In which the Battle of Naboo concludes, with nothing therein making any sense whatsoever.
Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace (01.55.35-02.05.14)
The action continues with the Jedi fighting Maul in the power plant. Ten seconds in at 01:55:45 Darth Maul misses a prime opportunity to cut the legs out from under Qui-Gon Jinn. Literally. Jinn punches him in the face, knocking him down to a lower platform. Jinn then stupidly jumps straight down after him. Stupid stupid stupid. Maul then kicks him away before getting up when his lightsaber is perfectly poised to cut Jinn in half. This makes no sense whatsoever. Don’t take my word for it, watch it yourself. Kenobi, having fallen some time back, plays catch up for the rest of the fight. This is actually very good writing in order to get him out of the way so that the balance of power in the fight is shifted back towards Maul and he gets the upper hand to wound Qui-Gon.
Meanwhile, back on Naboo, the droids have penetrated the Gungan shield and destroyed a link in their shield, causing it to collapse and a sensible retreat is called seeing as the droid artillery can now cause extreme causalities. More slapstick action ensues around Jar Jar, apparently because Lucas felt that by now only eight year olds would be watching or caring about this battle. With Jar Jar being the only main character here, I don’t see why anyone would care about this battle. It has no objective nor goal to accomplish; it is very one sided; and it is filled with goofy action. Most people who love the Original Trilogy hate the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, but at least there they had smart battle tactics, and the audience had Han, Leia, Chewie, Threepio, and Artoo to care about when they got tired of angry teddy bears. Jar Jar simply does not have the necessary invested interest to carry a fourth of the ending by himself and no amount of silliness will add it back. When watching these scenes I mostly can’t wait to get back to the lightsaber fight because at least that is intense, and isn’t accidental, like Anakin’s flying.
Speaking of which, Anakin’s starfighter gets hit and while out of control he accidentally flies into the battleship’s main hold. I don’t know why the Royal Naboo fighters didn’t try this back when they discovered the shields were too strong for blasters. As a matter of fact, I have no idea what the rest of the air corps is doing at all, except flying around shooting droids. They certainly have no plan to actually take out the ship because Anakin does it by accident.
Good writing (and the only piece in this ten minutes): Qui-Gon meditates while waiting for the shield dividers to cycle off in the Naboo power plant. This is obvious, but Lucas has missed the obvious before, so I give full credit here. Believe me, he needs it, because when Qui-Gon gets stabbed at 01:59:54 it is without a doubt not a lethal wound. Lightsaber’s cauterize their wounds, which is a well established Star Wars fact, so a simple thrust through the midsection, which given the location of the thrust misses all major organs, cannot kill Qui-Gon. Some guy once blew a hole clean through his digestive tract and lived to be a help to doctors who studied his internal anatomy. Cows sometimes have holes put in them for precisely this reason. The most damage I can see this blow inflicting would be if Darth Maul had happened to hit dead centre and severed Qui-Gon’s spinal cord, making him a paraplegic. That would have actually been a fascinating occurance to explore in the Star Wars universe, but Lucas hasn’t that much imagination.
Darth Maul missed two clear opportunities to kill Qui-Gon already, and here misses his third because this thrust shouldn’t kill him. But it does. I can only guess that the only reason Qui-Gon even dies here is because Obi-Wan dies in A New Hope, but their deaths are so different, as are the circumstances, that there is no comparison. This is more bad writing. (As is the fact that Lucas kills all dramatic tension in the scene to cut to a stupid “Doh” line back on the Gungan field of battle 02:00:29).
Despite having no army, and few enemies, Queen Amidala keeps blasters in her throne. Convenient.
Finally, back to Obi-Wan, whose Force unleashes on Darth Maul. According to the behind the scenes, Lucas considered slowing down the footage because Ewan McGregor moves so fast, and I can well believe it. He is so ferocious in fact that I am slightly surprised that he doesn’t kill Maul, but Lucas can’t let another opportunity for Maul to miss an opportunity to kill to go by.
Proof of Anakin’s lack of brilliance: 02:02:42 “Oops!” He fires a few torpedoes by accident, and destroys the droid control ship by accident. Anakin is not Luke Skywalker: Luke destroyed the Death Star on purpose with the Force. Anakin pressed buttons at random and shouldn’t even have been there.
Please, someone, tell me why Maul is swiping his lightsaber at the ground and throwing down sparks? That is something a kid would do, not a Sith Lord. He is also too dumb to consider that Obi-Wan is going for Qui-Gon’s lightsaber (which he didn’t kick down the bottomless pit because that would have been the smart thing to do.) Obi-Wan force calls the lightsaber and jumps straight up, past Maul and his lightsaber and Maul misses the best opportunity yet to cut Obi-Wan in half which he would have done if he were an actual Sith Lord bent on revenge against the Jedi. Instead, Obi-Wan helps him part ways with himself, and the fight ends.
Qui-Gon is not quite dead, but just enough to force Obi-Wan to promise to train Anakin. It is all heroic, but it is also direct contradiction of Star Wars lore. In Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan states that he thought he could train Anakin as well as Yoda, but in fact, Yoda was never going to train him, and had Qui-Gon not conveniently died, Obi-Wan would never had trained Anakin. Incredibly, unconscionably bad writing.
Qui-Gon dies ending the Battle of Naboo.
(02:05:14)
a simple man 