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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

PT Plot Holes and Inconsistencies in the Prequel Trilogy

Discussion in 'Prequel Trilogy' started by janstett, Sep 13, 2011.

  1. Slicer87

    Slicer87 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 18, 2013
    I always thought the TF landing ships were landing all over Naboo and seized many different cities at once. That Qui and Obi had the bad luck to be on ships that landed on the wrong side of Naboo.
     
  2. Darth Downunder

    Darth Downunder Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 5, 2001
    The Naboo don't seem to be some sprawling civilization throughout the planet. Otherwise Qui-Gon could've gone to a far closer city to warn them. They had to go through the core of the planet to the other side to get to them. The TF didn't consider the stories of underwater natives a threat. So again, why land all of those troop transports on the opposite side? Just there to have a battle at the end of the movie I guess.

    Reasonable answers about them stowing separately though.
    But if there are Naboo cities everywhere, how is there a "wrong side"? If you want to warn the US government you don't have to go to Washington DC. You can visit a government office in LA if that's closer.
     
  3. Torib

    Torib Jedi Master star 2

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    Jan 27, 2016
    Landing in an uninhabited swamp area makes sense as it lowers the risk of transports coming under fire or being shot down as they land. They can't assume the Naboo won't offer resistance. Losing even a single transport would be an unacceptable (and unnecessary) loss since each seems to carry dozens of tanks and armored transports and probably thousands of droids. Kinda like how in WWII the allies would only land the large LSTs--those big transports that carried tanks and large numbers of soldiers--on beaches that were safely under control. It's safe to say though that the ones we see landing in the swamp are a different group than the ones who we see drive into the capital--presumably there were multiple staging areas. The group in the swamp must have had some objective in that area of the planet--perhaps a city to capture or some other facility such as a communications center or a power station or something of that sort.
     
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  4. Slicer87

    Slicer87 Jedi Master star 4

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    Mar 18, 2013
    That is what they did try by going to Otah Gunga. The Jedi likely didn't know exactly where they landed and they did not have transports. However, than did find a local who take them to a closest settlement which did not work out as well as they hoped. A better comparison would be you want to warn the US government, but you are stuck in Australia who are not too willing to help you to warn them. They only reluctantly give you a boat to get to the US just to be rid of you.

    Spliting up makes perfect sense as it reduces the likelyhood both would be captured. Only one needs to make it to the Naboo. Both avoiding capture and reuniting are bonuses.
     
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  5. Darth Downunder

    Darth Downunder Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 5, 2001
    That's fine but doesn't explain why the TF are landing huge ground vehicles on the opposite side of the planet to the Naboo. In your example, why are the US landing ground forces in Australia when they're about to invade Iraq?
     
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  6. Torib

    Torib Jedi Master star 2

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    Jan 27, 2016
    A better analogy would be why did the allies land in Casablanca and Algiers first rather than Tunis itself in order to take Tunisia from the Nazis? The answer in both cases is that it's less risky to land unopposed and establish yourself first rather than going immediately for the main prize (Wikipedia tells me that Eisenhower did in fact consider more aggressive landing sites but ultimately rejected them due to the greater risk they posed). As for why the federation is on that side of the plqnet at all, there could easily be smaller cities distributed around the planet, or if not, it's certainly possible that there could be other facilities such as communication centers or power plants on that side of the globe that the federation might have marked as important strategic sites to capture.
     
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  7. Darth Downunder

    Darth Downunder Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 5, 2001
    Not an appropriate comparison bcs those places are all in the same region of the world. Not on the opposite side of the planet.
    If there were closer Naboo cities Qui-Gon could've traveled there to warn the Naboo. Power plants etc is interesting speculation. Can't see why they'd need huge numbers of troops though. They're used for occupation. To take out communication facilities you just need land assault vehicles or you threaten/destroy those facilities from the air or from orbit.
     
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  8. Torib

    Torib Jedi Master star 2

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    Jan 27, 2016
    Maybe they want these hypothetical facilities intact. The troops are there because they don't know how much resistance to expect. Yes, it's overkill, but the entire invasion is overkill anyway, as it turns out. The droid army that took the capital probably did land in that vicinity, and not in the area where the two Jedi ended up. We can judge this pretty easily because of the timing. All the invasion ships appear to land at the same time. The armored transports typically go probably not much more than 30 mph on average. We see them arrive in the capital and secure it before the Jedi get there. So the question is how long were the Jedi occupied with finding the gunans and then travelling in the submarine? I doubt it's more than twelve hours or so based on how the movie presents things. So with those numbers the federation army could have landed as much as 360 miles away from the capital and still gotten there in time--a fair distance but not the other side of the planet.

    Of course something about this still doesn't quite add up. We see how fast the submersible goes, and while it's not slow, it's also not particularly speedy, certainly not fast enough to travel the diameter of a planet, thousands of miles, in twelve or so hours. But it seems pretty clear they didn't spend a week or something down there. So that doesn't really make sense. Of course Star Wars shouldn't really be taken this literally. They're created as movies, not as real-time clockwork simulations of a made-up universe.

    But if I did have to reconcile this discrepancy, I would suggest that planets in Star Wars are far smaller than planets are in the real universe. After all, each planet in Star Wars only has one ecosystem anyway. That doesn't really make sense either, if they're the size of earth. But if you think of a planet in Star Wars as representing the size of a region of earth, everything kind of makes more intuitive sense--the distances involved, the travel times, the likelihood of certain people bumping into other--that's roughly the order of magnitude we're used to functioning in in our own lives, and so it intuitively "makes sense" in the same way that spaceships flying like airplanes also make sense even though in both cases they're not actually realistic representations of our universe.
     
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  9. Darth Downunder

    Darth Downunder Chosen One star 6

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    Aug 5, 2001
    Well we're left to make these things up. The movie implies that the Naboo are on the opposite side of the planet. No obvious reason for the TF to land ground troops & vehicles on the other side of Naboo. Seems to be just for story reasons that suited the movie.
    Personally I give all time & travel issues a pass. Dramatic convenience.
    On the contrary, what seems to be far more common are the SW style one ecosystem planets, regardless of size. Look at our system: Mercury (all rock), Venus (roughly the size of Earth & all desert & mountains), Mars (mostly desert), then there are the larger all gas & all ice planets. Earth-like planets with such varied environments are likely to be far rarer. Naboo seems to have some environmental variety, & we didn't see all areas of alot of other worlds in SW. Could be more variety than we assume.
     
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  10. Slicer87

    Slicer87 Jedi Master star 4

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    Mar 18, 2013

    It is more like the US is landing troops both at Iraq and Australia to seize both. Of course we don't know if they are on the complete opposite side from Threed or just very far from it. Plus as I said before, the Jedi likely don't know where they landed on Naboo, they are lost and don't know where the closest Naboo city would be. But they met a local who did take them to the closet city which wasn't too helpful.

    Otah Gunga may have been closer than the nearest Naboo city, as the TF did not know about the Gungans at first. They heard of rumored underwater cities after the Naboo were captured. JJ mentioned there were signs of fighting in Otah Gunga when the queen returned to Naboo.
     
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  11. Darth Downunder

    Darth Downunder Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 5, 2001
    The implication is there's no closer Naboo city. Or surely the Gungans would've said so & not had the Jedi travel to the other side of the planet. So if the TF didn't know/care about the Gungans & there's no Naboo city over that side what were they doing there with ground troops & vehicles?
     
  12. Lulu Mars

    Lulu Mars Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 10, 2005
    You forget what the opening scroll says: "the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo".

    ;)
     
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  13. gezvader28

    gezvader28 Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Mar 22, 2003
    Darth Downunder
    never heard of hyperspace signatures , but if they exist then Kenobi would know and his hyperspace ring wouldn't just remain in the same position for that very reason .

    plus Kenobi won't be stranded , the Kaminos have ships , Fett knows that .

    .
     
  14. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    In TESB it's possible to detect the Imperial fleet dropping out of hyperspace - since they're a little too close.

    But the energy flare from several enormous battleships is bound to be vastly bigger than that from a single small fighter - and just because the drop-out generates detectable energy, doesn't mean that the engine will continue to radiate this energy nonstop, in realspace.

    Indeed, Vader's plan relies on his ships being undetectable if they drop out far enough away and approach at sublight velocities. Suggesting that even Star Destroyer engines, in realspace, can somehow be stealthy. A stationary fighter engine is bound to be more so.
     
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  15. Pyrogenic

    Pyrogenic Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 17, 2006
    "Plot holes and inconsistencies in the fanboy fandom."
     
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  16. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Force Ghost star 5

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    Jul 20, 2005
    A hole is just a gap in one's knowledge of the plot.
     
  17. darth-sinister

    darth-sinister Manager Emeritus star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 28, 2001
    No, but they're still a ways off from where they intended to strike.

    Qui-gon and Obi-wan would have gone to those cities and settlements, but they ran into Jar Jar and sought out his help first.


    They need those large troops because they are more cities and settlements on Naboo.

    No, there is no implication of that.

    OBI-WAN: "What’s this?"

    QUI-GON: "A local. Let’s go, before more of those droids show up."

    JAR JAR: "Mure? Mure did you spake??!? Ex-squeeze-me, but da moto grande safe place would be Otoh Gunga. Tis where I grew up… Tis safe city."

    QUI-GON: "A city! Can you take us there?"

    JAR JAR: "Ahhh, will… on second taut… no, not willy."

    QUI-GON: "No??!"

    JAR JAR: "Iss embarrissing, boot… My afrai my’ve bean banished. My forgoten der Bosses would do terrible tings to my. Terrible tings if my goen back dare."

    Qui-gon decides to take advantage of Jar Jar's offer to go to Otoh Gunga, rather than seek out a settlement. He never breaks out a GPS locator to determine where they are. Also, cut from the film is this bit.

    RUNE: "…and there is no trace of the Jedi. They may have gotten onto one of your landing craft."

    OOM-9: "If they are down here, sir, we’ll find them. We are moving out of the swamp and are marching on the city of Oxon. There is no resistance."

    NUTE: "Excellent."

    Hence if they didn't go with Jar Jar, the Jedi would have gone to Oxon, a spaceport city. But they'd be too late if they had. Instead, going to Otoh Gunga gets them to a transport which they use to get to Theed.
     
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  18. Moon Labutto

    Moon Labutto Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Mar 29, 2016
    So...I'm watching the phantom menace and its right after the pod race before they encounter Maul. After Anakin is freed, he sells his pod for a ton of moolah...Watto already stated that a pod is worth one slave...Anakin after finding out that he is freed complains that his mother is still a slave...Watto lost a ton of money in his bet on Sebulba and is probably pretty strapped for cash...Watto owns Anakin's mother...Anakin had money from selling his pod, enough for at least one slave...Why doesn't Anakin buy his mother and free her????? Only reason I can think of is that it defeats the story line...only it doesn't. Shmi can still stay on Tatooine, marry Lars, and get killed by the sand people which would have kept the story relatively the same. I know that since this would not change the story it may not be relevant or important, however I wonder more is this sloppy story telling or is this an indication of greed on the side of Anakin that no one noticed???
     
  19. Qui-Riv-Brid

    Qui-Riv-Brid Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 18, 2013
    If Qui-Gon could have freed Shmi from Watto he would have done it.

    He obviously wasn't able to and so Watto was hanging onto Shmi until he did want to sell her.

    Simple as that.
     
  20. Moon Labutto

    Moon Labutto Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Mar 29, 2016
    I guess what I thought was a stroke of brilliance was just a stroke....:(
     
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  21. The_Phantom_Calamari

    The_Phantom_Calamari Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 10, 2011
    I don't think the pod really was worth even one slave. Watto didn't think he'd ever lose that bet, so he was willing to make it even though it was a bad one. But he still had enough sense to not want to risk losing both slaves, even on a seemingly sure thing.
     
  22. icqfreak

    icqfreak Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 7, 1999
    Even if the pod was worth several slaves at this point because of winning, I could see Watto not wanting to give up Shmi out of spite.
     
  23. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    In the TPM novel - a point is made of how Qui-Gon, immediately after the race, sells the Pod (to Sebulba) - gives the money to Anakin.

    Qui-Gon put his hand on Anakin's shoulder and steered him away from the crowd, not saying anything until they were out of hearing.
    "You know, Annie," he said then, his deep voice thoughtful, "fighting didn't change his opinion. The opinions of others, whether you agree with them or not, are something you have to learn to tolerate."
    He walked the boy back toward his home, counseling him quietly about the way life worked, hand resting on his shoulder in a way that made Anakin feel comforted. As they neared the boy's home, the Jedi reached beneath his poncho and produced a leather pouch filled with credits.
    "These are yours," he announced. "I sold the Pod." He pursed his lips. "To a particularly surly and rather insistent Dug."

    But it's also later mentioned to be "not nearly enough". Presumably Watto has put Shmi's price up ludicrously high.
     
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  24. Darth Downunder

    Darth Downunder Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 5, 2001
    No, you're spot on. That's a very good observation. This is a plot hole or a silly plot contrivance, depending on your definition. It's been discussed before so I'll just paste my thoughts on it:

    It's clearly shown that Watto wasn't too bothered about losing Shmi. Which is why it's nuts that Qui-Gon couldn't secure her freedom. After the race Watto was broke & he'd lost Anakin. What further use was Shmi? Qui-Gon told Anakin "Watto wouldn't allow it". Please, he said earlier that two slaves were worth more than one pod but he was actually quite willing to bet just Shmi alone. Instead QG & Watto bet the pod only for Anakin's feedom. To be clear, Watto only gets the pod if Anakin loses. But then Anakin won the race. So QG had freed Anakin due to the bet & still owned the amazingly fast podracer to trade to Watto for Shmi. Watto seemed very keen to do that trade. He tried to use a loaded chance cube to make sure he risked Shmi for the pod. & that was before Watto knew how fast it was. So after the race why wouldn't Watto swap the old lady who can't race pods or fix anything or do anything especially profitable, for the now champion winning pod? Then sell it for big $$, or find a new pilot & enter it in future races to make cash? He could team up with Sebulba who needs a new pod.

    Instead of that Anakin says they sold the pod. He runs in & tells his mother "look at all the money we've got" from the sale. So why not offer that money to Watto for Shmi? Watto had just said he'd lost everything. He's now dirt poor & he's going to keep Shmi instead of pocketing a pile of cash?? They could also add all kinds of valuables from the royal Naboo ship! Instead we're expected to believe that a poor Watto is going to ignore all of that cash & profit so he can play house with Shmi. Lucas didn't think that scenario through very clearly.

    As an extra bonus I'll thrown in another problem with the whole Qui-Gon/Watto betting scenario. Which is full of holes & problems. Watto already had the initial bet in place. So why does he agree to the ridiculous second bet involving one of his slaves & Qui-Gon's pod? Here's where it's nonsense. The second bet proposed is this: if Anakin wins Watto loses one of his slaves. Which to him will be Shmi (assuming he tried to use loaded dice). Bad result for him. In this bet only if Anakin loses does he win the pod. So, he only wins the pod in a scenario where that pod is unsuccessful in the race! So he's risking a slave in the hope of maybe winning a second rate losing pod. Add to that the fact that Anakin had just crashed Watto's last pod in the previous race due to Sebulba's antics. Which Watto would know could & probably would happen again. Bcs they're Sebulba's standard tactics. So: Watto gets nothing if it's a fast & successful pod. In fact he loses a slave. He only wins the pod if it's unsuccessful, which also likely means it's been sabotaged by Sebulba & has crashed or been damaged! Worst bet ever.
     
  25. Qui-Riv-Brid

    Qui-Riv-Brid Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 18, 2013
    There is absolutely no reason to believe that he didn't anymore than he thought through all kinds of other things that went on in all the movies. So from the Kessel run to the escape on the Death Star to the positioning of the Death Star going around Yavin he had all sorts of explanations but he simply didn't spend pages of dialogue explaining them.

    What about the massive "plot hole" in ANH where Obi-Wan doesn't have a starfighter ready to go if he needed to get Luke away from Tatooine? Why does he need to hire a ship? He doesn't know anyone or have any access to a ship nevermind his own hidden somewhere? Going to Mos Eisley with the droids was massively stupid. Cutting down people with a Lightsaber was massively stupid.

    That is if you want it to be. Leia going to Tatooine at all especially in the light of R1 makes no sense at all. The plans are more important than stopping to get Obi-Wan being noticed and tracked down by the Empire.

    Characters makes decisions and we are not given their direct though process on every matter and detail.

    So we're left with the very basics. Did Qui-Gon want to free Shmi as well as Anakin? Yes.

    Was he able to? No.

    Therefore for reasons we are not explicitly told Watto did not want to sell Shmi to Qui-Gon or they didn't have the resources to do so. They had nothing of any real value before and the bet was to get the parts they needed and the side-bet was for Anakin. The sale of the pod was clearly not enough to buy Shmi from Watto or they would have done so. They had nothing else as before.

    Qui-Gon would have loved to get Shmi not just for her freedom but because he knew that Anakin might not leave and only did because Shmi was able to let go and get Anakin to as well.