Star Wars: 8 Stupid Changes In The Phantom Menace Special Edition

3. Jar Jar And Ani Ride An Air Taxi

The air taxi sequence is one of the most perfunctory in all of Star Wars; Anakin and Jar Jar ride through the skies of Coruscant and... that's pretty much it. Jar Jar makes some quip about the Queen being nice (which I will concede is fair seeding of the identity twist), but then it's just a stream of location shots with the oddly designed vehicle sweeping through them. No wonder it originally wound up on the cutting room floor. The scene was only added into the film for the 2001 DVD release, and has no effect other than further bloating the odd end-of-second-act Coruscant interlude. So why was it added back in? Well, looking at its release before being part of the movie proper might reveal that. Like the pod race it was a late removal, so no real CGI work was required to get it ready for the film. This ease point keeps popping up, and is certainly damning of the whole exercise of changing the film, but that this scene worked its way in is particularly astounding; these are two of the most despised characters in the film, and by the time he was prepping the home video release Lucas will have known that. It's almost like he's trolling the haters.