xhonzi said:
What, no one wants to discuss my wild and baseless accusations? No one wants to disagree with me? Surely, VINH will come and tell me I'm wrong?
Why would I get worked up about it? You're just considering alternative ways of doing the prequels.
Saw most of the two eps on youtube. Not bad for a light cartoon series, but it's still not Star Wars, nor will ever be. This stuff is very much founded on the pseudo-Star-Wars the prequels gave us. And even if the show's Anakin is a bit more masculine and less whiny, he's still a distinctly limited sort of guy, in a way the OT's Luke wasn't, nor ROTJ's Anakin. In other words, he still doesn't fit as Anakin and, like the PT Anakins, probably does not match Lucas's making-of-OOT era envisioning of the character. Ashoka remains the best thing on the show. Why the fuck is this guy called CAD Bane? If they were looking for British derogatory slang like "cad", why didn't they just call him Bounder Bane and be done with it? Then they'd have alliteration and all. Or if they wanted a bit ruder they could call him Tosser Bane. Cad Bane? Sounds pretty funny. But then Han Solo went around space with a robot called bollocks.
It strikes me as rather more relevant than Asimov's robot laws.
doubleofive said:
C3PX said:
From what I read while trying to look into this, Kenner was in charge of naming many of the background characters that got figures, so if that is the case, and the names came from them and not anywhere else, then I concede that the original names they gave them were initially correct and the change may have been made retroactively.
That would change everything! If the script and novelization call the humanoid "Tuckuss" and the toys call him "4-LOM" and the droid "Zuckuss" and Kenner came up with the name "Zuckuss" than TUCKUSS is the canon name and Kenner messed it up by calling him "4-LOM"!
The script and novelization call "Tuckuss"/Zuckuss a human type and no way is that bug-faced alien a human type by any stretch of the imagination, so it's a good bet the that alien was NOT in mind when those things were written. Obviously the name started with a human type and both droids and bug-faced aliens are pretty different from humans. So I don't think it can be concluded that the script called THAT character "Tuckuss". The script called A character that, and the novel followed on by calling a character "Zuckuss". I suspect the fact that it's in the novel means the Zuckuss name wasn't invented by Kenner. But the novel and script's version doesn't favor either the bug-alien option or the droid option, because "human-type" is way different from either.
doubleofive said:
I did some research (I searched the Googles), and there was no front of card with Zuckuss or 4-LOM listed. One of "IG-88 and Boba Fett", but the other card is just the line up of bounty hunters. I couldn't find the back of the card though to see if it ran down the list on there. Anyone have the cards handy?
So maybe the question is whether the card back listed the names and applied them in the same arrangement that was embraced 1989 onwards.
Well, apart from "Zuckass" being mentioned in the Marvel comic when a character looking like the droid is (barely) shown and the story acts as if IG88 is the only droid on the scene.
That's not the issue. The issue is what was in print back around the time of the movies. C3PX has said the vintage trading cards have 4-Lom as the droid and Zuckuss as the alien. I want to know how certain he is of that, like does he have a card he can look at to confirm it, because memory can be a tricky thing.
Yes Kenner probably made a mistake, but I'm concerned here solely with what ended up in print in that period, not why it ended up in print, mistakes or otherwise.
Are you sure?
In the comics they drew the droid and called him "Zuckass" but acted like IG88 was the only droid on the scene. I don't have a clue what the cards said.
The names may have been mixed up by Kenner, but it's what was published at the time that counts, not whatever Lucasfilm intended that didn't get published back then. Trading cards having the other order of names would count, though.
As far as I'm concerned Zuckuss is the droid, because that's what we were told back in the old days when Star Wars was for real. Zuckuss was the name for him in published sources as of the classic movie era, and 4-Lom for the other guy, so that's what goes. I bought a Zuckuss figure in 1982 and he was droid.
Was that the thing in which he says Jar Jar is the key to the whole film?
Bingowings said:
Vaderisnothayden we will have to agree to disagree, I've seen the series bible for Crusade I know what direction they were going in and it was much more interesting than B5's first season and TNT screwed it up. The evidence is not only in dated documentation but also on screen.
B5's first season only really hints at where it is going to go at the end, up until then it's largely a series of not very connected episodic adventures. The worst episode is definately "Grey 17 Is Missing" but that a blip in a strong season of tightly knitted episodes, there are plenty of clunkers in Season One of which most of the episodes of Crusade stand well above despite the studio interference.
I'd much rather watch "The Path Of Sorrows" or "The Needs Of Earth" than "Infection" or "The War Prayer".
I would put B5's season 1 episodes well above Crusade's. The station in season 1 was a well-realized setting, well brought to life, interesting stuff. There were multiple interesting episodes. Crusade was just one weak episode after another.
As for Crusade having a planned interesting direction in the bible, such a direction would not make up for the faults. An interesting overall story would not fix the fact that the way they were bringing their story to the screen in each individual episode was screwed up and low-grade. There simply was no fire of inspiration in the way it was done. And an inspired overall story would not mean an inspired way of portraying that story, and that's what Crusade was lacking. The show lacked feeling or conviction and lacked some other important things too. Every individual episode had the feeling of something perfunctory and unenthusiastically made. The only good thing about Crusade was the cast. Other than that, it had nothing going for it.
Legend of the Rangers and the recent stuff (I forget what it was called) being awful was not an abberation. The spinoff quality has been universally bad since after the B5 show ended. I think every franchise eventually reaches a point when it is loses it. That happened to Star Wars and it happened to B5 after the main show ended. I don't think they should have tried to continue the franchise past the main show, just as I don't think the SE or PT should have been made. Creators should know when to end a story, but people like making money and many fans want their stories to go on for ever. Personally, I prefer a story to end when it's still good. Like Frank Herbert should have kept Dune to one book and not have gotten into worm rulers and endless fucking clones.
Bingowings said:
The pod racer guys were the worst for cartoon crapness. The little guy with the body shaped like an ear of corn just makes me want to explode, what on Earth was he thinking when he put those scenes together?
This guy? http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ben_Quadinaros
Terrible. But the announcer, the sports commentator, was even worse.
Akwat Kbrana said:
Probably, "I have a great idea, guys! We've already made a frog-creature and a giraffe-creature, so I really feel that we've explored the animal kingdom. But get this: what if we had a vegetable-creature? Maybe one the looks kinda like an ear of corn. Whaddya think?"
Yes-men proceed to assure frantically that the idea is genius and doesn't suck at all. Then the idea gets sent down to the animators, and bob's your uncle.
I remember seeing this thing where Lucas is with Spielberg and he's talking about the droid troopers and he's basically saying they'll suck and be useless in a fight so the jedi cut them down easily. And he says it'll be great. Huh?
Greedo may have loosely been a bounty hunter, but he wasn't a Bounty Hunter the way the ESB guys were. He clearly didn't have their status. He seemed to function primarily as Jabba's thug.
Bingowings said:
I'm sorry but it's a very valid observation that's held up by the evidence.
The planned episodes of Crusade followed a very different path to the one it was forced into and Threshold was actually rather fun (no classic but it was beginning to go places especially with the built in direction changes).
Some of the best shows on television show very little clue to their potential in the first season.
B5 was justifiably likened to a poor man's Star Trek going from season one (which had some of the weakest stories) something it found hard to shake off when it went to more interesting and epic places.
NuGalactica's mini-series showed none of the moreish wonder it would later show as a series.
Buffy was fun from the start but if you went by the first season alone you have no idea how great and daring it would get later.
I disagree. B5 was recognizably very good from the first season, as was Buffy. The Battlestar Galactica mini series was a fair guide to what the show was going to be like. So I think the first seasons of Threshold and Crusade are indeed a good guide to what they could have become. And leaving aside the question of what they could have become, we have the question of what they WERE, which can be judged from looking at we what we've got.
Obviously you found Threshold fun. I found it dull and uninspired. As for Crusade, the objections I have to it are unaffected by episode order. The whole nature of that show was massively uninspired. The excuse about it being screwed around by the network is constantly brought up, which ignores the fact that its problems go far deeper than that. It was just poorly done, in multiple ways. Were it merely screwed around by the network, there would be some hint of greater quality, but there was no such thing, no hint that this was something that could be good that was just screwed up by interference. It was just low level all around.
C3PX said:
Just out of curiousity, what are some examples of how Firefly doesn't connect properly?
It's not the sort of thing you can give examples for. It's a general thing that affects the entire show. It lacks depth of emotional connection. And viewing the episodes in the proper order doesn't help that. It's down to the basic mentality and tone of the show. And it just did not connect you with the characters with any strength of feeling.
I've heard the it-was-screwed-around-by-the-network argument for Crusade before. It doesn't hold water. It wasn't a lack of a coherent ongoing story that was the problem with it. The problem was in the individual episodes and the way they were made. Similarly, being seen in order doesn't improve Firefly -it still doesn't connect properly. There was something very dumb and shoddy about Crusade, like an effort was not being made. No way was any of it better than B5. B5 had feeling. Crusade was limp and by-the-numbers.
Threshold was mediocre at best. Worst use of Brent Spiner ever. The rival show Invasion was much better.
.
RoccondilRinon said:
Somehow, all the menace is removed from Palpatine's character once you start referring to him as "Sid".
lol
Crusade was really badly done. All the post-Babylon 5 stuff has been terrible. Crusade had a good cast, but that was all it had.
The sequel trilogy ceased being seriously planned back in the early 80s. The live action show was planned back around 2005 and they're going ahead with it, so I don't see why they wouldn't be keeping to their plans for it.
Well, they totally screwed up on making Jar Jar believable. The Jar Jar is the key thing is revealing, because Jar Jar is the key to understanding TPM's mentality. TPM lacks conviction in its own imagined world and doesn't try to make things believable. Jar Jar and the other cartoon characters (most notably Boss Nass) are the most obvious manifestation of this unreal mentality. The prequels in general don't feel real and also tend towards artificiality and lack of sincerity. TPM is where it starts, not as bad as in the later two but very much a problem.
There's no reason why something that was planned in 2005 wouldn't still be planned now.
There isn't any bloody "saga". There's just the Star Wars trilogy and there's the bunch of ripoffs called the prequels.
SilverWook said:
I've long forgotten the source, but circa 1980 Boba's outfit was referred to as "old shocktrooper armor" and I probably wasn't the only fan who decided that this was something worn during the Clone Wars.
Isn't there an early costume test photo where Boba's armor is pristine and white?
One of the early fake trailers for Episode II had a shot of a whole squad of guys in Fett armor. The maker must have remembered the same stuff I read.
The ESB novelization said Fett's armor was from a group of evil warriors defeated by the jedi during the clone wars. The ESB sketchbook said that the armor was originally intended to be worn by Mandalorian supercommandos but that they changed it to be for Boba Fett. Changing it involved aging and denting it.