I've been meditating recently (read: at 2 AM) on all of the in-universe reasons why the PT Jedi are awful. The TL;DR version is 'it's all Yoda's fault'.
The Spaghetti Western/Cowboy movie influence is part of why the Jedi seem to fit into the Galaxy so well, too--look at how many Old Westerns were inspired by samurai movies, lol. Throwing in some laser sword-fighters in the old Space West feels perfectly natural.
I wonder if the lack of 'Old West' spirit in the PT has something to do with why it was ultimately so poorly received. The TPM visit to Tatooine kind of demonstrates that it was something other than just 'lol desert planet' that made us enjoy SW in the first place.
That seems like a typical 'lol it's in moratorium for the next couple of years' Disney response.
I'd be shocked if they didn't release a special Platinum Edition within the next year or so. They've gotta get a version out there that has the 'Walt Disney Pictures' music at the beginning instead of the Fox fanfare, lol.
That was the single most perfect possible image response. I have been enlightened.
I'd heard they were planning on dropping a lot of the EU, but the prequel films aren't exactly EU. They're half of the canon films.
I probably fall into the age range of the wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn SW fans, but I was raised on stories of my mom working at the Game Palace Theater and Arcade when Star Wars came out. She had to give me 'the talk' about how Vader could be Luke's father when Obi-Wan told Luke that Vader killed him ('Jedi lie and Sith tell the truth' is a lasting lesson from my childhood). She took me to see the prequels because I wasn't old enough to drive, but she raised me on the OT.
For reasons unknown to science, my mother likes Jar-Jar.
I don't know what to make of that.
I'd only ever consider Windows 8 if Bill Gates said he was going to go halvsies with Elon Musk on his 'Human to Mars by 2020' plan.
I'd take one for the team in that scenario.
It's one of the myths that permeates Western culture. I'm sure someone sufficiently well-trained in Sanskrit classics could find themes from the Mahabharata in the biggest Bollywood blockbusters, and Buddhist and Confucian themes surface in Japanese literature and film all the time. You have to include some of these big cultural touchstones to give a story staying power (e.g. Western stories which reference Shakespeare, the Bible, or Greek myth will remain relevant for centuries; conversely, Blaxploitation and early 90's superhero films are already no longer culturally relevant, and are viewed mainly as curiosities or as cult classics, if they're lucky).
wow
no wai
so skare
such intrigue
They have the Death Star, and lots of people have robot arms.
Kamelon pan!
That's toOoOoOoOotally my fav Japanese food 5EVAR desu kawaii dattebayo!
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome.
In Japan (nowadays, anyway), foreign movies are usually simultaneously screened in dubbed editions 'for kids', and subbed editions 'for adults'. There are a lot of practical issues associated with subbing titles directed at kids (varying levels of reading ability among the target audience, having to clutter up the subs with tons of furigana, etc.), issues which go beyond 'kids are lazy and don't want to read', lol. Nowadays, films generally get simultaneous international releases due to American studios having deals with international studios, better translation pipelines, etc. but I'm not sure what the pipeline would have looked like in the 80's.
(Where in Japan are you going? I lived in Hatogaya-shi/Kawaguchi-shi, Saitama-ken for a year when I was attending Jouchi.)
That's awesome. Midi-chlorians as retroviruses...
I've got a bit of headcanon that states that midi-chlorians are attracted to the Force and sustain themselves on the Force, and so beings which are Force sensitive can sustain larger colonies of midi-chlorians, but that the connection ends there.
My headcanon also includes the idea that Galactic culture and science has become stagnant (explaining why nothing seemed to advance in the 19 years between ROTS and ANH, or in the 15-odd years between TPM and ROTS, for that matter); therefore, kyttarocentric Jedi researchers from Core worlds began and ended their research at midi-chlorians thousands of years ago, thus marginalizing the status of non-cellular life forms and explaining why there don't seem to be any sentient rock monster Jedi or gaseous cloud-being Jedi populating the CGI ranks of the Order in the prequels.
But again, that's all headcanon that helps me sleep at night after arguing with PT-lovers, or rationalize stuff away when I write fan fiction. Usually, I forget that midi-chlorians are even a thing, BECAUSE they are so redundant and lack any sort of real impact on the story (and because the only way I'll watch the PT is in fanedit format where all mention of midi-chlorians have been removed).
Sounds like a good tabletop adventure setting.
ITT: Headcanon discussion
1. This has been addressed pretty well. Why would the Imperials go after a couple of random droids when Leia was right there acting as a decoy to get their attention? Since she didn't actually have the plans on board anymore by the time they captured her, she had all kinds of plausible deniability on her side; sending the droids off on their own to reach Kenobi was her best bet to ensure that the Death Star plans got where they needed to go. She had planned this--that's why Artoo's message for Obi-Wan included Leia apologizing for not being there personally.
2. You're going to fault them for having a plan B? Plan A would obviously be 'keeping them all prisoner and not allowing an escape attempt in the first place', of course. The trash compactor thing wasn't part of anyone's plan--not the Empire, and not the Rebels. It was fog of war, Murphy's Law, what have you. The Death Star was so huge, they couldn't keep track of everything that was happening during Leia's rescue and escape--this is made clear by the fact that they didn't know our heroes were in the trash compactor, and therefore didn't shut down the trash compactors and just take pot-shots at them from the hole in the ceiling...and the fact that the Falcon and all its passengers were able to escape in the first place.
3. There are figures that place the DSII at 160 km in diameter, and others that place it at 900 km. If it was closer to 900 km, that puts it on par with Saturn's 'large moons', and if it's appreciably bigger than the original, then that would easily put the original in the realm of Saturn's small moons. Y'know, a large small moon. (Incidentally, if the DSII is 900 km in diameter, and is twice the size of the original DS, that would make the original Death Star the size of Mimas. That makes me smile. Let's all say that the Death Star is the size of Mimas.)
4. That should have happened, yes. Still, the official fuzzy-wuzzy feel-good canon explanation is 'all that energy from the DSII exploding created a wormhole which most of the debris fell into, therefore No Endor Holocaust. Yay!'
Kids suck. I would have liked to have seen an older Obi-Wan and an older Anakin from the outset of the PT. As much as I swooned over Ewan MacGregor and his padawan crop in my younger years, they could have just given him a beard from the beginning and been done with it (and I still would have swooned). The absolute lower limit on Anakin's age should have been 19. That way, we could have seen Anakin being a loyal friend to Obi-Wan, seen him being a great pilot, seen him being a great warrior, etc.
Anakin needed some flaws besides 'being an inherently unlikable whiny petulant teenager'. He needed a big flaw that would lead to his downfall--something that Obi-Wan either didn't or couldn't help him fix. He needed some smaller flaws, too, to give him more character. Maybe he could have had bad luck with the ladies, or have had Qui-Gon's compulsive gambling habit (placing bets on himself in races, or getting kicked out of space casinos because he used the Force to rig the space roulette wheel and space craps), something, ANYTHING to make him a more balanced protagonist.
I hate what Lucas did to Padme's character. I'd have totally been down with Padme being a Queen Victoria-type who was enthroned as a teenager, and had to struggle for power against corrupt regents under Palpatine's influence. I could have even been down with a love triangle between Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme, if they went with 'jealousy' as Anakin's big character flaw. And hell, if Anakin is going to cause her death, just go all out and have him Force choke her to death, and make the fact that Luke and Leia survived Padme's death be a sign that the Force is strong with them. But that 'dying of a broken heart' thing is flat out insulting.
Never having Yoda draw a lightsaber would have made the films so much better. For the venerable Yoda, the Master of all Masters to sully his hands with the blood and grit of battle is such a disservice to his character, and to the legacy of Jedi we had built up for us in the OT. It's like hearing a story about the Buddha going on a killing spree, or Ghandi being a genocidal dictator of a military state. It just don't jive. I want a Yoda who spends all day in meditation, spouts a never-ending stream of koans, hits people with his walking stick for no apparent reason and eats all of their protein bars. A Yoda who doesn't HAVE to demonstrate his power every five minutes to earn respect, like Vader did.
...or, like was said before, a Yoda who never appears on screen, heightening the mystery and making his final appearance all the more surprising.
The point about how all the Jedi fighting in one big battle with all their lightsabers is a terrible idea is right on the money. When freaking EVERYONE in the story has these powers and weapons, even people who we've never seen before, have no lines, and are never mentioned by name, it makes those powers and weapons not special anymore. (That's one of my problems with the EU, too, for that matter.)
Boo on a virgin birth happening in the same movie where a scientific explanation is given to the Force. Those two things should never happen together in the same series. The Force has to be mystical, because everything else in the series is science/tech. (The fact that midi-chlorians are a complete throwaway plot device is even worse. The story would not be different in any way if they just replaced every instance of 'midi-chlorians' with 'The Force'.)
No, I'll have to check it out. (Considering the person who translated Palpatine's lines was actually halfway decent, that's even funnier.)
Ripplin said:
I always hear the actors doing the lines. I really wish I could hear Harrison Ford call Chewie a fabric hair bulb. :)
This. Although I've always wanted to get some friends together and do a dub of Backstroke...sadly, I'm not actually friends with Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill.
(Of course, I also want to get a bunch of friends together and do a dub of Darths and Droids.)
Donated!
I wish it weren't such a gamble to say 'go for one of those Korean LCD monitors while you're at it'...
One of the things that amused me most about Backstroke is that clearly, multiple translators were employed for the project--some of whom had a better grasp of English than others. Or who had at least seen a Star Wars movie before. The guy who translated Obi-Wan's dialogue (and probably the guy who translated the first half of the movie--you can tell a new translator came on board when they stop calling Anakin 'Allah Gold' and start calling him 'Peaceful Willing') clearly went the 'Google Translate' route, given all of Obi-Wan's 'gan = fuck' instances, while Anakin rarely seems to have that problem. In fact, Anakin and Palpatine are almost intelligible the whole way through.
Except for when they start talking about elephants and the original dint and the Presbyterian Church's hopeless situation.
And the answer will be 'Video stores? Do you mean Netflix?'
I'd love to run it along with Harmy's DeEd someday. But I, too, have work that needs doing.
In any case, my DVD isn't going anywhere, lol. Haven't even unwrapped it yet--I promised myself I'd finish up these Japanese subtitles before I watched it.