The Phantom Menace
Everyone knows that The Phantom Menace doesn’t work. My 5-year-old Star Wars-obsessed son knows The Phantom Menace doesn’t work (two hours into the movie, he asks “Does Darth Maul ever actually fight anyone?”). But the question I must face as a screenwriter is why. And, after seeing the movie a half-dozen or so times, I believe I have an answer.
The problem is not Jar-Jar.
Let’s go back to first principles. What does the protagonist want? I thought about this for a long time, and then I realized something — I wasn’t sure who the protagonist was.
So I thought, as a public service, I would run down the most obvious characters and examine their motivations.