darklordoftech

WEG was the guardian of Star Wars lore. Before the dark times. Before KJA.

Tobar said:

They’re literally the backbone of the EU. They’re the skeletal frame that the rest was built on top of.

I personally prefer WEG to the EU. The EU often did dumb and silly things, but WEG usually made sense and stayed true to the spirit of the OOT.

towne32 said:

SilverWook said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

I loathe Plagueis for his name alone. I don’t want to see stupid names like that appear in the ST, not even in passing.

Yeah, that would be like naming an inept bounty hunter Greedo. 😉

As long as they don’t name a lone bounty hunter ‘Solo’.

Or a kid destined to take to the stars “Skywalker”.

Actually? Bring on the idiotic names if you want it to feel more Star Wars-y.

The problem with “Plagueis” isn’t that it’s a descriptive name. It 's that adding “us”,“is”, or something similar to the end of a word makes it sound stupid.

joefavs said:

I’m pretty sure his species was recanonized as Muun in Tarkin.

It wasn’t.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darth_Plagueis/Canon

joefavs said:

The Plagueis truther community on Reddit is freaking the hell out over this image that showed up in a Mexican magazine purporting to be Snoke:

On the right is the Snoke image, the left is a result that comes up on the first page when you plug “Darth Plagueis” into google image search that it seems to be traced off of (the image they have of Kylo Ren is similarly traced off of a photo of a fan’s D23 costume). After all that stuff in the Andy Serkis and JJ interviews about how Snoke’s bone structure would be impossible to pull off without mocap, and how the look of the character continued to evolve into post-production, are we to believe they just lifted an existing (and rather lame) character design? It seems so obviously fake that it shouldn’t even warrant discussion, but then Collider Movie Talk claimed that they’d verified it with three different sources, and then shortly after that Disney contacted them requesting they edit the segment out of the episode. I honestly don’t even know that I’d hate it if Snoke was Plagueis in itself, because I know nothing about that character beyond his single mention in ROTS. I kind of assume he sucks because he’s from ROTS and ROTS sucks, but I have no concrete reason to be against this beyond a general desire to ignore the prequels coupled with a significant case of Sith-fatigue. In this last year of perusing TFA speculation stuff, though, I’ve found the Plagueis truthers themselves to be so insufferable that I think a major reason I’m upset about this is that I don’t want to see them validated. It’s not real, though. There’s no way.

Exactly how I feel. Conspiracy theorists are so annoying that the last thing you want is for them to be validated.

Anchorhead said:

Did this ever make its way into here?
https://youtu.be/v7BwIyNN9rs?list=PL148kCvXk8pD4i6tww4roNV1R_oAceb-5

He looks great. I really hope we get to see him as a regular person in the flow of the film, not just as some sort of seated in a temple Obi-Wan duplicate with a few Wise Old Jedi lines.

Luke Skywalker, the cocky and passionate focus of the OT, deserves more.

Are you thinking something like the Luke character from The Star Wars?

Adding all kinds of ships and squadrons beyond what’s shown and/or mentioned to the battles. We’re told that there’s 30 ships at Yavin but A-Wings, medical frigates, additional squadrons, etc. participated according to the EU.

Legends has some wierd beings in the Unknown Regions.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mnggal-Mnggal

I wonder what the prequels would have been like if Luke’s sister was a separate character from Leia as was intended in 1980. Would Naboo have been Alderaan? Who would Luke’s mother be and how long would she live?

I don’t care for Kurtz at all unless all the problems with ROTJ and the prequels were caused by low budgets and short schedules. You could make a case that McQuarrie, Marcia, Kasdan, and Kershner made Star Wars good, but Kurtz is nothing more than an incompetent producer who blames his employers for everything.

I think it’s a fun video game but that it doesn’t belong in the canon.

DuracellEnergizer said:

LuckyGungan2001 said:

Maybe I should make an Empire Strikes Back thread. People aren’t in debate about that film.

Well, Anchorhead is something of a '77 purist …

There is something special about 77 by itself. The Empire is a secular organization that reluctantly works with Vader, Vader’s parents are Mr. and Mrs. Vader and they named him Darth, the galaxy has less communication tech, the Jedi are underdogs, etc.

I think Luke, Vader, and the Emperor more than make up for Ewoks. Han was never the main character. Also, the Royal Guards are an excellent costume design.

Notice that ANH and ESB never say who Anakin’s master was. They only say that Vader was Obi-Wan’s apprentice. It would be interesting if Yoda was Anakin’s master. In fact, in the Brackett draft of ESB, the Luke/Anakin lightsaber has the coordinates to Dagobah stored on it. This makes me think that Brackett intended for Yoda to be Anakin’s master. After Obi-Wan and Anakin complete their training, Obi-Wan, arrogant in his ability to be a master, trains Vader, and the rest is history. It would also be interesting if Yoda warned Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Vader not to get involved in the Clone Wars, but they ignore Yoda’s warning.

Would the prequels have been better off if ROTJ hadn’t made Leia Luke’s sister? That way Naboo could have been Alderaan and there wouldn’t be the Leia remembering Padme issue.

SilverWook said:

They just opened a can of worms they probably didn’t intend to. 😉
The can of worms has been open since 1997.

GlastoEls said:

SilverWook said:

And there are people inside Lucasfilm who want the OOT restored and released as much as we do.

Briefest of acknowledgments on the official site today that the Special Editons are controversial!

http://www.starwars.com/news/collectibles-from-the-outer-rim-star-wars-vhs-releases?cmp=smc|274674436&linkId=18658509

I love how that article is 100% revisionism-free. I love seeing the truth of how Star Wars has been throughout history.

Is it just me or were the SEs hated far more before Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney? When Lucas owned Star Wars, everyone was saying “the evil Lucas is holding back the awesome OOT and shoving the awful SEs down our throats.” When Lucas sold to Disney, people switched to saying, “Disney wants to give us the awesome SEs but a small group of fans is trying to shove the awful OOT down our throats.”

The birth of the Jedi and Sith.

Before TPM was released, people said that it couldn’t possibly be worse than ROTJ.

• an X-Wing film
• a film showing what Palpatine was doing during ANH, with a screenplay written by James Luceno

ZkinandBonez said:

darklordoftech said:

ZkinandBonez said: The second quote is quite an interesting addition to what we've read/heard before in the movies and books (as well as the PT for that matter). It's never occurred to me before that he could have been an assassin on behalf of Palpatine before he eventually became Darth Vader and eventually performed the military "purge" that we're more familiar with. I think ROTS would have been a lot more interesting if they had gone for this story, rather than the fairly instant transformation that we did get.  Although this quote mentions Vader and "Annikin" as different people, it could still more or less be attributed to the post 1983, pre-PT canon.

Lucas actually restated the second quote to Kasdan during the writing of ROTJ:

Lucas: "Anakin Skywalker starting hanging out with the Emperor, who at this point nobody knew was that bad, because he was an elected official." 
Kasdan: "Was he a Jedi?" 
Lucas: "No, he was a politician. Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the senate and finally took over and became an imperial guy and he was really evil. But he pretended to be a really nice guy. He sucked Luke's father into the dark side." 
Kasdan: "The Force was available to anyone who could hook into it?" 
Lucas: "Yes, everybody can do it." 
Kasdan: "Not just the Jedi?"
Lucas: "It's just the Jedi who take the time to do it." 
Marquand: "They use it as a technique." 
Lucas: "Like yoga. If you want to take the time to do it, you can do it; but the ones that really want to do it are the ones who are into that kind of thing."
[...]
Lucas: "Well, anyway, Luke's father gets subverted by the Emperor. He gets a little weird at home and his wife begins to figure out that things are going wrong and she confides in Ben, who is his mentor. On his missions through the galaxies, Anakin has been going off doing his Jedi thing and a lot of Jedi have been getting killed — and it's because they turn their back on him and he cuts them down. The president is turning into an Emperor and Luke's mother suspects that something has happened to her husband. She is pregnant. Anakin gets worse and worse, and finally Ben has to fight him and he throws him down into a volcano and Vader is all beat up. Now, when he falls into the pit, his other arm goes and his leg and there is hardly anything left of him by the time the Emperor's troops fish him out of the drink. Then when Ben finds out that Vader has been fished out and is in the hands of the Empire, he is worried about it. He goes back to Vader's wife and explains that Anakin is the bad guy, the one killing all the Jedi. When he goes back his wife, Mrs. Skywalker has had the kids, the twins, so she has these two little babies who are six months old or so. So everybody has to go into hiding. The Skywalker line is very strong with the Force, so Ben says, 'I think we should protect the kids, because they may be able to help us right the wrong that your husband has created in the universe'. And so Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow. Ben can't raise Luke himself, because he's a wanted man. Leia and Luke's mother go to Alderaan and are taken in by the king there, who is a friend of Ben's. She dies shortly thereafter and Leia is brought up by her foster parents. She knows that her real mother died."
Kasdan: "She does know that?" 
Lucas: "Yes, so we can bring that out when Luke is talking to her, she can say that her mother died when 'I was two years old'."

I wonder if Lucas is also implying that Palpatine is self-taught when it comes to using The Force. Maybe that's why Palpatine calls the lightsaber "the weapon of a Jedi."

It's kind of funny how Lucas tells Kasdan that using the force can be learned by anyone, only to shortly after point out how "strong" it is in the Skywalkers.
So I'm guessing that it's more of a second nature to them, while most people have to work really hard on it?

It's hard to tell what Palpatine really is. Every pre-PT text I have read so far has always just referred to his past as a "mystery". I don't really think it matters though. The only thing that that all the texts, and seemingly Lucas (pre-PT anyway) seem to agree on is that he has been evil for a very, very long time. Perhaps he's always been evil. 
Then there's his unnatural age. According to Lucas' timeline he was a "young" politician while Mon Mothma was in office, yet ca. 30-40 years later he looks ancient. His age also has a very unnatural look to it as well. He looks almost decayed and his eyes have that unnatural yellow colour. The novelization of ROTJ which was approved by Lucas describes him as having "a face lined by holocaust."
(Heck one EU interpretation of this "Mystery" simply stated that he had had many lives, implying both cloning and somehow resurrecting himself with the Force. He even described himself as more energy than man. I always liked Dark Empire's interpretation, it was weird but it's sits a lot more right with me than the whole Plageuis thing ever did.)
His death in ROTJ is also pretty surreal and weird. Not only is there some kind of energy explosion as he falls down the shaft, if you listen closely the energy cloud has this supernatural wail to it. Of course this is in a universe with Force ghosts, but you get the impression that there was more to Palpatine than being a mere Sith as the PT made him.

But random thoughts on Palpatine aside;
at least we now have an official date of Mrs. Skywalker's death at 16 BBY. 

Lucas also mentions that Anakin loses his "other arm" in his duel with Obi-Wan, does that mean that he always intended for Anakin to loose his arm in battle like he eventually did in the PT? 

(Btw, where did you get this conversation transcript?)

This conversation transcript is in The Making of Return of the Jedi by J.W. Rinzler. 

I think Lucas sees Palpatine as evil from birth. Luceno mentioned that Lucas told him this.

Where was Palpatine described as a "young" politician?

ZkinandBonez said: The second quote is quite an interesting addition to what we've read/heard before in the movies and books (as well as the PT for that matter). It's never occurred to me before that he could have been an assassin on behalf of Palpatine before he eventually became Darth Vader and eventually performed the military "purge" that we're more familiar with. I think ROTS would have been a lot more interesting if they had gone for this story, rather than the fairly instant transformation that we did get.  Although this quote mentions Vader and "Annikin" as different people, it could still more or less be attributed to the post 1983, pre-PT canon.

Lucas actually restated the second quote to Kasdan during the writing of ROTJ:

Lucas: "Anakin Skywalker starting hanging out with the Emperor, who at this point nobody knew was that bad, because he was an elected official." 
Kasdan: "Was he a Jedi?" 
Lucas: "No, he was a politician. Richard M. Nixon was his name. He subverted the senate and finally took over and became an imperial guy and he was really evil. But he pretended to be a really nice guy. He sucked Luke's father into the dark side." 
Kasdan: "The Force was available to anyone who could hook into it?" 
Lucas: "Yes, everybody can do it." 
Kasdan: "Not just the Jedi?"
Lucas: "It's just the Jedi who take the time to do it." 
Marquand: "They use it as a technique." 
Lucas: "Like yoga. If you want to take the time to do it, you can do it; but the ones that really want to do it are the ones who are into that kind of thing."
[...]
Lucas: "Well, anyway, Luke's father gets subverted by the Emperor. He gets a little weird at home and his wife begins to figure out that things are going wrong and she confides in Ben, who is his mentor. On his missions through the galaxies, Anakin has been going off doing his Jedi thing and a lot of Jedi have been getting killed — and it's because they turn their back on him and he cuts them down. The president is turning into an Emperor and Luke's mother suspects that something has happened to her husband. She is pregnant. Anakin gets worse and worse, and finally Ben has to fight him and he throws him down into a volcano and Vader is all beat up. Now, when he falls into the pit, his other arm goes and his leg and there is hardly anything left of him by the time the Emperor's troops fish him out of the drink. Then when Ben finds out that Vader has been fished out and is in the hands of the Empire, he is worried about it. He goes back to Vader's wife and explains that Anakin is the bad guy, the one killing all the Jedi. When he goes back his wife, Mrs. Skywalker has had the kids, the twins, so she has these two little babies who are six months old or so. So everybody has to go into hiding. The Skywalker line is very strong with the Force, so Ben says, 'I think we should protect the kids, because they may be able to help us right the wrong that your husband has created in the universe'. And so Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow. Ben can't raise Luke himself, because he's a wanted man. Leia and Luke's mother go to Alderaan and are taken in by the king there, who is a friend of Ben's. She dies shortly thereafter and Leia is brought up by her foster parents. She knows that her real mother died."
Kasdan: "She does know that?" 
Lucas: "Yes, so we can bring that out when Luke is talking to her, she can say that her mother died when 'I was two years old'."

I wonder if Lucas is also implying that Palpatine is self-taught when it comes to using The Force. Maybe that's why Palpatine calls the lightsaber "the weapon of a Jedi."

I got the impression that Tarkin had a major role in the rise of the Empire. I imagine that he helped Palpatine become President of the Senate, helped wipe out the Jedi, etc. I think that the prequels should have shown an escalating rivalry between Bail Organa and Tarkin.

Here's some Lucas quotes from summer 1977:

"[...] One of the Chancellors began subverting the Senate and buying off Senators with the help of some of the large intergalactic trade companies and mining companies and intergalactic power companies. Through their power and money, he bought off enough of the Senate to get himself elected to a second term, because of a crisis. By the time the third term came along, he had corrupted so much of the Senate that they made him Emperor for the rest of his life.
"Giving the Emperor that title for life and doing away with the elective process was all done with a lot of rationalizing. Many in the Senate felt that having elections and changing leaders in the time of an emergency disrupted the bureaucratic system. And the bureaucracy was getting to be so big that changing leaders made it impossible to have any effect on the system and make it work - moreover the bureaucracy was running amok and not paying attention to the rulers. So they reasoned that the Emperor could bring the bureaucracy back in line. So the Emperor took control of the bureaucracy. The Galactic Senate would meet for a period that was similar to a year, but after it became the Imperial Senate, the meetings were less and less frequent until finally the meetings were only once a year, and they were very short.
"With the bureaucracy behind the Emperor, it was impossible and too late for the Senate to do anything. He had slowly manipulated things; in fact, it was he who had let the bureaucracy run amok and therefore had blackmailed the Senate into doing things because he was the only one who really had any power over the bureaucracy. It was so large there was no way to get things done, but he knew the right people; the key people in the bureaucracy were working for him and were paid by the companies."

"Darth Vader is really attached to the Emperor himself, and he was not really part of the Death Star personnel or any of that system. Lord Vader worked directly for the Emperor and was the Emperor's emissary.
[...]
When the Jedi tried to restore order, Darth Vader was still one of the Jedi. What he would do is catch the Jedi off guard and, using his knowledge of the Force, he would kill the Jedi without them realizing what was happening. They trusted him and they didn't realize he was the murderer who was decimating their ranks. At the height of the Jedi, there were sever hundred thousand. At the time of the Rebellion, most of them were killed. The Emperor had some strong forces rally behind him, as well, in terms of the army the Imperial forces that he'd been building up secretly. The Jedi were so outnumbered that they fled and were tracked down. They tried to regroup, but they were eventually massacred by one of the special elite forces led by Darth Vader. Eventually only a few, including Ben and Luke's father, were left. Luke's father is named Annikin."

I still wonder how they will continue without Vader and Palpatine. Vader is what comes to mind when people think of "Star Wars" and he spoke one of the most famous lines in film history. Palpatine has been behind everything for all six films and there was an entire prophecy devoted to defeating him. How does one continue beyond the deaths of these fundamental characters?