While it’s difficult to pin down one specific problem with Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, one of the biggest is the film’s inability to reckon with the implications of galactic bondage. The first of George Lucas’ sprawling Prequel Trilogy, The Phantom Menace interposed publics to the Galactic Republic, the droid military, and people such as Qui-Gon Jinn( Liam Neeson ), Queen Padme Amidala( Natalie Portman ), and a young Anakin Skywalker( Jake Lloyd ). Set 32 years before A New Hope, the fib follows the Jedi Order’s attempts to peacefully boundary a trade dispute between the Trade Federation and the planet Naboo – happens that are intimately confined to the return of the Sith and a baleful scheme that menaces the entire galaxy.

Upon release, The Phantom Menace was met with mixed actions from both love and reviewers, who felt that the film failed to live up to the acclaim of the original trilogy. Specific criticism was aimed at Lucas’ overreliance on computer-generated aftermaths, the film’s convoluted screenplay, and the implementation of its of young Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best, who played the Gungan Jar-Jar Binks. Despite the reviews, however, the movie managed to gross more than $ 900 million worldwide, becoming the highest grossing film of 1999, and its effects on the world-building and expansion of the Star Wars nature is irreplaceable.

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Among the many missed opportunities of The Phantom Menace, the film’s failure to capitalize on the storytelling potential of its politics is one of the worst. In special, the movie sidelines the much more compelling story of the Jedi Order’s rulings on bondage in favour of an half-baked narrative about trade disputes.

When Qui-Gon Jinn first meetings Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine, he and his mother are enslaved by Watto, a Toydarian browse owned who often maligns them and employs Anakin’s natural technological knowledge. On top of this, both Anakin and his mother have been implanted with restrained explosives that are able remotely explosion at any point, adding to the depravity of their place. Despite their lowly problem, Qui-Gon never get out of his method to free the slaves out of moral obligation or even decry the institution as a whole. In fact, he only helps to secure Anakin’s freedom after realizing the son is exceptionally powerful in the Force and even clears him leave his mother behind instead of freeing her as well. This childhood of exploitation and servitude define Anakin’s later decisions as a persona, and the death of Anakin’s mother as a result of her life on Tatooine drives him further towards the dark side.

This would be an exceptionally written plotline, except that it isn’t focused on in any meaningful method. The information that it serves as Anakin’s incidental backstory feels less like an intentional commentary on the contentment of the Jedi, and more like a subplot that was disappointingly underdeveloped. The Jedi don’t comment on the existence of slavery as a reality, despite their self-appointed title as defenders of peace and justice. And even then, when Qui-Gon Jinn generates Anakin before the Jedi Council and requests to train him, the Council doesn’t empathize with the son or try and aid him in his modulation out of slavery, instead initially refusing Qui-Gon’s request that he be accepted into the Jedi Academy.

Instead of focusing its lens on a largely irrelevant trade dispute, The Phantom Menace could have manufactured the debate considering intergalactic bondage the main conflict of the film. Instead of the blockade on Naboo being a response to the taxation of trade routes, it could have been a targeted response to an impending poll regarding the fate of slavery throughout the galaxy. This would have centered the conflict at the heart of the legend and forced the Jedi into a difficult moral arrangement in which they have to weigh the fate of millions of slaves against the fate of an entire planet. On surface of this, the movie could have applied the issue of slavery as an opportunity to highlight the tension between Qui-Gon Jinn and the rest of the council.

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This decision could have had a positive effect on the rest of the prequels as well. Anakin Skywalker’s slow transition to the Dark Side is the misfortune that drives the narrative of the trilogy, and it’s in part due to the Jedi Order’s manipulation and infantilization of him. If sure-fire a number of members of the Jedi Council were “okay” with the notions of bondage, or were prepared to tolerate the institution due to their unwillingness to interfere, it could have added a brand-new layer of nuance to Anakin’s plight. Not exclusively do the Jedi turn their backs on Anakin’s psychological vulnerability, but they likewise turn a blind eye to the dehumanizing practice that claimed the life of his mother.

To is equitable , not all of Star Wars media portrays Qui-Gon Jinn as turning a blind eye to the issue of slavery. In the novel Star Wars: Master and Apprentice, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan Kenobi are have the responsibility probing a political contravention on the planet of Pijal, one that instantly spirals into a conspiracy involving the Czerka Corporation, an ancient limbs make. Czerka exploits planetary loopholes within the Galactic Republic to get away with the usage of slave labor, something that the Jedi Council is unable to interfere with due to their self-imposed political neutrality. A feature story in the book involves Qui-Gon Jinn being invited to join the Jedi Council, an offer he inevitably turns down, citing the Jedi’s strict adherence to hierarchy and their apathy to the issue of slavery as his reasons why.

Curiously fairly, however, other works in the canon seem to confirm that slavery still exists in certain parts of the galaxy. Up until and throughout the Galactic Civil War, the Empire began to discreetly repeal and loosen certain laws that prohibited bondage throughout the galaxy, culminating in certain species being testified “non-sentient” and enslaved, with Wookiees being an example. After the end of the fight, slavery still existed in patterns despite being prohibited wholesale, continuing as far as the era of the First Order. And we even hear evidence of the existence of slave trafficking in Star Wars:The Last Jedi, in the string on Canto Bight in which Finn and Rose free groupings of enslaved swine but for some reason do not offer that same liberation to the child slaves frequently shown.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace failed to capitalize on the outcomes of the Jedi’s acceptance of bondage, and while other storeys within the Star Wars cosmo have tackled slavery tangentially, the canon’s treatment of enslaved publics is one of its most overlooked conflicts. Without a direct confrontation of this inhumane practice, Star Wars refuses to address a huge moral blind spot in its mythos – one with the potential to depict the succession as dangerously regressive.

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