Ready, Set, Glow!
Yes, we've all had enough of the Star Wars hype. But there's still some magic in the latest saga
By RICHARD CORLISS

A short time from now, in a theater not far from you ... the creatures will assemble in a movie-plex queue so long it might seem computer-generated. Guys as tall as Wookiees with Ewok-size children in their backpacks. Teenage girls dreaming they can be Queen Amidala, if only they had her Fabergé-egg earrings. The Anakin-young and the Yoda-old, the dutiful moms and the punks with their Han Solo 'tudes--all the children of Star Wars will be waiting for magic to strike in '99, as it did in '77.

What was, is again. On May 19, Star Wars: Episode 1--The Phantom Menace opened on more than 2,500 screens in North America. It's moving next to Europe, Asia and the beyond. Moviemakers like their pictures to have "want-see" (tradespeak for marketable elements), and who doesn't want to see the first of George Lucas' three prequels to the most popular trilogy ever filmed? Last November fans paid full ticket price to watch the film's 2-min. trailer, slept through the 3-hr. Meet Joe Black, then watched the trailer again. At midnight on May 3, kids in the U.S. dragged their parents, or vice versa, to Toys "R" Us to fill their shopping carts with Lucasian action figures. Some of the faithful camped out for six weeks to get first-day tickets. Opening-day tickets sales totaled $28.5 million, easily eclipsing the single-day record of $26.1 million set in 1997 by The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Want-see? Just try keeping them away.

But for the Starwoids--the trilogy cultists who live in the world that Lucas created--this anticipation may have been a bit too fevered. Many crafty acolytes wormed into the very first exhibitors screenings, two weeks before opening, then peppered the Internet with reviews that ranged from mixed to vexed. All this was enough to send a little shudder through the 54-year-old gentleman who wrote the script alone and, for the first time in 22 years, directed a movie as well as supervised it. "Expectations are so high," he told time, "that no matter what, for some people we'll never make it."

Lucas is not alone in wondering if the $115 million film on the screen will be able to top the spectacle outside. Can Lucas keep his huge, devout constituency awed while gently reminding them that it's only a movie? Will the masses who played "Wookie hooky" last Wednesday (resulting in an estimated $300 million in lost U.S. business productivity) spread the word that this Star Wars is worthy of the others? Or has all the promotional percussion deafened the audience, spilled the best secrets? Maybe moviegoers who have read stories like this one will have a slumping sense of déjà view when they finally see The Phantom Menace.

Naah. At least at the box office, this movie is review-proof and hype-proof. You needn't be Return of the Jedi's evil Emperor, pregnant with prescience, to foresee smiles of delicious anticipation all over the world as the 20th Century Fox fanfare blares, the Lucasfilm logo fades and the sacred text appears: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." You needn't be a Hollywood accountant, mopey about this year's stagnant box office and praying for a Titanic-size hit, to forehear the cheers that will surely erupt in theaters everywhere when, halfway through the film, the Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) casts his laser stare on nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and intones, "May the Force be with you."

All right, any auteur can replay his greatest hits, exploiting even the youngest viewer's need for nostalgia. And, indeed, The Phantom Menace displays the old Lucas touches, many of them dating back not just to the trilogy of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but also to his first features, THX 1138 and American Graffiti. It has the gifted, driven misfit; the young woman above his station but not beyond his dreams; the mystic guide, the imposing villain, the comic sidekick. Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, the evil Emperor and Darth Vader are here--all of them 30 years younger, some barely recognizable. There are lots of battles and a cool drag race. It's a George Lucas movie.

But visually and viscerally, the director is also offering something fresh and handsome. Naboo's golden underwater city glows like an Art Nouveau chandelier, while the Jedi knights' home base, Coruscant, could come from a spiffier Blade Runner. The film's set pieces--a 10-min. Podrace and the climactic battle between the ragged forces of good and the minions of the dark side--have power and razzmadazzle.

The cast is much tonier than the 1977 Star Wars trio: surfer boy Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, callow Carrie Fisher as the Alderaan-American Princess Leia and a young Harrison Ford who had not yet achieved his surly machismo. This time around there's Neeson (an Oscar nominee for Schindler's List); art-house sex pistol Ewan McGregor as young Obi-Wan; Ingmar Bergman favorite Pernilla August as Anakin's mother; Natalie Portman (Broadway's Anne Frank) as the young Queen; and, brooding on the Jedi Council, Samuel L. Jackson.

The film is set in an age tipping from medieval to modern, from the doddering aristocracy of the Galactic Republic to the brutal opportunism of the Trade Federation, which has blocked all shipping routes to the planet Naboo. Qui-Gon and his Jedi apprentice Obi-Wan are dispatched to settle the dispute. Reaching Naboo, they are befriended--hounded, really--by Jar Jar, a disaster-prone outcast of the Gungan race. He leads them to Amidala the Naboo Queen, whom they intend to take to the Republic's assembly in Coruscant. Engine trouble forces them to detour to Tatooine, where Qui-Gon bargains for spare spacecraft parts with Watto, a potbellied, hummingbird-winged junkman. In Anakin, Watto's slave boy, Qui-Gon senses an unusual precocity, one might almost say a Force. Qui-Gon makes a bet with Watto. If Anakin miraculously wins the big Podrace against the swaggering champ Sebulba, the boy will be freed. Free to chase his destiny as a Jedi knight.

PAGE 1  |  2  |  3

THIS WEEK'S TABLE OF CONTENTS