Anyone remember what you liked least about The Phantom Menace? Anyone? I know it’s been a while, but try really hard. Oh come on, he was a veiled racist character, he was clumsy and stupid, remember?
Fine be that way. Truth be told, I blocked it out too.
But wait, what’s this? The Clone Wars has decided, like a therapist thinking my parents are to blame for my inability to stand up for myself, that I need to be reminded of this character. But you know what? I’m not going to even mention his name. That character was a mistake from word one and it epitomizes the lack of insight The George has into his own creation. But that’s a different diatribe.
“Bombad Jedi” sees Senator Amidala on route to Rodia (home planet of Greedo) to entreat with their leader to remain loyal to the Republic. He’s sorry but, despite his long familial relationship with Padmé, he’s already made a deal with Nute Gunray and the Separatists. (If you recall, Gunray was formally one of the leaders of the Trade Federation, a group that has joined a few other guilds and associations to create the Separatists.) The Separatists have offered Rodia food, supplies and protection and their people are starving so guess who they sided with. Padmé is taken prisoner until Gunray’s arrival and her companions, included Threepio, try to save her. However, during some incompetence, their ship is destroyed. The Gungan grabs a robe from the wrecked ship and the battle droids start thinking he’s a Jedi. Threepio is able to sneak a message to the clone army, Padmé escapes and a new underwater friend is made – a giant sea slug that helps in the end to wipe out the droids and capture Nute Gunray.
The metaphor for this episode was encapsulated in Padmé’s final statement: Your best allies are not always the most powerful. It would seem that she’s almost convincing herself of this more than she’s trying to pass Senatorial wisdom onto her life long Rodian friend. Early in the episode, Padmé was talking to Chancellor Palpetine and he admonished her for not taking a clone escort during this mission. She fired back that it was a peaceful mission and showing up with armed troops would not accomplish anything. Rather, she brings a fretful protocol droid and an idiotic Gungan.
Another metaphor could have been that you stick with what you know, even if what you know is wrong. A famous man once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. The characters continue to blindly side with machines and creatures that cause problems. In the last few episodes, Ahsoka continually gave the R3 droid the benefit of the doubt when it was just shamefully obvious it was a spy. In the prequel movies, the entire Jedi Order was baffled at the identity of the Palpetine/Darth Sidious character even though it was obvious to the viewer. Look, if you’re going to make something intriguing, something mysterious, you can’t make it obvious to the viewer. It does two things; it makes your characters look dumb, it bores your audience.
If Clone Wars has any chance of remaining on the air (and there’s no reason to think it won’t) it must never, ever, show this character’s face again. It has to start making the Jedi a powerful and intelligent group of warriors. It must make the droid army a dreaded force and not a collection of walking tin goofballs. There’s going to be very little revelation for the lore seekers during the course of this series. It would be best to make it as cool as possible and remove this silly garbage before this Clone Wars experiment is remembered the same way The Holiday Special is.
And sadly we’re left with this taste in our mouths as next week we have repeats. So enjoy the one and a half green lightsabers.
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“It has to start making the Jedi a powerful and intelligent group of warriors”
But according to everything we’ve seen in the prequels, the Jedi aren’t remotely intelligent.
I realize it’s all Lucas’ fault, for not thinking anything through, which makes the Jedi come across like utter idiots:
What exactly did they plan to do with young Anakin in “Phantom Menace” if they weren’t willing to train him? Dump him back on Tatooine, now that he knows he’s potentially the most powerful force-user in the galaxy? Yeah, that’s a great idea. Kill him? I can really picture Yoda signing off on the murder of a 9-year-old for the crime of being too old when the Jedi found him, can’t you?
Did anybody think for two seconds what “bringing balance to the Force” might actually mean? Didn’t it occur to anybody that, with thousands of Jedi running around, and only two Sith in existence, that, maybe, “balance to the Force” might not be something the Jedi would find desirable?
Nobody in the whole Jedi order thought that, maybe, sometime in the 10 years between episodes I and II, going back to Tatooine and bringing Anakin’s mother to Coruscant where she’d be safe, thus removing a major source of fear for their clearly unstable “Chosen One”, might just possibly be a good idea?
Etc.
This series is far too late to make the Jedi smart, unfortunately…
Comment by james — December 3, 2008 @ 2:01 pm
Unfortunately it’s exactly what I thought. As soon as the phrase “balance to the Force” was uttered, I knew it meant the Jedi were going to be wiped out. Balance doesn’t mean all of one side. We knew it was going to happen anyway, not far into ANH, Obi-Wan says, “Now the Jedi are all but extinct.”
I think it’d be rather easy to make them appear more insightful. Even before Order 66, the Jedi were outnumbered. They existed as protectors and ambassadors, not soldiers. Pitted against a seemingly limitless number of droids, I would hope that they’d be smart enough to keep the Republic Army together long enough for it to become the Imperial Army. They fight desperate fights at all sides, I’m just holding out hope that the writing staff realizes they can be on the losing side but still remain heroic, smart and formidable.
I keep plugging at Tartakovsky’s “Clone War.” It was so much better story-wise. The battle droids weren’t moronic, the Jedi were stoic and “knightly.” Even Anakin, when he wasn’t talking, was more steadfast and reliable. Also, in that version no one talked a lot. Maybe that’s the trick, limit the dialog.
Don’t see that happening either.
Comment by xadrian — December 3, 2008 @ 2:13 pm
My comment wasn’t clear – I meant, within the story, why didn’t any of the Jedi question what “Balance to the Force” meant?
It was just incredibly poor writing – when Phantom Menace opens, the Jedi appear to be respected and feared (the very first scene shows this – the Trade Federation has dozens of battleships and zillons of combat droids in orbit of Naboo, but when their leader is informed that just two Jedi have arrived, his first response is “this invasion is lost! we’re doomed!” I’d call that a pretty healthy fear of the power of the Jedi!).
There’s nothing to indicate that any “balancing of the Force” is necessary, nothing we see or hear on screen indicates any dire need for a “Chosen One” or any reason the Jedi should be scouring prophecies for guidance.
For the story to really work, we needed to see on-screen WHY the Jedi thought that balance needed to be brought to the Force, and also WHY they felt so threatened by just two Sith Lords (yes, in retrospect, it’s obvious why they should have feared Palpatine, but certainly in the first movie, nothing we see indicates that the Jedi have any real reason to fear the Sith, especially since at the movie’s end, as far as they know, 50% of the Sith are dead, and their plot has been utterly foiled).
Comment by james — December 4, 2008 @ 9:20 am
First of all, I love me a Star Wars discussion. I rarely get to have one, so I feel this is a treat.
I agree that at first the Jedi were still revered to the point of zealotry and mania. “Have you ever encountered a Jedi?…We will not survive this.” That’s fairly impressive.
While you and I agree that the Jedi’s interpretation of the Prophecy was skewed and not as illustrative as the viewer may have liked or needed, I can see where Balance would mean the Force acting in concert with its hosts, rather than being subverted as done by the Sith. So balance would mean only the light side, or wiping out the Sith. Anakin still does it but it’s only after he and Palpetine kill the other Jedi and then Palpetine tries to kill Luke, Vader kills Palpetine and moves back to the light side, Prophecy fulfilled.
That is of course all just movies. I know there’s novel treatments out there with more dark Jedi and Sith but I haven’t read most of it.
As to the why, there may not have been time on screen to tell that tale, but it sure would have been nice. Apparently the original Journal of the Whills had a prophecy of The Son of Suns that never was written out into the movie. This is likely the impetus for the obscure Jedi Order legend. I think they may have assumed the Sith were extinct for hundreds of generations and thus didn’t feel this Prophecy was that important, thus not allowing Qui-Gon to train Anakin – thought of as foolish in light of a aged story of balance.
Comment by xadrian — December 4, 2008 @ 10:03 am
Well, had Lucas not wasted 15 minutes of screentime in “Phantom Menace” with the endless podracing scene, and another probably 15-20 minutes on the mindblowingly supid antics of Jar Jar, then there WOULD have been time to go into more depth on the Jedi and their situation and their prophecy and their need/desire to balance the force, etc.
Same thing with the issue of not training Anakin (putting aside the fact that the audience knows he’s going to be trained, based on the original three movies) – within “Phantom Menace”, the question of what was to be done with Anakin if he wasn’t going to be allowed to train as a Jedi really needed to be addresses, for story-logic purposes, and to show that Yoda and the Jedi Council were not utter morons.
But Lucas was more interested in fart jokes that even 10 year olds wouldn’t find amusing than in thinking through the story and the implications of what was (and was not) shown on screen.
Comment by james — December 4, 2008 @ 11:13 am
I still enjoy most of the Star Wars movies (not much about Phantom Menace, but if I’m in the right mood, there are some good action scenes). The rest of the stuff like this show or the books, I’m not as into any more. However, I think Lucas knows his audience better than we give him credit for. These stories still appeal to young kids in a big way, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
I’d love to have a more gritty, grown-up take on Star Wars that jibes with the mood of Empire Strikes Back, but I don’t blame Lucas for not giving that to me. There’s a lot of people pretty happy with what he does make.
“Now theh are TWO of ‘dem?!!”
Comment by chrispiers — December 4, 2008 @ 3:02 pm