Channel72

More spamz: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Precious-971528604116-Pakistani-Independent-Call-girls-In-Festival-City-By-Young-Independent-Call-girls-Festival/id/109770

I find that answer vague and unconvincing.

Another thing… after the Prequels came out, everyone got a sense of what a Jedi was capable of doing. Taking out a room full of armed goons with a single laser sword seems firmly within a Jedi’s normal capabilities. But when ROTJ came out, we had never seen a Jedi do anything remotely like that. The most impressive thing we saw was Yoda lifting the X-wing, which suggested that a powerful Jedi would probably be able to use telekinesis to devastating effect in a fight. And Darth Vader does just this in ESB when he knocks Luke out the window on Bespin.

But when I first saw Luke just start flipping around and stabbing or slashing at everyone onboard the sail barge, it kind of just came off as completely unbelievable and silly. Like… why can’t any of Jabba’s guys just shoot him from a distance? He can’t reflect every single bolt, can he? (To be fair, he does take a hit in his hand.) Plus Jabba’s henchmen have the high ground! Luke is basically fighting an upward battle from inside a pit, with gravity against him. Regardless, I had imagined that Jedi were more about subtle mental trickery and telekinesis rather than just straight up doing backflips and stabbing people. I thought lightsabers were almost ceremonial, used mostly for Jedi vs. Jedi combat.

But after seeing the Prequels, Luke’s lethal acrobatics in ROTJ seem a lot less far fetched now. If only his lightsaber actually worked correctly, instead of turning into a baseball bat. (To be fair, he just constructed it. Maybe factory default settings are “baseball bat” mode.)

This thread is fake news.

Well, I think it depends on what question we’re actually asking here. Is it theoretically possible - given only the info in the OT - that the Empire was much older than 20 years in ANH? Sure, it’s possible. There are many ways to write the backstory this way, as suggested in this thread, including but not limited to: (1) Vader was secretly evil for decades before giving birth to Luke, or (2) it wasn’t a secret and Mrs. Skywalker openly supported Vader’s murderous purge, or (3) there were other Jedi-killers before Vader, or (4) Luke and Leia were cryogenically frozen for some unspecified time period, etc. etc.

But none of those possibilities are the most straightforward, natural interpretation of the OT. The most natural interpretation is probably just the Empire was only 19 years old.

Or rather, with only ANH in mind, perhaps the Empire was substantially older. But with all three Original Trilogy films, the most natural conclusion is the Empire is the same age as Luke. Yes, it’s possible to come up with ways to extend the length, but they all involve “multiplying extra entities beyond necessity”, which makes William of Occam very sad.

There’s kind of a “thematic dissonance” in the OT about this. In ANH, you really get the sense the Empire is a very old institution - the way Kenobi talks about the Old Republic, before the dark times, or how he tells Luke he hasn’t gone by the name Obi Wan for “a long time… a long time.” Plus, the whole epic fantasy vibe and the implied backstory of a Golden Age Old Republic that lasted for “a thousand generations” sort of suggested longer time scales for all of this.

But then in the Prequels we find out the Empire is less than 20 years old. But a closer examination reveals the Prequels aren’t to blame here: it’s actually the fault of Empire Strikes Back. Turning Anakin into Vader had the unintentional side effect of heavily implying the Empire is about the same age as Luke, since Luke’s father is now Darth Vader, who killed the Jedi Knights of old. (Separate Anakin/Vader characters allows the possibility that Luke’s father was among the last of the Jedi Knights, who were victims of an ongoing multi-decade purge carried out by Vader under the Imperial banner.)

The pre-Prequel Gen-X fans also picked up on this. Early fan-fiction stories about the Prequel era, written in the 1980s, generally set the Prequels around 20 years before ANH, and considered the birth of Luke/Leia to be cotemporaneous with the rise of the Empire and the fall of Vader.

Another random complaint I have about ROTJ: it’s the first time we’re introduced to “lightsaber baseball bat syndrome”, i.e. when lightsabers stop being the deadly slicing weapons they’re supposed to be and turn into baseball bats you can whack people with. When Luke slashes at Jabba’s henchmen aboard the sail barge, they sort of just get knocked backwards and fall off the barge.

Lightsaber baseball bat syndrome also appeared in the recent Disney Kenobi series.

Clearly, this syndrome occurs because a lightsaber is really a rated R weapon in a PG universe. That’s why Lucas used battledroids as disposable Jedi fodder in the Prequels. But the whole “baseball bat effect” looks so dumb. Star Wars shouldn’t be ultra-violent, but surely there’s some compromise between turning ROTJ into a violent slasher film and turning the coolest sci-fi weapon ever conceived into a stupid glowing baton.

^ I tend to ignore the age of the actors as strong evidence of any particular scenario, because it’s really just a very broad indicator at best, and doesn’t take into account any sci-fi/fantasy possibilities. But the reality is it’s tricky to extend the duration of the Empire too much over 19 years. You can say that Anakin/Vader turned evil before giving birth to the twins (and thus before turning into a cyborg). But presumably Mrs. Skywalker wouldn’t stick around once Anakin became a supervillain, so the only way to pull this off story-wise is to claim Anakin was “secretly” evil for some unspecified time period before the twins were born.

The “secretly evil Vader” scenario isn’t entirely implausible. Lucas himself has even implied this was the case in some old story discussions with Kasdan et. al., saying that the Jedi purge was sort of a stealthy affair, with Vader secretly catching Jedi off guard. (What did he like stab hundreds of thousands of people when they weren’t paying attention? I don’t know, maybe there weren’t that many Jedi.) I guess we can extend the duration of this “secret evil Vader” period to any number of decades, to extend the length of the Empire. But really, it stretches plausibility the longer we stretch it. Also, Lucas’ comments about “stealthy Vader” imply the Jedi purge happened during the waning days of the Old Republic, before the Empire.

I mean, believe me, I don’t like the idea that the Empire only lasted like 20 years. Before the Prequels, I kind of assumed the Empire was a very old institution, which is why taking it down seemed so impossible. I even came up with scenarios to explain how Vader could have turned evil much earlier than 19 years before A New Hope: maybe Ben Kenobi took Vader’s children and hid them by cryogenically freezing them for some unspecified time period. Then later (perhaps decades - or centuries? - later), when he thought it would be safe, he unthawed the twins and gave them to Owen/Beru and the Organas. But no… that doesn’t work, because Owen and Beru act like they were friendly with Anakin relatively recently.

I don’t know. It’s science fiction/fantasy. Maybe humans in Star Wars live for 500 years. Maybe Han Solo was actually 175 years old at the time of ANH. Who knows? Except, we all know that isn’t the intent here. It’s pretty clear the Empire is relatively young (despite certain impressions we may get to the contrary.) That’s the most straightforward interpretation of all the evidence.

Also, the deleted scene in ANH, where Luke talks with Biggs at Tosche station, actually gives the impression of a relatively young Empire. Luke and Biggs talk about how the Empire isn’t “out here” yet (i.e. not out on Tatooine), and is just now starting to “nationalize commerce”, indicating it’s still in a growth/expansion phase. Sure, it’s possible it takes centuries for Imperial control to expand to the Outer Rim, but that’s just not the impression I get from how Biggs talks about it - warning Luke that the Empire isn’t as far away as it seems.

I don’t think any start date for the Empire was ever really implied by OT dialogue. But we can piece a few things together to work it out:

We know Vader must have turned evil no later than 19 years before ANH (due to Luke’s age), and we know Vader hunted down the Jedi Knights - meaning the Jedi Knights existed 19 years before ANH. We know the Jedi Knights were guardians of peace in the “Old Republic”. We can take this to mean the Old Republic existed 19 years before ANH. All of these add up to sort of give the picture that the Old Republic fell around the same time Vader turned evil and hunted the Jedi Knights.

So:

• Vader turned evil no later than 19 years before ANH
• Vader killed the Jedi Knights
• The Jedi Knights were guardians of peace in the Old Republic

Therefore… the Old Republic must have become the Empire 19 years before ANH. This is also what the Prequels show. So case closed.

Or IS IT??!??!???

Yes. It is. Mostly. But there’s just one nagging thing. Did anyone who grew up watching the OT actually feel like the Empire was only 19 years old?

I certainly didn’t. I had assumed the Empire might have been like centuries old. Most of the characters didn’t seem to even remember a time before the Empire, except for Obi-Wan, who, as a Jedi, may be supernaturally old. And the way Alec Guinness waxed poetic about the Old Republic - before the dark times, sounds like he was reminiscing for an ancient Golden Age of Legend. Something that existed in the remote past. And the way Han scoffed at Kenobi’s superstitious beliefs, or the way Tarkin spoke of Obi Wan as if he should be long dead, or Vader’s ancient religion.

The Empire never seemed only 19 years old. It seemed ancient - a Galactic Order that had existed as long as anyone can remember. That’s what made toppling it seem all the more spectacular.

I originally blamed the Prequels for showing the Empire lasted less than 20 years. But actually, the OT more or less implies this as well if you put the pieces together.

Mocata said:

These are minor details since Boba Fett isn’t a match for Luke.

Ehhh… maybe. Mandalorians have always been portrayed as challenging opponents for the Jedi. Even in the very earliest proto-incarnations of Mandalorians, back when they were just “Imperial Shocktroopers”, they were implied to at least be capable of giving the Jedi Knights a run for their money.

Not that Boba Fett is necessarily an actual Mandalorian, in 1983 or any time after (I can’t keep track of Boba Fett’s endless retconned origin stories), but Luke is also barely a Jedi. Maybe Boba Fett can just cheat by using some fancy tech to stun or incapacitate Luke, rather than best him in a fight.

Why is the Alliance letting their top fighters go off to save one man when such a big campaign is being fought? We never find out, and it’s odd.

One possible excuse is that Act 1 actually happened like months before Act 2 and 3. Not a great solution, but I guess it explains why the Rebels were freed up to go rescue Han.

But even worse is the fact that Luke inexplicably never returned to Yoda. He was definitely supposed to return to Dagobah to complete his training with Yoda originally. The Fourth Draft of Empire Strikes Back ends with Luke and Leia on board the medical frigate, staring out the window into space, and Luke says “I want to go with them, but I have a promise to keep. They’ll find Han. I know they will…”. This implies Luke intends to return to Yoda to finish his training. But in the actual film, Luke goes off with Lando to Tatooine, and apparently never returns to Dagobah to complete his training until ROTJ. So it’s never explained how Luke is suddenly a bad-ass Jedi with a stylish new outfit when he shows up at Jabba’s Palace. (And what were they doing on Tatooine for 3 years? I guess maybe it took 3 years for Lando to land a job in Jabba’s palace.)

I lowkey just figured out how to use the phrase “lowkey”. Actually… I’m still not sure I’m doing it right. Is there a space or a hyphen? Whatever. I low-key need a zoomer dictionary.

Man, I miss 90s lingo. It ruled.

theprequelsrule said:

This place is a ghost town. Never seen the forums so inactive.

So are most old-school Internet forums where I used to post. All the kids these days are on social media. But at least they’re not on my lawn.

It sucks that the Internet these days is basically just like 3 companies.

I mean, obviously it’s possible for automata to behave in such a way that is indistinguishable from humans (including expressing joy, sadness, anxiety, pain, etc.), yet still be completely non-sentient. An outside observer would have no way of knowing (see the famous “Chinese room” thought experiment).

But we all know Star Wars isn’t thinking about this. C3PO exists for comic relief and nothing more. Actually, C3PO is basically just a sci-fi homage to a Kurosawa character.

But since C3PO is designed for etiquette and protocol, it kind of makes sense his designers would incorporate many human-like qualities, including expressing a range of emotions.

WookieeWarrior77 said:

I was just watching Return of the Jedi again this weekend actually, and I was thinking about Boba Fett; mainly, like why does he stay at the palace? Jabba presumably paid him for delivering Han, so why does he stay? Just for the party? Fine, sure, but then when Luke and co. fight back on the skiff he flies down to help Jabba. Why?
Maybe he’s there because of this idea that he was originally gonna play a larger role.
(I was gonna make this "Why Does Boba Fett Stay? thing into a separate thread, but I saw this and it fit in)

By the time of ROTJ, it’s been like 3 years since Boba Fett delivered Han. (At least if we ignore supplementary material like Shadows of the Empire.) So the fact that Boba Fett is still hanging around at Jabba’s palace by the time of ROTJ would seem to indicate some kind of permanent employment with Jabba. There’s also that ridiculous scene in the Special Edition of A New Hope where we see Boba Fett as part of Jabba’s entourage. So we can infer from all this that Boba Fett fights Luke on the skiff in ROTJ because his duties include general security or protection for Jabba.

I recall that George Lucas stated somewhere that, when writing ROTJ, Boba Fett was considered basically just a random goon and nothing more. Strangely, the script for ROTJ acts like many events in ESB never happened. For example, Boba Fett doesn’t recognize Lando, and doesn’t seem to have any relationship with Vader anymore.

It’s weird because in the late 1979/early 1980 promotional material for ESB, Boba Fett was always advertised as working for Darth Vader. He was never associated with Jabba the Hutt. And in the 1978 Holiday Special (Boba Fett’s first appearance), Fett is associated with Vader, not Jabba.

But the A New Hope Special Edition scene from 1997 implies Boba Fett worked for Jabba in some capacity well before Vader hired him in ESB. And of course, ESB itself implies Boba Fett works for BOTH Vader and Jabba (and the “No disintegration!” line implies a prior relationship between Fett and Vader). But the earliest 1978/1979 promotional material emphasizes Boba Fett’s connection with Vader. Yet by the time ROTJ came out, Fett’s connection with Vader was essentially forgotten by the script.

Basically, Fett was originally marketed as Darth Vader’s minion, from 1978 thru 1980 when Empire Strikes Back was released. But then in ROTJ, Boba Fett works for Jabba in some semi-permanent capacity, and his relationship with Vader is never acknowledged.

This is one aspect of Star Wars that just gets worse and worse the more you think about it.

Of course, not all droids appear to get emotional. IG-88 doesn’t give a shit.

A pretty common criticism of ROTJ (other than Ewoks) is that the first Act (Jabba’s palace) has no connection to the rest of the film - apart from explaining why Han is back. This breaks an unwritten “rule” of film making, which is that each plot development should be caused by prior events. There’s a famous talk from the South Park creators that expounds on this: a movie should not be written such that Event A happens and then Event B happens. Rather, the movie should be written so that Event A happens, which causes Event B.

Now, this is pretty subjective. But I think everyone would at least agree you don’t want your film to be an arbitrary series of disconnected events (unless you’re going for some experimental sort of filmmaking). You want prior events to cause future events. A New Hope does this perfectly. You can follow a clear causality chain backwards from the last scene to the first scene. The Rebels attack the Death Star because they have the plans, because Leia brought the plans, because Luke rescued Leia, because Luke met Ben Kenobi, because R2 and C3PO escaped to Tatooine, because Vader attacked the Tantive IV. There is a CLEAR, direct chain of causality throughout A New Hope.

But ROTJ completely breaks this rule. In ROTJ, there is no causality chain. They rescue Han, and then a completely unrelated plot takes over.

Again, whether or not this bothers you is subjective - and many films break this “rule”. But it started to bother me, so as a thought experiment I started thinking about ways this could have been fixed. It’s really hard to come up with a way to connect Jabba’s palace with the Battle of Endor.

Ideally, you’d want something that happens in Jabba’s palace to later have relevance to the Death Star attack. Maybe among the criminal denizens of Jabba’s palace they stumble upon a hacker who provides them with the clearance codes for Shuttle Tyderium? Nah… that’s kind of stupid.

Then I realized there’s actually already an organic, built-in connection between the world of Jabba the Hutt and the Rebel/Empire (or Luke/Vader) conflict. That connection is Boba Fett. He works for BOTH Jabba and Vader.

It’s already a bit of a plot hole that Boba Fett never recognizes Lando in Jabba’s place (even with Lando’s silly mask). And while not an actual plot hole, it’s kind of weird that Boba Fett fights Luke but there’s no acknowledgement in the script that Boba Fett surely must know that Vader is still searching for Luke. You’d think when Luke showed up at Jabba’s palace, Boba Fett would take notice and perhaps contact Vader.

It seems like the connective tissue between Act I and the rest of the film was right there all along, in the form of Boba Fett - but the writers just didn’t seem to take advantage of this.

Of course, I still don’t know exactly how this Boba Fett link would help connect Act I with the rest of the film. It still doesn’t lend itself to some obvious causal link between the events in Jabba’s palace and Endor. But it could provide a partial link, if Boba Fett was somehow rewritten to be the connective tissue that causes Luke to ultimately get captured by Vader (instead of just turning himself in randomly on Endor - arguably another violation of the South Park rule).

Anyway, I don’t have it worked out, but to me it seems the best way to provide a causal through-line in ROTJ is to leverage the one link between Jabba and Vader, which is Boba Fett. Perhaps instead of killing him off unceremoniously, he could have been leveraged to create a much tighter, causality-driven story. I’m just not sure exactly how.

Thoughts?

The only rational stance to have on the recent UFO/UAP evidence is “Hmm… interesting. Not sure what’s going on here. This needs further investigation.”

I’m 99.99% certain that intelligent extra-terrestrial life exists in our Universe. But only 50% certain that any aliens (or alien probes) have actually visited Earth yet.

Vultural said:

I suspect most of us who recall the 80’s are halfway to the graveyard.

Well yeah, given the average life span of a human. Anyone who can remember the 80s in any meaningful way is at least 40 by now. Now get off my lawn.

AntcuFaalb said:

1. What was being an 80s Star Wars fan like?

I was a child in the 80s, but I can remember being a Star Wars fan. My first encounter with Star Wars was when I was at my Uncle’s house and he randomly put on Empire Strikes Back on VHS. I watched it and was blown away.

The main difference between then and now was that the Original Trilogy was the only live-action Star Wars content in existence (ignoring Ewok/Holiday TV specials), and pretty much everyone agreed it was awesome (except for some minor complaints about ROTJ).

And we all loved George. Consider how Lord of the Rings fans view J.R.R. Tolkien today. That was how Star Wars fans saw George Lucas: as this master storyteller with an unparalleled creative vision. The man was surrounded by an aura of mystique - unlike today, where Lucas is a divisive figure.

The other difference in the fandom was there were different ideas about what aspects of Star Wars were the most awesome. Today, the fandom seems to really be captivated mostly by the Jedi, lightsaber combat, the Sith, Force powers, etc. But in the 80s, the fandom was much more captivated by the world and technology of Star Wars: X-Wings, Star Destroyers, TIE fighters, etc. Yes, fans still love that shit today, but the focus of the 80s fandom was more around the “military sci-fi” aspect of Star Wars, whereas today’s fandom is more interested in Jedi lightsaber duels and Force powers.

This is probably because the Jedi in the OT were more subtle, more spiritual, and not as physically impressive. The Jedi were simply not as much of a big deal as they are today. The most beloved Star Wars character throughout the 80s was not even a Jedi: it was Han Solo. In fact, if there was one bit of iconography that defined Star Wars in the 80s, it was Han and Chewie in the Falcon.

4. Did you participate in the early home video revolution? If so, how did you, for instance, obtain all of the episodes of Star Trek (TOS)?

Well, my family bought a VCR when I was very young. Obtaining all the episodes of Star Trek was pretty difficult to do back then. You’d probably have to pay a lot of money to order a box set of VHS tapes from Paramount or something. Either that, or just wait for each episode to be aired on some local channel, and methodically record it over the span of a few months.

When I was a kid we mostly just recorded HBO movies on VHS. (I think that’s how I got my first VHS copy of Star Wars.) We would occasionally purchase an official VHS release of a movie, but that was pretty rare.

I think one aspect of media culture that was quite common in the 80s but has mostly disappeared today was recording movies/music directly from the television or radio. I would record HBO movies on VHS often. You had to check the “TV Guide” (a physical magazine you got in the mail that listed all television show time slots for the week for your local channels) to know when the movie would be playing. It was not uncommon to go over to somebody’s house, and see their “library” of VHS tapes on display on a shelf somewhere, with self-made labels inscribed with hand-written movie titles.

The first time I saw pretty much all the 80s classics (Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc.) was when I went over to a friend’s house and they had it on VHS, recorded off of HBO, Cinemax, or even just a regular cable or network TV channel. It was quite common for movies on VHS to contain commercials, since they were recorded straight from network TV.

RicOlie_2 said:

Saying you appreciate Stalin is like saying you appreciate Hitler…

Stalin certainly never appreciated Hitler.

Spuffure said:

The internet has made so many political ideologies present, I don’t know whether or not I should be left or right or centre or something else. Who is right? Who is wrong? Am I a bigot and don’t even know it?

The correct ideology is obviously anarcho-syndicalism.

Just kidding. You shouldn’t choose a political ideology just to have one. Political ideologies are just sets of ideas, assumptions and strategies, for organizing society. You can’t really test which one is best in a lab, and none of them are “right”, except insofar as some probably lead to better outcomes than others under certain conditions. Except of course, for capitalism. That one sucks at all times under all conditions. (Again just kidding. Sort of.)

DZ-330 said:
I miss the times when people on the opposite sides of the spectrum would actually listen to the other side’s opinion and try to find a middle-ground. The culture in the USA today is literally like Anakin said: “If you’re not with me… then you’re my enemy!”

Political polarization in the US increased dramatically around the turn of the 21st century, most likely due to the advent of 24-hour news networks. The Internet and social media then took this trend and injected it with steroids.

fmalover said:

Channel72 said:

Let’s face it: the only competent Star Wars sequels ever created were written by Timothy Zahn, and those are basically unfilmable.

Unfilmable? How so?

Well, maybe not entirely unfilmable with today’s deep-fake antics, but probably very difficult to film. To film it without relying entirely on multiple deep-faked main characters, it would need to be substantially rewritten. Plus, arguably, a Sequel Trilogy should focus on a new cast, not have the OT cast again as main characters, regardless of how much we love them.

I remember like 15 years ago or something, before “Prequel memes” were all the rage with the kids today, I was arguing on the Internet about the Prequels (as one does circa 2010), and I basically created a very similar “meme” (I didn’t call it that), showing one screenshot of Kenobi and Anakin chained up, and another shot of Jango Fett just standing out in the open, next to Dooku. I didn’t add captions or anything, but I just posted the screenshots to make the point.

The responses I got from Prequel fans were something like: “Well… Jango is a bounty hunter. Lots of people hire him! Nothing suspicious there!!” Or “That’s the POINT you idiot - the whole POINT is the Jedi are blinded by their arrogance. Didn’t you pay attention when Yoda complained about arrogance later??? You’re so stupid, George Lucas is a genius.” Or “Well the Jedi had no choice! They HAD to use the clone army! etc.”

Sigh…

The only point that has any merit is the last one. But that doesn’t explain why apparently NO investigation was done after Geonosis. I mean, it’s not like the Jedi/Republic are incapable of fighting a war while ALSO investigating some stuff. If the Allies can fight the Nazis while ALSO working on decoding Enigma, the Jedi can fight the Separatists while ALSO investigating the suspicious circumstances surrounding the clones.

I mean seriously, how hard is it? Go to Kamino. Ask them: “Hey do you have any logs or video footage of your conversation with Sifo Diyas? Do you have any video of him or a picture of him? Do you have the routing number of the bank used to transfer you the money? etc. etc.” Maybe Sifo Diyas paid them in crypto.

If you rephrase the question to “Which is LESS harmful to the OT?”, I would say the Sequels. The Sequels are unnecessary supplemental stories that can be easily ignored. But the Prequels are vital backstory to the OT, and are now inextricably intertwined with the OT in the public consciousness.

Let me put it this way: Jar Jar Binks now appears in Return of the Jedi.

Superweapon VII said:

Midi-chlorian microverse trilogy. How the fuck anyone could think that’d ever have been good, I fail to understand.

If that’s really what Lucas’ sequels were about even. I read so many contradictory claims about George’s crazy sequels. The latest incarnation apparently is a story featuring cyborg Darth Maul as leader of a criminal underworld, and a plot involving various criminal organizations vying for control of the galaxy in a power vacuum left by the Empire.

That sounds kind of stupid, but probably better than the actual Sequels which are ultimately just an OT remix with extra incoherence. Maybe George’s sequels have a subplot where they use a magic shrinking ray to shrink down into the microverse and go on an amazing psychedelic midichlorian adventure in quantumania or whatever. Hopefully those scenes are easy to skip.

Let’s face it: the only competent Star Wars sequels ever created were written by Timothy Zahn, and those are basically unfilmable.