Vaderisnothayden

C3PX said:

TheBoost said:

C3PX said:

Why does it matter if it is considered canon or not? If you enjoyed it, then it wasn't a waste of time and brain space.

Sometimes I think some of you guys forget that NONE of this stuff EVER happened. It is all made up anyway. What difference does it make if Lucas' lackeys tell you it did or didn't happen? All that matters is what you enjoy it.

I do find the idea that if something is 'real' has some bearing on its quality to be confusing.

Then perhaps you misunderstood the point of my post? Or perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say now? Either way, I will try to clarify.

I was merely stating that this whole "canon" business is more than just a little bit silly, considering it is all just a bunch of made up stories anyway. I think it makes more sense to enjoy what you enjoy, and don't give a bother about the rest or what other people, whether they be fellow fans or GL himself, have to say about the matter.

This was in response to the previous poster bemoaning the fact that they wasted "time" and "brain space" reading all this EU, only to later be told that it never really took place in this fictional universe.

I guess I just really have a hard time seeing the significance of whether or not a fictional story is considered "canon" of a fictional universe or not. Though Zombie made a good point about it making it hard to suspend disbelieve with things like Boba Fett's backstory and other aspects of the galaxy constantly changing; for some reason I just really have a hard time caring about it at all. All that matters to me is my own enjoyment of the book I am reading.

Well, you and TheBoost are of a like mind in this, but not everybody is. To many people, if something is in some way less "real" then suspension of disbelief is harder and the emotional conent is dulled because you feel it's not "really happening" in the fictional universe. Of course none of it really happens anywhere, but enjoying fiction depends on pretending it does, to an extent. And we can do that a lot less if we are aware something is just an imitation or counterfeit. For some people it's enough if Lucasfilm  guves something the rubber stamp and says it happens. For these people that is enough to assure these people that it "happens" in the Star wars universe. Others require a more real innate inherent sort of realness in the nature of the thing itself. Which is where I stand.

TheBoost said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

It's self-evident that the eu isn't the real Star Wars and thus shouldn't be considered canon. Sure, some guys at Lucasfilm will tell you certain EU things are canon, but that's just for internal consistency of EU products and for selling stuff.

They wont tell you anything. You need to log onto their forums and ask.

The liscening department at Lucasfilm only has authority if fans give it to them, and the fact we're having this discussion about 'canon' shows we take these glorified bloggers far too seriously.

Let creators create (Lucas, Zahn, Stover, Tarkovsky) and let liscencing departments liscence.

The point is a lot of fans believe in the authority of Lucas Licensing as regards canon and as long as that is the case we are constantly confronted with situations in which the making of some point requires us to detour into arguing that this stuff is not canon. The existence of the myth that this stuff is canon is an oppression. And not just because we have argue with people who believe in it, but because it is an oppression to have an offensive lie shouting us all over the place when we're reading about Star Wars. The canonical version of ROTJ's ending has Hayden as the ghost they say. Like hell it is. And that untruth, expressed with such confidence, bothers me, particularly as I know it has many fanatical followers who would like lecture me on how Anakin's ghost is not Sebastian Shaw if I dared mention how I liked how Luke saw the old guy at the end. 

I loved the old Marvel comics, and if they are not 'real canon' according to some glorified blogger Lucasfilm hired to manage their websites and lisecning, that doesn't effect me in the slightest. If "Crimson Jack" gets a mention in the next illustrated Star Wars encyclopedia or not doesn't imporve the stories or detract from them.

Well, the Marvel comics have a different sort of realness. The films are the real thing and merchandising is not, but amongst merchandising EU things, some have the special status of being true relics of the era in which the films were current. They are often marked by being more true to the spirit of Star Wars (even when doing weird silly stories) than more recent stuff is. Star Wars, the OOT, the real Star Wars, is very much a thing of its time and that is its spinoff material from that time. In that sense, the Marvel comics are more real Star Wars than the 90s EU or later stuff.

TheBoost said:

C3PX said:

Why does it matter if it is considered canon or not? If you enjoyed it, then it wasn't a waste of time and brain space.

Sometimes I think some of you guys forget that NONE of this stuff EVER happened. It is all made up anyway. What difference does it make if Lucas' lackeys tell you it did or didn't happen? All that matters is what you enjoy it.

I do find the idea that if something is 'real' has some bearing on its quality to be confusing.

I loved the old Marvel comics, and if they are not 'real canon' according to some glorified blogger Lucasfilm hired to manage their websites and lisecning, that doesn't effect me in the slightest. If "Crimson Jack" gets a mention in the next illustrated Star Wars encyclopedia or not doesn't imporve the stories or detract from them.

I liked "Shadows of the Empire" which I am lead to understand is somehow higher on the canon-train than most of the EU, but that has no influence on me liking it or not.

If George Lucas himself came to me and told me that the "BattleMed: Space Medics" novels from the Clone Wars series were real Star Wars, and intrinsic to his saga, I still wouldn't bother to read them.

That the EU is inconsistent, and contains various levels of canon that may or may not be real Star Wars seems inconsequential to me. That most of the EU is extremely boring, derivitive and just plain not fun is the real reason not to like it.

 

 "I do find the idea that if something is 'real' has some bearing on its quality to be confusing."

It's not a quality issue. It's relevance issue. That something has a certain genuineness or realness makes it more relevant. You can believe in its fictional existance more, whereas the spinoff material seems to be just the imitation Star Wars, not something that "really happened" in that fictional universe. It's a suspension of disbelief issue. The Star Wars fiction that is outside the original films (or outside all the films and the tv shows from 2008 on, if you take the Lucas view) is more real than the fiction that is put out just as merchandising or as otherwise subordinate material (like spinoff material such as the Ewok movies). Suspension of disbelief goes farther with stuff that is the real thing. When you read a Zahn Thrawn trilogy novel that's not the real characters. You want to see the real characters. You are aware that what you hold in your hands is an imitation and not the real thing. That has an effect on how you feel about the story. (Maybe not you personally, but certainly a lot of people.) As such, how much a work is or is not real Star Wars has a significant bearing on how you feel about it.   

If George Lucas himself came to me and told me that the "BattleMed: Space Medics" novels from the Clone Wars series were real Star Wars, and intrinsic to his saga, I still wouldn't bother to read them.

If Lucas said that he'd be talking bull. Though I might be curious to see what he was calling canon. However, if I thought they could somehow be real Star wars I might have to read them. But what's real star Wars is not defined by Lucas or his flunkies. It's defined by the nature of the thing itself and is there for us to see.

I loved the old Marvel comics, and if they are not 'real canon' according to some glorified blogger Lucasfilm hired to manage their websites and lisecning, that doesn't effect me in the slightest. If "Crimson Jack" gets a mention in the next illustrated Star Wars encyclopedia or not doesn't imporve the stories or detract from them.

Well, it's nice to know the old stories are getting some attention in the new material.

TheBoost said:

thecolorsblend said:

Why is this even an issue?  Because LFL and some of the subsidiaries thereof insist that we fans regard these (largely inferior) offerings as being the prior/ongoing adventures of the movie characters.

The idea of canon only exists to please a certain sort of fan. Lucasfilm would make just as much money off the franchise if they discounted the idea entirely, like Star Trek does.

Look at any other fictional universe that's in the hands of multiple creators, from the Marvel Universe to Zorro. It's totally natural there will be inconsistencies, changes, retcons, and widely varying quality. We're talking about a fictional universe that spreads across hundreds of hours of film, hundreds of thousands of pages of books and comics, and even wierder supplementary materials.

In the early 80s "Superman: The Man of Steel" was a comic that reworked Superman's origin (at the time I didn't know that. I was 7). It was my favorite comic. I understand that a new Superman origin series was published in the early 2000s (Birthright), and "Man of Steel" doesn't "count" anymore. All I can do is shrug my shoulders and re-read a 25 year old comicbook that I like. 

With all these Star Wars writiers fighting for scraps from Lucas's table, the 'canon' idea that somehow gives equal weight to blurbs on a Star Wars CCG card, RPG supplements, and well-written epic novels is bound to have flaws, massive ones, but to the degree canon policies work, (which I don't persoanlyl care for), I respect it, because it's trying to please the fans (who of course, are never pleased).  It has no other purpose.

 

That calling stuff non-canon has succeeded monetarily for the Trek franchise doesn't mean it would work for Star Wars, nor does it mean Lucasfilm believes it would work for Star Wars. And do we really have figures demonstrating that the Trek franchise's merchandise fiction sells as well the Star wars stuff? There is certainly no proof that people at Lucasfilm believe that the merchandise would sell as well if it were not called canon, so there is no proof that sales is not a factor in calling stuff canon. You can feel free to "respect" their canon bullshit all you like, but don't expect me to respect it, because it's a big lie that tells us a whole lot of works are more important and relevant than they actually are. And I don't tend to respect bullshit as a rule.

Canon policies also exist to satisfy those making them. They can be used to include some story a "creator" wants to include, whether it deserves to be included or not (eg. the recent Buffy comics). They can  be used to exclude stories a creator doesn't want to include (eg. Gene Roddenbery excluding numerous Star Trek things). I think a factor in the existence of a canon policy for Star Wars is that some people in Lucasfilm wanted one to satisfy their own fannish feelings and they convinced Lucas that it would benfit the franchise. It's not all done for you and me. 

Another reason for a canon policy is just to keep continuity straight for one fictional universe. Which is an in-house thing done to keep the fiction working with some consistency. This is why there's all this Star Wars canon policy stuff that we're not told. Because it's not all done for us. It's done to help the writers keep the story straight.

Asha said:

Yeah, at least half of the EU makes for pretty bad fiction (Palpatine clones etc.).

The thing that pisses me off is that a huge chunk of the EU that I followed from the 70s up until the prequels was rendered non-canon. So following it was a big, fat waste of time and brain space. 

Right from the start, Splinter of the Mind's Eye was a moot point the moment ESB came out. Same goes for the Marvel comics.

Jaster Mereel was no longer Boba Fett. Owen Lars was no longer Ben's brother.

Really, who in his/her right mind would pay any attention to the EU after getting burned for over 20 years?

I like some of the Clone Wars stuff (particularly Ventress and the original cartoon), but when I'm in the mood for new science fiction or fantasy, the EU is the last place I'd look.

Actually, a lot of the Marvel stuff seems to be considered canon to some extent now. And I think Splinter is considered canon too, even though that makes no sense, because no way did Vader fight Luke before ESB. But the whole question of what EU is canon is pointless, because the EU is just merchandising and it makes no sense for any of it to be considered canon.

Lucas himself doesn't seem to consider the EU canon and on that one thing I agree with him. It's self-evident that the eu isn't the real Star Wars and thus shouldn't be considered canon. Sure, some guys at Lucasfilm will tell you certain EU things are canon, but that's just for internal consistency of EU products and for selling stuff. It isn't some great significant truth. And they seem to change what they consider canon. So their canon doesn't have a lot of validity. What's in it and what's not in it doesn't count for a lot.

Sure, it can still sting a bit to find that the favorite eu stories you knew as a kid are not taken seriously nowadays as much as some Zahn book is, but a lot of that old stuff is taken seriously to one extent or another anyway. The Chronology book they put out in, I think, 2005 references a good dose of Marvel stuff. The rule is when some Marvel stuff is referenced by modern canonical items that Marvel story becomes canon as they count it. Various Marvel stories are referenced elsewhere in "canon" too. Once the Marvel stories came back into print in tpbs in the 2000s they started taking them more seriously and referencing them in more works. Splinter seems to still be counted as canon, even if that makes no sense.

Personally I never considered Splinter as any sort of canon, not back in the early 80s, not now. And while I got a great kick out of the Marvel stories as a kid, I knew back then that they weren't real Star Wars and didn't really happen in the Star Wars universe. When the Zahn trilogy came out I got the message that they were instead of the sequel trilogy Lucas wasn't making, so it seemed like they being pushed as canon, but I knew they still weren't the real thing. In fact, Lucasfilm in the 90s only considered the films, novelizations, screenplays and radio dramas to be canon, but the Zahn trilogy was taken more seriously than earlier EU and it was with the Zahn trilogy that they started paying attention to eu continuity and coordinating it.

Nowadays there's a guy called Leland Chee who decides what's canon and what's not and he runs a database called the Holocron, for Star Wars canon. But as far as Lucas is concerned, the films and the eu exist in two different universes. He's said clearly that Luke doesn't get married and the emperor doesn't get cloned -denials of two core EU things. To Lucas, the eu isn't real. Sometimes he likes something in the EU and borrows it to stick it in his work (like Aayla Securua or Quinlan Vos), but he's not bound by it and his new tv series has caused continuity troubles in the eu by running counter to eu continuity, as did the prequels. Lucas will surely continue to merrily ride roughshod over the eu, because he knows it isn't the real thing.

Asha said:

... but the SUCK TO ENJOYABLE ratio within the EU gives SUCK the advantage.

At least two decades of EU works were packaged with an implicit promise that they were pieces of a larger story/work of fiction.

There was no such promise. Back before the 90s they didn't even bother to try to coordinate eu continuity between different works and that shows they weren't taking the stuff seriously as one unified fictional universe. It was just a lot of stories and continuity and canon weren't considered or important.

C3PX said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

skyjedi2005 said:

dark angels second season was garbage

Dark Angel's second season was considerably better than season 1.

Season one was pretty worthless, but at least somewhat interesting; I liked the setting and plot, and Jessica Alba was kind of fun to look at regardless of the fact that she couldn't act. Season two was just a ridiculous waste of time. Genetically enhanced escaped children is one thing, but streets filled with retarded looking animal people was just plain lame... not to mention the introduction of a character so pointless and obnoxious that he actually rivals Jar Jar Binks.

 

Hehe, thought it was kind of funny Dances with Wolves got mentioned in this thread; with South Park's Avatar parody being titled Dances with Smurfs.

 Season 2 was a considerable improvement, with better characters and better story.

Your Shadows of Empire and Thrawn trilogy are inferior to the Marvel comics, which were far truer to the spirit of Star wars (despite some odd stuff) than the later stuff ever was.

So shouldn't people here try to prove on wikipedia that the entry should be kept on the site and that the topic is "notable" enough to qualify for that? They're demanding proof that this site had the petition with all that number of signatures. Is there some page that the article can be linked to to prove that? It might be worth pointing out how the GOUT matches the petition's idea of a two-disk edition including the original film and the SE, which suggests that the GOUT was in response to the petition. If this site can be said to have gotten the GOUT made then that's an argument in favor of the notability of the site as a wiki topic.

Isn't Ric Olie a character? Acted by an actor? He's not real, right? So the poster here can't be Ric Olie. Maybe he's the actor, Ralph Brown? ;)

Most of the ones written by Frank Herbert himself weren't much use either. There's really one classic Dune novel and it's best taken as a standalone.

Hey dude, leave my posts alone. Go fix somebody else's posts, you you... PILOT you.

skyjedi2005 said:

dark angels second season was garbage

Dark Angel's second season was considerably better than season 1. Titanic was a load of bullshit. No thank you to Avatar. I'm not going to see it. I have no interest in 3d. I want to watch films, ordinary films, not weird 3d oddness. I think 3d is just a big new fad to rake in the cash. We keep hearing about Star Wars on 3d. Why the hell is Lucas planning to WASTE cash on putting Star Wars on 3d when the original legendary films are not being restored? Ok, we know why, but still, it's a ludicrous injustice. I couldn't give a fuck about Star wars on 3d. I won't go see it. Sorry, Georgie, you won't get my cash that way. And mister Cameron won't get my cash either. How about filmmakers put more effort into making good films instead of wasting their time with fancy gimmicks? I guess the fancy gimmicks are easier.

I saw a trailer for the GI Joe movie recently and I think I can see why Gaffer thought it was terrible. Why couldn't they have put in some effort and made a decent movie? Because that wouldn't have made the bucks? Quality is not cost effective? Granted, GI Joe has never had good fiction. The classic cartoon was nightmarish and the old comics weren't impressive and I saw some recent comics recently and they weren't much use either. But the classic package art was great and so were the file cards. Makes you think something better could have been made of the franchise onscreen. But I guess nobody dreamed that anything good could have been made of GIJOE so nobody tried. But seriously, that Wayans guy a tough guy elite soldier? Who are they fooling? And the guy they have as Duke is so wrong for the role. And wtf is Sienna Miller playing The Baroness for?

Re the title question of this thread, suck is rooted in the overall foundation mentality of the prequels, how Lucas reenvisioned the story once he came back to it (or even a few years earlier -a comment from MCallum makes me think the suck goes back to at least 1990) and also the mentality with which Lucas approached making the prequels, as expressed by so much of what's in the films themselves. The prequels are screwed from the ground up. It's not just a few faults here or there, or even a lot of faults. It's an overall mentality that's not Star wars and is toxic to Star Wars. Worse in AOTC and ROTS than in TPM, but pretty bad in TPM too.

Gaffer Tape said:

Sigh.  Did George ever watch his movies when making the prequels, or was he too busy thinking, "Ooh, Jedi are kewl.  They make stuff dead and tey r invincibal!"?

 Lol!

zombie84 said:

I am pretty sure I am an article on wookieepedia. Should I be scared?

Here you  are:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Michael_Kaminski

Nothing derogatory anyway. Trying to kick the OT.com article off the site for not being notable enough strikes me as a dig at this site.

Sluggo said:

The biggest problem in the prequels is Anakin's turn to the Dark Side.  Lucas's idea that 'attachment' is the root to the dark side seems philosophically problematic.  What happened to "Anger...fear...aggression. The dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice."? 

 

Yeah, suddenly all the stuff that was supposed to be the dark side is no longer relevant and Anakin turns dark because he's in love. And since when was being attached to people an evil thing? That strikes me as a pretty disturbing attitude. I think ROTS preaches an anti-love anti-human attitude.

xhonzi said:

The Phantom Menace:

A boy born into slavery on a backwater planet meets some strangers who are actually warriors marooned on his planet after a battle in an intergalactic Space War.  The boy is intrigued by the strangers and the idea of life away slavery.  He helps them repair their damaged spacecraft so they can return to the War.  The boy leaves his life of slavery with the warriors and is introduced to the vastness of the galaxy.  He joins the War effort and is trained by the warriors.

Well...  that's maybe shorter than it needs to be, but that's the kernel of story in Phantom Menace that I do like and think could actually be quite good if executed differently than TPM.  Reminds me of the White Mountains of the Tripod Trilogy for those that have read them.

Knock out the "warriors" and make it "warrior". There was no Qui Gon in the original story. It was all Kenobi. And Anakin was probably imagined as an adult when he first met Kenobi in the version of the story Lucas had back crica 1983.

xhonzi said:

We normally blame the acting (which is bad (except for Ewan who was excellent!))

I disagree. He was ok in the first film (in which Liam Neeson was excellent), but in the second film he came off 100% false and in the third film he was just bland. His performances as Kenobi regularly get praised for the simple reason that he didn't fuck up as much as Hayden or as Padme in the later two films. But it's really not so good. He fails to make the sort of connection betwen the audience and the character that there was with the characters in the OT and in the PT Neeson managed a lot more connection and feeling than he did.

The Marvel comics are cool. There's plenty dumb stuff but overall they're more in tune with the old OT mentality than EU stuff (comics or otherwise) from more recent times are. Shira Brie is cooler than Mara Jade.

The Legacy comic is well done but it's not really very Star Wars and it's VERY comic-booky. The Knights of the Old Republic comic is good. I don't see what's wrong the sidekick character in that. It's a good-natured comic. Generally I think a lot of Dark Horses's comics have been overrated. Dark Empire was pretty mediocre and didn't capture the characters at all. Dark Empire II at least had good art. Tales of the Jedi had a good overall story idea but wasn't well done. The Republic comics, set in the PT era have some good stuff and some bad. The problem with them is they're following the movies' lead in portrayal of the jedi and then taking it even farther, so the jedi come off self-important, pious, self-righteous and false. Even Quinlan Vos does a bit. The Vos character from there caught Lucas's attention and nearly appeared in ROTS (he did get mentioned by Kenobi) and it's speculated that he's going to appear in the live action show. Lucas decreed that he shouldn't be killed off in the comic when the jedi are getting offed by the clones. Aayla Secura from that comic was put in two of the prequels and gets a death scene in ROTS.

One of the best Star Wars comics from Dark Horse was a one-shot called A Valetine story or something like that. It was in the Heart of the Rebellion tpb. It has Leia and Han on Hoth and it really captures the essence of the characters. The character portrayal is better than most comics and is animate.

The OT followed the good vs evil non-moral-relativistic approach, so it's reasonable to expect spinoff material based on it to follow that. The PT tried to be greyer, but it was still a lot more good-and-evil than it wanted to pretend. The EU tries to be greyer than either trilogy and that's definitely a mistaken direction. In Star Wars, we shouldn't have the rebels suicide-attacking civilians while the imperials are this moral bunch. That's just total bullshit. As for the argument that the greyer stuff is realistic, that misses the point that star wars is not supposed to be realistic. Trying to make it realistic is a mistake. If you want realistic gray science fiction, go watch Battlestar Galactica. Star Wars is not supposed to be Battlestar Galactica.

A while back, in answer to a question about what changes were made in the 85 mix of ANH, Moth3r posted a quote about the changes from a site. In the quote changes were listed and they included "new stereo'd effects (Jawa voices after Artoo's capture)". Now, I'd like help interpreting this. Does this mean new effects recorded in 85? Or does it mean effects newly put on stereo sound in 85, as in from the mono? Or just stereo effects that were new to the stereo mix but had been recorded back in 76/77?

(I wish I knew if that new effects was just meant to be the Jawa voices or of that was just given as an example and there were other changes. )

TheBoost said:

Thinkin' about the original "Star Wars," there's no reason to assume that there ARE any aliens in the Empire or the Rebellion. For all we know it's the Human Empire, the government for human beings, one of many governments in the galaxy far far away, and not of any particular concern to aliens, who all have their own governments with their own problems.

 

 No, that idea is thrown out by the film's opening crawl, which tells you that it's the "galactic empire", implying it runs the whole galaxy. Which doesn't imply a situation in which it's just one of many governments in the galaxy.

Sluggo said:

 

 I was going to argue this, but after racking my brain for a few minutes, I can't think of any threat to alien species at all. 

Stormtroopers killing Jawas comes to mind. It's pretty clear the imperials are going to kick around anybody who gets in their way, human or alien and since they're the "galactic empire" that runs the galaxy, that's going to include the aliens that are in the galaxy.

I refuse to believe that if Lucas was really that interested in putting in other aliens he couldn't have at least put one alien mask on somebody in the rebel briefing in ANH or on some rebel in Hoth. The total lack of aliens there, in films that had the cantina and the ugnauts, really stands out and I don't think it's just down to budget.  

xhonzi said:

It seems they could have put a few masks in the Yain briefing scene (re-use ones from the cantina) if they wanted some alien presence.

 Exactly.

It strikes me that Lucas wasn't too concerned with portraying the rebels as anything but humans. And that fits with the way they were overwhelmingly portrayed as male and white as well, in the first two films. In ROTJ, there are female rebels of significance (they're led by a woman, which is a big difference from having one female radio operator), non-white rebels (such as among the pilots) and alien rebels. It's clear the change was a change in the attitudes of the day, not a change in budget or special effects capabilities.

Gaffer Tape said:

Yeah, it seemed that George always wanted to put more and more different races in the films,

Where do you get this info from?

Wanting to put in more different races in the films doesn't necessarily mean putting in more in the rebellion. It could mean putting more in the cantina or in Bespin or on the streets of Mos Eisley.

"Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo, so long ago, when there was nothing but our love. No politics, no plotting, no war."

Let's rephrase that...

"Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo, so long ago, when we made the audience barf up their lunch."

;;;;;;;

And there's Kenobi's line about how Anakin was the Chosen one and was supposed to bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness.

Lol. Kenobi, you halfwit, you actually bought that Chosen One/balancing the force crap?

TheBoost said:

xhonzi said:

 

But it's sort of a joke.  "ONLY a Sith deals in ABSOLUTES"  Is Obi-Wan a Sith then?  (We're discussing this in the Politics thread right now!)

Let me break it down for you: If he said, "Usually, or at an overwhelming percentage, a one dealing in absolutes is a Sith, but occaisonally he is a Jedi instead." Then the line would be fine.  But since he uses the absolutist language of "Only a Sith..." he was, himself, dealing in absolutes.

 That's really taking it too literally. His statement was a direct response to Anakin's "You're with me or you're my enemy."

Also, given the context,  the question was was Anakin a Sith or a Jedi, not what was Anakin in the context of a near limitless ammount of things that may or may not deal in absolutes.

THAT was the kind of absolute he was dealing with. It's a statement about competing philosophy, not a word game like "This sentence is a lie."

No it's not taking it too literally. A statement that only Sith deal in absolutes, coming from a jedi is dumb, because it's an absolute. That's just plain obvious. Plus the jedi are very into absolutes, which makes it even dumber. The whole thing was just more of how the jedi are idiots and hypocrites in the prequels.

Akwat Kbrana said:

bkev said:

 

skyjedi2005 said:

I will start the thread off, you guys can add others if you like.

Episode III:

"only a sith deals in absolutes"- Obi wan Kenobi

I actually don't mind this line. Makes sense that in someone's anger they might only see black and white. Of course, it would have gone better in a different context.

 

But it makes absolutely no sense. As Xhonzi pointed out, the statement is philosophically self-defeating (it's like "there are no absolutes...absolutely none!"). Moreover, it's demonstrably absurd: check out the different ways Jedi and Sith philosophy is presented throughout the PT, and you'll find it's actually exactly opposite what Obi-Wan claims. The Jedi only see black and white, while the Sith are all about playing in the shadowy grey areas. Recall Palpatine's line in you will: "The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power." Sounds a lot more like moral relativism than dogmatic absolutism to me.

So, George managed to paint a perfectly clear picture of relativistic Sith and thoroughly absolutist Jedi, but then in his desire to shoehorn a Bush-bash into his last Star Wars movie, simultaneously demonstrated that he doesn't even understand the core beliefs and methods of the very characters and movements he created. Strange, innit?

 I agree.

A black teenager was murdered by a white guy after he'd seen the film. The film prompted groups of white people to attack black people. The KKK was rebuilt based on the success of the film and they used it for recruitment for much of the 20th century (I guess racists like silent film). We can see in this the dangers of absolute freedom of speech. The film was hate speech, plain and simple. It was also the most successful film of its time, which doesn't say much for people's attitudes back then. The film is a major blot on cinema history. Also worth noting is that a common form of lynching situation was when a black guy was falsely accused of raping a white woman and lynched for it. Obviously the film expressed the thinking behind this sort of lynching. The stereotype of black men raping white women appears even in Buffy, when three black men in African garb try to symbolically rape Buffy with magic (season 7 episode Get It Done).

Good post, Gaffer.

The canon of projects such as the force unleashed and clone wars are clearly higher than EU because of lucas involvement but they have not stated them as G-canon

I wonder about the Farts Unleashed. There's been all this talk of it being "canon", but when Lucas went and described what's in HIS Star Wars (basically the Lucas canon) in 2008 he sure didn't mention it. And the other canon is the Lucasfilm canon, and by that canon most SW video games are canon, not just Farts. Lucas was involved in it's making, but not all that much. There was talk of how Star wars canon was taken into consideration in its making, but that happens with star wars video games generally, so I don't see what's the big fuss. I wonder if it was all hype. How much does Lucas really take it seriously? There is a rumor that stuff from it will appear in the live action series. Maybe that would mean Lucas takes it seriously or maybe it'd just be like him appropriating Aayla secura and Quinlan Vos from the comics -that didn't mean the comics were suddenly a Lucas project.

Can somebody provide a photo of his appearance in that scene, so we can see?

Gaffer Tape said:

  I think The Outrider in Star Wars is harmless enough in theory (except that it's a SE change and therefore shouldn't have been made in the first place--I'm referring to the practice of tiny, innocuous cameos in general), but it does present a mixed message that causes scratching of heads.  It's like Lucas is saying, "Well, I don't know what this ship even is because I haven't read this book, but I'm sure if I have it wink at the camera and can get my people to add a new entry into the databank, it'll sell a few more toys."

The Outrider in ANH SE. Yeah, that really pisses me off, because I consider Shadows to be a unholy piece of jumped-up fanfiction stuffed into the Star Wars saga and Bash Fendar to be a Mary Sue and Han ripoff. I don't think EU belongs in the OT, even less than other changes (I'm even pissed off about EU stuff being put in the ROTJ radio drama, because the radio dramas and novelizations were being taken more seriously than the rest of the EU). But Lucas knows something about the Shadows story. He must have read some of it (read the comic? (Sue Rostoni said Lucas reads Star Wars comics) Or played the game?) , because he's said to have liked it. It's even been claimed by a poster here that Shadows was accepted into the Lucas canon and that putting the Outrider into the ANH SE was to cement that, though I've had no external confirmation of that. If Shadows was ever accepted into Lucas's canon, it's probably since been dropped, because when he's talked since then of what's his Star Wars he's mentioned movies and tv shows, not novels, video games and comics like made up Shadows. There was no footnote in his comments saying "oh and I also count Shadows of the Empire". But that doesn't mean he's totally forgotten it either, because apparently they put Xizor in the crowd in the podrace (I didn't spot him, but I'm told he's there -I'm glad I've never seen him) and a track from the Shadows soundtrack was included in the ROTS music.