Swank’s Rebuttal to the 70 Minute Phantom Menace Review – Part 6 (of 7)

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We’re coming to a close on the rebuttal of the 7 part Phantom Menace “review” from Red Letter Media, but after this we still have one part left.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been asked by a mass of fans of the prequels to rebut the Red Letter Media Review which, though humorous and tongue in cheek, has been a rallying cry for prequel bashers, even though most of the arguments in the video are pretty thin.   I’ve been asked repeatedly to come up with logical responses to it and have been doing so on a semi-regular basis.  Click the links to read Part OnePart Two,  Part ThreePart Four, and Part Five of my rebuttal.  To watch the original review,” target=”_blank”> click here.

Part Six

Part Six deals a lot with the ending, and Plinkett starts right off with saying, “The Jedi go back to Naboo for no reason, and they bring Anakin to a war zone for no reason.”  I can only assume that Plinkett fell asleep during every single scene that takes place in the Jedi Council chamber, because the reasons they went AND took Anakin were pretty clear.

As far as why they went, they basically have no clue who or what Darth Maul is or what he’s after.  Qui-Gon’s best guess (which was accurate) was that he was out to kill the Queen.  With the Queen heading back to Naboo to widen the conflict, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are tasked with continuing their protection of her in hopes that they may draw out this mysterious warrior.  That’s a pretty solid reason and it was in the movie, despite anyone’s attempts to tell you otherwise.

As for why they brought Anakin, the council forbade his training.  He’s essentially an orphan and Qui-Gon has taken it upon himself to take care of the boy.  Somehow, I doubt that he could have just left him in a day care.

The next issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a blockade on Naboo when the Jedi and the Queen come back, but why would you need to blockade a planet that you’ve entirely subjugated?  It seems ridiculous that the Trade Federation would waste all of those resources maintaining a blockade of a planet they have control of.

The Queen’s Plan

Plinkett does a really good job of belittling the Queen’s plan without actually thinking things through here.  His big problem is that they could have skipped the Gungan battle and the capturing of the Viceroy if they had focused their efforts on destroying the droid control ship.  What he fails to mention and realize is that they don’t have any ships.  They need to draw the droids out of Theed with the Gungan army to sneak the pilots in so they can actually accomplish that task.  Then, they need to capture the Viceroy, not so the droids will be lost and confused, but the Trade Federation, and those controlling the droids.  It’s really clear in the film that if they don’t capture the Viceroy and he escapes, he’ll be able to return with more droids and the problem will start all over.  The plan makes perfect sense and fits the story here, I really don’t see how it can be argued with.

There also seems to be an issue with the fact that the Trade Federation (who has zero military experience) would send their army to meet the Gungans, but they say in the film they don’t want the battle to take place in or near the city.  Nute Gunray is a coward and wants the fighting to take place as far away from himself as possible.  And how it will work to Palpatine’s advantage is that the Queen and the Jedi can be killed in the name of the conflict and no one would think twice into investigating it.

As far as the problems the reviewer has with Anakin accidentally starting up the ship to help the Queen escape the hangar bay, he doesn’t really have an argument against it other than he doesn’t like it.  I happen to think it’s great fun and I like it quite a bit.  I think this one is a personal taste issue.  And I don’t need to get into all the metaphysical force, and midi-chlorians and “Nothing happens by accident” debate.

“If the Sith have been extinct for a millenium, and only Jedi carry lightsabers why are they so good at sword fighting?” Aside from the fact that they’re guided by the force?  Well, because they train.  They have lots and lots of training to do that.  I’m sure they spar with their masters.  But we never see Luke train to sword fight his either, but no one ever questions why he can do it so well…

Plinket then goes on to complain about how the Jedi can run really fast at the beginning of the film, but can’t by the end.  And I hate to use a video game analogy here, but have you ever played a Star Wars game with force powers?  There’s a point where you can get winded and need to lay off the force powers for a minute until you can use them again.  Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are in a heated battle for a long time and Obi-Wan actually just used the force to brace his fall from 5 stories high, and then used the force to leap back up and race back into the battle.  Maybe he’s winded…  But the larger point is that it was visually and dramatically interesting to separate each of the combatants up by the energy shields and it worked for the story, too.

“If the order is to wipe them all out, why are the droids taking prisoners?”  I think we can assume based on the context of that conversation that Palpatine meant the royal retinue and the Jedi, not the Gungans.

I can’t even believe that the next argument brought up in this video is that the lightsaber battle at the end of Phantom Menace is too good.  Here we have well trained and seasoned Jedi and Sith fighting on screen for the first time after only seeing half-machines and boys playing Jedi fight, and the only argument you hear is “it looks too good”?  It makes perfect sense why the fighting in this era would be much more graceful and athletic than in any spot in Return of the Jedi.

I can’t argue with the fact that there was much more at stake during the lightsaber duels during the classic trilogy than Phantom Menace, but Phantom Menace is a careful building block that shades and enhances those moments later on in the saga.  Phantom Menace also provides an excellent contrast in the galaxy, how good and rich things were and how run down and hopeless they had become under the thumb of the Empire.  If Phantom Menace hadn’t been so bright and relatively cheery, the entire saga would seem monotone, we needed the levity of this film to offset the others and show us what was truly being lost in the Galaxy.

The better the good times, by contrast, the worse the bad.  Phantom Menace illustrates this point to a tee in the Star Wars saga, and it’s a little disheartening how so few people seem to recognize that.

I’ll be back soon with Part 7, but be sure to come back tomorrow, May 19th, on Prequel Appreciation Day.  It’s the 11th anniversary of Phantom Menace and we’ll be giving away a 2gb Obi-Wan Kenobi Mimo-Bot Flash Drive.