This
is a weapon of terror. It’s made to intimidate the enemy.
This
is a weapon of war. It’s made to kill the enemy.
However, both were originally designed for The Empire Strikes Back.
I was just going to ask: why is Ron Howard tweeting a picture from a video game?
“Almost”?
Exactly. It’s the same mentality that puts the phrase “imaginary story” on the cover of a Silver Age AU comic book with no hint of irony.
Mark’s Down On Your Syntax said:
So Panaka is Typho’s uncle? Well, well, well.
In the normal sense or the cardinal-nephew sense?
It seems like it was a missed opportunity to not have young Anakin be a hot shot Skyhopper pilot in TPM.
If you’re committed to making the Prequels as mediocre as possible, it isn’t.
Speaking of the standalone sequel Episode VII movie, in that storyline the main male protagonist loses a leg in a duel with the Dark Lord at the film’s end. However, he survives and wins with the help of his girlfriend, Kira Starkiller/ Skywalker.
This is alluded to in Marvel’s recent Darth Vader comics, where Vader’s suit is injured in three areas: the eye of his helmet, his left arm, and his left leg.
The broken eyepiece reveals the eye of Anakin Skywalker, but his suit’s left arm being torn off is a reference to Luke losing his left arm at the elbow in early drafts of The Empire Strikes Back. (To make sure we get the reference, Vader retains his glove, but it has a hole on the back, where Luke gets shot in the hand in ROTJ.)
And the left leg being lost entirely, droid limb and all, is a reference to this alternate Episode VII. (The comic has a few other cerebral in-jokes as well, such as a planet Vader visits having a mountain called “Passvaal”, as in “Parsifal”, and shaped like the Mount of Purgatory from the Divine Comedy.)
I mention this here because according to George Lucas, limb injuries are sublimated castration scenes. You’re welcome.
Small note: When George Lucas decided to expand the Sequel Trilogy from one film to three (as mentioned in The Making of ESB), he initially considered having each film use the same cast and script, but different directors.
That way, by experiencing the same story three times in different ways, audiences would see what a director’s sensibility brings to a film: a particular point of view.
Too bad directors don’t direct the film anymore. It’s now a soulless, corporate, machine.
It’s quite remarkable how one of Star Wars’ greatest legacies is the resurrection of the 1930s studio system whose death brought about the New Hollywood in the first place. One more sad indicator of how Lucas became the King Midas of Hollywood: turning ideas to gold at the price of sucking out their life.
True. Though usually it doesn’t extend to enshrining the idea of “you kill Space Hitler, you become Space Hitler” in its official doctrine. That’s just Trek Mirror Universe levels of cartoonishly silly evil.
Well, not really – the January 1975 second draft established the basic plot structure, and the August 1975 third draft set up the character dynamics we know (save for Governor Tarkin, who was added as an additional villain in the fourth draft Jan 1976 script).
But I do think it may have been something Lucas talked about with someone at one point, hence the model being created.
Similar to how Luke told Ralph McQuarrie in April 1975 that he was considering having a female protagonist, and McQuarrie drew concept art accordingly for a month until Lucas changed his mind and started thinking about the third draft.
Lucas was extraordinarily good at throwing out interesting ideas in casual conversation – the Holiday Special premise began as an “alien fairy tale” bookend idea he suggested offhand for the first film, and he also considered a scenario where Luke, Han, and Chewie all get captured on the Death Star and rescued by Ben. However, Lucas’ slow methodical style of writing (and his tendency to preserve language from previous drafts whenever possible) meant these never reached a script page. The Skyhopper idea may have been a similar case.
Also, in the other idea of the Sequel Trilogy continuing immediately on from the third film in the OT: Luke’s long-lost sister (i.e., not Leia) is named either Nellith or Mara, depending on whether she’s a former Sith Lord or a former space pirate.
The former name suggests Lilith, Adam’s sinful first wife from Jewish lore, and parallels the Catholic Marian symbolism associated with Leia. The second, from Mara the tempter demon in Buddhism, stands outside Christianity, as pirates stand outside polite society. (Hence Mara Jade’s name in the Thrawn trilogy.)
Small note: When George Lucas decided to expand the Sequel Trilogy from one film to three (as mentioned in The Making of ESB), he initially considered having each film use the same cast and script, but different directors.
That way, by experiencing the same story three times in different ways, audiences would see what a director’s sensibility brings to a film: a particular point of view.
In the final film of the Sequel Trilogy as planned around 1980, Luke and Nellith Skywalker’s daughter, born of incest, fell in love either with another woman or a man of color (depending on whether Nellith’s backstory involved her joining a pirate gang or being recruited by the Sith).
This isn’t actually icky sex, except to racists who are obsessed with perpetuating their “bloodlines” and defending them from so-called “pollution”. A palate cleanser after the Wagnerian incest of the previous generation.
In outlines where Luke & Leia were half-siblings committing incest, their daughter Kira was an albino – an idea inspired by Jim Henson’s 1981 The Dark Crystal, with further influence from TH White’s Mordred in The Once and Future King.
In this case the villain of the sequel film (originally just one, as George Lucas confessed in a 1980 conversation recorded in The Making of ESB) would be Kira’s twin brother. However, if Luke & Leia weren’t related, the villain would be Leia’s secret son, fathered when she was raped during her time in Imperial captivity in the OT. The idea would be that Leia carried the child to term but put the baby out for adoption, all off-screen between films.
This villain would have been one of Luke’s Jedi students, but would turn evil after learning of his true parentage: a variation on the moral issues Luke faced after learning of Vader’s identity in ESB.
The Sith would be a lot more formidable if they didn’t have chronic backstabbing built into their order as ideology.
Nice Phantom of the Opera mask. 😄
That coffee cup is flashing me.
The worst thing about SWGOH is it causes me to use prequel characters like Darth Sidious.
Who has two lightsabers? Very odd.
He uses two in The Clone Wars, for what it’s worth.
It’s probably to “explain” where he got another one in ROTS after he lost his in the Windu duel. “He had two all along, see?!” 😒
Huh. Well spotted!
In the original DF canon I like Kyle being a Jedi, but don’t much care for him training Academy brats at Yavin.
I’d be cool with an alternate DF storyline where Kyle stays a mercenary though.
Heh!
Almost certainly yes.
The more pressing question is, was Leia a virgin when she had sex with Luke? Specify whether your answer is based on the August 1975 third draft, the March 1976 shooting script, or another source.
He also played a Nazi commander in an alternate Earth on Star Trek: Enterprise.
The worst thing about SWGOH is it causes me to use prequel characters like Darth Sidious.
Who has two lightsabers? Very odd.
Remember when Boc in Jedi Knight was said to be “one of the few who actually uses two lightsabers in battle”?
Those were happier times.
There’s also the fact that the storyline for the Sequel Trilogy involved Luke meeting & falling in love with his long-lost sister Nellith (culminating in a movie where their son goes evil, Mordred-style).
Nellith’s character arc was the inspiration for Mara Jade in Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy. Zahn tipped the hat to her origins as Nellith by putting the Branstock tree from Wagner’s Die Walkure in Talon Karrde’s base in Heir to the Empire (which he mentions in the HttE annotated author’s notes).
So do I, but Carrie Fisher told me that’d be a good joke.
Since Colin Trevorrow’s story pitch was so Leia-centric, I guess it’s not surprising that after Carrie Fisher’s death Lucasfilm brought JJ back. With TFA Abrams proved he can do a SW film where one of the three OT leads is absent for the whole thing.
