When is the phantom menace

That led into the new sets of trilogies. It was an exciting time, actually. Really it was, for me. I looked forward to it when he, as I said, he called me up and talked about this podrace. I spent a lot of time in developing those elements, and what each planet did, and why they did it the way they did. So I had all this material. A lot of the story elements were givens. Early on, it was that Anakin had been more or less created by the midi-chlorians, and that the midi-chlorians had a very powerful relationship to the Whills [from the first draft of Star Wars ], and the power of the Whills, and all that.

I never really got a chance to explain the Whills part. And now I was just having to put it into a script and fill it in, kind of sew up some of the gaps that were in there. But it was also the way that the Sith worked. What really happened is, the Sith ruled the universe for a while, 2, years ago. Each Sith has an apprentice, but the problem was, each Sith Lord got to be powerful. And the Sith Lords would try to kill each other because they all wanted to be the most powerful.

Which is exactly what they did. And he went through a few apprentices before he was betrayed. People have a tendency to confuse it — everybody has the Force. You have the good side and you have the bad side. Maybe kill a few people, cheat, lie, steal. Lord it over everybody. But the good side is hard because you have to be compassionate. You have to give of yourself. Whereas the dark side is selfish. So it seemed natural that when I had the technology to actually make the film — for example, I could finally have Yoda be the warrior he was meant to be — then I would move forward to thinking about how I could make that a movie.

Because I had all the backstory, I had basically the three scripts. Or at least the material that was in the three scripts. George Lucas: The inspiration for Star Wars , one of the very first ideas, was when Richard Nixon tried to change the Constitution so that he could run for a third term.

We all knew he was a crook, he was a bad guy, he did terrible things and we sort of chugged along with it. How does it die? Would the people vote for it? And the populace gives up the democratic powers and this guy is suddenly running the show.

You end up with the Empire. Everybody thought he was a nice guy. And he was plotting to take over the Republic. The thing about Anakin is, Anakin started out as a nice kid. He was kind, and sweet, and lovely, and he was then trained as a Jedi.

Ultimately it has to do with being unwilling to give things up. He knew she was going to die. And he became a Sith Lord. Officially head of the art department, Doug Chiang was in for a surprise when George Lucas briefed him on his ideas regarding the overall look of the prequels. I had no idea where George was going to go in terms of design aesthetics. George Lucas: World building is the hard part. Even on those original three movies, I had quite a number of designers: Ralph [McQuarrie] and Joe [Johnston], and later on we had probably seven or eight designers.

But I did it on the first three Star Wars movies. Each Star Wars movie had three different societies. Three different cultures, three different worlds. And those three worlds were the basis of everything.

We used deserts, and then we used forests. It was hard to find that many different environments to be able to build around. That was one of the problems of going on to the next three, which was I had to come up with worlds, fashion, and craft that were very different. If you do what a lot of people do, it just becomes generic.

One person I can point to who is great at world building is Jim Cameron. Avatar was brilliant. You have to know the rules on everything. If you come up with something new, you have to say what all the rules are about it.

Doug Chiang: The good thing is, that during the whole process, I realized that part of why Star Wars design is so timeless is because George anchors it in a real historical timeline. And when I realized what he was doing with that, we established the timeline for all designs with our design history in the US. And then as you segue more toward the original trilogy, design would become more like the manufactured era of the s.

It was all different. Everything was different. Well, not everything, but all of the design in terms of technology improves. They just had to pick up whatever junkers they could get anywhere because they were rebels. That kind of detail gets lost. It was sort of almost like a historical film. So we did a lot of research into all sorts of cultures, peoples, sculptures, woodcrafts, paintings, textiles, anything.

Influences could come from anywhere and they did. Doug Chiang: George surprised me on many levels. His tastes are exquisite in terms of fine art. I thought that was my job, that I was going to present a design and I was going to sell it to George, and he would approve it. And it was the other way around! And George cut through all of that. One of the most impressive things is that he could do that very quickly at many levels.

He had a way of looking at a whole bunch of different images and then really pulling out, very quickly, the handful that he liked. I was always impressed at how he could do that. I remember asking him once, finally, why and how.

His answer was very simple. It was because he could understand those designs very quickly. From a sort of graphic logo silhouette point of view, he could read what that is and he could understand it.

And his whole point was, when these designs show up in a movie — and this is where my three-second rule came about — the audience is not going to have you there to explain it. They have to understand it quickly. That transformed how I approached design because it applies not only to film, it applies to all kinds of other designs as well.

He wants to understand it clearly. A kid could draw them. Now with a solid grip on the design approach for The Phantom Menace , Doug Chiang and his team got to work. Doug Chiang: There were no scripts when I started work. It was basically just ideas, and he would just throw out things. So a lot of it was just fragments of ideas. I love the process of working with George. As he was writing, we were in there drawing and designing. Sometimes what I drew would inform what he would write, and vice versa.

Every week it would change. And he would push me in a new direction. It grew very organically that way. At that time, George, I think, deliberately wanted myself and [principal creature designer] Terryl Whitlatch during that first year to just kind of explore. Because he just wanted food for thought. I just went in and just designed it.

You really feel that you want to do justice to something that looked that beautiful. What am I going to do? Do you mind? The podracer was one of the first things that I really jumped onto as a design. I liked car racing, I liked the idea of technology, I liked the idea of where he was going with this mess of engines. When he equated it to a horse and chariot, then it made complete sense. The horses are the engines. I was trying to put too much logic into it at that time.

I wanted it to make sense. How would they tie to the cockpit? Where would the fuel tank be? I finally decided to do research and went to the maintenance bay at the San Francisco [International] Airport. Seeing these giant engines stripped of their cowling, hanging in these spaces, I was just awestruck.

It was just amazing. We were taking something very ordinary and putting it into a new context and creating something new from that. Once that idea stuck, it was a matter of coming up with different configurations of these engines. That became a real challenge because it was going to be a very kinetic race.

George was very keen on making sure that each of the podracers were easy to distinguish and identify. He had the cheapest version. He just found an engine, he had a very simple cockpit. It would be the most plain and the most ordinary so he would be distinctly an underdog.

Later on George decided that maybe Anakin should have an even smaller engine. That was really nice because then, definitely, it made Anakin an underdog. George decided he wanted it to have a little bit more personality.

He asked us to reference the Birdcage Maserati, the Birdcage. It looked really great. The idea then was to take the essence, the spirit of that design with the big fairings, and just lop off the underside of it and turn that into a cockpit. It worked out really well, because that, in combination with the two engines and the flaps, makes for a very iconic design.

Doug Chiang: The battle droid was actually the very first drawing that I drew. I think that was my first failure because I took what I heard from George too literally when he described that he wanted a robotic stormtrooper.

I drew that — a guy in a costume, but made it look robotic. It was my first big lesson where I was designing something completely out of thin air, just making it up trying to fit the design brief.

I found this one photo book on African sculptures and that inspired me to lean toward them, because those sculptures have this wonderful way of stylizing the human form. It was very elegant and almost looked mechanical. When I started to lean toward that, using African sculptures as a foundation for the droid designs, it started to come together.

Slowly, over time, I started to think — the droids, I wanted them to be distinctly scary. I wanted them to be almost like living skeletons. Originally, they were very thin. They should be completely mute. That was my first idea; I was taking it too seriously. But that helped inform how I designed. Doug Chiang: The N-1 is one of my favorites. But I loved the idea of a really sleek boat form.

At that time, I knew George was a racing fan, and he loved F1 cars, and he also liked F1 boats. And the F1 boats were really striking in the sense that they had those lines already. So I felt very strongly that I had to make it have the flavor of elegance that George wanted, but also make it functionally practical as well.

I took the two pontoons of the F1 boats and turned them into jet engines. I deliberately gave the engines a really long spike, to mirror the tail spike, to give it that real streamlined, fishlike quality.

It was a matter of massaging all those details to come up with something. But at the end, it fit all the requirements. Naturally, everything he said was a lie. To prepare for the role, Serafinowicz said, he moved to Tunisia and opened a shoe-repair shop, before coming to blows with director George Lucas on several occasions when filming began. The feud eventually boiled over into a violent medieval jousting match that culminated in the death of two elephants.

The year was Sixteen years after Return of the Jedi brought to a close the most influential and highest grossing film trilogy of all time, Lucas was reviving the Star Wars saga and all that went with it.

Jedi knights! The Force! Lightsaber duels and dynasties torn between good and evil! The Phantom Menace had those things. Where did it all go wrong?

The Phantom Menace was the biggest event in film history, the long-awaited continuation of a series that changed the face of cinema. The original Star Wars trilogy recalibrated almost every element of American movie-making. The Viceroy locks the Jedi in the meeting room and attempts to kill them with poison gas while having their ship, the Radiant VII , destroyed in the hangar, but they escape. After battling through squads of battle droids, Jinn and Kenobi make their way to the command deck where Gunray is located, shielding himself behind blast doors.

The Jedi are forced to flee upon the arrival of two Destroyer Droids and stow away aboard two separate Federation landing craft leaving for the surface of Naboo to begin the invasion. Back in the command deck, Queen Amidala contacts Gunray to express her disapproval of their blockade, with Gunray explaining that they wouldn't have done it without the approval of the Senate. When she asks about the ambassadors sent by the Chancellor, Gunray claims that they have received no such ambassadors, leaving Amidala startled and suspicious.

Gunray ends communications with her and informs his aide that they should disable all communications on the planet. Meanwhile, Amidala is conversing with Senator Sheev Palpatine regarding the recent attempt at negotiations and how Gunray claimed that they did not receive any ambassadors.

Surprised, Palpatine states that he had assurances from the Chancellor that his ambassadors did arrive. However, Palpatine is unable to finish his sentence as his hologram flickers out. Naboo Governor Sio Bibble suspects that the interruption of communications is a sign that an invasion from the Trade Federation is imminent.

Meanwhile, the Trade Federation occupies Theed , the capital city of Naboo, and captures Queen Amidala along with the rest of the government. In Otoh Gunga, the Jedi meet the Gungan leader, Boss Nass , and ask him to help the people of Naboo, but Nass refuses and sends them off in a bongo submarine. They are attacked by an opee sea killer and a colo claw fish but both fish are eaten by a sando aqua monster. They depart for Coruscant , the Galactic Republic's capital planet, to ask for help from the Senate.

As they attempt to run the blockade, the queen's starship is damaged by Federation battleships , but an astromech droid named R2-D2 manages to repair it and they narrowly escape. Due to the damage to the ship's hyperdrive sustained in the attack, the Jedi decide to land on the nearby planet Tatooine instead of proceeding to Coruscant.

While searching for a new hyperdrive generator, they befriend young Anakin Skywalker , a slave boy, whose master is Watto , a Toydarian junk dealer. Watto has the required parts in stock, but Qui-Gon is unable to purchase them, as Republic credits are worthless on Tatooine.

Anakin is gifted with piloting and mechanical abilities, and has built an almost-complete droid named C-3PO. Qui-Gon senses a strong presence of the Force in Anakin, and feels that he may be the Chosen One —the one who will fulfill a prophecy by bringing balance to the Force.

By entering Anakin into a podrace , Qui-Gon orchestrates a gamble in which the boy alone, since Qui-Gon was unable to include the youth's mother in the bargain will be released from slavery while also acquiring the parts needed for their ship. The night before the race, Qui-Gon does a blood test on Anakin and discovers that the boy's midi-chlorian reading is off the chart.

Anakin wins the race defeating his rival, Sebulba and joins the team as they prepare to leave for Coruscant, where Qui-Gon plans to seek permission from the Jedi High Council to train Anakin to be a Jedi. Meanwhile, Darth Sidious sends his apprentice, Darth Maul , to kill the two Jedi and capture the queen.

Maul appears just as the group is leaving the planet, and duels with Qui-Gon. The fight is cut short when Qui-Gon escapes his black-robed assailant by jumping on board the Naboo Royal Starship as it takes off. Because of that being's obvious mastery of the Jedi arts, the Council are concerned that this development may indicate the reappearance of the Sith , a religious order who were followers of the dark side of the Force and thought to have been extinct for over a millennium.

Qui-Gon also informs the Council about Anakin, hoping that he can be trained as a Jedi. After testing the boy and deliberating with one another, the Council refuses, deeming him too old for training according to the Jedi Code. They are also concerned that they sense much fear in the boy, and that he has a clouded future.

When their petition to the Senate is refused, Amidala sees no alternative but to do just that. Palpatine is among the candidates to become the new Supreme Chancellor. The queen later announces to Palpatine that she will return to their home planet to repel the invasion of her people by herself. She is frustrated by the Senate's deliberation and lack of action, and feels that even if Palpatine is elected Chancellor, it will be too late. The Jedi Council sends the two Jedi to accompany the queen back to Naboo, hoping to shed light on any Sith involvement.

Amidala, back on Naboo, attempts to locate the Gungans at Otoh Gunga, but Jar-Jar, after searching the city, informs them that it has been abandoned.

He then leads them to the Gungan Sacred Place , where he is certain the Gungans will be. She negotiates with Boss Nass to form an alliance and unite their peoples in battle against the Trade Federation. Captain Panaka and several other security forces were also dispatched to rescue anyone imprisoned in the Trade Federation's prison camps, although they were only able to successfully extract a handful. Next, Amidala informs Qui-Gon and Nass of her battle strategy: with the Grand Gungan Army acting as a distraction to the bulk of the main Trade Federation forces, the Naboo resistance led by herself, Captain Panaka and the Jedi will infiltrate Theed via a secret entrance located inside one of the waterfalls.

Captain Roos Tarpals orders the Gungan Grand Army to activate their shield , which protects them from ranged attack. OOM-9 has his tanks fire first, but seeing them fail to penetrate the powerful shield, orders them to cease fire.

Daultay Dofine gives the command to activate the battle droids. These droids march through the shield and open fire on the Grand Army, soon destroying the shield generator. As the tanks cause heavy casualties among the Gungans, defeat for the alliance seems imminent. However, victory comes when young Anakin Skywalker accidentally takes control of a starfighter and goes on to destroy the Federation's Droid Control Ship from the inside, killing Daultay Dofine and rendering the droid army useless.

User Reviews Parents say Kids say. Adult Written by Albert K. December 17, Amazing My first star wars movie I have seen it. Amazing I love it. Report this review. Parent Written by moviemomma September 25, Great movie Even with a lot of violence, it is very obviously just fantasy with not many real life references. It's easy to explain to my child the difference between Continue reading. Kid, 11 years old July 18, Good movie, but bad actors Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is a very cool movie with an interesting plot, but veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery bad actors.

Its for kids 8 and up, because theres no blo Written by Anonymous March 16, The cool sci-fi effects can not birng light to make this movie better -- it is too muddled down by all the borin What's the story? Is it any good? Talk to your kids about Our editors recommend. Great action, intense mood, but romance may bore kids. The Iron Giant. Touching robot-kid friendship tale has great messages.

Brainy, charming, eco-friendly animated adventure. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Age-appropriate food adventure goes down easily. Sci-fi action classic perfect for sharing with kids. For kids who love sci-fi. Sci-Fi Movies. Star Wars Movies.