TheBoost

darthmunky said:

Another thing, this has got to be one of the worst scale problems I have ever seen in a Star Wars movie:
Shot 1 - Showing the Banthas

 Forget scale and bad CG.

How can it make any sense for a massive herd of beasts that size to be stampeding across a barren wasteland? They aren't bison and the Sea of Karkoon aint the American Midwest. It's not even the Siberian Tigha.

As beasts of burden for a nomadic Sand People they make sense. But on a planet where you actually have to FARM MOISTURE out of the air to live, how could a population that size survive, and what exactly are they doing in the Dune Sea? Even heards of African Elephants don't galavant across the Sahara.

Just another idea for making the Ewoks less cuddly.

How about Logray (the Ewok medicine man) only has one eye? He's only in a handful of shots, and one cloudy eye makes him seem older, wiser, tougher, and more intersting.

xhonzi said:

Yes, no farmer robes.

I don't remember Yoda saying anything about a council, but maybe I'm FORCING it out of my mind.

 He says "My own counsel will I keep" which is a homophone.

I'm also all for Jedi outfits being more stylistly related to Luke's gear in ROTJ than to Obi and Yoda's hermit robes. And all the Jedi should be stylistically similar, but not identical.

What the hell is ICANN?

xhonzi said:

It was always my interpretation, not that any of this came from anything official I don't think, that Vader, as "Dark Lord of the Sith" with a "sad devotion to that ancient religion" still had some code of ethics that he lived by.  Can't say exactly what that was...  But the Emperor sort of just used/abused whatever power he could.  That he had no formal Jedi training, and that he had no specific Sith religion either.  That he was a "wilder", to borrow a phrase from the Wheel of Time.  He had Force sensitivity and he taught himself or learned from others without following them all of the tricks he needed to get along.  And maybe that the Emperor in that way kooked Vader out a little.  I'm thinking of the Sheriff of Nottingham and the Witch in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.  He's using her to his own means, but he actually finds her and her witchcraft somewhat repulsive due to this mostly traditional mindset.

So I was a little put off when the PT showed him as the head of the Sith order, with his own "Darth" title as well.

And speaking of things that would have been brought up in the OT had they actually existed in the PT... "Darth Sidious", anyone?

 Grrrrrrrr... Darths. My least favorite part of the PT... and that's saying something.

The more I think of the Jedi in the NPT, the more I have to FORCE myself (pun partially intended) to ignore preconceptions from the EU and the PT about who the Jedi have to be.

From the OT, there's no reason to assume there was ever a Jedi Temple, Jedi Council, or Jedi ORDER even remotly resembling the monastic army presented in the PT.

I had a funny thought. I'm rereading "Dracula" and one of the plot points is that Dracula wants Harker at his castle so that he can practice and master English pronunciation.

In the Coppolla Dracula, it would have been great, that since Harker was the only English speaker Dracula had ever met, he spent the whole movie talking like Keaneau Reeves.

xhonzi said:

TheBoost said:

 

• The general public is probably unaware of the Emperor's status as an evil Force-Person.

Lolz.  Very PC of you, Boost.

 :)
I was actually not sure what to call the dude.

In the OT, the Emperor can apparently see the future (which Jedi can also do) and shoot lighting (something we don't know of any Jedi doing). There's no reason to assume he had any Jedi background, and evidence suggests most people are unaware he has these powers.

My idea is that he was once a general, renowned for his brutal efficiency, who went out to the dark unknown to do battle with someone, and somehow out there he learned these dark sorcerous arts (in a way that never needs to be explained precisely).  He's invited back by the Republic to lead their armies during the Clone Wars, and manipulates that role into being crowned Emperor. What exactly his evil sorcery (Forcery?) is not important, just that it's bad.

xhonzi said:

Hmmm.....

How long would it take for these attitudes to develop, do you think?  Or do you think there were never 10,000 Jedi?

 Just going on impressions, its hard to imagine the galaxy-spanning monastic order from the PT, who were involved in everything and known and respected by everyone, including being a semi-official part of the galactic government, could in 19 years become not only eliminated, but discounted.

If the Jedi were accused, disgraced, and outlawed (as in the PT) there might very well be strong anti-Jedi sentiment, but I don't think apathy (calling it 'hokey') would be evident so soon. Han was about 10 years old when the Clone Wars happened and Jedi superwarriors WON that war. If the Jedi had ever been that significant, my guess would be it would take a generation or two before that kind of talk was common.

I think what seems likely is that Jedi were not major players on the galactic stage in the decades before the OT. Perhaps even in the NPT Jedi are Quixotic relics of a better golden-age. Knight errants doing good, but not single-handedly shaking the stars. "Idealistic crusaders," not the galaxy's police-force. 

Perhaps a couple Jedi served as the President of the Galaxy's bodyguard, and tales of them would circulate the Outer Rim of how Jedi arrive and fight for justice, making Jedi legendary, special, and rare.

The closest analogy I can think of would be the modernization of Japan in the late 1800s, where the Samurai rapidly became very unpopular, but that was part of a major cultural and technological transformation. I don't know how well that would echo in "Star Wars" style space opera.

xhonzi said:

TheBoost said:

xhonzi said:

But that's what's in the OT. Vader being seduced by the dark side was a big deal, so it must be uncommon.

I think we might have to agree to disagree here.  I think Anakin is a big deal for personal reasons, not statistical ones.  His fall is a big deal because we knew and loved him.  And because he had so much potential to be a great Jedi.  If your brother went to jail, you would feel a lot differently than seeing a ton of people you don't know in jail.  Or if your no-good cousin went to jail (like mine did) that would be a lot different than your favourite cousin that you trust implicitly going to jail.  It's a personal tragedy, not a galactic one.

Or, perhaps. Anakin is such a strong force user that his turn to the Dark Side has galactic consequences whereas Bob the Jedi falling to the Dark Side- not so much.

Perhaps the Force does only speak to the pure of heart. It seems likely. Being "Strong in the Force" isn't just a random mutation, but perhaps a special calling.

Yeah, it's hard to say.  The mystical part of it suggests that it comes to the pure in heart... but the corruptibility is there not only for Anakin, but for Luke as well.  So... of the 5 force users we see in the OT, 2 are bad and 1 is in danger of becoming bad as he develops his skills and strives to do the right thing.  The 2 that are good are hermits or are so passive that they decide suicide in front of their pupil is the only way to win a lightsabre fight.

In other words, ANH seems to say that Luke can use the force because he is pure in heart.  But ESB seems to say that he can blow it by being too human, too reckless, and too much like his father.  RoTJ seems to say that if you stay the course, not only is it possible to remain pure, but to triumph over pure evil and to redeem the fallen.

What do we know about the jedi from the OT?

• Guardians of Peace and Justice for a hecka long time.
• Betrayed and Murdered by Darth Vader.
• They begin training younger than their early 20s, apparently by Yoda or perhaps other Masters.
• Anakin fell because he was angry and impatient. It is possible he was trained poorly and began too old.

 

If the Jedi can just as easily be good or bad, then they aren't Guardians of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy. They're just a bunch of people with superpowers.

 I guess that brings back the discussion of "Dark Jedi/Sith."  Taking what you say above, I can say, "Yes.  The Jedi were all good and none were servants of the Dark Side.  Likewise, the Sith were all bad and none were Guardians of Peace and Justice."  I'll repeat that I'm not terribly interested in using the term Sith as an all purpose "Dark Jedi."  Maybe "Fallen Jedi" is more of use since it describes them as a sub-set of the Jedi that generic statements like "The Jedi were..." may not apply to.

Good discussion.

 It is a jolly good discussion.

For the time being, I'm going to stop worrying about the level of secrecy of Anakin's fall and think more about the good/bad Jedi dynamic.

THE FORCE:

What the OT tells us
Luke's ignorance of the Force is apparently a special case, since he was raised specifically that way by craggy Uncle Owen. Han and that one dude Vader chokes on the Death Star both know about it and casually dismiss it. The Rebellion uses "May the Force Be With You." With Vader's help, the Empire hunted down and destroyed the Jedi knights.

From that the following inferences seem likely.

• The Rebels have embraced/maintained some connection with the role the Jedi Religion had in the Old Republic.
• The Empire is blatantly anti-Force
• The general public is aware to some degree of the Jedi Religion and seeingly discounts it.
• The general public is probably unaware of the Emperor's status as an evil Force-Person.
• If Vader has a 'sad devotion' implies that perception is that the Force is ineffectual. "ancient Religion" also implies it might have been a while since the Jedi Religion was seen as important to Galactic Politics.

Going from this, it doesn't seem that a large mass of Bad Jedi had any effect on the fall of the Republic, and that the Jedi themselves were either actually or percived as helpless and/or a non-factor in the brith of the Empire. Massive battles of Good and Bad Jedi-types would probably have made some impact on the galactic stage worth mentioning.

On the same note, 10,000 good Jedi being seen as the heroes of the Republic, as presented in the PT, would seem very unlikely to devolve into these attitudes in 19 years.

I always thought Bossk had really nice ones, although perhaps that thing Obi-Wan rode in ROTS had the best overall.

Johannus said:

To me, the most convincing way that has been suggested so far is to have Obi Wan train Anakin, then to have him train someone else.  Anakin slowly and secretly begins to turn to the dark side because he thinks it is necessary to 'interfer' more than the jedi allow.  Whereas, the other apprentice seems to take a more obvious slide down to the dark side.  Then there would come a point where Anakin and this apprentice fight, they would both fall somewhere.  Then by the time Obi Wan gets there all we see is one person putting on a helmet (which we recognise as Vader) but we don't know which apprentice it is.  Obi Wan would ask about his apprentice and Vader would reply that 'he is no more'.  This way we maintain the secret (to some degree), Obi Wan learns the truth, they fight, etc. 

 If this was the case, during all of ANH and most of ESB the audience would be thinking "That sure was ambiguous. I wonder if it's Anakin or the other guy." When Vader says "No, I am your father." the reaction wouldn't be shock or surpirse but more likely "Yeah... that makes sense." unless Anakin's fall is completley off camera, then they would likely think "What? That doesn't make sense! We need a second PT to explain this."

Here's the game. Find the image or article on Wookipedia that seems the most absurdly un-Star Wars.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/File:Nightsisters_NEGTF_Full.jpg

Apparently this is Darth Panda and her sexy ninja minions.

xhonzi said:

I think the delted scene about the lost 24 seems to back you up here.  Personally, I don't buy it.  How could there not be Dark Jedi?  How could there not be Dark Jedi in almost equal number to Light Jedi?  It's the line that all Jedi must walk, right?  Does the Force only speak to the pure in heart?  If so, then there is no threat of Luke becoming Vader II (or III or IV or LXI) and you need some kind of convoluted reason for why Anakin fell.

If the Jedi can just as easily be bad as good, then it makes them a big X-factor for the normal citizens of the galaxy and it just might be easier if they all went away and the proverbial baby was thrown out with the proverbial bath water.

But that's what's in the OT. Vader being seduced by the dark side was a big deal, so it must be uncommon. Perhaps the Force does only speak to the pure of heart. It seems likely. Being "Strong in the Force" isn't just a random mutation, but perhaps a special calling.

What do we know about the jedi from the OT?

• Guardians of Peace and Justice for a hecka long time.
• Betrayed and Murdered by Darth Vader.
• They begin training younger than their early 20s, apparently by Yoda or perhaps other Masters.
• Anakin fell because he was angry and impatient. It is possible he was trained poorly and began too old.

If the Jedi can just as easily be good or bad, then they aren't Guardians of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy. They're just a bunch of people with superpowers.

xhonzi said:

 

 Let me see if I can clear my end of this confusion up.

I'm proposing at the end of Episode 3 that Anakin is not Vader yet.  That Episode 3 ends with his death- therefore before his rebirth as Vader.  So- Obi-Wan does not know that Anakin is Vader because it hasn't even happened yet.  Somepoint in time before A New Hope, he figures this out.  However, he starts the lie right away that someone else killed Anakin to protect the good memory of Anakin.  If people know someone good (Obi-Wan) killed Anakin, that reveals that Anakin was bad.  If Obi-Wan says someone bad killed Anakin (Vader or Notvader (Frink's Dad)) then that perpetuates the myth that Anakin died a good Jedi.

Any better?

 So we never see Vader in this scenario? Hmmm... could work, although we Obi-Wan still has to know Anakin=Vader.

"We last we met I was but a learner now-"

"What? We've never met!"

double post

but let me take this oppurtunity to say I'm glad people are playing here again.

xhonzi said:

 Maybe I need to give up my vision of full on Jedi vs Dark Jedi battle. 

 The way I see it, Vader is special. He betrayed and murdered the Jedi. If he's one of a giant army of Dark Jedi, he beceomes significantly less special.

I also don't see in the OT any sense that the struggle of the past was bad Jedi vs good Jedi. The Jedi were guardians of peace until the dark times... until the Empire, not "until a bunch of Jedi either turned bad, or another competing force of bad Jedi had war with us."

xhonzi said:

As long as he knows that Anakin had turned bad and that he's trying to protect his memory, why would Obi-Wan have to know Vader's actual identity?

Perhaps I'm confused.

In ROTJ Obi knows Anakin=Vader.

If Obi knows Anakin turned bad, he's still lying to Luke in ANH. Why replace the currently understood lie lie (Anakin=Vader) with another plot twist that ammounts to the same thing (Anakin=killed by someone who was Vader=but was still bad anyway)

adywan said:

TheBoost said:

I'm looking for higher quality versions of these images for a DVD cover set I'm starting to work on. Anyone know of a site?

I love that Hoth pic... had it on my wall as a kid, torn out of a magazine. Thanks all.

try these

 I missed this post a while back. THANKS! You are the man.

There is only one spacecraft that we have a perfect scale refrence for, and can us it to calculate the size of many other ships, including Star Destroyers, X-Wings, and the Death Star.

A Star Tours shuttle.

Bingowings said:

I wouldn't want that or imagine it possible with the existing footage but it might be possible to add some almost subliminal images of their ghosts trying to shield Luke.

 Sorry for the late response.

I don't care for this idea on a storytelling level. Force-ghost physiology aside, the pivotal idea here is that Luke is now an adult and on his own. He's lost his mentors and has to step up.

Yoda and Obi showing up to help him diminishes Luke and the dramatic purpose of the climax.

Johannus said:

 

We know that at some point there has to be a showdown between Obi Wan and Anakin, which Obi Wan wins.  However, do people see that as Anakin who we all know is Anakin (pre Vader armour) or Anakin who is hidden beneath the helmet? 

I've always imagined it as Obi Wan fighting Anakin in the Vader armour. 

TheBoost - I like the idea of a group of jedi following Anakin (though I don't think it should be many because I don't think there should be too many jedi crowded together - perhaps 4), but I dont think I would necessarily make them have red lightsabers, I would say perhaps only Anakin should, but I am admittedly undecided about this.  But rather than having them killed by an explosion, I think Anakin should be ordered to kill them all, this way the idea that Darth Vader hunted the jedi to extinction has even more validity. 

 My idea has been that "The Duel" would be between Obi-Wan and Anakin in white Vader armor (more in line with the Stormtroopers he commands) sans helmet. When Anakin throws his lot in with Palpy, he drops the Jedi robes for blatantly aggressive white armor. Even if it's black, i don't think he should rock the helmet until medically required to do so.

Really, the size of Anakin's bad-Jedi contingent is based on thte total number of Jedi we want in the film. My idea is that there shouldn't be more than maybe 100 Jedi. Being a Jedi is like being a Knight of the Round Table, and a big deal. If, in the first round of murders Anakin and his crew whittle the number to maybe 20, minus the ammount who've gone bad, I could see a final battle of Anakin, maybe 4-6 fellow bad-Jedi, and a contingent of Stormtroopers going against Obi-Wan and a 10 or so remaining Jedi.

During this battle the remaing Jedi are slain, and Anakin's crew could be winnowed down to 2-3. Possibly this battle directly leads to Anakin vs. Obi 1on1 and Anakin taking his lava bath. That way, when Anakin kills his own followers, he does so as full-on Darth Vader.

Anakin killing his own Legion wuld be cool, but ideally in a shady way, just so Ep. 3 isn't too heavy in "Anakin killing everyone' lightsaber fights. Perhaps in a echoing of Anakin killing the kids in the actual PT, Anakin could have his men in a 'victory celebration' and while they're partying lock the doors, ignite his saber, and we cut away.

As for saber color, I like red for the entire legion for the following reasons. I really like the suggestion that all NPT lightsabers are blue, adding a level of symbolism to Luke's green one in ROTJ. If the Legion are all followers, toadies of Anakin's boldness and defiance, red-sabers show they're all copying him as well as making battles a tad easier to follow.

A scene in my outline has Obi-Wan confronting his best pal Anakin, who is now head of Palpy's secret police, and abuot 3/4 to the Dark Side. (another layer is that everyone calls Anakin "Skywalker" and later "Lord Skywalker" when Palpatine promotes him, except Obi and NotPadme. This scene would have Obi-Wan change mode of address, underlying the distance between the two men).

• OBI-WAN: You can't serve two masters Anakin.
• Anakin removes his lightsaber, and presents it to Obi-Wan.
• ANAKIN: Take this. It no longer has any meaning to me.
• OBI-WAN: Very well, Lord Skywalker.

After that scene, Anakin would begin to wield his redsaber, a sign of his no longer seving as a Jedi. In my outline, it's one of my favorite bits, and is echoed in Anakin's final scene with NotPadme, where he challenges her to chose between her duty as the betrothed of Bail Organa, and her passion for him, and she returns to him some token of their love, cementing that she's going to marry Bail.

If Anakin is one of many Darth Vader's, isn't this a plot point that should be explianed at some point? And isn't his accepting this identity, as well as the history of this identity, the sort of thing that the OT should have dealt with? Perhaps Palpy could have offered for Luke to become the new Vader?

This is a dramatic and total reinterpretation of the character. Darth Vader isn't one dude... he's like the Phantom. Anakin didn't become Vader, he took someone elses mantel. If the goal of the NPT is to write a series more in line with the OT, I think that would be a step in the wrong direction. In this case, I think the reaction to "I am your father" would not be shock, but confusion.

On the otherhand, the lie starting immediately has a lot of potential. Obi-Wan, who has to know Vader's actual identity, lying to the people around him immediatly (specifically NotPadme) to spare their feelings is an interesting note to his character, withoutreworking our understanding of him in the OT.

And that photo is badass. What is it from?

Also, if there are so many fallen Jedi around, how come they seem to have so little bearing on the OT? And if Obi's apprentices keep going bad, why doesn't he stop training people!?!?

My proposal is that when Anakin goes bad (still Anakin), he leads a contigent of red-sabered former-Jedi as the bodyguards of Emperor/President Palpatine. Yong bold Jedi have always looked up to him because he's badass, and his defection to Palpatine's party leads to a mass exodus from the Jedi Knights. It's not a club of evil like the Sith, but a political schism in the Jedi.

It is this group (The Legion of Lettow) that help wipe out the Jedi. But at some point Anakin/Vader or Palpatine realize that a group of superpowered asskickers with no moral code is not a good thing to have in a new government, and assassinates them all via a bomb in their shuttle.  (Inspired by the Nazi's Night of Long Knives).

This schism lets us have large scale lightsaber battles, whille not having to create some kind of 'Evil' club or having apprentices go bad left and right.

xhonzi said:

TheBoost said:

 

My first objection to secrecy is I have not heard nor can I imagine any ending to Episode III wherein the main character's horriffic climactic fate is left unseen/ambiguous/confusing enough that secrecy could be maintained in any enoyable way.

 

Good to know.  So if we could find the right way to do it, you wouldn't be opposed?

 Despite my... philisophical objections to maintaining secrecy, for the purposes of playing I'm not going to discount the idea out of hand.

BUT... we're talking the major character point for the primary protaganist of the entire PT. Imagine "Citizen Kane" where the meaning of "Rosebud" wasn't explianed, or "Gone With the Wind" where we don't know how Rhett feels about Scarlett at the ending. The both become lots of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I've heard the ideas of multiple 'Darth Vaders' and having an extra bad apprentice in the background to confuse the viewer, ambiguous lines of dialong with double meaning, or having Anakin vanish and Vader show up with no explaination, all seem extremely unsatisfying.

NotPadme not giving birth on screen is easy. Hiding the fate of the twins is a piece of cake.

Somehow not revealing the climax of the main character's arc, as well as what should be the emotional and action climax of the entire trilogy sounds impossible.

C3PX said:

 I guess those vimpire romance/porn novels (Twilight and its hoards of clones) are a pretty big thing these days,

 I was at a Border's the other day, and they have a whole section. Not a section of 'sci fi' or 'fantasy' or 'romance' but an entire block of the store, four entire shelving units, two DVD displays and a banner all for 'young girl and vampire romances'.

I almost poured my hot chai tea into my eyes to try and make myself unsee it.

AxiaEuxine said:

I dont think it had a midriff. But the out fit you are talking about was part of her zero-g suit when they went after Bane on board the separatist ship. I perfered the new look myself. More jedi like than what she usually wears

 I agree it looked better.

If you can see a girls belly, does the shirt have a midriff, or lack a midriff?