1999 has been described as the greatest year in cinema history, if not the last great year of movie history, giving us iconic works such as David Fincher's Fight Club, Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s The Blair Witch Project, and Lana and Lilly Wachowskis' The Matrix. While these films have all been influential in their own right, there is one film that is often neglected in that canon, and one that is arguably the most influential of them all: George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
Before I explain my reasoning, I should state that I don’t think The Phantom Menace is a good movie. I don’t buy into the prequel revisionism, nor am I saying its influence was for the better. In fact, I believe its influence has mostly been negative and has made the industry worse. I am simply arguing that The Phantom Menace might just be the most influential film of 1999, in the sense that the trends it started would eventually define our modern era of blockbuster filmmaking, for better or worse.
If there's one thing from The Phantom Menace reevaluation that I agree with, it's that the film was ahead of the curve in terms of technical enhancements. Firstly, The Phantom Menace was the first major Hollywood release to use digital cameras. While most of the film was shot on 35mm, many sequences were shot using the Sony HDC-750. Lucas liked the camera so much that he decided to shoot the rest of the prequel series using digital cameras, making Attack of the Clones the first Hollywood blockbuster shot entirely digitally. Secondly, another pioneering aspect of The Phantom Menace is Jar Jar Binks himself. While motion capture had been used in video games and movies before, it had never been utilized to create a fictional character in a live-action film to the extent it was with Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar Binks is the first full CGI motion-captured character, and although Andy Serkis’s performance as Gollum surpassed Ahmed Best’s, there is still a case to be made that Jar Jar paved the way for Gollum.
Moreover, The Phantom Menace introduced techniques that, while commonplace in Hollywood today, were groundbreaking in 1999, such as having an entirely CGI set or segments of the film that are entirely animated. All these techniques felt fresh at the time and in many ways paved the way for a transition from movies like Godzilla (1998), The Mummy (1999), and even The Matrix in how they utilized CGI and a blockbuster approach to filmmaking, akin to modern films like Avatar, Planet of the Apes, and most Disney live-action movies.
Speaking of Disney, The Phantom Menace might just be the first true legacy sequel. Nostalgia bait in Hollywood is nothing new, nor are sequels made decades later or even the passing of the torch. However, I would argue that what distinguishes a legacy sequel from a mere continuation is reverence to the IP. The hype around The Phantom Menace marketed it as “A Star Wars for a new generation,” targeting late 20-year-old Gen Xers nostalgic for Star Wars and emphasizing that Star Wars was back. The hype for The Phantom Menace also kick-started many traditions seen with big blockbusters today, such as camping out for movie releases, and notably, the release of trailers online. The Phantom Menace was one of the first movies to have its trailer released online, becoming one of the most downloaded videos at the time, crashing Lucasfilm’s website.
However, I would argue that the tidal wave shift signifying the modern era of American blockbuster cinema has little to do with the movie or its marketing, but rather with the discourse surrounding The Phantom Menace itself. The backlash against The Phantom Menace is more well-known than the film itself, and I would argue that one of the reasons it garnered such widespread attention was the internet, which made it easier than ever to spread opinions. One of the most famous critiques was the "Phantom Edit," a fan edit that removed excessive dialogue and nearly 18 minutes of footage. The "Phantom Edit" spawned a new subculture of film fans who create fan edits, a subculture that continues to thrive today. Moreover, the backlash to The Phantom Menace online laid the foundation for modern internet nerd criticism. In the past, criticism of fan-hated movies and TV shows was confined to conversations among friends, conventions, and fanzines. However, due to blogs and forums where these criticisms spread, the influence of fan criticism grew exponentially. Fans and non-fans alike often value the opinions of fans over professional film critics, with fan criticism often focusing more on nitpicks and negative aspects rather than positives.
In conclusion, while these influences have negatively impacted the industry in my opinion, their influence is undeniable. If 1999 is truly considered the end of an era, then The Phantom Menace marks the beginning of the new one.