C3PX

With how they are rushing through things now, I wouldn't be surprised is that is the last we see of the statue. I imagine that they will explain verbally that "the others" are descendants of an ancient race who has been on the island for a very long time, and the statue was their handiwork. 

I wonder how many toes Ricardo Alpert has?

This out of order story telling method gets confusing. I wonder where Ben is at this time (LeFleur's "three years later" time). It is 1975, and since Ben was born sometime in the early nineteen sixties, he would be a teenager by this time. So I wonder if he is on the island yet, or if he is yet to arrive.

Another thing that is kind of weird, Richard always looks the same, no matter what time period he pops up in, same kind of clothing, same hair cut. However, when he meets Ben for the first time, he has kind of a shaggy hair thing going on, and is wearing tattered season-two-others style clothing.

I figured this was because the "hostiles" desguised themselves as primitives when appearing before the DHAMRA initiative much like they did to the castaways. However, in the last episode Richard had no problem showing up clean cut and nicely dressed in the barracks for all to see in the last episode.

LOL, I like that this has become the official thread for discussing the new ST film, and its own dedicated thread with a title not dripping with hatred has vanished into obscurity.

So, I went to see Watchmen today, and during the Star Trek trailer before the beginning of the film, when the name "from J. J. Abrams" flashed up on the screen, a large white guy with one of those pubic hair beards (you know what I am talking about) who was sitting directly in front of me held up his hand and gave a well know obscene hand gesture toward the screen. It was pretty funny.

So, anybody else see this yet?

Had the day off work and I really wanted to see this. All my friends were working, busy, or didn't want to go, but dammit, I really wanted to see this. I have never gone to a movie by myself before, just always seems like the kind of thing you don't do, because you just don't want to be that guy that goes to the movies by himself. Giving into my desire to see the movie over my desire not to seem like a pathetic loser, I went by myself, only to discover a theater full of mid-twenty to forty year old white guys all sitting by themselves. It was kind of depressing. At least I enjoyed the movie, and the knowledge that I have a wife who will be home from work in about an hour makes me feel less loserly :)

I thought it was an excellent adaption of the graphic novel. Not perfect, but damn near it.

Only... I just don't feel the new ending quite packed the punch of the original. Maybe that is because I am used to the original ending, and that I have already read the spoilers for the new ending. The ending just didn't work that well for me.

A few other minor things were:

Rorschach's moving mask, it moved around so much that it was actually kind of distracting and took some focus off of conversation for the first bit of the film. Got used to it after a few scenes though.

Richard Nixon's nose. He actually looked eerily like Nixon from the distance shots, but in the close up shots, he felt like a characature of Nixon. The nose just seemed way over done (okay, maybe slightly over done), and for some reason it really bugged me throughout the film.

Moloch's ears. One cool things about The Watchmen as a graphic novel, was that it took the silly premise of vigilantes in gay costumes, and made it real and gritty. Yes, Moloch in the graphic novel had pointy ears, but in the graphic novel, it was a realistic degree of pointiness. In the film, they just look awful and over done. He is suppose to be a criminal, not some sort of evil woodelf, or imp.

The funniest complaint I have heard about this movie so far is that the blood drip on the Comedian Smiley button didn't look exactly the same as it did in the book. If you are one of these types of fans, don't even bother seeing the movie, you'll hate it.

Was that Star Trek inspired though? The world has had navel vessels named "Enterprise" way back in the 1700s (maybe even early, I don't know), from the French vessel L'Enterprise, to about a million British gunships named HMS Enterprise, to an additional million or so US navy vessels.

However, a quick look at the uber-scholarly wikipedia ;) informs me that it was originally named the Constitution until a write in campaign convinced them to name it in honor of the sci-fi vessel. Huh, crazy stuff. I have no doubt though, that even without the existence of Star Trek, there would have eventually been space shuttle named The Enterprise.

I know, that is why I was making the comment on him being a tard for answering a three year old question.

TheDoctor1987 said:

... because the Prequels are great movies...

Lol, never get used to hearing people say that. They are good movies, as the Matrix trilogy are good movies...

Vaderisnothayden said:

The relevance of the Marvel comics take on things is that it shows people back in the 80s figuring the empire was mostly over after ROTJ. I suspect that was the assumption among most people. Certainly nobody back then gave me the impression that the empire wasn't over after ROTJ.

It shows that comic book writters back in the eighties decided to go with that, it doesn't say a lot about people in general. Comic book writters also decided to create Hoojibs and Jaxxon (guess they had a thing for rabbits).

Yeah, I always liked that idea from the EU, it makes more sense. But the SE take priority over the EU, and according to the SE, Imperial City falls as the Ewok celebration is going on, while according to the EU, it happens quite a bit after the Battle of Endor.

Yeah I know. It has become so ingrained in our culture, when we hear someone use a phrase like "Jedi instinct" we hardly even think twice about it. I hear the words "Jedi" and "darkside" used all the time in the real world far outside the context of Star Wars. 

The other day one of my more crass co-workers was talking about a girl and said, "She has a cute face, but a body like Jabba."

Back when I was in university, a kid was giving a presentation on an ancient Greek city that was historically known for being a very corrupt and bad place, when he was explaining what a awful place it was, he used the phrase, "I guess you could say you'd never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy". Most of us in the class room, including the professor had a little chuckle and the presentation went on.

I cannot think of another movie that has had such a severe cultural impact. Casablanca and Monty Python and the Holy Grail are about the only two films I hear referenced anywhere near as much as Star Wars in everyday speech. The Wizard of Oz might fit in there too though, I hear it referenced quite often, and I think every now and then we all catch somebody whistling "If I only had a brain".

Vaderisnothayden said:

If Star Wars was meant to be realistic that would be the case, but I think it's pretty clear we're meant to take it the Empire is over at the end of ROTJ.

Really? Just because of the celebration? It was a huge victory, a great big hootenanny was most definitely called for. For some reason in all the years before the SE, I never even began to assume the Empire was over at that moment. It is not like all those Imperial bases and outposts scattered through the galaxy would just spontaneously explode because of the Death Star blew up.  

Obviously that was the original intention though, thank God George made that clear with the SE.

Scruffy said:

The inflection point for his character is when he reveals that he has accepted a commission as a general. That is when you know he takes the rebellion seriously, and is in it for more than just a chance to get in Leia's pants.

Hey, I have become general lots us times just to get into some girl's pants, and I know other guys who have too. So it isn't entirely unlikely :)

I mean, it is Carrie Fisher circa 1983 we are talking about here... that is worth at least becoming Rear admiral for.

Wow, just a little over three years for this question to get answered, that has got to be some kind of a speed record! I am impressed.

Moth3r said:

The guy from that site joined up here sometime last year to promote his sales. He then called me a fucking cunt and a complete and total wanker when I banned him.

Man, what a fucking cunt and complete total wanker! Glad you banned him. These idiots really ruin things for the rest of us.

Octorox said:

well, I'd equate the Emperor more to a dictator than a U.S. President. If the President dies, there is a system in place to deal with that. If a dictator dies the region can fall into chaos.

Right, but there is always a successor. The idea that a governing body as large as the Empire, full of politicians and beaurcrates who want power for themselves, and high ranking officers like the Grand Moffs, it would be nonsensical for the masses to be pulling down his statue the second they hear of his death and for all the high ranking officers and other people in the government to just turn around and say, "Ah crap! Well, hopefully I can land a job with the new administration...

No doubt such news would weaken the system and encourage more uprising, but a governing body that large wouldn't have much work to do to make some examples of a few Rebelious groups.

As a kid I never thought the Empire was over at the end of Return of the Jedi. I always assumed the Rebels remained Rebels, and continues to fight against the now weakened Empire. I never thought about a New Republic or any thing of the sort until the EU came along. I think the EU's progression was a lot more likely, as they have the Rebels continue to fight the Imperial Remnant for many years after the eventual toppling of the Empire, which comes quite a while after ROTJ. Upon seeing the SE in 1997, I was a bit surprised to see the Empire collapse the instant the DS II was destroyed, followed by a galaxy wide celebration.

skyjedi2005 said:

None of the prequels made me as depressed and betrayed feeling as i was when i left the theater after seeing Indiana Jones IV despite some moments i truly enjoyed in the film, the movie was totally uneven and ruined by Lucas stupid modern cgi sensibility of wackiness that some really get a kick out of. Like a bad parody of the older films i felt embarrassed at the cheesiness of the fridge scene.

"A bad parady of the older films", that is most definitely IJ:ATKOTKS (lol, love using the acronym) in a nut shell. Couldn't think of a better way to sum up that film, and to sum it up in a way that is literally shorter than its title no less!

EDIT: HA! See what I mean? Seriously! Let any thread in the General Star Wars Discussion go on long enough, and we'll turn it into a discussion about how badly the PT or IJATKOTKS sucks. I am truely impressed at our abilities. If you don't believe me, pick the first 10 threads on the page, scan through them, everyone that is at least a page or so long has had the crappiness of the PT brought up. And some of us have been doing this since before 2005. Talk about endurance! Lol, we are truely a force to be reckoned with, no doubt even the great Lord Total Biscuit and all his minions would be no match against just two or three of us. We are like freakin' Spartans!

Vaderisnothayden said:

It gets soooo frustrating when somebody point blank refuses to understand something that's been explained to them.

No kidding!

For anybody else following this discussion who is still uncertain as to whether they are allowed to interpret words for themselves or not, let me set the record strait from an academic perspective.

word noun (which means it is a person, a place, or a thing. In this case, it is a thing)

"a meaningful sound or combination of sounds that is a unit of language or its representation in a text"

Once words are open for personal interpretation, they cease to be meaningful units of language, and become rather useless.

Of course, another school of thought (seemingly) would say that the definition of "word" that I posted above is pointless, as that it is merely one interpretation of what a word is.

Score in the fight against ignorance,

Ignorance:1

Reality: 0

Baronlando said:

Han in Jedi is a funny thing. By the end, he's essentially become a team player, with a grownup job in the new government and a wife.

Well, that is EU stuff. None of it is in the movie.

By the end of ROTJ, Han is merely a fighter in the battle against tyrany and stands a good chance to get lucky with the princess. At that point there was nothing to say the Empire was over, or that Han was going to take a job in the New Republic, marry Leia, or even that there would be a New Republic (as there was nothing to say the Empire was over, other than having lost their second end all be all weapon, and having lost their Emperor. If the President of the US was killed, and we lost a few of our finest battleships, it would suck big time, but the US government would be far from fallen). 

And

Han Solo Unleashed! HAHA! That would be pretty awesome.

Octorox said:

There can be different interpretations of language. Different words have different connotations to different people. 

Again, not if language is to mean anything.

Maybe you are talking about jargon among certain groups of people or certain professions. I use to work in construction, the words "Caterpiller" and "Bobcat" had very different meanings to us than it might to your average person. If the foremen said, "Get in the bobcat and go move those beams." It would make perfect sense to me, but to somebody who hasn't a clue as to what the word "bobcat" might mean in the context of a construction site would be a bit baffled at the idea of telling someone to get inside of an animal. But even then, the person is probably going to be smart enough to figure out that "bobcat" is being used in a sense that they are unfamiliar with. Thus is the nature of jargon. But the term "bobcat" still applies to something specific in that context, if the foremen decides to make his own interpretation of the word "bobcat" and start using it as a general term to refer to whatever kind of machinery he feel like using that name for, then there will be a breakdown of communication, and his workers will have no idea what he actually wants. However, jargon still fits within the rules of language.

Language means something, when we decide not to follow its rules we only make ourselves out to be idiots, and destroy our ability to communicate in the process.

Well, I for one love birthday cakes, even if they are shaped like Jar Jar's head.

Hehe, reading Vaderisnohayden's post reminded me of how contrived and obscenely ridiculous that Mustafar battle is. I think that was pretty much the perfect analysis of that scene. And it was damn funny to read.

I don't think this place is suddenly becoming TFN, I think some people are just getting tired of the constant negativity and the fact that we tend to turn every single thread into a discussion of how badly the PT sucks. After all, the topic at hand is, "relationships between the OT and the PT", in which rcb's obvious intention was to contrast the parallels between the two trilogies, not to compare which one was better than the other, and how one failed miserably while the other kicked the asses of multiple generations (and will continue to do so).

Vaderisnothayden said:

I was using reminiscent in the sense of "meaningfully reminiscent" or "the whole is reminiscent", as opposed to the sense of "some bit is reminiscent". It's a valid use of the word. There are different ways things can be reminiscent and all versions I have mentioned fit in with the dictionary definition. No matter how much you follow dictionary definition, interpretation is still important. The reality is that very many words are interpreted. That's how language works. It's not a simple clean cut thing. It's messy and complicated.

I don't want to go about debating linguistics, but in reality language is usually pretty clean cut (though obviously, there are exceptions, but most of these exceptions are nullified by context), it only becomes messy and complicated when people decide not to play by the rules. 

You have idiot thinkers like Bill Clinton ("depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is", "depends on how you define 'alone'") who seems to think words are open to individual interpretation, but they really are not. "Is" in the English language always means "is", you cannot interpret it any other way.

If we really had to go around pondering how exactly we are to interpret the word "is" every time someone uses it in a sentence, then we'd still be walking around in animals skins, being awed at the existence of fire, and inventing wheels (in other words, we'd have a hard time progressing). But, amazingly, I can pick up a novel written by a man who died over a hundred years before I was born, and despite some linguistic evolution that may have taken place between his time and mine, I will be able to read it come out with the same story everyone else who has read that book has come out with. Sounds pretty clean cut to me.

"I was using reminiscent in the sense of "meaningfully reminiscent" or "the whole is reminiscent", as opposed to the sense of "some bit is reminiscent". It's a valid use of the word."

"Meaningfully reminiscent", "wholly reminiscent", "somewhat reminiscent" now we are adding qualifiers to these words to indicate the degree of reminiscence. Yes, they are all valid uses of the word, nobody would argue otherwise. However, these qualifiers seemed to be heavily lacking from the conversation that was going on not long ago. I suppose we can take this to mean that the meaning or interpretation of the word "reminiscent" was never an issue, but the degree of reminiscence was were the problem lie.

Either way, reminiscence is a rather relative thing (not in its definition or interpretation, but in the feelings of the person using the word). While I may say Battlestar Galactica is reminicent of Star Wars someone else may disagree and say, "You're completely looney! They are absolutely nothing alike!" Regardless of how this fellow feels on the matter, a fact remains: Battlestar Galactica reminds me of Star Wars. Therefore to me, BSG is reminiscent of SW, while to the other guys, BSG is not at all reminicent of SW. In other words, a rather fruitless debate.

Many people think Han's death would have been better for his character, but I don't really see that. In fact, after the long gap between the ESB and ROTJ and not knowing the fate of Han, I think it would have been rather annoying to have him rescued only to have him die. Might as well just killed him off in ESB.

ROTJ was really focused on Luke's character, and I think it worked well in that way. Putting too much emphasis on the other characters might very well have taken away from that. I do however, think Han would have benefitted from being involved in the space battle, rather than on the ground. Doesn't really stand that they would have such an ace pilot on their hands, and not have him in the space battle. I think it might have been interesting had Lando been on the ground, with Han and Chewie in the Falcon. But this would have taken away from the Han Leia romance, which really needed to go somewhere after being setup in ESB.

Yoda Is Your Father said:

rcb said:

ask the kids and younger people. they'll say different. i like them, but i admit that there are flaws in the PT.

How young is young?  I was 18 when TPM came out and I thought it sucked ass.

I think by this standard of young, 18 is rather old.

To respond to rcb's age comment, there is an age where a kid will think beyond a doubt that Teletubbies are better than the OT, doesn't mean he is going to continue to feel that way as taste begins to mature a little.

And why he has always been able to see the six in his head.

Though I don't think Baltar's survival of the nuking of Caprica was ever suppose to be a mystery. A lot of people survived. When the shock wave was heading for Baltar's place, the six told him to get down, I always figured we were to assume that is how he lived.

There are obviously intentional parallels between the two trilogies. But I'd have to strongly disagree with the idea that the "main point" of Star Wars was to meet characters that would be in the next two films. In many ways this was the intention of The Phantom Menace, but when it was made, it was clear there would be two sequels.

With Star Wars, George himself said he jumped right to the middle of the story, because that was the exciting part, and he didn't know if there would be anymore. Star Wars was obviously not just a pilot episode, or having its main point to be setting up characters. It is sad to think some people actually see it as that.

Another parallels would be that we meet Boba Fett in TESB and then we meet both Jango and Boba in AOTC. Although, if this were a true parallel, instead of having Jango die like a bitch in AOTC, he would have died like a bitch in ROTS as Boba died like a bitch in ROTJ.

"Episodes II and V, Both movies put the rebels/republic in a dark time. Only difference is u may notice it a little more in AOTC. Both contain love stories."

This is a very interesting statement to me. Not that there is anything wrong with it, it is just that personally, I would have thought ESB as by far the more dark time-ish of the two.

Maybe this is do to the fact that AOTC completely failed to capture any emotional attention from me whatsoever. In ESB we start off with Luke nearly getting eaten by a wampa, then Imperials discover there secret base and attack it with over whelming force. Luke goes to meet Yoda, and proves to be a horribly impatient and a poor excuse for Jedi material. Finally Yoda is convinced to train him, and just as the training is getting started, he runs off for emotional reasons, leaving Yoda thinking, "Ah, crap! This idiot his hopeless, hope he gets himself killed before he has a chance to turn to the darkside. Guess we will have to track down the other." Meanwhile, Han and Leia spend the whole film running for their lives in a very unhealthy Millennium Falcon. They finally find a safe haven, only to be betrayed by a friend, which eventually ends up with Han being frozen and taken away, his fate remaining unknown for a whole three years (real world time). Luke flys into a trap, learns some depressing news, his father the hero is really his father the villain, and his mentor had been lying to him all this time... or maybe Vader is lying, either way, poor kids head is filled with doubt. Oh yeah, and he loses his hand and his dad's old lightsaber, talk about one bad day!

Attack of the Clones... Anakin acts like a whiney idiot, Obi-Wan acts like an annoying nagging father figure. Anakin takes off to go protect his one true love and try to make her fall in love with him by whining and killing villages of sand people. Obi-Wan goes on a very contrived and ridiculous quest to discover who is trying to kill Padme, which eventually leads him to a ridiculous bit about these long necked CG guys making a million Boba Fett daddy clones at the whim of some dead Jedi. Eventually, it is decided that war needs to break out, and the convenient news of the clone army of New Zealanders of questionable origins arrives back to the Republic, and they decide "Hang questionable origins! We wouldn't want to miss this chance to go on a crazy meaningless war, would we? Vote now, vote now!" And so war breaks out in a gladiator arena (with LFL thinking, hell, I bet we could make some pretty sweet video game levels if we had the war start in the middle of giant gladiator arena!). After TPM everyone was expecting another amazing lightsaber battle, instead we get flashbacks from Muppet's Treasure Island (Kermit with a sword, just in case everyone doesn't get it), Anakin getting his arm cut off rather anticlimactically, and the villain turning tail and running like a pansy (a character trait George found very becoming of his villains, and reused the idea to the point of cliche in his next film).

Oh yeah, and then there were the large beasts in the gladiator arena that reminded me of Ghostbusters toys for some reason... and... okay, I concede, AOTC is by far more depressing than ESB. Not so much of a darker film, but just more depressing in general...