See comments section for our thoughts and critiques!
Script copyright by George Lucas.
Script excerpted from this site:
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars-The-Phantom-Menace.html
INT. NABOO PALACE - THRONE ROOM - DAY
NUTE, RUNE, and DARTH MAUL walk with a hologram of DARTH SIDIOUS.
NUTE : ...we've sent out patrols. We've already located their starship in
the swamp....It won't be long, My Lord.
DARTH SIDIOUS : This is an unexpected move for her. It's too aggresive..
Lord Maul, be mindful.
DARTH MAUL : Yes, my Master.
DARTH SIDIOUS : Be patient... Let them make the first move.
EXT. NABOO EDGE OF SWAMP/ GRASS PLAINS - DAY
A GUNGAN SENTRY sits on top of the ancient temple heah, searching the
landscape with a pair of electrobinoculars. He sees something and yells
down to ANAKIN at the foot of the statue.
GUNGAN LOOKOUT : Daza comen!
ANAKIN : All right. They're here!
ANAKIN yells and runs over to PADME and the JEDI, who are discussing a
battle plan with FIVE GUNGAN GENERALS. SABE and EIRTAE stand nearby. BOSS
NASS puts his arm around JAR JAR.
BOSS NASS : Yousa doen grand. Jar Jar bringen da Naboo together.
JAR JAR : Oh, no, no, no...
BOSS NASS : So, wesa maken yousa Bombad General.
JAR JAR : General??! Oh, no..
JAR JAR's eyes roll back, his tongue flops out and he faints.
FOUR SPEEDERS pull up to the GROUP. CAPTAIN PANAKA and a DOZEN OR SO
GUARDS
and PILOT pile out and join the group.
PADME : What is the situation?
CAPT. PANAKA : Almost everyone's in camps. A few hundred police and guards
have formed an underground movement. I brought as many of the keaders as I
could. The Federation Army's also much larger than we thought, and much
stronger. Your Highness, this is a battle I do not think we can win.
PADME : The battle is a diversion. The Gungans must draw theDroid Army away
from the cities. We can enter the city using the secret passages on the
waterfall side. Once we get to the main entrance, Captain Pnaka will create
a diversion, so that we can enter the palace and capture the Viceroy.
Without the Viceroy, they will be lost and confused.
QUI-GON and OBI-WAN look on with interest.
PADME : (Cont'd) What do you think, Master Jedi?
QUI-GON : The Viceroy will be well guarded.
CAPT. PANAKA : The difficulty's getting into the throne room. Once we're
inside, we shouldn't have a problem.
QUI-GON : There is a possibility with this diversion many Gungans will be
killed.
BOSS NASS : Wesa ready to do are-sa part.
JAR JAR smiles a very worried and sheepish grin. ANAKIN watches with
interest, as does ARTOO.
PADME : We have a plan which should immobilize the Droid Army. We will send
what pilots we have to knock out the Droid control ship which is orbiting
the planet. If we can get past their rayshields, we can sever communication
and their droids will be helpless.
QUI-GON : A well-conceived plan. However, there's great risk. The weapons
on your fighters may not penetrate the shields on the control ship.
OBI-WAN : And there's an even bigger danger. If the Vicroy escapes, Your
Highness, he will return with another droid army.
PADME : That is why we must not fail to get to the Viceroy. Everything
depends on it.
Well.....this is just dumb. Or maybe the Trade Federation is dumb for being so poorly set up that such a dumb plan could actually defeat them.
ReplyDeleteI'll try to come up with something more substantial, but that's my gut reaction.
The Darth Sidious move is fine--Sidious should care nothing about the Trade Federation OR Naboo at this point, because he is now Chancellor. The whole point of the Phantom Menace has been achieved.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'd like to make that very point more clear here. Sidious saying something blunt like "she's your problem now. Deal with her if you can. I've already given you more help than you deserve."
And, of course, making Jar Jar a general makes absolutely no sense. Exactly what has Jar Jar done other than bring the Jedi to the Naboo? So...a Gungan brings foreigners--aliens!--into the secret Hidden City of the Naboo, and then FURTHER shows them their secret hiding camp city, and they make him a general?
ReplyDeleteThis crazy plan of theirs...that's going to a need a post of its own.
Well? Where's the post on their crazy plan?
ReplyDeleteI agree that this is flat out stupid, but hey, it let's us go crazy with CGI armies.
Where'd my post go?
ReplyDeleteWell, again:
ReplyDelete1) I'm fine with the bit where the Gungans draw the droid army out from the city. I'm not convinced the Trade Federation would be so frightened of a bunch of goofy turtle-rabbits that they'd send most of their army out there, but for all I know there are a lot more Gungans than we've seen so far. Or maybe the Gungans are pulling some clever trick where it looks like there are a lot more of them. And hey, maybe George McClellan is in charge of the Droid Army, and he thinks the only reason so many of them are attacking such a well-situated enemy is because they have tons of reserves, so he gets scared and runs away like The Battle of Malvern Hill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Malvern_Hill
2) The secret passage behind the waterfall is fine as well, provided the Trade Federation hasn't discovered its existence through questioning their prisoners or their own search. It would be nice if the existence of the secret passages were set up earlier in the movie, perhaps through an escape, but we'll survive.
3) But now it gets stupid. Captain Panaka "creates a distraction." So basically, we're tipping off the Traders that we've gotten into their captured city. I would have thought stealth was a better plan. Creating a distraction within the city would, I would think, only cause a strengthening of the guard around the Viceroy, who is presumably feeling pretty comfortable at the moment.
ReplyDelete4) The rest of the plan on the ground appears to be "so we can enter the palace and capture the Viceroy." That is not a plan. It's an objective. How we gonna do that? Apparently, we're going to run into the palace and capture a guy. Sweet, I'm in, boss.
5) "Without the Viceroy, they'll be lost, and confused." Who will be? The robots? Maybe the Trade Federation really is this dumb. Is it just two guys and a bunch of robots? Seriously, Naboo, did you just get occupied by two guys and some robots?
6) And now, for the grand finale, I give you: The Climax of Star Wars! And the Co-Climax of Return of the Jedi! That's right, a single snub fighter is going to penetrate the might defenses of a space station and blow it up from the inside, at which point the entire opposition will crumble. Wait, how are we going to get the fighter? Who will fly it? Leave that to the eight-year-old.
Well, I think that about covers it. Like the whole movie, really, it's a kernel of a decent idea that is never fleshed out into an actual idea. The more I think about this movie, the angrier I get. It's like we're expected to buckle up for 2 hours of nonstop fun, and just ignore the fact that NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE. Pick any random scene in the movie, ask a "why?", and that scene falls completely apart. And here, as you've pointed out, the overarching "why" of the whole movie falls apart.
ReplyDeleteI guess the eternal problem with filming the backstory is that the backstory has no backstory. Unless it's Tolkien, which essentially begins with "let there be light."
ReplyDeleteGeorge R. R. Martin has a line about that in an interview I read several years ago, something like "Tolkien wrote his whole backstory. The rest of us are just propping things up with a flimsy fake set, like a ghost town in an old western."
Ok, so yes, that's true to some extent. All hail JRRT. But since we're presumably not planning on going back and filming episodes -2 to 0 (because that would predate C3PO, and is thus meaningless), can't we at least put some backing on our stage props? I mean, they don't need to stand up to close inspection, but they need to not be obviously a joke.
ReplyDeleteHell, a child-novelesque secret passage to the back of the throne room would do wonders for this overthrow plot. I mean, that's how Eilonwy got Taran out of that one castle in The Book of Three, right? And then they ended up wandering around in the catacombs below the castle and found a magic sword and all kinds of cool stuff happened.
ReplyDeleteSame thing happened in Le Guin's Tombs of Atuan, if I remember right, making that novel the shining jewel of her original Earthsea Trilogy. Both in Le Guin and in the Lloyd Alexander novel I reference above, time alone in the dark makes for great romantic bonding between two mismatched lovers...like Padme and our Gungan Rogue OR (could it be?) Padme and angsty elder teenager pre-Padwan Anakin Skywalker?
Lo, the catacombs could be the very experience that pushes Padme away from Gungan Rogue and towards young Anakin.
ReplyDeleteOooo! Nice twist. I love a good catacombs. And I'm not sure the general public is ready for a cross-species romance.
ReplyDeleteRogue gets too frisky in catacombs, Anakin steps in. Fate sealed.
ReplyDeleteMe likey.
ReplyDelete