xhonzi

BmB said:

Big question; what mythical themes does it reflect? This is a big part of star wars, however terribly the prequels handled the jesus/oedipus myths.

I'm not up on my "mythical theme vocab" so I won't give you a nice concise name for it, but it's that overwhelming, foreign, unstoppable force that seeks to destroy you physically or perhaps just your way of life.  Having them be slightly non-human is always a perk.  See: zombies, zealots, undead armies, biowarfare, etc.

I don't his wife or friends would call him "Anakin" all of the time.  Trisyllabic words are usually shortened one way or another.

I guess Rik from Anakin isn't any more of a stretch than Ben from Obi-Wan.  Thanks for the suggestion!

Are they?  I'll have to check them out.

As mentioned previously, I've been playing a lot of Halo online what with my brother-in-law Brent in town.  Last night we were playing the social team playlist and played a 5x5 game on Guardian.  About a minute into the game, our three teammates bailed.  For those of you with math degrees, that left Brent and me to fend off against the remaining 5 members of the Evil Red team.

Well, it was awesome.  We held our own and even kept the scores pretty even.  It came down to 49-49 and I got the last kill giving us the total win.  My nerves were shot as all of the adrenaline left my body like so much used tissue paper.  So I totally sucked for the next couple of matches as I mostly just sat there and twitched.

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=1590866534&player=xhonzi

^Here are my bragging rights.  It was awesome.  A game career defining moment.

Careful.  You might be asking for Star Wars Blue Harvest.  It's terrible.

http://www.pendantaudio.com/starwars.php

"Anakin" as a name, is totally awesome.  "Anakin Skywalker" has a nice ring to it.  It's has this archaic sense to it that seems to me to fit well in the SW universe.

"Ani", however, is a terrible nick name for the handsome rogue jedi.  I once tried to think of other solutions to this nick name problem and, unfortunately, "Anakin" doesn't seem to provide a lot of diminutive options.

But on my drive to work this morning... I thought of Obi-Wan -> Ben and how little sense that makes etymologically speaking... yet how much sense it makes on an emotional level. 

So what kind of nick name can you come up with for "Anakin" that doesn't royaly screw up the feel of the character?

My best effort in the matter would have to be Anakin -> aNakin -> aNikin -> Nik.  Nik name?  Get it?  Nik is obvoiusly a derivation of the English name Nick... but Ben & Luke are English names as well, right?

Still, it doesn't feel quite right to me.  Any other stabs?

This thread is... very... educational.

EyeShotFirst said:

Pandorum

The cover art sort of disgusts me.  After your review, I may have to pay more attention to it.  Or do I?

Daybreakers

Yeah, I watched it. I will say that the concept was purely original, and it even showed some great potential. Then it said screw our great idea, and it turned into another monster movie. There were so many opportunities to make a masterpiece, but no. They ignored them.

 That is "rush to script-itis" I think.  You come up with one great idea and then pad it to feature length with plastic cliches from the cliche drawer.  These writers need to calm down and collect a few more original ideas before they start (or finish!) writing.

The Empire Counter-Attacks, eh?  I guess so...

And...?

I believe you've had more than enough time to read it?

Cher is one word?

C3PX said:

xhonzi said:

Left 4 Dead Co-op: 25%

What! You own L4D and you have only played 25% of it! The campaigns are short, you could beat the whole thing in just a few hours. It really isn't one of those games meant to be played to be beaten. It is all about the multiplayer experience. I have probably beaten every map on that game 50 times, and each time it was a completely different experience depending on the difficulty level and who I was playing with. When you are playing with real people is when it really shines. L4D is really more of a social thing. If you only ever played it off line on single player, then I can't imagine it being very enjoyable at all.

If you feel like making your way through the other 75% of that game sometime, I'd be glad to join you. Could probably get one or two of my friends to join in too.

Actually my local "only plays zombie games" friend has it.  (same friend who named my band "Porkins and the Came From Behinds") I've been sending my wife over to his place to distract his wife while he brings it over.  We played on either Hard or Too Hard and it took us 3 hours, I think, to beat the first scenario.  Actually- he beat it.  The zombies carried me away while I was trying to join him on the helicopter.  I have been thinking of picking up my own copy, but as you can see from the list above... I don't have any business picking up any additional games.  :(

In other news, my brother-in-law, zombiefriend, and I were going to play system link L4D this weekend.  We're looking for a fourth, but I don't think we can combine system-link with non-Gold accounts with an online player.  You want to skip over to Colorado on Friday?

Also- Rocket Race is gone again.  I guess it was just for the Double XP weekend.

Interesting they changed it to "black" in the French translation...  I assume you have a word for "clone" in French?

So the expression "clone war" is known only by those who found out that Palpatine is not the real Palpatine.

Not a bad one, other than Luke, a nobody on a nobody planet, knows all about "The Clone Wars!"

VideInfra78 said:

...forgot to mention my interpretations of the Force. I always thought that Dark Side and Light Side were polar opposites of each other and that the Jedi would live on in the afterlife while the Dark Side users would have an afterlife in the Star Wars world. So my interpretation was that Dark Side users could never die of natural causes. That was the power of the dark side, immortality, but when they die, their "life energy" is dissipated in the "real world" like what happens to the Emperor. The choice would be that as a Light Sider you could live forever in the afterlife but have a limited life here, but as a Dark Sider you could live forever in the "real world". It makes for a much tougher choice, you just have to be sure you don't get axed. It's kind of like making a deal with the Devil/Dark Side. Anyway, that's just how I thought it should always be. I always thought the Emperor was hundreds of years old as a child and that he was once human but that age and the dark side had corrupted his physical appearance.

That's interesting.  That's not too far off from what I was saying, but that they couldn't die from natural causes.  Presumably with some supernatural protection against unnatural causes as well, or else they might not be willing to stick their necks out so far trying to conquer the galaxy.

I also got the sense that Palpatine was very old.

I'm not sure where I dropped this other little nugget.  (It's here several places, I know, but I'm not sure where any one of them is)  In trying to craft a "realistic and satisfactory" arc for Anakin that includes a "fall/seduction" to the Dark Side... I've analized Luke's "lean to the Dark Side" at the end of Jedi.  It's the only concrete example of how the Dark Side can overtake an otherwise good Jedi.  And the conclusion I've come to is that the scene, on the surface, is broken to me.  Palpatine claims Luke will be his new apprentice if he can take out Vader.  Assuming this is true, why would Luke "stop killing the bad guys" if the Dark Side had compelled him to kill Vader?  Wouldn't he follow through and take out Palpatine as well?  He would have tried, at least, right?  Either he would have killed Palpatine or would have been killed by Palpatine.  Maybe I can see him attacking Palpatine and being toyed with Cat->Mouse until Palpatine traps him and takes him prisoner for further indoctrination...

But I digress.  My point is this: Palpatine appears to not have a very good exit strategy from DSII at the end of RotJ.  This makes him look a little stupid.  And how exactly Luke would end up being his apprentice in any scenario- I can't see it working out.  IF you take into account Palpatine using cloning and not fearing his own death... then he is poised to use his death as a means of converting Luke to the Dark Side.  If Luke wins his "duel" with Vader by tapping into the Dark Side, presumably he then turns on an undefended Palpatine.  The Light Side would not allow Luke to kill an undefended man, no matter how evil he might be.  But the Dark Side!  The Dark Side would compel Luke to take revenge on the man, to blame him for the making Luke kill his own father!  It was Palpatine's fault for corrupting him afterall!  So, Luke cuts him down!  Is his Journey to the Dark Side complete?  No, what nonsense!  But his Journey to the Dark Side has begun.  And Palpatine, having cheated death, will be there to guide him in.

Anakin's first temptation as a Sith should not have been to murder innocent Jedi children.  Murder.  Innocent.  Jedi.  Children.  It goes against everything the man stood for 10 minutes prior.  Sending him to despose of the Separatist Leaders is much better.  It's not murder, it's a military assassination to end a war.  Palpatine is a commander and Anakin is a soldier- and the war does need to end.  So you can justify it, from a moral perspective.  And using the Dark Side to control enough power to bring to pass a good thing... THAT is a temptation for a Jedi.

TMBTM said:

I kind of like the idea of "cloning" being the "macguffin" of the NPT.

The technology everyone (bad guys and good guys) wants to control but...

At one point in time, I thought that it would simplify things if the technology was being fought over, but there were no clones at all.  Is that what you mean?  I think I gave up on that thought experiment because I think it flew too far in the expectation of what the Clone Wars would be.  That, and I think people wouldn't call them "Clone Wars"- rather they would be the "Argonian Wars" if the Argonians were the agressors looking for cloning tech, etc.  Like we don't call WWI the Duke Ferdinand War.

That's not Le Chat d'ABC!  That's Le Chat de General Star Wars, better known in America as General Star Wars Cat!

If that were true, I'd have a...  oh, I see Frink beat me to it as well.

TV's Frink said:

pittrek said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

It does if it gets all over their clothes. Not very hygenic.

Come on guys, I just came back from lunch :-)

We figured anyone who takes a lunch longer than two weeks gives up the right to be ill. ;-)

 I know... and I thought I had good benefits at work.  If he gets a 2 week lunch, how much vacation time does he get?

I had a CO sighting today.

Bingowings said:

I've search through this thread but I may have missed it.

Maybe Ady has answered this question before but how was the Anaglyphic 3D Jabba Easter egg done?

I'm working on something myself (nothing to do with Star Wars) and it might be a fun way of presenting it along with all the other wonky things I'm throwing in.

I asked a little about it in the ESB:R thread, but it was shortly after Ady's personal tragedy, so I don't know if it went unnoticed because no one cared or if it was just overshadowed by recent events.
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/STAR-WARS-EP-V-REVISITED-EDITION-ADYWAN-NEW-TRAILER-AVAILABLE-NOW/post/394814/#TopicPost394814 

And ImpFighter responded to me here:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/STAR-WARS-EP-V-REVISITED-EDITION-ADYWAN-NEW-TRAILER-AVAILABLE-NOW/post/394913/#TopicPost394913

Davnes007 said:

Or, how about getting a Phased Plasma Rifle, in the 40 Watt range?

 Hey, only what you see, pal...

msycamore said:

xhonzi said:

It was the Episode subtitle on the 1978 re-release and all of the home video releases.  Not that that necessarily changes your answers, but the subtitle was around for all but one year of the 33 year history of "that movie."  It's not like George invented it for the Special Editions or for the Prequels.

 

 It was actually added on the 1981 re-release

 Are you sure?  Either way- 1978 or 1981... it's been around for a while.

Here's a relatively simple "restriction" I've been toying with: Cloning doesn't work on humans.

This does a couple things for you:
1. It restricts "primary" characters from being clones so the audience doesn't feel like you're jerking them around with fake deaths, or clone deaths or having to be suspect whether the main characters are themselves or not.  
2. If it's only the humans that can't be cloned, it gives the Empire the rationale they need to be distrustful of non Human races.  All important leadership roles would need to be held by Humans since they are beyond suspicion of being replaced by clones.
3. If it's a single race that can be cloned: That means anytime you see that race, it's probably a clone.  If the Clone Wars are destructive enough, then some galactic leaders would approve of complete genocide of that race of creatures if it means "restoring peace" to the rest of the galaxy.

I'll add one more and this is where my ideas get most unpopular: (some of it is here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Emperors-New-Clones/topic/11008/ )

Perhaps the human clones "don't work" because they "have no mind."  Their bodies are completely functional, but their brains just don't work.  They simply lie as if in a coma.  But Palpatine, seeking immortality through manipulations of the Dark Side, is also using the clones- not to build an army, but to create an infinite supply of Palpatine bodies which he can use to transfer his dark soul into.  So this gives Palpatine a motivation for the prequels besides simply "conquer the known galaxy."  But, probably best, in my opinion, it gives you a reason that Vader would server Palpatine and the Dark Side.  If transferring your soul is one of the hardest "spells" in Dark Side Magic and Vader has to learn it from Palpatine and also gain proficiency at using the Dark Side...  well, it sure beats the "Join me and the Dark Side so that your wife can live forever.  By the way, she's dead and you killed her, but joine me anyway." logic of Revenge of the Sith.
 

(awkward!)

vote_for_palpatine said:

Oh, just so I'm clear: I wouldn't buy that with xhonzi's money. There's your goddamn proof.

I don't know what you mean exactly, but I still feel instulted.

Segue:

So... I usually look through that sky mall magazine whenever I fly, but I never thought I'd actually order something from it.  WELL!  I did, and it came in the mail today.