COMM. STATION

With Darren Maxwell

 

Well, the “biggest film of the millennium” has been out now for a month now (and I don’t mean the Austin Powers sequel either). Yes I’m talking about the one which cinemas were pre-selling tickets to months ago, the one where people were paying 11 bucks to see the trailer in US cinemas and ignoring the feature that followed it, the one which had all other movie releases pushed back because everyone knew they couldn’t compete against it. Yep, I’m talking about Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (TPM). Due to the immense publicity the film has received from both the public and the media, it seems only natural to focus this Comm Station on Star Wars.

 

Did you hear the furore that erupted with fans when Channel 10 celebrity Angela Bishop released a two hour Star Wars special called “The Building of an Empire” a month or so ago? Now someone like myself made a point of not watching this show until AFTER I’d seen the film, but other fans couldn’t do this and naturally the show dumped a couple of little spoilers into the fans’ laps who wanted to remain ignorant of the film’s details. Personally I can only look at these people and say “well serve yourselves right, what did you expect?” Now, after watching Angela’s special can I say “yep I’m glad I didn’t know that before I saw the film.” The special by the way was actually pretty good, although I especially would have loved to seen an interview with Ian McDiarmid, as well as Anthony Daniels and Ray Park (just to hear how his voice REALLY sounds).

 

It’s not hard to see that Star Wars is boosting businesses everywhere. Back in mid-April the night-time Melbourne Triple M radio programme called “The Crud Show” was running a competition for a couple of hours, asking people to ring up and say what they would like to see in the new film. Even FRONTIER’s own illustrious editor was able to put her call through and made her suggestion. It was also clear to see that Katharine knew more about the actual film than all the other callers as she was the only one to make a reference to the actual characters in the new film and not the “old” ones (it’s always easy to spot a REAL sci-fi aficionado). Since then of course both Triple M and FOX-FM (and maybe a few others too that I haven’t heard yet) have been using Star Wars constantly to advertise themselves.

 

Just to prove that you do learn something everyday, I found out from Juice Magazine that the rock band who perform the main theme to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is actually called Nerf Herder. How’s that for a suble Star Wars reference! (Princess Leia called Han Solo a Nerf Herder in The Empire Strikes Back.) By the way, Juice Magazine featured a nifty “Who’s who” table in the Star Wars universe which although a bit of work was put into it, it still contained a few major Star Wars errors. This  included misquotes from characters and using the surname of Skywalker for Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru (their name is Lars, everyone knows THAT!) and saying that Owen is Anakin’s brother - HELLO!!! Anakin’s an only child (in reality Owen is Ben Kenobi’s brother). So Juice Magazine take note, in future you really need a real Star Wars FAN to do this kind of work <insert image of me dusting off fingernails here>.

 

OK enough of the natter, in the classic tradition of Comm Stations everywhere, it’s time for my famous one paragraph review of The Phantom Menace (OK so it’s a big paragraph):

 

I won’t kid around, I thought the film was excellent, however make no mistake it does take a couple of screenings for the film to become more familiar to you. So don’t expect to fully comprehend all of The Phantom Menace in your first viewing as there is a lot to take in both from a story perspective and a visual perspective (boy is there a lot to take in from a visual perspective!). It was great to see the traditional opening of the film with the title crawl along with the familiar march which I found personally very pleasing (even if it was weird seeing new text appear as opposed to the three crawls I had memorised many years before). On the other hand I thought it was a shame that the film didn’t open with a big “blow you away” type battle that Episode IV did. The big talking point of the film is the quality of the CGI work which I was very impressed with. It doesn’t take long before you forget that half of what you’re seeing isn’t really there and even the organic creatures are very true to life, along with their matting into real environments which is seamless. As for the story, this film isn’t as simple as previous Star Wars films by any stretch and I think that’s a positive point. For many years the fans have attempted to deduce certain details about the Star Wars storyline like: Where do Artoo and Threepio come from? How does Senator Palpatine become Emperor? How do the Jedi fit into the Old Republic and where does the Sith fit into it all? And what about the Clone Wars? TPM doesn’t answer all of these questions, but it does pave the way for a fantastic Episode II and III. In that regard, TPM is an excellent opening to what will become a very intriguing and complete storyline. Remember that this isn’t Star Wars as you know it; sure it may finish with a happy ending, but there is still a lot going on in the background and WE know that the worst is yet to come for the Old Republic, the planets and people that exist within it. With regard to some smaller key details: I loved the lightsabre duel which was fast and just fantastic, definitely a real heart pumper. It was a shame to see Darth Maul bite the dust after a short life span, but I suspect his popularity will increase (ala Boba Fett) because of this. The concept of using Stap Battle Droids and not “humans in armour” is interesting as you can “kill” millions of them and not have any problems with your conscience (I wonder if there was an intention to somehow keep the body count down). I also loved the night time window scenes of Coruscant from atop of the Jedi Council’s Tower, kinda reminded me of looking out from the Rialto observation deck. On an audio note the sound effects are just superb, I loved the footsteps of the Stap droids and the fast humming of the duelling lightsabres. From a music angle I was suprised to note the that end credit music didn’t finish on a climatic crescendo, it just seemed to fade out at the end which isn’t the Star Wars norm. I also picked up some similarities to other sci-fi films too. The Stap droid voices sounded like the Kodan Armada baddies in The Last Starfighter, some of the multilegged Destroyer droids reminded me of the bugs in Starship Troopers, and the Coruscant “street traffic” scenes were reminiscent of The 5th Element (Coruscant itself is derived from Trantor in the book “Foundation” - a planet that is covered by one whole city). My advice is to go and see The Phantom Menace in a cinema with a big screen and powerful sound and let the film tell its story, then turn around and see it again within a day or two before making your final judgement.

 

The continuing search for sci-fi car registration number plates has unearthed a real beauty. At the 12:01 premiere screening of Star Wars on June 3, I saw a car with the plates ANAKIN (Anakin Skywalker for the uneducated) drive past.

 

Until next time, stay galactic. email: darren@maxwell.net

 

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