I’m pretty sure my feelings about Episode I as a movie are fairly well established around here. Spoiler alert… not good. That being said, one of the things I think that Episode I did fairly well was setting up a lot of interesting and fairly unique designs, especially compared to some of the stuff we got later. Naboo was simply gorgeous, with an aesthetic that was fairly diverse and definitely unique compared to the rest of Star Wars that we saw.The Naboo starfighter was an fairly interesting ship, that unfortunately only a player for about 10 minutes in the movie (though spread across far longer, because everything was).
We didn’t get to see a whole lot, other than the fact that the Naboo never felt the need to install parental controls, lockout programs, keys, or any sort of protections on their military hardware. Well, that and that they valued style over function big time, what with the sporty paint job and the chrome and leather option. It really matches the rest of the movie in that whole look over purpose… but it also did the look really well. Even though it’s kind of slick, it was a ship I could believe was there more for parade looks than military prowess. Â In other words, I’m suggesting that the military on Naboo is made up entirely of Blue Angles pilots. So maybe Anakin really did see an angel.
We’re a bit late on getting around to reviewing this set; I bought it during the May the 4th sales, mostly because it was on sale and I didn’t buy the last version (I have multiples of the one before that, and even the original 1999 version)… mostly because, while I like the ship well enough, as a build and LEGO set, it was always sub-par and fragile. But since there wasn’t a lot else to buy to get above the limit I needed for the VIP set they had, it went on the pile. At $49.99 and 442 pieces, and what feels like somewhere around seventeen million figures (3 minifigs, 3 Battle Droids, R2-D2, and 2 Droidekas), there is probably a lot of value hiding in a set that most of us would overlook just because of the source… but who really needs more yellow parts?