Star Wars: Phantom Menace comments and questions

I have heard that making the Trade Federation characters as Japanese was racist- particularly when Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn was extremely dismissive of them, saying “These Federation types are cowards. The negotiations will be short.”
But maybe rather than calling the screenwriter a racist, it is showing the viewer how racist and extremely arrogant the current crop of Jedi are. You go in the movie assuming, with a nudge from the opening crawl, that the Jedi are awesome- but maybe there is nuance in there. Gray areas you didn’t think of before.

Jar Jar Binks is the most annoying character in the Star Wars universe. It goes without saying, but I’m saying it to lead into a favorite fan theory that really he was meant to be a dark side Sith Lord- above Darth Sidius! If it would have played out in Episodes II and III that Jar Jar was either working for or even the master of Sidius, then THAT would have been worth wading through his annoyances. But since his annoying behavior doesn’t lead to any payoff, it has no reason to be. It’s just annoying, and George Lucas is a coward for removing Jar Jar’s reveal as a Zui Quan (drunken boxing) style Sith master from the storyline. Jar Jar is either the true Count Dooku or even the Supreme Leader Snoke!

So when they enter the underwater Gunga City, they just pass through a force field separating water vs air. So…what happens when a fish swims through? This would probably happen every minute. Do they have like an automatic squeegee or something to sweep them back into the water?

Wow, the Boss was really trying to kill them by making them go through the planet core!
It sounds like Sith Jar Jar was trying to kill Boss Nass. It didn’t work. He got off as just clumsy and banished instead of evil and executed.

Why does Lucas do the small fish, bigger fish thing twice in a row?

Is R2-D2 a Zui Quan jedi droid?

These hologram teleconferences always have the audio breaking up to show the large distance involved in transmissions across the galaxy (I guess?), but my experience is the high bandwidth of a hologram video would probably freeze or break up before the audio would.

Are we ever going to see the Angels from the moons of Lego?

So slaves have their own, off-site apartment. Just like me!

What revenge against the Jedi is Darth Maul talking about? What did the Jedi do to the Sith?

Shmi Skywalker has a Swedish accent. Why doesn’t her son Anakin have the same accent? (I know. That’s nit-picky.)

So slaves have their own podracer. Just like I have a car!

What were all those midi-chlorians doing in one of Shmi’s fallopian tubes?

No Jedi has a midi-chlorian count as high as little Ani, but then rather than assume “it’s A Force Miracle!” I would guess there is some technology involved since midi-chlorians are a physical life force measurable in a blood test. The question would be did a Sith Lord do this with a dastardly plan or did a Jedi with all of our best interests at heart and know-better-than-us-what-is-good-for-us do this? They would have made her unconscious (or cause to forget?), kidnapped her, knocked her up in a lab, and set her loose on Tatooine (so-to-speak, relatively- for a slave. Not actually set loose).
Which high level Sith or Jedi keeps tabs on the goings-on in Tatooine? Which one has connections with Gardulla the Hutt and could grab one of her slaves for a lab project? (BTW my money is on Darth Plagueis, who had power over life and death, and Gardulla is mentioned in the book.)

God, this podrace is sooooo long.

So Qui-Gon Jinn can jump up into a moving ship, but Darth Maul can’t?

Having an entire planet turn into one big city is MESSED UP! I’d guess a civilization with such a thing would be messed up also.

Jar Jar telling Ani that the Queen is “pitty hot” is pretty gross. But he is Sith, so…

I don’t understand why Queen Amidala believes Senator Palpatine’s view of the scenario. Why not at least get a second opinion? I’m sure she could even take a meeting with Chancellor Valorum himself since he was already magnanimous enough to send two Jedi to help the Naboo and meet her at her ship when she arrived at Coruscant.

So during this assembly, we can pause for a vote of no confidence in the supreme chancellor, but not introduce evidence of an invasion?

Yoda is a hard-ass.

So if Obi-Wan has to face the trials before becoming a Jedi knight, what did Luke do for this since the Jedi Council was no more?

Huh, they took the photo of Microsoft Windows XP desktop background just before the battle of Naboo started.

The Gungans have HUGE feathers on the back of the mount for the animals they ride. I wonder what ginormous bird they killed to put three feathers on each saddle.

Wait, at the beginning of the movie, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon did some kind of lightning-fast, Force run down a hallway to escape the droidikas, but now Obi-Wan can’t run fast enough to reach Qui-Gon fighting Darth Maul when the forcefield-doors-hallway separated them?

Why is Darth Maul flat footed with Obi-Wan jumps right over him?

Palpatine knew Anikan would have a “career he would watch with great interest.” That tells me he already knew about him, so probably a Sith engineered Anikan.

The actor who plays little Ani is remarkably believable in this role. Good job. What ever happened to his career? (Yes, I could look it up on IMDB before writing this down, but I’m just sayin’ off the top of my head I have no idea.)

Song Lyrics Analysis: You Know You’re Right by Nirvana

Time for another installment of Song Lyrics Analysis where I discuss the meanings of certain songs. Today, I’d like to talk about You Know You’re Right by Nirvana. For reference, here it is on YouTube:

Here are the lyrics:

I will never bother you
I will never promise to
I will never follow you
I will never bother you
Never speak a word again
I will crawl away for good

I will move away from here
You won’t be afraid of fear
No thought was put into this
I always knew it would come to this
Things have never been so swell
I have never failed to feel [fail]

Pain [x3]
You know you’re right [x3]

I’m so warm and calm inside
I no longer have to hide
Let’s [There’s] talk about someone else
Steaming soup begins to melt
Nothing really bothers her
She just wants to love herself

I will move away from here
You won’t be afraid of fear
No thought was put into this
I always knew to come like this
Things have never been so swell
I have never failed to fail [feel]

Pain [x5]
You know you’re right [x12]
You know your rights
You know you’re right
You know your rights
You know your rights
You know your rights
Pain

Listening to it, you probably think you hear “failed to fail,” but I think the first time he says it, he’s saying “feel” with an accent that makes it sounds like “fail” as a homophone double entendre. Pretty clever. Then I’d say the second time he’s saying failed to fail.

Like I’ve said before, there are as many interpretations of an item of art as there are interpreters, and even the artist may not claim to have the only valid interpretation. That said, it would be nice if the song lyricist would publish their lyrics to give us a head start to understand their intent. This song has lots of mis-hearings because Cobain sings the lyrics rather ambiguously. Fail vs feel and steaming soup against her mouth vs sterling silver begins to melt vs steaming soup begins to melt and right vs rite. It’s a mess.

Most people believe this is an anti-Courtney Love song because she is a total bitch who doesn’t ever think she’s wrong, and maybe he’s singing about how he is going to leave her, and she only loves herself anyway. (And maybe if he’d left her earlier, he would be alive today.)

But all good lyrics, poems, scriptures have multiple levels of meaning. Another way to interpret this song is Cobain is singing to his drugs (again)- specifically heroin. In Spanish, heroin is feminine (la heroína), so nothing really bothers heroin. Heroin just wants to love herself. Heroin tar is the soup that melts on the spoon before getting sucked up into the “gun” for injection. With little thought he’s thinking about leaving heroin use- but he’s not going to promise.

He experiences pain because of his heroin use, but also he experiences pain in withdrawal.

In the middle of the song he goes back to heroin use (feeling all calm and warm inside, soup melting). Then he says he’s leaving heroin and the cyle starts over.

But also, the song could be the heroin singing to Kurt. Still works.

You know your right is the toughest lyric to jive with the heroin interpretation. I’m guessing that it’s just a call-out to the punk band The Clash and their song “Know your Rights.”

Return of Jedi Comments and Questions

Jabba the Hutt in the desert.

I watched Return of the Jedi again for the first time in about 20 years. I have some thoughts and questions:

  • If R2-D2, an “R2” unit, goes around telling people that’s his name, does that mean there were only 260 R2 units ever made? From R2-A0 to R2-Z9?
  • I feel like the aliens weren’t given enough thought.
    • How do those bipedal, green-skinned hippo guards survive in Tatooine? Their drool alone would require its own Hoover Dam!
    • What is the natural food source for a very large, immobile sarlacc nested in the middle of a big sand dune?
    • What are the chances of a squid species eventually becoming bipedal?
  • There must have been several hours of conference room meetings about how to portray Jabba’s place as super sleazy, but still retain a PG mpaa rating.
  • How is being threatened to die by digestion over a thousand years a threat when your typical lifespan is <10% of that?
  • R2-D2 was SELLING drinks aboard the sail barge. Jabba is a cheap bastard.
  • Since Jabba is apparently also a sex slave trafficker, and he was killed by choking…did he find it pleasurable? I am not familiar with hutt anatomy and physiology.
  • I believe we saw Jabba’s wife in Episode 1 at the pod races. Where is she in Episode 6? What does she think about Jabba’s bipedal, chained sex slaves?
  • I am not attracted to hutts AT ALL, so why would Jabba be excited by humanoids?
  • Luke is introduced as a jedi knight in the opening title crawl and at Jabba’s palace, but then he talks with Yoda and THEN realizes that he is finally going to be a Jedi Knight after facing Vader? Continuity problem?
  • What real mom is Leia taking about? Another continuity problem, psychology snafu, or Mandela effect?
  • If you ever think the Ewoks are adorable, just remember that they worshiped as a god the 3rd-most annoying character in the Star Wars universe.  (The first goes without saying. I think the second is that Rizzo-the-rat-like creature that pecks out C3PO’s “eye” aboard Jabba’s sail barge.  Wow, Threepio is a pansy.)
  • Ewoks are boring. I am falling asleep.
  • Sorry, no way the emperor survived that.
  • Come to think of it, I am not familiar with the sex anatomy of Ewoks and Wookies. I presume their anatomical textbooks have multiple instances of prefixes beginning with “crypto” and “endo.”
  • The music is the best thing about Star Wars.
  • Bipedal is a fun word.