logo Sign In

Scruffy

User Group
Members
Join date
29-Nov-2005
Last activity
31-May-2016
Posts
625

Post History

Post
#249635
Topic
I've given this a lot of thought, and I've decided this makes no sense. (Qui-Gon and Anakin's ghosts.)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/249635/action/topic#249635
Time
Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
I realize he was fleshing a lot of this out as he went, but I think in the end it makes better sense that one would expect given that fact.

Given that he had over fifteen years to "flesh it out," it should've made perfect sense.

I don't think that Yoda and Obi-Wan taught Anakin how to retain his identity, he did that on his own when he gave his life to save his son and for the greater good of all beings in the galaxy.


Per RotS, the maintenance of identity is supposed to be a skill, a technique -- not something that is intuitively acquired solely by the good nature of your actions. If giving your life for the greater good of all beings in the galaxy* is enough to make one a ghost, then we should've seen a spectral Jek Porkins flying at Hoth and Endor.

I think the intention is that Yoda and Obi-Wan were able to help Anakin become one with the Force before he actually expired. He loses consciousness in front of Luke, but off camera, before he actually dies, Obi-Wan and Anakin assist him in becoming one with the Force.


Maybe he swoons in front of Luke, then wakes up in the shuttle and tells Luke the secret of a perfect chilled blue milk. But before he can tell Luke what aerosolized blue milk will do to Yuuzhan Vong, Yoda and Obi-wan show up and insist on giving Anakin a two-hour lecture, followed by an hour of practical work. This lecture is so interesting, both Anakin and Luke forget that the former is slowly dying. Anakin eventually drowns from the fluid collecting in his lungs, a painful and frightening death -- and the final revenge of the Jedi.

Or maybe he just became a ghost because that's what dead Jedi do, regardless of derivative products like the PT. (No matter their provenance, the PT is ultimately derivative of the OT.)

* NB: Vader gave his life for his son, not for all beings in the galaxy -- who he had been burning through at a prodigious rate for 20 years.
Post
#249196
Topic
Tarkin, The Rebel Base & The Mystery Of The Trash Compactor.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/249196/action/topic#249196
Time
Originally posted by: boba feta
Now there's some things I'm a little unsure of in the Star Wars Universe, and who better to answer my questions than you learned folk. Here's my queries:

1. Is Tarkin actually Vader's superior? It seems to be the case from the initial Death Star scenes.

Tarkin was a uniformed member of the military establishment at the end of RotS, when Vader was just a whiny newly-minted Sith, possibly suicidal over the loss of his bride. Tarkin probably outranks Vader de jure due to his longer period of service, as well as being the de facto ruler of the Outer Rim and the duly appointed commander of the Death Star. Whether the Emperor preferred one over the other is unclear; he probably used Vader for the wetworks, and left the mental heavy lifting to Tarkin.

2. What type of propulsion system powers the Death Star? It seems to get around pretty quick but there doesn't seem to be anything powering it.

The Death Star is powered by a hypermatter reactor, a fictional construct described in minimal detail by Curtis Saxton. It is propelled by ion engines, antigravs, and a hyperdrive, just like any other starship.

3. There's no telling just how long it takes the Empire too find the hidden Rebel Base on Dantooine, but it sure seems to me it takes them a very short time indeed. After all the base is deserted. Wouldn't a deserted base would be a lot harder to find than one that's inhabited.

Depends on how thoroughly Dantooine was searched and the composition of the forces searching it.

4. What's the purpose of the Trash Compactor? Surely it's more economic to just dump your trash out into the endless vacuum of space, instead of wasting precious energy on crushing trash.

The energy required to crush trash is not precious to a space station that generates many times the power of our sun. They probably smash their trash so oddly-shaped pieces will fit out the airlock, or feed it to recycling droids so it can be used for repairs.

5. Does Biggs actually tell Porkins to eject just before he bites the big one? What good's that gonna do him?


I don't remember if he told Porkins to eject or pull up. Ejecting would've saved Porkins from burning up in his cockpit or splattering into the Death Star. Odds of rescue were low, but the probability of surviving the big splat were zero.

6. What exactly is a parsec, and why use that terminology in SW, after all they do also use minutes, days and seconds.


I don't remember the exact definition of parsec, but it's about 3.26 light-years. They use it because it's a convenient unit for describing interstellar distances, such as those covered by the treacherous Kessel Run.

7. Obi Wan offers Han two thousand up front, and fifteen when they reach Alderan. What exactly is the currency on Tatooine, or the Star Wars Universe in general?


Most EU sources say it's Imperial credits. This provides an interesting comparison to TPM, where Watto does not accept Republic money. The Empire has succeeded in bringing Tatooine into monetary union with the rest of the galaxy, bringing freer trade and other benefits to the population.

8. If 3PO was created by Anakin, why does it look like he's mass produced with several other similar bots sprinkled throughout the Universe? Was he a kitset? or did Anakin build the prototype that was subsequently cloned en masse? (I have to admit, I haven't watched much of the prequels so that one's probably slipped by me.)


Threepio was not created by Anakin. He was assembled out of existing Cybot Galactica parts.
Post
#248486
Topic
I Love Dark Horse
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/248486/action/topic#248486
Time
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe1.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe2.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe3.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe4.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe5.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe6.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe7.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe8.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe9.jpg
http://www.ofkaiser.com/StarWars/woe/woe10.jpg

Please don't melt my server, i.e., no hotlinking.
Post
#247943
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247943/action/topic#247943
Time
"Oh, so wanting good things is bad?"

Absolutely. Wanting his mother not to be abducted, raped, and murdered by Sandpeople was a bad thing, because that desire led to Anakin slaughtering their village. Wanting to have a wife and child was a bad thing, because it led to him slaughtering the Jedi students. In fact, any bad thing Anakin/Vader ever did can be connected through some tenuous, tortuous thread to him "desiring" something and "not letting go," since that's George's Preferred Moral du Jour.

(Every time I watch ESB now I get shivers. When Yoda claims Luke's flashlight and says, "Mine, or will help you not," he's clearly dancing with the Dark Side.)

Maybe later George will change his mind and decide that Anakin's blond hair was the cause of his downfall, and we can spend hours debating whether it's a profound moral or simply a hypocritical non sequitur.
Post
#247594
Topic
Star Wars prequel film noir (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247594/action/topic#247594
Time
Giving away the ending all depends on what the ending is. Sometimes narrators don't know the whole story; they just carry you to a point near the end where something unexpected happens.

Scene 1

Several establishing shots of Mustafar, taken from RotS or stock footage of volcanoes. OS, in the distance, someone is moaning in pain. Dissolve to Anakin feebly clawing up a lava knoll, moaning louder now.

Anakin (VO): The third degree burns hurt, but not as bad as my pride. Carved up by Ben Kenobi and left like bacon on a skillet. How could I have let myself fall this low? It all started when ...

Scene 1 + a bijillion

Anakin (VO): And now I'm dying on this forsaken cinder of a world.

Palpatine arrives and saves him. Maybe show footage up to his arrival at the surgical center.

Anakin (VO): Looks like I'm not toast after all. But knowing this guy, I'm gonna wish I was.

Fin.

Post
#247564
Topic
Star Wars prequel film noir (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247564/action/topic#247564
Time
Unfortunately, I can't access the data session on my SotE CD. But most or all of the artwork is reproduced as thumbnails in the liner notes; it looks like Ralph McQuarrie paintings, maybe from the Had Abaddon era.

How are you planning on addressing the Sith and the reorganization of the Republic into the Empire, if at all? I kind of like the idea of Palpatine circuitously talking about "the cause," and "our brothers in the Sith." It could reflect the 1950s fear of communism in the government, but the communists are also anti-Jedi occultists. I don't know how the occult was portrayed in the film noir era, but I'd borrow language from RL occultism.

Palpatine would secretly be "the Grand Master of the Sith." Upon rescuing him from Jedi Master Windu, Anakin would be elevated to "Lord of the Sith," "one of the Dark Lords of the Sith," etc. Anakin would use his Sith philosophy and his advancement in the Order to justify spending less time with his wife or the Jedi. He's a convert, full of a convert's zeal, he's found the True Way now and what do those other people matter anymore?

You've said some of this will be Anakin narrating. When is he narrating this? That would influence how he views the events that have happened. Is his life flashing before his eyes as he lays dying on Mustafar? Is he at the height of his power in the Empire, reminiscing how he got there? Dying on the DSII?
Post
#247509
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247509/action/topic#247509
Time
"When he accepted Palpatine's offer in Palpatine's original "reveal" scene he genuinely believed that the Jedi were plotting against him and was slowly feeling the darkside and being corrupted by it; in fact, in the original version when he kills Mace Windu he doesn't say "what have i done"--he says "i cant believe the jedi were really taking over." "

This is much better than what we got. It has a much stronger political subtext, i.e. that of codified law vs. natural law. Because the Jedi really were taking over, they were extrajudiciously executing a sitting head of government/state. As an officer of the Republic -- at least, I think he was an officer, probably General Kenobi's aide-de-camp -- anyway, as an officer of the Republic, he was duty-bound to protect the person and office of the chancellor against the coup attempt.

On the other hand, Palpatine was evil.

On the third hand, so were the Jedi in Anakin's humble opinion.

That's the stuff of political drama; Anakin is torn between two means to a just end, two paths to preserve the Republic, and he chooses one. He supports Palpatine as the strong executive, leading to his buy-in of the Imperial ethos. In the version we got, the choice is different: go kill a bunch of Jedi and I'll give you a dubious chance of saving your wife, otherwise she's going to die according to some dream you've had. This doesn't lead into him becoming an Imperial; it makes him kind of a wuss. Now, that's certainly a valid interpretation of Vader: I was onboard with Veitch's "weak man in an iron mask" years before the prequels. But lots of other people aren't.

The only problem is with the dialogue itself. "Hurr, I can't believe that the Jedi was rilly gonna take over!" I'd have written something like, "All along ... They've been plotting all along. I should've sensed it. I'm sorry, sir, I failed you." That adds a little paranoia, and emphasizes his subordination to Palpatine.

EDIT

I just checked DE; Palpatine called Vader, "a sick man in an iron mask," and that sickness was the fact that, "his heart was possessed by the impotent side of the Force." So it's not really a weak Vader, but it's still a line that inspired a certain amount of rage in fandom.
Post
#247487
Topic
Star Wars prequel film noir (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247487/action/topic#247487
Time
Could you use Metropolis as a partial stand-in for Coruscant? It's a few decades earlier than you were thinking, but it was also a few decades ahead of its time, so that all balances out. You might want to avoid the scenes with cars and planes (or not), but there's some still shots that are basically hand-drawn or animated by the architect who designed the place.

If you do go with that route, you might want to integrate the old Metropolis stuff with some newer concept art of Coruscant, going back to the high-res scans in the Shadows of the Empire CD. You can use pans and zooms around this material instead of CGI whenever you need an establishing shot of the city. Or is that a little too cheesy?

Also, fake matte boxes and lower framerate for Jar-Jar. (comedy option)
Post
#247362
Topic
Your first reaction to Hayden is ROTJ
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247362/action/topic#247362
Time
Shaw's is the face behind the mask of Vader. Except for David Prowse, who is actually the face behind the mask, but you know what I mean. Seeing that face restored, happy, approving of his son, in communion with his mentor ... there's a lot of strong feelings there. He has been in a dark place for twenty years, but he's found his way home, and his friends were waiting for him.

Hayden's is the face of pride, resentment, and foolishness. The prequel trilogy spent four hours linking these attributes with that face, prepping us to dislike him. When I look into that face in Jedi, I don't know what he's thinking or feeling. He has no camaraderie with the geriatrics he's hanging out with, that's for sure; he's more like a bad child who avoided a scolding by flashing his puppy-dog eyes at his parents.

To answer your question, I think Ronnie summed it up pretty well: "There he goes again."
Post
#247110
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247110/action/topic#247110
Time
Originally posted by: Jumpman
Scruffy,

Between Naboo, Coruscant, and the Jedi Order, you get a sense of the Great Republic in Episode I and Episode II, even if its starting to crumble in Episode II.


Naboo had a divided population and was under siege with little or no official relief from the Republic, Coruscant was rife with corruption and incompetence, Tatooine was run by criminals and didn't even implement Republican laws ... this is all in accordance with Lucas's original ideas about the Republic falling apart toward the end. I don't know why you're trying to tear down one of the ideas he stuck to and implemented with some success. If California besieged Nevada while Washington debated tax rates and the mafia reestablished slavery in Alabama, would you call it "the Golden Age of the United States?" The Republic is clearly a failing state from the beginning of TPM, there's no other way to look at it.
Post
#247063
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247063/action/topic#247063
Time
Originally posted by: Jumpman


Interesting points. I chalk this up to Lucas trying to make the Star Wars universe more vast than what we've previously seen because, we are in the golden age of the Republic where the interactions of all the civilizations is normal.


The golden age? Lucas has always described the end period of the Republic as a period of balkanization and unresponsive government. He even got a little of that into the PT. Even within the context of myth, the golden age predates the republic, because it implies rule by a benevolent god.
Post
#247059
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247059/action/topic#247059
Time
Originally posted by: Jumpman

I mean, if you strip away everything in Episode I, it's really about Palpatine's machinations to get to the highest office in the Republic.


If you strip away everything in Episode I, there's nothing left. You're selectively stripping away parts that don't support your thesis without explaining why those parts are without value.

IMHO, Episode I did nothing that couldn't have been accomplished in Episode II. Introduce the main characters? AotC did that pretty well, and a rewrite would make it perfect. Establish Palpatine as a powerful but unassuming political operator? Check. Introduce the Sith and their ancient grudge? Check. Set up the Clone Wars? Check. The whole PT feels like backstory to the OT, but TPM is backstory to backstory.

Ca. 1976, George Lucas showed his notebook of ideas for The Star Wars to Gary Kurtz, and Kurtz told him to pick the most interesting "episode" out of the narrative instead of telling the story from the beginning. He needed another Gary Kurtz to help him pick which parts of his PT notes to commit to film/video.
Post
#247026
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247026/action/topic#247026
Time
"Yes, because if the scene had been executed effectively, it wouldn't have come off as comedic. I admit that the parts you mentioned are pretty good, but as soon as they start mourning the loss of "younglings", I can't help but bust a gut every single time. The most ridiculous word in the world, and every time I heard Ewan McGregor say it, it sounds like he's having trouble spewing out that piece of dialogue."

Probably since there's already a perfectly serviceable word for the characters being described, that is, "children." There was no need to invent a neologism to communicate a universally-understood notion. The -ling suffix was also an odd choice. If the word was used only by Yoda, that'd be okay, he's a 900-year-old alien who never quite mastered English. But hearing it from Obi-wan and Padme is kind of strange.

I didn't feel for the poor dead younglings, but not for linguistic reasons. The PT turned me off on the Jedi so much I felt the purge was more of a mild overreaction than the holocaust I'd imagined. You know how you read about a government shooting or crackdown on some troublesome group, and you think, "Well, obviously their civil rights were violated, but they were kind of asking for it?" Yeah, that's the Jedi.
Post
#246685
Topic
First Impressions of the OOT ...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/246685/action/topic#246685
Time
Originally posted by: WaragainsttheCouncil

adding for Scruffy: Very likely there is digital copies. But it's not burden for Lucas to use the Technicolour source, he already has once. And I bet they have the equipment in LFL to do the scan themselves. Such a restoration is really no skin off his nose...


Yeah, it wouldn't really be burdensome, if it was something he wanted to do. But it might be irksome. By most accounts, the Technicolor masters are in his personal possession, somewhere on his property. The digital stuff is in the possession of his company. I don't know how his personal collection is set up, who has access, etc. If it is true that he doesn't like the O-OT, he may not be inclined to open up the archive again. He may decide the existing digital stuff is good enough, put it out there, and we can always do a better transfer later. But at this point, I'm just guessing at his potential future thoughts.

The one thing that is abundantly clear, though, is that there are several excellent sources for a good DVD or HD release. Claiming the O-OT "doesn't exist anymore" is one of those strongly-clung-to certain points of view.