This weekend, The Phantom Menace turns 25—and while we’ve celebrated the ways the film brought so much to Star Wars in the past, for its 25th anniversary we wanted to look back at a few different things, big and small, that make Phantom Menace so great all these years later, whether you caught it on the big screen again this month or are ready to watch it at home to mark the occasion.
Every look, a serve. Every change, effortless. She’s giving Handmaiden, she’s giving Sad Queen, she’s giving Glad Queen, she’s giving woman of the people, she’s giving battle dress, she’s giving “I need to yell about the downfall of democracy, but make it fashion.” She’s giving like 15 other things because Padmé has so many looks in this movie and they’re all incredible. Gowns, beautiful gowns, sincerely.
Clone Wars really did a number on the B-1 Battle Droid’s reputation, transforming the Trade Federation’s robot hordes into effectively goofy comic relief—and even before then, they’re a little silly in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. But in Phantom Menace they really are, for the most part, a captivating, menacing threat. The design is so good, and unlike anything we’d seen from Star Wars droid design before—a really cool example of Lucas wanting to use new technologies to push designs further than what came before.
Star Wars is filled with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it character designs that are on screen for a shot or two, but so immediately compelling you want to know more about them. In Phantom Menace, that is Aurra Sing, who shows up to watch the Boonta Eve Podrace for approximately five seconds—and is just so striking in her presence that, thank god, we immediately got to see her shine in comics and expanded material, and eventually get to take on a real life of her own in the Clone Wars animated series (we don’t talk about her unfortunately revealed fate in Solo here, thank you).
All that from about three seconds of on-screen existence? That’s Star Wars, right there.
Star Wars is filled with excellent Starfighter design. It’s rare for a combat fighter to not be one of the coolest looking things you’ve ever seen—even the A-Wing, which correct people believe sucks ass, looks cool as hell. But the Naboo N-1 is just an absolute beaut of a design.
Once again, like so much of the design in Phantom Menace, it feels Star Wars while being unlike anything we’d seen in this universe before, and its visual identity tells us so much about the Naboo and their worldview the second you lay eyes on it. The bold yellow, the smooth curves, the chrome sheen… Phantom Menace is jam packed with absolutely incredible costume and mechanical and environment design, but this sits at the peak of peaks.
Star Wars loves its rhyming poetry, so there’s something wonderful about Anakin and Luke sharing a past time in incredibly reckless vehicle joyrides. Luke might have been scoring bullseyes on womp rats in Beggar’s Canyon, but his dad was… participating in high-velocity death races on the regular? Oh, hell yes.
The remarkable poetry of it all aside, the Boonta Eve Classic is up there as one of the all-time Star Wars moments. The bounty of alien racers, the incredible designs of these spindly, rickety death traps zooming around at a million miles an hour, it’s still so fun and energetic to watch all these years later. And the sound of it all! Speaking of…
I have to put “Sound Design” as one item on this list, because if wasn’t, 90% of this list would be me trying to find the onomatopoeia for practically every noise in this movie. The thrum of podrace engines, the clack of droideka feet, the little wibble Gungan energy shields make under fire, and yes, the Naboo blasters that go “bwah!”.
Especially the Naboo blasters that go “bwah!”.
The master of figuring out the one thing that a communications disruption could mean, Oliver Ford Davies doesn’t get much to do in Phantom Menace, but he sells the hell out of every little moment. Also, I cannot stress enough, the man that we have to watch over holocomms imply—under duress as a lie or otherwise—that the Trade Federation are rounding up the Naboo in camps and slaughtering them in untold numbers is called Sio Bibble. Doing all that with a straight face, remarkable.
Part of the premise of the prequels is getting to see Jedi at the apex of their influence and power (well… we’ll get to that later), which means getting to see them fight in ways we could never see Luke, Vader, and Obi-Wan do in the original films, and getting to see them use the Force in similar ways. But the insanely brief moment Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon use a Force dash like they’re video game characters to leg it from the Droidekas on the Trade Federation command ship? Insane. It looks like a wild editing flub, as a mystical super power. And despite being insanely useful it’s never used in the film or the rest of the prequel trilogy again?
Charting the technological evolution of Star Wars’ universe is a fraught endeavor at the best of times, but the thought that the Naboo haven’t figured out a way to repair ships in flight that doesn’t involve sending a little army of Astromech droids out to go work on fixing parts while under blaster fire is as hilarious as it is horrifying.
Like, we know R2-D2 is going to be fine, because he’s R2-D2, but he has to work literally under fire, while watching his fellow astros just get blown away by cannon fire? And his reward as seemingly the sole survivor of the repair job is Padmé saying “thanks, get this dirty little droid cleaned up please.” Star Wars’ relationship to droid personhood continues to be a hot mess.
It became en vogue for a good while after Phantom Menace to rag on Jar Jar as too outlandish and silly a character for Star Wars, but while the movie plays up that side of him a lot, Jar Jar is also frequently just actually a solidly funny character. The way he constantly sarcastically rags on Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s recklessness is fascinating little bit of character work—in that he’s both somehow the realist of their situation, but also a bit of a selfish coward, which is an interesting place to put your comedy relief character—but also, his repeated attempts to make “How wude” happen are just great. He’s a Gungan who knows when he’s on to a good bit, and he sticks to it.
The prequels have been endlessly memed upon, but there’s something in the stark absurdity of the little wibble in Palpatine’s holographic display as communications on Naboo begin to go offline being one of them that’s remarkably funny. Look at his big chest! That’s the future Emperor of the Galactic Empire! Delightful.
Part of what made the original Star Wars such a remarkable film from a design standpoint was its approach to a rugged, “lived-in” sensibility for its sets and props. Everything is a little grimy, even the stark sheen of the Death Star’s hallways are marked with shoe scuffs and little bits of carbon scoring, everything looks like it’s been used by people for years and years before it appears in a scene. So it’s fascinating to get that aesthetic in Phantom Menace’s middle-act on Tatooine, and contrast it with the art-deco cleanliness of Naboo and Coruscant sandwiched around it.
Again, it’s Star Wars while not looking like the Star Wars we know, something additive to the universe’s visual language that speaks to the state of the galaxy at this point in the timeline. Theed and Coruscant are beautiful for very different reasons—the elaborate palatial hallways of Theed contrasted with the technological bustle of Coruscanti air traffic—but we learn so much about the Republic in the simple fact that they’re both so spartan and clean compared to the familiarity of Tatooine.
Once again, the Podrace scene is just jam packed with banger after banger of alien designs among the racers. But a special shoutout has to go to Gasgano, who is both a) a delightful looking multi-armed weirdo, and b) the unsung second-place finisher of the Boonta Eve Classic, one of the few handfuls of racers we don’t see explosively crash out along the way. Good for you, you little freak.
Everything about the visual identity of the Naboo is meant to evoke this idea of a pacifist people, a society that prioritizes trade and cultural exchange over military might. When we do see military capability, it’s couched in this ornate, sleek design language—we already mentioned the starfighters, but everything from the immaculate wood-handled blasters to the uniforms of Theed security, to the battledress worn by Padmé and her handmaidens, all informs our view of Naboo society.
Which is why it’s incredibly funny when a seemingly captured Padmé turns the tables on Nute Gunray by popping over to her throne and activating an opening panel in one of its arm rests… to reveal like, four or five holdout pistols just hidden in there, which she rapidly tosses around to the captured guards to take out the gathered Battle droids and make Nute Gunray and Rune Haako the actual prisoners. Sure they knew things were getting tense with the blockade prior to the Trade Federation’s invasion, but how long has Padmé had those hidden there? And why?
How do you make a lightsaber cooler? You strap a second lightsaber to it. And Darth Maul knows he looks cool with that remarkable little flourish he offers when he readies to fight Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon—twirling his hilt out in front of him, igniting one end… and then holding the beat just long enough that when he fires up the second blade it hits you that he’s about to thrown the hell down. An immaculate serve.
Remember how I said Battle Droids eventually became Funny Little Guys in Star Wars after Phantom Menace? They didn’t need to be that in this movie, because it already had Funny Little Guys in the Pit Droids! A great design, very funny, a similarly unintentionally dark metacommentary on droid sentience and treatment after we watch one get chewed out by a podracer engine, they’re great. Well, except for the poor one that gets put through that engine, of course.
It’s a very brave choice on the prequels’ part that we return to an era of Jedi prominence—even as we brace for their undoing over the course of the trilogy—unseen onscreen in Star Wars and our introduction to them is that, basically, they’re all a little bit awful? Sure, yes, they swing lightsabers well, but you get some really telling moments about just how even at this point the Jedi as an institution are in a state of moral rot. The way the Jedi Council so casually dismisses Qui-Gon’s concerns and Anakin’s potentiality speaks to this hubris of course, but a special shoutout has to go to Qui-Gon himself, and the absolute gutwrenching look in Liam Neeson’s eyes when he has to stare Anakin in the face and tell him his Jedi hero isn’t on Tatooine to free slaves, but settle a trade dispute for a teen Queen who walks around in gowns worth more than anything the kid has ever seen in his life.
These are the heroes of myth and legend that Luke strived to be like? That we’ve had mythologized for decades after the original trilogy ended? These guys?
In part yet another sound design win here—the bounce they make as they roll around, paired with the electrical thrum of the way they “burst” over the Trade Federation’s infantry and tanks, is just so good. But they’re also just incredibly aesthetically pleasing—an interesting cultural link between the Gungans and the Naboo and how they both prioritize design and artistry across their society. That, and they kind of look like forbidden gummy candies that come in either hand grenade or giant boulder sizes.
Shielding as a concept is far from new to Star Wars—they’re all over the starship sequences in the original trilogy—but we didn’t really see them. They were represented by the flashes of dissipating blaster fire, whereas in Phantom Menace, we actually get to see shielding in action in a really interesting visual way—from the spherical bubbles that protect the Droidekas as they unleash volleys at Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, to the massive domes protecting the Gungan army from artillery fire, making shielding a tangible, visual thing we get to see is a really neat aesthetic choice (and again, paired with some really nifty sound design! This movie sounds so good!!!).
We the audience know Palpatine’s up to no good, because he shows up and his name is goddamn Palpatine, but Ian McDiarmid plays an incredible little performance when Palpatine’s in his Senatorial guise. We get all the classic Emperor stuff in the Lord Sidious sequences, but the masterful way he lays out the state of things on Coruscant to Padmé, and weaves her into his plans to depose Chancellor Valorum, is played to a slimy perfection. He’s not cackling and outwardly villainous, but there’s a smooth, sinister charm to Palpatine in Phantom Menace that’s really effective.
Speaking of: yes, a controversial statement at the time of release—and the years after of people ragging that our first glimpse of the prequel saga was an opening crawl talking about taxation—but it’s good to see the kind of political quagmire the Republic was! It’s brief in the film, for all the complaining about it, but it’s a really effective way to immediately show us how this system has become untenable—and ripe for someone like Palpatine to exploit its powers for his own good. The decline of empire (not capital E galactic, in this case) is just as interesting as lightsaber fights, actually.
Pernilla August is only in Phantom Menace for its middle act on Tatooine, but even with the little she has, she turns in an incredibly touching performance as Anakin’s mother. The way she has to try and play between the unease of not knowing what her son is capable of, to the mirrored joy and despair of Qui-Gon earning his freedom but not hers, Shmi is a character that has to really land to make Anakin’s arc across the prequels work at its fundamental core—the emotional attachment that defines everything about Anakin’s sense of justice and his ethos as he grows into the troubled young man of the later films. And it lands because of August’s understated performance.
It’s the anthem of the prequels. How could it not be called out here? John Williams’ eventual body of work on the prequel trilogy gives us a ton of great themes and suites, but nothing will ever compare to hearing that chorus bellow for the first time—a sound, in and of itself, was not something we’d associated with part of Star Wars’ soundscape before. Now, it’s impossible to imagine Star Wars music without it.
While the soundtrack definitely plays a huge part of why Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Maul’s duel through Theed’s power generators works, the fight itself—a thing that has been nitpicked on over and over in the years since—is still a fabulous bit of spectacle. Getting to see Force users fight like this was unlike anything the action of the original trilogy could give—the twirls, the leaps, even the fact that it’s a trio of combatants for the most part, instead of a one-on-one duel. Less of a clash of swords and more of a dance, it still sets a high standard to this day for Star Wars lightsaber fights.
Once again: the peoples of Naboo love a shiny ball. A wonderful symbol of their renewed commonality! Brian Blessed gets to yell “PEACE” as he raises the disco ball to the sky! It’s so bright!
