Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace is returning to movie theaters on May 3 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. This essay was inspired by its re-release.
In the quarter century since the Star Wars prequel trilogy launched, The Phantom Menace and its siblings have been exalted, excoriated, relitigated, rehabilitated, beloved, and bemoaned. At the risk of cliche, they permanently changed what Star Wars meant to audiences and creators in terms of story, world-building, vibes, and visuals.
The Phantom Menace introduced a lot of new ideas to the franchise — a long, frequently embarrassing list that includes midi-chlorians, Jar-Jar Binks, and several uncomfortably accented alien species. But one of the best ideas it brought to Star Wars is on the verge of disappearing.
When did the Jedi lose their sick flips?
George Lucas is known for his affection for aerial dogfights in WWII cinema, not hand-to-hand fights. While the swordplay of the original Star Wars trilogy is iconic, there’s precious little finesse to it. The lightsaber duels are kinetic proxies for the emotional and philosophical clashes between characters, not set-pieces in and of themselves. The prequel trilogy’s move toward highly balletic, choreographed lightsaber battles wasn’t primarily Lucas’ doing; designing those fell squarely on the creative shoulders of stunt performer and coordinator Nick Gillard.
“George has never been in a fight in his life,” Gillard told Vulture in 2017. “So he didn’t bother, really, writing [a lightsaber duel]. It would say something like, ‘A vicious lightsaber battle ensues — seven minutes,’ and you could fill in the gap there.”
Gillard already had two decades of industry experience under his belt when he took on The Phantom Menace’s lightsaber combat. He’d worked with Lucasfilm productions off and on for nearly that long, starting with 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. But the way he filled in “the gap” for the Jedi was entirely inspired by the movie action he was seeing on screen around him in the late ’90s. Given Lucas’ blessing and full creative freedom, Gillard crafted a bespoke Jedi martial art that was fast, mobile, and acrobatic, highlighting the order’s supernatural........