Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Essential as the start of the prequels, and not a place to begin the saga, which is what chronological order on this page proposes. It is the film least able to carry a newcomer: the politics assume you care about an institution you have not met, and the only character with a future you can feel is a nine-year-old whose significance is entirely in films you have not watched.

The complaints are mostly fair. The plot is a taxation dispute over trade routes, explained in dialogue, with a blockade and a senate vote. Jar Jar Binks is pitched at small children and placed in almost every scene. Anakin is written considerably younger than the story needs, which makes the eventual romance in the next film land badly from the moment it begins.

What is genuinely good here is also genuinely good. The podrace is a superb action sequence built out of sound design and practical-looking speed. Duel of the Fates is the best piece of music John Williams wrote for the series and the three-way lightsaber duel it scores is the most athletic in any of the nine films. Darth Maul says almost nothing and is more frightening for it.

There is also a real idea underneath, which the trilogy as a whole delivers: a republic is not overthrown, it votes itself away in stages, and each stage is a reasonable response to an emergency somebody manufactured. The twenty-five years since release have made that read less like background than it did in 1999.