Well, no matter how the film got to this point, plot twists and illogical happenstance, it is here: the Battle of Naboo, the War among the Stars. Despite having stated at the beginning of the film that she would not “condone a course of action that will lead us to war” Queen Amidala has decided to do just that. In her defense she has been shot at, been the target of her first assassination attempt, been ignored in the Senate, been used for political gain by her Republic representative, and been denied any and all aid. If I were her, I would be looking for a rumble too.
Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace (01.45.05-01.55.24)
For all that it promises, the Battle of Naboo does not really deliver much on the battle. The cutting together of the four (count ’em: droids vs Gungans – Royal Naboo Air Force vs Federation battleship – Jedi vs Sith – Padme vs droids) four separate plots lines is unnatural and clunky. Three of the plot lines ostensibly deal with the battle to retake Naboo, but the final lightsaber battle is completely disconnected. The pacing of the cuts makes watching the battle(s) a little confusing, and dramatically little ties one cut to the next. A perusal of the special features on the Phantom Menace dvd reveals that Lucas felt the same way when he first cut the movie together, but by that time it was too late to do anything about it before the film was set to release. The audience is moved from scene to scene with little emotional connectivity and the battle unfolds rather mechanically.
Viewed sequentially from A New Hope, the Star Wars films got increasingly complex in the final act: Hope had one plot line (Rebels vs Death Star), Empire had two (Luke vs Vader, Leia vs Troopers), and Jedi had three (Han and Co. vs Shield, Lando and Co. vs Death Star, Luke vs Emperor). I think that the four plot lines of Phantom simply overloads things, and Lucas apparently pretty much felt the same way because by Attack of the Clones he had settled on two final plot lines. In Clones they are sequential, not concurrent: first the Arena battle, then the lightsaber duels, which are also sequential. Revenge of the Sith also has two, this time back to being concurrent: Yoda vs Sidious, Anakin vs Obi-Wan. Much simpler, and much easier to connect with and follow. Phantom’s end game was a failure of writing, and fortunately, one that Lucas learned from.
The battle begins with the Gungan army emerging from the mists of the swamps onto the verdant field of battle, heralded by the call of the didgeridoo [DID-jury-doo which looks like a two pronged Gungan instrument in the film]. I love didgeridoo music, find some – it is fantastic. Anyway, the Gungans brought with them shield generators, obviously the same technology that separates the water from their submarine city, which proves to be helpful against the droid laser barrage.
Speaking of technology, the only real element in the Gungan vs Droid battle is the grass and some of the sky. Everything else is digital which sparks the trend that Lucas made from location shooting to green screen shooting which, in my opinion, was a very bad move away from maintaining realism. What made the beginning of Empire so visceral was the fact that the set was a sub-freezing glacier, and you simply cannot achieve the same effect on a hot stage with potato flakes. CGI is a very powerful tool, but one that Lucas overuses with time.
Moving on, I wish, for the life of me, that someone could present a logical and reasonable reason why Qui-Gon Jinn thought it was in any way a good idea to bring an nine year old child along for a tactical assault. Why is Anakin there, besides the fact that he needs to jump into a ship so that he can save the day? One simply does not include a child in a military operation. He was Qui-Gon’s responsibility, but nothing about that dictates that he could not have been left somewhere secure. The Jedi might not have had many options, but there are at least Gungan women and children still hiding at the sacred place where he would have been safe. Telling him to find cover minutes before engaging in battle is stupid and reckless endangerment. I do not care about Anakin’s primitive Force ability or the fact that he was Skywalker, it makes absolutely no sense for him to accompany the Jedi into battle where, in a real situation, he could end up very much dead, especially when Jinn, Kenobi, and Padme summarily abandon him to fight their own battles. This is child abuse, criminal negligence, and just plain wrong beyond simple bad writing.
The Naboo, despite not having an army, do have weapons-equipped speeders. Might not some of these aided the Gungans in their outmatched battle? Another small evidence that the Queen did not care about Gungan casualties. And, the droids only guard the exit of the main hangar with one tank. Obviously they weren’t expecting anybody to be coming to fly the starfighters, but then, why not have simply disabled the ships to begin with? There are easily any number of ways that could have been accomplished, especially with unlimited mechanical minions. But, this starts the long chain of accidents that is Anakin’s “heroic” saving of the day: R2-D2, for whatever reason, happens to roll beneath precisely the same fighter than Anakin chooses for cover and is pulled into his socket by the automated ship’s systems. Why is Artoo there? he obviously wasn’t a part of the palace assault, because no one missed him while he was joyriding with Anakin. Oh, right, to get the fighter off autopilot so that Anakin could save the day. Why is the ship already programmed to fly them to the Federation battleship in orbit? Conveniently bad writing.
After taking the hangar, the insurgents briefly discuss their plan of attack. Wouldn’t a better time and place to do that be before they started the offensive? Amidala guesses that Nute Gunray is “in the throne room” (01:50:13). She guesses? What if he isn’t? What if he isn’t even on the planet? Amidala apparently doesn’t know, or else she would (and should) already know where he is with her “well conceived plan”. He is, of course, but he shouldn’t be. In the very beginning of the film Jinn called the Federation stooges “cowards”. Once the shooting started, Gunray should have hightailed it back to his orbiting ship or at the very least headed somewhere other than the one place Amidala would guess to look for him.
Once they decide where to go, Darth Maul shows up. And the Jedi abandon their ward Anakin and their charge Amidala to simply fight him. Let’s back up: their mission was to draw out the Queen’s attacker and learn his identity. They say nothing. Maul says nothing. They just start fighting. It is only after they kill him that Mace Windu says that “there is no doubt that the mysterious warrior was a Sith” (how could he have known that without interrogating him?) but at this point he and the Jedi Council are still doubting the Sith’s return (02:08:06). So, they fail their mission.
I really love this duel (with three exceptions) but this duel is nothing beyond a flashy clash of lightsabers. Every single lightsaber duel in the Original Trilogy, all three of them, happened for reasons beyond the mere fight of it. One can barely call the Obi-Wan vs Vader duel on the Death Star a duel, more a desperate attempt on Kenobi’s part to give Luke a fighting chance to escape by occupying Vader. Kenobi wasn’t even there to confront Vader: he had no idea that Vader would even be on the Death Star. But, once begun, the duel was more about the conversation than the fight. The combatants spent more time talking than fighting, and only when Kenobi surrenders does Vader move to strike. In Empire, Vader goes out of his way to avoid fighting because his objective is not to win a lightsaber fight in which he obviously has the upper hand already but is to goad and tempt Luke, which, again, is why he spends most of the fight talking. The duel on the Second Death Star involves slightly more fighting, but only because Luke loses control and only once he has been pushed to do so by the Emperor (after which point he hides) and then Vader, but he stops as soon as he realizes that fighting is not the answer. In short, the lightsaber duels are never about the lightsaber duels. They are punctuation in the larger conversation of the scene. While mesmerizing, the Theed lightsaber duel is just a fight, and therefore, badly written because it adds nothing to the conversation. To put a cop-drama-noir-film flair to it, the Jedi summarily kill their only witness and it costs them dearly (and I am decidedly NOT talking about Jinn’s life).
Because the Queen gets pinned down by droids with shields, Anakin decides to do something about it. He fumbles about the cockpit looking for a trigger, and accidentally launches the fighter while closing the cockpit (conveniently), and only eventually finds what is most obviously the trigger. Anakin supposedly knows flying contraptions better than I do, and he can’t find the trigger. Hmm. But he does, and blasts the droids, and then, because his fighter is somehow on autopilot, he blasts into orbit, and he doesn’t even know where he is going (despite having been at the pre-mission briefing) until he makes visual contact. It is like Lucas did not even think about what he was writing, or even read through his draft a second time to miss something so obvious. The only real thing about this is that Anakin treats it like a game, which any nine year old would do.
At 01:52:08 Darth Maul shows off his acrobatic skills for the audience, because it is a very stupid thing to do while fighting with weapons that can cut through almost anything against two opponents wielding such weapons. Even as a kid, watching this movie for the very first time, I thought it was lame that Maul danced around while Vader never wasted a movement. Seriously, see how much of the lightsaber duels Vader fights while standing rooted to one spot. Maul also spends an inordinate amount of time twirling his saber for no reason at all. Pointless eye candy this is, but nothing approaching what will be seen in Clones and Revenge. Seriously, here, less is definitely more. After a bit he then jumps somewhere, but because the audience hasn’t seen where the battle is going, they have no idea where he jumps to, which is a failure in setting the scene. To this day, after so many viewings of this battle I’ve lost count, I have no idea how in the world the Jedi get from a one story hangar to a multi-story power plant, especially considering that the outside overview of the hangar shows nothing of the sort in the vicinity, and certainly not in an upward-jumping location. At 01:52:40 Darth Maul backflips from one platform in the power plant to another, and, instead of flanking him, at 01:52:42 the Jedi jump after him. What is completely flabbergasting about this is the fact that Darth Maul hops backward in order to let the Jedi land. For the love of the Sith, why?? He could have simply extended his arms and cut them both in half as they dropped in for landing on the exact spot on which he stood. Clear as day, watch it yourself, and you don’t even need to do it slow motion. Right here Maul could have killed them both. The Jedi were stupid to jump, and Maul should not have let them land. Bad writing and worse choreography.
Next it becomes obvious that, despite Amidala’s “well conceived plan” there are still very many droids in the palace keeping them from Nute Gunray. Despite some slapstick routines, Jar Jar stays among the living. Oh, and Anakin has a convenient child-sized helmet. Good thing he picked the kiddy-trainer starfighter. I love that R2-D2 tries to get him to go back to the planet. That is amusing and touching – and part of why Artoo is one of my favorite characters in the entire saga. Fortunately, the Bat-Squad has been altering the Royal Naboo blasters because they come conveniently equipped with grapple guns.
Panaka and the Queen’s protectors ascend to another floor of the palace, and the Battle of Naboo comes to a middle.
(01:55:24)
down the dusty road 