Fantasia (1940)

"How do you do. My name is Deems Taylor, and it's my very pleasant duty to welcome you here on behalf of Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowsky and all the other artists and musicians whose combined talents went into the creation of this new form of entertainment, Fantasia."

So began Walter Elias Disney's most audacious experiment in the field of animation. Four years previously he had mortgaged his house and practically his entire career on the reckless venture of a cartoon feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the results paid handsome dividends. From this seminal moment, a new genre of film was born, and Disney was able to push the boat out with further adventures in the feature length animation field, as well as the further adventures of his "star" originally to be known as Mortimer Mouse (named after the camera whose reels his ears mimicked), later changed to Mickey.

Thus it was that Disney approached Leopold Stokowsky with a view towards making a cartoon short version of Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The end result however, was something considerably more ambitious.

It was a film that I had known about since the 1970s, from looking at posters in the London Underground stations; the cartoons of Walt Disney were as rich and prosperous a commodity as they are today, but this particular one seemed a little unusual, which even a child of my age would notice. The one unmistakable image was that of Mickey Mouse, but the rest of it seemed puzzling: what was the title about? Why wasn't it a Mickey type cartoon adventure? Where was the story? And what were all those other strange things around him?

Such an impression led to an aura of mystique around the film, so that when I did finally get round to seeing it in 1990 (on the film's 50th anniversary) at the new Odeon Ipswich, I was curious to the point of wonderment, and found it an incredibly beautiful film, having grown up enough to be able to appreciate it as not just a cartoon. The children of the 1990's however, were just as mystified as children of the 1970's (or indeed the 1940's) - "When's Mickey coming on, Dad?", I heard a child ask in the cinema in Ipswich that afternoon. I suspect many other children have asked their parents that question in cinemas through the decades.

Youngsters may not have expected the arty tones to the film, but this doesn't alter the brilliance of the animations, which all work on their own different levels. The first of them is a slightly uncharacteristic rendition of Bach's Tocata and Fugue, unusual not for the abstract animation, but for Stokowsky's orchestration of a piece originally written for organ. This was no doubt to allow Stokowsky and his orchestra full reign to their talents.

A rousing, stylish start nonetheless, followed equally audaciously by Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite, perhaps the most charming of all the animations, with characteristic Disney flourishes of imagination such as Chinese mushroom dancers and Cossack dancing thistles.

Next comes the long-awaited arrival of The Sorcerer's Apprentice; as the erstwhile Mr. Taylor puts it, "a piece that tells a very definite story", and formed the basis for the whole project. It's the one item of all that seems most in tune with what would be perceived to be the "Disney style" (if one thinks of the "Silly Symphonies" they had been producing for years), and in that sense is probably the most successful of the lot. It certainly sold this otherwise unsellable film by putting Mickey on the front of the posters.

After the mischievous exploits of Mickey the Sorcerer's Apprentice, comes something altogether different in The Rite of Spring, which was always a very experimental and ritualistic piece as composed by Igor Stravinsky, and a highly unusual piece for Walt Disney to challenge. As an adaptation of the music, it chops and changes with uncomfortable melodies to listen to, and as animation it's variable but certainly has its moments, and Disney has rarely dared to push the barriers further than this.

As if to trivialise things after the primal experience of the story of the beginning of the Earth in The Rite of Spring, there comes an intermission (in the tradition of a "Concert Feature") where a soundtrack line makes various noises and wave forms, before the second half of the concert/film commences with The Pastoral Symphony, only partly trivialised by switching to a mythical setting. Its difficult not to recognise a certain My Little Pony imagery with parts of this sequence; secretly I also wonder if it was considered politically incorrect to depict Beethoven's beloved Austria because of its connections to the Nazis in World War II (The Ride of the Valkyries was also a piece considered and ultimately rejected by Disney), but Beethoven's music still transcends the prissiness of the visuals, and there are still some charming moments such as the storm and the party of revellers.

The funniest and perhaps most enjoyable of the pieces for me is The Dance of the Hours, an unashamed parody of Ponchielli's ballet but quite appropriate considering the jollity of the piece, with balletic ostriches, hippos (the inspiration for those "Hippapotamousse" ads in the 80's?), elephants (two years before Dumbo came along) and amorous crocodiles, all coming together in a delightful finale.

The "big finish comes" with Mussourgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Schubert's Ave Maria, a beautifully powerful mixture of "the profane and the sacred", with the sight of Satan atop the mountain (looking very Darth Vader-ish) demonstrating the darker element that often permeated Disney's work. The beautiful ending representing the triumph of good over evil (darkness gives way to light) was done with innovative multi-plane animation, ending with a sunset to conclude Fantasia, which at the time (and still today) in the eyes of some was considered pretentious, and was not a huge success. If it was a failure, then it was one of Disney's most glorious ones, a brilliant attempt at integrating mass entertainment and art, and an experience of pure cinema.

In the sixty years since Fantasia there were many attempts at reviving the formula of classical music set to animation: the original film went through various re-releases, with the 1982 version having the audacity to completely re-record the music (as previously orchestrated by Stokowsky) to the original animation.

There was much talk of a sequel, with various composers considered for animated treatment (including even The Beatles at one stage), but in 1999 the Disney studio bravely and perhaps foolishly set about trying to follow-up its original masterpiece with FANTASIA 2000, commemorating the new millennium in enjoyable fashion with Donald and Daisy Duck in a cheerfully apocalyptic rendition of the Noah's Arc story to the tune of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. Other pieces followed a pretty similar pattern to the original, with an abstract opening (to the beginning of Beethoven's 5th Symphony) followed by a charming rendition of flying whales to Respighi's Pines of Rome, and finishing once again with the good vs. evil motif of Stravinsky's Firebird suite. Perhaps the most innovative piece was Copeland's Rhapsody in Blue animated to the newspaper drawings of Al Hirschfield.

In spite of the shortening of the music down to single movements rather than entire symphonies, as well as irritating celebrity introductions (from the likes of Steve Martin, Bette Midler, James Earl Jones and the conductor himself, James Levine), there was still a great deal of charm to the enterprise, although less of the magic that Walt brought to the original.

And it was testament to the memory of the original, that Mickey's Sorcerer's Apprentice was revived for the sequel 60 years later.

Batman (1989)

The comic book blockbuster has come to the fore in the latter stages of the 20th Century: in 1979 Superman flew in to herald the beginning of the new wave, and then ten years later came for me by far the most entertaining treatment of the Batman legend by Tim Burton.

At the time Burton seemed a choice for director that came from Left Field. He was the creator of such weird darkly comical fantasy as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, films that almost defied description. The prospect of such a director helming a mega-budget comic strip blockbuster seemed hardly most people's first thought, and while the plot of Batman is largely a secondary consideration to the imaginative set pieces (a Burton characteristic throughout all his films), his unique visual touch dominates Batman from first frame to last. The very opening titles set the tone, the camera prowling around darkened shadowy corridors which turn out to be the outline of a giant Bat logo.

Equally eccentric was the choice of actor to play the title role: Michael Keaton had teamed up with Burton in Beetlejuice - very much in the Jack Nicholson-type role - but here went for the slightly "harder" role of the straight-laced hero with slight psychological hang-ups thanks to his troubled childhood. Keaton did a creditable job, arguably the best of the recent Batmen (particularly with his agility in coping with the heavy costume), although generally speaking the character's psychosis remains under the mask, difficult for any actor to bring out fully therefore. This Batman is less of a caped crusader and more of an avenging angel; he observes the mugging of a tourist (Garrick Hagon) and his wife and child, but does nothing to prevent it; he merely takes his vengeance out on the offending muggers afterwards.

Early interest in this film, however, quickly intensified with the perfect choice of guest villain. Some years before, I had watched the TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward, with Cesar Romero as The Joker, and mused to myself how the perfect choice for that villain today would be Jack Nicholson. Producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters thought likewise when they were working with Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick - as another over-the-top villain, The Devil.

"I made you, you made me first!"

Nicholson has always been a great scene-stealer, and here was a role that many people argued (and I'm one of them) that this was the role he was born for. Criticisms that his performance was too OTT (as Barry Norman put it: "with more ham than the meat counter at Sainsbury's") and pushed Michael Keaton's reserved Batman to one side are irrelevant, and incorrect I feel. These after all, are the characteristics of The Joker - he's supposed be mad, bad and over-the-top, as originally defined in the comic books.

Though his character dies at the end, Nicholson did very much walk off with the film, and a cool $3 million (a lot of money at the time) plus a percentage of all the profits, and top billing over Michael Keaton. For all the millions he raked in, nevertheless as an actor he gave his all, having a whale of a time in perhaps the most luscious of all his over-the-top performances (over the illustrious likes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Shining), but never making concessions to his stardom with a huge fee for only a small appearance - unlike Marlon Brando in Superman.

The other unofficial star of Batman, besides The Joker, was a gigantic full-scale set - designed by the late, lamented Anton Furst, re-imagining a Gothic New York that had decayed from the ground up (influenced in part by Blade Runner), coupled with a certain amount of 1940s retro, intending to give the film a certain "timeless" feel. Creator Bob Kane (left) himself stepped onto the lot at Pinewood, and was in awe of how his Gotham City had been brought to such vivid life.

It seems nostalgic to look back now on the dramatic summer and late autumn of 1989. 50 years after the beginning of the Second World War, its last surviving leader, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, had died; technically, the legacy of that war was also finally laid to rest when Stalin's Iron Curtain crumbled with the deposing of several Eastern Bloc countries, and the pulling down of the Berlin Wall. There was also the dramatic Tianenmen Square protest; Salman Rushdie lost his freedom to walk in the street after writing The Satanic Verses, and the rest of Britain lost Lord Laurence Olivier, the ancient Rose Theatre, The Ashes, the first of the Monty Pythons (Graham Chapman), and there was the terrible Hillsborough tragedy.

On a more personal note, the year of my 18th birthday also saw the loss of two of the Sales family : my grand uncle George Sugden, and later my grandmother Kate Ethel Sales ("Kitty" to most, and "Nan" to me) died in October - and so the scene where Bruce Wayne lays two red roses on the site of his parents' death had an extra minor poignancy for me, and reflected some of my feelings that year.

As part of the hype machine that summer, before the film had even opened, "Batman - The Album" came out, which was basically a series of hit spin-off songs by Prince - only a smattering of which are in the film. I had to wait a few months before being able to acquire the much stronger musical element in Tim Burton's film - the grand, stamping orchestral score by Danny Elfman.

The second of three cinema viewings of the film that year - note the new "12" certificate, implemented to allow younger audiences in.

At the time, I sensed that this was not a great film, but a very exciting one. It also felt a good enough film in its own right, an eccentric one-off. Inevitably however, sequels came along. Burton and Keaton covered as much of Bruce Wayne's psychosis as they wanted to in Batman Returns, with more entertaining performances by Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny De Vito (and Christopher Walken) as the villains. Val Kilmer donned the batsuit for Batman Forever (with loyal Michael Gough again as Alfred the butler), then George Clooney for Batman and Robin, but the self-parody so prevalent in the 60s TV series had now crept into the films as well.

It led to a slight overly-serious return to the dark roots of the comic book in Batman Begins (with an excellent cast), and in more recent times, the Joker's persona has taken on a very different form in the shape of the late Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, portraying Batman's most famous adversary as a twisted, sickened individual - hardly a character to identify with or to enjoy - unlike Joker Jack.

And just for good measure, in the later months of 1989 I helped to contribute another 25 pence to Jack Nicholson's pay packet - by buying a Batman T-shirt, at a reduced-to-clear price of £5 (for which Nicholson had a 5% share in all Batman merchandise). They say the Devil has all the best tunes: Joker Jack certainly had them in this film, and made the most of them too.

North by Northwest (1959)

Sometimes there's that happy occasion when you don't discover a film, the film discovers you. On the evening of the tedious World Cup Final in 1990 between West Germany and Argentina, I switched over to the non-football channels and found to my pleasant surprise, a film in colour on BBC2 with Cary Grant and my favourite cinema villain, James Mason. Both gentlemen looked very suave and witty, as also was Martin Landau (whom I'd seen recently in Francis Coppola's Tucker) as Mason's sidekick. To my utter delight, I then checked the listings to know more about this unexpected film, and discovered that it was directed by one Alfred Hitchcock. So, whilst Diego Maradona and company were crying and bickering themselves to deserved defeat against West Germany, I was laughing my head off at the sheer pleasure that is North by Northwest.

By the time I'd seen watched the farcical and thrillingly comical drunken drive (where the villains intend to kill Thornhill and make it resemble an accident) I was totally hooked, and never gave the football a second glance.

Cary Grant was probably the greatest James Bond there never was: suave, charming, dynamic when he needed to be, and most women's idea of their perfect man. All these elements were characteristic of James Bond - added to which was a self-deprecatory sense of goofiness, which served him very well through four decades of romantic and screwball comedies - and never was his sense of droll bewilderment better demonstrated than in North by Northwest.

Ernest Lehman's brilliant spiralling screenplay with lots of beautiful one-liners ("apparently the only performance that'll suit you is when I play dead!") incorporated many favourite Hitchcock elements, some of them easily recognisable from Hitch's earlier classic comedy thriller, The 39 Steps (also one of my favourites). This considerably more polished "American reworking" contained certain key elements added to the mixture - not least the score by Bernard Herrmann which played in perfect symbiosis with Hitch's sense of the playful yet suspenseful. The film is a glorious summing-up of Hitchcock's description of how he wanted the audience to have experienced the same thrills and detachment of real danger as on a switchback railway.

Hitchcock's own appearance in the film is one of his most amusing, just after his name has disappeared from the stylish credits (by Saul Bass), and sets the tone for the two hours that follow.

The premise is so delightfully absurd, yet in its own way alarmingly plausible: staying at the Plaza Hotel in New York is top CIA agent George Kaplan, who's hot on the trail of the smooth but deadly Russian agent Philip Vandamm (Mason), but Kaplan himself is an even cannier fellow who is always one step ahead of his enemies, so that not even the Russian agents or even the hotel porter knows what he looks like. So naturally when Vandamm's sidekicks spot Roger Thornhill (Grant) inadvertently answering a bellboy's request for a "Mr. George Kaplan", they eagerly latch on to their prized adversary, and never seem to doubt the fact that he's not the real mccoy.

So much of the suspicion of the Cold War was based on tip-offs and half-truths: it's more than likely therefore that an ordinary bloke in the street could easily be mistaken for a government agent. Although in this particular case, the "ordinary" bloke in question is actually quite a smooth operator, "an advertising man, not a red herring." Well, he's Cary Grant, after all.

As with any good spy story, there's usually a glamorous female interest somewhere in the midst of it, and after Thornhill's got himself into further trouble at the UN, as well as with his disbelieving mother (amusingly played by Jessie Royce Landis - only 7 years Grant's senior), he takes refuge on the 20th Century Express from New York Central, where he manages to evade the police with the help of sympathetic passenger Eve Kendall. But - guess what - Eve is secretly one of Vandamm's conspirators, and much more besides. But Thornhill is quickly smitten.

Eva Marie Saint looks dazzlingly sophisticated and skillful in the role, and in spite of the fact that this was her one and only romantic femme fatale role, she looks from first moment to last as if she was to the manor born.

Some of the set pieces just seem to exist for their own sake: the famous crop dusting sequence and the finale on Mount Rushmore to name but two. The spoilsports at Mount Rushmore itself disliked the idea of having their famous monument desecrated by having actors clambering around the dangerous structures (one idea of Hitch's was to have Thornhill hide in one of Abraham Lincoln's nostrils!), but this probably suited Hitchcock fine as he was always at his happiest controlling things from the confines of a studio anyway. So who cared if parts of the film seemed to just plod along in a kind of elegant 1950's way - Hitch was having fun with his set pieces, as he had in past years with the likes of Blackmail, Saboteur, The Man Who Knew Too Much (both versions) and of course The 39 Steps.

And it has one of the most brilliant and rapid summing-ups of a climax imaginable: from the sight of Martin Landau's foot about to step on Grant's flailing outstretched hand, to the brazenly cheeky symbolism of a train entering a tunnel, on which Mr and Mrs Thornhill are travelling back, the whole epilogue clocks in at a helter-skelter, all-encompassing forty-six seconds.

Result by the end of that evening: World Cup 0 Hitchcock 6.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

If A Hard Day's Night signalled the launch of the Swinging Sixties, then Lawrence of Arabia was a glorious by-product of that era, perhaps the greatest ever use of 70mm widescreen to convey the vastness of the desert landscape, as well as being one of the first "intellectual" epics with a little of the old school technique about it too.

David Lean, born one hundred (and one) years ago last month, probably reached the peak of his career with this film, the one for which he is most remembered. He took on the epic project following the success of The Bridge on the River Kwai - a slightly audacious war story of British prisoners surviving in the jungle by building a railway for the Japanese. It shared certain elements that were also utilised in Lawrence: namely, the supreme irony of British soldiers triumphing in something very foreign to them (even anti-British), in a very British, no-nonsense way.

It was a brilliantly cinematic film, displaying Lean's consummate storytelling skill (as previously demonstrated with earlier films like Oliver Twist and Brief Encounter) - although personally I felt it had its flaws, dragging on for nearly three hours and sidetracking half-way through to focus its attention on William Holden's character Commander Shears, instead of the much more interesting duel of wits between Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) in the Japanese prisoner camp.

Three years later however, with Lawrence, Lean had ironed these deficiencies, and found his true metier in a location that suited him so perfectly that he could hardly bear to leave the desert once most of the principal photography was complete. But thanks to producer Sam Spiegel - who seemed the ideal general to reign in his Lawrence-like extravagance - as well as scriptwriter Robert Bolt, and a star performance by Peter O'Toole, Lean was able to create a near masterpiece.

There's something magical about the allure of the desert in this film - a tribute to another sadly missed talent of recent days, Maurice Jarre. His score, combined the brilliant photography of Freddie Young, were two key elements that still make this epic shine through the ages as a timeless film.

The story that emerged for filming however, was a bumpy journey, that started as far back as the 1930s, when a film version of T.E. Lawrence's semi-memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom was planned by Alexander Korda. The project fell through, but with various other dramatisations such as Terence Rattigan's play Ross (with Alec Guinness) very much in the domain, it was only a matter of time before someone with the cinematic skills would come along to make a film version.

Lean was able to take on the project with two recent collaborators on Kwai: producer Spiegel and scriptwriter Michael Wilson, the latter eventually abandoning the association because of difficulties with surviving members of the Lawrence family, and then further creative difficulties with David Lean; step forward acclaimed playwright Robert Bolt, to write the dialogue and re-emphasize some of the characterisation based on Wilson's original blueprint.

For the all-important title role, an international assortment of actors were considered: Lean had been very keen for some years to work with Marlon Brando - an association which sadly never came to pass - but after much digging, Lean and Spiegel felt they had their man in Albert Finney; a sudden hot property from the innovative working-class drama Saturday Night Sunday Morning, Finney was however reluctant to be tied to a major film contract, working exclusively in "epics", and declined the lucrative offer, in spite of a major screen test where he recited scenes from Seven Pillars of Wisdom (right). It could with the benefit of hindsight be considered a career-ruining move - not that Finney has done too bad in the years since - almost as well, arguably, as Peter O'Toole.

But it was O'Toole who barnstormed his way into the role late in the day, balancing the sensitivity of Lawrence with his own extravagance which Lean helped to nurture. When it came to casting the all-important Arabian key figures in the saga, again, the search was international; American Anthony Quinn was a splendid Auda Abu Tayi (good enough to be uncannily mimicked by Bernard Bresslaw in Follow That Camel), and for the main Arab role of the mysterious Sherif Ali, eyes were turned eventually towards Egypt's biggest film star of the time, Michel Shalhoub - much better known as Omar Sharif, for whom Lean fashioned a whole new star in the making, giving the Egyptian charmer a moustache and a suave Valentino-like aura which soon won over millions of female admirers (in this and later Doctor Zhivago) on both sides of the globe.

Indeed, there are few greater cinema entrances that Sharif's first appearance on the desert horizon where Lawrence and his guide Tafas (Zia Mohyeddin) suddenly discover they are not alone.

Aside from all the breathtaking visuals - and let's face it, the desert is the real star of the film - what gave me a greater appreciation of Lawrence of Arabia when I saw it in its entirety (on its restoration in 1988) was the richness of the supporting cast, not least the urbane presence of Alec Guinness (top billed in the credits) who doesn't appear very often, as nor do Claude Rains, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quayle, Arthur Kennedy (replacing Edmond O'Brien as the American journalist based on Lowell Thomas), or Howard Marion Crawford (in a clever recurring cameo) but their presence is more than welcome. Guinness in particular, exudes charm and quiet authority as Prince Feisal, and almost looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi's Arabian half cousin. His performance is the forgotten gem of Lawrence of Arabia, alongside the deserved acclaim for the likes of O'Toole and Sharif.

Historically speaking Lawrence of Arabia leaves a certain amount to be desired - T.E. Lawrence himself worked skilfully to try and cover his tracks by rewriting Seven Pillars of Wisdom (from which most of the ideas in the finished script were taken from) so how much of the historical fact remains in Lean's film is very much open to doubt. It's unlikely, I think, that Lawrence was quite so narcissistic or as temperamental as Peter O'Toole is. Nor do I suspect was he quite so passionately in favour of the Arab cause as implied in this film. While it's true that the actual Lawrence was very disillusioned by the way in which political and economic control of Arabia was divided up between the English and the French after the First World War, the notion that Lawrence was also personally leading a revolt on Damascus to let the Arabs to take charge, just doesn't wash. I suspect he would have been much more of a mediator than a revolutionary.

But what did it matter...the legend, as they say, is greater than the truth. And in Peter O'Toole, the Lawrence legend received perhaps its definitive treatment, whilst still leaving the vacant central question mark of Lawrence's real identity. Robert Bolt and David Lean play it ambivalently, covering Lawrence's mixed-up sense of patriotism (desert lover or exiled Englishman?), his illegitimacy, and his homosexuality (in his infamous capture by the Turks in Deraa - the watershed in his desert crusade) in certain intriguing ways: "Who are you?", asks a motorcyclist (the voice of David Lean himself) when he reaches the Suez Canal, and then also at the very end, when the newly promoted Colonel Lawrence is driven away from the desert by an ordinary Tommy (Bryan Pringle) who says to him, "Well sir, going home!", to which Lawrence gives a stammered query: where is his home?

So in terms of the psychology and background of the hero, the film sheds little insight, but what does it matter after three and a half hours of glorious spectacle combined with historical drama.

Television cannot do justice to a film the scale and breadth of Lawrence of Arabia; it has to be seen in the cinema. I can count myself fortunate enough to have seen it twice in this manner. The first was at the Warner Brothers' cinema in Leicester Square, and I can well remember the queue for soft drinks at the cinema during the intermission (not surprisingly!) The other, greater memory, is how this is a film that hardly seems to date at all from first release: the desert still looks as breathtaking as it always did, the drama still as potent and compelling as it was in 1962.



Omar Sharif's original robes for Sherif Ali (in the David Lean exhibition at the National Film Theatre)

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

Many of the favourite films in this blog are based around memorable cinema experiences: in this particular case, the 14th of April 2001, at the Electric Cinema in Portobello Road - itself a historic old cinema of some repute (where the infamous John Reginald Christie once worked as projectionist) - which appropriately felt like going back in time to an innovative, electrifying age.

I mention this because as a rule films following pop groups are not usually the sort of art form that I would openly embrace: usually the plot is fairly superfluous (and this film is no exception), a means by which to thread together the various songs performed by the artists - but these particular songs, and the artists, are a cut above the rest.

The Beatles were, and still are, a cultural phenomenon. This film helps to demonstrate just how they made such a vivid impact on the era of the 1960's. Though personally never having any great admiration for their Liverpudlian Jack-the-Lad manner, what shines through in the case of A Hard Day's Night is a freshness and excitement that heralded the birth of a new era, in what was arguably the 20th century's greatest decade. This is much more than just a film one of their concerts (at the former Scala Theatre in Regent Street), but also provides an invaluable snapshot of them if not at their peak, then certainly at a time when their music and their impact was at its most vibrant and innovative, before superfame started to get the better of them.

Significantly - unlike for instance, the films of Elvis Presley - the Beatles make very little pretence at playing anything other than themselves (and quite adequately at that.) Each of "The Fab Four" is given a particular character quirk, of which the most endearing figure ultimately, is the much maligned Ringo Starr, who is seen (in the film) usually getting into trouble and requiring the other three to get him out of it. The title itself was from one of Ringo's many verbal platitudes, coming on the back of a heavy gig the previous day (that had extended into the evening): "...that was a hard day's night."

For the choice of director, the Beatles leant towards their fondness for The Goon Show (whose comedy records were also produced by George Martin), working with a fellow Goon collaborator, Richard Lester. Combined with Alun Owen's semi-observational screenplay, Dick Lester exploited the Beatles' sense of mischief and self-mockery by creating a semi-Goon show environment where the world is as we know it, but with slight eccentricities. He also brought on board some trusted comedy colleagues, seasoned campaigners such as John Junkin, Norman Rossington, Victor Spinetti, and most notably Wilfred Brambell (from Steptoe and Son) as Paul McCartney's (fictional) Irish grandfather. As such, Lester was able to play upon "Beatlemania" (the film's original working title) in a surreal satirical context.

A prime example is the hit song "Can't Buy Me Love", intended as a moment when The Beatles escape from all the fuss and bother of rehearsal - conceived by Lester as a semi-silent movie pastiche - which was quickly imitated by other pop groups, to such an extent, that in more recent years MTV declared Richard Lester to be the father of the pop video.

The subsequent career paths of Paul, George, Ringo, and especially John, have been well charted, but whatever became of Dick Lester? His career may have peaked with this film, for which he had the great good fortune to be involved, but nonetheless, his multi-faceted cinema verite techniques (aided by Gilbert Taylor's precision black-and-white cinematography) burst off the screen vividly even today - although you feel the sense of the tricks quickly losing their freshness, like a bubble just waiting to pop (excuse the pun).

Like the 1960's themselves, his was a fashion that came and went, and maybe became a little too Goonish and surreal for his own good. He went on to make some more than respectable films in later years, such as the all-star Three Musketeers, and did a creditable job in patching together Superman II after Richard Donner had been fired. But back in 1964, his idiosyncratic direction combined with the Beatles' huge following, made for a potent mixture.

Subsequent innumerable pop films (including the Beatles' own follow-up HELP! in 1965) have tried hard to emulate A Hard Day's Night (the Spice Girls' recent Spiceworld in 2000 used practically the same blueprint), but haven't been able to capture the Zeitgeist that made Dick Lester's original film so prevalent. It is a film very much of its time, and a formative one at that.

Watching it on the big screen at the Electric that afternoon, I felt the same sense of excitement and freshness for young people of the 1960's as when I first experienced the Star Wars saga in the 1970's. And there's a connection here too: both films featured music recorded at the Abbey Road Studios.


I Should Have Known Better

title song

The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Most Anticipated Movie Ever Made?

Quite possibly, although the likes of Gone with the Wind and Harry Potter were certainly just as as eagerly anticipated in their day. Neither of those films however, had fans who'd waited 16 years for the film to come along. As such, it was perhaps inevitable that they were going to be disappointed.

That is not to say that what came out in 1999 was a bad film: a perfectly reasonable one in fact, but its mere release became such an event that was greater than the film itself; people went to cinemas just to see the trailer without even bothering to see the film which followed it; actor Brian Blessed visited 10 Downing Street but all Tony Blair wanted to talk about was the new Star Wars film; fans who couldn't wait until its UK release date in July crossed the Atlantic to see it first hand on Memorial Day weekend.

Such behaviour was phenomenal and obsessive perhaps, but came from 16 years of expectation, so a good deal of context is required. This also happens to be a film that I had imagined 10 years before its eventual arrival on the screen, and any similarities therefore between my vision and the film that George Lucas eventually made in 1999 (and the subsequent episodes) will be indicated thus.

So as this is a rather more personal blog than most others on this page, readers who are solely interested in The Phantom Menace itself are advised to jump to the section titled "The Film". For the others, I crave your indulgence.

The Build-Up

In May 1987, George Lucas made a rare personal appearance at a Sci-Fi convention celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Star Wars saga. Among the many questions he was asked by worshipping fans and delegates were the following:

Q: "Will there be more Star Wars films?"
Lucas: "As long as enough of you support the films, there will be."

Q: "Will you return to the Star Wars universe?"Lucas: "Hopefully, I will some day be doing the next three Star Wars, but I'm not sure when. The next three would take place 20 or 30 years before the films they're celebrating here today. I'll do the first trilogy first. There are nine floating around there somewhere. I'll guarantee that the first three are pretty much organized in my head, but the other three are kind of out there somewhere."

Q: "Advice to young filmmakers?"Lucas: "Persevere. Work very hard, and always do the best at whatever you do, no matter how lowly the job seems."

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I remember reading that last quote in Starlog magazine and took it slightly to heart. It was in that autumn of 1987 that I made the significant step from school into college, often a mind-expanding, liberating experience for young people, where pupils become students, children become adults, and the foundations of political causes are often cemented. In my case, it was at the brand new Sixth Form College in Colchester, where among the subjects I was studying were some extra-curricular "Video Production" courses, encouraging "potential Spielbergs" to be involved in the film making process.

From this I was able to start pottering around with a video camera with friends, and at some point we needed people to step in front of the camera and act - so I started acting again, something I hadn't done since the age of 11.

So: I knew that I could act, and after a while discovered that I had an enthusiasm for making films as well. I'd also seen Return of the Jedi just a couple of months before, and from that bought some old back copies of sci-fi magazines from 1983, which included this last section from an extensive "Starburst" article:

"Having disposed of his central trilogy, George has to gamble on going back to the beginning, to the real Star Wars I, II and III. Starting all over, with Artoo and Threepio apart, new characters...before of course, come the Nineties, going on into VII, VIII and IX, which cover the rebuilding of the Republic."
The article seems unusually knowledgeable about the general future of Lucasfilm, as mapped out in 1983. For the time being however, George Lucas himself had put thoughts of Star Wars aside. There were two spin-off Ewok films and a TV cartoon series featuring the cuddly heroes from Jedi as well as the cartoon series Drioids (featuring R2-D2 and C-3PO), but no sign of the cinematic exploits of Luke, Leia, Han and company, or the late Darth Vader.

Shattering news came along in the autumn of 1988: Elstree Studios had been sold off to Brent Walker, a local businessman who chose to dispose of the site to whomsoever was interested. Five years later in 1993, half the sound stages were pulled down (including the mighty Star Wars stage specially built by Lucasfilm in 1979), and a Tesco supermarket was built over it. If Star Wars was going to ever be made again, it would be at somewhere other than Elstree.

Watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a year later therefore had a certain bittersweet taste to it - the last film made exclusively by Lucasfilm at Elstree - and there was no sign of a new Star Wars film on the horizon.

The frustration mounted.

Then an edition of Film 89 featured a section on dedicated film fans, who included Star Wars fan Victoria Hills, who liked to dress up as Princess Leia and recite some of the scenes. There was also a devotee of The Poseidon Adventure, who had written his own unofficial sequel to the two Poseidon films.

This set me thinking: if Lucas was going to drag his heels so much, why shouldn't I write my own Episodes I, II and III? Influenced in part by some of the films which had appeared that year, such as Last Crusade, Batman and others, and also captivated by the plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (which the story of Darth Vader seemed to parallel), I set out some of the ideas into a basic synopsis.

I drafted a letter to George Lucas himself (right). The curt reply from Lucasfilm's office in Hertfordshire returned my letter, saying that they did not receive unsolicited mail, nor did they even read it.

I persevered.

From the beginning, I knew that the key relationships in the early episodes would between the younger Ben Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, and Anakin and his wife - a character not directly involved in the saga up till now, but clearly of importance as the future mother of Luke and Leia. I remembered seeing The Accused at the time and felt that Jodie Foster would be the ideal choice to play this important role, and wrote the character of Abigail with her in mind. By sheer coincidence, I also later discovered that she was one of the main candidates originally considered for the role of Princess Leia.

As to Anakin, this was a trickier proposition to get round - to think of the right actor who could play a character immortalised under a breath mask, with all the physicality of Dave Prowse combined with a youthful resemblance to Sebastian Shaw. It was only natural therefore to think of a British actor in the role, and Jeremy Irons was the nearest (certainly in terms of height!) that would fit the bill. Secretly, I also wrote the role of Anakin with myself in mind - writer's prerogative if you will - and hoped and wished one day that if lucky enough, I would love to play the role of either Anakin or Obi-Wan - but felt too young for the latter (how wrong that was!)

Around this time (December 1990) at a film memorabilia fair in Camden, I met two Star Wars fans, Craig Stevens and Stephen Nelmes, and discussed with them my enthusiasm for the films and my fascination with how the first three episodes were going to turn out. The resulting conversation alerted me to the fact that there was still very much a Star Wars fan community of dedicated fans just simmering beneath the surface. Two years later, I wrote in Craig's UK Star Wars Fan Club magazine:

"As for casting decisions, it would be worth Ian McDiarmid reprising his role as the Emperor, especially as the make-up he wore in ROTJ made him him look eighty-seven! If they let him play the younger Senator Palpatine without make-up he'd be exactly the right age!"
It was therefore in the autumn of 1990 going into the spring of '91 that I set all these ideas and creative energies into overdrive, making my first proper "serious" film, Return to Ypres (a documentary about my family's visit to the battlefields of World War I), and also started writing my own personal Star Wars prequel trilogy.

Episode I: The First Encounter

In this, to keep audiences interested from the first, the story goes straight into an action set piece on the Tethoran system where Anakin Skywalker is a law enforcement officer and gifted pilot, who intercepts, after a long chase, a bounty hunter trying to assassinate Abigail Deraynor, daughter of Senator Oberon Deraynor, an influential figure in the Imperial Senate.

The Republic is in crisis, and while Oberon debates the situation in the Senate, Anakin is given the further task of escorting Abigail across the galaxy to safety in his ship The Black Hawk (an intended variation on the Millennium Falcon) to Alderaan via the Dantooine system. But Abigail as it turns out, has been in disguise for most of the mission, as extra security. The ambitious Senator Palpatine however, has a sinister emissary, Ludwig Atikeen, who is out to intercept Abigail and her bodyguard.

In the course of their adventures, Anakin and Abigail fall in love, and by the time they reach Alderaan, the reckless young Senator's daughter has persuaded Anakin to join her on an audacious mission to free the Kribuna system of its slave fortress. Her persuasion, as well as that of a Jedi from the Clone Wars whom Anakin meets for the first time: Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi (for whom I envisaged a distinguished namesake in the role: Ben Kingsley).

Anakin is reluctant at first to engage in any "rebel" activity against the general wishes of the Republic, but is won round by Obi-Wan when he shows Anakin a mythical laser sword frozen in stone (Arthurian-style legend now). Kenobi demonstrates how the lightsabre - legend has it - only knows who is destined to use it. Obi-Wan himself tries and fails to prize the sword free, but Anakin, unaware of his own powers until now, uses the Force and suddenly the lightsabre is resting in his hand - the same lightsabre that his son Luke will also use in years to come.

This confirms what Obi-Wan had always suspected, that Anakin (whose parents died during The Clone Wars) is, in a sense, the chosen one, and decides to train him to become a Jedi, after the Battle of Kribuna where the slaves are freed by the rebel Republic fleet and an army of Jedi knights. During the battle Ludwig Atikeen is also killed by Abigail, but the real enemy has yet to reveal himself, as Senator Palpatine stands many lightyears away from Kribuna in the Kessel system, plotting his schemes against Senator Deraynor and his daughter, and now interested also in Anakin Skywalker. Episode I concludes with the wedding of Anakin and Abigail.

Episode II: The Rise of the Emperor

Poster design circa 1992, and 10 years later

Covering not only Palpatine's rise to power, but also his simultaneous seduction of Anakin Skywalker (who's having nightmare premonitions) towards the Dark Side, and is much more political, as Abigail is kidnapped by mercenary Luthan Kaspar (a character with Billy Crystal/Richard Dreyfuss echoes of Han Solo about him) and her father is murdered, just as Oberon is about to contest the leadership of the Senate with the eventual winner, Senator Palpatine.

In the ensuing struggle - which involves a Titanic disaster-style finale where the main Republic ship is destroyed and most of its passengers killed - Anakin tries to stop Emperor Palpatine (as he now is) directly, but has to overcome Palpatine's fearsome new associate Kat'sar (Pat Roach). Here was the dilemma - what exactly would make Anakin turn to the Dark Side? I thought to myself.....what would make me turn to evil? The answer: pain, and the suppression of it. Anakin therefore uses his anger to kill Kat'sar when the beast clings hold of an old wound (sustained by Ludwig Atikeen), and then despairs when he sees an image of Abigail in pain, but in reality it is the Emperor standing before him. Just as he is about to welcome Anakin to the Dark Side however, Palpatine is electrocuted (hence the energy bolts at the end of Jedi) and Anakin escapes heavily scarred, and crash lands on the sandbanks of the Trexel system, in limbo, with his future destiny in doubt.

Episode III: The Search for Luke Skywalker

Abigail has given birth to the two twins, Luke and Leia, and defied her own planetary system's rules on another reckless quest to find her missing husband. On the way however she is captured by a space pirate (Brian Blessed) and his band, as Luthan Kaspar quickly discovers when he too is intercepted in pursuit of her. She and Luthan team up to escape captivity and rescue Anakin, but the Empire is one step ahead of everybody, slaying the pirates, and it is left to General (later to become Grand Moff) Tarkin to lead an Imperial assault on the Trexel homestead where Anakin is being protected. This battle follows the primitive society versus technology theme (of Jedi) again, only this time the Empire wins.

Tarkin hands Anakin's body over to the Emperor, who uses his powers to revive him (see below), and in return for this life debt, Anakin finally joins the Empire under his new guise: Lord Darth Vader.

Whilst Abigail returns to the twins in declining health, Vader is given his first task by his new master to wipe out the entire Jedi clan, including Obi-Wan Kenobi. In the course of this he confronts some of his former colleagues and mentors (for whom I envisioned actors the stature of Anthony Hopkins and Liam Neeson making brief appearances).

Matters come to a head however when the Empire invades Tethoran, where the Emperor discovers that a son of Skywalker has been born. Palpatine orders Vader to kill every child on the planet (a la King Herod) to ensure the baby doesn't escape, which Vader does, even if that means having to kill his wife and child.

Abigail dies anyway - in her husband's arms - but not before Obi-Wan has persuaded her to separate the twins, with Luthan making the supreme sacrifice to get Leia to Alderaan safely, and Obi-Wan himself taking Luke to Tatooine, with the assistance of the children of Tethoran (including a very young Han Solo) who rise against Vader - the perfect blend of Spielberg whimsy and dark intergalactic warfare. I envisioned that Steven Spielberg was the perfect choice to direct Episode III.

There is also the famous and well documented duel between Obi-Wan and Vader, which here takes place on the volcanic generator high above Tethoran's capital city. Obi-Wan overcomes both Vader and his master the Emperor, and Anakin falls to the precipice of the molten lava, whereupon Obi-Wan pulls him back and begs him to come back to the good side ("Obi-Wan once thought as you do." - Vader to Luke in Jedi), and Anakin (like Luke in The Empire Strikes Back) chooses to fall into the abyss, to his presumed death.

Obi-Wan weeps for the loss of his apprentice and friend as well as his own failures, but manages to retrieve Anakin/Vader's discarded lightsabre and returns to the more important task of helping Luke get to safety before the Empire completes its invasion of Tethoran.

At the end, Obi-Wan successfully and secretly transports the infant boy to the Lars homestead on Tatooine, and the twin suns set as the camera rises up into space and the end titles - but the very last moment of this trilogy comes at the end of the credits, when a mask is seen descending down onto Anakin's scarred body, and thanks to the Emperor once again, the new Dark Lord of the Sith takes his first breath through the mask - now truly more machine than man.

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Breathless at the end of this mammoth task of writing, I was satisfied at least that I had done it the way I wanted to see the new trilogy to turn out, and eagerly awaited the real thing, if and when it came along.

In 1992 came the first new official Star Wars fiction, Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire trilogy - but a sequel , not a prequel. This, for me, was where the rot began to set in - with various elements introduced that cropped up in the prequels, such as the unpronounceable names and the misguided idea of trying to "quantify" the Force, which later developed into the idea of Midichlorians. As a novel of course, it was naturally written like one, with open endings instead of a good satisfying climax between episodes. The franchise however, was alive again and open for business.

A year later in 1993 came a seismic event for Lucasfilm (and arguably world cinema): Jurassic Park , for which ILM had done many of the ground-breaking new digital special effects, where entire worlds could be created out of nothing, persuaded George Lucas that he could now make the next Star Wars films the way he wanted.

Soon afterwards disturbing rumours circulated about casting for the new film. The first was that megastar child actor Macaulay Culkin (from Home Alone) was to play the young Anakin; the second, more popular notion which gained ground was that Kenneth Branagh was cast as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi. A third, much later rumour, but equally disturbing, was that young Ewan McGregor was being considered for Obi-Wan. Two years later to my dismay this was proved correct.

And then in 1997, Twentieth Century Fox were eager to persuade Lucas to re-release his original trilogy on its 20th anniversary, and he in turn persuaded them to allow him to "enhance" them. Thereby, Lucas was testing out his new digital FX technicians with challenges that they would soon be presented with for Star Wars: Episode I.

Events moved apace, and with time running out, I auditioned for the Central School of Speech and Drama (where Carrie Fisher studied in the 1970s), whom I think had practically made up their mind about me before I even walked in the room. Que sera sera, I thought. Meanwhile as the new film went into pre-production, so did the casting stories. Liam Neeson had been announced as having a major role, and a young American child actor, Jake Lloyd, to play Anakin. As to the choice of the young heroine Amidala however, I could have no complaints: I remembered Natalie Portman from Leon (aka. The Professional) as a very precocious 12-year old with a remarkably mature sensibility (in a similar vein to Jodie Foster), who seemed to perfectly suit the description given by Princess Leia of her real mother: "She was very beautiful, gentle and kind, but....sad."

In 1998, after much hushed anticipation and outside curiosity, a rough cut was made of the film, and the aforesaid trailer appeared in cinemas, with a surprisingly ordinary title:

"STAR WARS EPISODE I The Phantom Menace"

The lack of emphasis on the actual episode's title seemed disturbing, but as Lucas put it way back in 1987: "I see it as one movie."

Visiting a sci-fi convention in London, a friend told me of the rough cut screening, where the insiders' view was that it was "awful" - thanks apparently to the new all-CGI character, so I was told. With all the little leaks that continued to emerge about the film's making, I decided that enough was enough. If I learned anymore there would be little of any novelty to see in the film at all - so I collected all the articles, TV interviews and reviews that I could find, and refused to look at any of them until I'd seen the film for myself.

One final gesture to my dashed hopes however, was to apply for a ticket to see the film's premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square. Fat chance. Nearly every Star Wars fan friend I knew was trying to get in too, or knew someone else that was going to.

Back to the original newsagent in Aylesbury.

In a Proustian spirit of reflection therefore, I went back to the place where it all started in 1978. The Dominion Tottenham Court Road no longer showed films, so I took my whole family on an outing to the Odeon Aylesbury to finally see the film for myself, on 31st July 1999, after 12 years and an extra two months of waiting.

The Film

Before the film began that afternoon, there were a monumental eight trailers for other blockbusters, including Jodie Foster in Anna and the King. Seeing the Twentieth Century Fox fanfare and those famous sloping letters revealing the words "Episode I" was a peculiarly nostalgic experience, although the cumberous scrolling titles about taxation to trade routes seemed a little clunkier (even by Star Wars' standards) than ever before.

I will however defend Lucas's much maligned use of dialogue in his films. It's usually quite serviceable and suits the situation and environment in which the characters find themselves. The bad, and I feel, unfair reputation Lucas is accorded, is I suspect down to general Media envy of one of the most successful film series ever made.

Regardless of the script, The Phantom Menace has undoubtedly the best cast of the entire Star Wars saga: a veritable international pot pourri, from Pernilla August to Brian Blessed (in voice if not in person), all of whom deliver the lines with Shakespeare-like reverence - the first of which is Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn, who anchors the film in what approaches the nearest to Alec Guinness-like gravitas (as too does Samuel L. Jackson). Ewan McGregor, as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, utters the famous catchphrase "I have a bad feeling about this" in slightly archaic fashion, as the two Jedi knights remove their cloaks, but I love the slickness of the ships in space and the general style of the film. The production design is beyond compare: the Naboo designs for The Phantom Menace are the most successful of this trilogy to make it resemble a time set before Star Wars (Episode IV).

It isn't long however before Messers Jinn and Kenobi are hurled straight into an action piece when the Trade Federation try to get rid of their slightly unwanted guests, and the two Jedi avoid the meddlesome Battle Droids (less independent and resourceful than stormtroopers - but also looking more technologically advanced) and stow aboard one of the Trade Federation battleships about to invade Naboo.

There we see for the first time, the oddball figure of Jar-Jar Binks (voiced and modelled by Ahmed Best), about whom I'd already vaguely heard the advance publicity, and now saw him for myself. An irritating character but deliberately so, and to be fair all the Star Wars films have had their share of slightly irritating comedy sidekicks, from the droids C-3PO & R2-D2, to the Ewoks in Jedi, and even Yoda had his irritating moments. What's significant however is that Jar Jar entertains younger audiences worldwide - as I discovered when I later saw the film in Germany (one of nine cinema visits), and found the German kids were laughing at the exactly the same moments as the English ones.

Talking of Yoda, his seniority in the whole saga has ballooned from what was merely a stand-in character for Ben Kenobi (killed off in Episode IV), into an all-seeing presence in five of the six episodes, and his slightly preachy countenance becomes increasingly tiresome during the prequel trilogy, and reaches its zenith when the misguided step was taken (in Episode II) to turn him into a Jedi warrior (thanks to special effects). Just because ILM could do it, didn't necesarily mean that they should do it.

But I digress. Back to Naboo, where the two intrepid Jedi (and their "third Musketeer" Jar Jar) leap in to the rescue of Queen Amidala and her party, and aid her on a perilous quest across the galaxy to the Republic Senate (via a lengthy stop-off at Tatooine for a pod race), but the real Amidala is in disguise, with added confusion over the Queen's name. Is it Amidala, or Padme Naberrie?

At the time, I thought this was digital FX of two Natalie Portmans, when in fact the one on the left is young Keira Knightley.

It is Padme "the handmaiden" however who meets little Anakin at Watto(Andrew Secombe)'s junk shop in Mos Espa ("Is that the one who's going to become Darth Vader?", audiences gasped), and dreams of freeing slaves on the planet Tatooine, where he himself is one.

The pod race, which by means of the contrived plot is the centrepiece of the film, continues Lucas's lifelong passion for fast cars (also demonstrated in the Star Wars trench run and Return of the Jedi's speeder bike chase), although all the racers - bar Anakin - are CGI creations (one of the voices was allegedly Mark Hamill's) so the lack of tension and human interaction makes for a slightly unengaging 20 minutes of special effects. Kids however (and liberal-minded adults), loved it.

The most emotional moment of the entire prequel trilogy (as it turned out) is when Anakin says goodbye to his Mum (thanks once again to John Williams' beautiful arrangement of "The Force theme") - which was the fundamental reason for Lucas changing the age of the central character from 12 to 9 (and also now setting the story 40 years before Star Wars). The idea works well enough in this individual instance, but it also undercuts much of the drama for the rest of the trilogy.

Once free to leave Tatooine and begin his fateful quest, little Anakin joins the growing band of heroes on their way to Coruscant (renamed that thanks to Timothy Zahn), but not before the intervention of Palpatine's sinister emissary, Darth Maul - who livens up the action considerably as soon as he swings into action.

Indeed, the whole finale of the film features a quadruple battle that tries to top the climactic triple battle of Return of the Jedi, and pretty near succeeds. The highlight is the lightsabre duel between Maul, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, and it brings out the best in John Williams (his "Duel of the Fates" theme), Ray Park and Ewan McGregor, who is suitably miffed and angry-looking when he stares Darth Maul in the eye after the demise of his Jedi master Qui-Gon. The first of many Jedi, I sensed, soon to be exterminated by the Sith. By the end of the dramatic Battle for Naboo, the heroes win through, with a Viking-style funeral for Qui-Gon, but the real villain of the piece has yet to reveal himself, as Palpatine looks on with the mourners in a nicely sinister closing shot.

Fans were disappointed that Darth Maul disappeared so quickly at the end of this film, yet I feel he'd served his purpose in a thuggish, blood-and-thunder sort of way. As for the film as a whole, critics who'd never held Star Wars with much regard in the first place sharpened their knives for this one - as also, sadly, did most fans - some of whom seemed to have forgotten that they'd grown up since 1977. Most of the flak was directed on poor old Jar Jar (whose further participation in the prequels was severely diminished), when I think the actual main weakness was the characterisation of the principals.

"Hey! We've just been to see The Phantom Menace!"

To see Anakin in his slightly younger form as little Jake Lloyd was to say the least, surprising. His fighting in the space battle over Naboo made little sense, and the decision to make him American was disappointing and also inconsistent, in view of Sebastian Shaw's dignified portrayal back in 1983 - as well as the general "British" intonation with which James Earl Jones was instructed to use for Darth Vader's voice.

"Vader" did show up, at the very end of the credits of The Phantom Menace, with that inimitable breath mask sound to reward audiences who'd stayed to the end. Others left the cinema weeping that George Lucas had supposedly ruined their childhood. But I enjoyed it, for all its flaws and slight reservations.

The many fans who were disappointed by Episode I hoped for better (and some got it) for Episode II, with Sebastian Shaw's younger form now in the guise of cherubic-looking Hayden Christensen in ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002), set 10 years later (trying to cover the mistake of the character's under-aging first time around) but made only 3 years after Episode I, a much more political film than before, with Anakin and Obi-Wan in a long (and unbelievable) chase sequence pursuing a bounty hunter who has tried to assassinate Amidala. Soon enough, Palpatine uses his wiles to give Anakin the task of escorting Amidala to the safety of the Naboo system, where the inevitable happens. If the romance was disappointing (the film badly lacked a Han Solo-type presence), things at least started getting into gear with the sight of the mysterious clone planet Kamino (Episode II's one moment of genuine originality) and the climactic and frankly messy battle on Geonosis involving gladiators, the eponymous clone soldiers, an army of Jedi, and the "show-stopper", a lightsabre duel between Yoda and Count Dooku (Christopher Lee). One Episode late perhaps, the film concluded with the marriage of Anakin and Amidala.

This left a lot of plot to be shoe-horned into Episode III, REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005), a film with as many good points as bad ones - regressing to a 12A certificate for the scene where Darth Vader slithers to the precipice of the molten lava pit (on the Mustafar system), as Obi-Wan weeps for the loss of his apprentice and friend, and retrieves Anakin/Vader's discarded lightsabre. One minor consolation: Steven Spielberg had directed (or rather "designed" on his laptop) some of the choreography for the lightsabre duel.

Other moments such as Anakin's nightmare visions of Padme suffering, and Vader's massacre of all the children in the Jedi Temple showed positive hints of the kind of grand climax this third chapter was aspiring to, yet the drama was still fatally compromised by the earlier decision to make the characters so young. McGregor once again had his moments (and beautifully underplays his awareness to Padme of the secret marriage), but still looks more like a maturing Padawan than the future Alec Guinness. Anakin also still resembles a boy by the time the famous mask is put over his head, but Christensen had at least worked hard enough with the role to get his Darth Vader moment. With the assistance of the Emperor, Vader takes his first breath through the mask, and out from it speaks the voice of - hey presto - James Earl Jones.

Two leaders of an Empire?

Revenge of the Sith was a watershed not only for Lucasfilm but for cinema itself, an indication of how techniques had changed since 1977: films were now franchises, celluloid had gone digital, and characterisation and performances had given way to special effects. It was tempting to think that Lucas himself had turned the way of the saga's main protagonist to the Dark Side of Filmmaking: once a brilliant independent film maker but now more resembling the sort of Hollywood studio producer that he had once fought against.

To give him credit, no-one (not even Peter Jackson) has managed to top his feat of creating six huge movies over three decades. Such a shame that he chose to abandon his original plans of making the third and last trilogy.

As for me, looking back to that day in July 1999 was a sentimental moment. Within three months the old Odeon Aylesbury had closed, and Lucasfilm chose to relocate their main studio location from Britain to Australia (at the new Fox Studios Sydney), so the inherent "British" style of Star Wars was gone - as also in 2000, was my acting idol Alec Guinness.

The Phantom Menace was beginning of the end of a dream, and in other ways the fulfilment of one. I knew by then that I would never be involved with these films, but had at least hoped that they would be made, and made well.

After leaving the cinema in Aylesbury that day, with the excitement of the film and the sound of The Duel of the Fates ringing in my ears, I was once again inspired to complete the final trilogy of films (Episodes VII, VIII and IX) in that distant galaxy, far far away.