Qui-Gon Was An Idiot

A blog I read had a post about "One Hundred Movie Scenes That Assert Themselves" that is a pretty good list of awesome scenes. Number fourteen was "Qui-Gon's demise."

Southern Man has been a Star Wars fan since opening weekend of the original film, seen with his best friend and our girlfriends from the middle of the first row of a packed-to-the-rafters theater. And by "fan" he means he's built the models and has many of the books and keeps the original trilogy (but not the SEs) in more or less constant rotation in the DVD player and saw the prequels at midnight showings and dressed his five-year-old son as a Jedi for a Halloween party which resulted in an epic lightsabre battle with a five-year-old Darth Maul.

That said, Qui-Gon was an idiot.

First he walks into a trap that results in the destruction of his ship and the deaths of his entire entourage which he and his apprentice survive only because they are Jedi.

Then because he's Qui-Gon he has a Crowning Moment of Awesome but fails to gain entry to the bridge or control room or whatever and has to run away. He then decides that the best way to "warn the Naboo" about the imminent invasion is by riding down to the planet with said invasion. And he decides that in the process he will ignore the principle that two Jedi together are ten times as effective as two Jedi apart and has Obi-Wan ride down on a different ship.

No matter; they quickly find each other on the ground, run into Jar-Jar, swim to the bottom of the ocean, take a cruise through the planet core, and arrive in the capital city. More awesomeness ensues and they get away with the Queen and her entourage. While doing so he says nothing while their pilot flies directly towards the largest starship in the enemy force but thanks to R2D2 they survive.

Then they go to a planet run by the Mafia where Qui-Gon decides that the best course of action is to have a kid he's just met enter a ridiculously dangerous race to win money to buy parts to fix their ship.

No matter; Anikan wins and they try to go home and encounter Darth Maul but get away. But apparently Queen Amidala flies around in the only unarmed starship in the entire Star Wars universe so they don't blast Darth Maul into Sith dust from on high. Then they go to the Capital and appoint Jar-Jar as ambassador and then go back to Naboo where Qui-Gon decides that the best course of action is to enlist the aid of a race he'd never heard of, led by someone who at their last meeting had set him up to die, to go forth and do battle against killer robots. We don't question why Gungans who live in an underwater city have huge domesticated land mammals trained to carry shield generators. Fortunately for them the Trade Federation had never watched Aliens either.

And during all of this time he had never does figure out who Queen Amidala actually is in spite of having been at her side almost continually since the rescue on Naboo.

Then they meet Darth Maul and have an epic battle in which at one point all three combatants are separated by those energy shields or whatever and Qui-Gon again ignores the principle that two Jedi together are ten times as effective as two apart and sits down instead of sticking his tongue out at Darth Maul and strolling back down the corridor to rejoin Obi-Wan and is promptly run through.

Having never figured out who the Sith Lord is in spite of hanging out in his office earlier that week.

Obi-Wan was an idiot, too, but that's another post.