ATMachine

By the way, I have a thread on the TFN forums where I analyze lots of the costume concepts and other character designs done for the OT. Many of the drawings there are by Ralph McQuarrie, but some are by other artists, such as John Mollo and Nilo Rodis-Jamero.

Fair warning: the thread is intensely image-heavy. Do not go there if you have dial-up (or are still living in a cave in 1992).

Also, there may be some potential Episode VII spoilers--but likely nothing you haven't encountered already.

I find that, much of the time, a thing is best defined by its opposite.

"I sit beside the fire and think / Of all that I have seen..."

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

"Seek and ye shall find."

"I find that if I just sit down and think... a solution presents itself!"

"Then he knew not if he awoke, or if it were a change in his dream; but the chamber became dark about him, and he lay there thinking of her, till, as it seemed, day began to dawn, and there was some little stir in the world without, and the new wind moved the casement. And again the door opened, and someone entered as before; and this also was a woman: green-clad she was and barefoot, yet he knew at once that it was not his love that was dead, but the damsel of the ale-house of Bourton, whom he had last seen by the wantways of the Wood Perilous, and he thought her wondrous fair, fairer than he had deemed."

JawsTDS said:

Best moment in ROTS is the last 10-15 minutes of the film. It brings a bad era to a good close and wraps it all up nicely. 

Funny, I think the best moment in the film is the first 10-15 minutes.

But the last 5 minutes or so of ROTS are also good, in my book.

One good turn deserves another, as they say.

"Embrace the power of the Ring... or embrace your own destruction!"

"Hojotoho! Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha!"

Then Beren and Lúthien went through the Gate, and down the labyrinthine stairs; and together wrought the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves or Men. For they came to the seat of Morgoth in his nethermost hall that was upheld by horror, lit by fire, and filled with weapons of death and torment. There Lúthien was stripped of her disguise by the will of Morgoth, and he bent his gaze upon her. She alone of all things in Middle-earth could not be daunted by his eyes; and she named her own name, and offered her service to sing before him, after the manner of a minstrel.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Quenta Silmarillion, 1937

Then Beren and Lúthien went through the Gate, and down the labyrinthine stairs; and together wrought the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves or Men. For they came to the seat of Morgoth in his nethermost hall that was upheld by horror, lit by fire, and filled with weapons of death and torment. There Beren slunk in wolf's form beneath his throne; but Lúthien was stripped of her disguise by the will of Morgoth, and he bent his gaze upon her. She was not daunted by his eyes; and she named her own name, and offered her service to sing before him, after the manner of a minstrel.

--J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 1977

OK, here's a new topic for all the film buffs.

At the risk of invoking the specter of academia, I'll go along with the literary notion of the "Death of the Author," and ask:

What deleted scenes (or dialogue lines) do you wish hadn't been cut from your favorite movies?

--

One of my favorite passages that didn't make it into the film version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade comes from Indy's full translation of Donovan's fragmentary Grail tablet:

"Let them bring me to your holy mountain... in the place where you dwell. Across the desert and through the mountain... to the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, broad enough only for one man. To the Temple of the Sun, holy enough for all men... Where the cup that holds the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord resides forever."

The name of the Grail Temple used here is a clear reference to the Tintin album Le Temple du Soleil (translated into English as Prisoners of the Sun).

Fitting, given that another Tintin book--Coke En Stock/The Red Sea Sharks--sees Tintin visit the real-world location used to film the Grail Temple exterior: the Treasury in Petra. As in Last Crusade, the facade of this ancient building is put to other uses in service of Hergé's story.

Also, an alternate cut of Indy's meeting with Donovan has Donovan mentioning that Henry Sr. holds the Chair of Medieval Studies at Princeton. This idea was later taken up in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

(And I wonder if the reference to "your holy mountain" isn't a subtle reference of sorts to the Alejandro Jodorowsky film.)

--

The Grail tablet's phrase "broad enough only for one man" was to pay off in a later deleted scene, where Donovan, Elsa, and the Nazis use dynamite to blast open the narrow canyon leading to the Grail Temple.

Around the same time, there was a great bit of unused dialogue from Henry:

"Marcus, we're like the four heroes of the Grail legend. You're Percival, the holy innocent. Sallah is Bors, the ordinary man. My son is Galahad, the valiant knight. And his father... the old crusader, Lancelot, who was turned away because he was unworthy, as perhaps I am."

Unlike the earlier bit of dialogue from Henry referencing a fictitious Charlemagne quote, this is actually based on the medieval legends of the Grail, particularly Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur.

The same dialogue also worked its way in modified form into the adventure-game adaptation. Really a shame it was cut from the film, in my view... it was quite profound, and well worth keeping.

"But why is it made of diamond instead of glass?"

"We don't know. That's the Conundrum."

--LOOM (Lucasfilm Games)

"But I'm still curious: why is it diamond, instead of glass?"

"We've no idea, no idea at all. That's the conundrum, you see."

--LOOM (LucasArts)

"Hmm... looks like a big plus sign. What could that possibly mean?"

--The Secret of Monkey Island (Lucasfilm Games)

--

Perhaps my favorite Tintin album is Le Secret de La Licorne.

Trois frères unys. Trois Licornes de conserve vogant au Soleil de midi parleron.

Car c'est de la lumière que viendra la lumière. Et resplendirra

la + de l'Aigle.

However, I actually prefer certain passages as they're rendered in the English translation (whose authors were good friends of Hergé).

Three Brothers joyned. Three Vnicornes in company sailing in the noonday Sunne will speak.

For 'tis from the Light that Light will dawn. And then shines forth

the Eagle's +

Of course, I also enjoyed Steven Spielberg's film adaptation (though not particularly the music, though some may accuse me of heresy for dissing John Williams). I particularly liked that the writers managed to work in Bianca Castafiore...

"Ciel! Mes bijoux!"

...and a posthumous Hitchcock-esque cameo from Hergé himself. (I'm fairly sure he'd have approved, having drawn himself into crowd attending the medal ceremony at the end of Le Sceptre d'Ottokar.)

--

"...and X never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading. We cannot afford to take mythology at face value."

--Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

"Well, ah... now what's that supposed to be coming out of there?"

"Lightning... fire... the power of God, or something."

"I'm beginning to understand Hitler's interest in this thing."

"Oh, yes. The Bible speaks of the Ark levelling mountains and laying waste to entire regions. An army which carries the Ark before it is invincible."

--Raiders of the Lost Ark

"X marks the spot."

--Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

I would be saddened if no one understood this thread on a level comparable to my own understanding of it.

(Though I'd be equally sad if everyone in the world understood it exactly as I have.)

Therefore I propose these as supplements/complements/sequels, for future issues:

And there you have it.

As above, so below:

Insert Disk 22 and Press Button to Continue.

To complete the triptych, here's one of my favorite images of Chaos, the villain in Lucasfilm Games' 1990 graphic adventure game LOOM (written by Brian Moriarty):

Wait, that may be the wrong picture.

(I'm getting the strangest feeling of déjà vu.)

Oh, the heck with it.

Hooray!

And, because this post would be otherwise complete, here is the prelude to the (three days of the) Trilogy: my favorite images of Padme's mother, Princess Leia.

And now, for your entertainment, I present a trilogy of images, courtesy of René Magritte.

First, here's one of my favorite screen captures of Padme from the SW prequels:

Wait, that may be the wrong picture.

Oops, still wrong, I'm afraid.

That's better.

Next, one my favorite pictures of Brigitte Helm from Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis:

Hmm. I may have screwed up again.

Let's try that once more:

If at first you don't succeed....

There we go.

TV's Frink said:

ATMachine said:

What if Han isn't Rey's real father?

 Who?

 Sorry, I obviously meant Kira.

(And of course, we all know Gul Dukat was her real father.)

Allow me to drop a quote bomb:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

--William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

And another:

"IN EARTH AND SKIE AND SEA 

STRANGE THYNGS THER BE"

--H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure

OK, crazy theory time:

JJ may want something to shake up the audience. An "I am your father" type of revelation, to blindside theater goers.

(In other words, exactly what wasn't the case with "John Harrison" in Star Trek Into Darkness.)

So, with that in mind...

What if Han isn't Rey's real father?

"Only the magic of pure thought, my lord."

To be quite honest, I'd rather look to different inspiration for a fourth trilogy, if at all possible.

Smash the hourglass. There's a whole world of stories out there!

My sources are those which are available to every man: the books and scripts of Star Wars themselves. (For ease of reference: Virtually all of the early draft scripts of SW are easily available here.)

One has merely to read between the lines to figure it out.

For instance, look closely at Ralph McQuarrie's thumbnail sketches for the famous Death Star chasm swing painting.

Having done so, it becomes clear (to those with open eyes) that Leia is wearing only a "Tarzan-style" loincloth... an idea which is also mentioned, in passing, in the recent Star Wars Costumes book.

In the sketch below, for instance, Leia is evidently using one arm to cover her bare chest.

Likewise, it is clear from the text of the 1975 third draft that a) Leia was to be "bloody and mutilated" as a result of Imperial torture, and b) Ben Kenobi was indisputably a cyborg himself, like Luke in ROTJ.

(The Darth Vader of 1975, on the other hand, evidently had no problems taking off his mask to drink a glass of water.)

Even in the later films, darker implications remained. According to The Making of Return of the Jedi, for instance, Lawrence Kasdan's first draft of the script contained dialogue revealing that Leia suffered "a fate worse than death" (a euphemism for rape) at Jabba's hands.

--

Next, from the evidence presented before our eyes, we can extrapolate and hypothesize.

The 1974 rough draft, in stark contrast to the final film, appears to describe a Star Wars with bright white Imperial hallways and black Stormtrooper armor.... extremely reminiscent visually of Lucas' earlier film THX 1138.

That film, of course, featured on-screen nudity. (Which, I should point out, did not affect the PG rating in 1971, but merited an R on re-release in 2004. Times change!)

And the THX 1138 novelization is indisputably more violent than the film. The heroine LUH has a scarlet brand on her face, marking her as a product of illegal sexual activity; and she suffers some of the very tortures I have detailed in the posts above.

But that Lucas approved some of the novelization's content I cannot doubt.

In the 1971 original cut of THX 1138, THX confronts a pack of angry mutated dwarfs during his escape to the surface. But in the 2004 re-release, the dwarfs were digitally replaced with CGI ape-monsters--an idea which first appeared in the original novelization.

Turning back to the original ideas for Star Wars: if it resembled Lucas' earlier work in one way, might it not in others?

--

I do not fault you for questioning my logic here. Far from it! Questioning leads to wisdom, after all.

But in order to reconstruct GL's true intentions, one must move onward from reasoning, and acquire for oneself the most fundamental capacity of a filmmaker.

Imagination.

Thus, when I am asked: Is this story real, or did you make it up? I can only say: Both.

Or better yet: It doesn't matter.

But... reasoning still has an important place.

I have heard it said (by a moderator on TheForce.net, no less) that even JW Rinzler did not have access to GL's full set of working notes when writing the Making Of books.

What cannot be seen, therefore, has to be imagined.

This tale may be a flawed reconstruction of a notional Star Wars, one that exists only in handwritten drafts on yellowed sheets of paper... yet, I am in little doubt, it gets at the essential truth of the story.

I myself would very much like to see those "secret notes" for myself some day, and see how close I have come to the mark.

Until then, I can only keep guessing.

No, it was some random nurse who had never appeared on screen before or since (or at all, for that matter).

But Frink is right. Shall we take this Outside?

As Boston Low says: "A place for everything, and everything in its place."

And one good astronaut deserves another, I'd say.

That reminds me: the original outline for the TOS episode Mirror, Mirror took place in a parallel universe which was almost exactly the same as the normal one.

(In other words, it wasn't the Always Chaotic Evil Universe we saw on screen.)

The major differences were that McCoy (not Spock) had a beard; Kirk was married; and nobody had ever invented the phaser. Which led to Starfleet nearly being defeated by an alien race who never gave "our" Kirk any trouble.

Of course, when Kirk arrives in this parallel world, he promptly re-invents the phaser and saves the day.

In other words, it was very much a riff on L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall.

Somehow I think Lucifer Davidson would be a great name for a band.

The ideal lead singer, of course, would be Zombie Freddie Mercury.

Also, suddenly I just remembered what awful theme music Star Trek Enterprise had. Even Voyager had a mesmerizing intro--thanks largely to Jerry Goldsmith's spellbinding music.

Life imitates Art, I suppose.

In the end of The Wrath of Khan, of course, Kirk didn't beat the Kobayashi Maru. He couldn't escape the no-win scenario. That was the whole point of the film.

And when he tried to change the outcome in Star Trek III, he lost the Enterprise and his son as a result.... but he did succeed in getting Spock back, which was the goal of his quest.

Kirk himself put it best, I think:

"And yet, in the midst of our sorrow it should be noted that this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world..."

But then, in The Voyage Home, Kirk was surprised by another reward, his secret heart's desire:

A demotion to Captain.... and a new Enterprise, almost exactly the same as his old one.

"All right, Mr. Sulu. Let's see what she's got."

This thread reminds me: I really need to finish listening to Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Or, perhaps, begin listening to Parsifal.... or even Lohengrin.

Here's another good one:

“You mustn’t be so hasty, Lady Skywalker!” PRESIDENT Palpatine emerges from the shadows, accompanied by Prince Valarium, and explains that Arcadia, her servants, her droids, and her pilot are being placed under his protective custody.

Also, I really need to rewatch Disney's Peter Pan... or at least read the original book, or even the play (which, I must confess, I have not yet done).

My favorite Sierra adventure game is Heart of China.

OK, I guess I'll have to explain it for you.

Who said the Sith were evil, after all?

"From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!"

I can't help thinking back to that scene where Mace Windu is about to straight-up murder Palpatine in his office.