The Phantom Menace‘s podrace grew out of George Lucas’ neverending need for speed
Anakin Skywalker's victory in Episode I is a Star Wars all-timer thanks to the director’s life-long passion for racing
Film Features George Lucas
The propulsion that gives many of the Star Wars films their power comes from its filmmaker’s healthy fear of speed.
Consider the perilousness of the cosmic dogfights in 1977's Star Wars, the way the Rebellion’s X-wings and Empire’s TIE fighters exploded in halos of sparks and flame, sometimes done in by their pilot’s miscalculations as much as an enemy’s laser blasts. Take a hard look at the Millennium Falcon, which looked like it was kitbashed from junk snatched from scrap heaps; how its power drives always seemed to be stalling out just before some handy mid-chase tinkering had it blasting off once more. These are the sci-fi fantasies of a racer, a profession that George Lucas not only pursued once upon a time, but also infused into his filmmaking style, forever changing sci-fi.
Decisions made in filmmaking require a level of precision that, considering the financial stakes involved, can often feel as dramatic as those made in racing. That level of precision is an essential aspect of what has become one of the most tactile and thrilling sequences in Lucas’ filmography: the podrace from Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace. It’s a mid-film event that sets young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) on his path to becoming a Jedi Knight and showcases his ability to see things before they happen—”a Jedi trait,” according to Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson). What follows is a display of talent and skill that speaks to the tragedy of Darth Vader and Lucas’ history with the deadly sport of racing. When you pair this part of Anakin’s backstory with that of his creator, illuminating parallels of yearning and determination begin to form. But when you look at the films Lucas made when he was younger, a bigger picture of the podrace’s origins—not to mention its director’s cinematic philosophies—emerges.
One of the more famous biographical tidbits from Lucas’ early life is that as a student in Modesto, California, he’d developed a fascination with race cars. He was also something of a gearhead, futzing with engines to understand their function and what made them go. When his father bought him his first car, a yellow two-cylinder Autobianchi Bianchina, George’s first instinct was to pop the hood and soup it up. He’d spend his nights tooling around the streets of Modesto, looking for girls and street races, a seminal period in his life that would fuel much of his second feature film, American Graffiti. It’s a film he might have never made, were it not for a near-fatal crash on June 12, 1962, when Lucas’ hot rod was broadsided by a Chevy Impala, putting the young racing aspirant in the hospital.
This experience left a lasting impact on the Star Wars creator (“I realized more than anything else what a thin thread we hang on in life,” he said in 1999), and while it changed his chosen vocation, it also augmented his preoccupation with speed and its mechanics. Pursuit is a recurring theme in his films—THX 1138 features a motorcycle chase, American Graffiti ends with a hot rod race, and, of course, Luke Skywalker destroys the Death Star after a successful trench run, a Force-specific moment that presages Anakin’s podrace—but the specificity of the vehicles Lucas uses is also notable. He’s souping up his dream cars again, only this time using a full suite of resources and collaborators instead of the tools in his dad’s garage.
That puts an interesting spin on the podracers themselves, which are, in essence, a technological impossibility of twin (or quad) engines with a small pod strapped to them. If such engines did exist, defying gravity, propelling at improbable speeds, capable of hairpin turns and all the other terrifying feats one can and often does pull off in Episode I, nobody in their right mind would fund their construction—and no sane person would race them. The pod design is the ultimate form of racing as it can only exist in fantasy, a fusion of the chariot race in Ben-Hur, Formula 1, and Lucas’ ridiculous Star Wars magic, culminating in The Phantom Menace’s most purely transcendent sequence.
But what most clearly tethers the podrace to Lucas is its similarities to a short film the director made in University of Southern California’s film school. 1:42.08 is a seven-minute “tone poem” about a racecar looking to hit a specific lap time to qualify for an unspecified race. It’s a significant example of Lucas as a visualist, and watching it illuminates the techniques and editing tricks that he would later employ in American Graffiti, THX-1138, and Star Wars. But what’s most striking about the piece is how many of its shots are seemingly replicated during the podrace of The Phantom Menace; watching the two side by side gives the impression that with his first major directorial role since 1977, Lucas was drawing from the same well of inspiration that originally made him such an impactful filmmaker.
It might be purely speculative, but Lucas’ short seems to have a visual nod to his past as a hot rodder. The car he selected for the film, a Lotus 23, is yellow, just as Anakin’s pod engines featured prominent yellow air scoops. This choice of color could be either an intentional nod to his ill-fated Bianchina or a purely coincidental one. When looking for more concrete parallels between 1:42.08 and The Phantom Menace’s podrace, the shots in this short are fairly cut-and-dried. Lucas hyperactively cuts from the driver’s gritted-teeth expressions to the speedometer—hardly a novel approach in movies about racing, but the conscious repetition of the edits is significant in how they’re reflected during the podrace. There’s also a moment when the driver spins out of control and has to fiddle with the controls as the car’s engine cools down, a moment that is replicated—with more smoke, speed, and danger—during the tail-end of Anakin’s race. (The shot composition as the car spins out in 1:42.08 is also vaguely similar to how the iniquitous Sebulba crashes in The Phantom Menace.)
1:42.08's use of a first-person perspective is also worth considering. In Episode I, the camera often cuts to this view as Anakin weaves his pod through the stone monuments of Arch Canyon, and it’s seen again during the Laguna Caves leg of the race, a dangerous stretch of stalactites and stalagmites for any pod, as the racer Ratts Tyerell discovers milliseconds before he’s smashed to atoms. This perspective is perhaps the most effective tool to convey speed on screen; the computer-generated sands of Tatooine rush under the horizon line as tremendous mountain structures push into our view—in 1:42.08, it’s the pavement of a course we see, and Lucas cognizantly shifts into this view whenever his driver negotiates its tight turns.
Both films also use sound similarly. While composer John Williams inserts a few heart-thundering grace notes into the podrace now and again, the only sound we hear for a good stretch of it is the warring scream of the many engines on the track. Each podracer was given unique “personalities” by sound designer and editor Ben Burtt, who maximized the thrum of their drives to create the sequence’s thrilling sense of acceleration. In 1:42.08, the only sounds we hear are the wind, a roaring engine, and the click of a stopwatch. It’s not insignificant that the lack of music during these races is a deliberate creative choice that gives both films immediacy.
Whether he was making films in 1966 or 1997 (when much of The Phantom Menace was shot), Lucas used his former need for speed to tell a story about skill and precision. The depiction of his two characters—the unnamed driver of 1:42.08 and Anakin Skywalker—are similar in determination, even if they’re lightyears apart in age, experience, and ability. In both films, Lucas wanted to depict the feeling of speed as he felt it, as we see in both corkscrew tracks and the way the pod and the race car are shot weaving through them. With one road being entirely digitized and the other real, Lucas’ technological challenges conveying speed differed dramatically, but the way in which he pulled it off highlights his mechanical, formal acumen.
There is a revealing anecdote about Lucas’ process during the supplemental documentary from the DVD release of Episode I, in which concept model maker John Goodson recounts the first time he watched the director review concept art—in this case, Goodson’s model of Anakin’s pod. “He would talk [about] how this thing would work,” Goodson says. “The feeling I got was this guy was at the podrace yesterday, and he’s telling us a story—’this thing opens up, and this electrical thing comes out’—all these details about it. I was mesmerized by the fact that he could just do that […] come up with all these mechanical explanations for things.”
George Lucas, former and current gearhead, was tinkering again with The Phantom Menace. Watching the film 25 years later, it’s clear he was still engrossed in playing with the vehicles he loved from an early age. But another aspect of the podrace speaks to his appreciation for speed and the consequences of pushing its boundaries: the sense of tangible danger that kept him in the director’s chair instead of the driver’s seat. Racing’s loss was cinema’s gain.
80 Comments
Now that’s podracing.
Loved the podrace as a kid and frankly, I think it still slaps today. It bewilders me that we only got one video game sequel to Episode I Racer.
I have the complete opposite reaction to the pod racing. At best the race scene is way too long, at worst (depending on how I feel about the Phantom Menace that day) it’s completely unnecessary.
I’m with you, and even in its best light it’s still rendered deeply stupid by the dumbass announcer.
“That’s gotta hurt!” when one of the racers crashes is prime example why Lucas shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near dialogue.
And yet he somehow out did himself with “I don’t like sand” just three years later.
I find the whole dialogue about Padme finishing her term as queen even more cringe-worthy. It’s just so dumb and awkward! A monarch is a lifetime appointment, not a short term one, and regardless of what you call a position (it was much closer to a president or prime minister than anything aristocratic), you don’t appoint a child to it as the best person for the job would have had to have some kind of skills and experience. It’s just a way to try to extract himself from a mess he wrote himself in to in the first place…
I remember recognizing Greg Proops’ voice immediately from his stand-up and it was distracting even though I like him as a comedian.
I like Greg Proops as much as anyone when he’s on Who’s Line Is It Anyways. But that two-headed nonsense monster was a bit much.
The bit where they wag their heads…
That’s completely true, but it’s also still one of the best parts of the movie because it’s the only exciting thing happening in the otherwise dull 2nd act of the film.
It’s too long by half, at least. Probably could have skipped some of Anakin’s futzing with the engine mid-race and gone straight to him running that one asshole off the course.
We definitely did not need to see all three laps in real time.
It’s weird to think that the pod race is, at fifteen minutes, more than ten percent of the entire movie. Narratively, it’s barely a speed bump (“well, I guess now we can go do the main quest”) but it goes on forever.
It’s also the first thing people point to when they complain the movie looks like a video game.
i think its just way too predictable so that no matter how nice it might look its hard to get invested in it. not a lot of suspense or tension imo
i love the SOUND of the podrace. the rest, not so much. Ewan McGregor’s Kenobi is one of the few things in the whole movie that i think saves it, along with Liam Neeson, of course.
It’s just a weird fifteen minute side trail that answers the cinematic question”how can we cough up some dough to buy this kid out of slavery” that Amidala giving Qui-Gonn a necklace would have solved in eight seconds but that wouldn’t sell toys.
It’s probably only because of how toxic the discourse about everything relating to Episode 1 got and companies wanted to distance themselves from everything about it.I am kind of shocked they haven’t tried making a new one now, given how a lot of Gen Z kids have been going through a nostalgia-fueled (wrong) “reevaluation” of how “no actually the prequels are really good” and might actually buy such a game. But then again, the market for racing games in general has shrunk pretty significantly.
Millennials. I was a Millennial kid (the target age no less) when the prequels were originally released theatrically, and I loved them. It didn’t take me long to realize they are not good movies, but for a multitude of reasons I got a lot of entertainment out of them, especially Episode I & III.
I am apparently a Xennial(or very young Gen X). While, ultimately, I had to contend with the idea that Phantom Menace was not great. At the time the hype and excitement to see a Star Wars movie in theaters at release was a huge deal. I was not born when Star Wars came out and was very young when Empire and ROTJ came out, so this was the first time I was seeing new Star Wars in theater. Honestly I just have a lot of fondness for the year 1999. It was a killer year for movies. For 3/4 of it I was working full time at a job that was easy and fun and going to community college just taking blow off classes to stay a full time student. It was the last year in my life where I could live with zero responsibility
At the time the hype and excitement to see a Star Wars movie in theaters at release was a huge deal.Oh, absolutely. It was huge. I’m a bit older than you (it came out 2 days before my 27th birthday) and for those of us who saw the OT in theaters as kids it was a seismic event.A group of us waited in line overnight to buy tickets a few weeks (IIRC) ahead of the release date. And then, the day before, I ended up in the hospital thanks to a back injury that caused me to temporarily lose feeling below my waist thanks to the idiot chiropractor (never again) the PT place sent me to.They kept me overnight for observation and the neurosurgeon said that if I didn’t have any issues they’d release me, but if I did I’d have to have surgery. I told him I was going to see that damn movie no matter what; obviously I wasn’t going to break out of the hospital to see it or do anything else that was going to jeopardize my health but I was dead serious about how important seeing that movie was to me.And y’know what? In the moment I enjoyed it. I realized it wasn’t a good movie at all when I went to see it again a few weeks later but that opening day showing was still a great experience with good friends.
That’s true. I too am a millennial and unfortunately fell into the classic boomer “blame trends I don’t like on people younger than me” trap! Yeah, I do remember really liking Phantom Menace as a kid (I think the things that stuck with me most at the time were thinking that all the ships looked really cool because they were all sleek and shiny and clean, unlike the ol’ rusty looking X-Wings. And of course, seeing a double bladed lightsaber was sick as shit (and still does hold up as being rad to look at). In general I think I liked a lot of the prequels back then for looking more “new” like how Jango Fett’s armor was all fresh unlike Boba’s.But I’ve never really gotten the trend of thinking they’re actually good. I know thinking things were better when you were a kid is a common thing to fall into but I’ve never understood why the SW prequels in particular seem to be so many peoples’ hills to die on.
I don’t think they’re good movies, but I do think they were more carefully-crafted and thought-0ut than people originally gave them credit for. I think the racist & misogynist backlashes against sequel actors like John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran also highlighted the ways people who grew up with the original trilogy were dismissive, if not outright mean to actors like Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd. This doesn’t make them good movies, but I think it fairly calls into question if positive qualities about the prequels were overlooked.Plus at a certain point, what more is there to say about how those movies were bad? Writing, bad. Direction, bad. CGI, didn’t age well. I accepted those things about the prequels a very long time ago, and haven’t heard anything interesting about *how* they were bad in almost as long. But I still rewatch them because I still enjoy them for reasons that I like to talk about.
You… you think that people should still be coming up with new ways to explain or describe how and why a 25 year old movie is bad, even though people have been explaining those reasons for 25 years now? The lack of new “interesting” ways to describe why they are bad somehow renders the criticism of them less authentic?Okay, then… smart, reasonable take….
Do you genuinely believe that I think people should be coming up with new negative criticisms of a 25-year old movie and that any negative criticism of the prequels is “inauthentic” (???) or did you read my comment in bad faith so you could find the worst and most absurd interpretation of it, hoping that I would reply to it?I’m a Millennial. I’ve been reading/listening to (and agreeing with most) criticism of the prequels for 25 years now. They are bad movies, but I’m bored of having the same conversations about how they’re bad over and over and over, and I suspect that many of the people who enjoyed the movies feel the same way. Re-evaluating older works often means examining them from different perspectives, which can lead to people having new, interesting takes decades after a work was released. I see this get conflated with “it was good, actually,” but that’s what pop culture and media criticism looks like.
You talk an awful lot of shit but when someone calls out your idiotic comment, crickets.
I don’t think good and bad are actually useful metrics for talking about movies. Sometimes accepting the badness of a movie is a prelude to appreciating the things it does well. Not always, but sometimes.
Psst… Gen Z is doing the same thing to the prequels Gen X did with the original trilogy. They’re allowing nostalgia to inflate their sense of it’s quality.
I get that but honestly while I’ve never seen them as the masterpieces they’re sometimes praised as, I can still see that the originals are pretty good.
I remember going to watch the Lucas remasters in the late 90s and feeling a little deflated as I became much more aware of the faults in the original trilogy seeing them as an older person. Nostalgia is a powerful drug at times!
Millennials, not Gen Z.
The directing and composition was okay, but honestly, looking at the clip above (I haven’t seen the movie since it was in theaters) shows just how poorly turn-of-the-millennium CGI dated. This looks like a budget PS3 game from 2010, not something from a big budget movie. The practical effects of the original series (which I’ve seen many, many, times) are far superior.
Phantom Menace is a product of its time but the CGI at least blends into the movie in a way that it is not super distracting. We watched Return of the Jedi on Disney+ last week and even my youngest(it was his first time watching it) could tell that the special edition added scenes looked completely off and wrong in the movie. He turned to me and said “Why does Jabba the Hutt look real but those singers look fake”.
I think the way the CGI effects have aged also has a lot to do with poor mastering decisions that for some reasons plagues this series in particular. For example, when the OT was released on (I believe) DVD, a warm tint was introduced that turned a lot of people off because the lightsaber colors didn’t look right anymore. I don’t think enough people both knew a lot about mastering and cared about the prequels to raise the same concerns, but this video IMO shows how much better the CG effects blend in with the film stock than the digital, plastic look of later masters:In general I agree that practical effects tend to hold up better. The Phantom Menace even had a lot of practical effects which held up a lot better than the CG effects. But it’s hard for me to not feel like people are also eager to put on nostalgia goggles for older effects. One of the things I most appreciated about the Special Editions are the shots where LucasFilm went in and removed or cleaned up matte lines, which make the practical effects IMO look better than they ever have before (I saw the unaltered editions as a kid and the de-specialized editions as an adult; the practical effects were never flawless). It’s a shame Lucas couldn’t leave well enough alone and added or changed all sorts of weird little things.
One of the things I most appreciated about the Special Editions are the shots where LucasFilm went in and removed or cleaned up matte lines, which make the practical effects IMO look better than they ever have before (I saw the unaltered editions as a kid and the de-specialized editions as an adult; the practical effects were never flawless)When I first heard about the Special Editions, that’s what I thought they were going to be – cleaned-up versions of the OT – and I was totally on-board. I wonder if part of my irritation about those being the only officially available versions stems in some small part from that.I remember watching the Laserdisc version of Star Wars with my cousins in days of yore, two of whom were serious home video enthusiasts, and they were pointing out things like the matte boxes and explaining why they were the way they were.
I still have that “final” VHS set before Lucas stared fucking with everything. There’s a teaser at the front about seeing the movies in their original form “one last time.” Which seemed like marketing hyperbole at the time, as opposed to a legitimate threat.
They were even phoning it in back then. The original versions that they released on DVD were just sloppy transfers from the LaserDisc, and I think those VHS versions were as well.
This video had some pretty interesting commentary on why FX work is affected by remastering. Probably not super surprising for anyone who’s got a background in the field, but it’s still pretty well done.
I wouldn’t be shocked if “Laguna Caves” is a nod to Laguna Seca raceway. As well, I didn’t really appreciate it at the time, but with the exaggerated front fenders, the headrest fairing, the general shape of it, slap a set of wheels on Anakin’s pod, and it would fit in rather well in vintage racing, surrounded by just the sort of cars Lucas was probably reading about in Road & Track or something.
Horse pucky. It grew out of Lucas’ love of the Ben Hur chariot race, of which the pod race is nearly a shot for shot remake.
Another worthwhile contribution to what I hope I’m not imprudently dubbing the AV Club Renaissance!
THX 1138 came out before American Graffiti to my knowledge.
Never going to understand why people keep trying to rehabilitate one of the worst movies ever made. The thrill of an actual race or even of a movie where they use real cars is completely absent, the crowd reactions are terrible, the announcer is terrible, the faces people keep pulling and the kid keep pulling are terrible, the movie is fucking terrible, let it go. Honestly fully hand animated race scenes like just people on cycles in Akira are much more exciting than videogame CGI race scenes, and this is about as thrilling as the race scenes in Cars.
Literally the most disappointing movie experience of my life. Walking out the whole crowd was just sort of quiet and despondent-looking.
Never understood how the fuck Lucas is spoken of as being in the same field as the Hollywood New Wave guys like Spielberg, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Lynch, Coppola, Altman, et al, other than just being around at the same damn time. I think the prequels simply proved the theory that it was, indeed, everyone around Lucas who made the originals good. Left alone, with full creative control, you get…the Phantom Menace. He’s the Todd Howard of movies. The most important person on the original trilogy was surely the intern whose job was to distract George every time George got An Idea™. “Hey, Mr. Lucas, sorry to interrupt you as you’re pitching the idea of a Jabba the Hutt interpretive dance, but I think they’re about to tow your car unless you move it.”I just watched that pod racing sequence and…it’s not good. For one, it’s obviously aimed at selling toys to kids (“Collect the whole field of podracers! NAG YOUR PARENTS INTO OPENING THEIR WALLETS TODAY! GO! NOW!”) and provide a jolt of energy to a dull movie as coldsavage down below said. For two, it’s so blatantly descriptive, outright telling the audience what to feel……because, for three, it’s poorly-shot and edited. Anakin suffers a bunch of setbacks and just…just…well, they’re never a problem. He starts off way behind the field, and then just…catches up through no visible effort of his own. He’s last, then in about ten seconds he’s in the thick of of the race pack. We have no idea what him throwing all those switches means, so we have no stakes, especially after seeing Anakin magick his way through everything.Oh, and a bunch of innocent racers die. Hilarious! Except Sebulba, because he’s as marketable as Anakin.
I think proximity is the only answer to your first question. Lucas WAS friendly with a lot of those guys. But I doubt many people have any remaining illusions about his relative talent.
His first wife, Marcia Lou Griffin, won the Academy Award for Best Editing for Star Wars. You can read about the shitshow the film would have been if she hadn’t put her foot down.She also edited American Graffiti (1973), Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), and New York, New York (1977).She’s a truly great editor.
Thank you! To my shame, and indeed pop culture in general’s, I didn’t know her name – the fact that she’s not as famous as Lucas is a tragedy. I read her wiki page, and, holy crap: George Lucas referring to her as a simply Valley Girl while describing himself as the intellectual is just…yeah. About what I would expect.And then, of course, her going on to win a damn Oscar for Lucas’s baby. And eight weeks to edit the Battle of Yavin, and diverged significantly from George’s intent. 40,000 feet of footage and dialogue. That says two things to me: one, Griffin is a genius, and two, George, as usual, couldn’t find his own arse with both hands and a team of proctologists.You also had Lawrence Kasdan and Carrie “You can type this shit but you can’t say it, George” Fisher herself punching up the script – well, not so much punching as kicking the ever-loving bejesus out of it.
Leaving the theater after a sold-out midnight screening on opening night, I’ve never seen such a quiet group of people.
I didn’t even bother to watch it until long after the fact, and it’s mind-blowing how terrible it is. I think it’s kind of hilarious that people were sleeping out for a couple months here in New York to see it. That’s a lot of bagels, McDonald’s, and bruised asses for not much payoff!
I remember eye-rolling at multiple points in the Phantom Menace and the pod race was one of the worst offenders. I used to be a huge motorcycle racing fan and everything about this sequence felt off. I particularly hated that in a race with very few laps, a racer who gets half a lap behind can catch up, but then struggle to overtake the leader? If their speeds were that comparable, he’d have never caught up. It’s just lazily put together with a little bit of fan service with bits that feel intentionally reminiscent of the Death Star trench flying
movie still sucks but it’s the only one of the prequels that’s fun to talk about.
I don’t know, I’d say this video proves you can have fun talking about episode II:
the other two prequels just kind of make me sad because it’s lucas spinning his wheels going ‘this is what you want, right? boba fett is a clone of his own father!’i like the energy of the first one because he’s so sure of himself that he’s delivering exactly what everyone wants, and he’s so completely wrong.
The thing about Phantom Menace is it shows what Lucas does without anyone to rein him in…weird racist stereotypes! A fifteen minute pod racing scene that just cone off as boring! A romance that appears to be between a teenager and an eight year old! Making some of the most interesting actors of that time come off as listless and boring!
Is Disney still sending those checks? Or – with all of the possible topics out there – it is THIS topic, which the AVClub honestly considers worthy of an article?
It’s a well-written article. Who cares what it’s about?
Good god, why are you even here?
why not? What are you contributing to av club that makes it more interesting than this article?
Who knew there was something new to learn about Star Wars and George Lucas. This is a fantastic article.Between old articles getting uploaded, archival releases, and interviews with still living crew, we’re still learning a lot about the heyday of “genre” film and TV from the 60’s to the 80’s. Even old mysteries about Star Trek like the origins and whereabouts of ship models. And the consistent narrative is nobody knew what the finished product would be or if anything would work, even on the original Star Wars sequels. They were inventing a style of filming and production as they went.It’s easy to think of the prequels as a guaranteed success since the world wanted more Star Wars, but Lucas had no idea whether a new movie could actually be created. His decision to go so heavily CGI may have been based on years of experience with things not working on camera while the release date closed in.
The podracing scene is a bit of a litmus test for people liking the movie. Anecdotally, those who liked the TPM (or are nostalgic for it, or didn’t hate it, or defend it, or whatever you want to call it) seem to think that the race was exciting and well done and set up some of Anakin’s abilities, or some combination of those. People who hate TPM point to the pod-racing as an overlong interruption that seems aimed at children to give them an energy jolt and sell some toys, wrapped up with bad dialogue and the distracting announcers.
I weirdly fall in between. I was in the second generation of Star Wars fans – those born in the mid-80s who grew up watching the original trilogy through the early-mid 90s and caught the special editions in theatres and finally, Phantom Menace in 1999.It’s a movie I loved at the time, had a great dislike for over many years but have come around to it being a deeply, deeply flawed film which is also simultaneously got some incredible stuff in it.Could they have been better written? Fuck yeah? Were there better ways to show Anakin’s fall to the dark side. Oh definitly.But there’s no what ifs that can ever satisfy – These are the movies we got and whatever head canon or other ideas anyone else has don’t count for shit.The podrace is something I wasn’t overly big on, especially circa 1999-2002 because I was desperate for new Star Wars material and was annoyed so much of the film was given over to that rather than worldbuilding or seeing more of Coroscant or the rest of the universe.Now, decades later and having so much more Star Wars, it doesn’t bother me especially and I can enjoy it on its own merits. Free from being the only Star Wars I was going to get for years, it’s got some good moments in it.
Interesting perspective. I am guessing we are in the same age range but I remember seeing it at the time and being incredibly disappointed. It seemed like such a letdown after so much hype. I was definitely one of those people who in real time asked myself some variation of “am I really enjoying this, or am I telling myself I am enjoying it because it’s Star Wars in a theater and I like Star Wars?” That said, with the passage of time it went from an incredible disappointment to simply a movie I recognize was not for me and that has made it seem, well, less bad.You bring up a good point with your last paragraph too. TPM being in the theater was a huge deal, since outside the (expansive and fun, but limited to mostly books/comics) EU, this was Star Wars I could watch like the original. It was an event. It did not happen often. Now? There’s a bunch of Star Wars shows and there have been 5 movies released since the prequels. It went from an event to just another film on the schedule and if people don’t like one, another one is coming up soon that maybe they will like more.
The podrace scene was there to plug the video game based on it.
Fight me.
I think it was a more general commercial opportunity play. Loads of the merch that came out along with the movie was pod-race related.
The entire movie was a toy commercial.
the lengths to which people will go to make a thru and thru shitty movie vaguely redeemable
I think it’s on one of the Harry Potter Rifftrax commentaries that one of the guys says the Quidditch sequences are that franchise’s version of the pod race. I’ve always appreciated that.
Fuck off with that. The Quidditch sequences are cool
You can just hear the directors say “well, fuck, I’ve gotta put in a goddamn Quidditch match or I’ll catch hell for it.”
The podrace itself isn’t great, but I find it endearing because of all the weird scenes peppered throughout. Like the announcers welcoming “Jabba du Hutt” with “alalalalalaalalalala”, the puppet screaming “RAAAAARRRR” before he explodes, Anakin engaging his “fix engine” switch which gives him a mega-boost for some reason.
Going to see this in the theater as a teenage stoner, my friends and I all smuggled Abba Zabbas into the movie. Tucked into our shirt breastpockets, the candy “bars” were to be consumed at the most intense part of the movie. Once the pod race scene hit it’s fever pitch, we all looked at each other knowingly, smiled, nodded, unsheathed, and loosened our teeth a little more with each bite.What a summer!
You guys were such dweebs lol. But sweet memory
I thought this one was mostly directed by Roger Christian, though credited to Lucas. EDIT: oh, everyone is giving their opinion about how terrible it is? I don’t think it’s terrible, I do think it is generally very fun and moves fast, and I love all the world creation in it (there is even an underwater city, my favourite trope) but when Jar Jar appears on screen I have to scream “what the hell were you all thinking?”
love the podrace. still remember how intense i found it, as a 14yr, in 1999.shout out to the Speed Racer movie, for also having really cool race scenes.
If you mean all time completely gratuitous and totally cuttable scenes, sure.
If you cut out the podrace then, what, Anakin is just magically freed by Watto?
The pod race is such a mixed bag, the race it’s self is good but someone needed to rewrite the script to have it better integrated. All the main characters stop dead for the length of the race. There had to be a way to have the race but make it interesting for the plot other then just winning a part.