SparkySywer

G&G-Fan said:

I’ve come up with a great analogy for why Anakin’s turn doesn’t work.

Imagine you have a romantic partner and they get into a terrible car accident. You’ve been in the hospital for 3 days and there’s a possibility she may die. You’re worried sick and have barely slept. Satan himself (for the record, I’m an atheist, but this is hypothetical) appears to you and says, “I’ll save her if you kill all of your neighbors, coworkers and their families, every friend you’ve ever had and their families, your entire extended family, and your partner’s entire extended family. This includes any of the children or babies.”

Who would do that?

There has to be some parallel between Anakin being tricked into becoming Space Hitler and the Senate being tricked into becoming Space Nazi Germany, though. I don’t think this is a mistake or a failure of the prequels, but genuinely how George Lucas views the world, or at least the message he was trying to convey.

Adywan did one for ESB and TrillaryDump did one for RotJ.

When my friends feel like rewatching a Star Wars movie, I’ve found that I’d much rather put on a prequel than a sequel. So I guess I’d say the prequels now.

In 1977 what did people think about a sequel? They probably expected one, even if they hadn’t been officially set in stone until later that year.

He heard about it

What should Rey’s purpose in the wider saga be?

If Anakin’s fight with Dooku in Episode 3 is supposed to call back to the Throne Room fight in Episode 6, it would be cool if Dooku called back to how Vader “must obey his master.”

Anakin would be left with the question in his mind of why a Sith would do that, which would be resolved at the end of the movie when he’s in the suit, having lost everything, and still obeying Palpatine. It would also make Dooku more of an interesting character, and retroactively add something to this scene in Return of the Jedi.

Spuffure said:

I seriously don’t know how much longer I can go on like this. Life really is putting me in the shitter.

Go outside. Stop spending so much time online. Go to the gym. Look for real, genuine friends (not internet “friends”). Look for a meaningful, long term relationship, not just getting off. If you’re unemployed, get a job. Stop watching porn. None of this is new to you because you’ve talked about stuff like this in this thread before, but you have to stop talking about it and start acting. Nobody’s going to pull you out of your misery but yourself. It’s way easier said than done, but you will do it eventually. Your attitude that you can’t go on much longer like this is correct. Your suicidal ideation is not because you want to die, but because you don’t want to continue living the way you are. Every day you indulge in the behaviors that make you miserable achieves nothing but delaying your rehabilitation by a day.

My sexual fetishes and sex drive are becoming a damned serious problem.

And for the love of God, stop posting shit like this on a public forum and just fix it.

I think it was a pretty interesting contribution G&G Fan. I’ve never read the original draft of Star Wars to be honest, so it was new information to me that one of the characters Darth Vader was based on was the father of one of the characters Luke Skywalker was based on. It shows that George Lucas clearly wasn’t just pulling him being Luke’s father out of his ass, even if that’s not what the intention was in 1977. With how pervasive the narrative that he just come up with this idea out of nowhere, and it didn’t exist at all to influence his decision-making before the later drafts of The Empire Strikes Back, it’s interesting to see this point of information.

Hey, even if he didn’t mean to, Tommy Wiseau made an unforgettable classic

Me and my dad still say “meesa” and “bombad” to each other, therefore Jar Jar was actually a good character. If he didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have that.

The only character I’ve ever really felt annoyed by was D-0

You snooze you lose

I’d embrace the idea of the Jedi being kind of a cult. The Jedi, on their quest to defend peace and justice in the galaxy, have tried to systematize good and evil to help them understand what their quest even is. I like the idea of the Jedi thinking Yoda was the Chosen One, so maybe he, or some other legendary Jedi who deserves that level of respect, would have defeated the Sith, established the current Republic and a new Jedi order, and came up with a perfect moral code which always illuminates the greater good. In the 800 or so years since this, the Jedi have set out on perfecting both themselves and the galaxy.

The cult-like behavior comes from their sheer commitment to the greater good. The Order is socially engineered so all of its members always prioritize the greater good. They train Jedi from birth so they never meet their family and prioritize them over the greater good of the galaxy. They don’t allow Jedi to fall in love or even have friends because the galaxy’s history books are full of Jedi who turned to the dark side for their friends. It’s dehumanizing, but the Jedi justify it because the Force gives you an immense amount of power, and if you can’t give up your own humanity for the greater good, you don’t deserve that power. Anakin, the one who wasn’t brainwashed from birth, who will fall in love and have a child, is going to be the one who ultimately destroys the Jedi Order and hands the galaxy over to Palpatine.

The Jedi are still flawed though, and if I were to actually write this I’d like to frame it to make the argument that the greater good itself is not for the greater good. The Jedi and the Republic tolerate slavery because the effort to end it would cost many times more lives than it would liberate, and (temporarily) tolerating some evils is for the greater good. But you can’t exactly tell a slave that their slavery is a good thing, and if it turned out that the Chosen One is a former slave, you’re going to make a natural enemy of him by continuing to tolerate slavery, even if he recognizes ending slavery would let out more evils than it would abolish.

Anakin’s fall to the dark side has more to do with the Jedi’s failings than his own inclination toward evil. Anakin’s respect for all the good the galaxy’s done at first puts him on their side. But as it becomes more clear to him how much evil they tolerate, he becomes disillusioned with them. When it becomes clear that he’s the Chosen One, not Yoda/whoever, and their arcane rules prioritize the greater good over him fulfilling his destiny by ending the war and defeating the Sith, he becomes radicalized against them. He embraces fear because it’s a natural reaction to danger, anger because it’s a natural reaction to injustice, and hate because it’s a natural reaction to evil. He turns to Palpatine and the Sith, not because they were the real good guys, but because in a galaxy where moral thinking is so completely dominated by the dishonest, delusional, and ineffective Jedi, the only option he really has to turn to is the Sith, who definitely do not give a damn about the greater good, but don’t force him to tolerate slavery and don’t stop Anakin from ending the war destroying galactic civilization itself. With the Sith and the Empire, the galaxy is his to shape according to his will, but radicalized against the extreme selflessness and peacefulness of the Jedi, he becomes a brutish tyrant whose will becomes just as much of an evil as what he once fought against.

I’d like to reconstruct this in the ST. If the PT Jedi’s failings were that they prioritized the greater good over the individual good, and there’s this idea that in the ST that the Force is to become decentralized, maybe Luke and/or Rey teach the galaxy to defend their own personal good. The galaxy shouldn’t have one group of people defending peace and justice, but everyone should be defending peace and justice in their own lives. The Republic, too, would have to go, because there’s no way to enforce one singular greater good over trillions or quadrillions of people in the galaxy. Someone’s always going to get fucked over for the greater good, and some people more often than others. The political status quo after Episode 9 would be a network of small, local Republics which keep order and peace on a small scale. This is bittersweet, because without the institutions that keep galactic civilization together, civilization can not exist on a galactic scale. But that scale of civilization led to the tyrannies of the Republic and the Empire, and the hell that the Clone Wars and the Empire were weren’t worth the luxury of galactic civilization.

erichf69 said:

To me, Rogue One was a VERY polished movie. I really enjoyed it. That being said, in my humble opinion, it did feel a little less star warsy. Primarily because it did not have the cheesy writing, humor, or as many continuity errors as the OT movies did. They really nailed the look down though. I walked out of the theater knowing it would be an immediate Blu Ray purchase once available.

“Fuck this movie, I’m just gonna leave. Not enough plot holes.”

Removed

G&G-Fan said:

Correct. He did a lot of research clearly which is really awesome. And it proves that RocketJump wasn’t exactly being genuine in his portrayal of Lucas and the making of the movie.

I’ve discussed this video with people here before, and people got upset about it. And yeah, the guy can be passive aggressive and somewhat mean, which is a problem, but a lot of the points are still valid. I can understand being mad about slander and misinformation about something you love at the same time though. People getting upset at the video was also probably partially due to the way I talked about it, due to my explosive nature. I think you’ll get a lot better reception as you’re way cooler and more level-headed and this post is much more objective.

Ultimately I think the original RocketJump video gained a lot of traction because people really want an answer to, “What happened to the Lucas that directed the original trilogy?/WTF happened with the prequels?” question. Which is understandable and very relatable. I felt that during my latest rewatch. But to take on a mindset that it must’ve been because George Lucas was just never good is not the answer. The real answer is definitely way more complex.

I remember shitting on you really hard about this video. I’m a lot more suspicious of this anti-George Lucas narrative that became so popular in the fandom than I was when you made that post. It feels really shitty to change my mind about something I was so opinionated on before, but I really feel like I watched Nerdonymous’s video with a hostile mindset and could only find errors in his refusal to treat RocketJump in good faith. But does RocketJump deserve good faith? Treating people with good people is a virtue, so maybe, but RocketJump’s video makes so many factual errors that he kind of has no credibility. The argument between Nerdonymous and RocketJump should be framed as someone who did their research vs someone who, at best, has no idea what they’re talking about, not as two equals both presenting valid viewpoints.

I originally disliked how Nerdonymous’s video didn’t make a strong, central argument to refute RocketJump, instead just being two hours of pointing out dumb shit RocketJump said, but the point here is to undermine RocketJump’s credibility: Here he is making pretty lofty claims discrediting George Lucas of Star Wars’s success, and he can’t even get basic facts right. Nerdonymous implies that RocketJump is a Disney shill or that the fans of this video are Disney shills, which I didn’t like at the time, and I still don’t see how you could ever prove that RocketJump had any connection to Disney or Disney promoted it. But it’s kind of obvious to me now how much RocketJump’s video was muddying the waters, and it’s extremely hard to believe someone who’s as clearly intelligent as RocketJump was just overzealous and ran a story based on mistaken and/or completely fabricated information. I don’t blame Nerdonymous for connecting the dots and blaming Disney, although there’s no evidence for that and literally all it takes to make a video like this is one guy still seething over the Special Editions.

Marooned Biker Scout said:

Because some people did a video talking about the power of editing film and how it can have a big effect in general, this film especially?

Come on. Let’s be real, that’s not what this video was. It’s not the takeaway you were meant to get from this video. It’s not why it got popular either, and it’s not what people reference it for. Do you really think Nerdonymous just randomly attacked RocketJump’s innocent video about “the power of editing film”? Even if trying to discredit George Lucas is a total accidental message that RocketJump did not intend to put in his video, come on, we need to look a little more critically about the messages in the media we’re consuming. You’re being extremely forgiving. The message is definitely there, and considering how many people have picked up on this message and used this video to argue against George Lucas deserving credit for Star Wars’s success, it deserves to be taken seriously.

Like I said above, I think it was a brave thing to post that Nerdonymous video on here considering it shits on fan preservations and fan edits.

That pissed me off too. I’m a member of this community and I didn’t appreciate being shit on like that. But can you really blame an outsider for thinking these things about us? 99% of the early fanediting scene was driven by George Lucas seethe, and while we constantly talk about the preservation of Star Wars’s cultural legacy, something which is extremely important, you have to admit George Lucas seethe is embedded in these preservationist communities. Anti-Lucas revisionism is more of a problem here than Pro-Lucas revisionism is in the general population. If we want to be act like someone who has a deep admiration for Lucas shitting on us is an unfair thing to do, maybe we should stop shitting on George Lucas so much.

Especially because, if Star Wars’s cultural heritage is what we want to say we’re here for, and not just because we’re still seething about the Special Editions, we need to keep in mind that George Lucas has contributed far, far more to Star Wars’s cultural heritage than he’s destroyed. It’s a shame that he destroyed some of it. But he literally made Star Wars. Can we have some perspective?

We’re at a point in time where our fiction is as soulless and hollow as ever because we shit on visionary storytellers like George Lucas. The creativity and passion that went into the OT which is now rare if not absent from modern filmmaking is more important to Star Wars’s cultural legacy than whether or not Han shot first, and considering that Disney has done nothing but give us what we ask for, it was us who destroyed it.

Anyway, I apologize to you G&G Fan. I was wrong about what I said, and it’s embarrassing to look at the original thread and see myself defending a viewpoint which I really think should have been obvious how wrong it was. I’m feeling that way more and more about the shit I’ve said on the internet years past. Although Nerdonymous’s major chip on his shoulder really does make the video fucking suck.

I used to hold out hope for the OOT, but now I’m completely certain we will never, ever see an official release. We have to move on.

If I get to hear about these “Ruusan Reformations” one more time I’m going to giggle.

G&G-Fan said:

Superweapon VII said:

It’s probably difficult for some folks to wrap their heads around Vader being the Dark Lord of the Sith whilst being subservient to a non-Sith Palpatine because since 1999, the Sith have been portrayed as apex predators who have a monopoly on dark side mastery. But this is purely an invention of the prequels.

You do realize that the fact that Vader calls Palpatine his master obviously means Palpatine was a Sith in TESB and ROTJ?

Sith was never uttered until TPM. All we know is that Palpatine is Vader’s master. It could be that they’re both part of a dark Order where Palpatine trained Vader, but we have no reason to believe Vader’s a part of any order based solely off the OT. It’s worth mentioning that Timothy Zahn wanted to name the Noghri species “Sith” to explain what “Dark Lord of the Sith” meant. Palpatine only really needs to be someone powerful in the dark side, what the Sith are and whether or not Palpatine is one of them isn’t as important.

Not that Palpatine’s relationship with Anakin should be like Snoke and Kylo Ren, but in a prequel rewrite, their relationship could be something like that. Kylo Ren is a Knight of Ren, Snoke trained him and is his master but is not a Knight of Ren. The Knights of Ren are just an order that Kylo Ren is also a part of.

At this point I’m starting to think that the kind of mental gymnastics people use to resolve the contradictions between the PT and OT is funny. The contradictions are a blessing. They make the movies more enjoyable because I now get to listen to people spew horseshit about how the Ruusan Reformation explains how the Republic is simultaneously 1,000 and 25,000 years old. I wish there were more of them.

I’m considering changing my profile picture to that of a desert fox

Now that All I Want For Christmas Is You season is over, how long did you guys go without hearing it? I made it all the way to December 23.

Superweapon VII said:

Spuffure said:

The internet was peddled as a meaningful and revolutionary tool, but capitalism being capitalism, it is now corrupted by filth, lies, and addiction.

Fixed that for you.

Capitalism was not necessary to put filth, lies, and addiction on the internet.

Spuffure said:

I strongly dislike the term “Grammar Nazi”. How does being obsessively corrective to someone’s grammar have anything to do with killing a lot of innocent people?

“Grammar Cop” or “Grammar Policeman” is a much more suitable term.

I used to hear Grammar Police all the time, but I don’t anymore.

Servii said:

Spartacus01 said:

Sometimes I feel the Star Wars universe is unnecessarily big and confused, and that it contains a disproportionate amount of material, although there’s no need to. If I were George Lucas, this is the way I would have organized the Star Wars universe from the beginning:

• A “Down of the Jedi” style long comic series to explore the birth of the Jedi and the Republic.
• A “Tales of the Jedi” style comic series to explore the birth of the Sith and the Great War between the Jedi and the Sith, which leed to the Sith “extinction” at Russan.
• A trilogy of comics to explore Darth Bane’s story.
• A “Star Wars: Republic” style long comic series to explore the whole Prequel Era, the Clone Wars and Anakin’s fall. No Prequel films, everything Is made in comics.
• A “Star Wars: Dark Times” style comic series to explore the Dark Times.
• The Original Trilogy.
• A “Tales of the Jedi” style long comic series to explore the post-ROTJ period, at least until the definitive defeat of the Empire.

That’s it. This way, there wouldn’t be too much material, the universe outside of the movies wouldn’t be so big, and perhaps people would be less confused.

The issue you run into with a really tight, concrete canon is that the duds are harder to ignore. If a book, show, or movie is hard canon and ends up being really bad, all future material still has adhere to it.

IMO, Disney should consider the movies something like a “Main Saga” and everything else sort of like an Expanded Universe, which are on different tiers of canon.

In fact, it would probably be a good idea to split it into more than two tiers of canon. Like, George Lucas’s 6 movies are obviously on the top tier of canon as the core story the rest is based on, but then on the next tier you could have stuff like The Clone Wars which is clearly core canon but still lower than 1-6. Then you’d have stuff like novels and comics, the main bulk of what I’m thinking I’d call the “Expanded Star Wars Universe”, and then at the bottom you’d have stuff which conforms to canon but doesn’t define it. This would really work out, especially with such an anal fanbase. I’m not sure why Disney doesn’t do this.