NeverarGreat

One of my favorite movies is Sunshine, which is about a single mission to the Sun. Your story seems to mostly take place on board a single ship like the mission in Sunshine, which I have wanted to see in a Star Wars movie. I think it would be nice to start out nice and slow like this.

I assume that Ben is going to influence the naming of Obi-wan in some way...

One thing that I find strange is that Nellith suspects Ben of being Force sensitive during the trip. I would think that she chose this particular vessel because she sensed Anakin on board, but seeing only Ben, she then concluded that he must be the Force sensitive.

There's a lot of good detail even in this synopsis, but something that I've had trouble with in my own writing is making the universe appear simple enough that the movie isn't heavy with exposition. In Star Wars, there were only Jedi Knights. I guess the point is that we must first understand what a Jedi is before we can appreciate the differences between classes of Jedi.

I'd like to hear more!

A good summary Darth, very similar in plot to the Lucas Prequels episodes 1 and 2, though it seems that if you want to not spoil the reveal, Episode 2 could be split into two movies. Actually I thought at first that Anakin cutting down his own troops and being "murdered" by Vader happened at the end of Episode 2, and that the destruction of the Jedi and Obi-wan's quest happens between 2 and 3, and during Episode 3 as well.

I would caution against making the story too much about Jedi/Sith, as people in the OT (Han) believe that the Jedi are simply a "hokey religion". This argues against the Jedi being the saviors of the Republic in the Clone Wars, or at least they are not seen as such by the public. I consider that the Jedi were just an entrenched power structure in the Old Republic, one of the many vestiges of a time long past which the Empire was quick to eliminate in its march to a standardized and racially pure military.

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

AntcuFaalb said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Until recently I thought Who Watches the Watchers? was the worst TNG episode ever made. When I watched The Chase today, however, I realized that wasn't so.

I don't see what's wrong with either of them.

In regards to Who Watches the Watchers?, as someone who considers himself a protheistic agnostic, I have no love for the preachy, one-dimensional, one-sided, self-righteous way theism and theistic belief is treated in this episode. And anyway - metaphysics aside - I don't like it when writers twist characters to serve as mouthpieces for their own personal ideologies, characterization be damned.

As for The Chase ... to make a long story short, the pseudoscience just kills it for me. I could have used the real-world mechanism of convergent evolution as a ham-fisted explanation for why so many aliens in the ST Universe are basically humans with rubber foreheads; there was no need to throw some bullshit elder race/directed panspermia/pre-programmed evolution crap into the equation.

In fact, I can't think of a single bad TNG episode...

So that's means you're the first person in the world to think Shades of Gray was a decent episode?

 

I've never seen The Chase, but in the original series episode The Paradise Syndrome, a race of "Preservers" are theorized as having seeded the galaxy with humanoids. So this episode may have been referring to the original series.

I never quite understood the final confrontation between Emperor, Vader, and Luke. How exactly was the Emperor hoping to turn Luke to the side of the Empire by turning him to the Dark Side? I think this is an important question, as Anakin, who was on his side of the war, and Luke, an avowed rebel, are rather different characters. So what if the Emperor's thinking was this:

1. The Dark Side consists of anger and fear.

2. Anger and fear weaken the mind.

3. The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.

This second point is never explicitly stated during the OT, so if the connection is made in the prequels, the Emperor's attempt to turn Anakin would not need to differ from his attempt to turn Luke in any meaningful way, as turning someone to the Dark Side naturally makes them easy prey for someone to control their mind. It's also very Dune: "Fear is the mind-killer".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/star-wars-prequels-return-of-the-jedi_n_3313793.html

Here Lucas explains before Return of the Jedi how Yoda isn't a "real" Jedi. Yoda was never supposed to fight, instead he was a guru. Making Jedi Knights only one aspect of the Order is a good idea in my opinion. However, it would seem we need a new designation for the Jedi religion, if the Jedi are only the militarized crusaders. Perhaps Disciples of the Force, or something. I don't know. Order of the Force? Perhaps it doesn't need a name. I guess Jedi is a good name, as Yoda was referred to by Obi-wan as a Jedi Master. I just want the Jedi Order to not be all in one building on Coruscant. Yoda should always have lived on Dagobah, and be one of the less well known of the Jedi. That way he is simply never found in the Jedi Purge, for Obi-wan never told Anakin where to find him. It could be that Obi-wan trained Anakin without Yoda's approval, and so he didn't want Anakin ever seeking out Yoda and blowing his cover.

One other point: Jedi should be rare, even in the Prequels. I think that the assumption in the prequels should be that only humans use the Force, so that Luke (and the audience) would not expect a little alien dude to be a Jedi Master, like it was originally intended.

Anyway, back to the topic, I just saw Starcrash, the most entertaining Star Wars ripoff ever.

Just keep an eye out near the end for the tape dispenser glued to the bottom of the spaceship. Perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvweDgcWISI

BOIL JAPAN!

...Wait, wut?

I've been getting those warnings for three days now. AVG just blocks them, and I figure it is being resolved somewhere.

Thank you for your support, I'm glad you like it.

However, I just don't have the technical know-how to make a DVD release of this project, and my computer can't even handle Blu-rays (although ideally this project would be in Blu-ray quality). This was always intended as an experiment to find out if this movie could be color corrected to an acceptable degree, not a complete DVD or Blu-ray release.

I've been through thousands of combinations of settings in search of something that will work for the entire film, so I hope someone with the technical knowledge will make use of this resource to make a DVD or Blu-ray release.

The above are my final channel mixer settings. However, I was playing around in Premiere and found these lighting settings brightened the entire movie while keeping the highlights intact:

Adjustments:

Color: Saturation -20

Lighting: Brightness -10, Contrast 60, Exposure 90

Gamma 8

Effects: Image Control: Brightness -5, Saturation 100

No link to an album as of yet, but as the color has not substantially changed, the images are basically unchanged except for a slight increase in brightness.

I'm afraid not. The scale is all wrong. It looks more like a Jedi Starfighter:

I'm not using Obi-wan in my version, but I'd expect from the OT that he fought in the clone wars because he was an idealist who genuinely believed that he was making a difference, which is why he became a Jedi, and also a general. He became a highly decorated war veteran, but was reckless in his "crusade" for justice. He discovered Anakin Skywalker, and realized that here was a chance to convert a truly powerful individual to his cause, and so he rushed Anakin's training in an attempt to bring him quickly to his full power. This fails, and when Anakin turns to the Dark Side, Obi-wan learns to take things slower, and gains patience. He goes to Tatooine to watch over Luke, and decides not to interfere in his life the way he did with Anakin. However, events force him to go back to his old methods of teaching, where he gets results at the expense of the student's understanding. He teaches Luke a great deal in the short time available, but realizes that he isn't the best teacher for him, and sacrifices himself to give Luke time to escape the Death Star. That's his story in a nutshell, at least from my point of view!

This bickering is pointless.

Enough of this.

Even with the absence of the Jedi, Star Wars is a very different beast than Firefly. Star Wars is about wars. Firefly is what happens afterwards. Besides, Firefly has its magical elements as well.

So I guess everyone is headed back to Tatooine. If we're going back there in a live action movie, is this going to turn into a trip to Tunisia?

That movie sure has a lot of whispering in it.

This message brought to you by Sand. It's everywhere. Get used to it.

Ah, this Falcon talk is bringing me back. If the Falcon is in it, it could be that Anakin made the Kessel run in it during the Clone Wars, and nobody has ever beaten his time. At the time, you see, he was a navigator on a spice freighter out of Kessel. Of course, it wasn't named the Millennium Falcon back then, and it had a different owner. But Obi-wan puts this info together in the cantina in ANH, and his knowing smiles upon hearing this information and seeing the ship that Anakin flew before he knew him tell us all we need to know.

That's the Star Trek Into Darkness approach to writing the movie, I guess.

In my opinion, Dune Messiah isn't particularly great, at least compared to the superlative Dune. However, Children of Dune actually ties all three books together in a way that seems like it was designed as a multi-generational epic. I read God Emperor of Dune, but it takes place thousands of years after Children of Dune, so it really begins a new cycle of the tale. While interesting, I put it down after reading it and wasn't inspired to pick up the next book in the series. So I'd say read through Children of Dune and then stop. It's a perfectly good stopping place, and ties everything up admirably.

Are you sure? My only source for the original post is a photograph of a Greek translation, so I'm not sure what the intent of the author was. We may never know, I'm afraid.

Have you read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune? I actually think that Children of Dune is as good if not better than Dune.

I read The Lord of the Rings as a child, and it felt like reading a translated mythological history of an ancient civilization. However, reading Dune felt like stepping into an actual temple built by the founders of an ancient civilization. Frank Herbert had such reverence and devotion to his own world that I don't think that anyone will ever top his accomplishment.

So yes. I do think that you should re-read Dune sooner or later.

That's a good beginning Darth, and if we had never seen Tatooine or the homestead or the binary sunset before, I would have no problem with it at all. Problem is, we see Tatooine twice in the OT, and three times in the Lucas Prequels. That's an awful lot of time to be spent on a planet where even Luke says there's nothing to see.

I think that if we are going to focus on Anakin as the protagonist of these movies, it should be after he becomes a Jedi, and even after he has been trained by Obi-wan. The reason is that the OT can be viewed as an exploration of Anakin's past. We begin on the planet of Anakin's birth, meet his brother, then meet the man who trained him, then travel to Alderaan like Obi-wan (and perhaps Anakin) did in the Clone Wars, and have Luke be trained as a Jedi, except that this time he is trained by Yoda, not Obi-wan, and this makes the difference in him not turning to the Dark Side. To repeat these beats in the prequels seems unnecessary. Of course, the only story left to tell at that point is how Anakin the Jedi became Darth Vader, and we don't really want to spoil the surprise, so we've brainstormed ourselves into a corner.

Alternately, as has been suggested, it could be about Obi-wan, and how he was a hotheaded Jedi who eventually cooled down and became the serene mentor we know in the OT. The trilogy could begin with the outbreak of the First Clone War, and could even end at the end of the First Clone War, when he is rescued by Anakin who is piloting a spice freighter and happens to be in the area. He is tired of war by this point, and Yoda has told him to pass on what he has learned, so he promises to train Anakin to take his place in the Jedi Order, and he is able to retire from war in peace.

OR DOES HE???? ;)