Something More Real
In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon Jinn tries to bargain with the junk dealer Watto by offering to pay him in Republic credits. “Republic credits are no good out here [on Tatooine]. I need something more real,” Watto says, and when Qui-Gon attempts to persuade him with a Jedi mind trick, the obstinate shopkeeper remains unmoved: “Mind tricks don’t work on me, only money.” This dialogue is revealing: for the materialistic Watto, “real” is a synonym for “useful” or “profitable.” If he cannot use a thing to buy or sell in Tatooine’s hardscrabble marketplace, it might as well be an insubstantial illusion.
The fact that Watto is dismissive of “Republic credits” plays like a double entendre, given that Plato’s Republic is a thematic touchstone across Star Wars. In the Republic, Socrates argues that the sorts of things Watto deems to be most “real” – money and material goods – are in fact less real than immaterial things like goodness and justice. When Watto discredits the Jedi, the Force, and the Republic (a government meant to uphold ideals like justice and freedom) while insisting on something “more real,” he is revealing how small and upside-down his idea of reality is, like a person in a cave who mistakes a shadow for something with real substance.
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Characters: Watto
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Concepts: greed / materialism
Influences: Plato
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I’ve never caught onto this and I just did a TPM rewatch last week. I’m currently reading the E.K. Johnston Padme trilogy and wanted to see how the books would affect my prequel rewatch. I like this line of dialogue so much more now! 💯