Ten years ago today Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released after sixteen years of pent up expectations. That’s right. For ten years now we’ve known about Jar-Jar Binks, Jake Lloyd’s acting, and midichlorians. It boggles the mind.
Believe it or not, nerds were once generally happy, optimistic people who enjoyed nothing more than getting together with friends and talking about video games or Star Wars. Ten years after TPM, geekdom is still reeling from the shock. Nowadays, nerds are bitter, resentful individuals, angry at the world and its broken promises.
For the record, I was never one of those radicals who detested the prequels. I still think Episode III is quite good (parts of it, anyway), and when each of the new movies came out, I was one of those strange people who sat there defending the obvious problems and missteps. It’s probably taken about ten years to get a little perspective. When I look back now, and see the effect the prequels have had on my perception of Star Wars as a whole, it’s hard not to be a little upset.
There’s a whole generation growing up now that doesn’t understand how cool Star Wars was before the prequels, and that’s a shame. Words will never do justice to the feeling of painting a painstakingly glued model of the Millennium Falcon or playing the Imperial March on a badly recorded cassette tape. Everyone has their own memories of Star Wars, and it’s impossible to say how much of the prequel bashing is built on nostalgia. But overexposure is never a good thing, and what used to be three fantastic movies is now a bloated franchise. How can a lightsaber duel be exciting when you can flip on Cartoon Network and watch fifty Jedi fighting ten times a week?
To borrow an old phrase, “The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out in the universe.” (By the way, in, say, 1996 to quote Star Wars was kinda cool even among non-nerds. Try quoting it today and you’re bound to get some eye rolls.)
If nothing else, though, Phantom Menace gave us those wonderful first few months of 1999, when everything Star Wars was cool again. I don’t plan on being alive for the Second Coming (though, Odin willing, I might yet live to see Ragnarok) so the weeks and months leading up May 19, 1999 might just be the biggest moment of nationwide excitement I’ll ever encounter. Star Wars was everywhere. On the news, on the radio, and especially at my late 90s hang out of choice, Taco Bell.
I was a junior in high school then, and practically every day after school my friends and I would drive off to Taco Bell to sample the delicacies on their menu. Nothing was off limits. The radio blared Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and Britney Spears without distinction, and during commercials the announcers would even mention how excited they were for Episode I. I always made sure to purchase some of the fine Star Wars collectibles available at Taco Bell. Even outside the sacred walls of the Bell, you couldn't take a step without running into something Star Wars related. If the marketing blitz was any indication of quality, then we were in for a treat indeed.
We bought our tickets for the midnight show a week in advance, and then bought tickets for a few shows after that, just to make sure we got to see it as many times as possible. I don’t think I could sleep for at least two days leading up to the big event—every free moment was spent watching the original movies, talking about the original movies, or watching the trailers for the new movie. After waiting my whole life, the long awaited prequels were finally here, and I was almost choking on my own excitement by the time we got to go to the theater.
Even in my small town, the line was already wrapped around the building two hours before midnight, with people dressed in a number of Star Wars costumes. The quality ran the gamut from movie replica to barely recognizable. My friends and I didn’t go that far, but we brought piles of snack food to enjoy while in line.
At one point a panicked girl came up to me asking if I’d seen her boyfriend. “He’s dressed like Boba Fett!” she said. It took some searching, but I managed to comb the crowd and find a man in a high quality Boba Fett costume. When I brought him back to the fretting woman, she looked at him, then back at me. Then she frowned. “That’s not my boyfriend!” she yelled. I’m not sure if she ever found her boyfriend. Perhaps she just went home with the other Boba Fett guy. I’ve got to believe that one crazy Star Wars fan dressed as Boba Fett would have a lot in common with any other.
Finally, at around 11:30, they let us into the theater. The lights went down and the trailers began (I think they were for Disney’s Tarzan and Titan A.E.). At long last, at around 12:15, the familiar Star Wars logo appeared onscreen, the fanfare began, and the audience burst into applause.
Then we watched the movie. We all know what that was like. After that much hype, anything would have been disappointing, but the movie we ended up getting, looking back on it ten years later, was more disappointing than most.
But it’s the build up I’ll remember. We all really believed a movie could be that good. That Episode I would be every bit as good as the original movies, that it would make all of us feel the way those did, that it would be just as big a part of our lives. With the other prequels, we already knew that the prospects were grim. For those few great months in 1999, on the other hand, Star Wars was really on its way back. Lightsabers were going to crackle onscreen again! We were going to see Obi-Wan Kenobi and space battles and maybe even the Clone Wars!
It’s hard to say what the future will hold, but I’d place a safe bet that never again will so many people be so genuinely excited for something. It was the last time that many people loved Star Wars that much, and God did we love it.
So the movie didn’t live up to the hype. In a weird way, the hype lived up to the hype. Whenever I happen to catch Phantom Menace on Spike TV these days (or, in incredibly rare instances, put on the DVD) I don’t always see the bad acting, empty characters, overblown use of CGI and overall un-Star Wars like tone.
Sometimes I see the 2am trips to Taco Bell to get tacos and a stack of Star Wars pogs, Star Wars Pepsi cans, and the line of excited fans wrapped around the theater. I hear the long ago arguments with great friends over whether Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back is the better movie and remember how we all crowded around the N64 to play Shadows of the Empire or Rouge Squadron. I see the faces of friends I haven’t seen in ten years, lit up with the excitement of the moment, ready to kick off our last summer of high school and loving every second of it.
Sometimes, that’s good enough.
Doesn’t make up for Jake Lloyd’s acting though. Or Jar-Jar.
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