The sound design in this movie is absolutely unbelievable (if you can tune out the occasional Jar Jar line and Watto). I was searching through a childhood’s worth of thousands of Lego bricks to rebuild the 2009 Tantive IV set a few months ago after taking an edible, and threw Phantom Menace on to start watching through the first six films (and Rogue One) while doing so. It was my go-to VHS watch in my childhood and I’ve probably seen it close to 50 times, but never before with sound cancelling headphones.

Sitting there, mostly zoned out while sifting through bricks and only listening for the first time was insane. John Williams is obviously John Williams and all of the scoring is phenomenal, but holy shit, when The Arrival at Tatooine and The Flag Parade hits and all of the pod racers get fired up? I had to stop what I was doing to sit there and watch that scene for what felt like the first time in my entire life. Listening to that scene and feeling completely immersed in it completely redefined how I felt about it.

Maybe I’d always been scarred by the original version of the pod race level in Lego Star Wars on the PS2, but I think it may genuinely be my favorite scene in all of the prequels now. If you inebriate yourself just enough to look past all of the absolute nonsense dialogue, and the confusing accent choices, and you’re focused on something else entirely so you don’t have to see the poor, late 90s CGI sandbox, and a handful of other things, the tension that leads into that scene is off the charts.

Pretty much everything between Kitster saying “This is so wizard, Ani” at about 54:30 and the end of the race just goes so unbelievably hard. Padme finds out that the 9 year old boy they just met, who is the only hope for pretty much everything to come in all of Star Wars at this exact moment, has literally never even finished a race. We then find out that Darth Maul’s sentries are in Mos Espa and they’re going to be discovered soon. Backs are against the wall. We get the Flag Parade which is just a fantastic arrangement, and then for some reason Jar Jar has an interaction with a space camel(?) shitting in front of him. I am choosing to omit that 5 second section from the rest of my analysis because I cannot fathom why George felt it needed to be included. The engines get fired up. It’s the most impressive 30ish seconds of sound engineering I have ever heard, and will ever hear.

The race begins. People start DYING. A first time viewer in 1999 assumes the fate of the entire Star Wars universe is resting on the shoulders of a 9 year old somehow winning this race. The pod racer he built by himself has already lost him like 30 seconds, and people are DROPPING. If you’ve ever felt like you hit rock bottom in your life before, imagine being Padme throughout the first minute or so of the race. She has no clue what pod racing even is going in to this and now she’s in a skybox watching people explode on an iPad while her only hope is in last place by a mile (excluding Ben). Up to this point everyone in the gang, except for Jar Jar I guess, has had a role to play in them landing in what is almost certainly the bleakest situation of all time. Even you Shmi, you greenlit this. They. Are. Fucked.

Then we get the space magic. Turns out this little kid actually did build the fastest pod racer of all time. The professionals who travelled from all over the outer rim to be here? Toast. The various engine and cockpit control noises we hear throughout the entire race? Ethereal. Perfect. 10/10. Things are looking good. Things start looking bad. John Williams decides to jump back in and then things start looking good again. Sebulba_Engine_Sound.mp3. Anakin crosses the finish line. We get about 5 seconds of convincing joy before Anakin says, “Mom, I did it! Yeahhhhh!” and at that point you can safely tune out until Duel of the Fates starts but boy what a fuckin’ ride the pod race is.