Frank your Majesty

This is not the Classic LOW Moments in OT.com History thread.

DuracellEnergizer said:

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/My-thoughts-on-various-changes/id/57154

This.

ZeeverFett said:

SW:ANH

I found your problem. You should watch Star Wars. That’s a much better movie than A New Hope.

The Dark Empire said:

Frank your Majesty said:

I imagine that the Tie fighters build 30 years after ROTJ wouldn’t be exactly the same as the imperial designs.

Hi there,

nope. I got the Technical Manual for Episode 7 and the First Order SF TIE-Fighter has no repulsorlift either.

Ok, in that case, I don’t care 😉

I imagine that the Tie fighters build 30 years after ROTJ wouldn’t be exactly the same as the imperial designs.

Hmm, now it’s back to normal for me, too. Nevermind then.

In this post, jason’s moderator signature image is only a blank space for me. Other posts, like this show the signature image correctly.

Firefox 56.0.2
Windows 8.1

The Jedi could have just as well been a secret society. Not many outsiders might have known about them in the first place. The whole galaxy police with a big temple on the galactic capital isn’t anywhere in the OT.

When reading announcements with multiple pages, clicking on the “page 1” button takes me back with this link:
http://originaltrilogy.com/announcement/What-kind-of-merchandise-would-you-buy/id/4181/page/1
For the first post, I can neither see Jay’s name, nor his avatar, nor when it was posted. Only his signature is giving his identity away.

Using this link
http://originaltrilogy.com/announcement/What-kind-of-merchandise-would-you-buy/id/4181/
to go to the first page of the announcement, everything is normal.

This doesn’t seem to happen with regular threads, but with other announcements, like
http://originaltrilogy.com/announcement/Were-on-Twitter/id/17648/page/1
http://originaltrilogy.com/announcement/Were-on-Twitter/id/17648

Even if there is only one page, by adding /page/1 to the end of the url, the info about the first post disappears
http://originaltrilogy.com/announcement/The-forum-will-be-offline-Tuesday-October-7th-for-several-hours-beginning-at-2-PM-ET/id/17101/page/1
http://originaltrilogy.com/announcement/The-forum-will-be-offline-Tuesday-October-7th-for-several-hours-beginning-at-2-PM-ET/id/17101

Using Windows 8.1 and Firefox 56.0.1

Warbler said:

Frank your Majesty said:

Warbler said:

Frank your Majesty said:

Then there is the closed loop, like in Harry Potter, which makes lots of sense, but allows for some paradoxes and negates free will. Also, alternate timelines can’t exist.

What paradoxes does it create?

Harry can cast the patronus because he saw himself casting a patronus. This breaks causality.

He saw himself doing it, and it gave him self confidence that he could do it. It is not that he can cast the patronus because he saw himself do it, it is that he can cast the patronus because he has the ability and knew he had the ability because he saw himself do it. I don’t see the problem.

What came first? His patronus or his confidence?

Having seen the patronus gave him confidence, but he needed confidence ni the first place to cast the patronus. These two things are causing each other. In the context of the story, that’s perfectly fine, but giving up causality like that would make this mode of time travel unsuited for Star Trek.

Or simply call it Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of The Jedi and so on. What’s so hard about that?

Information technology in Star Wars isn’t nearly as advanced as ours. If Star Wars had internet, the rebels would have just uploaded the Death Star plans to WikiLeaks.

ChainsawAsh said:

Warbler said:

ChainsawAsh said:

He says in that scene that they created an alternate 1985 and can’t go back to the original timeline without undoing the very creation of the alternate timeline.

Why can’t you, if both timelines exist?

Because they have a time machine, not a universe-hopping machine. They’re stuck in a particular timeline, and if they create a divergent one, they get stuck in the new one until they can undo what caused the creation of the new one. If they had a portal gun like Rick from Rick and Morty, they could just say “Ah, fuck it, too much work” and hop back to the original timeline.

Think of it like train tracks. When they create a divergence, they create a switch on the tracks to a new railway, but they don’t have the tools to simply move the switch back to the original railway to get back to it. They have to dismantle the switch altogether, which means going back slightly further than the creation of the switch and preventing its creation.

Another fun thing to think about: they’re not even trying to go back to the original timeline, since Marty created a new one in BTTF1 when he went back to 1955 and got hit by the car instead of his dad. The timeline created in BTTF2 is actually the third timeline. They’re trying to get back to the second timeline. Which raises the ethical question of, what about the original timeline? Do that version of Marty’s parents think their son went missing/was kidnapped by Lybian nationalists? And what happened to the Marty from timeline 2, the one who remembers growing up with his “fixed” parents? When he went back, did he change something else and wind up coming back to a fourth timeline? Did he get stuck in 1955 while timeline 1 Marty got to go back to the future? Is there a timeline where two, or three, or four Martys show up on 1955 Doc’s doorstep?

Time travel is confusing and tough to write, man.

In the case of BTTF1, I have to disagree. Every time Marty comes close to altering the timeline in such a way that he would not be born, he starts to vanish. This means, that there is only one timeline.

Warbler said:

Frank your Majesty said:

Then there is the closed loop, like in Harry Potter, which makes lots of sense, but allows for some paradoxes and negates free will. Also, alternate timelines can’t exist.

What paradoxes does it create?

Harry can cast the patronus because he saw himself casting a patronus. This breaks causality.

There are three basic ways to travel back in time. There is the “do whatever you want” method, like in Back to the Future, which is the least logically consistent.
Then there is the closed loop, like in Harry Potter, which makes lots of sense, but allows for some paradoxes and negates free will. Also, alternate timelines can’t exist.
The only paradox-free way to travel back in time is to travel to a parallel universe that has the same history up to a certain point. Since Star Trek already has parallel universes and wants to have alternate timelines, while trying to have science that makes sense, this is the way to go.

I’m not a Star Trek expert, but that is basically how travelling back in time and changing things works in a multiverse without throwing causality out of the window. If the existence of parallel universes is already established and that you can travel to them, why go through the hassle of having to explain a mechanism of how a universe us created by the act of travelling back in time? Where does the energy to create that universe come from?

Other franchises use other time travel mechanisms. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban is one example of how time travel works without parallel universes, while keeping causality and making at least some sense.

It’s not that the act of travelling back in time creates a new universe, the time travellers simply go to a parallel universe that’s similar to the one they came from, up to the point where the time travellers appear.

The true question is: Can we build an AI that can post in the mixed up movie quotes thread?

ZigZig said:

the story makes no sense and is pre-arranged

That’s the PT in a nutshell.

Anakin Starkiller said:

YodaFan67 said:
Yoda is a puppet, yoda is a cartoon. Ben Kenobi sounds like a fucking boss, Ben Kenobi sounds like a fucking synthesizer. The Emperor is a monkey, the Emperor is a human. Cloud City has no windows, Cloud City has windows. Lando says ‘attention’ once, Lando says ‘attention’ twice. . . .

I don’t get what you’re saying about Obi-Wan. Is it about changing the krayt dragon call?

Frank your Majesty said:

I think he’s talking about the scream to scare off the Tusken Raiders.

I also watched ROTS for years with a high quality foreign dub and while it diminishes the moost awkward dialogues and deliveries, it can’t distract from the dumb plot and bland characters.

ToscheStation said:

moviefreakedmind said:

I don’t get how Obi Wan telling Luke to track down someone he used to know is “shrinking the universe.” If Han Solo happened to be the Jedi master he was referring to, or Yoda lived on Hoth, then that would be convenient and universe shrinking.

Yoda and Obi-Wan supposedly being the only Jedi survivors, while perhaps not “shrinking” the established story universe, is still convenient for the plot and how it relates to Luke. But then again, it’s part of my overall point in this argument: Leia being the Other/Luke’s sister is no more a case of “shrinking” the established story universe than is Ben (a close comrade of Luke’s father) and Yoda (Ben’s teacher) being the only surviving Jedi in the galaxy such a case.

Yoda and Obi-Wan being the only Jedi survivors that we know of. Maybe there are some more, but neither Obi-Wan, nor Yoda know that they are alive. And they probably didn’t know every single Jedi personally. So Yoda is the only other Jedi that Obi-Wan knows is alive, and he knows that because they have a pre-established connection. It would be a greater convenience if some Jedi, that Obi-Wan never heard of, appears at the start of Empire to offer Luke training. How did he find Luke? Why should Luke trust him?
I see that this could also make an interesting plot line, but that would have been much more than was needed for the move. Empire just needed a new mentor for Luke, that he can immediately trust, so why not introduce him via Obi-Wan? And Obi-Wan can only vouch for him if they have a personal relation.

The writer of the story having one more Jedi other than Obi-Wan Kenobi survive the purge - and just those two but no more! - is not exactly a case of “expanding” the story universe. An expanded universe would have been that Ben and Yoda thought they were the only survivors but actually weren’t (something that I originally thought the title “Return of the Jedi” alluded to before the movie came out).

Note that when originally - per the first draft of ESB - the Other/Luke’s sister wasn’t Leia but was “Neilith” Skywalker, she was said to have been undergoing Jedi training on the other side of the galaxy. A story element which, of course, implies that Jedi other than Yoda and Ben had survived the Empire/Vader’s purge (a Jedi was training her). The story universe where Leia is the Other, is logistically consistent with a story universe where only two Jedi survive the purge (and one if not both of them, had a close connection with Luke’s father - Yoda having originally supposed to have been Annikin’s teacher as well as Ben’s).

And this is why Jedi is shrinking the universe, but not Empire. When Yoda says “there is another one” in Empire, it could be the setup for a new Jedi character, but Jedi makes it clear that this is not the case, he was just talking about an already established character. That’s the prime example of universe shrinking.

Frank your Majesty said:
There is no doubt that Lucas made it up as he went along. But that’s not what universe shrinking is about.

Sometimes the two are connected, especially if it’s a case of a storyteller writing themselves into a corner.

Yes. In the case of Jedi, they are connected, in the case of Empire, they are not.

I think he’s talking about the scream to scare off the Tusken Raiders.

ToscheStation said:

DominicCobb said:

ToscheStation said:

DominicCobb said:

Because he is a great and wise Jedi master?

Regardless, what I’m trying to say is that I don’t understand what your larger point is.

Right. So…Yoda would have been in the movies even if Ben hadn’t died in the first one?

Could have, certainly, would have, I don’t know. Again, I’m not even sure what the point of this hypothetical is.

The point is that if Lucas only* introduced Yoda because he killed Ben off, and otherwise wouldn’t have introduced a strong and wise Jedi Master character into the trilogy, then it shows that Lucas’ penchant for making things up as he goes along was something that goes back almost to the beginning of Star Wars. It’s not something that he just started doing with Return of the Jedi. The same goes with Ben’s character. The character of Ben Kenobi was created to take the place of the father character who had been killed off in the story (as of the third draft), whereas prior to that he was to have been still alive in the story (in these earlier versions, Jedi knights trained their own children). So, as Yoda was a sort of ‘proxy’ for Ben, Ben himself was a ‘proxy’ for Luke’s father.

My overall point is that the “shrinking-universe” phenomenon is part of Star Wars’ “dna”, if you will

*Lucas himself even said that prior to killing off Ben, when thinking of potential sequels, he wanted Ben to train Luke in the other two films and then maybe have him die in the third.

There is no doubt that Lucas made it up as he went along. But that’s not what universe shrinking is about.

ToscheStation said:

Frank your Majesty said:

I think the term universe shrinking can’t really be applied to Star Wars and Empire. What you criticize, is that they don’t establish a very vast universe, but universe shrinking means that the established world is retroactively made smaller. Leia being Luke’s sister has consequences for the other movies before Jedi, while not offering anything interesting to the plot.

First I agree about Leia being the sister not offering anything to the plot of ROTJ. That, for me, is the problem I have with it. Leia’s character doesn’t really change, and her character arc/role in the story seems like the way it would have been had she not been Luke’s sister.

Second, about consequences to the previous two films: so it turned out she wasn’t ‘really’ an Organa. Since Alderaan was conveniently (there I go again) destroyed in the first film, how much would we have really learned about the Organa’s in future Star Wars stories, had Lucas not pursued the sibling angle?

Frank your Majesty said:

The Yoda subplot is interesting enough on its own, so most people don’t care about the setup being too convenient or not.

Perhaps. And if they do, maybe only in hindsight. And certainly not as an introduction to the series (with SW and ESB being the first films produced and released from the franchise). The only ‘consequence’ that Yoda has for the previous film is for the audience to wonder whether speaking in-universe was Ben/Obi-Wan going to be Luke’s teacher for the long-haul, or was he always intending to have Yoda teach him (had Ben not died/sacrificed himself so early into the franchise?)

One obvious consequence is that if Leia and Luke are siblings, Vader is also Leia’s father. Vader was directly facing her in Star Wars, being near her for a long time while she’s on the Death Star, and he never sensed anything through the force?

I think the term universe shrinking can’t really be applied to Star Wars and Empire. What you criticize, is that they don’t establish a very vast universe, but universe shrinking means that the established world is retroactively made smaller. Leia being Luke’s sister has consequences for the other movies before Jedi, while not offering anything interesting to the plot. The Yoda subplot is interesting enough on its own, so most people don’t care about the setup being too convenient or not.