xhonzi

Johannus said:

WheresBlackhawk said:

I've always thought that the most difficult thing about a NPT is the birth of the children.  Creating a situation where one is born and hidden away, while the other is temporarily ignored, is really a difficult concept for me still.  Any help would be appreciated there.

I agree with you here, which is why in the outline I hinted at above I would have Vader say something to NotPadme about Luke, this way we know that he is aware of the son, but when it turns out to be twins the daughter doesnt have to be hidden away, because we know that Vader didnt know about her, so she can just be passed off as Bail's adopted daughter without anyone needing to know who her real mother was. 

I agree with that and would also point out that it is unneccessary to show the birth of the twins.  If you show that Anakin is aware of a son then you can have all of these references to the impending birth of Luke.  You can end EpIII with Notpandababy still pregnant and taken in by Bail, with the birth of the twins to be a surprise to opened later in Return of the Jedi.

I have to say that no matter how you handle it- "hiding" Luke on Tatooine under the pseudonym "Skywalker" is about the dumbest thing I can think of.  Theres not a lot of wiggle room there.  But, with Leia, you can either do something equally stupid or you can try to fix it.  Let me explain- If Notpadme and Bail are betrothed or looking like they might hookup when Anakin "dies" then hiding his daughter with her own mother is sort of ridiculous.  In this case, the Lucas PT is actually preferable where Bail is already married so he can pass Leia off as his own daughter.  Say you take Bail and Notpadme and make them brother and sister.  Notpadme can be "hidden" by Obi-Wan by faking her death and setting her up not as a Princess of Alderaan, but as a servant in the Royal House.  This way she can be close to and raise her own daughter (Do you remember your Mother?  Your real mother?) but to all outsiders it would appear that Bail is raising his own daughter.

I don't think you have to read too much into Leia not dropping the title of Princess once the rest of the Royal Family was blown up.  She would probably not advance to Queen seeing as she had no kingdom.  And to deny her the title of Princess would probably be unpopular politically.  No one has to know that she's adopted for that to work.

C3PX said:

 

xhonzi said:

Nice.  That sucks.  Maybe you should burn a Catholic.  It always makes me feel better if only for a few minutes.

 

Wow, the above post by Xhonzi now has the distinction of being one of my all time favorite posts ever made at OT.com!

 Hopefully it's taken within the context of Warbler's and my discussion in the Guy Fawkes Thread, or else it's totally out of left field.

TheBoost said:

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."

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.

TheBoost said:

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)

 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?

Syfy?

Wait... are you speaking in Haiku?

Sky_ said:

vaderios said:

I know that the flyby is tough to recreate it without footage or whatever.

But since we see in the next shots that there is heights in the snow, why in the establishing shots are all plain?

 

Even if the mockup doesnt present the correct landscape it gives the idea. Right JJ? :)

 

-Angel

YOUR ARTWORK is way too good man

 Hi-rez please?

TV's Frink said:

xhonzi said:

Doesn't this belong in Ady's Empire thread?

I think xhonzi is a Customer Representative for a phone/cable/satellite/bank/etc. company lol.

 Remember who's buying my steak dinners.

Johannus said:

xhonzi - I know the idea of Vader being a sort of title that is passed down has been suggested earlier too, but I'm sorry I just don't like it.  I hope this doesn't sound like I'm always disagreeing, because from the moment I read it (earlier in the thread) I just thought it was fine in The Princess Bride, but wouldn't work in Star Wars (for the reasons TheBoost mentioned). Having said that your post did lead me to consider something. 

Don't worry- I don't think you're coming off that way.  I can't say I think the many Vaders idea is really the best, but perhaps the least of many evils.  Allow me to explain the paramaters that lead me there:
Preserve the ESB surprise.
- Which means no Anakin in the Darth Vader Suit and another person we could assume is Vader when Obi-Wan refers to his apprentice that turned to evil and then murdered Anakin.
Stronger Darth Vader Like Presence in the NPT.
-As I said above, I think the Maul, Dooku, Grievous trifecta was much less enjoyable than a singular Vader like villain would have been.  I know it's become an irreversible part of Star Wars by now, but the prefix "Darth" being assigned to every Dark Jedi (including the Emperor?) really rubbed me the wrong way.  So, to avoid the Darth propogation, you could just use an earlier version of Darth Vader rather than having to come up with Darth XXXXX.  And, for first time viewing of the NPT, it would potentially make the character of Vader something of a mystery.  Some surprises or mysteries would be a good thing for the NPT seeing how the twists and turns are an indelible part of the OT, and something that was plainly missing from the actual PT.  And given that you're doing a prequel, surprises are automatically a little harder to come from.

*whew*

Anyways, another Dark Jedi that has an oppressive appearance and basically stalks around all tough like Vader, I think, is still what the NPT desperately (badly wants/needs.)  I really like the more angular look of Vader in the early McQuarrie stuff so I went there.

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.  That way when it comes to their fight in A New Hope we should all be thinking that last time Obi Wan won, so it shouldn't be a problem, but then when he lets Vader win it has more impact. 

 You don't have to give me credit.  There's this little movie out there called Revenge of the Sith which seems to have gone this route as well.  You seem to be doing a very thorough job forgetting it.  Well done!

 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. 

 Maybe I need to give up my vision of full on Jedi vs Dark Jedi battle.  But I have to say that is probably the #2 image in my mind of how the prequels were going to be... right after the one of Obi-Wan and Anakin fighting near a molten pit.

TheBoost said:

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?

In a way he was though, right?  He says "Now,fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side!" instead of "Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father's place as the new Darth Vader at my side!" but would you really have him say that even if you could?  Supposedly, if you take Lucas's PT into account, you do expect that Luke might become a new Darth Somebody in the scene, but they don't address this directly in the scene either.

And it would sort of be a secret that there had been other Vaders too.  So it probably wouldn't come up.

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.

I gave this some thought over the weekend.  I don't think it has to be confusing, depending on how it is handled, but I hear you.  I can't point to any one thing that you said, but I think you are convincing me to steer clear of the many Vaders idea.  How about Mini-Vaders?  Now THAT'S an IDEA!

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.

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?

And that photo is badass. What is it from?

The McQuarrie Vader costume?  I don't know the history, but it comes up every time I search for McQuarrie Vader on google images.  I dig it.

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!?!?

I would have to make another long winded post about Jedi, which I intend on doing soon.  But in short: I think the Jedi would have almost as many turn bad as stay good.  Isn't that sort of the way these things go?  Power corrupts and I think the Jedi Order would do its best to train people to use the power responsibly... but c'mon.  And since the Jedi Light or Dark would all be dead or in serious hiding due to the purge (a non-screen based fact I assume we're keeping in the canon) at the time of the OT, I don't see why there can't be lots of Dark Jedi in the NPT.  As far as Obi-Wan not training anyone else, it seems that he exiles himself after this point in time, and maybe this is part of the reason why.  It also might make the viewer more nervous about Luke if it's that likely to turn to the dark side...   But I wouldn't think Ben's error rate would be ridiculously higher than the rest of the Jedi trainers.

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.

 I think this could work.  It doesn't really fit with a lot of the other pieces I have up in the air... but other than that I have no real problem with it.

I can't hear you- I still have you on ignore!

You lost the quiet game, you lost the quiet game!

Doesn't this belong in Ady's Empire thread?

doubleofive said:

I've always thought it was odd how most geeks have the same interests in common.  Have any of you ever wondered why that is?  Most of us seem to like science fiction, comic books, anime, computers, etc.

It's weird to think about, but it does give us a culture of our own.

I somewhat shamefully participate in the following geek activies:
Love Sci-Fi
Post multiple times a day on a website dedicated to part of the Star Wars saga
Play a lot of videogames
Collect Action figures
Have action figures on my desk at work
Read and collect Comic Books
Enjoy new technologies
Enjoy serious western cartoons (Batman TAS for example)
etc...

So whenever someone starts talking about anime, I think I should probably like it.  However... no matter how hard I try... I just can't seem to get into it.
They make some Matrix Anime and I think, "Maybe now I'll like it."  No.  They make Halo anime and I think, "Maybe now I'll like it."  No.
I guess I'm a broken geek.  Only most of me works.  Maybe it's this new robotic hand I got.  Perhaps it makes me more machine than geek. 

:(

Nice.  That sucks.  Maybe you should burn a Catholic.  It always makes me feel better if only for a few minutes.

TheBoost said:

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

Hmm...  I think I'm going to need pics to decide.  Yes.... lots of pics.

You're not trippin' Ripplin.  I read it.  I don't know what happened to it.

Wow, you guys are geeks.  And this is coming from a huge geek!

I thought the game had a weird "Web 2.0" kind of name when I saw it:

"New! Super Mario Bros.Wii"  The "." between Bros and Wii was throwing me off until I realized that it was simply used to abbreviate "Brothers."

In other news, I have been playing Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.  I recommend it.  Here are my expanded thoughts:

If you like Superhero games or Free Roaming Large City type games, then you will like or love Web of Shadows.  The combat system makes it much easier than previous games in the series to actually hit the bad guys with those awesome Spidey moves.  The voice of Spider-Man is quite terrible at the start of the game, but seems to get better as it goes along.  There are 2000 "hidden" collectibles in the game to collect.  I have about half of them.  Because there are so many, you can pretty much always see one if you look for them.  I'm not sure how hard or frustrating it gets as you start to run out of them though.

In summary- It's a compelling play.  Regardless of all other factors that weigh into the final score... I find myself turning it on whenever I get the chance.  I had 10 minutes to wait for my wife and I actually booted it up, beat 3 or 4 baddies and collected 5 or so of those darn collectables and felt like it was a good usage of my time.

The end.

It's such a chore to actually find a Catholic to burn.... Sometimes I question whether it's worth all of that effort. 

But who am I kidding, once they start to burn it's all totaly worth it.

I CAN'T HANDLE THE QUESTION MARKS!

Yes, Red 5.  All we need is about 172800 of those and we'll be in gooooooood shape.

Excuse me while I continue to dump long form here:
NPT Vader:
Here is my solution to the Vader problem.  I also came up with the idea of an ersatz Vader running around.  Someone here convinced me a couple years back that Obi-Wan has to have several people that could be called his "apprentice" for the lie in ANH to work.  I also thought that there was no Vader equivalent in LPT since the role is divied up amongst Maul, Dooku, and Grievous and I wanted a more consistent Black Knight.  So, I used to think of this guy as the Vader replacement.  Something very Vadery without actually being Vader.  Something like this guy on the cover of the comic- Tales of the Jedi: The Freedon Nadd Uprising. 

But then, like some of you, I thought: What if it was actually Vader?  The first surprise of the NPT!  Maybe regress the costume along the lines of the original McQuarrie designs a little, but he looks like Vader and is called Vader. 

I also thought along the lines of the Dread Pirate thingy, but I didn't plan on spending much screen time on it.  Just suggest that Vader has been around for a while and survived many deaths.  Anyways, the point of the NPT is to show the Fall of Anakin Skywalker.  So we show that.  In the process, we see a lot of Dark Jedi and even 2 or more "apprentices" of Obi-Wan fall as well- though somewhat less spectaculary. 

The difference is that we see Anakin struggle with it.  When he and Obi-Wan fight, Anakin is trying to show Obi-Wan the power of the Dark Side to convince him to join him in using it.  Obi-Wan has to show him the power of the light.  The fight ends when Anakin goads Obi-Wan into striking him aggressively and Anakin falls into the molten lava or whatever and Obi-Wan is instantly sobered because he thinks he killed his friend in the process. 

Anakin is left for dead.  His pregnant wife has not given birth to their son, nor does anyone know about Leia.  To save her from grief, perhaps Obi-Wan starts the lie then and there and tells Notpadme that Anakin died a hero fighting Darth Vader.  The tradegy of Anakin Skywalker is over.  And so is Episode 3.

Saying Anakin died and not making Vader's indentity a mystery seems much cleaner to me.  Also, to TheBoost's point, it does change the ESB reveal from "Wow!  DV is Luke's father!" to "Wow!  DV is Anakin Skywalker, fallen hero of the NPT and Luke's Father!"  But I think this is still preferable to "Luke is reacting this way because he has just learned, after two movies of us knowing better, that Darth Vader is in fact his father."  And by not cutting Anakin out early, we get to see his full fall to the Dark Side.  It does set up right away that Ben hides the truth to protect Anakin's memory and loved ones... But I don't think that works against the OT... rather I think it helps smooth out Obi-Wan's character from ANH to RotJ.  He's doing it out of friendship to Anakin and Notpadme, out of guilt for his own failings, and out of desire to put Luke on the right path.

vaderios said:

 Sweet!  So, how does a one go about getting some hi-rez copies of some of the stuff you've posted here?

Not a chance? :P

So you're telling me there's a chance?

Luke's, Leia's and Frink's mother, I mean.