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As I said in my review of Episode I, I enjoyed the movie. By no means is it perfect, and it probably ranks as my least favorite Star Wars movie, but to me that’s a lot like talking about my least favorite chocolate chip cookie. There must be folks who agree with me, given the rush of people who bought Phantom Menace on VHS and now on DVD - I’d hate to think they’re spending 20-25 bucks a pop on a movie they hate. Although even if you’re merely lukewarm toward the movie, the DVD is money well spent, so long as you’re a fan of behind-the-scenes and making of material. In that regard, I think this DVD sets the bar. There are hours of documentary and behind the scenes footage here. Start with the 12 short documentaries that aired on the official Star Wars website during the film’s production - these short pieces feature interviews with Lucas, producer Rick McCallum, compoer John Williams, and many others, along with footage of production meetings, auditions, script readings, and more. There’s no hype here - the documentaries aren’t trying to sell the movie, like many of the short making-of pieces that appear on DVDs. They’re just trying to give you a fly on the wall perspective of what goes into making a film of this scale, and they do a great job. You get to see Lucas start to write the script, in longhand, with a box of No. 2 pencils and a looseleaf binder. You see the crew’s reaction to the storm that wrecked most of the camp in Tunisia. I think my favorite of these shorts is the one on creature design, in which original designer Stuart Freeborn visits the production and talks shop with the Episode I designers - who present him with a bust of Yoda in appreciation of his work. But there’s lots of good stuff about the unheralded artists, from prop makers to set dressers to costume designers, who have to create all the little details that make a fictional world seem real.

There are also five longer documentaries, with a similar structure, devoted to effects, costume design, fight choreography, music, and the story itself. These have much the same virtues as the web documentaries, with perhaps a little bit more electronic-press-kit style interview footage. Of course, anyone who enjoyed the final lightsaber duel will enjoy the fights documentary, and I can’t blame them.

A documentary about the deleted scenes (about which more later) is actually broader than just a discussion of Star Wars deleted scenes, bringing in other directors (such as Francis Ford Coppola) and editors to talk about the art of film editing and how it affects the storytelling structure of a movie. It can be a little dry, but I give Lucasfilm credit here for trying to expand people’s boundaries a little bit. Of course, I also wish that Lucas himself paid more attention to this documentary - the reintegrated scenes serve to make the pod race introductions and the podrace itself even longer than the theatrical version, and that’s one thing the pace of this movie does not need.

Two hidden Easter Egg documentaries go into even more detail on the deleted scenes - by the time I got through all of the scene-specific documentaries, I was ready to never see the scenes in question again. There was, perhaps, a little too much detail here. On the other hand, the storyboards and animatics for the podrace and submarine sequences are highly informative, and fans of the creative process should get a kick out of all of them.

The audio commentary track is also pretty good, but not great. There are too many people talking and it’s a bit too heavy on the technical side, although Lucas does explain that the similarities between Phantom Menace and Star Wars are not coincidences or a mere reliance on a tried and true formula; he’s making a structural choice to create as many parallels between Anakin and Luke as possible, in order to bring the differences in their ultimate paths into sharper contrast. I still think Lucas went overboard there, but now that I see what he was trying to accomplish, I can appreciate it more. I would have liked more information like that out of the commentary; instead, we get Lucas referring to the line ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ as a ‘thematic note’ and Rick McCallum a bit too into his ‘man, this is great’ persona.

The biggest and best of the supplementary materials, though, is the one hour documentary Episode I: In the Beginning. There are no interviews or narration here - just solid, fly-on-the-wall footage of just about every aspect of the film. The level of access the filmmakers had here is incredible - there are budget meetings, rehearsals, auditions, everything. The first storyboard meeting, where Lucas scribbles all over the boards with magic markers to indicate what parts of the shots will be effects and which will be parts of the set, gets across the scale of the project. There are plenty of candid remarks; you hear discussion of the three finalists to play Anakin, for example, and see Lucas’ immediate reaction to the first rough cut screening. The former was actually a bit creepy to me. Whatever you think about Jake Lloyd, seeing his naivete as he signed his contract and offered his suggestion that the movie would cost about fifty thousand dollars to make, while parents and coaches and agents gather around and have a good chuckle, was unnerving to me.

Most of the time, you get swept up in the excitement of making a Star Wars movie - there’s footage of Ewan McGregor selecting his lightsaber, and giddily jumping up in excitement during the filming of the final duel. (This must have been a day or two before he realized how much time he had to spend in front of a bluescreen.) You also realize how much of the film isn’t CG - from Frank Oz’s puppetwork with Yoda, to the massive pod engine models, to the miniatures of the Theed palace. (Although Oz’s claims that ‘you don’t need me’ do foretell the all-CG Yoda of Attack of the Clones.) I was sort of gratified to see that, because while I have the greatest respect for computer art, there’s something about the tangibility of models and miniatures that has a certain magic to me. They call it world-building for a reason - I’d like to see something get built.

There’s more fun stuff on this disc as well - the Duel of the Fates music video, the trailers and TV spots, production still shots, poster and print ad galleries, and two outtake reels. (One of which is an Easter Egg that requires a number oft-used in Lucas films as a password.) There’s DVD-ROM content that includes additional production stills; the anticipated Episode II preview material never went much beyond the “Mystery” trailer that eventually was available at the official site anyway. That’s a little disappointing, but then again, I don’t buy DVDs looking for information on a movie’s sequel. I’d rather the effort focus on extras related to the film itself.

The menu screens are impressive, too, incorporating footage from the film into some very attractive scenes, and some screens feature amusing bits if you wait too long to make a choice. A great deal of care went into this disc, and it’s a great start to a Star Wars DVD collection. I can’t help but look ahead to when Lucasfilm will finally get around to releasing discs of the original trilogy - if they contain a similar wealth of material (and don’t spend all their time dwelling on the making of the Special Editions, or the Super-Special Editions, or whatever, as opposed to the original films), they’ll be worth the wait.