PT Nubian Royal Starship

Does anyone else think that Amidala's Royal Starship should have been the PT's "Falcon?"


By that, I mean the signature ship that serves as a sort of 'home base' for our characters.


The starship was one of the coolest looking designs and ships in the entire saga, imo. It's sleek design and luxurious setting were the perfect opposite to the Falcon's roughness and grittiness. Whereas the crew in the CT had a hunk 'a junk, the heroes of the PT would have had the finest ship in the galaxy. It could have held a metaphorical meaning and been a great contrast between the times.


And it would have given the audience a sense of familiarity between the different PT episodes the same way that the MF did in the CT or the Enterprise does for Trek. I've always thought not using the J-type 327 was a missed opportunity in the PT. What a cool ship....wish we could have seen more instead of the new and other Nubian royal vessels.






Anyone else agree?

 

It lacks the character of the Falcon, mainly because of the way it is portrayed. Simply replacing the Nubian yatch and Star Skiff wouldn't really add anything that isn't already there.

The Falcon was a key part of getting the audience to feel a part of the universe in the OT. The reason it is so fondly remembered isn't purely because it was in all three OT episodes, but because of how it was in all three OT episodes.

In ANH we learn that the Falcon is basically Han Solo's personal car - it looks like a pile of crap, but he loves it and is proud of it. A lot of people can relate to this feeling on a personal level. We've all built something that we've been immensely proud of that from a more objective point of view looked fairly rubbish.

TESB took this further by having the Falcon failing for the entire film and Han Solo frantically trying to put it back together - this really got across to the audience that it was a DIY project for Han, and basically everyone has at some point trying to DIY something and had it fall apart in their hands over and over.

The Falcon didn't feature as much in ROTJ in this way although we do get that lovely lending your car to someone for the first time nervousness from Han when he's speaking to Lando in the hangar.

Throughout the OT the way the Falcon is played shows that it is basically Han (and Chewie's) love for their beat up old car - something that the audience could relate to on several levels. If you leave the rest of the PT as is and simply put the Royal Naboo starship into AOTC and ROTS it wouldn't really add anything, mainly because the films aren't written in a way that allows this story element.

(As an aside I will say that it was also fairly obvious in universe that the ships that Padme subsequently flies in AOTC and ROTS are very obviously from the same manufacturer as the TPM ship)

 

Yeah, the various Naboo starships were used to represent the galaxy in a state of flux. In Episode I, you have a sleek, elegant starship which ferries the heroes around at a point when the galaxy is relatively prosperous and conducive to the pursuit of engineering as art.

In Episode II, we're confronted with a ship from the same mold right from the beginning, but it's immediately destroyed in an act of monetarily-induced terrorism, signifying that we're entering into a brave new world where individuality doesn't count for much (cue the assembly line produced, vat-grown clones right out of an Aldous Huxley novel). This ship is subsequently replaced by a pleasure yacht, which is soon swallowed up, literally and metaphorically, by the horrors of war.

In Episode III, the only Naboo ship we see has been outfitted with dirty, over-sized engines, a concession to the industrialized, "evolving" nature of the universe as embodied by the increasingly utilitarian Republic/Empire.

This progression is all clearly intentional, as is the subversion of the trope of the familiar-starship-as-home-base. I'd say it's undeniable that this tack was either inscrutable or simply failed to resonate with a majority of moviegoers, so its merit is still up to debate. But I appreciated it. In my view, it was one of the benefits of having a filmmaker who, compared to most blockbuster directors, didn't very much care whether the general public grasped every subtle nuance of his movies, so long as they were there and were satisfying to him.

 

I wish the one from TPM had been used throughout the PT, not changing it every movie

 

While I love the design of the Naboo Cruiser used at the beginning of AOTC, in hindsight I kind of wish the familiar Royal Starship from TPM had made a return, piloted by Ric Olié.
This would have given us two familiar elements from the previous film, blown to smithereens in a terrorist attack, thus creating an even bigger emotional impact. From then on Padmé could have used the Naboo Yacht from ROTS. I really do love all Nubian designs, though. They just have that elegant retro sic-fi look to them.

 

It served that role in TPM, but even if they had used it in AotC and RotS, it wouldn't be the Falcon's equivalent because the story in the movies isn't structured in a way that requires a "home" ship.

 

There was a very similar thread a few month ago.
In short: No, I don't think the Nubian should have been the PT's "Falcon".

Alexrd has already mentionied that the PT is not structered around a "home ship". In the OT, the Falcon is the save place for the Heroes. When they're inside, they're invulnerable. It's even possible for the Heroes to enter the Death Star (and not get detected inside) or Space Slugs (and be able to escape) with that ship.
In the PT, on the other hand, there is no save place for the characters. The Galaxy is headed for doom. There is no magical place that solves all the problems for them. If anything, the Senate could be considered a perversion of the Falcon: it's a save place for Palpatine, who hides as a wolf in a sheep's clothing.

For me, personally, the biggest difference between OT and PT has always been the Planet/Space ratio, not the effects, characters or something else. There are many, many scene in space in the OT. The PT, however, takes place mostly on planets. There are very few space scenes. So consequently, star ships are a lot less imporant and planets are designed to be in the forefront. In that regard, I think the Prequels succeeded magnificently. I don't think there is any (relatively important) planet in the Trilogy that doesn't offer wonderful symbolism. Tatooine (bleakness, lack of prospects etc.), Naboo (invaded paradise, place of seduction etc.), Kamino (a strom breaks loose, source of life etc.), Geonosis (origin of war at the other side of the Galaxy, clash of contrasts etc.), Corusant (decadent, overblown, self-pleased society etc.) , Mustafar (hell etc.)...

 

Good post, but I'd add that the main symbolic resonance of Geonosis lies in the fact that the first engagement of a galactic war starts in a gladiatorial arena built to stage manufactured battles for the entertainment of a crowd of bloodthirsty drones. That's the Clone Wars in a nutshell, of course.

I know that's basically what you meant, but I wanted to point out the specifics because it's one of my favorite parts of the plotting of the Clone Wars.

 

i love that ship. it's like a chrome SR-71

 

Forgot to mention, but even in RotJ, the Imperial Shuttle fills the Falcon role more than the Falcon itself.

 

If anywhere, Coruscant would be like the "home base" for the PT. The protagonists' goal in TPM is to reach Coruscant before having to make an emergency landing on Tat, and AOTC both begins and ends on Coruscant. I think it's fair to say that most of ROTS takes place on Coruscant too

Interestingly, I like how ROTS starts in space over what the PT's "home base" is, as if being far from home, with it just within view, reflecting the dark, yet oddly nostalgic feeling of ROTS

 

Correct. The reasons for the change also exist. The Queen's ship is basically that, just like Air Force One is the President's plane. The senator ship and the two personal ships were just that. The Falcon is a lot like Eagle 5.



A personal ship that becomes a safe haven and home.

 

Good observations. Though it's interesting to ponder how this ties in with the fact that Coruscant is visually reminiscent of the Death Star, both from space and on the surface.

 

Considering that it's more or less the capital of the Empire and quite often associated with Palpatine, I'm not particularly surprised

 

I LOVE that ship but always thought the name was odd considering the questionable name...

Nubia is a region along the Nile river, which is located in northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
There were a number of large Nubian kingdoms throughout the Postclassical Era, the last of which collapsed in 1504, when Nubia became divided between Egypt and the Sennar sultanate resulting in the Arabization of much of the Nubian population. Nubia was again united within Ottoman Egypt in the 19th century, and within Anglo-Egyptian Sudan from 1899 to 1956.
The name Nubia is derived from that of the Noba people, nomads who settled the area in the 4th century, with the collapse of the kingdom of Meroë. The Noba spoke a Nilo-Saharan language, ancestral to Old Nubian. Old Nubian was mostly used in religious texts dating from the 8th and 15th centuries AD. Before the 4th century, and throughout classical antiquity, Nubia was known as Kush, or, in Classical Greek usage, included under the name Ethiopia (Aithiopia).
Historically, the people of Nubia spoke at least two varieties of the Nubian language group, a subfamily which includes Nobiin (the descendant of Old Nubian), Kenuzi-Dongola, Midob and several related varieties in the northern part of the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan. A variety Birgid was spoken (at least until 1970) north of Nyala in Darfur but is now extinct.

 

I really appreciate all the insightful comments. This thread contains a good deal of thoughtful analysis. Good to know other fans really like the royal ship from TPM too and agreed it should have been the flagship of the PT.


Just a few things though...to those who are saying the structure of the PT didn't lend itself well to having a flagship vessel like the CT, well, there's an implied criticism in the OP of the PT's narrative structure.


One of the problems of the PT and why it was received relatively poorly was because there's not a signature ship ---an important symbolic piece of familiarity for audiences ---that connects the different films together. There was way too much planet-based narrative in this space opera.


But even if the PT didn't change a bit, it would have been easy to substitute TPM's Royal Starship into one of other films instead of using the yacht or the skiff. They're forgettable rip-offs of the original we see in TPM. Go to an image search engine and type in "Amidala's starship" or even the much-more-generic "royal starship" and you'll get a host of pics about TPM ship.


It was an awesome design based on the SR-71 (as others have mentioned) that could have carried weight throughout the trilogy. It was the ship that stuck in the public's mind despite only being in one film, and, with more screen time could have been on par with the MF for the generation of people who grew up with the PT.


It's the Darth Maul of spaceships.


As for GL using new metallic look-alike-but-different ships as symbolic references for a changing galaxy, I don't buy it. If anything, given the history of the franchise, new ships were introduced on-screen because they could be profitable for the franchise in other merchandising areas.


But even if there was some deep-minded symbolism occurring with different Nubian vessels, it was a mistake. If that's the case, a handful of people understood and millions forgot what they just saw because the ship they were looking at wasn't nearly as good as the one from TPM. Not using it throughout the PT was a missed opportunity.

 

True, but then why would it also be the home of the Jedi Council?

Shouldn't the Jedi be headquartered on a world more like Dagobah? A natural world as far from the Palps-friendly city sludge (Death Star, Coruscant) as possible?

A different thread, for sure...but interesting.

GL should have really thought through the PT as a cohesive story before ever filming TPM.


The more I reflect on the PT, it's unfair to blame the PT's downfall on Episode I, which was basically a prologue. Elements for greatness were in TPM. The ball was dropped in AOTC.

 

Twain the whole point of the Jedi in the PT being similar in a manner to Palpatine and even the Empire is intentional to show exactly HOW the order fell, how they became the way they were in the OT

 

I do think that Anakin, Obi-Wan and R2-D2 should have a starship. That the three of them would travel in seperate starfighters with the occasional extra droid to even the load bothers me.

 

What's wrong with the PT narrative structure?

What?! Since when? Is there any source for that?

The characters connect the films, not a ship.

So?

That's a matter of opinion.

A mistake implies lack of intention, but that's not the case. All I can surmise from your comment is that you wanted a ship to appear throughout the movies and that didn't happen. But that doesn't affect the quality of the movies and their reception nor does the absence of the ship make it a mistake.

 

I don't think the lack of a signature ship is that high up on the totem pole for people's issues with the PT.

There is a point of ships evolving during the PT. The Jedi Fighters in AOTC are triangular and small, without a hyperdrive. Then in ROTS, they're starting to turn into TIE Fighters. We see more and more ships that have that used look like the Falcon and the Tantive did. But we're also seeing a much wider universe. The Falcon and the X-Wing were consistent because it was a time of war. A smuggler's ship and a signature weapon of the Alliance. They represented who their owners were. The royal and senatorial ships from Naboo come from times of peace. Hence they're chrome and not really equipped with a complex weapons system and they don't have the kind of velocity that an old smuggler's ship that could go .5 past lightspeed did. Likewise for the Jedi in TPM, the hitching rides via Republic cruisers was to represent their simplistic lifestyle. There was no war going on and the Jedi could travel at their leisure and weren't in a rush to go somewhere else. In AOTC, tensions are high in the Republic and so the Jedi began using ships that could be utilized in combat situations, as well as moving from system to system much faster.

The Alliance, being mobile as we saw, needed to consolidate their ships. They went from Dantooine, to Yavin 4, to Hoth and to Sullest before going to Endor. The Republic during the PT was different. There was a stationed base for the Jedi and for Padme, who either stayed mainly on Naboo or on Coruscant, wasn't needing to travel as often. In fact, AOTC is the most she does travel.

The Jedi Temple was on Coruscant because for a thousand generations, the Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice in the Republic. That was the seat of the galactic government and the Jedi chose to be there, during a time when the Republic wasn't corrupted and run by a Sith Lord. And during the time period when that was going on, they didn't know that Palpatine was evil until ROTS.

 

I've heard people complain about the Queen's ship in Episode I for being too "shiny." I guess they would rather that the queen of an entire planet hop around the galaxy in a beat-up old jalopy like the Falcon, because that's the way the OT did it, and if it's not like the OT, it's not Star Wars.

Anyway, the point is, your complaint is that the cool design from TPM wasn't carried over to the other movies. But there are probably just as many people who hated the original TPM ship and didn't want to see any more like it, period. So it's not like you're expressing some largely agreed-upon consensus. There are a million different disappointed fans with a million different ideas about what the prequels should have been like, and none of them can seem to agree on anything. They all know the prequels were deficient in some way, and they all know the one simple, obvious, cure-all fix for everything that was staring dumb ol' George right in the face yet somehow eluded him. And it's always something different. Oftentimes it's something that's mutually exclusive with--or the complete diametric opposite of--the last proffered solution.

All I can say is, I'm glad these movies weren't written by committee.

 

Well, not so much the Falcon. More like the Tantive IV which ferried about the House of Organa, a royal family on Alderaan.

 

It's a great shop for sure


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It doesn't really have much character. It's just a shiny round ship. What the prequel trilogy needed was a ship with a design as iconic as the Millennium Falcon or Slave I.