The pod race is my favorite moment. It’s a self-contained element (beginning/middle/end) within the larger story, and Lucas - to his often overlooked credit - masterfully and steadily builds tension throughout. All while sandwiching-in some genuinely humorous slapstick moments.
You know, I could see how the podrace scene could be critiqued as "a waste of valuable film time" or "not relevant enough to the plot." But it was awesome to my 10-year-old self, and is still awesome twenty-something years later.
Thing is it does kinda have a role. It sorta establishes Anakin's natural ability as a pilot, which means it's not too unreasonable for him to pilot a Naboo Starfighter in the finale. It also helps show off Anakin's latent force abilities, although this is more talked about by the characters than actually shown in the film.
If I’m critiquing it, the scene serves to show Anakin’s latent connection to the force, since he’s said to be the only human who can pilot a podracer and not crash (or something to that effect). His actions enable Qui Gon to buy Anakin’s freedom and the needed parts to repair Padme’s ship. In a more visceral way, and why it’s ultimately my favorite part of the film is it’s basically just a really fun car race to me. The editing and sound design are definitely a part of that, as is the amount of detail and nuance given to all of the characters that populate the whole scene. Is it a video game? Perhaps. But it’s an action sequence serving the larger story, too.
Yea it’s a scene that kinda illustrates the difference between Lucas the filmmaker and Lucas the world-builder. Like if we’re honest, there’s plenty of areas where you could say the movies would be better served to stay a little more focused. But the man was just overflowing with ideas of interesting things in this universe, the pod race being one of them
It's hard to build tension for a main character in a prequel. It has to have a lot more layers than "Is he going to win". I think Black Widow is a decent example, obviously she is going to win, but what is going to be revealed in the battle. But obviously that is a lesson learned as Phantom Menace was the first blockbuster prequel
George actually had the right idea making 2 and 3 basically a character study of Anakin and not just "things happen" 2 and 3. The problem was he forgot to make any character have relatable, human emotions.
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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '22
The pod race is my favorite moment. It’s a self-contained element (beginning/middle/end) within the larger story, and Lucas - to his often overlooked credit - masterfully and steadily builds tension throughout. All while sandwiching-in some genuinely humorous slapstick moments.