The Hermit's Journey. To arms, prequel defenders, to arms!

[TGLS]

Here's a patch to the opening crawl that gives a the Trade Federation a better motive:

Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. A coalition of outlying star systems have seized the assets of the TRADE FEDERATION, a powerful alliance of interstellar merchants.

Hoping to impose a reversal of policy, Viceroy Nute Gunray has dispatched deadly battleships to blockade the planet of Naboo, leader of coalition.

While the Congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, to settle the conflict....

[Robovski]

Clearly an example is being made of Naboo for reasons not shown. Possibly because Palpatine is from there. The crawl can be interpreted several ways but we have to accept events as already in progress. As later events show, this is all a ploy to create a crisis in the first place, not as a solution to a dispute (regardless of validity). Signing a treaty we are left to infer is to make the occupation not only legal but to provide the likely stated war goal of restitution. The blockade isn't hanging around to just gain property by conquest, if that was the objective there was no need for a blockade in the first place barring a short one to keep the locals in.

We are never told that much about Naboo in the movies as to why it would be important at all. Speculation can go all over the place, but they have some manufacturing of starships and are active in the Senate. Maybe they were taxing exports to outer worlds? Maybe they were behind such taxation in the Senate as leader of this ''Coalition''? It is not clear but it's not that important.

[GandALF]

It's supposed to be an unusually brazen move, Qui-Gon literally points it out:

The situation here is not what it seems. There is something else behind all this, Your Highness. There is no logic in the Federation's move here.

It's a bit of chaos to give Palpatine his opportunity to take power. The publicly announced motive of the Trade Federation is that its a protest over taxation. Gunray's actual motive is to "legally" take Naboo from the senate and become a little warlord thereby destabilizing the senate and precipitating the separatist crisis for Palps. So while Palps succeeds in becoming chancellor, he has to resort to plan B for the separatist crisis and pulls strings to keep Gunray around for that.

[Morgaine]

Okay you're going into Palpatine's motivations, not Gunray's.
Palpatine's are fine... well.. his plan A is convoluted as hell. But still.

The problem is Gunray has no good reason for doing what he does. He's just a stooge. Now of course he's a stooge to Sidious but he shouldn't know he's a stooge. He needs to be gaining SOMETHING out of this deal.

So what we have is the taxation of trade routes, which apparently hurts the Trade Federation's bottom line for them to be willing to dick with the Republic. Okay.
The TF blockades Naboo. This benefits Palpatine one way or another by painting Valorum as weak.
This benefits Gunray and the TF itself because [SCENE MISSING].

Lampshading the fact that nothing the TF is doing makes sense doesn't change the fact that... nothing the TF is doing makes sense. Gunray is running around expending massive amounts of resources to blockade and occupy a planet to the TF's detriment (one can logically assume because the fleet being desperately needed elsewhere is the only reason why all but one of them left by the end of the movie) for no discernible reason.

All that would've been needed is a small scene where Gunray notes that direct control of Naboo's trade route would be extremely profitable or Naboo's meddling has hurt the TF and has to end now, along with a promise from Sidious that he has friends in the Senate that will "take care of things" for his motivations to work.
Or it could be that he's just on Sidious' payroll, and we could have the other TF representative guy aghast at how Gunray is misusing their assets for personal gain. Just, you know, anything to show an actual character and not a paper cutout who's just there to be evil and talk like an asian stereotype.

[Robovski]

Or maybe Gunray has a weak mind and he is being manipulated by Palpatine, Sith Lord, in some way. Perhaps playing upon greed, and playing up the losses to taxes or the profits to be had. It doesn't have to make sense when you have cannon mind control.

[Morgaine]

Or maybe Gunray has a weak mind and he is being manipulated by Palpatine, Sith Lord, in some way. Perhaps playing upon greed, and playing up the losses to taxes or the profits to be had. It doesn't have to make sense when you have cannon mind control.

Again that's an assumption, and even then..
What is a Sith Lord?
Can they mind control?
Can a mind trick be used long term?
When a mind trick was used on a greedy alien in this very movie it didn't work, so why would it work on this greedy alien?

I know there are explanations in supplemental material. I know we can assume and reason and headcanon, but the poont here is to show that The Phantom Menace, on it's own, fails to get it's points and characterisations across.

[bronnt]

We're never told why exactly the Empire is evil in the OT, they have reasons for certain actions, but not for what those actions in are service to. It's just shown from their demeanour that they're ruthlessly ambitious and arrogantly self-interested which is not all that different Gunray. Why does Tarkin want to crush the rebellion? Why does he serve the Empire? Never explicitly explained. "He's blockading a planet to protest taxation" is more information than "the Empire is evil"

We don't need to know everything about Tarkin's motivations or the whole structure of the empire. We just need to know what he's trying to accomplish and how he's going to do it, that's the point.

Empire = oppressive government. Boom, we get it. Anyone with the slightest sense of history knows what an oppressive government is and how it works, so our minds can fill in the gaps. We know exactly what Tarkin's process is: He's planning to use the Death Star to blow up planets, preferably the planet where the Rebels are housed, but also any other planets that might be hotbeds of discontent just to set an example. The only thing standing in the way is the hope that the schematics demonstrate an exploitable weakness.

Trade Federation = ???? A federation that trades? Are they a government bureau? Are they a coalition of allied planets? Are they a large private enterprise that has sway in government? There's not even a HINT that explains them or what they want beyond the name. We know that they're trying to conquer Naboo, sure, but they actually accomplish that around 20 minutes into the film and it's hard for an audience to care about the plan to stop them from doing the thing they've already done. I have zero investment in whether Queen Amidala does or does not sign the treaty because I don't see what it's accomplishing. If they're actually murdering people in order to try to coerce her into signing it, then heck, maybe she should just sign it. Sure, it's under duress, and maybe she's holding out because it's her only leverage and they'll just kill her afterward....but these are just wild ass guesses based upon the lack of information the movie gives me about their plan.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I haven't really thought in detail about this, but the obvious historical parallel to blockaded Naboo is Revolutionary Era Boston and the Intolerable/Coercive Acts. Star Wars had been using the Revolutionary War as inspiration since the beginning, The more daring parallel is the relationship between the Trade Federation and the Republic (or specifically Palpatine). The nature of that relationship isn't totally clear, but I think the idea is basically to highlight the problems that arise when "big business" and the government are in bed together. It's a big step toward the Republic becoming an evil Empire. The message is- America is (or is in danger of becoming) what the colonials revolted against in the Revolutionary era.

I think you have to give some credit to Lucas for coming up with a more sophisticated story on the political side of it. The OT deals with political stuff only a very simple level, and the politics of the ST just looks incoherent to me so far. The problem is that the format (big budget space opera) isn't conducive to complex political drama and intrigue. It isn't fleshed out enough to make total sense, and people certainly didn't seem to be clamoring for more scenes in the Senate.

You would need really strong, elegant writing to effectively show the political situation without bogging down the narrative. Unfortunately, strong writing is the one thing the prequels clearly don't have.

[Morgaine]

Empire = oppressive government. Boom, we get it. Anyone with the slightest sense of history knows what an oppressive government is and how it works, so our minds can fill in the gaps. We know exactly what Tarkin's process is: He's planning to use the Death Star to blow up planets, preferably the planet where the Rebels are housed, but also any other planets that might be hotbeds of discontent just to set an example. The only thing standing in the way is the hope that the schematics demonstrate an exploitable weakness.

Not to mention we see in seveeral scenes of exposition:

- There was an Imperial Senate, now there isn't.
- The regional governors will control the systems of the Empire directly.
- The governors will rule through fear. Obey or get blown up.
- In order to instill fear, a demonstration of the Death Star's full power is needed. A populated, major planet.

We thus have an idea of Tarkin's motivations.
The supplemental material goes into the Tarkin Doctrine and just what exactly his long term plans, but we don't need that to understand him like we need books and series to understand Gunray.
It also shows what a devastating blow it is to the Empire to lose the Death Star.
Blowing up Alderaan then losing the Death Star = the Empire has just outed themselves as genocidal murderers without the actual power to back that up. Thus Luke dealt them a significant blow.
Losing Naboo does what for the Trade Federation?

[Karha of Honor]

I haven't really thought in detail about this, but the obvious historical parallel to blockaded Naboo is Revolutionary Era Boston and the Intolerable/Coercive Acts. Star Wars had been using the Revolutionary War as inspiration since the beginning, The more daring parallel is the relationship between the Trade Federation and the Republic (or specifically Palpatine). The nature of that relationship isn't totally clear, but I think the idea is basically to highlight the problems that arise when "big business" and the government are in bed together. It's a big step toward the Republic becoming an evil Empire. The message is- America is (or is in danger of becoming) what the colonials revolted against in the Revolutionary era.

I think you have to give some credit to Lucas for coming up with a more sophisticated story on the political side of it. The OT deals with political stuff only a very simple level, and the politics of the ST just looks incoherent to me so far. The problem is that the format (big budget space opera) isn't conducive to complex political drama and intrigue. It isn't fleshed out enough to make total sense, and people certainly didn't seem to be clamoring for more scenes in the Senate.

You would need really strong, elegant writing to effectively show the political situation without bogging down the narrative. Unfortunately, strong writing is the one thing the prequels clearly don't have.

The problem is that the format (big budget space opera) isn't conducive to complex political drama and intrigue.

Give an artist George Lucas power and money and it could happen.