That involves taking her and her retinue (including her favorite squat droid, R2-D2) into space. After meeting the amphibious Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), they move to save Naboo's teenage ruler, Queen Amidala, from possible execution. After surviving an attempt on their lives in a planet-orbiting space station, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan end up on the ground in the midst of an invasion by an army of droids.
When they arrive, however, they find themselves caught in a trap sprung by the mysterious Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid), who is making a play to take control of the Galactic Republic. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, keeping his clothes on throughout), are on a diplomatic mission to the planet Naboo, where they hope to negotiate the end to a blockade of the planet organized by the Trade Federation. It's the kind of opening that brings a twinge of nostalgia to those of us who were there, in theaters, in 1977. The Phantom Menace starts in familiar fashion: the Lucasfilm logo materializes, followed by the words "Star Wars", then the introductory crawl - all are done in accompaniment to John Williams' score. Now it's time to learn how it all begins. So what about the movie? How close does it come to meeting the astronomical expectations placed upon it by a frenzied fandom and a curious public? The best place to start is with the storyline, which does an effective job of fulfilling its three-fold purpose: telling a self-contained tale set in the Star Wars universe, setting up the first trilogy, and remaining faithful to the previously-established mythos. This is not the greatest film ever made, as some fans would have you believe, nor does it signal the death knell of artistic motion pictures, as high-brow critic-prophets cry out.
Consideration of the movie, with its strengths and weaknesses, deserves to be divorced from an analysis of the Star Wars phenomenon. Those who have camped out at a theater box office for three-plus weeks may disagree, as may those who have spent $500 on an advance charity screening, but, in the end, everyone will be doing the same thing, regardless of whether they're the first admission or the last: sitting in a darkened theater, staring at the screen, and absorbing the sounds and images that represents the vision of a film maker who has left an indelible imprint upon two generations of movie-goers. Indeed, when you get right down to it, The Phantom Menace is a movie, and can be treated as such. but when you get a situation like this where you have so much hype and expectation, a movie can't possibly live up to that." I'm happy that Star Wars stimulates young people's imagination. In New York on May 9, he was quoted as saying, "People should have a well-rounded life. Even Lucas, who will reap the majority of The Phantom Menace's financial windfall, is concerned. The hype has dwarfed the film, reducing it to a cultural footnote. Yet, in terms of both intensity and widespread interest, the motion picture industry has never seen anything like this before, nor is it likely to in the foreseeable future (not even in 3 years, when the next Star Wars movie is released). And Star Trek: The Motion Picture had Trekkies and Trekkers standing in lines for hours on end. Goldfinger was so popular that some movie houses stayed open 24 hours a day to meet demand. Gone with the Wind was the entertainment event of the '30s. When it comes to unbridled anticipation generated by the release of a film, The Phantom Menace has antecedents. Over the course of 22 years, it has grown into a full-blown phenomenon - an event that gives promoters orgasmic shivers and makes theater employees wish they could take a week off. When George Lucas first conceived the idea for Star Wars, it was just a movie.