Debate of the Day: Was Phantom Menace Smarter Than We Think?
Well, I wasn’t expecting to wake up first thing Monday morning and have my mind blown, but here we are.
It’s common knowledge that The Phantom Menace sucked pretty hard, and is by far the worse Star Wars movie ever. The rest of the new trilogy was pretty terrible as well, but Phantom especially stood out as being a series of inane plot holes and incoherence. But what if it wasn’t?
I just got reading a really interesting theory from redditor JoshMeme that I think you should read below:
a) You should be familiar with the scene in Episode 3 when Palpatine tells Anakin about Darth Plagueis. They watched that bubble opera, and Palpatine said something along the line of “Darth Plagueis was able to manipulate midichlorians to save the ones he loved from dying.” Of course, the important thing to take from this was that it made Anakin realize he could save Padme by switching to the Dark Side. Well, there was another part to that quote. Palpatine slips in there a line that says Darth Plagueis was able to use the force to create life. Palpatine then smiles at Anakin and continues speaking. Remember, we learned in Phantom that Anakin had no father. So there was a pretty clear insinuation here by Palpatine. We have two possibilities: Palpatine was making it up, or Anakin was truly the creation of Palpatine’s former master. If you check Wookiepedia, however, it does say that many people believe Plagueis did conceive Anakin. To back this up further, the new novel about Darth Plagueis that has been postponed several times is now slated to come out a month before the re-release of Episode One. I doubt that Lucas has gone completely crazy, so he probably realizes that it might be hard to get people to go see the re-release of Phantom. Maybe he’s hoping something big will happen to spur interest in the films. Maybe there will be a big revelation in this book, particularly one about the origins of Anakin. Plagueis was killed between 52 and 46 BBY. This range should be clarified, and maybe even moved up a few years with the release of the novel in January. Anakin was born in 42 BBY. We don’t really know the gestation period of a force baby, and like I said, the date of Plagueis’ death is not set in stone yet. It isn’t very hard to believe Anakin was conceived by Plagueis.
b) So now you might say, alright, you have my attention. Maybe Anakin was created by Plagueis, sure. I’ll play along now. So what? Well let’s look closer at Palpatine. Plagueis’ Wookipedia page goes on to say that Palpatine feared being replaced by Plagueis’ force baby, and thus killed his master. Interesting. This means Palpatine knew that Plagueis was at least trying to make a force baby at the time. And as of Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine knew that baby was Anakin. So you might then wonder, did he know it was Anakin the whole time? He always had a close relationship to Anakin, that I assume was just a poorly constructed plot instrument that was never explained. But this logical explanation would definitely make some sense of it. So then you might ask, why some kid on Tatooine? Well, if I were to make an evil force baby, I would do it as far away from Coruscant as possible. Now that we have established that Palpatine knew about Anakin’s origins throughout the series, let’s go on to part (c).
c) In Phantom, Qui Gon and company are forced to land on Tatooine because their ship started to fail. Before they knew it, their communications were jammed. They were unable to tell anyone on Coruscant where they were. Qui Gon said of the communication jam that he “sensed a disturbance.” So what do you know, they left the planet with Anakin and brought him to Coruscant, where Palpatine spent all of his time. But before the group leaves, they get a surprise visit from Darth Maul. What the hell was that? In a cut scene earlier in the movie, Darth Maul suggests that he and Palpatine had tracked Amidala to Tatooine. Specifically, he says “If the trace was correct.” How was he able to trace the ship if the communications were jammed? Again, I thought this was a plot hole. But it all makes sense now. Darth Maul never said he saw a trace. Palpatine could have easily told Maul he had traced the ship, but Palpatine already knew where it was. Or, Palpatine was able to trace the ship, but either way, Palpatine was the one jamming their communications from the other side of the galaxy. So what are the chances the group would land on Tatooine and pick up Anakin, all while Palpatine, the man who killed his master over Anakin, happens to be clouding their ship. You can say what you want about the will of the force, but it is pretty clear to me that Palpatine purposefully made sure the group landed on Tatooine. He made that ship fail, and he made them have to land on Tatooine. The entire plot of Phantom was completely orchestrated by Palpatine. He got the ship to land on Tatooine so he could get Qui Gon to bring Anakin to him, and he could train Anakin himself. All of the events of Star Wars are therefore a result of this plan. Phantom’s existence now makes sense. The prequels were even more planned out by Palpatine than they superficially appear to be. It no longer seems like a mess of forced plot elements and annoying coincidences. Palpatine was just a fucking genius.
As awesome as this all was, there’s no way I actually believe this is what Lucas intended. I just don’t think he’s that smart to have purposefully buried something like that in an otherwise idiotic movie, or if he was, he was still stupid to bury it that deep where no one would ever find it, and just think the events of the movie are stupid coincidence. And furthermore, even if it is true, it doesn’t exactly make the movie “better” as the acting, writing and editing is still exceptionally terribly with or without that plot point.
Still though, kind of cool.
Well, the communications of the ship never were jammed. They just didn’t make any communications in order not to reveal their location to the trade federation, as stated by Obi-Wan when they received a message from the Governor of Naboo (“It’s a trap, send no response of any kind”). Other than that, it is a smart way to interpret the movie, and would go along with Palpatine evil mastermind ways (Why is he not considered the greatest villain ever instead of Vader always baffles me.)
And Episode II was way worst than Episode I. Episode I gave us Podracing, Darth Maul and dual bladed lightsabers. Episode II gave us Hayden Christensen.
Intresting theory but just a theory. Like you said I doubt that was Lucas’s intention and if that was the case he should have made it clearer to the audience.
Aside from part c) of your explanations, I simply thought that this was common knowledge. Not trying to come across as arrogant, but I understood this upon watching first time round.
My problem was never with the story of Starwars, my problems were always in the fact that Lucas ruins everything with his greediness. IMO he lost touch with what made the original 3 so grand. Oh and also it does appear that he kinda just went with the flow of things without any bigger picture of what this was supposed to be.
Even if it is all true, it doesn’t change the existence of Jar Jar Binks, or the horrible, horrible dialogue, or the overall poor direction by George Lucas. I will agree the man is a genius when it comes to inventing an interesting story, but he is a very poor writer/director.
Interesting stuff, eventhough I’m only a casual fan of the movies. I can’t help to think that this saga has better fans than it deserves, always tying up the loose ends left by Lucas.
Because, I mean, even if he apparently did plan for that one Sith to have “created” Anakin, he failed to give a sense of mystery to the first movie and then carry it through the second one. Anakin seems to have exactly zero concerns regarding who his father is throughout the movies, so the audience doesn’t either.
Not only is that lack of concern unrealistic and evidence of poor character development, but it also makes clear that you can’t just blow everyone’s minds with a clever revelation in the final movie. You have to earn that interest from the audience, first. By that point, no one was still wondering about the immaculate conception stuff; we just assumed it had already been answered with nonsense crap (the way most things got answered in the prequels) and we didn’t recognize the twist when we saw it. But that’s Lucas’ fault.
I feel like I’m the only person in the world who can openly admit that he likes the prequel trilogy. I admit that there was some dialog that was pretty bad, and I wish I had a 2×4 to beat Jar-Jar to death with, but in general I enjoy them. I guess my expectations are a bit off with the movies. Dialog(unless really bad) isn’t something I pay as much attention to if I don’t have to. I went into the prequel trilogy with the expectation of lightsaber battles, space battles, and some kind of ground warfare if possible. I know that fighting 2 feet above a river of molten lava is completely unbelieveable even in the star wars universe, but it was still a lightsaber battle. I’m not gonna try to change people’s opinions because that would be a waste of time and effort, but I do want to say that in my opinion they were good enough.
To end on topic, I thought that was a nice conspiracy theory about how extensive Palpatine’s plan was. Very amusing.
Well, we all know that most of theories are created by fans and not for G. Lucas himself. I might say, before reading this one and the comments I’ll watch the movies again, just ti see with diferent eyes. It sure makes a lot of sense, and it’s minfblowing.
Schiapu I totaly agree with you when you say Ep. II is worse than Ep. I, srsly, what is about all that annoying conversation between Padme and Anakin…
I actually enjoyed the prequels. I recognized from the start (of the prequels) that Palpatine was the mastermind.
In Ep I, Qui-gon mostly answers the question of how Anakin was concieved when he and Yoda are talking about Anakin being “a vergence in the Force.”
@Schaipu: Darth Vader is considered the most evil fictional villain in history because he is the one who commits the acts. It was Darth Vader who hunted down the Jedi Order. It might’ve been Darth Sidious’ plan, but Vader was the fall guy. That’s why he got the evil reputation. Not to mention, Darth Vader looks way more evil than Emperor Palpatine.
I assumed this was the case from my very first viewing of all 3 prequels. None of this information is stunning revelation level type stuff to me. Until now, I must admit I thought I was 1 of the few people who saw the genius in some of the clues in the dialogue.
this has already been established. it’s in the star wars books. it’s official canon. and it’s not accepted that the phantom menace sucked. you don’t speak for all star wars fans.
Not to be arrogant either, but none of this was a revelation to me. After knowing that Anakin had no father along with the Opera scene, it’s blatantly obvious that we are to believe that Darth Plagueis created Anakin by the will of the Force. I don’t like Part C…that’s going a little too far.
Well aren’t you all just so smart.
@jasiri
And yes. Yes it does.
wow that blew my mind lol
I love this. It’s one of the reasons that Star Wars is the best bit of drama that’s existed in my lifetime. In my opinion, I think the prequels, while quite bad compared to the originals, are pretty good in their own right. I also think that Lucas is a horrible director and needs to just stick with writing. Empire and Jedi were better than A New Hope I think a lot in part because Lucas didn’t direct them. He’s got this grand vision of things, but other people are just better at bringing that vision to life. Now I have to say that a lot of the prequel stuff is pretty bad but I have found that I typically put them on all the time because even though they have their shortcomings they are still a blast to watch. Though whenever I watch Episode II I simply skip past all the parts that have Anakin and Padme and concentrate on Obi-Wan. Makes it a lot more fun to watch. And I don’t know about any of you, but when I saw the preview for Episode I in 3D I got all excited to see it again on the big screen. Whoever is the editor for those previews needs a raise. Jar Jar is never seen. Not once.
Man, Star Wars. Think about this. The only releases worth a shit since Return of the Jedi came out have been video games and the original non-CG Clone Wars cartoons. That is nearly 30 years of shit and almost nothing in terms of actual output from the franchise to us, and yet here we are continuing to obsess over every tiny detail, even of the movies we hated. Further proof that the original trilogy is the most powerful cinema ever produced. Pity they’re in the hands of a madman.
Saying that “it’s not agreed” that Ep. I sucks is like saying there’s still doubt as to whether OJ did it.
Mindblowing, but i desagree of topic c) in some points. I dont think Palpatine “send” quigon to capture Anakin….i think he send Darth Maul to investigate the disturbing on the force on that location, and the rest was the coincidence. He doesnt have locate the airship, but Anakin himself, he was the trace located.
And is easy to say that where is a “force disturbing”, is a concentration of jedi/sith.
What are these prequels you mention? I remember seeing Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi in the theater when I was a kid. But other SW movies? Nope, those never happened.
But if they had happened, Ep. 1 licks balls.
Grey is correct. Take all the interesting plot revelations and cram ’em up your hole Star Wars apologists, and when you pull it out, maybe give us some good dialogue, characterization, meaningful effects shots, and a director that doesn’t have contempt for directing actors in a scene and instead just wants to play with his digital toys.
Everyone that complains about the prequels and the changes made to the original trilogy is forgetting a simple yet important fact. Star Wars is cheesy sci-fi fantasy FOR CHILDREN. If you have any doubts about that watch the movies with a child, especially one who hasn’t seen the films before. My three year old son has a typical attention span for someone his age, but he sat and watched the whole series with me after I got my blu-ray set. That’s right six movies back to back and when each one finished he wanted to watch another. Stop looking at the movies through the jaded eyes of overcritical forty year old fanboys and just enjoy the series for what it is.
Getting children is a way to make money and ensure future, but some of the best works are disguised as childrens story
you know what all people that keep bitching about the preqeuls can go to hell. I cant enjoy the originals because you made them into something not. fuck you
Who cares?
Trying to inject meaning into the prequels is like shining shit. It’s still shit.
It really says something when Red Letter Media’s reviews were 10x more entertaining than the movies. Not kidding. If you haven’t seen them yet, you can thank me later.
Man, interesting ideas, but not tracking with the actual facts of the movie. The idea that a a virgin birth force child was anticipated, etc., stems more from Lucas’ association with Joseph Campbell and the idea of putting a messiah in his story, than anything else. Sadly, Lucas doesn’t know anything about Messiah stories. He should have hired Orson Scott Card if he wanted a Messiah story… guys’ written a dozen, including Ender’s Game.
On another front, he suffered us all to watch the Jedi behave like utter morons for three movies. Forget that Yoda, who is supposed to be powerful, can’t even get the slightest glimmer of the Force off of Palpatine sitting right across from him (lowering our respect for Yoda immensely). What I never could get over was the idiots talking about bringing balance to the force.
Let me ask you this… in the time of Episode 1, the Jedi are supreme. Sith are a mere rumor, and though they’re plotting to take control, it’s really only a few individuals, well hidden among the ranks of blind Jedi. So, what “balance” did they think it would bring?
If the Force comes in two flavors… light and dark, then “Balance” is NOT absence of dark, but rather an equal measure of dark, and light. Anakin was meant to bring rise to the dark side, so it would match the prevalence of the light side.
In other words, the entire fate of the Republic/Empire stems from idiots who cannot read, and don’t know how to interpret a simple prophecy ;-).
Shame… Episode 4 was really awesome when I was a kid, and it was JUST called “Star Wars.” Empire made you think it could only get better… then Jedi showed us you could just as easily smear feces on the entire franchise (which it did). And decades later, he gave us episodes 1, 2 and 3 just to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could STILL find depths of awfulness beyond Jedi.
-facepalm- really? you just barely figured that out? i’ve known that for years. its the entire point of the prequels. any true star wars fan knows this already. so again -facepalm-
I understand that the movies had it’s flaws, by why can’t everyone just appreciate it for the complexity and creativity put into the storyline, characters, music, etc. You just can’t help but stand back, look at the star wars story line as a whole, and say “wow”. Or at least I can’t help but see the amount of depth it has in something as “meta-physical” as the force, alone. Then just combining the jedi, the sith, the whole “balance” factor…the way everything unfolds and such?………..no?…….*sigh*..I tried.
(c) sounds like it’s too complex and convoluted a plan for Palpatine to have thought up when he could have just used a direct approach instead.
Also, “It’s common knowledge that The Phantom Menace sucked pretty hard, and is by far the worse Star Wars movie ever” = WRONG.
Well, really this stuff has been about for a while. James Luceno was meant to write the Darth Plagueis novel ages ago almost directly after the “Dark lord: The Rise of Darth Vader” book, but it was pulled. If you want to look for meaningful additions to the Star Wars saga then really the books and games are the only way, though only intermittently.
I have mostly given up with the films as a whole. Ep4 was good and had a great storyline, informed by the whole hero’s journey thing, which was expanded in Ep5 and then sort of killed in Ep6 which I have never found particularly good. In the commentary Lucas basically admits that the whole Jabba’s palace stuff was added in because he hadn’t got enough material for an entire film. Also Ewoks, what the hell was that?
The entire prequel trilogy is crap. They were created to fill in specific gaps and allow Lucas to play around with cgi effects. The stories were wafer thin and constantly self referring to the original trilogy. Basically you can summarise those films thus:
“Palpatine takes over the galaxy, Anakin whines and becomes Vader. Many Jedi get killed.”
The rest is just fluff to pad it out. The whole Plagueis thing is retconned anyway, as most of the Plagueis theory was created I think after Ep3 limped out. Really this is a way of people still trying to like SW making a boring film more interesting. It does, in a way, but mostly due to the abscence of Lucas not his input.
BTW I write this as a rather big fan of SW having read many novels and owning all the films despite my criticism.
Hey, Chris, look buddy, you’re coming out as an a–hole, ok? Not a genius.
Phantom Menace was actually the only one of the prequels that actually felt like a “Star Wars” to me. It astounds me that someone thinks it was the worst of the 3, because I am frequently astounded by differing opinions.
That being said, interesting theory. Definitely just a theory though, because I think you’re absolutely right about George Lucas not being smart enough. Then again, I tend to think of him as portrayed by Will Sasso, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No fucking way.
George Lucas writes like a dyslexic and even with his low standards, the Phantom scrpit sucked. It sucked so much that no only did the non-talented actors suck but even the good ones.
am i the only one who remembers that palpatine specifically calls anikin “son” in episode 3? palpatine clearly learned the secrets of his master before killing him
this will all come out in episode 9
This debate has now been solidified. Simply read the Darth Plagueis book and you will understand how from the death of Dath Tenebrous, to the discovery and training of Palpatine/Sidious makes the first two prequel movies’ plots much more interesting and entertaining. Especially with the manipulation of Sifo-Dyas, Dooku, and all the other organizations that ended up becoming the Seperatists. And btw Palpatine did not know of Anakin before episode one.
I think my theory solves a few problems. Both Darth Plageius and Darth Sidious “created” Anakin, sort of, but really it was the Force. Darth Plageius attempted to manipulate midi chlorians to create the Chosen One with the help of his apprentice, Sidious, who realized that this would mean his replacement as apprentice. So having taught Sidious all that he knew, Plageius was really dispensable, and Sidious killed him and tried to do create life himself. Only Plageius didn’t teach Sidious everything he knew, that is, he taught him all the methods to create life, but didn’t tell him that a powerful Sith could control his midichlorian essence after death and be reincarnated into a new body. So, having given his apprentice all of the tools to create a powerful midichlorian life form, he allowed himself to be killed by Sidious to accomplish his plan. (c’mon, how else is a Sith Lord going to get killed in his sleep by his apprentice). Sidious, believing that he had rid himself of his master, and obviously not loyal to his apprentices (Maul, Dooku), set out to create for himself this powerful chosen one as his new apprentice. But in order to ensure that such a force sensitive child wouldnt be discovered by the Jedi, he had to go to the outer rim and get a person to experiment on, naturally a slave, Shmi Skywalker from Tatooine. He used the power of the force to impregnate her with high density midichlorian essences (Plageious). But neither he, nor Plagious realized that their Sith wills weren’t stronger than the Force itself, so instead of all of the dark side midichlorian Plageious Sith essence being reincarnated into Anakin, the Force provided half light side midichlorians, thus bringing forth a Force Balanced creation in Anakin. None of this mind you would have been possible if the Force had not willed it, which is why Sidious couldnt repeat the experiments later.
no one reincarnated into anakan. plagues was still alive after anakan was found by the jedi
they have already said in extended universe that his master in fact did attempt to create a force baby but the force basically said Hell no and created anakin to fight the sith
Well that didn’t end very well, did it.
I liked the dialogue, characters, story, effect shots and everything. It’s pretty stupid to think opinion is the same thing as knowledge. What stupid music are you listening to this week?
According to Jedi, there are no coincidences. Everything happens for a purpose
And Jar Jar bumped into Qi Jin. And Jar Jar bumped into Anakin. And Jar jar sabotaged the hyperdrive. And Jar Jar fixed the pod racer. All coincidences? I think not.
I bet you all must be eating your words now…
There is no doubt that Snoke is Plagueis.
It is confirmed via the soundtracks to Episode VII and Episode III—in ROTS, when Palpatine tells Anakin about Plagueis, the track in the background is “The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis” or something to that effect. During Snoke’s appearance in TFA, the track in the background is simply called “Snoke”. The interesting and crucial factor, here, however, is that it is the EXACT same music, note for note verbatim.
Plagueis even had a solid appearance in the prequels, even if just a cameo, according to Wookiepedia—the Munn in charge of the IBC sitting at the table on Geonosis in AOTC (a little too easter-eggy to be a mistake, as he is one of those non-distinctive SW characters but actually has dialogue). Further reading from the WookieP article on Plagueis, Plagueis’ own conception was the result of Force manipulation, although not to the extent of Anakin’s. Tenebrous put two people together, one a force-sensitive disciple and the other the—you guessed it—leader/future leader of the IBC! And Plagueis being their offspring meant that yes, he did inherit the IBC and therefore was its leader around 22 BBY (AOTC).
Now that that is established, do I think Phantom is “smarter than we think”? Eh, if you watch the interview between Hayden Christensen and George Lucas (whom you all write off as a dyslexic moron, yet if he didn’t exist STAR WARS WOULD NOT EXIST, and if you are a fan of the series you owe him that much even if he made some mistakes with it along the way), the entire original trilogy was supposed to be one whole space opera movie, from beginning to end, but it was too much story, too expensive, etc., so Lucas broke it up into separate movies. However, he knew when he wrote the story for the original trilogy that he HAD to write prequel movies in order for it to make sense.
Lucas’ words are (paraphrasing), “I hate starting a story from the beginning. I like to jump into the middle, right in the action. We did that with Indiana Jones, we did that with American Graffiti.” In essence, the whole start-in-the-middle thing is Lucas’ trademark. And Lucas’ has even been quoted as saying he had the ideas for the prequel trilogy in his head back in 1977.
So, to answer my aforementioned question, quoted from the title, I do not think Phantom or Clones or any of the prequel movies are any smarter or dumber than we think. I think we should be asking ourselves that question, if anything. The story has been there the entire time, for almost 40 years. We just never had ALL of the information in order to put the pieces together. The EU, in its own way, did an excellent job of filling in the parts we didn’t quite understand yet. But now with the new canon being released, until 2019’s worth, everything should fall into place. Maybe we’ll come back here in 3 or 4 years and laugh at ourselves for being such morons and being fooled by this “cheesy sci-fi fantasy for children” (yes, looking at you CJ, whoever you are).
So, in regards to C) think about Jar Jar Binks being the reason the ship’s hyperdrive fails And why Palpatine knows they are on Tatooine. they even show Jar Jar tinkering in the control room right before the Hyperdrive fails. He is the cause of the hyper drive failure. Its shown in the movie. . As you say, there was no communication. The “Jar jar is a sith” argument would explain why Palpatine knew they were on Tatooine and why Darth Maul was there to kill the jedi. HE sabotaged the ship. HE introduced the team to Anakin. He even got Amidala to come with them. And if he had force powers HE could have told Palpatine about their location through force telepathy. You think it went from Palpatine. What if it went TO palatine. From Jar Jar.
Well why haven’t he picked Anakin for himself if he knew he was on Tatooine all the time.
Lucas knew what he was doing. I’m not sure those now in control do, however. The Force Awakens lacks depth. It can be dug out the whole it left, so there is still hope…