Ok so this thread's dead, but I can't resist doing a bit of suggestive necroing to cement said circumstance - so here's some responses to a particular user from the old 108 thread, who came over here from the RLM board and was as unresponsive there due to general haplessness, as he'll be here due to obvious obliviousness:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 1#p3490051
The part where Raynor tries to make Qui-Gon into the protagonist is just sad...
RAYNOR: Here's a secret: Qui-Gon is the main character and big hero of this movie, which spends most of its time following him.
You're right. That is a secret!
Does Raynor have any better reason for calling Q-G the hero other than that he has the most screentime?
I have.
This if of course a lot of fun, because the situation here is as following:
1) The Plinkus fan thinks he's got the rational view on this issue - he and his like-minded have figured it out, and now let's see who's capable of questioning them.
2) Jimbo makes weak fanboyish arguments (at least as presented here), confirming 1)'s impression that they've got the truth and the opponents are irrational fanbois.
3) In fact both of them are unobservant and say nothing but ludicrous hogshite all day - and when someone like myself comes along to set things straight, the reactions are revealing.
He basically concedes that the movie does not focus on Padme ("just a supporting character")
Except it does - this is of course another one of 108's faults, when he's not being reasonable, or irrationally defensive of the movies, he makes stupid concessions to RLM, which are stupid.
Anakin ("he wasn't handled as well as he could have been")
In a TFN post which I could dig up if I tried, he said Anakin was the other main character - which is of course laughable, though nowhere as much as Plinkett saying Jar Jar's the only character with an arc in his audio commentary, when actually he's the only one WITHOUT.
It seems that he arrives at Qui-Gon by process of elimination: none of the other characters were prominent enough, so the protagonist must be Qui-Gon!
This approach is, of course, quite backwards.
Raynor then gives us a list of character attributes for Q-G. For example: he calls him compassionate for taking in Jar-Jar. He calls him trusting for allowing Anakin to race. And he calls him wise for accepting Obi-Wan's apology.
Q-G isn't compassionate, trusting or wise. At least, those aren't his defining character attributes. The underlying commonality in all these situations is Q-G's passivity as a character.
Of course he isn't "trusting" in that one - he's found this talent which he thinks is really significant in the grand scheme of things; it's a way for that talent to prove himself or advance somewhat, and he'S "trusting" in him because of his religious conviction / what he sensed in him and what is confirmed in the blood test.
Which leads us directly to:
Q-G does not seem to have strong motivations, passions or goals. This is why people call him calm or stoic
Neither does Jar Jar, yet people don't call him stoic
He does a lot of talking and advising, and comparatively little doing.
He leads the whole rescue mission all the way from seeing the invasion army first to the Naboo escape, and is THE proactive character on Tattoine.
On Coruscant he's actively invested in having said talent trained, because he's the only one really invested in fulfilling that prophecy.
Now that's 3/4ths of the movie of leading the team, making all the decisions and being invested into a messianic prophecy... so as we see, there's no need for any eliminative approaches, the defining characteristics have been overlooked, Admiral's full of shite, and so is Jimbo.
A mentor is a supporting character by definition. Who is Q-G a mentor to? Well, no one really, because neither Obi-Wan nor Anakin can qualify as the protagonist hero of the film.
This bullshit of course has been dealt with by other users there, but another example of a mentor-protagonist would be Anthony Hopkins in Zorro - or, rather, he's a protagonist along with his apprentice, though takes a bit of a backseat in that regard.
This, of course, isn't really the case in Name of the Rose which has a close relative of the master-apprentice relationship in EpI, except that both were fleshed out in that one (one of them even literally).
The movie clearly INTENDS for Anakin to be the protagonist, because his is the character that participates in the most action scenes, and grows the most during the film (from slave to padawan).
Um, yeah no - being accepted into a school isn't growth; Amidala, the other main character, has the most growth as she goes from relying on the system to taking action and succeeding; Obi-Wan also has one albeit not before the duel starts.
He's maybe a secondary protagonist in the Tattoine segment which is a sidequest itself, and delivers the moneyshot of the threeway attack heist even though he only blows up the ship by accident - but that hardly accounts, if anything it's like 1/10th of what they do with Obi-Wan at the end.
He's clearly supposed to be a supporting character like the Kid in the Matrix, and that's what he is... even though a particularly lame version, despite having a few moments.
However because Lucas made Anakin a preteen, he can only get involved in the action of the movie through extraordinarily contrived situations.
Now that didn't stop HP1 from happening, did it you dumbass.
And because the script focuses on the relationship between Q-G and Anakin, Obi-Wan becomes a third wheel.
1) Yeah no - except on Tattoine where he stay behind and gains some level of autonomy, he's Qui-Gon's sidekick all the way until that, and after that as well - he only interacts with Anakin in the Midichlorians scene, and then when telling him to hide; with Ob1 there are two poignant scenes and then the entirety of the duel. He wins in that regard, even though he's less of his own character than Anakin otherwise... until the duel.
Obi-Wan receives almost no characterization in TPM, and would practically be a cipher of a character to anyone who didn't know the original trilogy.
Horseshit - without having seen the other movies, he's Qui-Gon's alternately sarcastic and reserved/concerned sidekick partner. Very much a supporting role, but so what? There's plenty of those around.
RLM is right when he says “If you ask me, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi should have been combined into one character, called Obi-Wan Kenobi." As it exists on screen, TPM is an awkward mess, with neither of the three male leads qualifying as a hero or protagonist.
These are the kinds of big-picture criticisms that RLM lobs at the prequels. Raynor doesn't have an answer.
