Favourite frames in the PT

Qui-Gon "at one" with nature! Embracing the Living Force. Everyone equal. Running for their lives. Until Qui-Gon encounters his "Buddha" (or platonic spirit animal) on the road: Jar Jar! Then truly at one with nature. Lying in the mud. Kiss kiss, bang bang. Compromising supine position, but no time for smooches. OH-SEE-DAY! Know what I mean?

It would be cruel to leave it there, but I like the look of that little "free verse" poem. But it's weird how there's this, uh, forced intimacy to Qui-Gon and Jar Jar from the start. Prior to this moment in the film, all we've seen are cold councils, stern looks, blinking reptilian eyes, a creepy hologram man, upright robotic crickets unloading from their container ships, these robed people being gassed, the same robed people fighting back and parrying laser beams, a door being aggressively sliced, and an awkward moment of humour that passes in the night. And some cryptic mumbo-jumbo about trade routes and one robed guy telling the other robed guy in some empty conference room to be "mindful" of some force-thing as they monastically stare at not-Earth through a window. Weird!

So here is Qui-Gon, only minutes after that gauche overture, down on the forest floor, bolting along the squelchy ground, heading to who-knows-where, until, boom-de-gasser... yep, Jar Jar and the film's first "hug". No-one touches anyone prior to this primal moment of connection. It's all very mannered and stand-off-ish. Jar Jar interrupts Qui-Gon's nature safari by becoming nature: nature that stands in the way and clings tight for dear life. Poor Jar Jar is stuck to Qui-Gon like a quivering leaf! The machinations of the Trade Federation and the Sith -- greed, for want of a better word -- have brought this unlikely duo together; and together they will stay for the remainder of the movie. It's funny, it's touching, and it's cool. Lucas sure knows how to have his diverse roster of characters memorably meet one another. In this instance, they literally collide!

Anyway, the sound design is really cool in this segment, adding a great deal of life to the rock-solid, digitally-augmented visuals. A menagerie of lifeforms! Lucas was undoubtedly influenced a great deal by "Jurassic Park" on Episode I (I should make a thread) -- e.g., the gallimimus stampede. It immediately feels like the film is entering a different register: a new and lively comportment and fusing of the mundane and the spectacular, the gorgeous and the gross, the wacky and the gravitic. Even just prior to your screencap, there's a fantastic visual of Qui-Gon running over a reflective patch of water (lots of symbolic implications) -- like treading grapes in the sky. The grapes of wrath. New covenant for the galaxy. And then Qui-Gon has to follow this digital salamander and actually go underwater! Like disappearing into a painting: the flat surface becoming a detailed, three-dimensional realm in and of itself. "The planet core!" The strange topography of the movie opens up when Jar Jar is "trusted" as the guide these supermen need to advance forward. Follow the white rabbit. No, follow the orange amphibian. It's just a bloody awesome opening act, 'tis all.

Oh, and Qui-Gon does do a bit of running in the film -- and note, in both scenes, the film basically cuts straight to Qui-Gon running, with no intervening segment: