- Star wars episode i the phantom menace 1999 trial#
- Star wars episode i the phantom menace 1999 series#
The Phantom Menace helped demonstrate that Lucas’s world was bigger than anyone could have imagined Nowadays, continuity and canon are key concepts, with fans scrutinizing every character and action to make sure the stories they enjoy hold together when prodded. In 1999, the concept of tie-in stories adhering to a centralized canon wasn’t commonplace. It’s now not uncommon to see studios put together a far-reaching package of intellectual property to reach fans, with not just comics and tie-in novels, but also a larger constellation of stories that build upon and add to the film at the center. All of this was largely unheard of at the time - but it spoke to the power that the franchise still had with fans who had grown up seeing the films in theaters, or who had since watched them on VHS. Lucas had already begun work on a prequel trilogy, and restored and updated the original films in time for their own 20th anniversary.
Star wars episode i the phantom menace 1999 series#
Stackpole and Aaron Allston’s X-Wing series (which included books, video games, and comics), and Shadows of the Empire (A book, comic, video game, and action figures). They demonstrated that Lucas’ world was still viable, with crossover projects like Michael A.
Star wars episode i the phantom menace 1999 trial#
In the following years, the company began to develop larger cross-promotional projects, bringing together the company’s comics, novels, games, and action figures as a sort of trial run to see if all of those parts could work together. In the late 1980s, Lucasfilm began working to see if there was still life in the franchise, and licensed out a series of novels, the first of which, Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, hit the top of the bestseller lists in 1991. Lucas once largely walked away from the franchise that built his career, although he had sometimes referred to a larger plan for two additional trilogies. Star Wars’ return to theaters seems almost inevitable now, but its resurrection wasn’t always a sure thing. In 2019, we live in a world where massive, interconnected cinematic universes rule the box office, and where films that we’re most nostalgic for end up getting their own big-budget remakes with fresh faces, CGI budgets, and capabilities that the original directors could never have imagined. It was a special effects revolution, the first inkling that stories might never end, and a film where the director and cast faced enormous pushback from fans.
Looking back at the film two decades later, The Phantom Menace proved to be a precursor for the cinematic environment that we now find ourselves in. For some, excitement turned to confusion, puzzlement, and outright anger by the time the credits rolled, and Lucas’s grand cinematic experiment was off to a rocky start.
The long-anticipated Star Wars prequel Episode I: The Phantom Menace hit theaters, returning to a world that fans had thought they’d never see again. On May 19th, 1999, George Lucas changed movies forever.
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