Predicting The Future:
Five Different Outlooks On What "The Phantom Menace" Has In Store
And The Resulting Impressions Of The Film

Toryn Farr: Spoiler Queen

contains mild spoilers

Expectations Prior To Seeing The Film
5/17/99
I have read a ton of spoiler material, so I already know basically what to expect. However, I predict that I will still be blown away by the movie, much as I was by the teaser trailer even though I had read the script for it.

From the opening crawl with John Williams' music, I will be transported back to 1977 and my own personal age of wonder. I expect I will love the music. The theater I will go to is top notch, so the sound will be awesome. I wouldn't be surprised if tears come to my eyes as soon as I see the Lucasfilm logo.

Special Effects: Again, I will be blown away from the opening shot (a pan down from a huge ship to a planet's surface, no doubt!). I will be mentally comparing the CG characters (of which there are many) to characters from other films such as Dragonheart, MIB, etc. and I will be saying, "Wow, wow, wow" under my breath the whole time. I expect after a few minutes I'll be so totally immersed in the film that I'll be thinking of the main CG sidekick as real, much as I did Yoda in ESB. Tattooine will seem even hotter with the suns gleaming off polished metal. The planet Coruscant will be all that I imagined and more, a combination of Tim Burton's Gotham City from Batman and the city in The Fifth Element. Naboo will give me a feeling of deja vu, like I'm back in Florence or maybe Venice during a carnival. The space battles will be even cooler than the ones in ROTJ. The battles on land will be so huge they'll be hard to comprehend. The lightsaber duels will take my breath away. Perhaps there will be a few things that shake my suspension of disbelief, but I expect after a moment I'll even get used to the "young" Yoda. I predict there will be no cutesy-fake aliens like Ewoks or Max Rebo. Unfortunately, I am afraid there might be a musical number, but I hoping not.

Plot: This is the first part of a saga, where we're getting to know all the characters. I don't think the events that unfold will be, in the end, all that significant. More like a skirmish that starts a war. I won't feel the sense of crucial import or the satisfaction of total victory as I felt at the end of ANH. When the dust settles, I'll realize that really not a lot happened in this movie. But that's okay. I already know that what *does* happen will have cosmic significance on down the line. If this were a standalone film, it might not even be a success. In fact, some people who aren't Star Wars fans may come away from it saying, "Huh?"

Characters: Darth Maul will set a new standard for Darkside style, ambition, and malevolence. His creased cassock, striped face, quarterstaff-style lightsaber techniques, and horny black head will take the place of that black helmet and heavy breathing in the affections of many Dark Gals of the Sith. I, however, am a Lightside kind of gal and expect to totally fall in love with Obi-wan Kenobi. I will want to adopt Anakin.   I will also fall in love with Liam Neeson's character, and will have a dilemma deciding who to fantasize about first. I will admire Natalie Portman's character for her combination of beauty and spunk much as I did Princess Leia, although I will laugh out loud at her hairstyles. Every word and action of Obi-wan and Anakin will be steeped in irony, for we know what happens later between them. Afterwards, all they say and do will be sifted and analyzed for clues to the next two films, but for now, I will just let it soak in. Most of all, I will want to live in their world for more time than I'll get.

The Force: I expect we'll see and hear much more about the Force, how it works, and what the Jedi and the DLOTS can do with its help, all of which will be way cool. We'll finally get to see some Jedi with actual *power* in action! We'll probably hear a pseudo-scientific explanation of the Force, but it will remain a mystical, religious kind of thing. In the end, I'll be wishing it were real, and I'll probably be trying to turn my light switch off with the Force when I go to bed that night.

The overall impression I'll get will be constant, lightning-fast movement. Everything will happen way too fast to take it all in. In the end, I'll be saying, "I have to see it again!" And I will.

Reactions After Seeing The Film - contains spoilers
5/19/99

I went to three different screenings of TPM today. Each time was a very different experience. The first time, frankly, was not that enjoyable for me, but the subsequents viewings made up for it.

First let me say that my reading the script and novelization ahead of time turned out to be a huge mistake, but not in the way I expected. I thought perhaps I wouldn't be as surprised, as filled with wonder, as I might have been had I gone in cold. That idea didn't bother me. I figured it would be like seeing the movie for the second time -- I'd know what to expect, and could relax and start picking up details. But there was an even darker result; I was extremely disappointed because of what was not in the movie. For any of you who read the novelization and/or the script, you'll see there is a vast amount of good stuff that got left on the cutting room floor. Scenes that showed Anakin's anger -- gone. Scenes foreshadowing a relationship between Anakin and Padme -- gone. Bits of subtle humor ( like when Qui-Gon chastises Obi-Wan for burning out the battery of his lightsaber . . . again) -- gone. Many of my most-anticipated lines and scenes simply weren't there. That was the biggest disappointment. Fortunately, the second time I saw the film (10:00 am the next day) I had been disabused of the baggage of expectations, and was able to enjoy the film immensely. And oddly enough, it wasn't until I took my 3-year-old to the last show tonight that I finally regained the joyous anticipation I'd felt when waiting for the first trailer a few months ago.

Loren asked me to talk about the experience itself. The first theater had TPM on five screens seating about 2000 people, and there were no lines. We got there about 30 minutes early and got a decent seat near the front. I went with three girlfriends; all of us abandoned husbands and kids to take in the flick. None were as fanatical about the film as I was, and one had only seen the Holy Trilogy a total ("if you count all three films") of "less than 10 times." I thought this would give us a wide variety of reactions, although in the end we all felt pretty much the same about what we liked and didn't like. More on that later. The filmgoing experience was marred by a 15-minute-late start (due to poor planning in concessions) which had the theater rocking with boos and shouts. We lost some dialogue when the reels changed, and then there was a sound problem on the next reel that took about 10 minutes for somebody to notice and fix -- again with shouts and boos. People were muttering about getting their money back. AMC First Colony in Sugar Land, Texas, you need to get some competent projectionists! The crowd was almost all Generation-X or teenagers; you could count on two hands the number of Baby Boomers and/or little kids. But this was the 12:00 am showing. I took a photo of the crowd, telling them it was for Echo Station, and they cheered on cue. As I expect happened everywhere, the crowd cheered when the lights went down, when the Fox fanfare started, when the Lucasfilm logo appeared, when the opening crawl started, when we saw R2-D2, and at the end of each of four end-battle "climaxes." The reaction as the credits rolled seemed muted, but there was still a lot of applause. As a side note, the audience's take on the trailers before the movie was extremely hostile and profane, except for Austin Powers, which got its own lusty cheer.

In contrast, although the 10:00 am Wednesday showing (Loew's Fountains in Stafford, Texas) was packed, the crowd was much less rowdy. The cheering was still there, but at least we had no boos! I had the advantage, also, of having guys on either side of me (strangers) who were totally into the movie. As the pod race unfolded, I kept hearing them whisper, "Holy s---," in awe-filled voices as they clutched the armrests and swayed in their seats. During the more slow-paced scenes, though, one guy was saying, "Okay, I'm ready for a fight now." Patience, Padawan! The lightsaber duels had them literally jumping in their seats. I had a lot of fun at this screening, and now I'm feeling much better about the movie. People really seemed to enjoy it. There was lots of laughter at Jar Jar's antics, and the crowd even seemed to "get" a lot of subtle things I didn't expect them to. I saw so much that I had missed the first time! The quality of the theater really did make a tremendous difference. At the midnight showing,  I spent the first 30 minutes of the movie saying, "Huh?" as line after line of unintelligible dialogue rolled over me. At the second showing, I noticed I had no trouble understanding anything, and I realized the sound must have been screwed up at the AMC the whole time. I can see now why Lucas wanted to have the theaters certified. I hope that next time, though, he'll make it so we can understand it anyway, even in a crappy theater.

The third screening (11:00 pm) was again at the Loews, this time with my Dark Preschooler of the Sith, Luke, and his daddy Jeff. Luke brought along his red lightsaber. It was fun to watch his reactions to the movie. He laughed a lot, and he got really excited to see Darth Maul ("There's the bad guy, Mommy!) and Jar Jar (lots of laughter). Luke's seen about 50 movies already in his young life, so he usually behaves quite well at the theater, but this time he was truly mesmerized. Unfortunately he fell asleep before the final duel, but that just gives me an excuse to take him again (hee hee). Hubby Jeff thought the movie was great. He did have one criticism; he said he missed the cameraderie that you felt in the first trilogy among the main characters, the joking around, the warmth.

How did my predictions pan out? Well, in contrast to my expectations, I wasn't blown away, at least not on first viewing. It took me half an hour to "get into" the movie and start enjoying it. I predicted the special effects would have me saying "wow" a lot, which was true to an extent, although the opening shot was not as grand as I'd come to expect -- no doubt I'm just spoiled, but also I think Lucas intends this whole saga to start out with seemingly insignificant events, and that was mirrored in the opening shot. I did buy into the CG characters, especially the Toydarian junk dealer Watto. Only once did Jar Jar look animated to me, when I saw him walking from behind. There were no cutesy-fake aliens, and thank the Maker, no musical number. I predicted the plot would seem comparatively insignificant compared to ANH, and I stand by that. However, because we already know what Anakin and Palpatine become, the seemingly insignificant takes on chilling proportions. The way the various viewpoints of the final battle were intercut (similar to the end of ROTJ) really worked. The suspense literally had me on the edge of my seat. Plot-wise, the film exceeded my expectations. I felt pretty much as predicted about the characters, with the exception that Darth Maul had so little screen time I felt he was a wasted opportunity. The powers of the Jedi were, to me, the single most awe-inspiring aspect of the film. At one point Qui-Gon has his lightsaber switched off and hanging on his belt before all his enemies' bodies hit the ground. Very Cool. I thought the acting was well done (better than the first trilogy), and Liam Neeson was perfect. I did, however, wish we could have seen a little more warmth among the Jedi.

In the end, I thought the movie was enjoyable, but not up to my expectations, and that was mostly due to my knowing too much in advance. Luckily on subsequent viewings I was able to relax and enjoy it. I think with the next film I will not actively seek spoilers as I did with this one. I kept thinking about the movie that could have been, the one in the screenplay, and I got bummed out. Whereas, if I'd seen the movie first, I think I would have read the screenplay later and said, "Oh, cool, some extra information!"

The general consensus among my friends and myself seemed to be that we LIKED:

1. The pod race. Utterly breathtaking.
2. The lightsaber duels. I expected them to be fast and furious, but they exceeded even my tremendously high expectations.
3. The view of Coruscant from space. Awe inspiring, to say the least.
4. Jar Jar. Jar Jar did not suck. He was even amusing at times. Yes, his voice was annoying, but only because you couldn't understand him, not because of the voice itself. On subsequent viewings you can start to understand what he's saying.
5. The sound effects. Some of my favorites: the different pod engines, Padme's pistol, the sound of 100,000 droids all standing at once . . .
6. Ewan McGregor. Definitely one hot Jedi Knight, especially when he loses the "Jedi frown" and gives us a rare smile.
7. Liam Neeson. Period.

Stuff we thought COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER:

1. The Trade Federation's Neimoidians were unintelligible, especially at first. Subtitling would have been nicer, or better yet, redub it! (This apparently was a projection problem.)
2. The beginning seemed slow, but things really picked up around the Pod Race sequence.
3. The movie was cluttered, both in the look and in the pacing. You hardly grasped what was going on before it cut to another scene. There was too much to take in too quickly, and each frame seemed to have a thousand things to look at if only you had time to actually see it.
4. The stuff about how the Force works is a bunch of silly psuedo-scientific technobabble and stops the story dead in its tracks while it's being explained.
5. The underwater sub scenes could have used some colorful fish or something to break the monotone color scheme.
6. Darth Maul did not get enough screen time and suffered from lack of development.
7. This movie would have been much better had it been three hours long so that the characters could have been developed more and the camera could have lingered on key scenes. (And so they could add back in all the cool stuff they cut!) The editing was much too severe.
8. The CGI characters displayed a greater emotional range than the human actors.
9. Another fart joke. Please, George, even the kids didn't laugh at this one.

Conversation overheard as we were walking out:

"I hated the ending."
"What? Why?"
"Well, actually, I just hated the fact that it ended."
"Oh! Well, it couldn't keep going on forever. Even you'd get sick of it after a while."
"Wanna bet?"

In the end, I came away from the theater wanting to see the film again, just to take in those incredible lightsaber battles once more. What I really want, however, is a tape I can watch in slow motion. Maybe by Christmas?

(Toryn Farr knew everything about Star Wars before it even came out thanks to Starlog Magazine. She's been trying to keep her know-it-all reputation ever since. During the 90 minutes per day her three-year-old is napping, Toryn attempts to run an internet design business and write fantasy fiction.)

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P.S. I LOVE JAR JAR. Just had to say it.