People give the sequels a bad rep, but the Phantom menace has a lot more plot holes than all 3 sequels combined.
Like queen Amidala, who hired Jedi to break her through a blockade in order to participate in a senate meeting, only to want to return immediately afterwards because “her people need her”.
And that in a world where holographic meetings are the norm.
The blockade was jamming communication. The reason she wanted to return was that the republic refused to help, which was the whole reason she traveled Coruscant in the first place. She had to get back to Naboo in person to make an alliance with the Gungans.
I still don’t understand why the currency wasn’t good. Travel pretty often abroad for work and fun, exchanging euros or dollars for local is less painful than shaving. You go to a booth, usually at the airport, and they do it right there. Yes you can usually get a slightly better rate if you go to a bank but it usually isn’t massively better. Also they have like FTL communication plus plenty of computers. Why not use a credit card?
'Cause Republic currency is digital (or at least I assume it is because it’s called “dataries” and Watoo says it isn’t “real” enough) and Tatooine is the ass-end of space. Either they don’t have the communication infrastructure to deal with Republic credits or they just refuse to due to fears of having their transactions tracked.
Ok I guess. Been to places in the world where the bidet/tolietpaper/sink was a garden hose that was tied to a gravity feed rain water tank that you had to sort out yourself over the toilet mounted over a hole and was still able to use my credit card.
Or ask Watto what kind of miraculous favors he’d be willing to pay for. Say, if he had a morally flexible space wizard and his apprentice, at a disadvantage and in a hurry. Dirty deeds done for the best of intentions.
Consider that all the money handlers probably work for the Hutts, who they’re trying to avoid.
Now imagine one of those handlers reporting to the Hutts tip them off that someone is exchanging a shit ton of republic credits, someone who hasn’t checked into a ship dock and is trying to stay low.
Now, I don’t actually think George Lucas thought of that, but it’s easy enough to explain away.
I bet that is like the last profession. Long after even hookers are replaced with robots there will still be someone willing to make currency a into currency b while skimming a bit off the top for themselves.
Or they could sell the damaged but otherwise luxurious royal yacht and buy a smaller but still-functional ship to get them to Coruscant. Or even just tickets to Coruscant. Even if it’s just tickets for “Padme” and her one handmaid who looks like Natalie Portman, plus Qui Gon and Obi-Wan, and everyone else in the royal party has to hole up for a while, it’s not like it’s going to take very long for them to send someone back to pick them up.
While the President probably couldn’t sell Air Force One in a desperate situation, the Secret Service and/or Air Force people on board could. If there were any legal issues with this, the President could pardon them afterwards. While the power of the pardon is often abused, but this would actually be a good case for it to be used.
Because the sale of a luxury yacht in a cultural backwater raises no flags that a TRADE federation might be looking for. The interest in a Hyper Drive probably tipped off Maul in the first place.
As for booking passage, sure put her into a trade ship likely controlled by the federation in question. That won’t result in a hostage situation.
So the problems with the other plans is that it could tip off the Trade Federation, but the convoluted plan they went with was better even though it also tipped off the Trade Federation?
The sensible plan would be to get off the planet as quickly as possible, the longer they stayed there the more likely they’d be discovered. Which is what happened.
Selling the flashy ship and either buying a less conspicuous ship or simply booking passage on a ship would mean they wouldn’t have to wait until after Boonta Eve to leave. Maybe even hire a smuggler that has experience in evading detection? Given the enemy is a Trade Federation that has a penchant for blockades there’s probably a good number of smugglers with experience in getting around those blockades and those smugglers are no friends of the Trade Federation.
But since they already did the thing that makes the most sense in Star Wars already they gotta change it up. But that means doing something that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Now you’re thinking. The problem is selling the flashy ship would take longer, result in less local currency, and still tip off the federation. If you remember one of the options Qui Gon brought up was selling the ship and Greedo basically told him there were no inter-system ships available for trade, that he could get with his credits or the trade-in value.
He did give in fast but I always attributed this to force truth sense which Greedo may also have been able to fool.
Either way they weren’t there for long, got what they wanted and more, and where able to escape before detection resulted in concentrated force. It makes narrative sense.
They only need to get the value of transport to Coruscant, they don’t need to get the full value of what the ship is worth.
I mean if someone said they would give you a Lamborghini with broken engine in exchange for a ride to the next state, you wouldn’t take that deal? Sure it might be a headache for you to either tow it to a garage to get it repaired or find a buyer who will buy it as-is, but you’re talking about something like $100K in value just for giving some people a lift somewhere.
They could be out of there almost immediately if the safety of the Queen was top priority and were willing to take a huge loss on the sale of the ship.
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