EVERYBODY makes mistakes, and this is never truer than in movies, where a little bit of stupidity is often necessary as a device to drive the plot.

Sometimes, however, characters make decisions so monumentally bad that we simply can’t give them – and by extension their creators – a free pass.



Star Wars Episodes I-III are a veritable treasure trove of poor decision-making. Here are the nine dumbest decisions in the Star Wars prequels.



Trying to kill Jedi… with poison gas



Jedi can run really fast, hold their breath for ages and escape just about any locked room with a lightsaber… so why would the Trade Federation try to kill them with poison gas? Why not just open the door and shoot them in the back of the head with lasers, rig the protocol droid to explode, or lower the force field windows and let the vacuum of space do the rest? Hell, how about all three? Nope, poison gas.

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It's a trap! A very avoidable trap.



Not selling Queen Amidala’s ship



Look at Amidala’s ship.



LOOK AT THIS THING.

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Redefining the meaning of "bling."



It makes EVERY OTHER SHIP IN STAR WARS LOOK LIKE A PIECE OF CRAP. It must be worth a bazillion Galactic credits. So. If you're Qui-Gon, what do you do when one of its parts breaks down and nobody has any money? (Because, y'know, despite the fact that you live in a galaxy with holograms and plucky sentient robots, no one has gotten around to inventing the internet or wire transfers yet.)



You don't sell the BAZILLION DOLLAR ship and buy a fleet of less pretty, but completely working spaceships. That would be too sensible. Instead, Qui-Gon, in his infinite wisdom, decides to let a nine year-old enter a podrace (which he’s never completed before) in a podracer (that’s never been tested) that - and this is a fairly important detail - was BUILT BY A SMALL CHILD on the chance that this might result in winning enough money to buy the part. What could possibly go wrong?



On our planet, those kind of shenanigans gets you put up on child abuse charges.

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Anakin "raising the truth"... which is "this should never have been our plan, Qui-Gon."



Making Obi-Wan train Anakin



Yes, Qui-Gon requested his ex-Apprentice train Anakin but seriously, would any Jedi Council worth its salt let this happen? You have potentially the most powerful Jedi in all of history, whom you immediately sense has a lot of emotional issues, and you don’t choose to have him be trained by Yoda or any of the twenty other super experienced, powerful and wise Jedi Grand Masters in the room? Don’t you people have magical fortunetelling and empathic powers?!

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Anyone in this room would have been a better choice than Obi-Wan.



Setting Anakin to guard Padme



SCENARIO: You need to protect a high-profile Senator from political assassination.



IMPORTANT NOTE: She’s an incredibly gorgeous ex-Queen who looks a lot like Natalie Portman, a woman for whom almost every teenager in the universe would take a lightsaber to the privates to just to have a chance to be near.



As the Jedi Council, do you:



a) Allow Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to appoint the most impulsive, cocky, pigheaded teenage Jedi Padawan with a fairly obvious crush on said Senator to guard her;



b) Decide to do it yourself… for… safety… and stuff; or,



c) Appoint any of the thousands of other Jedi at your disposal to do it instead.



ANSWER: If you chose either (b) or (c), congratulations - you’ve just saved the galaxy. If you chose (a), and you’re a Jedi, then everything and everyone you’ve ever held dear will soon be dead. Well done.

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This was always going to end well.



Choosing Jar Jar for the Galactic Senate



Look, it’s easy to hate on Jar Jar, but it’s also 100% necessary because of his general crappiness. So why elect him of all people? Did any of the people involved in this decision ever actually meet Jar Jar? Because if they did, those people are the worst. THE WORST.



You know who would have made a better Senator? ANYONE. Pick any single person/alien/droid from the Star Wars universe and they would have done a better job - Watto, Dexter Jettster (shudder), hell, even Gonk would be a huge improvement. In fact, GONK 4 PRESIDENT!

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Is this the face of a senator? I think not.



Everything Jango Fett did in the arena on Geonosis



So, Mace Windu is fighting for his life in the arena on Geonosis when a rhino monster starts chasing him and knocks his lightsaber away. Jango Fett decides this is the perfect time to kill the Jedi Master. So far, so good. Then Jango does precisely NONE of the following:



a) Shoot Mace in the back from where he is. You know you can do that with a gun, right? Shoot people from a distance? It is kind of the whole point of guns.



b) Use his jetpack to fly over Mace Windu, shooting him in the face while the hideous rhino monster is eating him.



c) Shoot Mace Windu in the face instead of jumping for his lightsaber when Mace tries to pick it up with the Force.



d) Use his jetpack to fly away from Windu when he charges the bounty hunter with his lightsaber, THEN shoot him in the face.



To sum up: you have a GUN and CAN FLY, Jango. You don’t need to fight him from half a meter away.

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Those things in your hands? Yeah, they work at a distance.



Confronting Palpatine without serious back up



Sure, Mace Windu is the Jedi’s best swordsman but Palpatine has singlehandedly had the entire Jedi Order dancing like puppets for years. Mace has no idea what he’s truly capable of. Why take just three Jedi when he lives in the same building as every other Jedi on Coruscant? You know what’s better than four Jedi? FOUR HUNDRED JEDI. Trust us, there’s no such thing as overkill on this one, Mace.

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I'm about to serve you here, here and here.



See also: Yoda confronting Palpatine alone, and then just totally giving up forever when it doesn’t immediately work out.



Anakin trying to take the higher ground



We make plenty of life decisions that could be seen as good or bad depending on your point of view. But you can be pretty certain you’ve made a really bad call when it results in having your arms and legs cut off and lying face down in lava while your ex-best friend gives you a lecture.



The reason this is the worst decision in all three prequels? Anakin could have easily just stepped off the lavabot onto the bottom of the hill and kept fighting.



(To be fair though, that fight scene had gone on for about half an hour too long by that point, so maybe he just wanted it to be over already. Y'know, like the rest of us.)

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Higher ground is great and all, but it only really works if you get there with all your limbs intact.



Hiding Luke Skywalker… with the Skywalkers



Okay, you know what, the fact that Vader somehow never went back to check on his old family does not make this any less of a ridiculous idea. You have an ENTIRE GALAXY filled with hundreds of habitable planets and you “hide” the kid in his dad’s family home in the desert and don’t even bother changing his name?!



Meanwhile, you conceal the other kid extraordinarily well by sending her to be a Princess on the wealthiest planet there is… way to make it obvious who everyone’s favourite was.

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On the plus side, at least Tatooine had womp rats to bullseye.



What do you think were the worst decisions characters made in the prequels? Let us know!



Robbie Boland is a Sydney-based freelance copywriter and screenwriter. You can chat with him on IGN here and check out his excellent DeathStar PR Twitter account here. Oh, and why not join IGN Australia's facebook page while you're at it?

Originally published as Dumbest decisions in Star Wars prequels