People have been blaming everything for the recent epidemic of high-school mass-murders, but as far as I'm concerend, the roots of all this evil can be traced back to the original Star Wars. That movie took Boy's Town out of the hands of the boys, and gave it to the masses. In order to placate this new audience of occasionally non-male, non-adolescent or non-white viewers, creator G. Lucas tried to create black characters, light comedy, bloodless swordplay, cuddly critters and complex romantic feelings. As a result, by RETURN OF THE JEDI, the series had become kids stuff. The alienated teens of the world became alienated from their own aliens, and of course, they started shooting. Now, with the fourth film in the series, Lucas is trying to make peace with the borderline pathological adolescent in us all by layering dense mythos and technology over the juvenile comedy and embarassing racism. Maybe next time, an actual movie will suffice.

"The Phantom Menace" is being released over two decades after the original launched the concept of "tie-in" marketing, and it represents such marketing's ludicrously disporportioned pinnacle. Though it is twenty years later, the movie is a prequel, beginning 30-40 years before the 1977 film. It is a time longer ago, back when aliens were digitally created racial stereotypes, instead of extras in cool-looking rubber masks, and the armies of the burgeoning empire were animated robots instead of armor wearing flunkies. In short, it is a cold, sad time.

I was the age of Anniken Skywalker when the original STAR WARS came out, and one of the reasons it was such a hit was that kids my age could enjoy it for the same reasons as the adults. It didn't talk down to us yet it was right on our level. Not so the PHANTOM MENACE which is dividied into solemn Jedi politics no kid could understand, and infantile fart jokes no adult will be able to endure. Imagine Kane in "Kung Fu" sharing top billing with Barney the Dinosaur. in this case it's Liam Neeson struggling to both be stoic and have some sort of reaction to the animated antics of a spastic amphibian named Jar Jar.

Created via elaborate digital effects, Jar Jar still remains painfully archaic. When he talks he squeals and twists his words like Miss Piggy doing a bad Caribbean accent with a mouthful of novacaine. The incompetent ethnic side-kick, he allegedly provides "comic relief." Willie Best and Stepin Fetchet were paragons of racial dignity in comparison. He is not even the only example of alien stereoptyping: a pair of scheming, cowardly villains sound like Americans doing Asian accents, and a flying junk dealer (reminiscent of the muppet Gonzo) sounds like Cheech Marin doing Arabian rug merchant. The only simultaneously non-alien and non-white cast members are a black officer of the Queen whose job seems to be nay-saying every courageous, daring idea of the brilliant Jedi ("Sir, I don't think that's a good idea" is his refrain) and Samuel Jackson, wasted as the token black Jedi Knight.

Thankfully, the appalling racist subtext will most likely be lost amidst the never-ending parade of breath-taking backgrounds and derring do. There are no more than few scattered "pauses" in the entire film. If there is a moment of peace, that just means it's time for Jar Jar to do some more "hilarious antics". As the writer/producer/director, George Lucas obviously suffers from insecurity and a short attention span, and he assumes his audience does too. As a man who has unwittingly become the sole father of a global, billion dollar pop religion, he has resorted to being the Wizard of Oz. He pours on the digital smoke so thick that you can't help but realize there's just a frightened little computer geek behind the curtain. This movie would be twice as good with half as much going on. Of course Lucas is assuming you will see this movie at least 3 or 4 times, so there has to be a lot you would miss at only one go-round. Nagging questions are always left unanswered. Who is the guy in the funky make-up with the double edged light-sabre? How can we possibly be him for Halloween when he's nothing more than a plot contrivance? Is Nathalie Portman too young to fantasize about? What the hell is Samuel Jackson doing here?

These are the things keeping young boys awake at night as they desperately try to resist the urge to kill everyone in their school. Nathalie Portman is waiting for a knight in shining armour. She's a very popular boy's-town pipe dream, and according to the lore, she will be Luke and Leia's mother. Unfortunately, the father is this tow-headed kid who drives a space ship while screaming "Ahhh" and holding his hands up to his cheeks like Mulcahay Caulkin in HOME ALONE 2001. With an accidental press of a button young "Annakin" manages to blow up the reactor core of a huge space station, symbolically knocking up the queen in the process. Simultaneously, Jar Jar and his Third World cronies stage a battle with armies of robots who for some reason were programmed to be terrible shots. As a reward for their efforts, these non-white, non-washed minions are allowed to come and visit the very clean city of their upper-class superiors. The look of tolerant welcome on the faces of the noble people as their pretty city is filled with slobbering, thick-accented barbaric hordes is disturbing. The Eloi welcoming the Morlocks, the Bay Area hippies letting the Hell's Angels into the party, and so on throughout the ages.

I remember that Lucas took a little heat awhile back for having an all-white universe in the original (the voice of James Earle Jones aside), so to compensate he created Lando Calrissian for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Lando was a black man who... sells out the good guys for a buck? Oh, George, a step backwards is worse than none at all. And here the best Lucas can do for a black characters are buffoons and extras. Color blind casting seems to never have occured to him. If he had let Samuel Jackson have the Liam Neeson role, let's say, that would have been an unqualified cultural breakthrough.

Liam, meanwhile, does the best he can with nothing. He and Ewan MacGregor can barely hide their confusion at having such flimsy roles. Their burlap robes seem itchy and cheap compared to their slick surroundings, like they wandered into the wrong movie. Ewan looks bloated, pale, hung over and his acting consists of trying to sound like Alec Guiness. When Liam calmly eyes Jar Jar's inane antics you don't ever even think they are sharing the same space. In a galaxy far away Lucas the director seems to be asleep at the wheel in these scenes. Or he doesn't even care, figuring if it doesn't work he'll just throw in some more effects at the FX studio. Meanwhile, the human actors stand idly by, nervous at playing such vague characters in a movie they know will be seen by nearly everyone on the planet. Lucas is the real star of this movie anyway, the wizard of technology, invisible behind that curtain, controlling vast armies of images, leaving the puny human actors to wander around in blue mattes like lost souls.

Maybe he just feels intimidated. After all, Liam is a real man, and this is boy's town. No kissing, just robots getting shot. There's one girl, the princess, and there's one mother, cooking glowing green mush and stoically shedding not a tear as her little man runs off to play with swords. The rest of the evening is spent free and easy in the company of boys in pony tails, zapping computer-generated robots with xenophobic joy-sticks until it's time for bed. As for the fear of facing all those judgemental kids at school in the morning, that won't be as easy. Their human complexity is scary, beyond your control. Better not talk to them, and instead stay focused on the novelization by Terry Brooks, and spend your study halls dreaming of a planet where there's no room for things like a "Jar Jar." Such a planet is coming, because the force is with you. You may fire when ready.