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

[Morgaine]

He's greedy, he wants power, just like every other villain in Star Wars. Palpatine has used this to manipulate Gunray into doing something foolish in order give him an opening.

Blowing up Seattle when a civil war has just started and you need every resource available, is not going to practically benefit Trump or his government.

With the exception of it's royal family, Alderaan is a pacifist, Imperial world. Its like shooting your own dog, it'll cause some fear but its ultimately to the Empire's detriment. Blowing up Mon Cala which has its ships and military personal in the Rebel fleet would make more sense. The complaint a few pages ago was that the invasion Naboo was "evil for the sake of evil", well blowing up Alderaan is basically that.

I feel like we're going around in circles here. Yes Tarkin and Gunray want power, but there's a difference between portraying a character who demonstrates who he's going to achieve that power with a logical course of action, and a character like Gunray who's just there to be the villain's minion.

For them to be equivalent, A New Hope would have a scene where Palpatine tells Tarkin to blow up Alderaan, and Tarkin makes no effort to reason or demonstrate exactly why blowing up any planets benefits him. And yet still that would make more sense, because Tarkin is in the Imperial military and must obey the head of state, whereas Gunray owes no allegiance to Sidious.

I'm speaking of what is presented to us in the movie. There is no Mon Calamari to be discussed here.
Even if there was, it's a demonstration of power, and a demonstration that it doesn't matter how pacifist, populated, advanced or Imperial you are. If the Empire even things you're aiding the Rebels, you are gone. That's the message Tarkin wants to send.
Yes, it's mustache twirling evil, but it's also logical evil. Nobody else will dare even appear to be sympathetic to the Rebels, that's why the stakes become sky high, not only because the Death Star can directly crush the rebellion but because it can do so in the long term merely by existing and doing nothing.

[GandALF]

I feel like we're going around in circles here. Yes Tarkin and Gunray want power, but there's a difference between portraying a character who demonstrates who he's going to achieve that power with a logical course of action, and a character like Gunray who's just there to be the villain's minion.

For them to be equivalent, A New Hope would have a scene where Palpatine tells Tarkin to blow up Alderaan, and Tarkin makes no effort to reason or demonstrate exactly why blowing up any planets benefits him. And yet still that would make more sense, because Tarkin is in the Imperial military and must obey the head of state, whereas Gunray owes no allegiance to Sidious.

I'm speaking of what is presented to us in the movie. There is no Mon Calamari to be discussed here.
Even if there was, it's a demonstration of power, and a demonstration that it doesn't matter how pacifist, populated, advanced or Imperial you are. If the Empire even things you're aiding the Rebels, you are gone. That's the message Tarkin wants to send.
Yes, it's mustache twirling evil, but it's also logical evil. Nobody else will dare even appear to be sympathetic to the Rebels, that's why the stakes become sky high, not only because the Death Star can directly crush the rebellion but because it can do so in the long term merely by existing and doing nothing.

By Mon Cala I mean that if we were told that Alderaan was an active threat by secretly providing ships and personal to the rebels while publicly being loyal then it would be more logical. We're talking about the benefits of fear weighed against the damage caused by destroying a pool of your own resources, however small, during a civil war. Fear isn't going to last long if you can't afford to keep your ships running. They could just as easily be both evil and practical and tax it into starvation. Tarkin's hubris is clearly pointed out by his "evacuate!?" line. The only reason he isn't questioned on it is because it's a military operation.

Gunray's hubris, however, is questioned by Haako and Dofine because they know it doesn't make sense for a shipping cartel to invade a planet but Gunray has made his deal with the devil and feels he can get away with anything.

[Dînadan]

But the only thing he’s getting out of it is Sidious arranging to help legalise the invasion, which means that Naboo itself must be worth it, but there’s no indication what that worth is. It would be one thing if Sidious said that if they invade it for him he’d pull strings to get the taxes/trade sanctions/etc that are cutting into the Federation’s profits/shutting down trade/etc removed or lessened, but that’s not what we’re given.


Tarkin’s choice may or may not be stupid, as is his reasoning that fear will crush the desire to rebel rather than encourage it, but the point is he’s got a theory about how people will act and all his actions are based on that.

[GandALF]

Making the invasion legal would involve acknowledging that the Trade Federation's side in the disputes over the tax laws were legitimate and the Senate and the Naboo government were in the wrong. So therefore they had no choice but to invade Naboo to protest these unfair tax laws and would have to be absolved of wrongdoing. That way the tax dispute would be resolved in Gunray's favour.

[Dînadan]

Urn, no, it wouldn’t. At most it would be Naboo acknowledging it, but Naboo being an unimportant backwater (which remember is crucial to Palpatine’s plot as it’s necessary that the Republic doesn’t act too quickly or with too much force until after he’s taken over and can prompt quicker/more decisive action) means it saying “Yeah the tax laws are totally unfair” will have little sway in the Senate. Their Senator would add his/her voice to the ‘taxes are unfair’ side, but unless theirs was the deciding vote, that’s not going to have much sway, and when Palpatine became Chancellor, he likely ceased being Senator for Naboo, so wouldn’t be bound by the party line set by the Naboo government.

The legitimising of the invasion is Amidala turning around to the Republic and saying “We haven’t been invaded, we invited them in and asked them to stay.” It’s the difference between me breaking into your house and me breaking in and you selling your house to me and telling everyone I didn’t break in, you let me in.

There’s also the problem of how invading Naboo is a protest against the taxes. If Naboo had been established as the architect of the tax reform or taxes bennifited the Naboo while disadvantaging the Trade Federation. If you’re protesting something, generally you don’t break into a random person’s house and force them to sign over the deed to it as that’s not going to force the government to sway in your favour; it’s just going to make you look like a thug.

[GandALF]

There’s also the problem of how invading Naboo is a protest against the taxes. If Naboo had been established as the architect of the tax reform or taxes bennifited the Naboo while disadvantaging the Trade Federation. If you’re protesting something, generally you don’t break into a random person’s house and force them to sign over the deed to it as that’s not going to force the government to sway in your favour; it’s just going to make you look like a thug.

It is established that Naboo has some sort of ongoing rivalry with the Trade Federation. The Queen says "the Federation has gone too far this time" ( http://www.starwars.com/video/message-from-the-queen )

So Naboo is:

A) an anti-Federation voter in the senate

B) small enough not to be able to fight them off

Hence invasion.

[Dînadan]

That clip may imply there have been some previous aggression, so I’ll grant you that, but that doesn’t automatically mean Naboo is an anti-Federation voter in the Senate. You’re just guessing at that. I suppose we can stretch it to make the leap, but that’s tenuous at best.

And giving the context of the line you quoted, it sounds more like it’s refering to the investigators despatched by Valorum. Go rewatch it - the Queen says that she knows ambassadors have been dispatched and Gunray replies with “Ambassadors? What ambassadors?” in a way that screams he’s killed them and is trying to cover it up; only then does Amidala bring up the “You’ve gone too far this time.” line, implying that ‘this time’ refers to murdering the Chancellor’s representatives, not the blockade (especially as that clip begins with Gunray saying it’s nice to speak to her again, using phrasing that the previous time was also during the blockade, not at a previous time).


Even if we accept the tenuous link that you state, that doesn’t address the issue of how invading is supposed to resolve anything. Either Naboo is a political heavy in the Senate and controlling it gives the Trade Federation it’s political clout to change things in its favour (which contradicts the necessity for it to be an unimportant backwater), Naboo is the deciding vote on the issue and controlling it means the Trade Federation can force its Senator to vote how they want and tip the scales in its favour (in which case, why isn’t this brought up) or the Trade Federation is doing it out of revenge (in which case why aren’t we shown that that is how Gunray and the rest feel about it).

[GandALF]

Regarding the "too far" line, we have this exchange shortly after:

Bibble: "A communications disruption can only mean one thing: invasion."
Amidala: "The Federation would not dare go that far."
Panaka: "The Senate would revoke their trade franchise and they'd be finished"

Then we also have this line from Palpatine the Senate scene:

"a tragedy has occurred, which started right here with the taxation of trade routes, and has now engulfed our entire planet in the oppression of the Trade Federation!"

So the Senate itself is divided on the issue and since we have the Malastare senator defending Lott Dod we can infer that the Federation was on one side of the dispute and Naboo on the other.

The invasion of Naboo is therefore an escalation of a wider dispute. By invading a planet of the opposition, the Trade Federation is demonstrating that it is willing to push back against laws it doesn't like. Its sort of like when that Hawaiian judge blocked Trump's travel ban, Hawaii isn't some huge important state, but it still has an effect on wider politics.

[RobbyB1982]

All the discussions of Episode 1's plot holes aside....

I'm really enjoying Chuck's take on things (and the previous behind the scenes SW bits) and how he's sticking mostly to Lucas' point of view or all of it. Everything about him and the prequels is just so overblown and negative and insulting in basically every other kind of review out there, it's really refreshing to get the hows and whys and actual history of why things turned out a certain way.

It's far more interesting to get a "the actor brought their own take to the character and George liked the interpretation" than "Jar Jar sucks and Lucas was an idiot for inventing that terrible character." Similarly, you always only see it brought up that "casting a 9 year old to be the main character was stupid" actually finally makes SENSE when you realize the key point was supposed to be the tragedy of being taken from his mother.

And it's just such a refreshing alternate take after nearly two decades of Plinkett style nitpicking deconstruction and hate. (And I have enjoyed those, don't get me wrong. But it's also been the ONLY prevailing attitude for my entire adult life.)

Thank you Chuck.

[bronnt]

Similarly, you always only see it brought up that "casting a 9 year old to be the main character was stupid" actually finally makes SENSE when you realize the key point was supposed to be the tragedy of being taken from his mother.

This still doesn't address the fundamental problems with going that direction. The big problem is that Anakin is actually a minor character in the grand scheme-he's introduced 45 minutes into the film, he's being dragged along with the plot rather than getting involved, he makes almost no decisions for himself, and his only accomplishment is completely by accident following a convoluted series of contrivances. Roger Corman's "Space Raiders" did a better job of writing a child main character than George Lucas, and "Space Raiders" was a Star Wars ripoff.

Additionally, many people didn't like it because it felt like a contradiction from how Obi-wan previously established his relationship with Anakin. It also established that the Jedi Order has a very creepy overtone where they take very young children away from their parents and indoctrinate them in Jedi way. I'd have felt much better about the prequels overall if Jedi training required some minimum age of consent-even being uncomfortably young, like 14 or even 12, would have been preferable to the implication that Jedi are a brainwashing child-kidnapping cult.