All in all, I can’t say I’d recommend or even wish the movie version of Howard The Duck on anyone I know but if you do end up watching it, I don’t think you’ll actually hate it. You might question its values somewhat but it certainly won’t hurt you either, I think. I might even watch it again someday but, certainly, not for a long time.

Wordsworth Classics Guest Blog

Will The Real Protagonist Please Stand Up?

My look at the two main archetypes of heroes in literature and film can be found here as a guest blog at Wordsworth Editions.

Star Wars - Episode VI - Return Of The Jedi

Abaracad-Ackbar

Star Wars - Episode VI - Return Of The Jedi
1983 USA 
Directed by Richard Marquand
20th Century Fox UK Blu Ray Zone B

By the time Return Of The Jedi was released into cinemas in 1983, things had gotten really weird. I was 15 and any Star Wars fantasies I was still having mainly centred around Princess Leia being in the same room as Caroline Munro, Sybil Danning and Valerie Perrine. The other kids had all gotten to the age where they had given up collecting their much prized Star Wars action figures (I was soon to follow this trend) and were pursuing rock music and turning their back on film scores (something I never learned to do... film music is just so versatile and rewarding compared to most other stuff).

I was still a die hard Star Wars fan, though, and I remember going into London with my parents, once more, for what was to be (and still in some ways is, depending on a certain point of view), the very last movie in the series... ever. I’d not bothered to read the comic book adaptation this time, I think. I was saving it until after the movie... so I didn’t have much in the way of spoilers (although I’d worked out Leia probably had a family connection with Luke a couple of years before). I was pretty sure nobody would ever get to making the other six films that would allegedly complete the three trilogys. Movies were too expensive and signs weren’t looking good at around this time for there being any continuation in the series.

When I finally saw it I was kinda thrilled all over again... not as thrilled as the three middle aged guys sitting in front of us who were screaming their heads off but, still... pretty good seeing it up there on a huge screen in London’s Leicester Square (I can’t quite remember which cinema it was I saw the third movie in... I think it may have been the Empire). There were some very strange and disappointing things about it though... including, of course, the cutesy Ewoks. Did we really need that in a Star Wars movie? Also, why the heck did Jabba the Hutt, who I knew as a fairly humanoid life form from his portrayal in the Marvel comics adaptation of the original Star Wars movie, suddenly look like a big slug. How was this continuity? I wonder, now, when those issues are reprinted these days, if the panels are re-drawn to accommodate what Jabba eventually became when he was retro-fitted back into Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope, many years later.

Return Of The Jedi was great but I had one really big criticism of the movie when I saw it then and now, as I watch it again in a new version on Blu Ray, I have to say that this is still a very valid criticism... What the heck happened to Han Solo?

In the first two Star Wars films he’d been the cool space pirate who always got the upper hand and, you know, shot first and asked questions later. We already knew that Harrison Ford could actually be a great actor because we’d all seen him the year before in what turned out to be, not just his greatest film, but the greatest film ever projected on a cinema screen of all time... Blade Runner (my review here). His performance as Han Solo should have been a natural for him here but instead, we get a strangely comic and overly theatrical portrayal of the character. Everything Ford does with Solo here seems exaggerated beyond belief, like he was playing Han Solo for a local, dodgy Christmas pantomime... as opposed to one of the highest grossing movies of all time. I’m not blaming Ford necessarily, he might have been directed to behave this way in front of the camera, but it doesn’t change the fact that we have a largely dumbed down version of the character in this episode. This was a real disappointment and left a slightly bitter taste in the mouth. If course, years later, when Lucas released the special editions into cinemas ahead of the release of The Phantom Menace (reviewed here) Solo’s character had been further dumbed down in the original film by having Greedo shoot first. This caused a lot of hostility from the fans towards Lucas, I believe, and is probably still a hot topic for many.

Solo and cutesy suits and puppets aside, however, we have a film with some blisteringly good set pieces to it. Luke is dressed in a black costume which, we were told at the time, was deliberately done to blur the lines of good and evil when he confronts Darth Vader. Either way, his rescue of Leia, Chewbacca, Han, Lando, C3PO and R2D2 is absolutely fantastic and, coupled with Johnny Williams awesome music, which in this sequence is a medley of several melodies used in the original movie, it’s absolutely irresistible film making. Similarly, the speeder bike rides through the forests of Endor are absolutely triumphant in their execution and still cause great excitement.

Finally, the whole last half and hour or so cross cuts from three sets of protagonists having three separate styles of battle scene and it’s absolutely tremendous. The boisterous action of the forest battle is cross cut with Lando Calrissian taking on the new Death Star in the Millennium Falcon (backed up by the whole rebel fleet in some spectacular shots) while Luke is still on board said battle station and engaged in a light sabre dual with Darth Vader... this is all good stuff and makes for a movie which mostly consists of dessert, in that it delivers action treat after action treat.

Most of the performances (asides from Harrison Ford in this one) are fine, the music is suitably iconic and rousing, the special effects were state of the art (for their day) and the story line, wearing a lot of its influences on its sleeve again, is far from dull and will have you riveted to your seat. Unfortunately in terms of both the cinema release special edition and the new blu ray edition, the various Lucas revisions make for a far worse time than you would have had with the original movie. Some of the best score cuts, the song Lapti Neck and the original Ewok Celebration, are excised and replaced with much less hummable pieces of music and the footage replacing some of the key scenes in the movie is absolutely horrible. Worse than that, on the blu ray edition, we have the ridiculous Darth Vader “Nooooo. Noooooo.” shouts as he completes his final act of redemption. Seriously George, it was a lot subtler without that blindingly stupid addition... trust me on this one.

Still, even with all the terrible later editions and replacement effects on the Blu Ray versions, Return Of The Jedi is still a classically good Star Wars movie, although I think it’s the least best of the original trilogy and my fourth favourite Star Wars movie so far (I really liked The Phantom Menace a bit more than this one... sorry about that). Like all the films from the original trilogy, IV - VI, I much prefer the original cinema releases over the overly tampered editions (which I still have as extras on one of the sets of DVD versions from over the years) but even in its new form, Return Of The Jedi is still a solid entry in the series from a franchise that has now awakened once again. The release of the seventh instalment is less than a year away as this review goes up on the site and I liked what I’ve seen on the first teaser trailer just fine, so far. Of course, time will tell on that one but I hope to be reviewing it on here then so, please, check back here when the new one comes out to see what I make of it... I’ve got high hopes and mixed feelings about it, to be honest.

Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Final Bespination

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back 
1980 plus subsequent ruinations USA 
Directed by Irvin Kershner
20th Century Fox BluRay Region A/B 

So the first Star Wars had a considerable impact on the Western world. Adults and children alike were seemingly talking about nothing else for the three years we had to wait for the sequel. I remember I must have read those two volumes of Marvel Treasury adaptations of the first film about 50 times in the intervening years... along with starting my big ring binders full of Star Wars sketches, articles and notes. I even “published” a single issue of a science fiction magazine for some of the kids at school... armed with my mum’s typewriter, some scissors to cut photos out of the newspapers, some glue to stick them down on the page next to the type and, with the help of the photocopier in my dad’s office... I put out something that would look amateurish by today's standards but was looking pretty good to me as a kid. I think it would be safe to say, and this may have even been a tag line on one of the posters, that The Empire Strikes Back was “the most eagerly awaited sequel of all time”. This in a time when sequels were no longer a standard thing in Hollywood.

It’s interesting but, in those days, the notion of having spoilers was not really an issue. I think Hitchcock had started a publicity campaign for not spoiling the ending of Psycho when it was released in 1960 but this was not really “a thing” for movies or TV shows in 1980. At least, that’s not how I remember it. So there was a lot of pre-publicity for this film and also a lot of knowledge about the content. Full disclosure in fact.

I remember reading Alan Dean Foster’s excellent Star Wars spin off novel, Splinter Of A Mind’s Eye, at least a year before the second movie hit our screens. If you’ve ever read it, it seems a pretty obvious conclusion that Leia has Jedi powers. In fact, it always puzzled me why so many people were speculating so hard about the line in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda turns to the ghost version of Obi Wan Kenobi and says... “No, there is another.” Had they not read Splinter Of A Mind’s Eye? I thought it was pretty obvious who “the other hope” was.

At least three months before Empire opened over here (and my brain is telling me that it was at least 6 months before but I have no conclusive dates to work from), there was a big exhibition of costumes, models and drawings from The Empire Strikes Back in Selfridges. I went three times at least (I tended to be in London a lot during school holidays) and it blew me away. This was the only way, at the time, to see a playback of the trailer for the movie which hadn’t hit British cinemas yet. It was amazing.

Both the novelisation and the paperback reprint of the US comic book came out over here many weeks (possibly months) before the movie was released and I remember reading the comic strip and being in awe that Darth Vader turned out to be Luke Skywalker’s father. These days, if you watch the entire saga in chronological order, it’s no longer a “surprise reveal” and so I guess even this information doesn’t count as a spoiler in any way these days. I was also quite intrigued, that the movie left the story on a cliffhanger. I kept my silence about this stuff because I didn’t want my mum and dad to know what was going to happen before they saw it but I remember my father, before we saw Empire, wondering out aloud if they would bother doing another sequel. I remember answering that they would be in real trouble if they didn’t.

When I finally saw the finished film it was in no way really spoiled by reading the comic strip adaptation (which in those days were often quite different in detail and expression than the work they were adapting anyway) and it surpassed, as far as I was concerned, the absolute brilliance of the first Star Wars movie (reviewed here). I was already pumped up by the comic strip, a couple of clips on clapperboard and a recently aired TV documentary on John Williams by that time but the movie certainly lived up to my, frankly, giant sized expectations.

To say it’s the darkest of the Star Wars saga is an understatement. The only film in the series that comes close in its portrayal of some pretty bleak events is The Phantom Menace (and many people would argue with me on that point I expect... it’s reviewed here if you want to take a look) and The Empire Strikes Back certainly lives up to the implication of its title. The heroes are basically on the run all the way through this movie, Han gets frozen and taken away for bounty after being betrayed by his friend in a less than black and white moral dilemma, Luke loses his hand and ends up becoming closer to Darth Vader in spirit when it is replaced by a mechanical version and... basically... the rebels who are the main protagonists lose at the end. A good dramatic answering call to the previous movie and a perfect set up for an upbeat, good triumphs over evil resolution for the next... something which I remember George Lucas was very aware of when interviewed about it a while later.

It’s also got some truly impressive set pieces such as the fantastic Battle Of Hoth (although I don’t like the “revised” snowspeeder details on the overhauled versions of the film) and the Millennium Falcon’s chase through the asteroid field. It’s also the feature film introduction of Bobba Fett, although he has now been retroactively “inserted” into the previous movie too. I remember sporting a very trendy Bobba Fett T-shirt the year the film was first released. His first appearance was actually 1978, of course, in the much ridiculed Star Wars TV Summer Special... something which I’ve still not quite brought myself to watch, over the years.

And, of course, the music by Johnny Williams is absolutely fantastic... even surpassing the excellent score he did for the first movie, for some listeners. Certainly, The Battle of Hoth gives us some of the most intricate and exciting action music of all time and his scoring for The Asteroid Field is one of his greatest cues. A slightly watered down version was used by him for years in concerts (the first time I saw him perform this live was in either 1981 or 1982 at the Barbican Centre in London) but even that version is great... although the less symmetrical version used in the movie is very powerful.

The use of leitmotif in the score gets a bit screwy unless you’re really concentrating. For instance, when Luke lands on Cloud City (Lucas’ echo of the city of the Hawkmen from the original Flash Gordon strip and serial... as we all recognised straight away) to rescue his friends, an action fanfare version of Yoda’s Theme is used in quite a striking way... even though Yoda has left the film by this point. I guess the justification here is Luke is going into battle fresh from the teachings of Yoda but... I don’t know. It always seemed a bit out of place though, frankly, too wonderful and powerful to really care about in terms of musical continuity at the time.

Unfortunately, this movie now also suffers from the curse of Star Wars revisionism. Lucas has added and subtracted bits over the years and made replacements to fit in with his extended continuity. Both the Emperor and his voice, for instance, now match with the later Ian McDiarmid version and there’s even an entirely new scene composed of using shots from a few sources, including Return Of The Jedi, where Luke and his father have a Jedi “mind conversation”. This last bit wasn’t in the movie before and, frankly, detracts rather than adds to the power of the final, rebels running away in defeat, wind down of the film.

All in all, though, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is still the greatest movie in the Star Wars saga. It kept people talking and speculating for the next three years while they were waiting for the third one and, as you would know if you spend any time on the internet at all, people are still talking and speculating about the continuing franchise to this day. The Star Wars series of films is probably the most powerful and popular series of films ever released in cinemas... and the initial strength of The Empire Strikes Back is one of the reasons why.

Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Cool Han, Luke

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
1977 plus subsequent ruinations USA 
Directed by George Lucas
20th Century Fox BluRay Region A/B 

So this film was pretty much my life for 6 and a bit years.

When I first saw it, back at the very end of 1977 when it was released in the UK, I was two weeks shy of my tenth birthday. It was just called Star Wars back then. Lucas had no real thoughts of it making enough money to do a sequel and it wasn’t until the 1978 thetrical re-release that he retroactively redid the opening to reflect the Episode IV: A New Hope title (many people say it was later but I remember going to see it again in 1978 with that title). I went and saw the original version at the Dominion cinema in London (now a theatre which shows musicals) and the crowd scrabbling for entry beneath the massive, giant, illuminated signage poster artwork was a leviathan of chaos.

The Dominion cinema was pretty much one of the bigger cinemas, the likes of which you just don’t get in London today. It was an ideal venue for a film which pretty much blew away most people who went and saw it. It was the biggest cinematic event I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much the hype and the pre-marketing of this film, after it had already premiered in the US, dwarfed pretty much any modern blockbuster to this day. The only thing which came near it was when I had to queue around the block for a midnight screening (at least a day after the release) of Tim Burton’s Batman back in 1989... but as big as that was in terms of media saturation, the original 1977 Star Wars was like a bomb going off in everyone’s collective consciousness. I don’t remember it playing for less than three months at my local cinema and this was in the days when cinemas had one screen only, remember.

The film is simplistic in theme and content while still retaining a gritty, lived in look for the setting. The effects were so groundbreaking that Lucas even had to set up Industrial Light and Magic part of the way into production and invent new ways of doing things, just to cope with the demands of what was required. It payed off big time... people had never seen anything as slick as this in the space opera genre on the big screen (or small, come to that) before. An homage to those old theatrical serials that Lucas loved as a kid (who doesn’t love those serials?), Star Wars was shopped around through a lot of studios before 20th Century Fox agreed to pick it up. This was after Lucas had already tried to acquire the screen rights to his beloved Flash Gordon, of course. Once he was refused, he made his own homage to Flash Gordon with his own characters... who later became Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, Obi Wan Kenobi etc... after a fair few rewrites.

The way it affected me personally was to engulf almost the whole of my life at the time.

I read the Marvel Comics, listened to the double vinyl LP record on almost constant replay, collected and swapped the two sets of blue and red bubble gum cards that came out in the UK (not knowing that the Americans had three other sets released after these until over a decade later), played with the action figures when they, eventually, hit the shelves and kept two or three ring binders full of my own sketches, notes and articles based on the first two Star Wars films. It was all I, and many of my friends, ate, breathed and slept apart from when we were eating, breathing and sleeping the various bandwagon spin off movies that followed hot on the heels of Lucas’ magnum opus (Battlestar Galactica, The Black Hole, Star Trek The Motion Picture etc.). It was a phenomenon which I don’t expect to see repeated in my lifetime.

On BluRay we have to live with the “revised through various versions to buggery” editions. So, I think it would be fair to say, the film has never looked as bad as it does now but, even with the annoying additions and alterations, you can still see a lot of the sheer genius and panache coming through which marked this film as the real deal back in the day. It’s a shame that it’s been so tinkered with on subsequent editions, where backdrops now come alive with moving CGI creatures and ships which kinda fill the screen more... but somehow leave you with less of an experience.

There are, of course, some big problems with the prequels to this film not tying up too well. I mentioned in my review of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith (which you can read here) that there’s no way Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru wouldn’t recognise C3PO, who is effectively the mechanical son of Darth Vader, when they saw him because he’d been living with them for a long period of time not even two decades before. Similarly the ageing process of both Obi Wan Kenobi and Grand Moff Tarkin, not to mention the significant amount of time it takes to construct the first Death Star in relation to the time it takes to knock up the second one for Return Of The Jedi, really doesn’t hold water when you inspect it all closely.

Now this is further nitpicking, I’m sure (nitpicking is the path to strong continuity decisions my friends) but in the scene where Obi Wan Kenobi is blatantly lying to Luke about his father... certain point of view my ass, lying is lying... he also compounds his lie with the completely unnecessary fib that his father wanted him to have his lightsabre when Luke was old enough to have it. Well excuse me but Vader assumes his one child (he doesn't know they are 'twins' in Revenge Of The Sith) died with his wife... presumably until he learns different somewhere in between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Also, although Lucas was smart enough to add a shot of Obi Wan retrieving Anakin's lightsabre, post duel, this could hardly be, by any stretch of the imagination, representative of the specific sentiment that Obi Wan expresses to Luke in this specific scene.

Another thing Obi Wan says, and you may want to attribute (aka stupidly retroactively attempt to justify) this to the effects of old age, is that he has 't gone by the name of Obi Wan since before Luke was born. Nope mate. Completely wrong. Just saw it in the last movie... you were still going by the name Obi Wan until shortly after Luke was born. So this really is not good attention to detail and both this and the previous problem of Anakin's lightsabre are both examples of many foolish mis-steps which the prequel trilogy has created where none existed before.

The film was, of course, not without it's problems when it first came out as a stand alone experience. Many of these, such as the stormtrooper who bumps his head on a door, are remembered affectionately by fans of the series but I, lunkheaded viewer that I am, only now noticed one particular one on this last viewing (even though I've probably seen the film close to 50 times since 1977). The particular case in point is when Luke and Han steal the stormtroopers' uniforms. One of the more spectacular things found in this first Star Wars movie was that "laser guns" had real, visible consequences. They were just like regular, bullet firing guns... only prettier. They ricocheted, they left scorch holes in their wake and the guns had a recoil to them. It was details like this that set Star Wars apart from many of its predecessors and, sadly, many of its successors. Why then, I ask you, after you hear the laser blasts as Luke and Han incapacitate two stormtroopers to steal their uniforms, are their costumes all squeaky clean and free from blast holes? This enquiring mind wants to know.

Asides from all the little niggling negatives, though, the original Star Wars still holds up as a really decent movie. The device that Lucas attributes as a steal from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, that of telling an extraordinary story from the viewpoint of the two lowliest characters (in this case the droids R2D2 and C3PO) works very well in dragging you right into the story straight away and engages you in a way that other films with a different starting point are not always able to do.  The plotting is simplistic but ferociously paced and doesn't let up until the end credits.  much like those old 1930s and 1940s serials that George Lucas was trying to emulate. Heck, even the opening title pyramid crawl was a particular gimmick used in a lot of the serials specific to the Universal studio... and in this particular instance it might be worth pointing out that this style of recap was used in the third of the Flash Gordon serials... Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe.

There's one last thing I want to properly mention before bringing this little review to a close because I think it's important in that this was another way in which the film has had, still to this day, a lasting impact on the way many films are made... and it was all down to John Williams', frankly, outstanding score.

Before this film, the age old way of scoring a Hollywood film with a lush, orchestral score the likes of which the Steiners, Korngolds and Newmans of this world used to provide, had gone way out of style somewhere around the late 1950s/early 1960s. Directors wanted more jazzy, funkier and transparent soundscapes for their films. The music had to be hip. It had to be cool and, mostly, it had to have a hit title song if at all possible. Now Johnny Williams (soon to be listed with the shortened, more respectable form of his first name) had already bucked that trend a little a couple of years before this movie... when he provided an absolutely brilliant score for Steven Spielberg's first film Jaws. For this film, rather than take the space aged, modernistic, computerised tones most associated with sci-fi pictures, Lucas wanted a proper, full Golden Aged Hollywood, wall to wall score for his movie and this is exactly what Williams gave him... he gave him "the full Korngold", so to speak. When the record sales for the film were in, not to mention John Williams winning his third Oscar for this score, the studios realised that, not only could romantic, classical music still work as a viable option for a film score... It was also still incredibly popular. Popular enough to get some serious cash back from the record sales. And that's why many film scores to this day still use this Golden Age approach to the scoring... because Johnny Williams proved it could still work wonders in support of a movie.

So that's all I have to say, in this particular kind of venue, about the first Star Wars movie. Still a good film and although it has many added revisions, on the Blu Ray version Lucas has at least softened the much criticised ( and rightly so) Greedo shoots first revision. On the Blu Ray the two gun shots happen faster, pretty much simultaneously, and you can kind of justify to yourself that Greedo’s blaster just went off as a muscle spasm reaction to Han's killing shot. It was kind of impossible for either of them to miss at that close range anyway.

So, yes, a marred film now but still a classic. I still have the “untampered with” versions of the original trilogy on a special DVD release from around 6 or 7 years ago and I won't be parting with those versions anytime soon.  An elegant movie from a more civilised time... not as clumsy or random as a director's cut. The greatest Star Wars movie, however, was just three years away...


Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith

The Sith Element

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
2005 USA 
Directed by George Lucas
20th Century Fox BluRay Region A/B 

Okay, so after being more than pleased with the first of the prequel films, The Phantom Menace (reviewed here) my faith in Lucas was shaken again, what with his continual meddling with the original trilogy prints and the nightmare when Attack Of The Clones was released into cinemas (my review of that one here). The sluggish pacing of the previous film meant that I wasn’t getting too excited about what we’d get in Revenge Of The Sith but I remember that I had a much better reaction to it at the time. There were some bits which didn’t quite make sense, and they still don’t (yeah, I’ll get to it later on in this review), but overall I originally had a good time with it.

Revisiting the movie now on blu ray, I have to say that my appreciation of this one has soured a little over the years and I’m not nearly as enthusiastic as I once was about this chapter in the Star Wars saga. The action sequences are spectacular, it has to be said, but also quite boring in their choreography and I did find myself slipping into lethargy this time around. The action sequences in Attack Of The Clones were much better but, having said that, the pacing in Revenge Of The Sith beats the prior episode hands down, so overall I’d have to say Attack Of The Clones is still my least favourite Star Wars movie, with this one running it a close second.

That being said, there are still some good things about it. Hayden Christensen, at least in the early scenes of the film, seems a lot more confident and really begins to inhabit the role of Anakin Skywalker, probably due to the fact that the dialogue seems less clumsy than it did in the previous movie. That being said, there still seems to be something a little bit “flipped switch” about Anakin’s fall to the dark side. I know George Lucas has been alluding to it and putting in necessary shading in the previous two films but somehow, even after the slaughter of the Tusken Raider colony in Attack Of The Clones, it still seems like a bit of a leap to me, when Anakin suddenly becomes Palpatine’s follower. Remember, he’d just got Samuel Jackson’s character Mace Windu involved to take care of Palpatine and then, all of a sudden, he’s slicing off Windu’s arm and letting Palpatine chuck the geezah out of a window. And then he’s off to slaughter Jedi.... it seems a bit much to me but, having said that, there could be good reasons for this.

Reason number 1 is... it’s hard to retrofit a series of movies to take place before a set of pre-existing movies and get them to match up (no matter how much you tinker with them and destroy everyone’s fondest childhood memories in the process) and get it absolutely perfect... even though Lucas had some elements of the basic plotline for the back story in place decades before. I know he did have at least some of it figured out because I can remember back as far as 1978, after the very first movie was released at the end of 1977 in the UK (when it was literally just called Star Wars), that I’d talk to my friends about the epic battle between Obi Wan Kenobi and his apprentice by the side of a volcanic pit, where Darth Vader fell in and had to be moved into some kind of iron lung. This movie pretty much has a variant of that scenario in it so, even then, he knew what he was doing. There’s always going to be some kind of inconsistency or lack of logic to it somewhere and, well, like I said... I’ll get to those in a while.

Reason number 2, from what I understand about this picture, is this. The first cut Lucas arrived at ran for four hours. Now, even with the initial rescue of Palpatine originally lasting for over an hour, apparently, that’s still a lot of extra on the 2 hours and 20 minutes running time that got excluded from the cinema and home video versions. This means that there could have been all kinds of subtle signals that Anakin was finally tipping over as a prelude to the actual act itself which may have been cut out. I say could, since I don’t actually know... but it might be that Lucas was trying to fix some other problems with the final cut and the elimination of those problems created the lack of subtlety we see in the final release prints. That kind of thing does tend to happen more and more in the editing room these days, from what I can see from a lot of modern cinema. Mistakes and so forth creep in due to decisions made in the edit. It happens. So I’m letting both George Lucas and Hayden Christensen off the hook on this one... Lucas may not have been standing far enough back from the last cut to be able to glean that he’d lost that element of subtlety.

Let’s balance that out with another plus, then. Ewan McGregor as a more mature Obi Wan Kenobi, 15-120 years before he turns into Alec Guinness, really goes for it with this one and succeeds perfectly. Each of his three performances have, of course, had shades of the Guinness personae in them but this one brings it up to near what Guinness was doing in the original trilogy. Perfect job here from McGregor, I have to say. In fact, most of the performances in this one are spot on. Threepio is also a lot less irritating here... so that’s a blessing.

The music is a lot less choppier too. There are, to be fair, a couple of moments when it sounds like stuff has just been tracked in from The Phantom Menace instead of being re-recorded but, mostly, the music is pretty solid. Not particularly as memorable as... well, any of the other Star Wars films, to be fair, but at least it holds its own against the intergalactic hubbub with a certain dignity and originality... so happy about that.

And there’s that great moment where we see Bail Organa, Yoda and Obi Wan walking the famous corridors that the rebels were defending at the start of the very first Star Wars movie, revised to A New Hope around about the 1978 re-release (contrary to popular belief) and which now, of course, chronologically follows on from the events of the first film. There’s also a nice shot where we see a younger version of Peter Cushing’s character from that same film, Grand Moff Tarkin... but, alas, that scene has problems all it’s own.

So let’s get to the problems with this one, shall we?

Well, asides from a clunky bit of dialogue which really needed the scene originally shot for it to be inserted either at the same point or, preferably, an earlier point in the movie, where Yoda tells Obi Wan that Qui Gon is back from the dead... most of the problems occur when trying to match this movie up to the next film and there are basically two main things I have a problem with here...

Number one is the scene with Grand Moff Tarkin in it. They are looking at the rough frame of their new construction project, the very first Death Star. This is the one that Luke destroys in the next/first movie which is said to be the first time the weapon is revealed and fully operational. Except... hold on a minute... we know from the chronology of the events in The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi that, after the destruction of the first Death Star, the second one could have only taken three and a half years to construct. Bearing in mind that Luke and Lei are somewhere between 16 and 20 years old in A New Hope, that means it takes 16-20 years to build the first Death Star? Even though they already have it half built at the end of Revenge Of The Sith? Seriously? C’mon guys. I mean, I know the first one would have taken a lot longer to build and, you know, to quote Kevin Smith “You think the average Stormtrooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms.” But, even so... 16 - 20 years. This stretches my ability to suspend my disbelief a little bit, to be honest.

The other problem I have is Luke’s “Uncle” Owen Lars and “Aunt Beru”. They look great in this and the previous movie as younger versions of the actors who played them in the original and, yes, I know Threepio’s memory is wiped so he doesn’t know them anymore but, honestly? You’d think after all the trouble they had when Darth Vader’s mum married Owen’s father and was killed by sandpeople, not to mention the fact that Threepio was Annakin’s droid and had been staying with them for, what, 15 years, that the minute these two saw Threepio again in A New Hope they would have junked him straight away and gone and hid somewhere. Not, presumably... “Oh, remember that robot who’s maker turned out to be the ruthless villain holding the galaxy in a stranglehold of terror... well he’s turned up in Luke's garage. Neat, huh? Better have it’s memory flushed, just in case.” I’m sorry but that’s just not appropriate. I know droids are seen as a lowly “life” form in the Star Wars universe but, seriously, this is basically Darth Vader’s other, mechanical, son. So I’m afraid this was a mistake I saw coming from a long way off, just after The Phantom Menace was released and, though I was trying to trust George Lucas on fixing this problem somehow... he just didn’t. Bit of a blow this one.

Still, an enjoyable film, if not a great one, albeit with some grizzly images which are maybe not totally appropriate for the rating, truth be told. A brave attempt but now with this trilogy back under my belt, it’s time to rewatch the original trilogy on blu ray. I’ll let you know how that goes real soon.

Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones

Clone With The Windu

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
2002 USA 
Directed by George Lucas
20th Century Fox BluRay Region A/B 
Previous BBFC cuts waived

I have really mixed feelings about Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. If you read my review of the The Phantom Menace (which I reviewed for the 3D cinematic re-release right here) you’ll know of the very strong bond I feel with the Star Wars universe since I first saw the very first movie play in the Dominion cinema in London at the tail end of 1977. You’ll also know from that review that, despite a lot of people being less impressed with Lucas’ first prequel, I actually rated it quite highly. I couldn’t understand why a film almost as dark as The Empire Strikes Back was not realised as such, just because it was wearing a happy face, so to speak. It wasn’t until I saw Revenge Of The Sith with some friends and had to explain it to them years later, that I realised a lot of people just didn’t have a very good idea of the back story to the original 1970s trilogy... so a lot of them didn’t realise just exactly what was going down in The Phantom Menace.

Now don’t get me wrong. I was losing a lot of love already for my childhood hero George Lucas, after the frankly disastrous “modifications” he made to the original trilogy on the late 1990s cinematic re-release of the movies... but The Phantom Menace was a triumph for me and I couldn’t wait to get to the next one. Well unfortunately, for me, Attack Of The Clones is the one Star Wars move I really don’t like all that much and it just doesn’t feel quite like a Star Wars movie to me. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some nice stuff in there... the asteroid depth charge sound and visual effects, for example... but to me it all just seems a little flat.

Now I’ve got absolutely nothing against Hayden Christensen as an actor. I especially liked him in Jumper, but I don’t think his on-screen chemistry with Natalie Portman is that great here. It’s not as emotionless or wooden as people said back when the first reviews of this came out in 2002... but it’s not all that great either. There are some parts where the actor is saying hugely romantic things and not really getting away with it and, other times, when his emotions seem to be quite a bit repressed or non-existent when they shouldn’t have been, perhaps. Now I’m not going to blame the actor for this stuff because I suspect at least some of the reasons why certain of the scenes don’t work is because he may have been directed to deliberately dial things down or up due to the ultimate fate the character is heading towards. Also, it has to be said, a lot of the romantic, character building stuff is overly long and slows things down... and also that brings me straight into what I personally feel is another bad thing about this movie.

Pretty much all the other Star Wars films in the original trilogy are very pacey and you’re not very far off from entering or leaving an action sequence throughout their running times. The Phantom Menace follows in the footsteps of this beautifully and, Kurosawa comparisons aside, these were kinda supposed to be the modern equivalent of an old Universal or Republic style film serial of times gone by. Now I really don’t mind slowly marinating plots and action alone doesn’t do it for me in a movie, unless it’s deliberately setting itself up to be that kind of thing, but Attack Of The Clones has a delayed action chase about ten minutes in (after two assassination attempts which don’t really count as action sequences) where we get to see Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi in pursuit of Zam The Assassin... and then the film just goes dead in terms of action, to be honest. Some wonderous sequences fill this gap, to be sure, but frankly, over 35 minutes without an action sequence in a Star Wars movie seems a bit of a mis-step to me. I maybe would have liked my Lucas a little more Corman in this particular movie, perhaps, but maybe the weight of the story just drags it down too much for added action? I don’t know... but I thought this was an uncharacteristically empty gap for a Star Wars movie.
And talking about pacing...

Now I know this film had some problems when the first cut was reviewed by the director and I understand that a lot of the Anakin/Padme romance scenes were either re-shot or beefed up to try to get them to work better (at least that’s what was reported at the time) but... the timeline taking place between the film’s two main male protagonists, Anakin and Obi Wan, and the cross cutting between their separate exploits... don’t quite make sense when you compare them. See if you agree with me on this one...

These are the two timelines which are equally cross cut together across the running time at a certain point in Attack Of The Clones:

Obi Wan, pops into a diner to get a quick bit of info, drops in on Yoda, goes to the planet where a Clone Army is being built (posing as a customer) and has a quick look at them, gets into a scrap and then goes to another planet where he sends a message and gets captured. That’s.... what? Two days at the most?

Meanwhile, cross cut with this is...

Annakin escorts Padme back to Naboo, they spend some days/nights romancing, then they hotfoot it to Tatooine, Anakin spends at least an evening, possibly a day, tracking down his dying mother, then he slaughters a whole tribe of Tusken Raiders and, only then, after all that, do we get the message cross cut into things.

So, what’s that? About a week? And these two timelines are simultaneously cross-cut to give them a sense of happening in the same time? It doesn’t quite gel with the way it’s been cut together I think.

So I’m guessing what’s happened here is they reshot and added some extra bits into the Annakin/Padme timeline but... there was nowhere else to insert them into the movie which made any sense unless you made the, aesthetically not great choice, of not continually cross cutting between Obi-Wan and Anakin’s timelines. Which must have been really irritating to the people sitting in the editing room, I’ll bet. Now, to be honest, what they’ve gone with in the finished product is probably the lesser of the two evils and I think they made the best choice they had... but it still leaves your mind playing catch up with the temporal space in a few areas during the course of the movie and it does pop you out of it a few times.

Okay... that’s most of the negative stuff. What about the good stuff?

Well, the fight between Obi Wan and Django Fett is pretty good and brutal (it was originally cut at both British cinemas and all British home release versions until a head butt cut was finally waived for this Blu Ray release... which meant I had to pay out for an import copy of the DVD when it was first released to get it the first time around). The idea of the poisonous centipedes which infiltrate Padme Amidala’s room at the start is something which reads straight out of a pulp Sherlock Holmes or Fu Manchu story and perfectly captures the tone of what this film series is about. The action sequence in the arena at the end is like it’s been plucked straight out of one of Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter novels... so that’s kinda cool (if a little plagiaristic, perhaps) and the incredibly hard to even imagine until you see it dual between Yoda and Count Dooku is pretty amazing. Oh, that reminds me... Sir Christopher Lee doesn’t have a huge amount of screen time in this film but what he does get he really makes count. He’s just really phenomenal in this movie and his screen presence uplifts certain scenes tremendously.

But... back to the negatives again, I’m afraid.

The conveyor belt battle looks and feels just like something out of a platform game... which makes me cynical about why it was even included in the movie... and the comedy shenanigans of C3PO are just beyond irritating in this one. Great gags in themselves but, seriously, inappropriate in the context of the scenes they are in, in my humble opinion. Also, there’s a real false note where Natalie Portman falls out of a transport and looks like she’s been really hurt and then, when someone asks if she’s okay, she just gets up and gets on with things... it doesn’t quite scan right. You have a watch and let me know if you agree with me please.

And then there’s the music. The beloved John Williams scores another epic Star Wars movie but... this one doesn’t seem quite right in a lot of places. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some memorable scoring in this one but, throughout the movie, it just felt like a load of action cues from The Phantom Menace were literally being chopped up and then just needle-dropped onto the soundtrack rather than have a new score composed in several places. I’m wondering if Williams wrote some stuff which was rejected and then replaced with temp or, possibly, if the action sequences in certain areas kept getting recut to buggery and he just didn’t have time to keep changing them. Either way, certain musical sequences just seem a bit choppy and clumsy to me. Still, you can’t top Johnny Williams scoring a Star Wars movie so maybe the story will come out on this one in a few decades... who knows?

And that’s about it for this one. There’s a certain something which really doesn’t make sense in the whole Star Wars timeline in this one, due to C3PO and R2D2 being present on Owen and Beru Lars moisture farm on Tatooine, but I’ll point that out in the next two reviews, when I rewatch them. For now, let me just say that, any Star Wars film is going to be something you’re probably going to get something out of. For me, Attack Of The Clones is my least favourite of the lot and I think newcomers to the trilogy should never try and start on this series with this as a jumping on point. Make sure you watch them in the chronological order on which they were released or, if you want to do it the other way round, make sure you start with The Phantom Menace first... just cut Attack Of The Clones some slack when you watch it. They’re not all like this one.

Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3D

Death In Menace

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3D

1999-2012 US

Directed by George Lucas

Screening at UK cinemas.

It’d be pretty impossible to relay to you my almost lifelong relationship with the Star Wars saga, which began when I saw the very first movie on its initial cinema run at the age of 9, way back in 1977. I could easily write a series of novel length reviews on the subject... which wouldn’t include the hundreds of drawings and articles I did for fun as a kid, and based on the first three films in the series (which I guess now has become, chronologically within the timelines of the story at least, the second trilogy) and which I collected in ring binders, one (or sometimes two) for each film.

It’s hard to explain how much of a cultural phenomenon Star Wars was back then to youngsters these days. They’ve never experienced it themselves... sure there have been huge blockbuster movies with bigger openings but their shelf life and the way in which they are consumed by the home video marketplace changes the impact of these films. When Star Wars came out it was in the days before home video and there was nothing like it at the cinema! Sure, there was a whole slew of bandwagon rip-off films that we all saw and enjoyed, including films which weren’t rip offs but needed the success of Star Wars to open up the marketplace to be able to make these films possible. So yeah, we had stuff like Battle Beyond The Stars, Star Trek The Motion Picture, The Black Hole and other similar films which either sought to recreate the thrills found in Lucas’ original movie or do their own thing in the zeitgeist created in its wake. But you have to understand that... until The Empire Strikes Back came out three years later... well, as I said... there was nothing like it.

What that meant to kids at school is... you went out on your playground breaks and lunch hours and you talked about Star Wars. You went home and maybe played in the street with the other kids... and you talked about Star Wars. You went on visits with your parents to family homes dotted around the country... and you talked about Star Wars. And you kept talking about Star Wars for 6 years solid (until the ewoks and the hammy acting in the third movie kind of put a crimp in it). Okay, so maybe some of the girls were talking about Grease but, trust me, when they weren’t talking about Grease they were talking about Star Wars.

When The Phantom Menace first came out in 1999, I remember staying up until four o’clock in the morning the first night the tickets went on sale in London because the demand for tickets was so great that within 5 seconds the computers overloaded and went down at the various box offices for the phone bookings... it took several days for them to get back up and for people to find out if they were successful in getting a ticket or whether they’d have to try and rebook. This was, of course, after Lucas had released those dreadfully dumbed down cuts for the 20th anniversary of the original trilogy... and gutted the heart of that original trilogy as you would a dead fish (I was so happy when the original prints were made available in a limited edition DVD as an “extra” for six months or so... finally the real movies had resurfaced).

So I’ve heard and read a lot of crap about The Phantom Menace over the years... including the criticisms of just the title when that was revealed while it was still being made. Frankly, people who don’t like The Phantom Menace must be half crazed to not realise what a great triumph it was. This was easily the best and the darkest of the prequel trilogy... but I remember a lot of the people who went to see it at the time were just not well versed enough in Star Wars lore to realise just how subtly dark it was. It’s right up their with my favourite Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back, a film which I find has a similar tone, and I couldn’t believe the criticisms people were hurling about at the time. Had these people just not seen the original trilogy, I asked myself at the time.

Let me set the record straight because, although George Lucas has let me down a lot over the years with both his treatment of the Star Wars and Young Indiana Jones franchises (the initial masterpiece episodes of which have been similarly recut to buggery), The Phantom Menace was not one of the problems. If you want to level criticism at a movie in the Star Wars canon which did let the side down appallingly it was the next chapter, Attack Of The Clones... but I’ll save that article until the 3D version of that turns up at the cinema (sometime next year I believe?).

Okay... despite the multitude of whining complaints at the time of the announcement, The Phantom Menace is a perfect title for a Star Wars film. Sure, it didn’t sound “cool” at first but, you know what? It’s a perfect title for a movie series which aspires to be the old Universal Flash Gordon serials (something the movies give away in almost every scene)... and if George Lucas had been able to afford to buy the rights to Flash Gordon when he was trying to get them in the mid-70s, there never would have been a Star Wars movie made. Typical Flash Gordon serial chapters include such awesome titling as: The Planet Of Peril, The Tunnel Of Terror, The Destroying Ray, The Black Sapphire Of Kalu, The Symbol Of Death, The Purple Death, Doom Of The Dictator... the list goes on. The Phantom Menace does not look out of place in that context does it? It was a big deal at the time though and I couldn’t figure out why people just couldn’t see the appropriateness of such a title.

Then, when the film came out... I was blown away. It was dark... really dark. Why then, were people coming out of the movie thinking it was an uplifting experience? This is where the bad stuff starts... you know, right from the outset, that Senator Palpatine is the bad guy right? I mean, ever since 1977 every kid who had read an article on the Star Wars stories knew the background story... from Emporer Palpatine (the clue is in the name guys... you know... Palpatine?) to Darth Vader’s fight with Obi Wan against a volcanic back drop where Darth fell in the lava... every kid knew that since 1977. And seriously... any kid who’d read Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter Of A Minds Eye back in 1978 had probably figured out by the time that Empire came out in 1980, that Yoda was referring to Princess Leia when he said... “No, there is another...” Since she had kinda Jedi powers in the 1978 novel (I understand the novel has been rewritten to conform for it’s reprints in later years... but I still have my original knocking about somewhere... can’t fool me!).

The Phantom Menace is all about politics (not a subject I understand myself) and it basically is all just about the way Palpatine (who is already a Sith) brings about the collapse of the Old Republic and manipulates Queen Amidala to move him into a position of power to rule the galaxy by bringing in a vote of no confidence against Terrance Stamp’s character. This was serious stuff and it hurt to watch it! I couldn’t believe some people only suspected Palpatine at the end of this movie. Seriously people? It’s that much of a jump from Senator Palpatine to Emporer Palpatine in people’s eyes? Holy moley. I hope people take time to re-evaluate this dark little corner of the Star Wars saga now it’s back in cinemas. I once saw a Steve Martin sketch where Paul Simon asked Steve Martin if he thought a downbeat song was more effective in an upbeat tempo and arrangement and that’s basically what The Phantom Menace is, to be sure... a very downbeat movie with an upbeat tempo and arrangement. Like I said... it was so dark it was almost painful to watch.

What wasn’t painful was... everything else asides from the politics. Jar Jar was maybe a little too "full on" but basically he performs the same function as someone like Mantan Moreland used to serve in the Sidney Toler Charlie Chan films... you either accept it or you don’t. If you can’t accept it... don’t rant about it and give everybody else a hard time. Not a fan of the character but not a hater of him either... and I do enjoy doing the odd Jar Jar Binks impression still... so bear that in mind if you ever find yourself in the pub with me.

My two favourite things in the movie, and thankfully Lucas has left them in tact, are as follows... Queen Amidala and the way she carries herself when she is in full Naboo Royalty make up really does, in this film, feel like an homage to the princess in Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. Maybe not in intent... well yeah, certainly not in intent, she’s by no means a spoiled brat... but the way she moves and kinda intones her lines is amazing. Great job.

But the thing that really had me jumping out of my seat the first time I saw it... and it’s still (thankfully) in there... or the tone of this article would be a lot more negative, was the look and sound of the viewscreen communicator with which Amidala talks to the Viceroy on the Trade Federation ship at the start of the movie. It’s basically the dead spit in both visual and audio content of the ones used in at least one of the original Flash Gordon serials (which are also homaged in other ways such as screen wipes... which Kurosawa also used to use... and art deco “ray gun” designs). It absolutely knocked me for six when I first saw the movie and I wanted to leap up and shout at the audience... “Did you see/hear what he just did? Did you? It’s amazing!”... but I didn’t. I’m a shy retiring type of person... and wouldn’t do that in a cinema... possibly.

Okay... seeing this movie in converted 3D for the first time was... okay. It’s pretty much like every other converted for 3D movie you see... it’s just like looking through and old view master toy with moving bits (used to love that toy)... it’s totally unnecessary and, quite surprisingly in the case of this particular movie... really doesn’t add anything to the experience I’m sad (very sad) to say. I was so looking forward to this... and I really wasn’t disappointed because, hey, it’s The Phantom Menace on a bigger screen than usual... but honestly... bits of it are just not working in 3D. I was particularly unimpressed with the pod race, for example, which seemed to me to be playing more like it was just in 2D for pretty much the whole sequence.

Also... purists note... this version is not the same cut as the original theatrical release... it’s closer to the subsequent home video VHS and DVD releases in that it has that 5 or 6 seconds where Annakin stops dead and glares hard at Terrance Stamp. I’d always assumed that bit had been put in on the home video versions because Stamp's character was going to return as a villain in a later episode. The fact that he doesn’t makes this little moment a bit of an oddity and I don’t know why Lucas didn’t just take it back out. It’s become a bit of a red herring and nobody usually remembers it anyway.

And anyway... the audience is all too busy listening to John William’s kick ass score to be noticing subtleties like that. Talking of which... Williams’ style had changed by the time he’d come to write the score for the second trilogy. It didn’t quite sound like the original stuff... fortunately though, the score was still brilliant and does kind of still slot in place with the Star Wars sound... so you won’t hear anything bad about it from me (until we get to Attack Of The Clones and the electric guitar moment... shudder). If memory serves me correctly, Annakin’s theme is an inverted, slowed down version of The Imperial March... so it’s a nice score to get to grips with if you can and it still retains enough Korngoldian homage in it’s make-up to keep the magic going. Oddly enough, his new score to Spielberg’s TinTin movie sounds much more like an “old-school” Star Wars soundtrack than his stuff on the prequel trilogy does... but it’s Wiliams and it’s brilliant and it’s good enough for most Star Wars fans... I’m certainly not complaining.

Well... I’d like to be writing another 6 or 7 pages on this stuff but I really shouldn’t. It’s getting late, I’m getting tired and by now you’ve probably got the general gist of where I’m coming from. But just in case you haven’t... here’s a short summary...

Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace 3D... great film, underrated, 3Ds a bit rubbish but at least you get to see it at a cinema... don’t heistate for goodness sake... it’s The Phantom Menace! Go see it today!
Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker