Development While writing the
original Star Wars film (1977),
George Lucas decided the story was too vast to be covered in one film. He introduced a wider story arc that could be told in sequels if it became successful. He negotiated a contract that allowed him to make two sequels, and over time created an elaborate
backstory to aid his writing process. While writing the second film,
The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Lucas considered directions in which to take the story. In the original trilogy, Darth Vader was revealed to have been Anakin Skywalker, a once-powerful Jedi Knight, and a traitor to the Jedi Order. With this backstory in place, Lucas decided that the movies would work best as a trilogy. In the trilogy's final episode,
Return of the Jedi (1983), Vader is redeemed through an act of sacrifice for Luke. (pictured in 2011) decided to return to the series in the 1990s following advancements in
computer-generated imagery. Throughout the 1980s, Lucas said he had no desire to return to
Star Wars and had canceled his
sequel trilogy by the time of
Return of the Jedi. However, because Lucas had developed most of the backstory, the idea of prequels continued to fascinate him. In the early 1990s,
Star Wars saw a resurgence in popularity in the wake of
Dark Horse's
comic line and
Timothy Zahn's
trilogy of novels. Lucas saw that there was still a large audience for his idea of a prequel trilogy, and with the development of special effects generated with
computer-generated imagery (CGI), Lucas considered returning to his saga and directing the film. In October 1993, it was announced in
Variety and other sources that he would be making the prequels. Lucas began outlining the story; Anakin Skywalker rather than Obi-Wan Kenobi would be the protagonist, and the series would be a tragedy examining Darth Vader's origins. A relic of the original outline was that Anakin would, like his son, grow up on Tatooine. Lucas also began to change the prequels' timeline relative to the original series; instead of filling in the tangential history, they would form the beginning of a long story that started with Anakin's childhood and ended with his death. This was the final step toward turning the franchise into a saga. Lucas began writing the
Star Wars prequel trilogy on November 1, 1994. The screenplay of
Star Wars was adapted from Lucas's 15-page outline that was written in 1976, which he designed to help him keep track of the characters' backstories and events that occurred before the
original trilogy. Anakin was first written as a twelve-year-old, but Lucas reduced his age to nine because he felt that the lower age would better fit the plot point of Anakin being affected by his mother's separation from him. Eventually, Anakin's younger age led Lucas to rewrite his participation in the movie's major scenes. The film's working title was
The Beginning, with the title not being changed to
The Phantom Menace until shortly before the film's completion. The larger budget and possibilities opened up by the use of digital effects made Lucas "think about a much grander, more epic scale—which is what I wanted
Star Wars to be". The story ended with five simultaneous, ongoing plots, one leading to another. The central plot is Palpatine's intent to become Chancellor, which leads to the Trade Federation's attack on Naboo, the Jedi being sent there, Anakin being met along the way, and the rise of the Sith Lords. As with the original trilogy, Lucas intended
The Phantom Menace to illustrate several themes throughout the narrative. Duality is a frequent theme; Amidala is a queen who passes as a handmaiden, Palpatine plays on both sides of the war, among others. "Balance" is frequently suggested; Anakin is supposedly "the one" chosen to bring balance to the Force—Lucas said, "Anakin needed to have a mother, Obi-Wan needed a Master, Darth Sidious needed an apprentice" as without interaction and dialogue, "you wouldn't have drama". In November 2015,
Ron Howard confirmed that he,
Robert Zemeckis and
Steven Spielberg were approached by Lucas to direct
The Phantom Menace. All three approached directors told Lucas that he should direct the film, as they each found the project "too daunting."
Pre-production and design Before Lucas had started writing, his producing partner
Rick McCallum was preparing for the film. McCallum stated that his experience with
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles led to many of his decisions on
The Phantom Menace, such as long-term deals with actors and soundstages, the employment of recent graduates with no film experience, and the creation of sets and landscapes with digital technology. In April 1994, McCallum started searching for artists in art, architecture and design schools, and in mid-year he began location scouting with production designer Gavin Bocquet.
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) art director
Doug Chiang impressed McCallum the most and was hired as the design director. Art development on the film began in January 1995. Within three to four months of Lucas beginning the writing process, Chiang and his design team started a two-year process of reviewing thousands of designs for the film. Chiang stated that Lucas intended
Episode I to be stylistically different from the other
Star Wars films; it would be "richer and more like a period piece, since it was the history leading up to
A New Hope." The story takes place on three planets, some with varied environments such as the human and Gungan cities of Naboo and three buildings in Coruscant. With the exception of the Gungan city, which had an
Art Nouveau-inspired visual, these locations would be given distinctive looks with some basis in the real world. The concept drawings of
Ralph McQuarrie for the original trilogy served as the basis for Mos Espa—which was also inspired by old Tunisian hotels and buildings and had touches such as a marketplace to differentiate it from
A New Hopes Mos Eisley—and Coruscant, in particular a metropolis design that became the basis for the Senate. Bocquet would later develop the work of Chiang's team and design the interiors, translating the concepts into construction blueprints with environments and architectural styles that had some basis in reality "to give the audience something to key into." Some elements were directly inspired by the original trilogy; Lucas described the battle droids as predecessors to the
stormtroopers. Chiang uses that orientation to base the droids on the Imperial soldiers, only in the same style of stylized and elongated features seen in tribal African art.
Stunt coordinator
Nick Gillard was recruited to create a new Jedi fighting style for the prequel trilogy. Gillard likened the lightsaber battles to a chess game "with every move being a
check". Because of their short-range weapons, Gillard thought that the Jedi would have had to develop a fighting style that merged every sword fighting style, such as
kendo and other
kenjutsu styles, with other swinging techniques, such as tennis swings and tree-chopping. While training Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor, Gillard wrote a sequence that lasted around 60 seconds and intended to be around five or six sequences per fight. Lucas later referred to the Jedi as "negotiators" rather than high-casualty soldiers. The preference of hand-to-hand combat was intended to give a spiritual and intellectual role to the Jedi. Lucas decided to make elaborate costumes, because the film's society was more sophisticated than the one depicted in the original trilogy. Designer
Trisha Biggar and her team created over 1,000 costumes that were inspired by various cultures. Biggar worked closely with concept designer Iain McCaig to create a color palette for the inhabitants of each world: Tatooine followed
A New Hope with sun-bleached sand colors, Coruscant had grays, browns and blacks, and Naboo had green and gold for humans while Gungans wore "a leathery look, like their skin". The Jedi costumes followed the tradition from the original film; Obi-Wan's costume was inspired by the costume that was worn by Guinness. Lucas said he and Biggar would look at the conceptual art to "translat[e] all of these designs into cloth and fabric and materials that would actually work and not look silly". Biggar also consulted Gillard to ensure that the costumes would accommodate action scenes, and consulted the creature department to find which fabrics "wouldn't wear too heavily" on the alien skins. A huge wardrobe department was set up at
Leavesden Film Studios to create over 250 costumes for the main actors and 5,000 for the background ones. McCaig initially designed Darth Maul as a cross "between a ghost and a
serial killer" after he was given a piece of the script where it stated "give me your worst nightmare", but when Lucas saw the design, it terrified him. He closed the book and told McCaig "give me your second worst nightmare". McCaig later based Darth Maul's design on
Bozo the Clown.
Nute Gunray's
Thai accent was chosen after Lucas and McCallum listened to various languages to decide how the Neimoidians would speak. The character design of
Watto was an amalgam of rejected ideas; his expressions were based on video footage of Secombe's voice acting, photographs of animation supervisor
Rob Coleman imitating the character, and modeler Steve Alpin saying Watto's lines to a mirror. Lucas described
Sebulba's design as "a spider crossed with an
orangutan crossed with a
sloth",
Casting Samuel L. Jackson expressed interest in appearing in a
Star Wars film in any role, including as a Stormtrooper. He was approached after casting director Robin Gurland suggested Jackson to Lucas and accepted; his role was kept secret from him until his first day on set where he found out he is playing
Mace Windu.
Tupac Shakur was also considered for the role of Mace Windu.
Ray Park, a
martial arts champion with experience in gymnastics and sword fighting, was originally a member of the stunt crew. Stunt coordinator
Nick Gillard filmed Park to demonstrate his conception of the lightsaber battles. Lucas and McCallum were so impressed with the test tape that they gave Park the role of Maul. His voice was considered "too squeaky" and was
dubbed over in post-production by
Peter Serafinowicz. Knightley was reported to have "cried every single day" due to finding the wardrobe uncomfortable. Over 3,000 actors auditioned for the role of Anakin Skywalker including
Haley Joel Osment,
Cameron Finley,
Justin Berfield and
Michael Angarano before
Jake Lloyd was selected.
Vinette Robinson auditioned for the role of Padmé Amidala.
Benicio del Toro was initially cast as Darth Maul before later leaving the project when the character's lines were cut.
Michael Jackson expressed interest in playing Jar Jar Binks, but he wanted to do it in prosthetic makeup while Lucas wanted to do it in CGI.
Joseph Fiennes auditioned for the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi and nearly landed the part until Lucas's daughter rejected him upon meeting him during the second level of auditioning. According to McCaig, in the first draft of the script Neeson's character was originally named Obi-Wan Kenobi and McGregor's character was named Qui-Gon Jinn; with the young Qui-Gon taking on the name of Obi-Wan upon the elder Jedi's death. However, these roles were reversed late in filming.
Silas Carson was cast as Nute Gunray because another actor was uncomfortable with the costumes used by the Trade Federation characters, which were hot, exerted a lot of pressure on the bearer, and took about 15 minutes to apply.
Hugh Quarshie considered the part of Panaka as "a good career move" and a production that would be fun to make.
Brian Blessed originally auditioned for the role of
Sio Bibble, the Governor of Naboo, for which he was considered "too loud". Casting director Robin Gurland approached him to play Nass because it was a "bigger than life" character with "a kind of bravado". Blessed described Nass as a "reluctant hero".
Filming |alt=Rocky buildings and an antenna-like structure in a desert. Filming began on June 26, 1997, and ended on September 30 of that year, primarily taking place at
Leavesden Film Studios in England. Leavesden was leased for a two and a half year period so the production company could leave the sets intact and return after
principal photography had been completed. The forest scenes on Naboo were filmed at
Cassiobury Park in
Watford, Hertfordshire.
Pick-ups were shot between August 1998 and February 1999 after Lucas screened a rough cut of the film for friends and colleagues in May 1998. Most of the action and stunts were filmed by
Roger Christian's
second unit, which worked alongside the main unit instead of afterwards because of the high number of shots to be completed daily. The Italian
Caserta Palace was used as the interior of the Theed City Naboo Palace; it was used as a location for four days after it had been closed to visitors. Scenes with explosions were filmed on replica sets in Leavesden. , in Italy, was the location for the Naboo Royal Palace. A binder with the film's storyboards served as a reference for live-action filming, shots that would be filmed in front of a
chroma key blue screen, and shots that would be composed using CGI. The sets were often built with the parts that would be required on screen; often they were built only up to the heights of the actors. Chroma key was extensively used for digital set extensions, backgrounds, or scenes that required cinematographer
David Tattersall to seek powerful lamps to light the sets and visual effects supervisor
John Knoll to develop software that would remove the blue reflection from shiny floors. Knoll, who remained on set through most of the production, worked closely with Tattersall to ensure that the shots were suitable to add effects later. The cameras were fitted with
data capture models to provide technical data for the CGI artists.
The Phantom Menace was the final
Star Wars film to be shot mainly on
35mm film until
The Force Awakens (2015). Some scenes, mostly of elements filmed by the special effects team, were shot on high definition digital video tapes to test the performance of digital recordings, which Lucas and McCallum considered the next logical step because of the amount of digitizing—an expensive process compared to recording directly on digital media—for the compositing of computer-generated effects. A couple of digitally shot scenes made it into the movie, one of them being of Qui-Gon taking a blood sample of Anakin Skywalker. Later prequel trilogy films
Attack of the Clones (2002) and
Revenge of the Sith (2005) would be shot using Sony
CineAlta high-definition video cameras.
Greg Proops and
Scott Capurro were filmed wearing makeup and blue bodysuits so their heads could be joined in a computer-generated body. The visual effects crew did not like the original results and crafted Fode and Beed as an entirely computer generated alien. Because of the amount of visual effects produced, editing took two years; Paul Martin Smith started the process in England and focused on dialogue-heavy scenes.
Ben Burtt—who was also the film's
sound editor—was responsible for action sequences under Lucas's supervision.
Non-linear editing systems played a large part in translating Lucas's vision; he constantly tweaked, revised and reworked shots and scenes. The final sound mix was added in March 1999, and the following month, the film was completed after the delivery of the remaining visual effects shots.
Effects The film saw a breakthrough in computer generated effects. About 1,950 of the shots in
The Phantom Menace have visual effects. The scene in which toxic gas is released on the Jedi is the only sequence with no digital alteration. Lucas also used CGI to correct the physical presence of actors in certain scenes. Lucas originally planned to create many of the aliens with computer graphics, but those that would be more cost-effectively realized with masks and
animatronics were created by Nick Dudman's creature effects team. These included the Neimoidians, background characters in Mos Espa, the Jedi Council, and the Galactic Senate. Dudman's team was told where the creatures would be required six months before principal photography begun, and they rushed the production. The Neimoidian suits, which were originally intended as digital characters, were delivered one day before they would be required on set. Dudman traveled to Skywalker Ranch to see the original creatures that could be reused, and read the script for a breakdown of scenes with practical creatures, leaving only the more outlandish designs to be created using CGI. To research for the podrace vehicles, the visual effects crew visited a jet aircraft junkyard outside
Phoenix, Arizona and scavenged four
Boeing 747 engines. Life-sized replicas of the engines were built and sent to Tunisia to provide reference in the film. Except for Jake Lloyd inside a hydraulically controlled cockpit and a few practical podracer models, the entire podracing scene—which the effects crew designed to be as "out of this world" as possible—is computer-generated. == Themes and analysis ==