*If you grant me the option to use Immaculate Conception and "virginal conception" interchangeably, which I know is not really accurate. "Immaculate Conception" is a much cooler phrase and even has its own feast.
Anyway, here we learn of Anakin's ancestry (or lack thereof).
Script copyright George Lucas
Script excerpted from this site:
http://www.supershadow.com/star_wars/episode_1/the_phantom_menace/script.html
EXT. MOS ESPA - JUNK DEALER PLAZA - DAY
The storm has passed. VENDORS and STREET PEOPLE clean up the
mess and rebuild their food stalls. JAR JAR sits on a box
in front of Watto's parts shop, watching all the activity
with growing nervousness. ARTOO is standing next to him.
PADME stops QUI-GON as he is about to enter the shop.
PADME
Are you sure about this? Trusting
our fate to a boy we hardly know.
The Queen will not approve.
QUI-GON
The Queen does not need to know.
PADME
Well, I don't approve.
QUI-GON turns and starts into the shop.
INT. WATTO'S JUNK SHOP - DAY
WATTO and ANAKIN are in the middle of an animated discussion
in Huttese.
WATTO
Patta go bolla!
ANAKIN
No batta!
WATTO
Pedunky. Maa kee cheelya.
ANAKIN
Bayno, Bayno!
QUI-GON walks in, and WATTO and ANAKIN join him.
WATTO
The boy tells me you wanta sponser
hi insa race. You can't afford parts.
How can you do this? Not on Republic
credits, I think.
(he laughs)
QUI-GON
My ship will be the entry fee.
QUI-GON pulls a small object that looks like a watch out of
his pocket, and a hologram of the Naboo spacecraft appears
about a foot long in front of WATTO. He studies it.
WATTO
Not bad... not bad... a Nubian.
QUI-GON
It's in good order, except for the
parts we need.
WATTO
...but what would the boy ride? He
smashed up my Pod in the last race.
It will take some time to fix it.
ANAKIN is embarrassed and steps forward.
ANAKIN
Ahhhh....it wasn't my fault really...
Sebulba flashed me with his vent
ports. I actually saved the Pod...
mostly.
WATTO
(laughing))
That you did. The boy is good, no
doubts there.
QUI-GON
I have... acquired a Pod in a game
of chance. "The fastest ever built."
WATTO
I hope you didn't kill anyone I know
for it.
(laughs))
So, you supply the Pod and the entry
fee; I supply the boy. We split the
winnings fifty-fifty, I think.
QUI-GON
Fifty-fifty!?! If it's going to be
fifty-fifty, I suggest you front the
cash for the entry. If we win, you
keep all the winnings, minus the
cost of the parts I need... If we
lose, you keep my ship.
WATTO thinks about this. ANAKIN tries not to be nervous.
QUI-GON
Either way, you win.
WATTO (SUBTITLED)
Deal! Yo bana pee ho-tah, meedee ya.
(Your friend is a follish one,
methinks.)
EXT. NABOO SPACECRAFT - TATOOINE DESERT - DAY
OBI-WAN stands outside the Naboo spacecraft, speaking into
his comlink.
QUI-GON is on the back porch of the hovel.
OBI-WAN
What if this plan fails, Master? We
could be stuck here for a long time.
QUI-GON (V.O.)
A ship without a power supply will
not get us anywhere, and there is
something about this boy...
EXT. MOS ESPA - SLAVE QUARTERS - PORCH - DAY
QUI-GON puts the comlink away as SHMI comes onto the porch
PADME, ANAKIN, JAR JAR, and ARTOO work on the engines of the
Podracer in the courtyard below.
QUI-GON
You should be proud of your son. He
gives without any thought of reward.
SHMI
He knows nothing of greed. He has...
QUI-GON
He has special powers.
SHMI
Yes...
QUI-GON
He can see things before they happen.
That's why he appears to have such
quick reflexes. It is a Jedi trait.
SHMI
He deserves better than a slave's
life.
QUI-GON
The Force is unusally strong with
him, that much is clear. Who was his
father?
SHMI
There was no father, that I know
of... I carried him, I gave him
birth... I can't explain what
happened. Can you help him?
QUI-GON
I'm afraid not. Had he been born in
the Republic, we would have identified
him early, and he would have become
Jedi, no doubt...he has the way.
But it's too late for him now, he's
too old.
You know what's sad? I had COMPLETELY forgotten this immaculate conception bullshit. Why? What purpose is served here? This is retarded.
ReplyDeleteI can't even think about the rest of this scene at the moment.
I'm going to go read wookiieepedia and see what the real story is when it's completed.
Wait, seriously? I am going to vomit now.
ReplyDeleteNearly a decade before his death, the Sith Lord, Darth Plagueis, and his apprentice, Darth Sidious, committed an act that directly violated the nature of the Force. To advance their plan for galactic domination, the two Sith attempted to will a being of their own design into existence, pouring their abhorrent intent into waves through the Force to the countless midi-chlorians that were spread throughout the galaxy. The experiment failed, however, and the midi-chlorians, not willing to obey, not only frustrated Plagueis' attempts, but countered in reprisal, conceiving a child within the slave Shmi Skywalker.[9]
Skywalker's mother claimed that her son was conceived without a father, but could not explain how that had happened. It was the theory of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn that the will of the Force caused his birth.[10]
Although I suppose we shouldn't deal with midichlorians yet. So let's just agree that he has a fucking father, yes?
ReplyDeleteEvery time you go to wookieepedia you make this stuff worse. I refuse to acknowledge, both henceforth and ex post facto, any information as canonical unless it appears in one of the following:
ReplyDelete(1) feature film cinema
(2) made-for-TV movies (christmas special, ewok adventures)
(3) Clone Wars cartoon series
(4) Droids cartoon series (Ewoks are right out)
(5) toys by Kenner
(6) novelizations of the feature films
Ok, can we include Zahn? If so, I'm willing to work under these conditions. But I do love some of the short story collections. They're about 4-6 though, anyway, so no big loss here.
ReplyDeleteSo, animated, thinking midichlorians aside (since we're not there yet)... we're writing out this immaculate bullshit, right? Right?
It just....serves no freaking purpose. By all means we cut it. It is possibly the stupidest thing in a movie chock full of stupid things.
ReplyDeleteAs for Zahn, I've never read his fine work. Do as you will on that front.
what else...as always I like Padme's exchanges with Qui-Gon when he doesn't know she's the queen. Of course you don't get the joke unless you know she's the queen, so it's kinda pointless unless you've seen the movie before. Sadly, Neeson and Portman have the best chemistry of any two actors in the prequels, but they get few scenes together.
The whole negotiation with Watto I like.
One big thing occurs to me here, though. Look at all the planet hopping people do in these movies. Naboo to Tatooine without hyperdrive. Hoth to Bespin without hyperdrive. With hyperdrive, they're jumping from planet to planet in what appears to be minutes, as witnessed repeatedly in III. For example, Palpatine is on Coruscant when Obi-Wan dumps Anakin in a lava pit, but the Emperor gets to planet whateverthehell in time to save him?
Given the speed of travel in this universe, it seems to me like Qui-Gon could have called up Yoda and said "Can you send somebody to pick us up?"
waitwaitwait
ReplyDeleteSo...Darths (and I'll come back to that) tried to make a being by sending force out into the universe, then the midichlorians rebel and make their own being....which turns out to be a Darth? That's dumb. Nice rebellion, midichlorians.
Re: the term Darth
"Darth" is clearly not a title in the original trilogy. It's Darth Vader's first name, as evidenced by Obi-Wan addressing him as "Darth" during their lightsaber duel.
More pointless revisionism. I don't think we need Darth Maul's name to be Darth in order to figure out he was down with the dark side.
I agree. The immaculate conception is even dumber than Jar Jar at the Senate, which is nigh impossible.
ReplyDeleteI recommend reading the Zahn trilogy... but bear with me, as I read them in college.
I agree that the repeated queen jokes are actually growing on me. I really should watch it again. Instead, we rented the Hunger Games... but it's failed to download, so we're stuck right when the Tributes finish riding in and the total hottie is making total hottie eyes at Our Heroine.
We really need to address hyperspace at some point. How fast is it? Again, we have to assume they get between SYSTEMS in weeks, at most, without it. So what the hell is going on here? I would look it up on a certain website, but then you'd yell at me again.
And yes, CLEARLY Darth is a back formation. Does that word work for this? Retrogram?
My mind is still blown from Sandi's astronomy thread.
I'll give you leave to look up hyperspace.
ReplyDeleteI had another mind-blowing question about all this a couple of hours ago but I forgot to write it down.
ReplyDeleteOh, right. Darth Vader doesn't have a dad. So. Is all his genetic material cloned from Shmi? Where did he get his Y chromosome? Did the midichlorians cut off part of one of Shmi's X's to get a Y? Or did the midichlorians supply the needed sperm cell somehow?
I mean, think about it. For years and years we thought all the prequels would be about the Clone Wars. But they're not. In fact, they're all about one clone. Anakin Skywalker, Clone of Shmi!!
Shmi Skywalker is Luke's dad.
"Luke, I am your father. And so is my mother."
ReplyDeleteThis... is awe inspiring. When you see the truth, you can't unsee it.
ReplyDeleteI'll keep poking around, since it's really the SUBlight speeds that we need to know more about. But:
ReplyDeleteHyperspace travel times
While generally determined by the distance between two planets, hyperspace travel times between two locations seemingly close to one another could be drastically extended by the need to navigate around stellar hazards, such as asteroid fields and nebulae.
An example of this is the journey from Coruscant to Alderaan. In terms of distance, Alderaan was situated close to Coruscant—the former at approximately 5,000 light years from the Core, the latter at approximately 10,000.[7] However, during the Imperial era, such a journey required roughly sixteen hours of travel due to a section of the route passing through a part of the largely-uncharted Deep Core, where navigation was difficult as a result of the gravity wells produced by the congregation of stars.[8] Ironically, then, it was actually faster to get from Tatooine to Alderaan on the other side of the galaxy. In some cases, intragalactic travels could take days, depending on the distance between two planets and the obstacles between.
Yikes! So, Naboo is 34000 light years from the Core. Tatooine is 43000. So they're AT LEAST 9000 light years apart.
ReplyDeleteApparently, they spent at least 9000 years traveling that distance.
yeah but time slowed down for them.
ReplyDeleteor
yeah but space is curved
or
yeah but hyperdrive is like "super duper FTL" and normal drives on these starships are simply "way FTL."
Really, we have no choice but to accept the last one, despite comments like Obi-Wan't "how long before we can make the jump to light speed?" in Star Wars.
So let's say Resolved: This Is Wrong and move on.
Agreed, it has to be option 3. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteSo, is our work here done?
done
ReplyDelete