The sonic background of Star Wars is almost unmatched for legendary, immediately recognizable callouts. The snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber. The penetrating wail of a TIE Fighter shrieking into view, the alien cacophony of Mos Eisley cantina. The prequels added to this catalogue massively, from the quivering bass of podracer engines to the thrumming of ray shields. But nothing compares to the sound the blasters used by Padmé and the Naboo guard in Phantom Menace to me.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I saw Phantom Menace in theaters again this past weekend for its 25th anniversary. It’s a movie that is really jam-packed with incredible new layers to Star Wars’ sound design, marrying a lot of the iconic sounds we knew with new noise—from the podracers and shields mentioned above to the holographic static of Sidious’ moving comms platform, the click-clack of Battle Droid feet, or that joyful little bounce the Gungan energy balls make as Jar Jar accidentally sets an ammo cart full of them rolling down a hill. But the Naboo blasters, whether it’s Padmé’s sleek little silver holdout or the heavier pistols used by Captain Panaka and the security forces, are burned into my eardrums as a definitive aspect of the prequel trilogy.
It’s a fascinating sonic choice, in the first place—for the most part, the blaster fire from the Trade Federation’s battle droids sounds similar to the blaster fire we heard in the original Star Wars movies. They sound like, well, blasters: they go “pew pew,” albeit with a little less percussive punch than we’re used to, and little red bolts streak out across the screen. The Naboo, who we’ve repeatedly been told about as a peaceful, passively diplomatic people, whose culture’s embrace of art reflects their refined politics, have blasters that sound anything but. It’s high pitched, it’s echo-y and light, it reverberates in the air compared to the tight sound of typical blaster fire. It’s a sound that’s hard to capture in onomatopoeia, it’s almost like a “bwah!”
It’s silly! It’s oddly elegant! For a people who value aesthetic and creativity more than martial power—in spite of the fact that Padmé apparently has like four pistols tucked into the armrest of her throne, just because she can!—it simply sounds right. You hear that noise in a shootout scene and can pick it out, but you also go “oh yeah, that sounds like a gun this culture would make.” That’s a lot to infer from a “bwah!” but that’s what makes it such an incredible piece of sound design in the first place. It sounds unlike anything else in Star Wars, but immediately tells you so much about the worldbuilding it’s part of.
The prequels now have almost as rich a sonic legacy as the original films do, adding tons and tons of fascinating bits of sound design into the wider tapestry of the galaxy far, far away. But the Naboo blasters perhaps remain as one of its finest additions: a truly elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.
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