I didn’t want to write one of these movies unless I had the technology available to really tell the kind of story I was interested in telling. I wanted to be able to explore the world I’d created to its fullest potential, so I waited until I had the technological means to do that.
George Lucas
For George Lucas and fans worldwide, Star Wars had never really gone away. For the wider public, however, the release of Return of the Jedi had ended the Star Wars story: it had been impressively epic, huge fun and widely influential, but it was over. Dale Pollock’s semi-authorized biography of Lucas was republished in 1990 with a new introduction that concluded that the Star Wars creator’s ‘biggest success [was] now behind him’.
The release of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park in June 1993 finally convinced Lucas the time was right to revive Star Wars. The success of the Timothy Zahn novels and the Star Wars Expanded Universe had proven to him that an audience for new Star Wars still existed. A new generation was discovering the original films through television and on video. The theatrical re-release of the Special Editions confirmed it: there was still a hunger for Star Wars.
Lucas had a story to tell: the material had been there since 1976, albeit in a rough form. The big question was whether filmmaking technology had developed enough to allow him to tell those stories in an economical way, as he would be funding them himself. Each of the original trilogy movies had been a struggle, but The Empire Strikes Back had been a huge personal financial risk. Now he was thinking of doing it all again, but he had to know he could both achieve his vision on screen and afford to do so.
Spielberg’s Jurassic Park showed that digital filmmaking tools (many developed by ILM) had progressed to the extent that photoreal visions could be shown on screen, interacting with humans. The implications were immediately obvious. Additionally, through working on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles with Rick McCallum, Lucas felt he had found his new Gary Kurtz or Howard Kazanjian – a man who could marshal the resources and command the troops to get such a complicated production underway.
Lucas first sat down seriously to begin work on crafting the first Star Wars prequel in November 1994. ‘The story for the three new films was the back story of the other films,’ said Lucas. ‘[It] was sketched out in rudimentary fashion when I wrote the first trilogy. There were certain things I knew even then, [such as] Anakin Skywalker grew up on a small planet, had special skills, and was found by the Jedi. A lot of the story points were there. The actual scenes and many of the characters were not.’
Lucas still saw writing as a chore and found it intensely difficult. He was determined, however, not to hand over the creation of his worlds to someone else. That might come later for the sequels, but he felt he needed to lay down the ground rules for these new Star Wars films himself. Despite having the original outlines to work from, a lot of new material was needed. Lucas wasn’t the same man who had originally drafted this material. He would be filtering his original vision through the more experienced eye of a mature filmmaker who had built an empire of his own.
Technology had changed here, too. Writing was now largely done using computers. Lucas, however, stuck with his tried and tested method of writing his screenplays longhand in pencil on yellow, lined notepads, with a secretary to type them up. Much of what he had put down on those sheets of paper would dictate how the story would unfold across a brand new trilogy. It was important to take the time to get it right at this stage when all that was involved was a man and his imagination, before committing to spending millions of dollars and co-opting the labour of thousands.
The Star Wars prequels were a complicated storytelling puzzle. Not only had Lucas to tell the back-story of major characters from the original films – mainly Darth Vader, the Emperor and Obi-Wan Kenobi – he had to ensure that everything tied up too. He also had an ambition to work in pre-echoes of events in the existing Star Wars movies. Lucas was a huge history buff, and he had noticed how events were often repeated or replayed in slightly different ways by different generations. He wanted to bring this to Star Wars by featuring characters, situations and events that viewers might recognize from the first trilogy. His overall ambition, though, was to transpose the fall of a Republic – as in Rome, or the United States in the 1970s (with the fall of Nixon’s presidency) – to his galaxy far, far away. Behind the space combat and all-out action would be the rise of the evil Empire that had dominated the original trilogy.
Fans had long been teased with an origin story for Darth Vader that had involved a final conflict with Obi-Wan Kenobi. A battle between the pair had seen Anakin Skywalker fall into a lava pit, being burned horribly and then reborn as ‘more machine than man’. The specifics of these events had never been revealed. Most diehard fans of Star Wars were expecting the prequel films to fill in those blanks. Instead, Lucas decided to start with the adventures of a nine-year-old boy.
Lucas knew that selling his planned depiction of the most evil man in the galaxy as a nine-year-old would be difficult. He considered making the character older, maybe nearer to twelve. That would simplify a lot of things that Lucas could see as problems for a nine-year-old, such as triumphing in the Podrace and flying an unfamiliar starfighter. However, clear in his mind was the need to depict the inciting trauma that would set the young Anakin Skywalker on the road to becoming Darth Vader. The forced separation of Anakin from his mother would be all the more traumatic for a younger boy, so Lucas stuck with his original ideas, even while aware of the problems he was creating for himself – and the fans.
The main through-line for the film was to be the rise of Palpatine from Senator to Chancellor of the Republic, his first step to becoming galactic Emperor. Drawing on history, Lucas was riffing on the rise of Hitler, the Nazi party and the Third Reich in 1930s Germany. Around this Lucas dropped in several other connected plots. The taxation of trade routes (another important element of American history, but something much mocked when introduced to Star Wars) sees the arrival of two Jedi to negotiate between the planet of Naboo and the blockading Trade Federation. These Jedi are the young padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi and his rebellious Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Their involvement in political matters brings them to Tatooine and an encounter with Anakin Skywalker, a young boy clearly powerful in the Force. The boy’s blood is rich in a microscopic life form called midi-chlorians that enhance the Force (a controversial addition to Star Wars mythology – although drawn from Lucas’s original source material – that annoyed fans and was not referred to in subsequent films). The older Jedi recognizes in this boy the fulfilment of a prophecy about a figure who will bring balance to the Force. The exact nature of this ‘balance’ is not initially clear, but the rebirth of the 1,000-year-old Sith order (through dark-side practitioner Darth Maul and Palpatine’s alter-ego of Darth Sidious) cannot be coincidental.
This may not have been the tale fans were expecting, but it was the one Lucas needed to tell. He knew he had two other movies to further deepen and complicate the story of Anakin Skywalker, depicting his fall to the dark side of the Force and his re-emergence as Darth Vader (not to be seen until the closing stages of the third movie). It may have all seemed rather simplistic in the finished film, but that was part of the overall plan. The original Star Wars was a simple adventure story, extended and deepened by the two sequels. Lucas wanted something similar this time around, although it did take him around twenty drafts to get this ‘simple’ story into a shape that would allow production to begin on what was one of the most-anticipated movies in film history.
Rick McCallum began work on the first Star Wars prequel without a finished script. Much of what had been learned through the three years of making the Indiana Jones TV series would be instrumental in his approach to Episode I (as the new film was now tagged) and many of the department heads would transfer over from that show.
Lucasfilm’s challenge to the traditional movie-making production process extended to pre-production. With only a story outline and a breakdown of key scenes, McCallum could begin the conceptual design work while Lucas continued to write. There were entire worlds, new characters and creatures, spaceships and vehicles to design. As with the script, the cheapest part of production would be when it was all still confined to pencil and paper. Digital tools came into play here, too, as they increasingly replaced traditional paint, pencil and ink.
The initial art department for Episode I was established in an upstairs room of the main house on Skywalker Ranch. McCallum spent six months looking for new artists, preferably new talent fresh out of art school who would be both affordable and adaptable. Months were spent sifting through over 25,000 portfolio submissions. Out of this process, McCallum found Doug Chiang, who was already working at Industrial Light and Magic. He won the role of heading up the art department on Episode I. He started drawing his ideas for how the new Star Wars movie might look the same November in 1994 that Lucas sat down to begin drafting the full screenplay.
The process of ‘pre-visualization’ was extensive, but helped hugely in communicating the look and feel of the film to those responsible for production, set and costume design. Chiang’s meetings with Lucas were inspirational. ‘George wanted to see a wide range of styles,’ said Chiang. ‘He wanted Episode I to be completely different from the previous films, stylistically richer and more like a period piece. At our weekly meetings [he] would choose the designs he liked best and ask us to expand on them. The list of design elements kept growing, and George would tell us just enough information to keep us working.’
Following in the footsteps of three of the biggest movies of all time would not be easy for those who came fresh to Star Wars. It was their task to capture the special essence of those films in their designs, the things that made them distinct from regular science-fiction movies. The universe they were set to depict would eventually evolve into the one seen in Star Wars: Episode IV –A New Hope. The clue came in their realization that Star Wars was really mythic fantasy dressed up in the iconography of science fiction. With that in mind, the designers were able to mine inspiration from not only great civilizations of the past, but also epic tales of heroes and villains from folklore.
The new film would feature Tatooine, a world already depicted on screen, although the town of Mos Espa would have to be distinct from the already seen Mos Eisley. The rest of the planets in Episode I would be new, although the Republic capital of Coruscant had been briefly glimpsed in the Return of the Jedi Special Edition.
Lucas’s design team drew upon Italian architecture, especially that of Venice, to provide a look for Theed City on Naboo. The underwater city of Otho Gunga, home of Jar Jar Binks and his fellow Gungans, was harder to visualize, with no earthly template to draw upon. The city – depicted as a series of pressurized bubbles – was art nouveau in its look, featuring the curves and shapes of natural forms from flowers and plants. It fitted well with the watery world the Gungans inhabited. Unused concept art by original Star Wars artist Ralph McQuarrie inspired the look of Coruscant – a high-tech city covering an entire planetary surface. Chiang admitted, ‘All I did was take his vision, and expand on it a little.’
These planets also had to feature their own unique inhabitants. Terryl Whitlatch, an illustrator specializing in zoology, was hired by Lucasfilm to create authentic creatures that would fit with the planets. She was able to bring her knowledge of how animals on Earth exist within their distinctive habitats to figure out what kind of creatures would live in the undersea world of Otho Gunga or deep in the bowels of the super-metropolis of Coruscant. Combining features from several real world creatures, Whitlatch came up with odd-looking characters such as Tatooine junk-dealer Watto, which Lucas then tinkered with before approving. It was Whitlatch who would give form to the notorious Jar Jar Binks, the comic Gungan who becomes an ally of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. Disowned by his people due to his bungling, Jar Jar saves the Jedi from Trade Federation forces and helps them get to Theed City. The result is an alliance between Naboo’s surface-dwellers and the Gungans to defeat the invading Trade Federation.
Lucas originally thought of Jar Jar as being the equivalent to Chewbacca, the loyal sidekick, or filling the comic relief role C-3PO had played in the originals. He wanted to use digital technology to bring the character to life, rather than the more traditional ‘man-in-a-suit’ approach. Whitlatch’s first attempts to design Jar Jar were more duck-like than Lucas wanted, while others resulted in a dog-like amphibian in an attempt to make him appealing. In the end, they settled on a gangly teenager for Jar Jar’s overall body shape, with extended eyestalks atop an elongated face and long, droopy ears. Initially intended to be green, it was decided to make Jar Jar a warmer orange colour instead. The character would form the template for the other Gungans featured in the movie, including the rather larger Boss Nass and Captain Tarpals.
A returning character requiring a makeover was Yoda. With the use of digital animation focused on Jar Jar Binks, Lucas decided that other characters – such as the Trade Federation’s Neimoidians and Yoda – should be a mix of animatronics, costumes and puppetry. Designer Iain McCaig had the task of making Yoda slightly younger than his appearance in The Empire Strikes Back while still retaining the core of the character. The new puppet seemed somehow less convincing than the one used back in the 1980s, and Lucas took the opportunity of the release of the films on Blu-ray in 2011 to update the Episode I Yoda with a digital CGI version, as seen in the two subsequent prequels.
The hardware of the movie was as important as its creatures and planetary environments. Lucas took a decision to replace the white armoured Imperial stormtroopers with robotic battledroids (although the origin of the cloned stormtroopers would prove central to the second prequel). As well as these cannon-fodder droids, the film also introduced rolling destroyer droids that unfurled into ruthless killing machines and an assortment of background robots seen walking and flying around on Tatooine.
Lucas once more indulged his need for speed with the central Podrace sequence that he modelled after the classic chariot race in Ben Hur (1959). Instead of horses, these carriages would be pulled by jet engines, ensuring an exciting and visceral sequence that would test the mettle of young Anakin and enable Qui-Gon Jinn to win the credits to buy spare parts needed to repair the queen’s starship and get them all off the planet. Each Pod (and, indeed, its pilot Podracer) was unique. Attention was paid to each vehicle in order to suggest that they came from individual cultures.
Storyboards and animatics (semi-animated storyboard sequences) were developed for much of the movie, allowing Lucas to essentially direct the film before he got on set or location. These tools proved very important given how much digital work would be required. These pre-visualizations allowed the film’s creative departments to see exactly what would be needed of them and to plan their work, thus helping to keep the budget under control. They proved vital to ILM when adding its work to the live action footage: there is virtually no scene in Episode I that does not have some digital effects involved.
Lucas had tried to work this way before, back in the low-tech, analogue 1970s. ‘On the first film I used old footage of dogfights as temporary footage to figure out the choreography of the end battle,’ he said. ‘On The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, we did a rough animated film for certain scenes to get a sense of what the action would look like. With Episode I, it was the first time I was able to use computerised animatics to pre-visualize the entire film before I even started shooting.’
The first sequence to be given the animatic treatment was the Podrace, which was only a few pages in the script but twelve minutes in the movie. There were already around 500 storyboards for this sequence, so animatic creator David Dozoretz had a lot of material with which to work. Low-resolution computer animation was employed to bring those storyboards to life, giving a feel for the potential speed and dynamism of the Podrace. It was a process of trial and error in attempting to get to the heart of the scene and dispensing with any ideas that didn’t work. The final arbiter on what was kept and what was discarded was Lucas. Working with a first-cut animatic of twenty-five minutes, Lucas, editor Ben Burtt and Dozoretz fine-tuned the Podrace sequence until the director was satisfied. So successful was the process that Lucas expanded it to the whole movie, creating an animated ‘guide track’ for those involved in the shooting.
McCallum and production designer Gavin Bocquet had begun looking for real-world locations several months before Lucas even sat down to write. The summer of 1994 had seen them visit Tunisia, Portugal and Morocco in search of Tatooine and Naboo. Bocquet – a British production designer who worked in the art department on Return of the Jedi – had come to Episode I through Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987) and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
The cast of the original trilogy had gone on to become famous and – at least in the case of Harrison Ford – stars, but they had all been virtually unknown when cast. Lucas had a similar idea in mind when it came to Episode I. Key among them was the role of the younger Kenobi, a character who would feature in all three films, growing older and wiser as the movies progressed. The actor taking on the part also had to pass as a younger version of Alec Guinness, something of a tall order for any young up-and-coming film actor.
The movie had been in development for over a year when Lucas began seriously to look at actors. Casting director Robin Gurland was hired to kick-start the process: it would take her two years and visits to seven different countries to find the cast for Episode I. Working from character profiles, the script outline and concept art, Gurland became familiar with the key characters and was able to suggest some actors right away. In the interests of secrecy, however, none of the prospective cast was given the film script to work from. Their suitability was instead determined through a series of conversations with Lucas, McCallum and Gurland about a wide range of topics, often anything other than Star Wars. ‘George was looking to find out who the person was and how he or she matched the vision he had of a particular character,’ said Gurland.
The earliest role filled was that of Qui-Gon Jinn, the Jedi Master who is a mentor to Kenobi. Described in the script as a man appearing to be in his sixties, Gurland had focused her search on older American actors but could find no one she and Lucas felt filled the brief. One name kept coming up, though: Liam Neeson, an Irish actor in his early forties. He had been Oscar-nominated for Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) and had already been cast in Rob Roy (1995) and Michael Collins (1996). He had the right physicality (at six foot four inches tall) and conveyed the distinguished gravitas of the Jedi, with Alec Guinness’s Kenobi the only readily available model. Having chatted with Lucas about their children, Neeson finished off by admitting, ‘For what it’s worth, George, I’d love to be a part of this movie’.
Lucas was convinced that Neeson was right to fill the role. ‘The Master Jedi is the centre of the movie, just like Alec Guinness was in the first movie,’ said Lucas. ‘Where were we going to find another Alec Guinness? Someone with that kind of nobility, strength, centre? Liam was the guy who could do it: there wasn’t anybody else . . .’
Casting Guinness’s direct replacement as the young Kenobi wasn’t quite as straight forward. Gurland started with a list of fifty actors and a sheaf of photos of a young Guinness. One name high on the list early on was British Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh, star and director of Henry V (1989). Lucas instigated a technological approach to casting the role, digitally matching half of Guinness’s face with that of prospective young Kenobis. One who made a good match was Scottish actor Ewan McGregor. His credits included two acclaimed UK TV series (Dennis Potter’s Lipstick on Your Collar, 1993, and Scarlet and Black, 1993, with Rachel Weisz) and two movies (Being Human, 1993, and Shallow Grave, 1994).
Before meeting with McGregor, Lucas had no idea that the actor’s uncle, Denis Lawson, had featured as X-wing pilot Wedge Antilles in the original trilogy and that the potential new Kenobi had grown up as a Star Wars fan. The family connection and McGregor’s love for the movies cemented the feeling that Lucas had that he was right for the young Jedi who would grow and change significantly. Before he could start work on Episode I, McGregor came to international fame in his starring role as a drug addict in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996). One of McGregor’s earliest tasks was to undergo voice coaching so he could sound like a youthful Guinness.
The biggest casting headache was trying to find an actor capable of playing the nine-year-old Darth Vader. The role of Anakin Skywalker was unusually complex. Gurland embarked upon a series of one-to-one meetings with over 3,000 child actors across the world, knowing that this performance could make or break the movie. One who stood out as wise beyond his years was Jake Lloyd. ‘He was too young at the time,’ noted Gurland, ‘but even then there was something magical about him, a quality that was perfect for Anakin. I kept him in mind, thinking that by the time we started shooting, he might be the right age.’ Between then and being cast as Anakin, Lloyd appeared alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way (1996), where he gave an assured performance. Lloyd finally tested alongside two other young actors, and convinced Gurland and Lucas he was right for the challenging role. Lucas saw echoes of Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker in Lloyd’s carefree approach and he felt that helped sell the idea that this was Luke’s father-to-be.
Anakin’s future wife, Queen Amidala of Naboo, was another tricky role to cast. Supposedly fourteen years old, the part was filled by sixteen-year-old Natalie Portman. A professional actress from an early age, she had starred opposite Jean Reno in Léon (1994) and in Tim Burton’s comic alien invasion movie Mars Attacks (1996). Referring back to the original trilogy, Lucas was keen to find someone who resembled Carrie Fisher’s Leia, and – like Ewan McGregor – Portman had to embark on a course of voice work for her dual role as queen-in-disguise handmaiden Padmé and the more formal queen.
Filling the last of the main roles for the film came extremely easy for Gurland after the challenges of finding actors for Kenobi, Skywalker and Amidala. The new trilogy would follow the rise of Senator Palpatine to evil Emperor. Ian McDiarmid had been heavily made up for his role back in 1983, as he had only been thirty years old. Now, fourteen years, later he was exactly the right age to portray Palpatine during his corrupting rise to galactic power. Several smaller roles were filled by prominent actors, such as Swedish star Pernilla August as Anakin’s doomed mother, Shmi, and Samuel L. Jackson as Jedi Knight Mace Windu. He had secured the role after lobbying for a part during a live British TV chat show. British actor Terence Stamp was cast as Chancellor Finis Valorum, Palpatine’s predecessor as head of the Republic. Finally, returning to familiar roles were Anthony Daniels (voicing the under construction skeletal C-3PO) and Kenny Baker (hired more for the good PR value than through any real necessity). Lucas even found a role for Warwick Davis, Return of the Jedi’s Wicket the Ewok, as Wald, a Rodian friend of Anakin.
Perhaps the most thankless role in the movie went to Ahmed Best, who not only played the physical role of Jar Jar Binks as a reference for ILM’s digital animators, but also voiced the character. Best suffered the indignity of performing dressed as Binks, with a helmet with a Jar Jar face to indicate the character’s height and give the other actors an eye-line. Also on set for reference were others playing eventual digital creations they later voiced, including Brian Blessed as Gungan leader Boss Nass and Andy Secombe as junk-dealer Watto.
Making the biggest impact in Episode I, given his brief screen time and lack of dialogue, was martial arts expert and stuntman Ray Park as Sith assassin Darth Maul. The red-skinned, tattooed Maul is Darth Sidious’s sidekick and weapon of choice. It is Maul who is sent to terminate the two Jedi. Facing them in a climatic confrontation, Maul unleashes a double-bladed lightsaber (first seen in an Expanded Universe comic book). During the dramatic battle, Maul kills Jinn, prompting Kenobi to strike back, chopping Maul in half. Park would build a career on the back of Maul, including physical roles in X-Men (2000) and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) and in TV superhero saga Heroes (2009).
It was almost two years from the beginning of pre-production on the new Star Wars film (then entitled ‘The Beginning’) until the first day of principal photography. On 26 June 1997 George Lucas returned to directing for the first time since 1977. ‘The reason I wanted to direct Episode I was that we were going to be attempting new things: I didn’t quite know how we were going to do them – nobody did,’ said Lucas. ‘I figured I needed to be there at all times.’
The first shots were relatively simple: a brief conversation between Darth Maul and Darth Sidious on a Coruscant balcony. Although both Ray Park and Ian McDiarmid were in full makeup and costume, they were shooting on a minimal set against a huge blue screen, so the cityscape could be added later by ILM. McDiarmid was in action again later that day, as Sidious’s alter-ego of Palpatine in a scene opposite Natalie Portman’s queen.
The studio base for the new movie was in England once more. However, the Star Wars team had bypassed the traditional studios of Elstree or Pinewood in favour of a converted aerodrome in Leavesden. It had been converted for use as a studio for the 1995 James Bond movie GoldenEye. After Episode I, the site became the home of the Harry Potter films.
McCallum had taken out a two-year lease, giving the production free run of the facilities, so significant sets could remain standing for long periods in case of reshoots. This allowed for an innovative ‘digital backlot’ approach where partially built sets would be augmented by digital extensions. Flexibility became the keynote, with production as an ongoing process, and constant revision of the story, concept creation and special effects development running alongside principal photography and into post-production.
Leavesden would be a long-term base for the production, with a break in the middle of studio shooting for location work and then a return to the studio to finish off. The guiding rule for the physical sets was only to build what was absolutely necessary, leaving the rest of Tatooine, Naboo and Coruscant to be filled in by ILM. Despite this, around sixty individual sets would still be constructed.
Episode I shot for a total of sixty-five days, including an initial four weeks in the studios at Leavesden, under a week at Caserta in Italy and another two weeks filming Tatooine scenes in Tunisia. Following the decision that Naboo should be an ornate Italianate city, the Palace of Caserta in Italy was used as the home of the queen of Naboo. McCallum negotiated exclusive access to the palace for four consecutive days between midday and midnight, leading to an intense period of shooting in Italy. Nothing could be done that might damage the historical site, so scenes requiring explosions from the climactic battle would have to be restaged on replica sets at Leavesden.
It was obvious that the Tatooine scenes should be shot on the original locations in Tunisia, but finding them proved to be difficult. When the crew moved on to Tunisia the search was helped immensely by Star Wars fan and archaeologist David West Reynolds, who had tracked the original locations down. However, several of the sites had been modernized, making filming difficult. Similar locations in Tozeur, Hadada and Medenine were used (primarily for Mos Espa and Anakin’s home), while digital trickery and camera angles helped overcome the other problems.
These weeks were the most difficult for cast and crew, who had to deal with the summer desert heat in July, with temperatures often exceeding 130°F. Much to his own surprise, Lucas was glad to be back. ‘Difficult as it was, Tunisia was the place that brought back the most memories for me,’ he said. ‘It looks like Tatooine – it must be Star Wars!’
As with original filming in Tunisia and Norway, the early location work for Episode I was hit by severe freak weather. Following the third day of shooting in Tozeur, the location was struck by a severe sandstorm that wrecked many of the sets and destroyed props. Rapid rescheduling and some quick thinking enabled the shooting to continue and the crew departed on schedule. At the back of Lucas’s mind was the faith that additional shooting and digital work could make up for any shortcomings, a luxury he did not have when making the original Star Wars.
Back at Leavesden, the second batch of studio photography closed out the summer of 1997. Another six weeks of shooting at the studio (and in the nearby forests) followed.
McCallum had purchased $60,000 of redundant military supplies and aircraft parts to build eighteen Podracer cockpits and engines, with the parts helping immensely in making each Podracer convincing as working machines. The illusion would be completed by a combination of digital effects and model work by ILM, enhancing and extending the physical sequences.
Also at Leavesden was a new creature shop under the supervision of Nick Dudman. He had been a trainee under Stuart Freeborn on The Empire Strikes Back and had helped in the creation of the first Yoda puppet, so it was fitting that he worked on the puppet of the younger Yoda. As with every Star Wars film, Episode I would feature a plethora of bizarre and weird alien creatures populating scenes.
Traditional make-up, creature suits, animatronics and more basic puppetry were all employed in bringing Episode I’s menagerie of alien wonders to life. Dudman’s approach was to adopt whatever technique worked best: if it was better for ILM to tackle something, he would gladly hand the task over (like the creation of Jar Jar Binks and most of the Podracer pilots). Dudman had a team of around fifty-five people working on the creation of hundreds of creatures, including the nasty Neimoidians, Nute Gunray and Rune Hakko. The Trade Federation villains were originally intended as CGI characters, but a late decision to create them with practical effects meant they fell to Dudman. Played by actors Silas Carson and Jerome Blake under heavy prosthetics, the Neimoidians had radio-controlled animatronics built in to allow movement in the eyes and mouths.
Key among returning characters were R2-D2 and C-3PO, much loved by Star Wars fans and general audiences alike. In bringing back the droids Lucas also gave them new back-stories. In Episode I, R2-D2 is one of several droids serving Queen Amidala, while C-3PO is a project undertaken by young Anakin Skywalker. Using technology unavailable in 1977, R2-D2 was a largely remote-controlled prop. Kenny Baker clambered back inside the dustbin-shaped droid shell for several key scenes to give R2-D2 a more ‘human’ feeling. Anthony Daniels’s contribution to Episode I would be in voice-over only, as C-3PO was now a puppet. Daniels provided his dialogue from off-set for the benefit of the other actors. Other droids were built, such as ten battle droid figures, even though they would be largely digital creations.
The final day of principal live action photography on Episode I came on 30 September 1997. Among the final scenes to be shot were the climatic lightsaber battles between Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The three actors – Ray Park, Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor – were all tutored by stunt coordinator Nick Gillard in lightsaber technique. Lucas was intent on using lightsabers more often and in more imaginative ways. ‘It’s a wonderful weapon, because you can do almost anything with it,’ said Lucas. ‘For this movie, I wanted something that was lethal, but elegant and sophisticated.’
Lucas wanted a new take on the rather tame confrontations seen in the original trilogy: ‘We’d never seen a Jedi in his prime. I wanted to do that with a fight that was faster and more dynamic, [but that was also] a kind of sword fighting reminiscent of the previous films.’
Like Dudman, Gillard had worked on the original movies – as Mark Hamill’s stunt double. Now he was responsible for choreographing Lucas’s ‘faster and more intense’ Jedi action. He put the actors, especially Neeson and McGregor, through a complex course of physical fighting lessons to prepare them for the lengthy lightsaber battle sequence. Each actor had to memorize a series of complex moves and be careful not to injure themselves or others. ‘I had done some fighting at drama school, but never anything that physical,’ said McGregor.
The result was a bravura sequence, played out to John Williams’ new composition, ‘Duel of the Fates’, putting previous lightsaber fights in the shade. Using the multiple levels of the Naboo power complex to great advantage, Gillard put the three characters through their paces in a dynamic and visually impressive way. Maul’s eventual defeat saw an intriguing character removed prematurely from the trilogy (although he would feature in the Extended Universe and eventually resurface in the fourth season of TV’s Star Wars:The Clone Wars).
As a director Lucas appeared to have mellowed. He had been heavily criticized by some of the cast from the original trilogy for his lack of personal direction, simply leaving the acting up to the actors. It was something the director himself recognized and had come to terms with. ‘There are two ways to approach working with actors,’ he said. ‘One is more “method”, where you are involved with the actors on a personal level. I prefer the traditional way of working in Europe, [where] it isn’t about trying to find the motivation for every moment. If an actor has a specific question, it is easy for me to give them a quick answer.’
Later, Ewan McGregor would look upon his work on The Phantom Menace with mixed feelings. ‘Even though I’ve talked about how hard they are to make, it’s still great being Obi-Wan Kenobi,’ he told Total Film. ‘It was the most heavily intense bluescreen [work]. I can act without anything being there – it’s hard work, a skill, but I can do it.’ Of the Jedi lightsaber battles, he noted: ‘I think me and Ray Park set the standard when we go at it. It was so fast and furious they had to speed the camera up so that it would look slightly slower, ’cos it was too quick and they thought it looked speeded-up.’
By the side of George Lucas throughout the filming of Episode I was the quietly spoken and unassuming director of photography David Tattersall. Lucas relied on him as he was open to the use of new technology and techniques that were integral to the new production process in a way that a traditionalist like Lucas’s original Star Wars cinematographer, Gil Taylor, hadn’t been. Unfortunately, Tattersall didn’t really know Star Wars, so prefaced his work with a crash-course viewing of the original trilogy. It was especially important given Episode I’s return to Tatooine that Tattersall should bring continuity to the lighting and depiction of the planet as seen in A New Hope and Return of the Jedi.
Tattersall would also have to work closely with the technicians from ILM during Episode I’s lengthy post-production period. Key to the process was ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll, who was on set during the entire live-action shooting period to ensure that what was shot would work in conjunction with the planned effects.
Knoll had undergone his Star Wars apprenticeship on the Special Editions. It was his job to identify from the 3,000 storyboards which scenes would need visual effects, digital matte paintings or models. He worked closely with Lucas to ensure the raw footage would mesh seamlessly with the effects, with lighting references and ‘match-move’ data (where LED dots on the blue screen are used to synch up a moving digital background) proving invaluable. He also communicated regularly with Tattersall, especially in relation to the lighting of scenes on location and in the studio.
The technology used in the production and post-production of Episode I was groundbreaking, but it quickly became standard for Hollywood filmmaking. For Lucas,Tattersall and Knoll, it was all unknown territory and involved a fair amount of trial-and-error. Much of that would be in the hands of ILM, which had made huge strides in visual effects.
The challenge now was for ILM to match the vision in Lucas’s screenplay. Of Episode I’s 2,200 individual shots, 1,900 would require some form of digital enhancement – compared to almost 500 visual effects shots needed by James Cameron’s Titanic (1997). Two additional visual effects supervisors joined Knoll on the project. While Knoll looked after the Podrace, space battles and Naboo’s underwater sequence, ILM veteran Dennis Muren handled the climatic ground battle between the Gungans and the Trade Federation, and Scott Squires supervised the lightsabers and the final battle between the Jedi and Darth Maul. Director of Animation Rob Coleman took on the supervision of digital character animation – mainly focusing on Jar Jar Binks.
Initially, Binks was a cartoon-like character until Lucas made it clear he wanted as ‘photorealistic’ a creature as possible. He would have to stand next to real actors and function within real-world environments, so it was important that he not be an animated character pasted on top, as had been the case for Roger Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). Using Best’s performance, ILM animators had something with which to work. Observation of real faces – human and animal – were used to make Binks’s expressions as convincing as possible. Once a library of expressions was built up, it was easier for each animator to bring the character to life. ‘This movie had a dozen major digital characters’, noted McCallum, ‘one of which [Binks] would have ninety minutes of screen time. They all had to be seamlessly integrated into the movie – absolutely spectacularly and real.’ The test was to make Binks look as real as Chewbacca had been in the earlier movies, a test the finished film failed in the eyes of many fans. The process, however, would pave the way for a host of new, digitally created characters starting with Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The key to integrating digitally animated characters with live action was in maintaining the lighting across both. If the digital character could be made to appear as though it was lit in the same way the real people were, an illusion of seamless integration could be achieved. The data captured during the live-action shooting was pivotal in this process, and its availability saved a huge amount of time.
Similarly, space battle sequences were achieved with a mix of tried-and-tested physical model work with newer digital creations: both had to appear in the same scenes. ‘For each effect we used the technique that was most appropriate and best suited to the particular situation,’ said Knoll. ‘Certain effects were easier to achieve in one medium or the other – CG or models – and we went with the medium that made the most sense. We have found that [physical] models remain the best solution to some of our effects challenges.’
ILM faced a deadline, as in April 1997 the movie would enter the editing process. Editor Paul Martin Smith had come from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series, and was aware that he would be working for a director who had long considered his own forte to be editing. ‘I came out of editing and I’ve worked as an editor,’ explained Lucas. ‘My whole focus on filmmaking is as an editor. The script is just a rough sketch of what I’m going to do. Filming is just gathering the materials. Editing is how I create the final draft.’
Digital editing techniques allowed flexibility in the director’s manipulation of his footage. ‘I could move things around, cut people out of one shot and put them in another, change sets or take a scene from one location and put it in another,’ said Lucas. ‘I could completely reconstruct and rewrite the story in the editing process.’
The ultimate aim was to produce a two-hour movie (although The Phantom Menace, as the film was eventually controversially titled, would be two hours and thirteen minutes). By May 1998 a rough cut had been assembled. As with the original Star Wars, much of the material was still missing, including finished effects shots, and the whole thing was scored with temporary music. However, many of the missing story elements could be filled in with animatics that helped those seeing the movie for the first time to evaluate what worked and what didn’t.
The result was a list of additional shots or scenes that were needed to make the film a better experience. With a full year until release, there was plenty of time for these pick-up elements to be created and inserted into the movie. Lucas often used the analogy of making a painting for the way he worked on the prequel trilogy. He could shape and reshape his materials using the full pallet of paints now available to him. It was a process that didn’t have to have a definite end, as a painter could continually revise his work, painting out old elements in favour of new material. Following August 1998 pick-up shooting at Leavesden, the movie was further refined.
At the same time, work was progressing at Skywalker Ranch on the sound mix and score. John Williams returned to a Star Wars movie for the first time in sixteen years, using a mix of his now-classic Star Wars themes and a huge amount of new music. At the beginning of February 1999, Lucas, McCallum and Williams met at Abbey Road Studios in London to record the score, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. That completed, the final sound mix took place in March and the last visual effects were locked in place in April. It had taken four years from the moment when George Lucas first put pencil to paper to write ‘The Beginning’, but Episode I was now complete and ready to be shown to an impatient worldwide audience.
The hype and anticipation for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was huge in the run up to the release date of 21 May 1999. When the title was announced to unbelieving fans in September 1998 it made major news bulletins. With many fans believing it to be a bogus title to fox would-be merchandise bootleggers (as with ‘Blue Harvest’ back in 1982), the 1930s serial-like title was actually a reference to Darth Sidious and his wider Sith plot, something that would only become clear when fans saw the movie.
Following the tradition of the previous Star Wars sequels, fans began lining up outside cinemas in advance. This time it was not for a few days, but an entire month. Encampments sprang up in major US cities and around the world, with many fans sleeping in tents raising money for charity through sponsorship. Fans had even queued up for the November 1998 trailer, often leaving the cinema after it and not staying to see the movie to which the trailer was attached. A few days later, the trailer became downloadable from the Lucasfilm website, a lengthy time-consuming process in pre-broadband days. The servers crashed repeatedly as eager fans attempted to view the trailer from their own homes.
On the day of release, up to 2.2 million full-time employees in the US reportedly skipped work to see the movie, according to a survey by Challenger, Gray and Christmas. This unauthorized absence was estimated to have cost the US economy $293 million. The Wall Street Journal reported that many companies dealt with the problem by closing down on opening day and giving staff the day off. In excess of $20 million was spent promoting the film, with a huge number of licensing deals resulting in images from the movie adorning Pepsi products and McDonald’s meals, alongside a huge range of toys and a novelization by fantasy author Terry Brooks.
Critical reaction was mixed, with the comic character of Jar Jar Binks a lightning rod for complaints. Drew Grant, writing at Salon.com, wondered if ‘perhaps the absolute creative freedom George Lucas enjoyed while dreaming up the flick’s “comic” relief – with no studio execs and not many an independently minded actor involved – is a path to the dark side.’ Most critics, like the Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert, recognized the movie as ‘an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking’. Others complimented the performances of Liam Neeson and Ray Park and the full-blown Jedi action, with Empire magazine describing the climax as ‘the saga’s very best lightsaber battle’. Some of the critical comment was as much in reaction to the hype preceding the release as the actual movie. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted the hype had ‘built expectations that can’t possibly be matched and scuttled [the] element of storytelling surprise’.
None of that affected the film’s box office, with records tumbling in rapid sequence. The Phantom Menace achieved the biggest single-day gross on its opening with $28 million, and was the fastest film to gross $100 million (in just five days). It was also fastest to $200 million and $300 million, becoming 1999’s most successful movie. Total US box office was $431 million, with another $493 added around the world. The film’s total worldwide total take was $924 million, making it the seventeenth highest grossing film of all time (and the highest placed Star Wars movie). While not regarded well critically, The Phantom Menace was an unqualified financial success.
‘I don’t think of myself as the best writer or director in the world,’ said Lucas. ‘I am always a little amazed when I do a movie and it is so well received. For every person who loves Episode I, there will be two or three who hate it, or who couldn’t care less about the whole thing.’ Within a month of the film’s successful release, work would begin in earnest on the second Star Wars prequel.