ITT: I comment on every stupid moment of the Star Wars prequels - THE PHANTOM MENACE PART 2

Part 1 is here: https://steemit.com/movies/@murdermystery/itt-i-comment-on-every-stupid-moment-of-the-star-wars-prequels-the-phantom-menace-part-1

We're picking up at the dumb podrace.

Podracing

We all know this scene sucks. It's literally 10 minutes of uninterrupted action, except nothing important happens, nothing unexpected happens, and never once does anyone seem to care what happens.

The problem is really twofold:

1. The outcome of the race really shouldn't fucking matter. It's sort of contrived that the fate of an entire planet is boiling down to a completely unrelated race. We're told that a lot is at stake here, but it doesn't show, because it's just a race. And not a very interesting one at that.
2. Nothing else is happening in the story, which is more of a screenwriting fault than anything else. Most films, when faced with a very long action sequence, will try to segment it with cutaways to dialogue scenes or bits of plot every couple minutes. It keeps the audience from getting bored and restless, and it progresses the plot and provides an action scene at the same time. But not here -- there's nothing to cut to. So it's very monotonous, especially because again, it's just a race. Who cares.

One brief interruption:

The guy on the left is the governor of Naboo.

So, Naboo is part of the Republic. It has a senator, a governor, and a queen.

What the fuck kind of government is this, exactly?

Padme and Anakin

Lucas tries to shove another bit of romance down our throats.

Let's be clear about this though, before we begin: Anakin is nine years old. So to say that he has a crush on Padme is fair, I guess, but really now, he's nine. What does he know about anything. Anakin carved some piece of jewelry for her so she'd "remember him." Remember him for what? They've known each other for like, a day. And at this point, according to Wookieepedia (yeah, I'm actually doing research for this shit, blow me), Padme is fourteen. When I was 14 the last thing I ever wanted to do was be anywhere near any 9-year-olds.

This deserves its own side note: Padme, queen of Naboo, is fourteen fucking years old?

Also, why cast Natalie Portman as a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD? She was around fourteen when she was in Leon, for crying out loud. There is no way she passes as a 14-year-old now.

Political "Intrigue"

So now we see Palpatine in the flesh for the first time.

In the original trilogy and a lot of the writings in the Expanded Universe, it is made clear that Palpatine is one of the most evil men of all time. He makes Vader look like a piker. He's charming, manipulative, cunning, and just a cold-hearted bastard. And actually, Ian MacDirmind's performance as Palpatine plays this one pretty well for the most part.

Anyway, Palpatine spouts out some bullshit about how Chancellor Valorum is a corrupt loser who can't lead the senate to get anything done, so although Amidala is slated to speak to the congress he doesn't expect anything to come of it, and perhaps they can make a move in this moment of weakness.

My question is fairly simple:
WHO CARES?!

This is the first of many, many scenes that show political intrigue, senate meetings, deliberation, and other C-Span crap. It's completely uninteresting. There's a reason why no one actually watches C-Span, and why people instead go out and watch so-called action movies: to get away from this crap!

The Jedi Council

So you've got a collection of pretty much the biggest badasses in the galaxy. You hire Samuel L. Jackson to play Mace Windu, who is such a badass motherfucker that Jackson actually demanded his lightsaber have "BMF" engraved on it. You've got Yoda and a bunch of other tough sons of bitches there in what is supposed to be the place where it all actually happens.

Yet throughout the prequels the Jedi Council portray themselves as unwilling to do anything, resistant to change, unbelieving of pretty much anything (such as Qui-Gon was attacked by a Sith, even though -- well, who else would use a red lightsaber and try to kill a Jedi), hostile to taking on Anakin, who is quite clearly an exceptionally powerful little kid.

The Jedi Council is Star Wars' representation of every mean-spirited dean in a college movie: powerful hardasses that constantly restrain our heroes from actually getting anything done. And when they finally actually get out of their chairs, they don't actually fucking do anything. In the movies, you see the Jedi Council in action... well, once. The rest of the time they just bitch and moan.

Galactic Congress

I actually really like this shot.

Anyway, here's another long, uninterrupted bit of political nonsense that no one cares about.

Senator Palpatine is given the floor (so to speak), and he introduces Queen Amidala to make her case to the senate.

One of the Trade Federation frogs tries to interrupt, but gets cut off by Chancellor Valorum, because the Feds do not have the floor.

So Amidala says some more boring words, and then the Feds interrupt again, and Valorum is like "yeah totally, look Amidala you gotta have some proof, sorry lady."

Then Amidala calls for a vote of No Confidence in Valorum.

Queen Amidala. Not Senator Palpatine, who actually, you know, is a senator, but Queen Amidala, the 14-year-old queen of Naboo who wears stupid clown paint everywhere.

Valorum should have been like, who the fuck are you, get out of my congress. And fuck your planet, you insolent brat.

"Supreme Chancellor, delegates of the senate. A tragedy has occurred, which started right here with the taxation of trade routes, blah blah blah."
"This is outrageous! I object to the senator's statement!"
"The chair does not recognize the Federation's statements at this time."
"To state our allegations, I bring to you Queen Amidala, recently elected ruler of the Naboo, who speaks on our behalf."

and so on, and so on

WHO

THE FUCK

CARES

The Jedi Council

The Jedi Council brings Anakin in to have a preliminary test or whatever, to see if he's worth inducting into Jedi School or whatever.

What really annoys me about this scene is that it's mostly the Jedi Council patronizing and taunting Anakin about his mother. It's ridiculous. The Jedi are a bunch of douchebags, really, and while I understand that there's an effort to establish the Jedi as not exactly good, in the movies it's portrayed so poorly that they just look like assholes throughout the entire thing.

Oh, and then they tell Qui-Gon to fuck off with the kid. So it's like, what did you even bring him in for? If you knew he was a 9-year-old, you could have just ended it there, but no, first you had to chastise him for having feelings for his mother like any kid ever. Jerks.

Jar Jar and Amidala

This scene only exists to establish that, hey, maybe the Gungans aren't totally useless annoying fuckers -- they're totally useless annoying fuckers with a totally useless and annoying army.

And it's got quality lines like "Yousa thinkin' yousa people gonna die?" "I don't know." "Gungans get pasted too, eh?" "I hope not."

It's a pretty pointless and protracted dialogue scene between two of the worst characters in the prequels. Aside from Anakin and C3PO, pretty much.

Look at this callous motherfucker, just leaning back all chill, being like "We don't want anything to fucking do with that brat, get him out of here."

There and Back Again, For Some Reason

Amidala wishes to return back to Naboo.

Uh... why?

She just up and leaves without any plan or any sort of objective in mind. She's not bringing a host of Jedi with her -- just Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. She's not bringing any delegates from Congress with her to see the carnage first-hand. She has no intention of signing the Feds' treaty. So... why is she leaving, except to conveniently maneuver the plot back home? This is the kind of irrational decision-making that powers a lot of story growth in the prequels, and it's very unconvincing.

Back on Naboo, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are busy discussing about how difficult it will be to coerce the Gungans into helping the Naboo.

Uh, why will it be so hard? All it will take is one hand-wave from Qui-Gon and bam, conflict resolved. Oh, but wait, you "cannot use your power to help her." Why the fuck not? Where did that come from? You sneaky little shit, you used your power to cheat in a game of chance to rescue Anakin, but now that the entire planet is at stake you're ready to have Padme fuck off and let her handle it herself.

Of course, because it turns out the Gungans are planks of wood, a 14-year-old queen can arrange an alliance in about two minutes of deliberation.

Boss Nass appoints Jar-Jar as a general of the Gungan army for no reason.

Comic relief, you never get old. Especially since there's a dose of comic relief every 40 fucking seconds.

This is great, it's just great.

The brilliant strategist Padme suggest a three-front attack on the militarily superior Federation in an attempt to wipe them all out in one stroke: the Gungans will form up into huge columns and march on the Naboo city to draw the Naboo ground forces out and meet them in open combat. This will allow a strike force to sneak into the city, reclaim the hangar, and establish a small air force to assault the Federation control ship. (Why there's only one battleship now, I will never know.) In the meantime, the strike force will then move to capture the Viceroy of the Federation.

What really burns me is the 1800s troop maneuvers here, and the fact that the Federation actually takes the bait. So you've got a vastly inferior Gungan army who doesn't have blasters, but instead catapults and slings, and who you probably outnumber 50 to 1. Not to mention you have tanks and artillery and shit. You hold the defensive position inside what appears to be a reasonably fortified town. And yet you send 99.9% of your troops out of the city to take the Gungans on in open combat, and when the Gungans display their convenient laser shield thing (...why would they have these), you push on anyway, rather than retreating back to the city since it's not like the Gungans can advance when they're hiding under their shields.

What fucking strategy is that? The Federation fucking deserve to lose.

That hardened, heavily-armored battle tank got taken out by a small laser mounted on a simple-looking speeder.

What's the fucking point of a tank if it can't take a single shot from a light vehicle to the front?

This is actually a pretty cool scene, with all the droids deploying at the same time and stuff. Too bad it's already been well-established that the battle droids are silly, easily-defeated clowns that make the Stormtroopers look talented and dangerous.

Also it has some of the best music in the movie. For the most part, imo, John Williams did not do a very good job with the score for the prequels. However, the soundtrack as the droid army marches toward the Gungans is pretty cool, and the way the sounds of the marching droids is in rhythm with the score is a nice touch. (They do it again in Episode 2.)

Duel of the Fates is another great tune, but that's about it. The music overall is much less memorable.

Another laughably terrible line with horrible delivery, thanks to bad writing and bad acting (mostly due to the kid).

"Hey, wait for me."
"Anakin, stay in the cockpit."
"But I."
"Stay in the cockpit."

The delivery is so rancid! There is absolutely no effort by either actor to suggest that Qui-Gon interrupted Anakin -- I can almost guarantee that on Anakin's script, the line actually just read:

ANAKIN:
But I.

Darth Maul!

Ah yes, the badass introduction of Darth Maul. Finally, hero and villain are prepared to face off in the film's highlight -- and definitely the prequel trilogy's best lightsaber battle.

But one minor plot point: Darth Maul, on his own, goes to intercept two Jedi and a cadre of troopers. Ballsy, to be sure. Qui-Gon dismisses the troopers, though -- but why?

Who's more likely to win? Two Jedi, or two Jedi and 30 guys with guns? Later in the movies, you have Jedi Masters being defeated by small battalions of Stormtroopers! Clearly, Jedi can be overpowered by enough lasers. It would have been pretty easy to dispatch Darth Maul in about 30 seconds if they just focused fire.

Anakin is in the cockpit of the Naboo starfighter. When he sees the troops that Qui-Gon dismissed now being threatened by the sadly underused Destroyer Droids, Anakin tries to activate the guns.

He very conveniently enables the autopilot, seals the cockpit, and initiates the entire takeoff sequence, and then finds the weapon controls just before the ship takes off so Anakin can save the day in space.

ugh, how convenient

it's getting old

Ascension Guns

Why.

Laser Walls

I know you've all heard this complaint before, but it bears mentioning again: what the fuck is the point of these stupid laser walls? Qui-Gon gets killed because Obi-Wan gets caught up in the STUPID VIDEO GAME DOORS. It's so ridiculous and just the perfect way for Lucas to shit on a perfectly fine fight scene.

It's pretty much just a cheap way to dispose of Qui-Gon, because Darth Maul can't take on both of them at once.

It is so, so embarrassing how the movie tries to put a lot of emotional weight on the noble sacrifice of the Gungan army as they fight the "superior" droids, but then every time we see them in action it's just Jar-Jar bumbling around. The entire Gungan army battle is a comic relief interlude that crops up every minute or two.

Wow, how convenient that Padme just happened to have two guns in the armrest of her throne, and that despite the fact that the Viceroy was sitting in the same throne earlier, he didn't bother to monkey around with the buttons on it.

And how equally convenient that Anakin's ship just happened to land in the droid control ship's hangar bay, and that his first random torpedo shot hit the ship's glowing weak point!

The weak point that they left... in the hangar...

"NOW THIS IS PODRACING!"
oh god, get fucked, you little shit

What are you doing, you idiot.

Rather than finding something to throw at the vulnerable Obi-Wan, or rather than reaching down with your lightsaber and slicing the dude's arms off, you... try to kill him with sparks.

...why.

You deserve to die, you moron. Especially since you stand around all baffled when, surprise surprise, your spark-shooting didn't bother him at all.

I love the stupid hoplite helmets the Chancellor's guards are wearing in the background.

I think Saruman is going to want his palantir back, fatty.

Anyway, that concludes Episode I: The Phantom Menace. So dumb. If anybody cares, I'll do Attack of the Clones.