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Despite being the one of the first fully animated character a full-time film, Jar Jar Binks received massive backlash from fans for his humor and uselessness. The characters’ appearance still holds up to this day

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In the opening scene, the film starts off with actions has viewers get to see fully trained Jedi in action for the first time. The poison gas in this scene is the only use of practical effects in the whole film, the rest uses CGI.

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Tattoine was shot in Tunisia, the same place where A New Hope was shot for Tatooine. 

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People waiting in line to see the premiere of The Phantom Menace! This was all around the world and people would camp out for days!

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The film starred Liam Neeson, as Qui Gon Gin, who was already considered a star and Ewan Mcgregor, as Obi-Wan, who made a name for himself in Star Wars and has gone on to become very successful.

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This is a scene from The Phantom Menace that is entirely CGI’d! This video showcases the groundbreaking technology that many people put lots of work and effort into. Some people consider this to be some of the most Star Wars feeling scenes in Star Wars

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These are Pepsi cans for The Phantom Menace, part of Lucasart's large scale marketing campaign.

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Cinema Sins does a video where they point out everything wrong with films. The Phantom Menace has multiple parts. This video is mostly comedy based but does illustrate the mentality that fans have for the film.

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The Phantom Menace Destined to Fail?

Curtis O’Donnell

The Global Blockbuster

Professor DelNero

The Phantom Menace Destined to Fail?

           The year was 1999, George Lucas has finally brought back his beloved Star Wars franchise for millions of fans worldwide. The hype and anticipation for the Phantom Menace reached an extreme high that would contribute to the film's large fall from grace based on the expectations of long-lived fans. This will be supported by examining the production, marketing, reception, and an overall critical analysis of The Phantom Menace.

          Confirmation that George Lucas was to be working on the Star Wars prequels came in 1993 after doubt that he would return to the series, after being burnt out by the Original Trilogy. Once this announcement was made “It didn’t take long for hysteria to take hold. The film’s impending release dominated every inch of the US media.” (Al Horner). This created a lot of pressure for the film to be released and George Lucas was looking to bring in a director to handle the films similar to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Before the filming of The Phantom Menace started, George Lucas approached at least three directors to take on his prequel trilogy. Robert Howard stated that “He told me he had talked to Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, and me. I was the third one he spoke to. They all said the same thing: ‘George, you should do it!’ I don’t think anybody wanted to follow-up that act at the time. It was an honor, but it would’ve been too daunting.” (Chitwood). This helps explain that George Lucas did attempt to take the responsibility off his shoulders and one of the main drawbacks of The Phantom Menace was the script as well as the pacing of the film. The Phantom Menace started filming in 1997 of June 26th and ended on September 30th, which mostly took place at Leavesden Film Studios in England, along with film locations such as Tunisian deserts and Italy palaces for Tatooine and Naboo. (Bouzereau). Reshoots were later done from August 1998 and February 1999 after a private showing. This shows that Lucas was very careful with The Phantom Menace, despite a relatively short filming process, he went back to reshoot and edit. The film was shot on 35mm film and was filled with many special effects, which is one of the main reasons George Lucas wanted to return to the Star Wars series (Bouzereau).

          From an effects point of view, The Phantom Menace was immensely important for the film industry. Jar Jar Binks was the first fully CGI’d character to appear in a film and was considered very impressive. Despite the accomplishment, Jar Jar Binks as a character was not well received and people believed that the film would have been better without him altogether. The spectacle of all the CGI was overused and has not aged well, especially when compared to current Star Wars and Marvel films. Not to mention the costs that the newly implemented CGI added. In fact, “Liam Neeson is famously one of the tallest stars in Hollywood, but during the shooting of The Phantom Menace, that height came at a price. The sets were only built up to the actors’ heads and the rest was filled in with CGI. But Neeson was so tall that he cost the set designers an extra $150,000 to build the sets up to the top of his head.” (Sherlock). The overall budget for The Phantom Menace $115,000,000 which was inflated due to the heavy use of CGI and the building of all the sets.

           With the massive anticipation of the return of Star Wars, marketing was heavily implemented towards all audiences. Before anyone even knew what, the Phantom Menace was, “Lucasfilm developed an enormous multimedia event; Shadows of the Empire. Spanning books, comics, video games, toy lines….almost everything you could imagine. Similar to a movie release, it was marketed across all platforms and debuted a brand-new story featuring new and returning characters.” (Harris). This merchandizing tested the waters of the demand for Star Wars as well as push the name before anything in the film was released. Lucasfilm’s also rereleased the three Original films into theatres to serve as a final test as well as give fans that were either not born or too young to view the films on the big screen. Which was ultimately one of the biggest pulls to go see the Phantom Menace, to be a part of this historically massive event. For example, “ on November 18th, 1998… the Star Wars universe was forever changed. Debuting in a relatively limited number of theaters across North America, the very first trailer for The Phantom Menace accompanied the film Meet Joe Black and a few others that winter. Fans who managed to catch wind of this, the internet was still an infant, were known to pay admission into the theater and leave before the film even started. Just paying to watch a two-minute teaser. Some multiple times a day” (Harris). This illustrates the excitement people had for the film and the building of anticipation the marketing contributed to and the well put together trailer not only showed a small preview of the film, but it gave people nostalgia as well as announce that their beloved franchise was back. The “second trailer in March of 1999 these would go on to rank among the most downloaded items of all time, notoriously taking forever with a dial-up connection, but fans would endure the grueling wait for these short glimpses of the upcoming cinematic event.” (Harris).The impact of the trailer shows that even for the early internet period, marketing reached the web and helped spread across millions of people. Now one of the biggest talking points pf marketing for the Phantom Menace may not be the trailers, the extended universe, releases, but the toys and merchandising that came with The Phantom Menace.

          To show how important the toys were to marketing and fans alike is “Midnight for The Phantom Menace took place at Toys ‘R’ Us locations nationwide. Turnout for these events exceeded all expectations, many local and national news organizations covered the events in some fashion, and have become a special place in the hearts and minds of those who were lucky enough to have lived in this dawning of the modern era of Star Wars fandom.” (Harris). Once again the grand event of The Phantom Menace spawned many smaller events through marketing that pulled people into the theatre to await what they believe will be a masterpiece. The marketing was so intense people look back and believed the film was created to sell merchandise and primarily for kids. This backlash as well as overloading on toys later actually contributed to less merchandizing. For example, for Attack of the Clones “when merchandise tied to the movie materialized at Toys R Us and elsewhere. Only this time the rollout was more subdued after some of the esoteric fare released for 1999's "The Phantom Menace" languished on shelves for months. "We've scaled it back a lot," said Lucasfilm licensing executive Howard Roffman. "We're going to stick to the basics - toys, video games ... the things our fans prefer, rather than some of the fringe items."(CBS).

          As far as critical reception goes, the movie scored with fans extremely poorly. Many fans even went back to see the movie again to try to convince themselves of what they believed. Some fans today even go back and edit the films to their liking. To fit in line with what they believed the films should have been. For example “The first prominent Star Wars fan edit was The Phantom Edit, which circulated Hollywood on videotape in 2001 (Kraus 2001). It is a typical Star Wars fan edit in that it was presented as an attempt to turn cinematic lead into gold (note 1). The Phantom Editor, aka Mike Nichols, has said that he intended to turn Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) into a stronger film by bringing it in line with the filmmaking philosophy that George Lucas espoused while making the original Star Wars trilogy” (Phillips). At the end of this statement, it is one of the reasons why the Phantom Menace was not well received. George Lucas made the prequels trilogies differently from the original series, instead of story-oriented character-driven focus, the world-building, cinematic story-driven. The plot was criticized for being too politically driven and this left “The Phantom Menace confused audiences. Confusion led to disappointment, disappointment led to anger, anger led to hate and now, two decades later, The Phantom Menace remains ridiculed: a symbol of Hollywood hubris and the uneasy intersection between creativity and commerce (Lucas reportedly financed the film, not through a Hollywood studio, but using a $100m cheque from toy company Hasbro, leading to suspicions that entire characters were devised because they’d make good action figures)” (Al Horner). Once again fans felt cheated that profit appeared to take more control over creativity and passion. The plot of politics also made it hard for any demographic of fans, with it being too complicated for children and too simple for adults. Jar Jar Binks was blamed for many of the problems with fans believing he was too childish and ruined the entire story with his humor. The critics were not any more impressed than the fans were. The Phantom Menace received a 54% splat on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.5 out of 10 on IMDB. One critic,  David Edelstein, wrote "Those poor souls who’ve been camping out in front of theaters for six weeks: Who can blame them for saying, 'To hell with the critics, we know it will be great!'? The doors will open, and they’ll race to grab the best seats and feel a surge of triumph as their butts sink. We’ve made it: Yeeehaww!! They’ll cheer when the familiar John Williams fanfare erupts and the title–Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace–rises out of the screen and the backward-slanted opening “crawl” begins: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…Yaaahhhhhhh!!! Then, their hearts pounding, they’ll settle back to read the rest of the titles: 'Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.' Taxation of trade routes: Waaahoooo!!!!" (Beck). This goes to show that the hype and nostalgia of the previous Star Wars films only aided the film in falling further down in disappointment, with many fans not receiving the story each and everyone wanted.

          Overall the Phantom Menace was incredibly ambitious for its time, and George Lucas looked to craft his own story. Despite the negative reception the film has received in the past, some fans are starting to warm up to the film with the emergence of the sequels. The Phantom Menace also exposed a whole new generation to Star Wars and those kids that are now grown up are fond of the prequel trilogy. Will the film ever be looked back and considered a great? Most likely not, with a hard to follow and confusing plot, aged CGI, hindering characters, and poor pacing the film will always be criticized. On the bright side, The Phantom Menace accomplished a lot for the film industry in technological advances and its impact will always be seen in the future.

 Works Cited

Beck, Kellen. “20 Years Later: Critics' Reviews of 'Star Wars: The Phantom Menace'.” Mashable, 19 May 2019, mashable.com/article/star-wars-phantom-menace-reviews-20-years-later/.

Bouzereau, Laurent, and Jody Duncan. Star Wars: the Making of Episode I, the Phantom Menace. Ballantine, 1999.

CBS News. “'Star Wars' - Attack of the Toys.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 24 Apr. 2002, www.cbsnews.com/news/star-wars-attack-of-the-toys/.

Chitwood, Adam. “'Star Wars: The Phantom Menace' Was Offered to Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis.” Collider, 24 Sept. 2019, collider.com/star-wars-episode-1-ron-howard-steven-spielberg-robert-zemeckis/.

Harris, Michael HarrisMike. “The Not-So-Phantom Marketing - The Journey To The Phantom Menace.” RetroZap, 3 Sept. 2019, www.retrozap.com/the-not-so-phantom-marketing-the-journey-to-the-phantom-menace/.

“Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999).” Rotten Tomatoes, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_episode_i_the_phantom_menace.

“Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 16 May 1999, www.imdb.com/title/tt0120915/.

Phillips, Forrest. “Symposium.” Transformative Works and Cultures, journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/download/385/260.

Horner, Al. “The Phantom Menace at 20: Where Did It All Go Wrong for the Star Wars Prequel?” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 19 May 2019, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/star-wars-the-phantom-menace-20-year-anniversary-george-lucas-a8914821.html.

Sherlock, Ben. “Star Wars: 25 Crazy Details Behind The Making Of The Prequel Trilogy.” ScreenRant, Screen Rant, 7 May 2019, screenrant.com/star-wars-prequel-trilogy-behind-the-making-of/.