Star Wars/Battle of Naboo
| Battle of Naboo | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Date | ||
| 32 BBY | ||
| Place | ||
| Theed and the Great Grass Plains, Naboo | ||
| Belligerents | Trade Federation Sith |
Royal House of Naboo Gungan High Council Jedi Order |
| Commanders | Darth Sidious (secretly) Viceroy Nute Gunray Darth Maul Captain Daultay Dofine† Commander OOM-9† |
Queen Padmé Amidala Qui-Gon Jinn† Obi-Wan Kenobi Captain Quarsh Panaka General Jar Jar Binks |
| Forces | 1 Droid Control Ship Thousands of battle droids Tanks, transports, and droid starfighters |
Gungan Grand Army Royal Naboo Security Forces Bravo Squadron starfighters |
| Losses | Droid Control Ship destroyed Entire droid army deactivated Nute Gunray arrested Darth Maul gravely wounded |
Many Gungan and Naboo soldiers Several starfighters Qui-Gon Jinn killed |
| Result | ||
| Naboo and Gungan victory — occupation of Naboo ends | ||
The Battle of Naboo was the final fight of the Trade Federation's invasion of Naboo, shown in the climax of The Phantom Menace. It took place in 32 BBY — thirty-two years before the events of A New Hope. When the Galactic Senate refused to help her occupied planet, Queen Padmé Amidala returned home and planned the battle herself, fighting on four fronts at once: a huge field battle, a raid on the capital, a lightsaber duel, and a starfighter attack in space.
The battle freed Naboo, united its human and Gungan peoples, and made nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker a hero. But it came at a price: the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn was killed by Darth Maul, and the entire crisis turned out to be a trick. Naboo's own senator, Palpatine — secretly the Sith Lord Darth Sidious — had arranged the invasion so he could be elected leader of the Republic, his first step toward ruling the galaxy.
1 Background✎
The Trade Federation had blockaded and then invaded Naboo on the secret orders of Darth Sidious. Queen Amidala escaped to Coruscant to ask the Galactic Senate for help, but too many senators were under the Federation's influence, and nothing was done. Refusing to give up, she returned to Naboo with her Jedi protectors, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The Naboo could not win alone, so Amidala turned to the Gungans, the planet's underwater civilization, who had long distrusted the surface-dwelling humans. With Jar Jar Binks as her guide, she found the Gungans in hiding at their sacred place. There the young queen humbled herself and begged Boss Nass for help — and he agreed, forming a historic alliance between the two peoples. Nass was so pleased with Jar Jar for bringing them together that he made him a general on the spot.
The plan had three parts. The Gungan Grand Army would march onto the Great Grass Plains to lure the Federation's droid army away from the capital city of Theed. While the droids were distracted, Amidala and a small strike team would sneak into the city, free the trapped starfighter pilots, and capture Viceroy Nute Gunray. Finally, the pilots would attack the Droid Control Ship orbiting the planet — the ship that commanded every battle droid on Naboo. Destroy it, and the whole droid army would shut down.
2 The battle✎
2.1 The Great Grass Plains✎
The Gungan army marched onto the plains and raised giant energy shields carried on the backs of swamp creatures called fambaas. Federation tanks fired on the shields without effect, so the droid army simply walked through them on foot. Thousands of battle droids opened fire, and the shield generator was eventually destroyed, leaving the Gungans exposed. Fighting with energy spears and catapults that hurled glowing plasma balls, the Gungans were brave but badly outgunned. As their lines broke apart, General Binks survived mostly by accident — his clumsy stumbles took out droids and even a tank — but he and Captain Tarpals were finally captured, and the Grand Army was defeated. The distraction, however, had worked.
2.2 The fight for Theed✎
Inside the capital, Amidala's strike team ambushed the droids guarding the main hangar, freeing the Naboo pilots to launch their starfighters into space. As the team pressed toward the palace, Darth Maul appeared, blocking their way. The two Jedi stepped forward to face him while the queen's force took another route. Surrounded at one point by rolling destroyer droids, the soldiers were saved by young Anakin Skywalker, who had hidden in a parked starfighter — he accidentally started it, blasted the droids, and then was carried into space by the ship's autopilot.
In the palace, Amidala's group was captured and marched to the throne room. It was a trap of her own design: her decoy, the handmaiden Sabé, appeared dressed as the queen and distracted Gunray just long enough for Amidala to pull hidden blasters from a secret compartment in the throne. The droids were shot down, the doors were sealed, and the Viceroy was a prisoner. Meanwhile, in the Federation's prison camps outside the city, captured Naboo guards rose up against their droid jailers.
2.3 The duel✎
Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan fought Darth Maul from the hangar into the city's power generator complex, a maze of catwalks over deep shafts. Maul, whirling his double-bladed lightsaber, was deadlier than any enemy the Jedi had faced. Walls of laser barriers in the complex separated the fighters, and when they opened, Qui-Gon was forced to duel Maul alone while Obi-Wan was trapped behind the last barrier. Maul stunned the Jedi Master with a blow from his lightsaber handle, then stabbed him through the torso.
When the barriers opened, a grieving Obi-Wan attacked. He cut Maul's double-bladed weapon in half, but the Sith Lord knocked him into a deep shaft, where Obi-Wan clung to a pipe with his lightsaber lost. Calming himself, Obi-Wan leaped from the pit, called his fallen master's lightsaber to his hand with the Force, and sliced Maul in two. With his dying breath, Qui-Gon asked Obi-Wan to train Anakin, and Obi-Wan promised he would.
2.4 The space battle✎
In orbit, the Naboo pilots of Bravo Squadron attacked the Droid Control Ship, but its shields were too strong for their torpedoes. Then Anakin's runaway starfighter arrived. Shot at and forced to land inside the giant ship's hangar, Anakin restarted his stalled fighter and fired two torpedoes — straight into the ship's main reactor. The explosion tore the vessel in half from the inside as Anakin sped out of the hangar. All across Naboo, every battle droid instantly went limp. The astonished Gungan prisoners, realizing the war was won, celebrated by tipping over their deactivated captors.
3 Aftermath✎
Gunray was arrested and forced to sign a peace treaty, ending the occupation. The Naboo and the Gungans, enemies for generations, celebrated together with a great parade in Theed. Yoda promoted Obi-Wan to Jedi Knight and reluctantly allowed him to train Anakin as his apprentice. Qui-Gon was given a Jedi funeral, where Yoda and Mace Windu reached a chilling conclusion: since the Sith always come in pairs — a master and an apprentice — one of them was still out there.
He was closer than anyone guessed. Palpatine, elected Supreme Chancellor because of the very crisis he had secretly created, personally congratulated young Anakin, promising to watch his career "with great interest." Years later he would engineer the Clone Wars, destroy the Jedi Order, and crown himself Emperor.
Darth Maul, too, survived against all odds. Kept alive by his hatred of Obi-Wan Kenobi, he escaped Naboo and hid on a junk world, where pain and rage drove him mad until his brother found him during the Clone Wars. He menaced the galaxy for decades — even secretly running a crime syndicate — until Obi-Wan finally ended his threat for good in a brief duel on Tatooine, shown in Star Wars Rebels.
4 Behind the scenes✎
George Lucas modeled the Great Grass Plains battle on the idea of a low-technology army facing a high-technology one, the same theme behind the Ewok battle in Return of the Jedi — except this time the underdogs lose and are saved only by luck and the space battle above. Lucas based Jar Jar's accidental heroics on silent-film comedian Buster Keaton. Industrial Light & Magic built the battle by photographing real landscapes, digitally warping them to look alien, and filling them with computer-generated armies; the droids were deliberately animated to move like pigeons.
For the lightsaber duel, John Williams composed "Duel of the Fates," which became the film's signature piece of music. According to Star Wars filmmaker Dave Filoni, the music signals that the duel decides Anakin Skywalker's fate: Qui-Gon is fighting for the boy's future, and his death leaves Anakin without the father figure he needed.
