Word: jedi
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Think that, and think again. You needn't be Return of the Jedi's evil Emperor, pregnant with prescience, to foresee smiles of delicious anticipation as the 20th Century Fox fanfare blares, the Lucasfilm logo fades and the sacred text appears: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." You needn't be a Hollywood accountant, mopey about this year's stagnant box office and praying for a Titanic-size hit, to forehear the cheers that will surely erupt halfway through the film when the Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) casts his laser stare on nine...
...right, any auteur can replay his greatest hits, exploiting even the youngest viewer's need for nostalgia. And, indeed, Episode 1 will display the old Lucas touches, many of them dating back not just to the trilogy of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but also to his first features, THX 1138 and American Graffiti. It has the gifted, driven misfit; the young woman above his station but not beyond his dreams; the mystic guide, the imposing villain, the comic sidekick. Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, the evil Emperor and Darth Vader are here...
Still, based on reading the script (hasn't everybody?) and seeing scraps of the film, we get intimations of something fresh, handsome, grand. Naboo's golden underwater city glows like an Art Nouveau chandelier, while the Jedi knights' home base, Coruscant, could come from a spiffier Blade Runner. The new sidekick, a computer-birthed frog boy named Jar Jar Binks, is a vexing, endearing mix of Kipling's Gunga Din and Tolkien's Gollum, and speaks in a pidgin English ("Yousa Jedi not all yousa cracked up to be!") that will be every kid's secret language this summer. Even...
...human characters are briskly developed in the script. And the cast is certainly tony: Neeson; art-house sex pistol Ewan McGregor as young Obi-Wan; Ingmar Bergman favorite Pernilla August as Anakin's mother; Natalie Portman (Broadway's Anne Frank) as the young Queen; and, brooding on the Jedi Council, Samuel L. Jackson. The completed film will offer definitive evidence, but for now there is reason to give Episode 1 the subtitle of the original Star Wars movie: A New Hope...
...film is set in an age tipping from medieval to modern, from the doddering aristocracy of the Galactic Republic to the brutal opportunism of the Trade Federation, which has blocked all shipping routes to the planet Naboo. Qui-Gon and his Jedi apprentice Obi-Wan are dispatched to settle the dispute. Reaching Naboo, they are befriended--hounded, really--by Jar Jar, a disaster-prone outcast of the Gungan race. He leads them to Amidala the Naboo Queen, whom they intend to take to the Republic's assembly in Coruscant. Engine trouble forces them to detour to Tatooine, where...