by Edward Gross
RICK MCCALLUM
It’s basically that crucial moment that everybody usually has in their life that Anakin is dealing with in these films. Once you’ve been educated, you basically have a choice to make in what you are going to do with your life. Anakin makes one choice, Obi-Wan makes another. Once you’ve made that choice, it’s very hard to turn back. Some people can, at that very last moment, like we saw with Darth/Anakin in Return of the Jedi. But it’s basically that whole dramatic situation: the choice that you ultimately make between good and evil, right and wrong. What George had to struggle with on the first three Star Wars films was to create a universe of people and places and their relationships and the way the story was going to go and how they all interrelated. It’s somewhat easier now, because he knows all those characters and where they came from, but there was still the essence of what makes a powerful, dramatic story that had to be dealt with.
GEORGE LUCAS
It’s a story about Ben Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and how we got to the point where Obi-Wan Kenobi was waiting in the middle of the desert for something to happen. It’s also about how Darth Vader got to be who he is, and how the Emperor came to power. It starts out with the Emperor not in power and then it keeps progressing.
RICK MCCALLUM
It’s the story about one of the most extraordinary kids who ever had the power of the Force. It’s the story of Anakin and what happened to him. Why did that happen and how did that happen? Where did he come from and how could he have made that choice? That’s the real saga.
GEORGE LUCAS
The backstory started when Anakin was young and with the issues of where he came from. The fact that he was a slave, the fact that he suffered—these kind of things are important story points. I had to start at a young age. Originally I had him about twelve years old, but then when I started writing the screenplay, I realized that the issues of him leaving his mother and these things weren’t quite as dramatic as they needed to be, and I wrote him down to ten years old, and I felt it worked better.
RAY MORTON
Lucas began work on Episode I by repurposing the first half of his original 1973 treatment for Star Wars. In that treatment, the galaxy is in the midst of a civil war. The evil Emperor puts a price on the head of rebel Princess Leia. The veteran General Luke Skywalker is tasked with escorting the Princess and her retinue of courtiers to a safe haven on the planet Ophuchi. Escaping Imperial ground forces in a stolen spacecraft, the Rebels are attacked by an Imperial warship. Their ship is damaged and crash-lands on the planet Yavin.
In the reworked version, the planet of Naboo is under siege by the evil Trade Federation. Under the direction of the mysterious Darth Sidious, the Trade Federation’s droid army invades Naboo and take the planet’s queen, Padmé Amidala, and her entourage hostage. Veteran Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn rescues Padmé and agrees to escort her and her entourage to the Republic’s capital planet of Coruscant so she can ask the Senate for help in repelling the invaders. They escape from Naboo on Padmé’s royal ship, but the ship is damaged as they break through the Federation’s blockade and it crash-lands on Tatooine.
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While trying to obtain spare parts to repair their ship, Qui-Gon and Padmé meet nine-year-old slave boy and expert podracer Anakin Skywalker, who Qui-Gon quickly determines is not only very strong in the Force, but is quite possibly the “Chosen One” prophesied to bring balance to the Force. Qui-Gon makes a bet with Anakin’s owner, a junk dealer named Watto: if Anakin can win a big podrace, Watto will free him and give the travelers the parts to repair their ship. Anakin wins the race, bids farewell to his mother Shmi, and leaves Tatooine with Qui-Gon, who intends to train the young boy to become a Jedi.
Following a fight with Sidious’s evil apprentice Darth Maul, who has been sent by Sidious to kill Padmé, Qui-Gon introduces Anakin to his current apprentice, a young Obi-Wan Kenobi. The royal band travels to Coruscant, where Padmé begs the Republic’s Chancellor Valorum and the Senate to help her planet. Palpatine manipulates Padmé into calling for a vote of no confidence that results in Valorum’s resignation. Palpatine is chosen to be his replacement. Meanwhile, Qui-Gon asks the Jedi ruling council—led by Yoda and Mace Windu—for permission to train Anakin. The council denies the request because it fears Anakin will be susceptible to the dark side of the Force. A defiant Qui-Gon says he will train Anakin anyway.
As the Senate dithers, Padmé decides to return home to save her planet. The Jedi Council orders Qui-Gon to go along to protect her. Qui-Gon brings Obi-Wan and Anakin with him. Back on Naboo, Padmé persuades the Gungans—a race that lives under Naboo’s waters—to join with her people to repel the Trade Federation invasion. A great ground battle ensues. As it does, Qui-Gon engages in a lightsaber battle with Darth Maul. Meanwhile, Anakin gets trapped in a space fighter that travels automatically to the Trade Federation’s orbiting battle station, from which its droid army is controlled. Through a series of mishaps, Anakin accidentally blows up the entire battle station. The loss of central control causes the droid army on the surface to shut down, allowing Padmé’s forces to win the day. Unfortunately, Maul mortally wounds Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan retaliates by cutting the evil Sith in half. His life slipping away, Qui-Gon asks Obi-Wan to train Anakin. Obi-Wan promises he will and Qui-Gon dies. The story concludes with a celebratory parade on Naboo at which Palpatine—impressed by what he’s seen of Anakin’s abilities—assures young Skywalker that he will keep an eye on him from now on.
RAY MORTON
Lucas incorporated a number of ideas originally devised but not used in Episodes IV to VI into this new story: the notion of Padmé using a decoy was one Lucas considered for Leia in his early work for Star Wars; an underwater city and an underwater adventure were both originally suggested for Empire; the idea of a young slave boy originated in Lucas’s notes for Star Wars, where it was originally Han Solo’s backstory; and the concept of a city that covered an entire planet was initially proposed for Jedi (in that film, the Imperial homeworld of Had Abbadon was to have been covered in a decayed and polluted city, as opposed to the clean, gleaming megalopolis that was the Coruscant of Menace). In fact, Lucas developed the Jedi and the Sith in far more detail than he had in the original trilogy.
In the first three films, the Jedi were described as having once been the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, but beyond that all we knew was that they were adept at using the Force and that their weapon of choice was a lightsaber. The impression we got was that they were priests/warriors akin to Samurai—roaming the galaxy, helping people and righting wrongs where they found them. In Menace, we see that the Jedi are actually a more formally organized group, a sort-of-a-religious order with a ruling council and an official headquarters, and that they are closely aligned with the government of the Republic, which they serve as a combination diplomatic and law enforcement entity. The knights recruit new members as children, teach them in a school contained within their headquarters, and when a pupil is old enough, apprentice him or her to a master Jedi to finish their training. Menace also tells us that the final step in becoming a Jedi is to successfully complete a series of undefined trials—a step that apparently was dropped by the time Luke came around. In the prequels, Jedi are not allowed to have intimate personal relationships or marry, another change, which does not jibe with the fact that the Anakin Skywalker of Star Wars had a son.
GEORGE LUCAS
The Jedi are like negotiators. They aren’t people that go out and blow up planets, or shoot down things. They’re more of a one-to-one-combat type. In The Phantom Menace I wanted the form of the fighting and the role of the Jedi Knight to be special. More spiritual and more intellectual than just something like a fighter or a superhero.
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In the original trilogy, all viewers knew about the Sith was that they were in essence the bad guys who used the Force nefariously. In The Phantom Menace, Lucas provided more detail on the sinister-sounding dark Force wielders.
GE
ORGE LUCAS
Palpatine is the Devil. There’s no fall from grace there. He’s the evil one. Palpatine is a Sith and there are usually only two Sith. And that’s because if you put more than two Sith together, two of them always conspire to kill the third one. So you’ll notice through the whole series that the apprentice Sith is always trying to recruit somebody else to join him, to kill the Emperor so he can be the Emperor and his partner can be his apprentice. That’s a constant. It’s greed, a greed for power. It’s, “I’m second and I want to be first.” These aren’t quiet little apprentices who say, “Oh, I respect you and I want to serve with you.” They basically want to kill the other guy and take over.
RAY MORTON
Lucas’s imagination, which seemed to have flagged during the creation of Jedi, is firing on all cylinders in Menace. He dreamt up a whole bunch of new races, cultures, and worlds (including a lush pastoral planet, a vast city planet, and an underwater civilization), all of which were developed with lots of intricate and eccentric detail. He took us back to Tatooine yet again, but showed us new aspects of life on the desert planet, including the unique sport of podracing. Lucas showed us the grand Senate of the Republic and introduced us to Darth Maul—a nifty (and scary-looking) villain with an awesome dual-blade lightsaber.
DAN MADSEN
Rick McCallum invited me out to Skywalker Ranch, and he took me up to this top room in the main house—like an attic room, I’d describe it as—where all the designers were working on the designs for Episode I. When we got to the door to get in to this room, he literally had a special knock. I don’t remember what it was like, but you had to have a special knock to get in the damn room. So, we got in the room, and there are all the designers working on sketches and drawings and storyboards, and things for Episode I—this was two years before the film opened. I’m walking in there with my eyes wide open, like “Holy Mackerel … I’m seeing this stuff for the first time, nobody even knows about this!” There’s maquettes and statues of Jar Jar Binks there, and telling me what this character is, and what that character is, and showing me some early special effects work on the computer, and VFX stuff, and introducing me to Doug Chiang and some of the designers who are working there with art on their desks and such. But, you know, you can’t report on all of this stuff—you’re just here to get an idea of what’s going on.
JOHN KENNETH MUIR
While these things are in the story, eventually The Phantom Menace’s visual design transmits much of the film’s underlying theme about the rise of fascism and fall of an enlightened republic. It’s about life here on Earth in the mid-twentieth century, particularly the years between the two world wars. This was, on Earth, a gilded age of Art Deco architecture and art, and apparent prosperity in the United States. Yet, economic ruin was around the corner, racism thrived, and the “phantom menace” of fascism and tyranny grew in the shadows. The Phantom Menace reflects this time with its chrome spaceships, and Art Deco spires and skyscrapers. Notably, Art Deco is a form or design often described as being purely decorative. It is the art of a people satisfied with the social status quo. In the film, we see the Futura or Art Deco touches primarily applied at Coruscant, the capital city of the Republic. What we glean from the architecture is that the Republic and its people are satisfied with their high level of society. They don’t perceive the phantom menace outside. They don’t correct the wrongs that diminish them, like the slavery on the outer rim planets. The film’s design carries all this information beautifully. The people of the Republic, including the Jedi, are self-satisfied and blind to the suffering of those beyond their borders.
Visually, Lucas equates the fall of Naboo’s capital city with the fall of Europe to the Nazi scourge. At least twice in the film, his camera photographs a sculpture/monument in that city that resembles France’s Arc de Triomphe. In 1940, of course, Nazi troops invaded Paris, and marched the Champs-Élysées as a sign of their domination. In 1944, France was liberated and the Allies had a parade at the same monument. The Phantom Menace features two moments under that Arc-like structure, one at the commencement of the droid army/ Trade Federation occupation, and then again after their expulsion, during a triumphant parade. These shots are not an accident, or a coincidence. Lucas’s galaxy far, far away is undergoing the same tumult that our world did in World War II.
JONATHAN RINZLER
George at one point wanted to do this book, Star Wars and History. Which we did. So I got to learn firsthand from George all the historical situations that inspired various things in Star Wars. We went out and got a bunch of historians to write about Star Wars, and they could write about anything they wanted to. They could just do whatever they wanted. And I think 70 percent of them wrote about the prequel trilogy. Not the original trilogy.
RAY MORTON
Unfortunately, some of Lucas’s new ideas were not so cool: In his cosmology, Jedi training is supposed to begin when the candidate is young, so Lucas intended to start his new trilogy with a youthful Anakin. In his initial notes and treatments, Anakin was a teenager, but Lucas later decided to make him even younger—in the final script drafts and the film, Anakin would be nine. This was important, because the separation of Anakin from his mother would be a key factor in decisions Anakin was going to make later in the trilogy. The problem with making Anakin so young was that Lucas planned to portray him as an expert pilot and have him play a key role in some of the story’s main action sequences—specifically the podrace and the climactic destruction of the Trade Federation’s orbiting battle station.
While it was already a bit of a stretch to think that a teenager can be an ace pilot and both win a podrace and make an attack run on an enemy space station, it was just plausible enough to be believable. However, it wasn’t at all believable that a nine-year-old could do any of these things—especially take part in combat or blow up a spacecraft. Lucas seemed to recognize this, because he reworked the final attack to unfold essentially as an accident—Anakin gets locked in a space fighter and accidentally activates the ship’s remote control, which flies the fighter up to the battle station, at which point Anakin makes a series of missteps that fortuitously result in the station exploding. While this may have been marginally more plausible action for a nine-year-old, it was all far too convenient and farcical and thus spoiled what should have been a very exciting climax.
* * *
Then there was perhaps one of the most controversial elements of the story, the introduction of the idea of the midi-chlorians, microscopic creatures living inside living cells that connect the host to the Force (and can also apparently create human life given Anakin’s seeming immaculate conception), in an ill-fated attempt to give Qui-Gon a concrete reason for believing Anakin was the “Chosen One” fated to bring balance to the Force.
GEORGE LUCAS
Midi-chlorians are a loose depiction of mitochondria, which are really necessary in order for the cells to divide and probably had something to do with the beginnings of life, and how one cell decided to become two cells with a little help from this other little creature. Life could not exist without it and it’s really a way of saying we have hundreds of little creatures that live with us and without them, we’d all die. There wouldn’t be any life. They are necessary for us and we are necessary for them. And I’m using them in the metaphor to say that society is the same way; we must all get along with each other. And the planet is the same way: we must treat the other creatures on this planet with respect, otherwise the planet will die.
RAY MORTON
Apparently Anakin has a higher level of midi-chlorians than any other person, making him more Force-powerful than anyone else. This attempt to provide a scientific explanation for the Force severely lessened the spiritual and mystical aspects of the energy field generated by all living things that was so appealing in the original movies.
JOHN KENNETH MUIR
Along comes Star Wars and it features the concept of “the Force.” Lucas devised this “thing” that binds the univer
se together, and binds us to one another. And his Force is nicely bifurcated among light and dark, good and bad, so not much deep thinking is really required to guess who to root for in the battle. But the Force is, on a deeper level, about faith. Those who believe in it, can use it. I can be a Jedi, if I try. You can be a Jedi. We have only but to concentrate … and believe. In the “Is God Dead?” world, post-1966, this assertion of belief in something we can’t see, something supernatural, let’s say, was nothing less than a revelation. That’s why Lucas goofed so badly with midi-chlorians in 1999. Suddenly, you had to have the right bloodline to be a Jedi. It was no longer something that could inspire everyone. But in the summer of 1977, Star Wars championed a nondenominational testament to the power of faith and the availability of spirituality to everybody who embraced belief. If the culture’s “lack of faith” was “disturbing,” the swashbuckling, spiritual Star Wars was the antidote.
TIMOTHY ZAHN
(author, Heir to the Empire)
I do not like the midi-chlorian idea at all. It sounds like an attempt to make a scientific basis for something that really was more mystical to begin with. I’m not sure of the purpose of it, but the idea that you can scan for a Jedi with a blood test bothers me for some reason. I’ve always thought of the Force as more than a talented art, that it is something that “if you’ve got it, you know it and you can develop it,” but it’s not something that you can look at a person and say, “Okay, he’s got that talent.” It’s just cold.
