Qui-Gon ruined TPM!

"No, but with his thousands of midichlorians constantly telling him the Will of the Force, does he really need jedi training in how to manipulate it before he can follow it?"

Yes.

He needs it in order for him to have the force guide him to where he can shoot the torpedoes just as Luke needs it so he would know when he's getting closer to the exhaust port on the Death Star so he can fire the torpedoes and KABOOM....1 Death Star blown to spacedust.

"It's still Qui-Gon lying to Watto though."

But it was NOT his idea to lie to Watto about the pod. How can anyone possibly be a liar when they haven't develop a lie by themselves and then have somebody else do it?

 

So, he KNOWINGLY lies, but he's not a liar because he's "just passing it along"? If you don't create the lie, but knowingly pass it along, you are still a liar IMO.

 

Liar or no liar, Qui Gon takes away too much screentime and left Obi Wan with nothing to do! So sayeth me!

 

Obi-wan has 4 freaking movies to do everything while Qui-Gon only has 1.

Why still complain about his screentime?

 

I actually liked QGJ's Byronic characteristics. Made him more sympathetic and believable, IMO.

 

"Why complain about his screetime"?

Because a lot of people feel that TPM was a golden opportunity to expand on Obi-Wan's character and add characterization and establish their friendship early on. Why introduce a new character that doesn't appear in the "final" 3 films, when you already have one that could easily handle the same job and more cohesively tie the two trilogy's together?

 

There is no way Qui-Gon ruined The Phantom Menace, without the help of Qui, star wars wouldn't even exist and i wouldn't even be here,

 

How cool was he? A Jedi who not only gambles, but cheats at gambling, tells the Council to f__ off, dares to land on a Hutt planet alone, tells his own apprentice to shut the f___ up if he's getting uppitty, has no fear, is supremely confident, and he has a green lightsaber.

Obi-Wan was underused, Jar Jar was a waste of space, Padme was stiff as a 2x4, Anakin was good, Sebulba and Watto were funny and cool without being annoying and dorkish "Oh no!!!!" , Palpatine was good, Nute Gunray was a riot, Valorum was convincing, Panaka was a panaka (it means dork in Portugese), Shmi was good, and Darth Maul was tragically underused, almost a throw-away.

The light saber battle between him and Obi is something I've watched about 40 times. Like the fight scenes in the Matrix, it is a great piece of action.

But Qui-Gon was the only real, full-fledged character in the movie.

-- tai

 

Exactly, Qui-Gon is awesome, and another cool thing about him is that he's not a big showoff like jumping out of windows and he doesen't yack about all the "i sense this, crap, i sense this, crap, too." He's simple and get's the job done.

 

without the help of Qui, star wars wouldn't even exist and i wouldn't even be here,

"Star Wars" was released in 1977 and included a cast of essentially 7 main characters...Qui-Gon was NOT one of them. Qui-Gon would not "be here" if it wasn't for Star Wars and the success of the original trilogy, of which he played no part in!

 

Dude, Episode 1 is the first epiosode, man. Without the help of Qui-Gon, star wars wouldn't be here. I'm not talking about the cast, i'm talking about the storyline.

 

And I'm talking about REALITY. If it wasn't for the boffo box offices of the OT in 1977-1983, Lucas would've never bothered to tell the story of Episode I-III and thus, NO Qui-Gon. The ORIGINAL trilogy DID come first, or have we all forgotten this?

And as far as QG in the MOVIE...if he didn't exist, Lucas would've just wrote someone else in to train Obi-Wan...like, hmmmm, I don't know, maybe...Yoda! Or, he didn't necessarily have to even show Obi as a padawan. He could of just shown Obi-Wan as a knight and he somewhat vainly CHOOSES (rather than having a kid DUMPED on him) to train Anakin and fails due to his hubris. Instead, Obi is basically paying back a friend a promise he made on his deathbed. Episodes I-III could've gone by fine without the addition of the character of Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan and Anakin, however are intrical to BOTH the PT and OT.

 

"tells his own apprentice to shut the f___ up if he's getting uppitty"

That line alone should end the debate, lol

Good job, Taibunsuu

 

Because a lot of people feel that TPM was a golden opportunity to expand on Obi-Wan's character and add characterization and establish their friendship early on. Why introduce a new character that doesn't appear in the "final" 3 films, when you already have one that could easily handle the same job and more cohesively tie the two trilogy's together?

Excellent post ferelwookie!!! Another reason is the fact that Kenobi was left with virtually nothing to do until Qui Gon died. And his lines were just "Yes Master". A wasted character, especially considering how he was full of life in AOTC.

Also, seeing the PT through Kenobi makes it consistent, just as the OT was seen through Luke. But here, we have Qui Gon taking the whole of TPM, and then he just dies. And so far his only significance is some lousy dubbed shout in AOTC. Anything more? I doubt it. Unless GL goes for a totally CGI Qui Gon ghost in Episode 3

*shudders at the thought that I just gave Lucas an idea*

 

--stares at lurking in jelously--

 

hew I agree with your original pemise. Also, with others here who have said that transposing QG's role to a younger Obi-Wan would have made a much more dramatic overall story for the PT. I mean, can you even imagine the EIII and ANH duels between Obi-Wan and Anakin if Obi had freed the little slave boy, championed his cause, gone against everybody to train him, only to be betrayed in the end? I think Kleenex stocks would go up in 2005.

Why did GL do it? One reason could be to show a "good" and "working" Master/Padawan relationship, in contrast to the dysfunctional one in AOTC. If we had NOT seen Qui-Obi in TPM, how would we know how the Jedi order trained apprentices? Also, the end duel of TPM is one of the best parts of the entire SW saga, IMO. If QG had not been part of TPM, we would not have seen this heart-wrenching parallel to the death scene in ROTJ.

Another reason would be to parcel off some of the blame for Anakin's fall to QG - though this is a cop-out and "lazy" approach as others have pointed out. Perhaps, GL wanted Obi-Wan to become a more "perfect" character than he originally envisioned - perhaps to give us a picture of the perfect, ideal Jedi (not the maverick), sort of as a measuring stick for the best of the order. Also, Obi-Wan's progress from TPM to ANH is a nice parallel arc to Anakin's; the contrast shows how troubled Anakin truly is and what he could have become had he made a "different choice". As the story stands, both Anakin and Obi-Wan make difficult choices: Anakin to become a Jedi (IMO, he should not have been trained) and Obi-Wan to have to train someone who he knows should not be trained, because of a promise. How they deal with their respective "wrong" choices becomes part of the story.

For the record: I admire Liam Neeson, and feel that QG is one of the better parts of TPM. I would have liked Obi to have taken up most of the screen time assigned to Padme, so that we could have seen tons of wonderful Qui-Obi interactions.

 

I agree, Qui-Gon kicked major tail.

Can you even imagine SW without Liam Neeson in it now? I know I can't. The guy is a great actor, and his role sets things up so perfectly for Anakin's relationship with Obi-Wan in AOTC.

Like some have said originally, the stuff Qui-Gon does were originally going to be Obi-Wan's deal (in earlier drafts), and I can relate to not being able to get enough Obi-Wan myself, but the way Lucas uses Obi-Wan's relationship to contrast Obi-Wan's and Anakin's in AOTC really helps to sketch out a far more detailed portrayal of the Jedi Order at the height of the Old Republic.

I am also surprised at the way it ties in so heavily to the trail of mistakes in AOTC. DuKoo was Yoda's Padawan, Qui-Gon was Dukoo's Padawan, Obi-Wan was Qui-Gon's Padawan, and Anakin was Obi-Wan's Padawan.

Sure you could have a "chain" like this without Qui-Gon, but you would miss out on the way Lucas is contrasting the way Qui-Gon teaches Obi-Wan, to the way Obi-Wan teaches Anakin. This way, we can see the difference between a straight arrow Padawan being taught by a renegade Jedi Knight, and a renegade Padawan being taught by a straight arrow Master. This gives us a well rounded portrayal of the difference between the status quo, and the radical opinion of both Master and Apprentice.

So much better than if Obi-Wan had merely been Yoda's Padawan.

 

but you would miss out on the way Lucas is contrasting the way Qui-Gon teaches Obi-Wan, to the way Obi-Wan teaches Anakin. This way, we can see the difference between a straight arrow Padawan being taught by a renegade Jedi Knight, and a renegade Padawan being taught by a straight arrow Master.

Actually I think that is wrong. I think what Lucas is contrasting isn't really between the teachers, it's between the padawans. The way Qui-Gon is with Obi-Wan is directly related to the way Obi-Wan acts. As I've said time and again, it's easy to seem patient when you have an apprentice that you know will follow your lead, even when he disagrees with you, when you know you can trust to think things through. However when Obi-Wan does seriously disagree with him(during a conversation between the two of them, not even a meeting with someone else as in AOTC), Qui-Gon sends Obi-Wan straight off and basically says the equivalent of "Shut up and go to your room".

However I don't believe that stuff is all that important. It's interesting but I don't think it was at all necessary to Anakin's story. What's important is Anakin's choices and where they lead. What's important is the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin, because ultimately that is what is important to the ending of the story.

We don't need to see how "normal" Jedi are for that. We don't need any of that to see why their relationship fails to keep Anakin on the straight and narrow. Show us their relationship and you can show us why their relationship fails to see why Anakin fails to stay on the good side of the Force. We don't need to know how normal Master/Padawan relationships work for that. Even more than that, that isn't what we see, if Qui-Gon is a maverick and not a "normal" Jedi, then we aren't seeing a "normal" master and padawan relationship anyway. We are already seeing one that is unusual if not inverted. So I don't see how it helps to show us "normal" Jedi relationships.

Had Lucas actually used Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's relationship to actually develop Obi-Wan, to show us what issues he was struggling with in his final days as a padawan and why he made some of the decisions he made, then perhaps the argument would have been stronger, but he didn't do that. Despite seeing his own master, we didn't really learn anything about what made Obi-Wan tick, what it was like for him to have spent half his life or more between his rebellious master and the Jedi Council, which had to have been a central shaping force for him. As it is, Obi-Wan would have been better served in terms of character development and revelation had he been on his own and we could have learned more about him personally(this seems important to me because he is the one who actually trains Anakin) through his interactions with the other characters.

 

I think they illustrate both Padawan and Master. You need to show how the straight arrow goes through being a Padawan and Master so that you have something to contrast Anakin's career off of.

I also like how Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan represet the Living and Unifying Force in TPM, while in AOTC, Obi-Wan seems to be a mix of the two. So Qui-Gon adds further detail to the Jedi Order's polar philosophies separately at first, so it isn't as confusing when they are mixed together.

Qui-Gon's time is actually showing us Obi-Wan's character, because by the end of the film, Obi-Wan absorbs his cause.

You can say you would rather have had more Obi-Wan, but you can't say Qui-Gon doesn't contribute directly to the story.

 

Had Lucas actually used Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's relationship to actually develop Obi-Wan, to show us what issues he was struggling with in his final days as a padawan and why he made some of the decisions he made, then perhaps the argument would have been stronger, but he didn't do that

Exactly! Forget developong Obi Wan, I'd settle for him to do something by himself and stop saying "Yes Master" everytime he and Qui Gon had a conversation.

 

He did the Midichlorian count.

 

Oooooh.

Maybe with all of that free-time with the ship parked on Tatooine, he decided to try on the queen's wardrobe.

Why not? He didn't have anything else to do in that lousy script!

 

He was helping to repair the ship so it would be ready when Qui-Gon got back with the new hyperdrive unit.

 

Whooo-hoo!

Just how I always imagine a great Jedi: a defender of peace to spend his time throughout a majority of a movie!

 

If you want the ship fixed right, sure. If he had gone with Qui-Gon, he would have just gotten in the way.