Channel72

Omni said:
From my experience, having lived years in both the United States and abroad, having attended conventions in multiple countries and all, Prequel reception is way, way more positive if you’re not from an English speaking country. You stop evaluating the lines by the quality you perceive in them, and only focus on what they’re trying to convey to the story, and the lines in the PT are very competent in that regard. So people watching the movie dubbed or subbed get a very different perception of the characters and story, probably the one Lucas wanted everyone to.

Yeah, that’s what I suspected. Which is why, for native English speakers, the Prequels might be easily improved to a certain extent by simply dubbing over certain characters with different performances or lines, as some fan edits have done. (I couldn’t bring myself to dub over Ian McDiarmid though…)

That would definitely help - but I also think the Prequels have a lot of fundamental problems at the structural/writing level that are impossible to fix without entirely rewriting them. But at least a dubbed version would potentially make certain scenes less painful to watch.

Qiviuq said:

I would argue that it has not been such a big issue with the sequels and the spin-offs (which have other issues for the most part), but the OT HANDS DOWN has the worst dialogue out of all SW content.

That opinion is… unique. Kind of fascinating to me this opinion exists at all. But of course what constitutes good dialogue is subjective and difficult to argue about. Plus most attempts to demonstrate good dialogue versus bad dialogue with examples will ultimately be dismissed as cherry-picking.

The most objective thing I can say is that, the OT dialogue is on average, very different stylistically than the PT.

The OT definitely has some really corny dialogue. It has a small amount of excellent, or above-average dialogue. (I think Yoda in ESB has the most above-average high-quality dialogue.) But the majority of the dialogue is just serviceable, designed to move the plot from point A to point B, often with added snappiness and snark. A lot of it is elevated by the performances, especially with Harrison Ford.

For me, the best aspect of OT dialogue is the back and forth character interactions. I particularly love Han Solo’s interactions with Leia and Threepio. (“Sir, if I may venture an opinion…” … “I’m not really interested in your opinion Threepio.”) Leia probably has the highest number of really corny lines that could only be written in the 1970s.

Like the OT, most of the dialogue in the Prequels is simply serviceable, designed to get us from A to B. But a lot of it is a jarring blend of overly juvenile and overly melodramatic. Like, Anakin uses the word “grumpy”, then a few minutes later says “You are in my very soul, tormenting me.”

Broadly speaking, what sets Prequel dialogue apart from OT dialogue is that it’s way more stylized: going from Saturday morning kids show to operatic melodrama. (The OT has these extremes as well, but in much smaller quantities.) Plus, the PT has very little of the grounded, realistic yet punchy back and forth character interaction that was so prevalent in the OT. Prequel characters simply don’t say things like “Don’t everyone thank me at once” or “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, kid. It ain’t there. It’s been totally blown away.” Ewan McGregor comes the closest to some version of this, with his observational wit and sarcasm - but unfortunately most of his dialogue is of the “getting from A to B” variety.

I’ve often wondered if watching the Prequels is a better experience if you’re a non-native English speaker, or if you watch it in a different language, so that the worst tendencies of the dialogue don’t necessarily register as overly childish or obnoxious.

You know, the way they resolved the whole mystery cloning experiment thing felt so inconsequential, it barely even registered to me that they were also resolving the entire Grogu DNA/science experiment plot line going back to Season 1. It came off like “Oh crap, there’s an army of force-wielding Moff Gideon clones and… oh wait, nevermind”.

The writers clearly implied there was something more going on earlier, because when we see those clones in the tubes in earlier episodes, they looked very deformed, obviously hinting at some proto-Snoke thing going on. I’m pretty sure the writers really had no idea where they where going with this. But if they couldn’t think of anything more interesting than just “more Moff Gideons, but with midichlorians now”, they could have at least tried to come up with something interesting to do with it, rather then just unceremoniously killing all the clones in 5 seconds.

Here’s an idea: how about an “Indiana Jones” style ending, where the villain’s own attempt to achieve power ends up backfiring in some humbling or moralistic way. Let’s say Gideon unleashes his army of Force-wielding clones, but soon learns it is unwise to mess around with the Force like that, as the clones immediately become insane and kill Gideon, and then kill each other. That would at least feel like a somewhat interesting outcome to all this, rather than yet another “generic fight sequence with final boss”. It’s kind of like when the bad guy in Indiana Jones finds [mystical artifact] but is deluded by a lust for power and so misunderstands its nature, and thus ends up melting/exploding/disintegrating/etc.

screams in the void said:

I think all parties involved would have discussed the plan ahead of time . Leia showed from the beginning that she can handle herself and I think if Luke had expressed Jabba’s reputation and treatment of captive women , Leia would have told Luke that she is a grown woman and can handle herself . And where was it stated that Luke had sole input in devising the plan ? Perhaps Leia knew the risks and decided how to proceed in her part herself anyway . Still , the plan as shown in the movie was convoluted for sure .

Well, let’s say Leia’s role was to (1) deliver Chewie to Jabba, (2) unthaw Han, (3) get caught herself so she ends up on the sail barge with everyone. This is kind of hard to buy, because the way the scene plays out (when Han says “I know that laugh…”), Leia seems to act like getting caught was an unexpected bad outcome. At least that’s my interpretation of the scene. But they also could have planned it so that Leia delivers Chewie to Jabba, collects 50,000 credits, and leaves. Then Lando unthaws Han, gets caught, Luke shows up, etc. Although we can infer Lando did lots of reconnaissance work, he never actually does anything onscreen to help. (But then I’m still wondering why Boba Fett doesn’t recognize him at some point, but whatever.) Maybe they chose Leia specifically because they knew that if she were caught unthawing Han, she wouldn’t be executed on the spot (unlike Lando), and would instead likely be turned into a harem slave.

Now, I’m sure Leia can handle anything Jabba does to her. She already endured torture from Vader and didn’t crack. But subjecting her to Jabba’s degrading treatment seems particularly egregious because it barely seems necessary. No matter how you look at it, the plan is ultimately to just have a Jedi show up and kick ass. So, how about this: Luke dresses up as a bounty hunter and delivers Chewie. Luke then unthaws Han at night and gets caught. Presumably then Jabba will throw him to the rancor, and the plan proceeds as usual. Alternatively, after delivering Chewie, Luke retrieves his lightsaber from R2, unthaws Han at night, gets caught, then just fights his way out. Leia shows up with the Falcon outside as their getaway. That alternative handwaves away how Chewie gets freed and makes many logistical assumptions, but either way, having Leia involved seems unnecessary when ultimately the plan revolves around Luke showing up, getting taken prisoner, and then getting Old Republic on everyone’s ass.

RogueLeader said:

Lucas: What Luke wants to do is to get on that barge and the only way he can do it is as a prisoner. He has to become a prisoner and Chewie has to become a prisoner; they have to unfreeze Han and they all have to be at the same execution, which is what his plan is. He figures once he kills the rancor, then they have to go to the pit. He knows that’s where the execution is going to be anyway. What they do with ordinary nuisances, or solicitors, is they drop them into the rancor pit. Luke knows or doesn’t know that is what would happen, what kind of trap they have laid for him. He’s assuming that when he is discovered and when he is subdued, which he will be, that he is bound to end up with Han and Chewie in the skiff over the Sarlacc pit.
The plan is, “I am going to knock everybody overboard into the pit and we’re going take off”—but it goes a little awry because Boba Fett screws everything up and suddenly they are in trouble and they get into the fight.”
Kasdan: You can assume that Luke’s plan is multilayered and the court of last resort is they are going to take him to the Sarlacc pit and they’ll all be in place. But when he comes in and says, “I want to bargain for Han,” he is hoping that will work.
Lucas: Yes.

I think the biggest problem I have with all this, is that if Luke intended for Chewie to get caught, it implies Leia was supposed to bring him to Jabba (disguised as the bounty hunter). But then Leia tried to free Han herself - which does not contribute to getting everyone on the sail barge, except insomuch as Han needed to be unthawed somehow. But if the goal was to get everyone on the sail barge, that means Luke also intended for Leia to be caught. Alternatively, we can interpret this as Leia going off-script and just trying to take the opportunity to free Han. (But then how was Chewie supposed to get out, and how was Han supposed to be unthawed in Luke’s original plan?)

Plus, it seems absurd to claim Luke also intended for Leia to be caught. That would be particularly reprehensible to me, because Luke would know of Jabba’s reputation and the way he is likely to treat captive women specifically.

Mocata said:

Filming cancelled over weather concerns at the location for Saw Gerrara’s hideout

That’s what they get for actually caring and not being lazy by just using the Volume.

MooWaza said:
They were clearly working together as you can see in the deleted scenes of Return of the Jedi. Whether this is valid is up to you since they’re not in the final movie, but it shows the original idea when making the movie.

True. There’s also dialogue at the end of ESB that implies Luke and Lando at least are planning to meet on Tatooine. But I guess they never got around to it until 3 years later.

Before those ROTJ deleted scenes were available on Youtube, I assumed Luke and Leia/Chewie/Lando were carrying out two independent plans (coincidentally at the same time). That seemed like the only way to make any sense of the bizarre sequence of events.

So I guess Plan A was to just send Lando undercover and then send the droids to deliver Luke’s message. It’s unclear how Jabba was supposed to even communicate with Luke if Plan A worked, but whatever, maybe R2 had some comm device. So then Plan B was to send in Leia and Chewie. Leia needed Chewie to get inside the palace, but it seems that, once inside, Leia was supposed to just wait until everyone fell asleep and then unfreeze Han and sneak him out. It’s unclear how they planned to extract Chewie. Maybe that was Lando’s job? But then why couldn’t Lando just unfreeze Han and sneak him out without Leia/Chewie getting involved? Maybe they were afraid Han would react badly to Lando (who betrayed him). But that just highlights how little strategic sense it makes for Lando to even be involved in this. Boba Fett could easily recognize him, and Han probably wouldn’t trust him. Plus, Lando never actually does anything to help anyway (that we know of) until the plan has already collapsed.

Servii said:

G&G-Fan said:

George Lucas gave us Vader’s laughably pathetic “Nooooooo!”. Disney took that and made it badass.

Ya’ll saying Disney ruined Star Wars, idk what you’re smoking.

I’m pretty burnt out on “badass angsty slasher” Vader, and I think a lot of fans have this borderline hero worship of the character that goes too far. A lot of people want an R-rated slasher that’s just about Vader hunting Jedi, for example, but that goes against the spirit of Star Wars.

I would like a series where Vader hides in the woods at a summer camp and violently murders teenage counselors in increasingly elaborate ways.

Disney is messing everything up.

If they hired me I’d pitch them a new original Star Wars series called “Anchorhead”. It’s a 1970s-style sitcom with a laugh track, about the antics of Camie, Fixer, Biggs Darklighter and Luke Skywalker as they come of age on Tatooine. In the first episode, Luke and Biggs get into deep trouble with Old Man Lars after accidentally damaging a moisture vaporator while racing their T-16s. Meanwhile, Fixer suspects Camie of shenanigans after spying on her at Tosche station. Guest starring Tony Danza as the voice of 3B6-RA-7.

Servii said:

And Star Wars is just fascinating to me, both because it’s a great potential fantasy setting and because it’s a case study in franchise mismanagement. (I’m not just talking about post-2012 Star Wars. The problems started in 1997.)

Yeah. The first visual hint of the catastrophe to come happened in 1997 when a CGI droid on the outskirts of Mos Eisley punched another smaller droid. Although some would argue it started in 1983 after Leia got lost in the woods.

The beginning of the Force Awakens seemed promising. After 3 movies of maximum Lucas quirkiness, watching Finn and Poe escape a Star Destroyer while exchanging rapid quips with decent chemistry seemed like a really good sign. But then Star Wars started to suck in exciting new ways!

I wish they kept that line in the film.

I always imagined Jenny got together with Fixer and Camie, and they had their own adventures that were almost but not quite remembered by the Galaxy at large. Some historians claim their adventures were recorded in “The Book of Jenny”, but prevailing consensus now believes these were apocryphal additions to the Journal of the Whills, known only through later accounts falsely attributed to Mace Windy and C.J. Thorpe. Other evidence may suggest these accounts were lost when the Journal of the Whills was recompiled by a later scribe known only as “Marcia L.” as attested in the margin notes.

Vladius said:
There aren’t that many people that like the sequels.

You seem confident about this, but this actually isn’t obvious to me. I know I hate the Sequels. But it’s really hard to quantify public sentiment about something like this. It’s easy to find thousands of people online who hate the Sequels. But perceptions about this topic are heavily influenced by selection bias, and online communities are pretty much designed around selection bias. Also, it’s much easier to inaccurately conclude a majority hates something than it is to inaccurately conclude a majority likes something, because people that hate something tend to be more vocal about it.

This is another reason why aggregate movie review scores (like Rottentomatoes) aren’t a reliable indicator of general public sentiment. I don’t believe negative reviews are bot-generated (at least not a significant percentage of them). But the The Last Jedi’s 44% audience score doesn’t mean 56% of humans are likely to dislike this movie. It means 56% of humans inclined to write movie reviews online and/or with strong pre-existing feelings about Star Wars, are likely to dislike this movie. And of course, these review scores cause a feedback loop because the scores themselves influence public opinion. (And the same goes for the professional critic scores obviously.)

Box office return is another signal, but again box office performance is not a reliable proxy for a random sample of public sentiment. There’s just way too many unpredictable variables that influence box office returns. Everyone always points out how the Sequel Trilogy generated diminishing returns with each subsequent movie. But the Original Trilogy experienced the same pattern with the worldwide box office (with ANH making the most and ROTJ making the least). The drop in worldwide box office from TLJ to TROS (19.4% decrease) is steeper than the drop from ESB to ROTJ (13.2% decrease), but not significantly. In general, every Star Wars trilogy follows a broadly similar pattern: the first movie makes a ton of money, then the following two make much less. The Prequels were a bit unique because the 3rd movie (ROTS) made more than the second (AOTC). We can come up with lots of seemingly obvious reasons to explain these patterns. (Obviously ROTS made more $$ cause Vader). But looking at the big picture, it certainly isn’t obvious to me that diminishing box office returns for the Sequels is a clear signal of widespread dislike of these movies.

That said, I’m not saying you’re wrong necessarily. I want you to be right, because I don’t like the Sequels either. I’m just not sure. My own intuition about this kind of thing is not reliable - I NEVER would have predicted the Prequels would ever be so adored as they seem to be today. But when people claim “most people don’t like the Sequels” I have to ask: how do you know? Unless you’ve polled a uniformly distributed random sample of people that saw all 3 movies, how can you be confident about this?

I mean, there are people that really like the Sequels. They do exist, somehow. I have no clue how numerous they are. I can even understand why people like TLJ. I get it. It’s different. It’s beautiful. It at least seems to be trying to convey something meaningful. I get why people like it. The problem is that it’s also a blasphemous abomination from hell designed to shred the semantic fabric of our collective folklore. Also it’s stupid because Porgs are dumb and I didn’t see any B-wings.

Spartacus01 said:

If we don’t count the Sequels and spin-offs, then C3PO is the most annoying character. Yes, he’s even more annoying than Jar Jar in my opinion.

Both C3PO and Jar Jar say “How rude”. But it does not become a catch phrase.

G&G-Fan said:

Luke’s plan to rescue Han makes complete sense when you realize the reason his plan is so complex is because he’s going out of his way to not have to kill Jabba. Because that’s what Jedi do. Negotiate, not kill.

His first plan is to use the droids as a bargaining chip. Lando is planted there so he can get them out after Han is freed, and they lose nothing. That fails. So Leia’s sent in to free him, but she’s caught. Crap. So Luke has to go in himself. He calmly tries to negotiate with Jabba one last time, but he refuses. He knew about the Sarlacc, but not the Rancor, which is why he’s surprised by it. He planted the lightsaber in R2 in case he was gonna be thrown in the Sarlacc pit. Because otherwise they’d nab it off him when preparing to throw him in. And thus we get the sail barge scene.

Luke’s plan isn’t actually needlessly complicated, it’s just that we saw the worst possible scenario because Jabba is stubborn and insane.

Well, sending in Leia automatically gets Chewie thrown in a cell. So Leia has to now extract Han and Chewie. I guess this could work - after all, they needed some way to get an audience with Jabba in the first place, and there was an open bounty on Chewie. But the problem is we just never know what the original Plan A was supposed to be, e.g. we don’t know how they planned on extracting Chewie if Han was successfully rescued. The answer is of course “somehow” (maybe Lando had keys to the cell). That’s fine, but it makes the plan feel arbitrary. I’m reminded of Palpatine’s nebulous plans in Phantom Menace, where again we only see contingencies and we must try to infer what the original plan was.

Also, I think Luke would prioritize showing up himself as Contingency Plan A, rather than risking the lives of both Leia and Chewie. Luke seemed to believe there was a reasonable chance a Jedi mind trick might work on Jabba. Perhaps he wasn’t so sure - but if he believed it had like a 50% chance of working, it seems attempting the mind trick would be the preferred option rather than first resorting to a plan that risked both Leia and Chewie.

I had always interpreted ROTJ to be implying that Luke and Leia were not even coordinating with this rescue plan. I thought they were acting independently. I interpreted the event as: Luke sends in the droids, which fails. Luke now decides to show up himself, but before he arrives, Leia and Chewie (acting independently) show up and get caught. Not sure who Lando was working with, but probably Leia/Chewie.

The plan might make sense - it’s just that it seems somewhat arbitrary to the audience, because we’re left in the dark about so many details. Like, did Luke know Jabba would head out to the Dune Sea for a theatrical execution? I guess so - it’s plausible Jabba is known for doing this, Luke is from Tatooine, Luke seemed to prepare for it by placing the lightsaber in R2, and Luke seemed really calm during the ride out there. But it’s also possible R2 had the lightsaber because Luke believed he’d be searched for weapons at the door. After the Rancor, Luke seems to have lost all hope in a peaceful outcome, so why not have R2 toss him the lightsaber then? The crowded interior of the palace seems better suited for a lightsaber massacre than out in the open. Maybe R2 just wasn’t present at that time. Okay, but what if R2 wasn’t present at the sail barge either? What if Jabba’s staff decided to assign R2 to some other duty instead of the sail barge?

This kind of elaborate planning that ignores all the unpredictable variables is common in movies in general, so it’s not specifically a problem with ROTJ. But there are some good bank heist or prison escape movies, where the plan is explicitly spelled out and all variables and contingencies are known to the audience in advance - which I feel makes watching it unfold much more interesting than watching it unfold when you don’t really know what’s going on.

Anyway, there are some other problems too. Like, we take it as a given that Lando was sent to infiltrate Jabba’s palace, and somehow managed to get hired as a guard. Fine. But shouldn’t Boba Fett recognize Lando? I mean, sure, Lando wears a mask that partially conceals his face (but not his voice), but it seems like a major risk to send in one of the few Rebel Alliance members who could be identified by one of Jabba’s regular hirees. I guess they just didn’t have anyone else capable of pulling this off, so they sent in Lando and just hoped he never had to take off his mask around Boba Fett. Or I don’t know, maybe Boba Fett isn’t there so often.

Finally, Vader is still searching for Luke at this point. You’d think Vader would be monitoring the situation in Jabba’s palace - probably via Boba Fett. Does Boba Fett recognize Luke when Luke shows up at the palace? Maybe he doesn’t (he only briefly saw him in ESB), or maybe he does and was trying to capture Luke before falling into the Sarlacc Pit and then promptly dying and certainly never escaping and going on to have further adventures. Maybe Boba Fett was just unsure how to proceed when caught between the conflicting interests of Jabba and Vader. But anyway I doubt any of that was intended in the writing. Lucas stated in an interview that Boba Fett was just basically a generic henchman in this scene - his earlier relationship with Vader and his role in setting a trap for Luke was seemingly not considered.

It seems like this movie forgets that Boba Fett was present for certain events in Empire Strikes Back.

BedeHistory731 said:

The way I see it, the franchise has been coasting off of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back for over 40 years now and almost nothing since has lived up to that standard of quality. Andor, ROTJ, TLJ, and the original Battlefront games are all that come close to me (and they don’t come all that close).

Correct. (I disagree about TLJ and I never played Battlefront, but agree with the general sentiment you express)

I’m still disappointed that nobody picked up on my “bricks and screws” reference. Ah well, I thought it was funny.

I’ve adopted an uncompromising pro-brick stance. Star Wars should include more bricks or brick-related masonry materials in the future.

Anyway, this episode was… adequate, I guess. If you watched Season 3 episodes 1 through 7, and then somebody came along and said to you “I’ll pay you $10,000 if you can write a full script for Episode 8 in 30 minutes”, this is basically what you would come up with. You’d resolve as many plot threads as efficiently as possible. You’d of course brush aside some open threads that are too annoying to deal with in a satisfactory way. You throw in a nice showdown with the main bad guy, etc. Bang. Done.

Then you’re like, shit, I forgot about the mythosaur. And I also forgot to add in a pay-off for those baby pterodactyls from that one episode. And a pay-off for that Order-66 flashback where we learned stuff about stuff. And a pay-off for that one time we had to sit through Dr. Pershing’s entire day. Whatever. If people want to see a Mandalorian riding a giant dinosaur, they can just watch the Holiday Special.

I don’t know what chaos was going on behind the scenes, but the overall strangeness that was Season 3 goes way beyond the usual type of problems that plague streaming shows. Most modern streaming shows become stale, repetitive or absurd around Season 3. But Mandalorian Season 3 was bad in particularly unique and fascinating ways. They erased all the dramatic and emotional consequences of everything that happened in Seasons 1 and 2, in an episode that aired as part of a spin-off show. That’s amazing.

Well, there’s no open plot threads left to wrap up. Not really the best way to generate interest in Season 4 (if Season 4 ever exists). So it turns out Gideon’s stupid clone project wasn’t some proto-Snoke experiment after all. He was just making more Moff Gideons. Maybe he published an article in a peer-reviewed Imperial science journal explaining how to genetically engineer force-sensitive beings. I hope Din at least got a really good deal on those moisture vaporators. Hopefully he breaks even after the next harvest. Man, Season 1 feels like a distant memory. Remember when Kuiil the Ugnaught retrained IG-11? Did that even really happen?

Season 3 was pointless in so many unique and interesting ways. This show would have gone out on a relatively high note if they just ended it with Season 2.

The DS2 being constructed much faster than the DS1 really is not implausible at all. Of all the silliness in Star Wars, this is one of the least implausible things.

There’s many ways to easily explain this. It really depends on why the DS1 took so long. Firstly, the DS1 was developed secretly under a government that still nominally had some democratic organs and accountability to a pluralistic Senate. So planning, logistics, allocation of funds (a massive amount of funds!), would all need to be carefully orchestrated to appear harmless to the Senate, while also balancing the various competing interests inherent to any pluralistic governing body. But when constructing the DS2, the mask was already off. At that point, Palpatine was just like “Yeah, fuck it, I’m evil. Just deal with it.” So presumably there was no need to cleverly hide resource allocation to maintain a façade of accountability. Palpatine could allocate funds with dictatorial fiat.

Consider how in real life, planning and building the new World Trade Center tower in New York after 9/11 took over a decade, with around 8 years required for construction. Meanwhile, in the United Arab Emirates, a much larger tower, the Burj Khalifa, was constructed in only 5 years. This is because the construction companies involved in building the new WTC had to contend with the large bureaucracies and competing multi-agency interests in New York City, whereas the Burj Khalifa was constructed in a mostly monarchic (or oligarchic) state, with fewer competing interests.

Secondly, it’s also very plausible that part of the reason the DS1 took so long was due to the novel engineering and technical obstacles they encountered while building it. These obstacles needed to be overcome and solved for the first time, requiring extensive R & D. But once solutions were discovered, they knew exactly what to do the second time around. Perhaps they ran into technical difficulties with (I don’t know) heat diffusion caused by the superlaser. A lot of R & D would be required to solve this issue. But once an effective solution was discovered, they could easily replicate it a second time. This sort of thing is common in real-world engineering projects.

And thirdly, there was way more urgency to finish the project quickly the second time around, because after Yavin, the Empire was likely facing countless uprisings, badly straining the Imperial navy. The Empire played the “Tarkin doctrine” card but were then suddenly caught with no Death Star to back it up. They probably had to scramble to build a new one, while their military was stretched thin quelling endless uprisings.

So it’s really not particularly implausible to me that the DS2 could be constructed much faster than the first Death Star, because it was constructed under different political constraints with way more urgency, and they already solved all the engineering challenges required to create it the first time.

And finally, remember that the DS2 wasn’t actually ever completed. Presumably it still couldn’t move. And it was never demonstrated that the superlaser was yet capable of scaling up to the energy level required to blow up a planet.

WookieeWarrior77 said:

Now, some of the wampa stuff was filmed; did that survive Kasdan’s rewrite?

I think there were later drafts between Leigh Brackett’s first one and the final script. These were probably much closer to the final version, but still included Wampas invading the base. That’s why those deleted scenes with the Wampas exist. But the Wampa attack on the base in Brackett’s original draft is so dramatically different than even those deleted scenes. In Brackett’s version, the Wampas seem ridiculously powerful and dangerous - they kill dozens of people instantly. Some of these scenes have horror-movie vibes. There’s one scene where you hear over a communicator device as a room full of people are massacred by a Wampa. They’re also very hard to kill. Han shoots at one of them and somehow the Wampa is fast enough to dodge it.

I’m also not sure how Brackett envisioned these creatures, but the script implies they’re more like some kind of ice monster than a giant Yeti. Luke kills one of them with his lightsaber, but the script says that when Luke slashes at it with his lightsaber, the monster turns into a cloud of vapor or something. I have no idea what Brackett is going for here… Are they made of ice? Are they supposed to be supernatural? Did Brackett think that anything that dies from a lightsaber just disappears (like Kenobi in Episode IV)? I’m really not sure what’s going on there.

Regardless, the version of the script that was the source for those deleted Wampa scenes must have been a later revision, written probably by Kasdan between Brackett’s first draft and the final version. It’s funny that ultimately after all these revisions, the final script removes the Wampa stuff entirely (except for the one that attacks Luke). I’m glad they removed it, it’s just weird how significant the Wampa stuff was in the earlier versions.

So I read the full ESB draft script by Leigh Brackett. Here’s some random musings that occurred to me when reading this:

• This draft is not very good, especially compared to the final product. The overall plot is basically the same (Rebels are hiding in a secret ice planet base, the Empire finds them, Luke goes off to train on a swamp planet, Han and Leia survive a space chase and end up at Lando’s floating city, get betrayed by Lando, and Luke shows up and confronts Vader). Despite having the same plot broadly speaking, there really is not a single scene in this draft that would be recognizable if actually filmed.
• The whole thing feels way more campy or whimsical than ESB. For example, in ESB, Echo Base looks like a practical, functional military base. But in the draft, the base is inside some kind of whimsical ice castle, with secret invisible doors in the ice.
• The script spends more time on a sub-plot about ice monsters (the Wampas) attacking the base than on the actual Empire attacking the base. Ice monsters attack the base, killing many people, and forcing the rebels to evacuate. While the rebels are evacuating due to the ice monster attack, the Empire also coincidentally shows up at the same time. The ice monsters are almost supernaturally powerful. It’s really stupid.
• Luke still acts like he does in Episode IV. He is portrayed as immature and inexperienced, compared to the suave, confident and experienced Han. The script implies that part of Luke’s motivation for becoming a Jedi is basically so Leia will take him seriously as a potential romantic partner.
• There’s a lot more exposition about the state of the Galaxy. There’s a scene where a Rebel commander explains that after the Death Star was destroyed, many systems joined the Rebellion, but the Imperial navy is still very powerful, and is currently spread thin around the Galaxy pursuing rebel cells. This kind of exposition is missing in the final version, requiring us to infer these background details ourselves. (Also the final version seems to imply Echo Base is the only rebel base.)
• The Force is way more vague. At one point, Darth Vader can force choke Luke from thousands of miles away merely by sensing his presence. Luke only barely escapes by jumping into hyperspace. (In the final draft, Vader force chokes Ozzel from a distance, which is also a bit iffy - but at least it’s implied that Vader has to at least visually see his target in that case.)
• In this draft, it’s possible to summon a Force Ghost by calling out “By the Force, I call you!”. This is how Luke summons Ben Kenobi’s ghost. This is utterly horrible.
• There is way more emphasis on the threat of Luke turning to the Dark Side. Since Vader is not Luke’s father in this version, Vader taunts Luke about how he murdered Luke’s father when they fight in Cloud City. This makes Luke very angry, and he begins using the Dark Side. It’s implied that Luke is on the verge of becoming evil from repeated Dark Side usage, but then at the last second Luke stops fighting Vader and throws himself down a shaft (similar to what happens in the final version). I like the final version much better, but it occurred to me that one consequence of merging Vader with Luke’s father was that the threat of Luke turning evil never seemed plausible. In the final version of ESB, Vader is Luke’s father and has nothing to taunt Luke with to inflame his anger and turn him towards the Dark Side. But in this earlier draft, since Vader murdered Luke’s father, Vader is easily able to make Luke angry, causing Luke to embrace the Dark Side.

Interestingly, there’s also some elements in this script that seem to have been recycled as concepts that appeared in the Prequels, decades later. Some examples:

• Darth Vader (who is not Luke’s father in this version) more explicitly tempts Luke with the power of the Dark Side. In fact, Vader specifically tells Luke that the Dark Side will enable him to “keep those he loves safe from harm”. Earlier it is established that Luke worries a lot about Princess Leia’s safety, and Vader exploits this when tempting Luke. This dynamic is pretty much identical to the way Palpatine tempts Anakin in the Prequels.
• Cloud City has elements that were almost certainly recycled into Kamino in Attack of the Clones. In the draft, Cloud City (called Orbital City) has tall, pale-white-skinned, native aliens that ride “giant manta-rays”. They also use “pneumatic darts” as weapons. This was obviously recycled as the Kamino aliens. (But the recycling feels a bit clumsy - the Kamino aliens don’t really fit the water-themed environment they inhabit, whereas these native cloud aliens were supposed to feel like airy warriors that dwell in the clouds - hence they use primitive darts. But why would the advanced Kamino aliens use darts?).
• Yoda (in this draft named “Minch”) uses a lightsaber, and at one point has a mock lightsaber duel with Ben Kenobi’s force ghost. This is the corniest thing ever. I don’t understand how Brackett wrote this thinking it would be filmable. (I don’t know if this scene specifically inspired Lucas to have Yoda fight with a lightsaber in the Prequels; it’s probably more likely that Lucas just thought it would be cool.)

StarkillerAG said:

Channel72 said:

Surprisingly, I think Darth Vader never sits down in Return of the Jedi. Objectively.

WRONG! If you watch the deleted scenes, he CLEARLY sits down right after arriving on the Death Star in order to contact Luke and persuade him to join the dark side. You utter imbecile. You should be ashamed of yourself. 😉

I should have known Anakin likes sitting down. He does so much sitting in Episode 3. I think that’s the real reason he wanted to be on the council, so he didn’t have to stand up during all those boring meetings.

Surprisingly, I think Darth Vader never sits down in Return of the Jedi. Objectively.

Some of those officially licensed Star Wars technical books say there’s a bathroom on the Millennium Falcon. I’m sure Leia was thrilled to share that bathroom with Chewie, who doubtlessly was always clogging up the sink with hairballs.

KumoNin said:

Thrawn. The other reason we like these characters, and the entire reason anybody is excited to see the blue guy is Zahn’s writing. The way he was written, and, in fact, how perfectly Zahn’s mystery-detective-plans-within-plans writing style lends itself to this type of character, is the reason I and others gasped at the name drop in that Mando S2 episode, it’s the reason live action Pellaeon made some people (ok maybe also me…) giddy.

That’s also why I’m excited to see Thrawn.

But it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that more people exist who only know Thrawn from the Rebels incarnation. And it’s very likely this is how Filoni will depict him. I haven’t seen much of Rebels, but the little I’ve seen or absorbed via osmosis feels like a very different vibe than Zahn’s military sci-fi-ish stories with their tech-centric plots involving cloning cylinders and cloaking devices and remote-controlled starships. Zahn’s Thrawn is always applying technology in innovative ways to further military objectives, very often to make up for what he lacks in conventional resources and manpower.

The Rebels version of Thrawn’s story involves giant wolves and magical space whales. I mean I guess that’s theoretically no more outlandish than ysalamiri, but Zahn’s ideas generally have well-defined parameters and serve very practical story purposes. I forgot the particular story-driven purpose of the space whales in Rebels, but I think it was just mostly created as a cool visual fantasy element to liven up a space battle.

Superweapon VII said:

Channel72 said:

Episode 5 seems to want to convey that Luke was on Dagobah for a while, and mastery of the Force is a slow, incremental process requiring training, even though it’s hard to understand how Luke could have been on Dagobah for long given the overall plot logistics.

Well, if you’re willing to inject some hard sci-fi into your space fantasy, without a hyperdrive, the Falcon would’ve had to travel from Hoth to Bespin in real space at near-light velocity, which would’ve subjected the crew to relativistic time dilation. So everyone aboard the Falcon may’ve only experienced an hours’-long trip while six months elapsed for the rest of the galaxy.

After having watched the Empire Strikes Back probably over 100 times, I just now noticed that the movie does in fact provide at least a minimum required training time duration of 1.5 days for Luke’s training with Yoda.

The first actual training session with Yoda is the scene where Luke is running around with Yoda on his back. Midway through this scene, before Luke enters the vision cave, Yoda says the following: “Nothing more will I teach you today. Clear your mind of questions.”

So Yoda says he won’t teach Luke anything further today. The next time we see Luke training with Yoda is the scene where he’s doing a headstand and lifting a rock. So the earliest this must be happening is the following day, but it could also be any number of days later.

So this sets a minimum time requirement of 1.5 days. Since it is night time on Dagobah when Luke leaves for Cloud City, the absolute shortest time the training could be is 1.5 days, if we assume every single training scene after the first happened on the same day that Luke leaves for Cloud City.

But the fact that, during the first training scene (Luke running around with Yoda on his back), Yoda ends the training by saying essentially “we’ll resume tomorrow”, suggests to me that we’re supposed to see the different training scenes as happening over a longer time period, with Luke living and sleeping on Dagobah each night.

But the longer we try and stretch out the total training time, the more creative we need to be to explain how Han and Leia were either waiting around inside that giant worm doing nothing for like a year, or else invoke General Relativity for the Hoth to Bespin trip.

We all know Irvin Kershner did not have Einstein in mind when working on this movie. But if we explore this just for fun, we still run into difficulty. We also have to account for the perspectives of Boba Fett and Darth Vader. Boba Fett seems to just follow Solo from the asteroid field to Bespin, meaning Boba Fett is also traveling at relativistic speeds in the same reference frame as Han Solo. Or maybe Fett calculated Solo’s most likely destination and jumped ahead via hyperspace. Either way, assuming Bespin is one star system away from Hoth (a weird coincidence that Han’s friend Lando lives next door to the remote Rebel base), the distance would be around 4 light years. This means that for anyone not traveling in the same reference frame as Han Solo, at least 4 years would have passed from the time Han left the asteroid field to the time he arrived at Cloud City. So… did Boba Fett call up Darth Vader and say “Okay I found the Millennium Falcon, and I know where it’s headed based on its current trajectory. Meet me in Cloud City in 4 years.” I guess Vader spent those 4 years thinking about the perfect way to surprise them, settling on an elaborate dinner party and a cool one-liner.

Mocata said:

I think it’s more calculated than that. Why write new characters when you can use old ones? Less risk and more brand recognition. A mixture of TCW cameos and old characters from books is potent stuff. Is the Thrawn trilogy really the place to start now, or is it just a logical next step in their methodical mining of the old EU? As for deepfakes… yeah I have a bad feeling about this.

I think it’s safe to predict that within 10 or 20 years, it will be possible to create an entire Hollywood-quality live action movie entirely using digital tools on a laptop. Then the floodgates will open and a trillion fan films of every possible permutation of Star Wars lore will engulf the Internet. The only difference between the endless stream of fan films (some of which will be of better quality than the official versions) and the official ones is that creators of fan films will not be able to profit directly from their films, because they do not hold a license to the IP. But fans will do it out of passion anyway, especially as technology improves to the point where a live-action Hollywood production can be digitally created with a simple script and some basic prompting. Then the entertainment industry will panic, and scramble to introduce regulation preventing this, but ultimately fail to meaningfully stop it.

But hey at least somebody can recreate the theatrical OT in 4K.

Spartacus01 said:

I can’t imagine Vader saying “Liar!! You’re with him! You brought him here to kill me!”

No, he just said: “You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor! Take her away!”

Prequel Anakin would have said something like “Traitor!! You’re with the Rebels! You’ve turned against us!! I will not let you get away with this!” or whatever.

He’d also pace back and forth while saying it. Then an Imperial officer would inform him that an escape pod with no lifeforms crashed on the surface of Tatooine. After realizing what planet they were orbiting, Anakin would tell his crew to initiate an orbital bombardment to kill all Sandpeople and also destroy all sand, after suspecting Leia was here as part of some nefarious sand-related plot to overthrow the Empire. He would then yell out to nobody in particular, saying “I now see through their lies! I will make them pay for their coarse, rough and irritating plotting against my Empire!!!1! It’s all Obi Wan’s fault!!”