4

Qui-Gon Jinn Has To Have Faster/Safer Ways To Make Money

When the hyperdrive on Queen Amidala's spaceship gives out in The Phantom Menace, it's up to Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn to figure out a solution. After realizing that kicking Jar-Jar out into the cold vacuum of space to reduce weight won't be enough, Qui-Gon decides to land the ship on Tatooine and purchase parts for repairs. Problem: Tatooine is the sandy asshole of the Galaxy, so this may be tough to do legally.

The only guy who appears to have the right stuff is flying bug / awful Jewish stereotype Watto, who refuses Republic credits as payment. And Qui-Gon's furious Force hand-waving doesn't work, since Watto's mind is too strong -- or too distracted by Natalie Portman -- to have any effect. However, as Watto's slave, Anakin, seems gifted in the Force, Qui-Gon wagers his ship against the repairs, and the boy's freedom, provided that Anakin can win the next podrace. Watto eagerly accepts the deal, because Anakin crashes pretty much all the time. Fortunately, Anakin somehow wins, and he's freed to go murder a bunch of younglings and plunge the galaxy into horrific, genocidal warfare. Hell of a maneuver, Qui-Gon.

Hold It ...

Why not go mind-trick somebody else or ... do anything else?

Before you say something about Qui-Gon adhering to the Jedi Code or whatever, remember that he literally tried to brainwash the first person they encountered on the planet before giving up and pinning the fate of Naboo on the racing skills of a whiny ten-year-old. Why not mind-trick some other vendor? And if that doesn't work, simply play a couple hands of space poker or do some underground street fighting. It's hard to walk two feet in Tatooine without bumping into someone who wants to rip your face off; it can't be that difficult to palm-shake your way into some high-stakes bare-knuckle boxing.

If all that feels like too much effort, why not trade the Queen's ship for a functional ship that could safely transport them through space (and hide their identity better than the Queen's personal ship, which all but screams "Abduct me!")? Why not buy passage on an intergalactic bus, or freaking hire a smuggler guy like Han Solo to transport them, like in A New Hope? All of those options would take all of a few hours to sort out. And at no point would anyone ever have to hear Anakin scream "NOW THIS IS PODRACING!" And that, my friends, is the greatest treasure of all.

3

The Fast & Furious Drug Lord Is Incredibly Inefficient

The emotional turning point of Fast & Furious -- the last movie before they decided to add the Rock and make the series watchable -- is the brutal "murder" (later retconned away) of Vin Diesel's main girl, Letty. Diesel's character leaves her to protect her from ... crime, we guess? But to the surprise of exactly nobody, Letty decides against getting a barista job at Starbucks and immediately turns to the life of crime she'd never left to support herself without Diesel and his improbably thick neck.

2

The Magician In The Prestige Completely Misses The Point Of Cloning

The Prestige follows the epic, bitter rivalry between two grown-up, this-is-literally-their-only-job magicians, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden. After a few years of screwing with each other's acts, Borden comes out with a trick called "The Transported Man," wherein he seemingly transports from one end of the room to the other instantaneously. Angier cannot figure out how Borden pulls this off, but he makes it his mission to one day come up with a better version. According to The Prestige, a magician's life is one-third tricks, two-thirds overwhelming obsession and vengeance.

Thankfully, Angier goes to meet Cracked.com's Nikola Tesla, who happens to have built a big goddamn cloning machine. In the 1890s. Totally ignoring all the wonderful masturbatory possibilities the machine offers, Angier decides to use it in his act, because he's responsible. Countering Borden, Angier uses this thing at every gig, duplicating himself and killing the most recent "original Angier" via trap door, drowning him(self) in a tank full of water. Angier then lugs his drowned clones to a big warehouse for ... safekeeping? Or to kinda look at 'em, we guess.

1

The Bad Guy In X2 Involves The President In His Scheme For No Reason

In X2: X-Men United, William Stryker attempts to use a brainwashed Professor X and a duplicate of the mega mutant Tinder, Cerebro, to psychically blow up the brains of every mutant on the planet. The plan is to infiltrate Xavier's school, gut the existing machine, and restore it at their elaborate underground dam base. But before they can start creeping around a school, Stryker first needs the president's permission. To endear the president to his desires, Stryker brainwashes Nightcrawler into an attempted assassination. Then, because he's still miffed about the whole attempt-on-his-life-by-a-mutant thing, the president readily gives Stryker his approval to do whatever he wants with that school.

Hold It ...

Why does Stryker need POTUS' permission for this, exactly?

Stryker seemingly doesn't need anybody to sign off on all the other bad shit he's been doing. A few things that the president didn't need to OK: performing experiments on mutants, kidnapping Xavier, building a sprawling secret base filled with soldiers, starting the plotline that would lead to X-Men Origins: Wolverine. When the president is shown all the things Stryker's been up to at the end of the film, he has no idea what anybody's talking about.

At this point, nobody knows about Xavier's school. Why is Stryker so confident that he could build a big dam base without the president knowing, but he isn't sure how to cover up that he's going to attack a random school that essentially doesn't exist? That's like successfully turning your bedroom into a brothel without anybody finding out, and then asking your parents if it's cool to go bang a prostitute at Jeff's house. They didn't know Jeff had a prostitute until you told them, moron. Except if this was Stryker, he'd also hire some hooker to attack your parents so they'll be okay with you revenge-fucking a prostitute. To put it bluntly, William Stryker probably would've gotten away with it, if he hadn't gotten mixed up with one too many hookers.

Jordan Breeding also writes officially for Paste Magazine, unofficially on the Twitter and his blog, and occasionally with a open heart and mind in the comments section.

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