Channel72

Everything in the Prequels is like a bare-bones, skeleton of a story. All the details - all the “connective tissue” - was all filled in later by people who are not George Lucas.

What was Palpatine’s plan in the Phantom Menace? Who knows! He was doing some shady shit with some Trade company to get elected President, that’s all that mattered. Why did the Separatists want to leave the Republic? Who cares! Taxes maybe! Or something! Maybe they were sick of Palpatine’s tacky office furnishings. What about Anakin’s great friendship with Obi-Wan? You know, basically the entire dramatic basis for making these movies? Who cares! It happens mostly off screen. We’ll fill it later with some EU “multi-media” projects or whatever. What really matters is General Grievous has enough screen-time to justify all those ILM man-hours and electricity cost of 3D rendering, and to meet projected sales figures for Grievous toys.

G&G-Fan said:

Channel72 said:

My guess is they changed it because Tarkin dies when the Death Star explodes, but Vader survives. Thus, there is more “poetic justice” if Tarkin was the one who ordered the destruction of Alderaan.

Tarkin still orders the destruction, Vader is just the one who tells them to release the primary ignition.

He’s the link to the script: https://imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars-A-New-Hope.html

Interesting. Yeah, would be interesting to find out what motivated that change. I think Lucas always had plans for Vader to be somewhat sympathetic, but not necessarily Luke’s father initially. I forget the exact details, but originally Vader was an amalgamation of characters from earlier drafts, including a “Sith Knight” character who was shown to have some redeeming qualities, caring about honor, etc. Darth Vader in A New Hope is also shown to still care about some notion of a code of honor, as he chooses to face Obi Wan alone. Also, Vader is kind of unsupportive of the Death Star in general. Maybe Lucas’ intuition told him that Vader should be distanced from the destruction of Alderaan as much as possible.

It’s similar to how, in the novelization or radio drama of A New Hope, the scene where Leia is tortured is described in more horrifying detail than the movie, but the author also strangely tries to make Vader slightly sympathetic by having him order the guards to provide some comfort to Leia after the torture session fails.

To really fix Star Wars, all they need to do is make it better. It’s like, so obvious.

Seriously though, from my perspective, Star Wars went off the rails in 1999, so the Disney-era doesn’t seem so catastrophic to me - just piling more shit on top of existing shit.

At this point, all I can say is that Andor was an outlier of awesomeness. Point at it and tell Disney “yeah that’s pretty good, just keep doing that”.

G&G-Fan said:

In the shooting script, Darth Vader is the one who orders the Death Star technicians to “Release primary ignitions”, thus making him more directly responsible for Alderaan. I wonder why this was changed.

Yet another serendipitous thing that presciently paved the way for Vader to become Anakin Skywalker.

My guess is they changed it because Tarkin dies when the Death Star explodes, but Vader survives. Thus, there is more “poetic justice” if Tarkin was the one who ordered the destruction of Alderaan.

^ I guess the problem everyone noticed is that Prequel Anakin is just so different. Hayden Christensen’s physique and lightsaber swordplay is really not suggestive of Vader in any way. Hence, the emergence of this idea that the cybernetics fundamentally limited Vader’s movement - an idea that seems kind of absurd given the existence of things like General Grievous. Or forget Grievous - we have an 80 year old Count Dooku doing backflips. Even Yoda in ESB had very limited physical mobility, but was implied to be extraordinarily powerful.

But I guess Force powers in Star Wars constantly waver between the mental and physical, causing a lot of thematic dissonance. Yoda can lift small starships with his mind, but Jedi training also includes learning space fencing and space kung fu. You’d think being able to lift a multi-ton metal X-wing with your mind would imply mastery over physical forces that would enable you to kill anyone instantly, thus making martial arts or lightsabers mostly useless. Star Wars tries to justify the sword fighting with this implied rule that two Force users can’t necessarily just kill each other with the Force. But Vader as a villain/monster was designed for an environment where no other Force users exist, so he works better as a hulking monster than a master swordsman who does backflips.

You know, I don’t think Darth Vader really should be depicted as agile in the cybernetic suit. Vader in the OT - particularly during the ESB duel - was more like this methodical, slow-moving, unstoppable force that just keeps slowly advancing forward. I know people won’t like the comparison, but I think Vader was somewhat designed to invoke similar fears that someone might experience watching horror movie icons like Jason Vorhees or Michael Meyers just silently walking forward like an unstoppable hulking mass. Rogue One certainly capitalized on this aspect of Vader’s aesthetic. I mean, Vader basically lives in a dark tower on a Mordor planet - an idea going back to the 1970s, pre-dating Rogue One by decades. He was never meant to be agile like Darth Maul. He’s meant to be a slow, imposing, unstoppable hulk. These physical mechanics are inextricably tied to the design of his suit.

Regarding Vader and the negative portrayal of prosthetics/cybernetics, I think this is more like a visual metaphor for losing one’s humanity. In a separate conversation I was having in the OT section with ZkinandBonez, we were talking about how Star Wars is to some extent written as a timeless piece of mythology. If it weren’t set in some psuedo-futuristic space civilization, but instead set in like, a Lord of the Rings type high-fantasy environment, Vader would be something like a “Ring Wraith” or Gollum or some kind of decrepid yet powerful being, whose loss of humanity and descent into evil is symbolized by some kind of physical deterioration or dependency on dark magic. Vader’s cybernetic suit and iron lung serve a similar function, as a visual representation of a formerly good person who became evil. The cybernetics was simply a handy visual metaphor suggested by the sci-fi setting.

There’s also buried underneath all of this a very Christian theme of a “deal with the Devil” type thing, where achieving great powers of darkness comes with a very severe price of physical deterioration. Lucas implemented this idea very literally with having Vader fall into lava after embracing the Dark Side. The Emperor also appears physically deformed, presumably because he’s been screwing around with Dark Side powers for so long.

However, I don’t completely agree with this interpretation. I think it’s partially true, but Vader’s cybernetic suit also serves as a manifestation of a very modern fear about technology consuming our humanity (whatever that means in practice). This is a running theme in Star Wars, where reliance (or over-reliance) on technology is considered a bad thing, which is why Luke has to switch off his X-Wing targeting computer before pulling off the impossible shot, and a primitive Ewok tribe is able to defeat the technologically advanced Imperial troops.

Regardless, the idea that the cybernetics somehow makes Vader less powerful is really an entirely off-screen idea that isn’t really apparent in any of the films themselves. If I recall correctly, the first time I even heard this idea was in the context of trying to reconcile the highly kinetic, acrobatic, fast-paced lightsaber duels in the Prequels, with Vader’s slow, sometimes almost clumsy fighting style in the OT. In other words, the idea that cybernetics makes Vader less powerful probably emerged from out-of-Universe inconsistencies in choreography and special effects between the two Trilogies.

Anakin Starkiller said:

They’re a large corporation literally named the Trade Federation. It feels implicit to me they’re against taxation.

How do you know they’re a large corporation? They have Senate representation and an army. Maybe they’re more like some international agency like the World Trade Organization. The word “Federation” usually suggests something more like a governmental or intergovernmental agency, coalition or guild.

Of course, I’m playing Devil’s advocate. I have access to Wookiepedia. I know that canonically the Trade Federation is a large corporation. But the movie doesn’t even make that basic detail particularly clear, other than to call them “greedy” in the opening crawl. The fact is, the entity in Star Wars called the “Trade Federation” does not have any exact parallel in real life. They’re not like Weyland Yutani of the Alien franchise or OmniCorp of Robocop, which are both very explicitly an example of the “dystopian mega-corporation” sci-fi trope. The closest parallel is probably something like the British East India Company, which hasn’t existed for centuries. The point is, it was not clear to a lot of people in 1999 what the Trade Federation even is.

To provide some more insight into this, here’s an essay written by some Star Wars nerd in 1999. It’s written from a Prequel fan perspective, it’s not critical of Phantom Menace. But it tries to earnestly figure out what the Trade Federation actually is using clues from the movie. It begins by saying “Very little is known about the Trade Federation. Is it a corporation? Is it a species? Is it the government of a planet? What are the motives of its leaders, and what is their grievance with Naboo or the Republic? We know only a handful of things”. It does ultimately conclude the Trade Federation is a corporation, but notes that it is quite different from real life corporations in many ways.

Servii said:

Channel72 said:

I recall back in the day the most controversial claims from Plinkett were related to how a lot of the whole Naboo invasion plot doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. I agree with RLM on this one, but that point always received lots of backlash by Prequel fans eager to explain Palpatine’s amazingly nebulous and malleable master-plan that could really be whatever you want it to be.

There’s this Youtuber, Sheev Talks, who in his TPM video did a response to a lot of Plinkett’s points. He accused Plinkett of not paying attention, and claimed that the opening crawl made the conflict perfectly clear.

I don’t agree. The crawl does not explain the situation well. It was never clear to me whether the Trade Federation was for or against the trade route taxes, and the movie never specifies. It tells us the taxation is in dispute. That’s all.

And the guy then goes on to explain the specifics of Palpatine’s plans and contingencies, a lot of which feels more like conjecture than anything else, then acts like it’s all perfectly obvious.

Yeah, that is exactly how most Prequel fans defend this. Or they say “it doesn’t matter, it’s just background details”. Except, it’s not background details. It’s actually like… the entire plot. Plinkett emphasizes this at one point, saying something like (paraphrasing) “the Trade Federation invading Naboo is the entire plot of the movie so it’s important to understand what everyone’s motivation is and why they’re doing it.” I recall countless debates about this on online forums in the “Dark Age” pre-social media era of the Internet.

The Phantom Menace portrays the Trade Federation as the bad guys, and shows us Trade Federation armies marching through Naboo and bossing people around. We know they’re the bad guys, and the entire movie revolves around defeating them and freeing Naboo. But it’s hilarious how nobody can provide a straight answer to the question “WHY are they even invading Naboo at all?” Possible Prequel-defense answers include:

• “Because taxes!”
• “Because Palpatine told them to! Also taxes!”
• “OMFG can’t you read?? it’s all in the opening crawl!”
• “Here’s my fan-fiction 10,000 word essay explaining Palpatine’s plan OMG it’s so obvious”
• “It’s so obvious this is all explained in 5 EU novels you’ll never read”
• “LMFAO OMG you’re so stupid this movie is for kids I understood it when I was 10”, etc.

I recall back in the day the most controversial claims from Plinkett were related to how a lot of the whole Naboo invasion plot doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. I agree with RLM on this one, but that point always received lots of backlash by Prequel fans eager to explain Palpatine’s amazingly nebulous and malleable master-plan that could really be whatever you want it to be.

Mocata said:

I’m thinking of the bounty hunters line up.

At least IG-88 slightly turned his head.

BedeHistory731 said:

Vladius said:

My original point with the RLM tangent was that the criticisms of the prequels were mostly correct. No one has really disagreed with that, just disliked the presentation.

I mean, I dislike the presentation, but the critiques are exceptionally valid. The whole bit with “the urban market” is something I’ve brought up when talking about tokenism/Hollywood racism.

But it does raise a point—if the reviews hadn’t been presented like they were, would they have been noticed to the same level?

Probably not. But then, any 90 minute review would have been novel at the time, because back then these long-form reviews were quite rare. In some interview I read ages ago, Mike Stoklasa said he initially started doing his first review (which was a Star Trek review) using his normal voice, but he decided it sounded too boring, so he invented this Plinkett character (who was based on the earlier Rich Evans version to some extent).

RLM’s review was also simply the most insightful. You have to remember what was available back then - you basically had low-effort, superficial stuff like Nostalgia Critic and some guy named “Confused Matthew”. The average Phantom Menace review was basically just somebody ranting about how Jar Jar sucks for 10 minutes.

rocknroll41 said:

I know we’ve gotten on a huge tangent here, but regarding RLM; I really think they’re old and out of touch these days.

Get off my lawn.

Spartacus01 said:

Channel72 said:

The dinosaurs were likely wiped out by the asteroid that hit the Yucatan peninsula. I mean, while not all paleontologists agree, there’s something of a consensus about this, and the Chicxulub crater is large enough and dates to the correct time period to explain the extinction of all (non-avian) dinosaurs. Speculating about some alien laser battle in the skies seems ridiculous.

Why are you being so antagonistic? I never tried to present my hypothesis about the accidental hit of an alien weapon in the context of an orbital war between two different alien species as an historical fact. It’s just a fascinating hypothesis that I think is realistic and that I like to speculate on. And I personally think that it is not ridiculous at all. None of the proponents of the asteroid impact theory were in Chicxulub 65 million years ago, nor was I. All we know is that something hit the Earth, caused a huge crater, and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Why are so many people against speculation, even when it is openly presented as speculation and not as objective fact?

I didn’t mean to come off as antagonistic. Just saying the asteroid theory is the scientific consensus at the moment. True, no paleontologist was alive 65 million years ago, but all paleontology requires using the scientific method to extrapolate from archaeological evidence and arrive at the most likely conclusion. Currently, the consensus among paleontologists (who study this for a living) is that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. Of course this consensus could be wrong, but at the moment it’s the best explanation given the available evidence.

The reason I say the alien war thing is ridiculous is because we already have a perfectly reasonable explanation backed up by geological evidence and radio-carbon dating. There’s a huge crater in Mexico that dates to the correct time. Plus, any extraordinary claim should require extraordinary evidence. Asteroid impacts are not really extraordinary. They happen quite often over geological time scales, so there’s nothing particularly weird or extraordinary about it, unlike an alien space war. So the Chicxulub impact is simply the best explanation. Again, obviously it’s possible that something else happened and paleontologists are wrong, but currently there’s just no compelling reason to believe so.

By the way, I’m also pretty optimistic about the discovery of alien life. The last few decades have revealed that Earth-like exoplanets are pretty common. I believe life exists on many planets in our own Galaxy and elsewhere, but it’s probably mostly microbial life or organisms with sub-human level intelligence. Intelligent life capable of building space ships is probably much more rare. Statistically it almost certainly exists somewhere, but I’m very skeptical about any claims that aliens have visited Earth.

Also, while aliens probably exist somewhere, evidence of alien visitations to Earth from ancient sources is likely all 100% bullshit. The ancients had all kinds of interesting ideas and mythologies surrounding gods, demi-gods, angels and other supernatural beings, and ancient artists and writers depicting weird shit happening in the sky were probably inspired by that kind of stuff rather than actual alien visitations. Consider the bat-shit crazy description of a divine or angelic being in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The description includes things like spinning crystal wheels, wings, fire, lightning, a crystal dome and multiple “eyes”. It’s easy to read something like a spaceship or whatever into that description, but in reality Ezekiel was probably just high on opium one day, and drew from various imagery inspired by things he was familiar with, like chariot wheels and other ancient equipment.

If you had read what I wrote in my previous post, where I extensively expressed all my opinions regarding the UFO phenomenon and related topics, you would know that I spoke unfavorably about the Ancient Astronaut Theory. I consider this theory to be heavily flawed, and based on scant or entirely non-existent evidence. However, I think it is important to make a distinction between the Ancient Astronaut Theory and Clipeology, because they are not the same thing.

The Ancient Astronaut Theory attempts to reinterpret sacred texts from various cultures, suggesting that the gods worshipped by these ancient civilizations were actually extraterrestrial beings who descended from the sky. According to this theory, these aliens supposedly taught ancient civilizations about astronomy, medicine and agriculture, built the megalithic structures we still see today, and performed other acts that the ancient civilizations attributed to divine intervention. Clipeology, on the other hand, is simply the study of unidentified flying objects in ancient history. Typically, clipeologists don’t rely on sacred texts or myths to identify UFO sightings from the distant past. Instead, they focus on historical texts, such as the works of historians like Josephus Flavius and others, as well as the writings and diaries of emperors, kings, soldiers and sailors. They look for references to strange flying objects in the sky within these sources. In this sense, Clipeology doesn’t take mythology as fact, and has no direct connection to the Ancient Astronaut Theory. Clipeology is more about examining historical records for possible evidence of UFO sightings in ancient times, rather than reinterpreting religious or mythological texts. In this sense, Clipeology doesn’t take mythology as fact, and has no direct connection to the Ancient Astronaut Theory. Clipeology is more about examining historical records for possible evidence of UFO sightings in ancient times, rather than reinterpreting religious or mythological texts. Therefore, what you said about the Ezekiel account from the Bible is applicable to the ancient astronaut theorists, but not to clipeologists. Clipeologists are perfectly aware of the difference between mythological accounts and historical records, and they look for evidence only in historical records.

Okay, fair enough. I’d just add that there was often a very blurry line between mythological accounts and historical records in antiquity. I mean, ancient historians like Herodotus or Josephus often reported obviously mythological things as if they were straightforward facts. Anyway, what do you think is the most convincing evidence that somebody observed an alien spacecraft back then?

^ Well, I mean, if I were Obi Wan or Yoda at the end of Revenge of the Sith thinking about what to do going forward, I would have A LOT of problems with hiding Luke on Tatooine. Kenobi’s plan is actually even worse than simply hiding Luke on Tatooine. He’s not only hiding Luke on Tatooine, but hiding him with a person that has a direct family connection to Anakin. Kenobi didn’t just throw Luke at some random orphanage in Mos Espa. He placed him with Anakin’s step-brother Owen. I mean… talk about a witness protection disaster. There are so many risks involved here. It’s possible somebody from Owen’s or Anakin’s past might one day blab about this boy appearing out of nowhere, or any number of things or past associates of Anakin or Owen could accidentally leak information that could ultimately alert Vader to investigate. Even if there’s only like a 0.001% chance of it happening, why take the risk? Tatooine is one of the few places in the Galaxy with people who used to know Anakin.

I mean ultimately all of this is a big writing kludge, because A New Hope was never written with the idea that Luke is supposed to be hiding. It makes no sense his last name is still Skywalker. People try to justify this with various excuses, like “maybe Skywalker is a common name!” or whatever. Again, I don’t care, because why risk it? If your last name is Smith and you go into witness protection, they will still change your name. They certainly changed Leia’s last name.

As things stand, the explanations you provide are probably the best we can do given the material we must work with, but it’s still kind of a kludge and an unfortunate side effect of the retcon that Vader is Luke’s father. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the idea that Vader is Luke’s father. It’s one of the best retcons in movie history. But it does come with certain unfortunate side effects like making Luke’s living situation and the fact his name is still “Skywalker” seem absurd in retrospect.

My memory of the Acolyte is already fading fast. But I still remember pretty much the entire plot of Andor, despite only watching it fully during the initial release. I am looking forward to Andor Season 2 and so far Disney has given me no reason to care about any other “products” they release or cancel.

Spartacus01 said:

First off, Obi-Wan’s dialogue with Luke in A New Hope is already filled with half-truths, but not everything he says is a lie. He’s protecting Luke from the harsh reality of his father’s fall, but there’s still truth in his words. If we change where Anakin was born, it could make Obi-Wan seem even more deceptive, which I think would undermine his role as a mentor.

Eh… I think the dialogue in A New Hope is just barely vague enough that we could weasel our way out of making this dialogue require Anakin to be from Tatooine. The relevant line in the script is “That’s what your uncle told you. He didn’t hold with your father’s ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.”

So that’s it… that’s the only line that implies Anakin is from Tatooine. It’s implied indirectly, because Obi Wan says “stayed here”, and the current “here” in that scene is the planet Tatooine. But this is inexact enough that we could interpret it as a slight grammatical blunder on Obi Wan’s part. He could have used “here” somewhat incorrectly to mean whatever location Kenobi/Anakin departed from before fighting in the Clone Wars. (Or you could always just do a fan edit that removes the words “stayed here and” so the sentence reads “Thought he should have not gotten involved.” Mostly kidding.)

Anyway, I know that’s really clumsy, but the thing is, as things stand now with the Prequels, Obi Wan’s line here is already like 95% a lie. Anakin and Owen barely had any relationship - they met for a few hours in Episode 2 - and certainly Owen never expressed any opinions about Anakin’s “ideals” or thought he should have stayed “here” at any point. Owen didn’t even know Anakin until after Anakin already left Tatooine and became a Jedi. So the line is already hopelessly broken.

Regardless, I do agree that the original line of dialogue does, as you say, imply that Anakin is from Tatooine. But due to various later retcons, Anakin being from Tatooine was no longer tenable, in my opinion, and keeping Tatooine as his home planet resulted in a worse outcome than simply ignoring the implications of that one word “here” in Obi Wan’s line in A New Hope.

Now, hiding Luke on Tatooine might seem risky at first — after all, it’s the same planet where Anakin was born — but that’s what makes it so clever. Anakin had such a rough time on Tatooine — being a slave, leaving his mother behind, and eventually losing her — that he’d have no desire to go back. The trauma he experienced there creates a psychological barrier, which makes Tatooine the last place he’d want to revisit. In that sense, it’s actually the perfect place to hide Luke because it plays on Anakin’s deepest pain and memories, keeping him away. So, even though the decision of hiding Luke on Tatooine might seem nonsensical at first, it works perfectly if you introduce a trauma that caused Anakin to not want to return to the planet, which is exactly what Attack of the Clones does. Also, you don’t have to forget that, sometimes, the best place to hide something is in plain sight.

I mean, I’ve heard this before. Vader wouldn’t want to go back to Tatooine because childhood trauma or whatever. I mean… that’s really just pure speculation. You don’t know that. You could guess this would be the case, but it’s also possible Vader doesn’t give a shit. He didn’t seem to care when the Tantive IV showed up on Tatooine at any rate.

Regardless, even if this is true, why would anyone risk it? There’s probably at least a million other remote locations similar to Tatooine. Granted, Kenobi knew some people on Tatooine, so that factored in I guess. But relying on Vader’s continuing trauma to keep him away from Tatooine is a huge risk. I sure hope Vader doesn’t have a therapist.

If you haven’t already, you should probably read this fan-made plot synopsis/script outline that was circulating around fan communities in the 1980s or early 1990s, telling the story of Episode 3 before the official Prequels existed. Obi-Wan is the main character. Other characters include Anakin (obviously), “Lady Arcadia Skywalker” (Anakin’s wife), Bail Organa, and Captain Antilles. The story centers around Obi-Wan and the Alderaanian forces as Palpatine takes control of the Republic.

This fan-made take on Episode 3 isn’t necessarily that great, but it definitely captures the spirit, both aesthetically and plot-wise, of common fan expectations about the Prequels in the 1980s and 1990s. At least, I can say that this synopsis is a lot closer to my own personal expectations about what the Prequels would be like before the official Prequels were released in 1999. Note the heavy focus on Alderaan, the lack of a “secret forbidden romance” (Anakin’s wife publicly uses the name Skywalker), Kaiburr Crystals, the inclusion of a Coruscant-like city planet called “Jhantor”, Boba Fett as a Mandalorian warrior who is recruited by the Empire to hunt Jedi, and the increased prominence of some OT characters like Bail Organa, Mon Mothma and Captain Antilles. C3PO and R2-D2 make appearances, as does Yoda who lives on Dagobah like in the OT and is Obi-Wan’s sole master. There’s also scenes depicting “Dark Side training” with Vader, paralleling Luke’s training with Yoda in Empire Strikes Back. Also, Vader’s transformation into a cyborg happens at the beginning of Episode 3 rather than the end, and Anakin’s wife doesn’t die, but ends up living as a servant on Alderaan at the end. The third act culminates with a grand space battle above Coruscant/Jhantor which ends after Kenobi flies a starship through a nebula/supernova, perhaps leading Vader to suspect that Kenobi was killed.

The only things this fan-fiction story has in common with the real version of Episode 3 are (1) Kenobi and Anakin fight beside a volcano on a lava planet, and of course Anakin falls into lava, and (2) the movie ends with Kenobi on Tatooine handing over the infant Luke to Owen Lars, who is Obi Wan’s brother in this version.

There’s also some interesting fragments reminiscent of ideas eventually incorporated into the actual Prequels. For example, there is mention of Palpatine’s plan to “blockade the commercial shipping lanes”, and there is a character named “Prince Valarium” who is portrayed as a weak-minded politician and lackey to Palpatine. These components are probably traceable to the ANH novelization, which contains fragments of backstory about Palpatine’s rise to power that George Lucas eventually incorporated into the canonical Prequel movies.

There’s also a sequence somewhat reminiscent of “Order 66”, where we get a montage of Vader and a team of assassins murdering various Jedi across different worlds. Boba Fett works for Vader as one of these assassins, and of course uses “disintegration” to kill Jedi Knights.

Anyway, this synopsis can serve as a helpful time capsule that preserves many common pre-Prequel fan expectations about what the Prequels would be like.

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

Spartacus01 said:

Hell, the only reason Lucas introduced the “no marriage rule” for the Jedi is because he wanted Anakin and Padmé’s love story in Attack of the Clones to be a reminiscence of Romeo and Juliet’s Love story: a forbidden love story between two people that shouldn’t be in love. In The Phantom Menace itself there is no indication whatsoever that the Jedi are not supposed to have romantic relationships.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. I just wonder if Lucas had already conceived of the Jedi as celibate even during The Phantom Menace. TPM doesn’t explicitly mention the no marriage rule, but it’s clear that by the time Lucas wrote TPM, he was already developing ideas about a very weird “anti-attachment” pseudo-Buddhist philosophy for the Jedi, because the script emphasizes how the Jedi get very fussy about 10 year old Anakin’s attachment to his mother. Even at this early stage in the Prequels, it’s clear that Lucas’ vision for the Jedi and their anti-attachment philosophy is already at odds with mainstream sensibilities. Like, it seems absurd to the average audience member that the Jedi are so averse to emotional attachments that they fear a 10 year old being attached to his mom. This already suggests the Jedi are some fucked up cult that kidnaps infants before they can even form emotional attachments. So the “no romantic attachments” rule in AoTC seemed like a natural extension of what TPM set up. But yeah, it’s very likely that Lucas’ desire to shoehorn in some Romeo & Juliet was the motivating factor here, but this also feels like a natural extension of the “no attachment” stuff in TPM.

I don’t think it’s the same thing. They’re using it as a point to convey that he will need to master his negative emotions like fear if he’s going to be a Jedi. They turn him down for training, not just because they’re worried he’ll turn to the dark side, but also for his benefit. If they just hated the idea that people have families and wanted powerful Force users no matter what, they would have whisked him away no questions asked. They trained him because Qui Gon pushed it on them and on Obi Wan especially.

As much as I dislike how they’re portrayed in the prequels, this is a common misconception people have. There’s this idea of “oh, how ironic, they were religious zealots who believed in this messiah figure, this is like Jesus coming and he’s actually the devil.” No, not really. The only person who believes in the chosen one idea fully is Qui Gon. Everyone else expresses a lot of skepticism, rightfully so.

They never kidnap anyone. They have the parents’ permission. It is a philosophical issue, like you could say, well, the kid didn’t consent to be raised as a Jedi. But no kids ever consent to being born into whatever family or culture they’re in anyway.

Even as late as 1999 and 2000, maybe 2001 there are comics that have a Jedi couple in the prequel era. I don’t know a lot about it but one of them is a tree lady. It started with Attack of the Clones.

You might be right. I wouldn’t be surprised though if Lucas already was strongly considering the Jedi to be celibate, even during the writing/production of TPM. I mean they look like freakin’ Franciscan monks. I know that imagery is explainable independently as derivative of Obi Wan’s desert robe in the Original Trilogy (and wasn’t even the original concept design for the TPM Jedi uniform), but it’s also yet another component that serendipitously suggests the idea of celibacy. None of the Jedi in TPM are shown to be married either, which, granted, is an “argument from silence” - perhaps there was simply no relevant occasion to show any married Jedi or bring up the subject. But again, I’m making a cumulative case here. Lucas famously never liked the idea of Luke marrying Mara Jade either. According to Timothy Zahn, as early as 1993/94 Lucasfilm rejected the idea of Luke getting married. But ultimately, after some convincing, Lucas allowed Luke to get married, or at least didn’t bother to veto the idea. But according to J.W. Rinzler, Lucas never really liked the idea. It’s likely that George Lucas’ feelings about this were initially limited to Luke specifically and not the whole Jedi order, but I suspect his feelings about Luke played an important role in shaping later ideas about the Jedi Order as an institution.

As for the 1999/2000 EU comics, there’s no guarantee any of that was in sync with George Lucas’ latest ideas. Maybe Lucas was toying with the idea in TPM, but wasn’t sure about it until some time after those comics were approved for publication. Maybe Lucas was too busy developing the Prequels to micromanage the EU at the time. The point is, a lot of elements in TPM serendipitously support the “no romantic attachments” rule from AoTC. Whether this was planned or not at the time TPM was written is uncertain, but there’s enough in TPM to make me suspect Lucas was at least headed in that direction. At least, the idea doesn’t seem to have popped up out of thin air in AoTC from a completely ad hoc need to add in a forbidden romance subplot. There’s clearly some indication of a precedent here (even if it was just a vague uneasiness Lucas had about Jedi marriage) that supported the subplot beyond the immediate needs of the script at the time.

Also, I understand the Jedi don’t actually kidnap children. But nothing in the movie explains how the recruitment process is supposed to work normally. All we know is that 10 year old Anakin is “too old” and the Jedi fear that his (completely normal) attachment to his mother could be a major problem down the road. The audience is thus left to fill in the blanks about how the Jedi recruit young children as new Padawans. It’s understandable that some people would read cult-like vibes into all this, given how real-world cults try to discourage outside attachments among members.

Finally, the Jedi are initially skeptical that little Anakin is the Chosen One, but they seem to accept that it’s at least a strong possibility, especially given the contemporaneous re-emergence of the Sith. At the end of TPM, Yoda says to Obi-Wan something like (paraphrasing) “The Chosen One he may be, but I still don’t like you training him, even though the Council approved it”. By the time of RoTS, Yoda seems to accept that the Chosen One prophecy applies to Anakin, but worries that the prophecy might have been misinterpreted. But I agree that the Prequels don’t really lend themselves well to an “ironic false Messiah” narrative like Dune. In interviews, Lucas flat out says the Chosen One prophecy is true, and Anakin fulfills it in ROTJ by killing Palpatine. So Vader is not really a “false Messiah” so much as a round-about, circuitous and misunderstood Messiah. He’s more like the ironic result of wishing for a Messiah using a monkey’s paw or something, i.e. you get exactly what you wished for, but it sucks in unexpected ways.

The dinosaurs were likely wiped out by the asteroid that hit the Yucatan peninsula. I mean, while not all paleontologists agree, there’s something of a consensus about this, and the Chicxulub crater is large enough and dates to the correct time period to explain the extinction of all (non-avian) dinosaurs. Speculating about some alien laser battle in the skies seems ridiculous.

Also, while aliens probably exist somewhere, evidence of alien visitations to Earth from ancient sources is likely all 100% bullshit. The ancients had all kinds of interesting ideas and mythologies surrounding gods, demi-gods, angels and other supernatural beings, and ancient artists and writers depicting weird shit happening in the sky were probably inspired by that kind of stuff rather than actual alien visitations. Consider the bat-shit crazy description of a divine or angelic being in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The description includes things like spinning crystal wheels, wings, fire, lightning, a crystal dome and multiple “eyes”. It’s easy to read something like a spaceship or whatever into that description, but in reality Ezekiel was probably just high on opium one day, and drew from various imagery inspired by things he was familiar with, like chariot wheels and other ancient equipment.

Mike O said:

The absolute worst news though is that I got a couple of e-mails about possibilities for my dream film critic job from prospective employers. Ecstatic, I replied and neither has contacted me again. I should’ve known it was too good to be true. But it really felt like a crushing blow. I want this so much, I know I’d be good at it, but it’s so hard to get into and I don’t think I ever will. I continue to work my dead-end job which makes ends meet, but makes me miserable. I’ve even taken to selling some of my old toys for extra money. I just feel so miserable.

Any dream job like this will require a lot of trial and error, failure and rejection. You will likely have to get rejected like 10 or more times before you find that one opportunity leading to success. But if it’s really your dream, it is probably worth it to keep trying (within reason). Obviously, it’s easy to get discouraged and give up after experiencing failure and rejection. But the reality is that most people who successfully realize their dreams are ridiculously persistent. They fail and experience rejection over and over and over. But eventually, through persistence and sheer probability, they find some opportunity that finally leads to success. The key is not to get overly discouraged by rejection and failure, because repeated rejection and failure is pretty much inevitable, especially when it comes to pursuing any kind of job in media or a creative field. But stubborn persistence maximizes the probability that eventually someone will give you a chance. When you apply somewhere, just pretend to yourself that you were already rejected, so that each rejection becomes no big deal and you don’t care so much about any individual employer’s response. Then just keep pursuing other positions while waiting for responses and improving your craft/portfolio.

Also, an employer not getting back to you is not necessarily a guaranteed sign of rejection. I realize you’re trying to “take the hint” and not feel stupid, but sometimes it’s better to be a bit of a persistent pest than it is to just shrug and give up because a prospective employer didn’t get back to you yet. Remember, the people sifting through resumes and making hiring decisions are just employees too. They don’t care about you personally, they just have a job to do. It’s possible they won’t get back to you promptly simply because they got busy with their own problems and they aren’t thinking about you. It’s completely fine to send follow-up emails if you haven’t received a definitive answer yet.

Spartacus01 said:

Vladius said:

timdiggerm said:

Channel72 said:

And I agree about Alderaan. I’ll never understand why Lucas created Naboo instead of just using Alderaan as one of the principal settings.

As much as I agree, I can’t help but feel that if he had done this, we’d be calling it the prime example of “universe shrinkage”

If Anakin wasn’t from Tatooine, Anakin didn’t build C3PO, and Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett, and Chewbacca didn’t appear, it would be completely fine and no one would have said anything or been any the wiser.

Personally, I am of the opinion that having Anakin being born on Tatooine was actually a good idea. A New Hope heavily implies that he was born and grew up on Tatooine, especially when Obi-Wan tells Luke that Owen thought that Anakin should have remained on Tatooine and not get involved with the Jedi. Why should have Anakin remained on Tatooine if he didn’t grew up there? I think it’s clear that Obi-Wan’s sentence about Owen’s wishes implied that Anakin was born on Tatooine.

You’re right, A New Hope pretty clearly implies Anakin was originally from Tatooine. The problem is that A New Hope was written under the assumption that Anakin and Vader were separate characters. When George Lucas wrote that dialogue, he was not thinking that Luke was actually hiding from anything. Luke was just an average farmboy who happened to live where he lived. But by the time Return of the Jedi was written, Luke was now Vader’s son, and was sent to Tatooine as an infant because it was a remote location far from the reach of the Empire. But this change to the backstory implies that Vader/Anakin shouldn’t be from Tatooine, because otherwise sending Luke to hide there comes off as a really bad decision. I mean, there’s a reason that modern “witness protection” programs choose locations completely detached from any former associates of the protected witness, and require a complete identity change.

In my opinion, once Vader and Anakin were merged into a single character, Anakin should no longer be from Tatooine. I’d rather just ignore or reinterpret Obi Wan’s line in A New Hope, rather than have to squirm around coming up with excuses for why anyone would hide Luke on the same planet his father grew up on.

BedeHistory731 said:

I mean, it’s kinda clear that their best material comes when they’re dunking on schlock and bizarre videos. Not comic book movies or Star Wars/Star Trek. Besides, Mike and Rich do re:View videos on that stuff often and realized that the modern stuff isn’t really for them. So they stopped watching, like any sane person would.

Also, Jay is very much there and present when they talk about the schlock. He’s there when they talk about ‘80s action and horror trash, surreal tapes, and random delusions of grandeur. Was he magically gone when they talked about Actar 911 Infantry or Creating Rem Lezar?

Jay doesn’t really seem to put too much mind into his Twitter, so I don’t know where you’re getting that from. They’re not “afraid of being cancelled” so much as they’re older and lost some of that righteous passion from the Plinkett days. Maybe that’s the legacy of Space Cop draining them of their filmmaking urges, IDK.

Modern RLM is way more enjoyable to me than the classic Plinkett stuff. Especially when Jack, Josh, or Colin are there.

Watching some of their older videos occasionally causes “cultural whiplash”, as the viewer is rapidly transported back to a time when a joke about an old man ejaculating uncontrollably while watching an Olsen twins movie was something that could actually happen on YouTube without concerns about demonetization or audience backlash. But I agree RLM is better in their more mature, modern form on average.

I think they mostly phased out Plinkett reviews because the joke can’t really be taken any further, and doesn’t really even make sense in the context of 2024. The Plinkett character was a stereotypical, basement-dwelling, sci-fi nerd amalgamated for the sake of an absurdist exaggeration with the adjacent trope of the basement-dwelling psychopath from Silence of the Lambs. But for the Plinkett character to work as a vehicle for critiquing science fiction movies, there needs to be an overall social context where obsessive, reclusive nerdiness is socially unacceptable. In the 2020s this is no longer the case, and tons of people make five-hour obsessive nitpicky videos complaining about sci-fi/fantasy series. Back in 2009 when RLM’s Phantom Menace review debuted, the average YouTube video was under 10 minutes, and making a 90 minute video criticizing a Star Wars movie was the kind of thing that would get you labeled as a social outcast by the mainstream. The Plinkett character effectively served as a satirical meta-joke “lampshading” the very fact that Mike Stoklasa wanted to make 90 minute videos obsessing about Star Wars. But in the 2020s, making 90 minute videos obsessing about nerdy movies is just a good business model for many YouTubers. Thus, the entire premise of Plinkett as an absurdist exaggeration of a basement dwelling, pizza-roll eating nerd with bad hygiene who makes lengthy videos obsessing about sci-fi minutiae is now obsolete. Plinkett used to be a reference to and satire of a specific cultural trope, but is now arguably just a “floating signifier”.

I don’t really like any of the Prequel villains, except Palpatine I guess. The appeal of Darth Maul is obviously that he looks like Satan and he does backflips. Which admittedly, is cool. But he has virtually no dialogue, and even worse, no connection with the main characters. If you think about it, the entire ending light-saber battle in The Phantom Menace has pretty much no actual plot related logic. The Jedi just encounter Maul, they stare at each other menacingly, and then fight. “They fight” says the script. Why is Darth Maul even there on Naboo at this point? I guess he’s just there for generic security reasons, but whatever.

After Maul kills Qui-Gon, a relationship between him and Obi Wan is now established. This could have been leveraged for some character drama, but instead Maul dies minutes later.

Christopher Lee is awesome, and continues the tradition (established with Moff Tarkin) of casting classic horror actors as second-tier bad guys. But Dooku’s implied backstory as a “gray” conflicted Jedi who might actually be on the right side of history is completely squandered the moment he turns into a generic end boss for Anakin and Kenobi to fight.

And General Grievous… I mean… I realize that Star Wars was always basically a glorified Saturday morning cartoon for general audiences, but Grievous is just too much of a moustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villain. You need to tone down that shit for live action, but Lucas didn’t seem to grasp that. I think when Grievous whipped out 4 lightsabers and started twirling them around is about the moment I sighed and gave up on Revenge of the Sith.

Spartacus01 said:

Hell, the only reason Lucas introduced the “no marriage rule” for the Jedi is because he wanted Anakin and Padmé’s love story in Attack of the Clones to be a reminiscence of Romeo and Juliet’s Love story: a forbidden love story between two people that shouldn’t be in love. In The Phantom Menace itself there is no indication whatsoever that the Jedi are not supposed to have romantic relationships.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. I just wonder if Lucas had already conceived of the Jedi as celibate even during The Phantom Menace. TPM doesn’t explicitly mention the no marriage rule, but it’s clear that by the time Lucas wrote TPM, he was already developing ideas about a very weird “anti-attachment” pseudo-Buddhist philosophy for the Jedi, because the script emphasizes how the Jedi get very fussy about 10 year old Anakin’s attachment to his mother. Even at this early stage in the Prequels, it’s clear that Lucas’ vision for the Jedi and their anti-attachment philosophy is already at odds with mainstream sensibilities. Like, it seems absurd to the average audience member that the Jedi are so averse to emotional attachments that they fear a 10 year old being attached to his mom. This already suggests the Jedi are some fucked up cult that kidnaps infants before they can even form emotional attachments. So the “no romantic attachments” rule in AoTC seemed like a natural extension of what TPM set up. But yeah, it’s very likely that Lucas’ desire to shoehorn in some Romeo & Juliet was the motivating factor here, but this also feels like a natural extension of the “no attachment” stuff in TPM.