Scruffy

generalfrevious said:

I think it may be that no one ever heard Kane say rosebud.

 

We didn't see Kane's last conversations. He might have been mumbling Rosebud for days before he passed away.

As for Leia, I think we can assume the Alliance operated as a cell-structure. Leia was a key person in the Alderaanian cell, using her diplomatic cover to ferry communiques and materiel between "peaceful" Alderaan and its outposts on Yavin and Dantooine. After the destruction of Alderaan and the compromise of Dantooine, she may not have known any other safe place in the galaxy to hide from the Empire. Certainly she could not have directed the Falcon to any of the Core Worlds--the local Imperials would be waiting for them. That leaves the Outer Rim, where Imperial forces were scattered. I can't say flying to Yavin was the best possible decision, but given the finicky nature of FTL communications in Star Wars it may have been the only way to safely return to Alliance control.

Which is?

Cracked didn't read the entire article they cited ... firing percentages went up to 55% to 95% after changes in training. Stormtroopers displayed very good marksmanship in ANH. They boarded a hostile ship under fire, impressed even General Kenobi with their attack on the Sandcrawler, and in an incredible display of bravado actually faked a running battle with the rebels on the Death Star. These are not the actions of untrained conscripts who are afraid of taking (or giving) a life.

WRT the helmet, Luke's comment reflects the fact that the helmet's suspension wasn't adjusted for the size and shape of his head. He was significantly shorter than the average stormtrooper, and would have had a proportionately smaller head. He probably didn't know how to work the HUD, either. A trained stormtrooper would have no problem seeing in his helmet.

There's a documentary about independent writers trying to get their scripts produced. One of them goes to Carrie Fisher (his script is not produced), another gets his movie made (straight to DVD a couple years ago), and the third cracks up and stops participating with the documentary crew. She was introduced as "Carrie Fisher, script doctor," with no hint of her previous career, and we see her talking the writer through the changes she recommends. Kinda neat.

Put Captain Solo in the Cargo Hold said:

Ric Olie's dialogue never really bothered me. It's just as obvious as "The Eagles are coming!" or "It's... it's a dinosaur!".

An exclamation is very natural. Especially if the purpose of the exclamation is to inform troops in contact that close air support is approaching. Purely expository dialogue is somewhat less natural. It is true that the ugly, no-name, never-seen-again pilot was talking to a child, but it wasn't natural. A real person might say something like, "Listen, kid. That shuttle belongs to Chancellor Valorum. He's pretty important. In fact, he runs the whole Republic. So don't say anything dumb or--you know, don't say anything at all. Okay?"

See? Natural. The adult is worried that the kid is going to embarrass him, he communicates to the audience who Valorum is, and he doesn't comment on anything really obvious like the urban build-up on Coruscant. We get a peek at what's going on inside balding pilot's head, and it sets the audience up to think that the precocious child is going to do something above his station. Describing what everyone could plainly see was didn't serve the audience or reflect very well on the oily pilot.

Also, if Anakin didn't say anything at all from that point forward, the trilogy would be much better.

I changed the channel and saw TPM on Spike. I haven't seen this in many years. The X-men ship was descending to Coruscant, and a no-name pilot said, "Coruscant. The whole planet is one big city. Look over there--Chancellor Valorum's shuttle. And Senator Palpatine is waiting for us."

Way cool dialogue. I think the next edition of SW should do some ADR to add dialogue like that.

"Tatooine. The planet is a big desert. Look over there--a Krayt dragon skeleton. The desolation does not bode well for us."

"Bespin. The whole planet is covered in clouds. Look over there--it's Cloud City. And Lando Calrissian is waiting for us."

"The Sanctuary Moon of Endor. The whole planet is a big forest. Look over there--the shield projector. And stormtroopers are guarding it."

I really like this "tell the audience what they're seeing and let them know what's about to happen" style of storytelling. Descriptive soundtracks have previously been relegated to films for the blind, but I really think we can work them directly into the dialogue. Perhaps Lucas's small, experimental films will do further work with this technique.

Episodes Wun and Too were quite effective at immunizing me against trying to think about Episode Three. I only had one half-hearted expectation, and it was this:

Padme would survive the birth of her children, and live in Alderaan disguised as the royal nursemaid. This was set up so well in the first two episodes: Padme exchanges identities with her handmaidens all the time. It would have been "like poetry, it repeats." It would also demonstrate the theme of falling, as she falls from Senator to servant, albeit for selfless reasons rather than Vader's selfish fall. By her fall, she protects the girl she loves; Vader only used this as an excuse for his fall. Imagine: There is a closed-casket funeral on Naboo, then one final shot on Alderaan. Bail and Brea present their adopted daughter to a cheering crowd, the camera slowly pans around the room and we see Brea's attendants, all of whom are ecstatic, except for one who is "very beautiful, but very sad."

RotJ told us everything else we needed to know. Eventually Leia would learn that her nanny was her mother, and Padme would die. The implied story, the clever girl finding out that she is adopted but her real mother hadn't abandoned her, adds a sort of hidden depth beneath the surface. It's also a clever inversion of the usual fairytale commoner-turns-out-to-be-a-princess story, in that the princess discovers she is the child of the servant. The EU would eventually chronicle the "Young Leia Adventures," but for the movie-only types the relationship between Padme and Leia would be a nice mystery.

Of course, that "hidden depth" adds narrative complexity that George didn't need. Episode III had to end exactly where Episode IV started. There was no Padme in Episode IV, so out the airlock she went.

Alderaan was a planet of dangerous insurrectionists who had infiltrated the upper echelons of Imperial power, but the planet itself represented only about 1/1,000,000 of the Empire's population. To put that in perspective, scaling the Empire down to the United States, Alderaan would be about 300 people. Killing 300 of our own citizens to put down a few insurrectionists would be highly unpopular, but the scale is similar to the Waco siege (80 dead). It might bring down a few officials, but it would not make the United States "evil." I suspect the Imperial populace viewed Alderaan much the way we viewed Waco--a regrettable overexercise of Federal power, but they were a bunch of trouble-making crazies anyway, and probably deserved it.

As for Padme, she is written exactly the way she is supposed to be: a super-elite and elitist bimbo, who covers her love of power and all its trappings by giving lip to "liberty." She reigned over a deeply segregated society, a human elite literally towering over an amphibian race confined to underwater ghettoes. This is the world that propelled Palpatine into the Senate; is it any surprise the Empire was apparently segregated and human-heavy at the top? (Nor did Padme's daughter escape this poisonous atmosphere when she was adopted into the blood royal of Alderaan. Leia's disgust when confronted by low caste aliens is so overpowering she cannot help but use a slur against the Wookiee who rescued her from execution on the Death Star!)

And then in 2015:

"Coming this summer: The movie you actually wanted to see. STAR WARS. The good one."

The last time I watched TPM was May 19, 1999. I saw The Phantom Edit about five years ago.

AOTC and ROTS I have seen more frequently, not always by my own choosing.

"Alert my Star Destroyer..." ruins the pacing and logic of the scene semantically, too.

"Bring my shuttle" means Vader is leaving, and he's leaving now. He's not going to walk to where his shuttle is, he's having it brought to him. In the SE, he walks to his shuttle, which is much less urgent.

"Alert:" Something is going to happen, but it's not happening yet. While everything else is happening in real time, the command to alert someone to do something draws our attention away from the action into the future. This would be okay if the future we were considering had some direct bearing on the action ... "Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for bombardment," etc ... but it really doesn't. Lucas breaks into the action to ask us to consider something utterly mundane.

"... to prepare for my arrival." This implies that Executor is not, in fact, prepared for Vader's arrival. There are troops in contact and starfighters cleared hot, so by this point everyone should be "prepared" for every contingency. Approach, IFF, etc should be handled by the shuttle crew and flight ops as in RotJ, there is no need for the passenger to do it. The implication behind this line is that

a) Vader expects some kind of pomp and ceremony when he boards, or

b) Executor is an inefficient ship and has to be continually reminded to be ready for the squadron commander to embark.

Either way, the Imperials come off looking kind of dumb. If Vader expects a reception in the midst of combat, he has a grossly-inflated sense of self-importance. If he is micromanaging his shuttle and Star Destroyer crews, he has a grossly-deflated sense of their competence (or they are, in fact, quite incompetent). And in both cases, the sense of urgency is deflated.

Ah, well. Star Wars is effectively dead to me. Star Trek, too. Maybe this "Firefly" thing I hear so much about will catch on.

Vaderisnothayden said:

Kenobi wasn't resurrected. He became a ghost. That's dead.

Maybe my materialist/antisupernaturalist bias is showing, but for storytelling purposes there's no practical difference between a ghost and a resurrection. In both cases, the finality of death is undone and the dead are free to interact with the living, make and carry out plans, influence the universe, etc. It's not like Kenobi was a shade combined to the underworld, or doomed for a certain term to walk the night. He just tricked Vader into discorporating him so he could act in secret, unencumbered by a physical shell. He wasn't a classical ghost segregated from the living world, a Shakespearean soul in torment, a Victorian table-knocker, or a modern residual haunting. He was just a non-corporeal living being.

And he wasn't the only one. By the end of the Trilogy, we had also seen Anakin and Yoda in this state. That is, every Force-sensitve bar one who physically died wasn't really dead. They were shown dying, on film, then the filmmaker resurrected them. As "ghosts." This is hardly surprising--the same filmmaker filled his universe with telekinesis, telepathy, and clairvoyance, so ghosts fit right in.

Now, does Palpatine's "resurrection" fit in as well? I'd argue that it does. Remember, when DE was written every other Force-user was able to maintain their consciousness and personality after death. Why not Palpatine? The circumstantial evidence suggests he could. And--in a universe full of telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, and ghosts--who's to say possession doesn't also occur? It's a logical outgrowth of Yoda's philosophy and the evidence for the soul existing independently from the body. The body is crude matter, the person is the soul, and the Force binds everything together. So the body is just a meat puppet animated by the soul. A sufficiently powerful soul could animate another body. And so Palpatine did.

I thought the Dark Empire portrayal of Palpatine was pathetic. In ROTJ he was a distinctive villain, whereas in the Dark Empire, Dark Empire 2 and Empire's End comics has was just a non-disticntive cliche villain and rather annoying. And they didn't bother to draw him looking anything like Palpatine.

You will note that I was including the DE Sourcebook in my earlier comments on DE. Most of what we know of Palpatine's plans for his theocracy come from the Sourcebook. (And probably later books that I have not read.)

Anyhow, the bathrobe tyrant of RotJ served as a decent nemesis for Luke Skywalker after Lucas decided to make Vader more sympathetic. But nothing about him screamed "galactic emperor" or "dark overlord." He seemed to have no plan or vision for the empire he had created. If it was just an oversized bodyguard to support his lavish lifestyle on Coruscant, that's great, but hardly distinctive. Dark Empire and its ancillary materials defined those distinctive elements that made the Galactic Empire more than just a slightly overzealous version of the British Empire in space.

Re: Boba Fett, I am always surprised by how many OOT fans ignore the bit about the "pain and agony as you are slowly digested for a thousand years[*]." Taken at face value, Boba Fett could not possibly have died during Return of the Jedi. If we assume that Jabba was exaggerating by several orders of magnitude ... Boba Fett could not possibly have died during Return of the Jedi. I'd like to think anyone who fell into the Pit of Carkoon died quickly and painlessly, because I have an aversion to torture, but Jabba does not, so I think they survived in the Sarlacc a long time. And I think the guy covered in armor, weapons, and a jet pack could maybe get out. Turns out the people who Lucas's corporation hired to continue Star Wars agree with me on this one.

[*] You could try to knock a few centuries off the survival time by arguing that most of the digestion must be post mortem. However, Threepio's language is clear: The pain and agony are coterminous with the thousand years of digestion. How a human being could survive being lunch for a millennium is something else that the DESB explores. And it gives us this line which elevates an otherwise average roleplaying supplement to great literature: "Half a kiloton was excessive, even for Fett."

I wish the Zahn books hadn't acquired their reputation as required reading for the EU. They're decent, and they get pride of place for re-establishing Star Wars as an ongoing, grown-up franchise, but they are rather flawed IMHO and are neither necessary nor particularly good jumping-on points.

CO said:

Hayden is an example of what is wrong with Hollywood these days, as there are many actors/actresses who are employed and get movie roles simply because they are good looking people.

Okay, but what's Hayden's excuse?

*rimshot*

Vaderisnothayden said:

Once you start resurrecting characters you lose something.

*cough*obiwankenobi*cough*

I haven't read much EU in years and years, but here's some thoughts.

The Tales of anthologies really shone, exploring different characters and a variety of circumstances in the Star Wars universe. Many of the tales are just good stories.

Dark Empire is probably both the best vision of a near-term post-RotJ galaxy yet, but it's also great science fantasy in its own right. On film, Palpatine is merely a cackling megalomaniac, with no real motive except to take over the Galaxy then wander about it in his bathrobe. DE and its associated WEG sourcebook really delve into Palpatine's plans for himself and the galaxy. The story was unfortunately truncated, but most of what there is is good.

Tom Veitch's other big Star Wars work, Tales of the Jedi, dovetails nicely with DE. It's also a great story with good characters. The quality declines quite a bit when Kevin J. Anderson takes over, but his final entry in the saga, Redemption, is easily on par with Veitch's work. Veitch pretty much invented the Sith, and later versions just aren't as interesting. For many years he was also the primary source on OR-era Jedi, who managed to be heroic and not at all the dorks Lucas decided they were.

There's also a lot to like in the prose X-wing series, and many of the 90s computer games.

Vaderisnothayden said:

The way it was all portrayed, taken in context of the simpicity that marks Star Wars in certain ways, gives the message that it's all over and the Empire is done. Star Wars wasn't about making realistic sense. Simple story like the Emperor is dead so the empire is done fits with the mentality of the OT.

The mentality of the OT, or the mentality of the OT viewers? A New Hope established what little we know of the Empire's structure in the filmed canon. And ANH was written when both Palpatine and Vader were comparatively less important than they were later conceived to be. Even after Palpatine and Vader were elevated to near-Morgoth and Sauron levels, the structure hinted at in ANH would still be in effect.

In ANH, it was established that the Imperial bureaucracy was a willful institution, only controlled by the Emperor through the Senate. With the dissolution of the Senate, the bureaucracy was bypassed or subordinated to the Regional Governors, and the RGs were given direct control of Imperial territories.The relevance of the Marvel comics take on things is that it shows people back in the 80s figuring the empire was mostly over after ROTJ. I suspect that was the assumption among most people. Certainly nobody back then gave me the impression that the empire wasn't over after ROTJ.

There is every reason to believe that these regional governors would have maintained their imperiums. Bureaucracies, almost by definition, survive regime changes unless forcefully purged. You don't need the EU to tell you that the blow against the Empire at Endor was not instantly fatal.

The relevance of the Marvel comics take on things is that it shows people back in the 80s figuring the empire was mostly over after ROTJ. I suspect that was the assumption among most people. Certainly nobody back then gave me the impression that the empire wasn't over after ROTJ.

Why should the EU of the 80s be any more important than the EU of the 90s? After all, the Marvel era is mostly forgotten, but the modern EU has been going strong ever since Zahn. Both Marvel and Zahn worked from the same version of RotJ, both derived different versions of what happened after it, and one really caught on.

I think the tendency to believe that the Empire died at Endor is usually driven by the belief, held by some, that RotJ is the Last Star Wars Ever. If it were, of course one would want to believe that all the battles had been one and everyone lived happily ever after. Among the camp that accepts the EU as deuterocanonical, there is no reason to cling to either belief. Then there's the third camp that doesn't necessarily accept the EU, but doesn't view the Star Wars Trilogy as a limit on the Star Wars universe. If the Star Wars universe is larger than the Trilogy, then there's no pressure to overinterpret the invents of the films in such a way that RotJ is a satisfying conclusion to every plot line in the trilogy. It's simply the end of (some of) the adventures of Luke Skywalker, and the redemption of Anakin Skywalker...but the story doesn't end after the camera irises out.

(I'm intentionally ignoring the handful of celebrations depicted in the SE. There's nothing remarkable about certain groups in a given population celebrating a change of regime.)

C3PX said:

Baronlando said:

Han in Jedi is a funny thing. By the end, he's essentially become a team player, with a grownup job in the new government and a wife.

Well, that is EU stuff. None of it is in the movie.

I don't know if I'd characterize it as a grownup job in the government, but Han definitely has a grownup job in the military at the end of RotJ. The inflection point for his character is when he reveals that he has accepted a commission as a general. That is when you know he takes the rebellion seriously, and is in it for more than just a chance to get in Leia's pants.

Aside from the Han vs. Zsinj stories, I think the EU pretty much ignored that and regressed Han somewhat. Sure, he had a wife and kids, but he also had his hotrodded starship and took off on adventures whenever he felt like it.

DarkFather said:

So you're trying to tell me that the believable human element in Star Wars isn't what helped it be such a cultural phenomena? That humans in Star Wars shouldn't be relatable, because that would be too realistic?

That's your issue, man. The interactions of the characters in Star Wars have always felt REAL. That's what makes part of the fantasy element so exciting, because you almost believe there are actual humans and aliens out there doing this stuff.

That's half of it. The other half is, the characters of Star Wars were likeable. The PT characters, not nearly so much. You can argue that that's realistic--a trilogy following a cult of back-stabbing villains, a cult of monastic child-brainwashing government-sponsored knights, and an ineffective politician should not be chock full of likeable characters. I agree it's realistic. But it doesn't necessarily make it enjoyable, or line it up with Star Wars.

The third half is chemistry and the fourth is acting, but those have been discussed to death.

Vaderisnothayden said:

Dark Horse's comics series takes place before ANH, so it doesn't account for the difference between ANH and ROTJ Jabbas.

I probably haven't read it in ten years, and don't remember anything placing it pre-ANH, but if that's where licensing has placed it, so it goes.

And Jabba was a lot more than just different in size. They gave him an appearance that totally changed his personality, from sinister and clever to silly and cutesy. It wasn't just a bad special effect. A special effect that doesn't work is presumably at least intended to work, but with Jabba there was clearly no intention of making it consistent with the ROTJ Jabba, so the scene screams out contempt for what had been previously established in the films and thus for the old films as a whole.

There's nothing silly or cutesy about his appearance--at least, no sillier than he was in RotJ. It's simply a slightly different appearance, due to the limitations placed upon and inherent to the CGI artists of the time. Perhaps your impression of his personality is based more on his mood than his appearance? Like all creditors and collection agencies, he is relatively friendly the first time he calls to collect--but he means business, and will freeze you in carbonate (or do worse to your credit score) if you don't pay up.

I never really minded the fact that Jabba in ANH:SE looked different than he did in RotJ. There are a few ways to rationalize it--Dark Horse did a Jabba miniseries in which he eats several people, sure to put on the pounds--but in the end, it's just a special effect in service of the story. No more or less suspension of disbelief is required than for any other questionable special effect. The change in Jabba's appearance is no more jarring than the change in the Emperor's.

I agree that the scene adds nothing to the movie, and it ruins the beat when the Falcon is properly introduced with a minor swell in the score and an appropriate exclamation from Luke. That is why it belongs in a special edition, and not the standard edition.

I remember the Faces advertising campaign including a lot of brou-ha-ha about the restoration of the  film. At least one of the tapes has a featurette comparing the Faces video with a previous release, and it does look punchier and maybe a little sharper. They made such a big deal about it being a THX-approved release that I called it the THX version for years.

When Faces was billed as "one last time," I--rather naively--thought that meant this was the final, canonical version of the O-OT. No more fancy THX restorations. I didn't consider what would happen if it went out of print. I thought they'd just manufacture a few more. That way, the O-OT would always be available, but it would always be "the last time," since all future releases would just be continuations of the Faces release. One last edition, unlimited print runs.

And as others have said, Disney's patented vault had inured many of us to overblown "get it now before it's gone forever!!!1" pitches.

C3PX said:

Some how I don't see guys like Yoda and Mace Windu tacitly keeping it to themselves. They make it very clear that such attatchment is a danger, not something to be played around with or taken lightly. The idea that they would know about it and just let it slide it completely and totally out of character for both of them.

I think it fits with what we know of Yoda. Yoda manages his students by counsel and advice, but he does not take action against his students when he thinks they are doing something wrong. He and Obi-wan "knew" that if Luke went to Cloud City, he'd fail; but he did nothing to actually stop Luke, no matter how disastrous the failure would have been. Likewise, Yoda counseled Anakin that attachment led to the Dark Side (somehow); to openly accuse Anakin of having an illicit marriage would have led to the guy's expulsion from the Jedi Order, and thus constitute de facto intervention. I can't say for sure that Yoda knew, but I'm pretty sure that if he knew, he wouldn't go squealing to the Jedi Council.

As for Mace Windu, I was unaware he had a character.

Even Obi-Wan seems to know be 100%, he just suspects. When he goes to Padme to warn her about Anakin he asks her if the baby is Anakin's. Had he know they were married, or even together, that question would not have made any sense. He suspected it, but didn't know for sure.

The question makes perfect sense. People don't just ask questions to elicit information, they also do it to provide information in a circumlocutious manner, or to influence behavior. I think we're so used to Lucasian dialog--characters marching onstage and announcing their feelings or intentions--that we don't notice subtlety when it is achieved.

I think the Jedi knew, but tacitly agreed amongst themselves to keep quiet. Don't we all have that one friend who makes ... questionable romantic decisions, but we choose to look the other way?

As for the Jedi code, I suppose the Jedi just didn't think some parts of it were really that important. Inter arma silent leges, after all. And it was a stupid rule anyway.

negative1 said:

and who was the original 'star wars' trilogy aimed at?

I don't know who it was aimed at, but what I've read about its initial reception indicates that it was popular with teenagers and young adults in addition to the kids, and it even did okay by the critics. ANH and Empire have since become two of the most highly-lauded films of all time. Clone Wars has no traction whatsoever amongst adults, was panned by critics, and will never even approach the level of respect given to the OT.

Conclusion: The Original Trilogy was aimed at general audiences, and Clone Wars was aimed at kids and die-hards. If the CW generation is the standard-bearer for SW fandom now, it truly is a different body than the OT fandom that appeared 30 years ago. It is a body grown not from wide and enduring appeal, but from a targeted attempt to capture a very specific demographic.

Edit: Found this on Wiki: "It was targeted to a specific audience for specific reasons. We accomplished that mission, and it will continue in another medium." Was ANH "targeted to a specific audience for specific reasons," or did Lucas just want to make a great film?