That smells stinkovich

Well it's official, I'm off on my 12-month journey to revisit the first six Star Wars movies. (I'd call them the only Star Wars movies, except that execrable piece of junk Star Wars: The Clone Wars actually got a theatrical release.)

Thanks to the Melbourne Public Library, which had a BluRay copy reserved for me last Wednesday when I showed up to pick it up, I watched Episode I - The Phantom Menace last Thursday night with more than two weeks to spare before my self-imposed end-of-February deadline.

The following disjointed collection of thoughts is how I feel about the movie now, nearly 16 years after I first saw it and probably 14 years since I last saw it. In upcoming installations of this series, I'll reflect on how the movies seem in comparison to each other while watching them during a relatively compacted time period ... though that obviously won't be possible after just the first one.

First, I must talk about Jar Jar Binks.

Over the years I have taken a contrarian's position on Mr. Binks. I have been so bored by the incredibly cliched perspective of hating George Lucas' most loathed creation, that I have become a Jar Jar Defender. That does not mean I like him, per se, but that I find him to be a piece of absurdist comedy rather than something actually obnoxious and loathsome. This perspective is divorced from the legitimate concerns about possible racial insensitivity in his depiction, which I think are not definitive enough to get stuck on. (Though I acknowledge their possible validity.)

One thing I'd forgotten about the movie is how many of Jar Jar's lines a friend of mine, who takes up a similar perspective on the character, and I used to quote. The fact that we could regularly crack each other up over idiotic lines of his brings a smile to my face. Anything that makes me feel that happy is something I view in a positive light, even if we're laughing at Jar Jar more than with him.

One of these is the line "That smells stinkovich," or probably "Dat smells stinkovich" if you want to cross that dangerous Ebonics line that Jar Jar is already flirting with. Of course, the word is not actually "stinkovich." If you look it up online, the imaginary word is apparently "stinkowiff," which makes more sense inasmuch as any of Jar Jar's jargon makes sense. I find it funnier, though, if the word has a random Russian suffix on it. So, "stinkovich" it is, and always shall be.

What else about this movie?

1) The Phantom Menace will always carry a certain cache as the only movie in which Darth Maul appears. It could be easily argued that Darth Maul is the most distinctive character of the prequel trilogy -- his main competition would be, I suppose, the aforementioned Mr. Binks. Qui-Gon Jinn (also only in this movie) might give him a run for this money if he didn't suffer from what one might call a "generic human Jedi" look. Anyway, he's definitely the coolest, and not just because he was the first one to bust out that two-sided lightsaber. (Interestingly, future Sith must have decided it was an inefficient weapon -- why else don't we see Darth Vader using one? Other than the fact that, you know, Lucas hadn't thought of it yet.) Oh Darth Maul, we hardly knew ye.

2) Jake Lloyd was not quite as bad as I remembered. There, I said it. He has been almost as much of a whipping boy as Jar Jar for, you know, general suckitude, so I thought it was worth saying that I found his performance non-terrible. Were you expecting a kid under the age of 10 to already project badassery? He's a little boy. Even evil masterminds were all once innocent little boys -- yes, probably even someone like Hitler. It's a point worth underscoring, especially in the context of the movies' six-episode arc, and Lloyd's performance effectively does that.

3) I was reminded of the moment I knew this didn't seem like one of our good old-fashioned Star Wars movies. It's when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are on Naboo, and they swim down to the Gungan city. I remember thinking "Water? There's no water in the Star Wars universe." Which of course there is, but having never seen anyone interact with water in these movies (other than the swamp on Dagobah), it stuck out like a sore thumb. The scene where they go through the planet core (also the source of some good Jar Jar quotes) just underscored the weirdness of water in the Star Wars universe. It made me wonder: Is a lightsaber waterproof?

4) Overall I guess I just kind of felt bored watching it. Maybe four times (twice previously in the theater, and once more on video) is just too many times to watch The Phantom Menace.

I'm sure I could write more, but a) do you really want it? and b) I started writing this nearly a week ago, and it's time to get the damn thing posted.

I'll be back here to discuss Episode II - Attack of the Clones sometime before the end of April.

Held hostage by this menace

Do you think it might be cool to see the original Star Wars trilogy on the big screen in 3D?

Regardless of your skepticism about 3D transfers, are you tantalized enough by the prospect of the Millennium Falcon warping out of the screen directly into your lap that you'd think it was a shame if it didn't happen?

Then you better get out there this weekend and see The Phantom Menace in 3D.

Until now I'd thought it was a foregone conclusion that all six Star Wars films were returning to the big screen in three dimensions. Just yesterday in a Facebook thread, however, I learned that the fate of the remaining five films hinges on the success of this first one.

That's right, producer Rick McCallum let it slip that if Star Wars Episode I does not do enough box office on its 3D re-release, the remaining five movies will be not be re-released in 3D on the big screen. (This news is not new -- he said this mid-way through last year -- but I didn't learn about it until yesterday.)

Just an idle threat, to force us to go out and see a 3D Jar Jar Binks and a 3D baby Annakin Skywalker? Or a legitimate concern?

I'd be very surprised if George Lucas et al would pass up any chance to make a buck on any part of the Star Wars saga. Of course, the ordinary Hollywood business approach is not to greenlight sequels unless the first movie does well, and some of the same logic applies here. But would Lucas really want to take the PR hit that would come from shelving his remaining 3D transfers, simply because many fans didn't want to shell out $14.75 to see the Star Wars movie many of them considered the biggest disappointment?

And if that's the case, shouldn't we be even more disappointed that he chose to re-release them in this order, rather than the order of their theatrical release as many fans would have preferred? Surely many of us would be treating these 3D releases with more excitement if it were the 1977 Star Wars hitting theaters this weekend, right?

Then again, there's a good chance that The Phantom Menace will in fact make decent money this weekend, and for one or two weekends after that, which would make the whole thing moot. See, Lucas is not catering these 3D releases to the fans of the original movies -- he's catering them to the audience that grew up knowing The Phantom Menace as their first exposure to Star Wars. These are also the same fans who have to some degree grown up with 3D. Sure, 3D has only really taken off in the last couple years. But it stands to reason that the people who love The Phantom Menace are also younger and less jaded about 3D in general, meaning they are less likely to poo-poo these plans than us crotchety old thirtysomethings, who take every opportunity we can to shit on both Lucas and 3D.

But what if that group doesn't turn out either? It doesn't help that The Phantom Menace is hitting theaters on the most crowded release date of the new year. Movies like The Vow and Safe House don't figure to siphon off much of the core Star Wars demographic, but you can't say the same for the family adventure Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. Which is also in 3D.

I'm sure some of you reading this are rooting for the box office failure of The Phantom Menace, and don't give a shit what effect it has on other potential Star Wars re-releases. In fact, seeing Lucas eat crow might satisfy you more than anything else that has happened in the movie business for years.

Me? Well, I'm just tantalized enough by that Millennium Falcon jumping out of the screen at me that I have very mixed emotions.

But will I be supporting The Phantom Menace with a $14.75 ticket this weekend?

Nah.

At least the decision has been taken out of my hands. My father and stepmother are in town until next Monday, so I can't exactly sneak off to the movies by myself. Their presence does give my wife and me the opportunity to see a movie together while they babysit our son, but she's having none of The Phantom Menace, and rightly so. Really, I'm having none of it either ... but that doesn't mean I don't feel some ambiguity about it. So I guess I'm having "almost none" of it.

We'll probably be giving Chronicle our money instead, and that will feel right for my soul.

Besides, if we give The Phantom Menace a big box office, it won't create the necessary conditions for us to call McCallum's bluff.

Let's see how committed they really are to scrapping the other 3D transfers, or if they really were just trying to hold us hostage.