#The Phantom Menace

[twinterrors29]

when Qui-Gon publicly dropped Obi-Wan like a hot potato in favor of throwing his full weight into his bid to train Anakin, recently-Knighted Quinlan Vos decided that he had the opportunity to be the funniest motherfucker imaginable (and earn both his friend's eternal debt and ire in one move):

he claimed Obi-Wan Kenobi as his first Padawan

Obi-Wan, while definitely pissed with his friend's 'parenting,' quickly gets behind the idea of using this to spite Qui-Gon as much as possible

the Vos-Kenobi pair immediately set out to break every single one of Jinn's records as pettily as possible, and even managed to earn Quinlan the title of 'youngest Master' when Obi-Wan was Knighted only a few months later when the Council realized what was going on and tried to cut them off by just Knighting Kenobi already

[the-far-bright-center]

“George [Lucas] just came up and said, ‘Darth Maul, he’s our new Sith Lord,’ and he walked away,” recalls artist Iain McCaig, who by that point had been working primarily on hero characters. “I didn’t know if Maul was male or female, an alien, anything. It freaked me out at the beginning that I didn’t get much direction. Then I realized that maybe he picked me because he liked my work and wanted me to show him what I thought a Darth Maul might look like. George clearly enjoys reacting to visuals. One of his many skills is that he can look at fifty things, make choices, move things around, take a head from this character and put it on the body of that one over there, and suddenly, it’s Star Wars. We learned to trust him and also to trust ourselves.”

— Phantom at 25 | Iain McCaig Talks Darth Maul, Queen Amidala, and working with George Lucas

[mrkestis]

We need to talk more about Obi-Wan’s survivors guilt after the Phantom Menace. This is him talking about Qui-Gon being killed by Maul:

”That fate should never have fallen to anyone. But if it had to happen, why didn’t it happen to me instead of you?”

And then instead of mourning and taking time to heal, he immediately takes on Anakin as a Padawan.

[taffi-louis]

[padmestrilogy]

there’s a girl in there

natalie portman behind the scenes of the phantom menace (1999) / angelita mallows

[cursedjewel]

the world hated them sooooooo bad

[mostthingskenobi]

OBI-WAN KENOBI AS "THE NEGOTIATOR." AKA AN ENTIRE EPISODE DEDICATED TO THIS:

[nkp1981]

Another Epic Star Wars Fight Between Darth Maul And Qui-Gon Jinn

[lady-arryn]

PADME AMIDALA costume appreciation: ▶ The Phantom Menace [9/9] (costume design by Trisha Biggar)

[gil-estel]

he’s getting flashbacks

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Jedi neutrality in TPM comes not at all from not taking sides. They get there and pick a side in under five minutes. They are 100% team Naboo. No, their neutrality, and their cultural moral authority, comes from not having a stake in this fight. They're not mixed up in the trade federation. They don't have personal ties with the Naboo. They don't stand to benefit or to lose from the success of either party. They can just show up and say, hey, just decided you guys suck. And no one can accuse them of being secretly married to the Naboo queen or having offshore investments in the Lake country, or whatever completely hypothetical thing a person might have going on that would hypothetically compromise that neutrality

[the-far-bright-center]

" The first character McCaig tackled was the young Queen of Naboo, Padmé Amidala. “She was the Force of nature trying to hold back a tide of evil, so I wanted her to be the first flag in the ground, a clear statement against which the other designs are measured.” To do that, he needed to understand the philosophy behind a character’s appearance and the deeper motivations that inform it. “If it’s called Star Wars,” McCaig says, “then what are the characters fighting for? What is the good that they are trying to protect, and why do we want them to succeed?

“George often said that it was a battle between organic lifeforms and machines,” he explains. “It’s not that the machines are bad, but they tend to steamroll over the soft, squishy organic things. Also, the squishy things misbehave a lot, creating conflicts. At the heart of it all is a Queen trying to hold everything together without going to war, and the Jedi doing their best to help her.”

Lucas mentioned being inspired by Princess Ozma from L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz. “At the same time,” McCaig says, “he challenged us with the question, ‘What makes Star Wars Star Wars?’ When he made his first trilogy, he said, there weren't many other films like it. Now there's Star Trek and Blade Runner and Alien and a host of others. What, indeed, is a Star Wars movie? And how do we shift the Star Wars you know into a whole new time period?

With the help of Jo Donaldson and her team in the Lucasfilm Research Library, as well as “freelance-researcher-extraordinaire” David Craig, McCaig plundered the Art Nouveau style of the early 20th century, developing an approach for the Queen and Naboo culture in general, which he dubbed “Space Nouveau.” He was also able to tap into the historic Paramount Studios research library, which George Lucas had acquired a decade earlier. McCaig also went outside at Skywalker Ranch, drawing plants, trees, whole forests, absorbing anything and everything organic.

“George loves illustrators,” says McCaig, “Fine artists create to satisfy themselves, but illustrators create to tell stories, and those stories reflect the time they live in, encapsulating a piece of history.”

To help create a historical sensibility that felt distinctly Star Wars, McCaig tried to ensure that each design pulled inspiration from elements in three different locations around the world, or three different time periods, or a combination of both. “If it’s reappearing in these different places and different times, chances are it's an iconic archetype – something that's part of our collective unconscious.” Queen Amidala's white face paint, for example, could be found in Japanese Geishas, the traditional appearance of married women in Mongolia, as well as England’s Queen Elizabeth I. "

— from Phantom at 25: Iain McCaig talks Darth Maul, Queen Amidala, and working with George Lucas

[beau-ba-fett]

Imagine you’re some pod racing enthusiast watching the Boonta Eve Classic and some literal child enters with the shittiest scrap pod you’ve ever seen. He built it himself. He then proceeds to absolutely demolish every other professional racer. The kid never enters a race again but his legacy lives on in the hearts of the pod racing community.

About 10 years later, you tune into a news stream to catch some news about the Clone War. The announcer is talking about a particularly pivotal battle, saying something about “Jedi General Anakin Skywalker”

YOU MEAN THAT KID FROM THE BOONTA EVE CLASSIC???

[yinza]

Obi-Wan and Anakin for @ladysarai! And then nothing bad ever happened...

[Image Description: Digital artwork of a young Obi-Wan Kenobi and child Anakin. Anakin is in padawan robes, while Obi-Wan's hair has started to grow out and he has his beard. Obi-Wan is kneeling with his arms around Anakin, who has just run forward to fling his arms around Obi-Wan's neck in a hug. /end ID]

[verc0pa]

obligatory obi-wan doodles bc i watched tpm at the theatre yesterday!!!

[padmestrilogy]

the empty queen: my life is for the people of naboo

star wars meets the eras of feminism, valerie estelle frankel / attack of the clones script third draft, cut dialogue / the phantom menace script / anne carson / judith herman / star wars tales #5, terry moore / constance grady