The character:	Qui-Gon Jinn
The actor:	Liam Neeson
The movie:	Star Wars Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (1999)

I stand before you today not to provide revisionist takes about the prequels. The Phantom Menace, for all of its many flaws, has Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon, for my money, is the most interesting character in any Star Wars movie.

Everyone in the original trilogy fits some kind of type, and few do anything to advance it besides saying some kind of technomancer mumbo-jumbo. The sequel trilogy has types as well, and those types are plagiaristic first and stupid second. When John Williams was writing the music for Attack of the Clones, he tried to envision Claudette Colbert with some handsome guy. We saw how that went. Star Wars fandom is one of the very few places where I allow myself the joy of psychoanalyzing strangers, and for so many people who might argue that Han Solo or Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker are somehow innovative characters, all that matters is that they see themselves in those characters and thus they must be original. It’s funny, but the hero worship, the copycatting, the fawning never quite seems to make it to Qui-Gon Jinn. There’s a risk to being Qui-Gon in the way there’s no risk in being any of those characters from the original trilogy. “I act like I don’t care very much and I’m actually really cool.” “I have bad moods I can’t control.” “I am the long-awaited protagonist of reality.” More than any other person in a Star Wars movie, Qui-Gon reminds me of an actual guy.

For those of us who were following the novels that were released en masse during the ’80s and ’90s, the Jedi had come to represent a certain type of person. It was a monastic life, one that echoed the advice that Yoda gives to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back. Reduce your emotions. Make your feelings smaller. Limit personal attachments. Take the Jedi Academy Trilogy, where Kyp Durron, enslaved on Kessel throughout his childhood, goes from trainee to mass murderer in seconds flat. The Phantom Menace emphasizes that pathway as well. From Yoda’s admonition that Luke is too old in Empire to the new point of view of early childhood Jedi training, the film suggests a Jedi Order which both drinks and bathes in tepid water.

You could read The Phantom Menace as a story of a man who arrogantly believes that he knows better than his peers, and in so doing sets a course for bloody conflict far beyond the scale of anyone’s memory. Or, more convincingly, you could read The Phantom Menace, and the rest of the prequel films, as the story of a sick system populated by the same kind of leaders who fill the rolls of every dying empire. “Master,” Obi-Wan scolds Qui-Gon, “you could be sitting on the Council by now if you would just follow the Code.” But Qui-Gon, not unlike Anton Chigurh, understands that the rule that brought you to this is useless. The Jedi Council sits in an almost literal ivory tower, a bunch of guys with ESP choosing to react to what’s already happened. Qui-Gon is a kinetic force. He makes decisions quickly, even impulsively. He not only takes long gambles, as when he bets on a child to win his first-ever Intergalactic full-contact F1 race, but forces the gamble further: he uses his powers to ensure that Anakin will be freed if the race is won. The future vindicates Qui-Gon, proving that his muscular approach to the Force was the right one at the right time. Killing him off seems like the only way to ensure that Palpatine prevails.