yotsuya

My favorite way to watch the original is 4k77 with the mono soundtrack. I was quite offended with the GOUT when I found out that because they reverted the opening crawl to the 1977 one and used the DC/Faces soundtrack that they had essentially created a new version. My favorite way to watch Episode IV is the DC/Faces version. It takes some editing to watch it that way in decent quality.

BedeHistory731 said:

yotsuya said:

A careful review of all the different releases and comparing them to the timeline shows that the original May 1977 version of the film (see Moth3r’s bootleg and Puggo Grand) had 4 differences. 3 FX shots and the end credits. Not to mention the soundtrack.

I’m curious, which FX shots are replacements?

When the Falcon leaves Tatooine, the shot of the Star Destroyer shooting at it, then the composite shot of the Yavin IV temple when Leia et al arrive, and then the shot with the Rebel lookout when the Rebel fighters blast off. There are subtle differences between those shots in Moth3r’s bootleg, Puggo Grand, JSC, and SWE and those same shots in Definitive Collection, Faces, GOUT, SSE, 4K77, and all the non-English versions (German, Spanish, and French specifically). Two of the were changed for the SE. Because SSE, 4K77 and all the non-English versions (even the earliest pan&scan releases) match the Definitive Collection and GOUT, the change had to be made for the late 77 release and they must have used a modified copy of the May 1977 edit for the early English language home video releases which would explain the JSC and SWE. But thanks to them we have them in widescreen. They aren’t too noticeable upscaled to 720p and spliced into 4K77.

I do think it is a stupid title. But I do call it that. When I do a trilogy or saga viewing, I want it to say Episode IV A New Hope. And that wasn’t the first change to the film.

A careful review of all the different releases and comparing them to the timeline shows that the original May 1977 version of the film (see Moth3r’s bootleg and Puggo Grand) had 4 differences. 3 FX shots and the end credits. Not to mention the soundtrack. When the film went into wider release those 3 FX shots and the end credits were replaced and the mono soundtrack was created. So the original May 1977 version and the later 1977 version with the mono soundtrack are quite a bit different. For some reason, those 3 FX shots (though not the end credits) were in the version that sourced all the English Language home video (which included Japan). It wasn’t until the Definitive Collection from the newly struck interpositive prints that the real 1981 version of the film came to home video, though not with the original soundtrack so I guess it was technically a new version.

And it was the release of the PT that changed the accepted name of the film from just Star Wars. Every home video release before than, including the SE, had it as Star Wars (with some having A New Hope there as well, but in smaller lettering). But since then the quick version is either 4, Ep4, EpIV, or ANH, never just Star Wars or SW. I’m fine with that. The whole thing is Star Wars.

But I truly consider that first version of the film to be a different movie, like I consider the SE version to be different. If I was going to do a full marathon of the films, I’d do the un-numbered original, followed by the original theatrical versions, followed by the 9 episode saga with the SE versions.

Vudu is a distributor. Their contracts are with studios. This situation is not covered by Vudu’s terms of service with you, but by their contract with the studio. With digital content, studios have finally achieved with home media what they have always had with theatrical prints. The content belongs to the studio. Not to the provider. Not to you. The only way to be sure you keep a particular version of digital content is to capture and save the stream to a device you control. That they cannot change. But the studio changing content is not up to Vudu or any other streaming service. Your gripe is with Disney and Lucasfilm because they are the ones who did this. Any other studio can do this at any time. The studio can pull a title at any point in time (though I suspect that is covered by their contract with the distributor and not too likely). Case in point is Starz disappearing from Comcast overnight.

You are getting mad at the wrong people if you get mad a Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, or any other streaming service for this. And most of us have been rather excited for this change to propagate through all the systems. I perefer Maklunkey to the oversaturated magenta mess than was the 2003 transfer. Frankly, until they switch it back to the original where Greedo doesn’t shoot at all, I don’t really care what version of that scene it has.

Specifically the 1997 ending? I doubt it. Interesting edit idea, but the 1997 ending is only available in SD. But you may have just described an edit I’d be interested in.

kujythrgefdw said:

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough, but I was talking about the 1977 Dolby Stereo mix. That stinks that all home video releases are either cropped or altered, but whatever. Star Wars is Star Wars.

I feel you. My holy grail is the 77 mono soundtrack and that was never on any home video release. The best quality version comes from a UK television broadcast (with some additional copies on film prints). Fortunately this site has enabled me to track down all the audio and rebuild all the video so I can watch whatever version I want. My next goal is to repeat that in HD.

Is your question about the mix or it is if the other home video releases had the matrixed Dolby Surround encoding. The 1977 Stereo (encoded Dolby Surround) was never on home video in widescreen. It has been included in a wide variety of fan releases of the GOUT as well as the Silver Screen Edition and 4K77. All home video releases of the Star Wars trilogy were encoded for Dolby Surround. If you run any of them through a Dolby surround sound decoder, you will get the original 4 channel surround. Be it the original theatrical mix, the 1985 mix, or the 1993 mix for Star Wars, Empire, or Jedi. But if you want the 1977 experience, it was never on home video. Plenty of releases around here if you care to look. 4K77 would be the best quality all around. Plenty of tools to take the GOUT and replace the audio with the 1977 stereo soundtrack.

For 99% of films this update is going to be rather transparent. There won’t be any content changes (such as Macklunkey), but will generally be a better transfer. In particular, this relates to 4K vs. HD. I believe that their system is downscaling on the fly based on your device and your connection speed so they only need to have one version of the program on their sever to meet everyone’s needs. I can’t wait for them to update TFA on the streaming servers because it will finally be the one with no burned in subtitles. It was the only film released that way. Idiots.

The photos I’ve seen have had more than one kid in ROTJ. And a nice symmetry is that Davis’s son was in TROS.

I’ve always loved it. It really made the original feel like we jumped into the middle of the story. It felt more complete with the PT, but I’ve been waiting for Ep IX since Lucas talked about the ST in the early 80’s. To me the original can kind of exist in isolation, but the rest all fit into the saga and need the numbers. If I’m going to do a saga viewing, it has to have Episode IV: A New Hope or it just feels wrong.

stretch009 said:

KurganX said:

It sounds like he was just sharing it with a few friends to get feedback. Did they tell him it sucked and he quit? Hope not!

I’m very pleased with the results so far. How has it been going? I always wanted to have a cut of the movie with these old school deleted scenes put back in where they originally would have belonged, even if they’re not super clean.

Now then, who has a complete version of the Declan Mulholland Jabba scene to go with it? Every version of it I’ve seen has those tv station borders/logos burned in…

Seriously though, Grindhouse Star Wars was magic for me, because of the sheer number of deleted scenes that were packed in there, but obviously it was turned into a different story entirely. So a project like this still has serious value. Hope it isn’t dead!

It was completed last November!

https://ifdb.fanedit.org/star-wars-the-darklighter-cut/

PM sent.

can you pm me as well.

StarkillerAG said:

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

I also wish these sequel movies had more of a thematic connection to the wider saga. It would have been very poetic if the prequels were the fall of the Skywalkers, the OT was the rise of the Skywalkers, and the sequels were the legacy of the Skywalkers. Instead we got one boring OT rehash, one weird post-modernist take on the OT storyline, and one crossover fanfic where Palpatine meets the sequel trilogy characters. Hardly a cohesive trilogy, let alone a cohesive saga.

The problem with that is that doesn’t make for much of a story. If you want an ST that has the same stakes and style as the previous 6 films, you have to have some great evil threatening what the OT built. Timothy Zahn did it with clone Palpatines and Admiral Thrawn and his force inhibiting critters. To be epic enough and see if our OT heroes really did their job the ST has to threaten what they built in a significant way. We know on the Force side that Lucas basically came up with the Luke, Rey, Kylo (not a Skywalker) and Snoke structure and introcucing Luke at the very end of VII seems to have been Arndt, not Abrams. But we don’t know where either of them were going with the trilogy and if that would have been epic enough. Lucas has talked about the Whills, but no details. But for it to work and fit in, the ST has to endanger the results of the OT. The ST we got did that, though not to some people’s liking. Snoke being a clone and Palpatine’s puppet could have used some additional foreshadowing. To me it feels like a story development hiccough. They let Rian kill of Snoke because they thought Kylo was bad ass enough and then decided he wasn’t and needed something bigger. And thanks to Zahn, they had the ready made idea of a Palpatine Clone. Unless we actually get to see Lucas’s treatments (or even Arndt’s), we won’t know what the ST was going to look like before Abrams. Was it going to be epic enough? Was it going to work?

It seems like your biggest wish for a Star Wars movie is for it to be “epic”, when that was never what made the OT so appealing to so many people. The best moments in Star Wars have always been the quiet moments. Stuff like the binary sunset, and Darth Vader’s death. I think a more “epilogue” style sequel trilogy would be very much in that spirit. Much more OT style than Palpatine 2 with his 10,000 Death Stars making Return of the Jedi pointless.

P.S. I’m pretty sure Timothy Zahn didn’t write Dark Empire. He actively tried to distance himself from that storyline in one of his later books. Which just shows that bringing back Palpatine is probably not a good idea.

I feel that the saga requires that epicness because of its roots. Yes, some of the great moments are the quiet ones. But the story is of good and evil on a galactic scale. I always tie it back to its origins in Flash Gordon. Ming kept coming back over and over. You think he’s dead? Think again. Because of that I was more than okay with Palpatine’s return because it is in that spirit and it did create that epic level story. And I don’t know why so many are upset that the work of the OT heroes 30 years on is threatened by something new. That is part of the structure. Nothing lasts forever and what we see in the ST is a world where Leia helped rebuild the republic, but it has issues (and doesn’t seem to listen to her as often times happens to heroes of the past). We have planet destroying tech in the very first film so having it crop up again only makes sense. The tech exists and some new fool is intent on using it again. So I don’t feel that what we got really had any issues. I think TFA had issues and I think TLJ and TROS ran with what was started and did they best they could from a rocky start. I think the end result is better than the PT. So what if some things are recycled. If you really look at it, the PT recycled quite a bit of the OT itself so the ST doing the same thing is just following the template. I think they varied it enough to create a unique and interesting trilogy. But I don’t feel that what I’m referring to as epic and the repeated story beats have any link. I think that a really creative person could have come in and crafted a unique story that would be epic enough. I don’t think we got that really creative and different story, but we got something that was different enough and epic enough to be worth it.

And I only read Zahn’s trilogy once, when it first came out. So I may be confusing things, but I didn’t read that many of the novels. I felt they went off on odd tangents and the great enemy they created just never seemed in keeping with the Star Wars theme. An alien invasion of the Star Wars galaxy isn’t as epic as some new dark side threat. And rechecking the story content on Wookiepedia, Zahn did have a clone, just not of Palpatine. The later EU had a whole slew of clones of Palpatine causing trouble until he was eliminated. Like some other things, I think that Abrams and co drew on the EU for ideas. I think what they ended up with was in the spirit of the EU but done much better. Though I do wish they’d thought of the stormtrooper rebellion and planted the seeds in TLJ. That would have been a cool thing to see play out over the later two films. Instead we just have an echo of it. But the EU writers did understand epic and wrote a lot of stories that do exactly what you don’t like about the ST. Lots of rebels vs. Empire redos. With the EU spending so much energy on that, I’m not surprised the ST went that way as well. The ST is kind of a best of EU compliation. And set 30 years after ROTJ, it is long after most of the EU stories were set, so they gave the Republic a lot more years of peace than the EU did. Not saying the EU was any good, just that a lot of fans were expecting something like that and the ST delivered with lots of story points right out of the EU. Clone Emperor in a dying body (because the clones couldn’t contain his power), a fleet of ships, more deadly planet killing weapons, Sith acolytes serving the Emperor, young Jedi, other evil force users, other clones. Quite a bit is missing, but the high points of what we got are just creatively repurposed form the EU.

idir_hh said:

yotsuya said:

StarkillerAG said:

I also wish these sequel movies had more of a thematic connection to the wider saga. It would have been very poetic if the prequels were the fall of the Skywalkers, the OT was the rise of the Skywalkers, and the sequels were the legacy of the Skywalkers. Instead we got one boring OT rehash, one weird post-modernist take on the OT storyline, and one crossover fanfic where Palpatine meets the sequel trilogy characters. Hardly a cohesive trilogy, let alone a cohesive saga.

The problem with that is that doesn’t make for much of a story. If you want an ST that has the same stakes and style as the previous 6 films, you have to have some great evil threatening what the OT built. Timothy Zahn did it with clone Palpatines and Admiral Thrawn and his force inhibiting critters. To be epic enough and see if our OT heroes really did their job the ST has to threaten what they built in a significant way. We know on the Force side that Lucas basically came up with the Luke, Rey, Kylo (not a Skywalker) and Snoke structure and introcucing Luke at the very end of VII seems to have been Arndt, not Abrams. But we don’t know where either of them were going with the trilogy and if that would have been epic enough. Lucas has talked about the Whills, but no details. But for it to work and fit in, the ST has to endanger the results of the OT. The ST we got did that, though not to some people’s liking. Snoke being a clone and Palpatine’s puppet could have used some additional foreshadowing. To me it feels like a story development hiccough. They let Rian kill of Snoke because they thought Kylo was bad ass enough and then decided he wasn’t and needed something bigger. And thanks to Zahn, they had the ready made idea of a Palpatine Clone. Unless we actually get to see Lucas’s treatments (or even Arndt’s), we won’t know what the ST was going to look like before Abrams. Was it going to be epic enough? Was it going to work?

Timothy Zahn had nothing to do with Palpatine returning as a clone, he actually hated that plot thread in the old EU and tried his best to avoid referencing it in his trilogy, you are referring to Dark Empire by Tom Veitch. Secondly nobody said anything about wanting the ST to have “the same stakes” as the previous films, ironically that’s what damned this trilogy from the get go -Empire 2.0 - Deathstar 3 - Palpatine back at the top, “Same stakes” give me a brake. It seems to me just from reading your comments that, to be blunt, you don’t seem to have a clue…

Not the same steaks. The same level of stakes. Bit difference. Yes, they went with something very familiar which has its advantages but the disadvantage of having been done before. I thought it worked because the tackled it a different way.

StarkillerAG said:

I also wish these sequel movies had more of a thematic connection to the wider saga. It would have been very poetic if the prequels were the fall of the Skywalkers, the OT was the rise of the Skywalkers, and the sequels were the legacy of the Skywalkers. Instead we got one boring OT rehash, one weird post-modernist take on the OT storyline, and one crossover fanfic where Palpatine meets the sequel trilogy characters. Hardly a cohesive trilogy, let alone a cohesive saga.

The problem with that is that doesn’t make for much of a story. If you want an ST that has the same stakes and style as the previous 6 films, you have to have some great evil threatening what the OT built. Timothy Zahn did it with clone Palpatines and Admiral Thrawn and his force inhibiting critters. To be epic enough and see if our OT heroes really did their job the ST has to threaten what they built in a significant way. We know on the Force side that Lucas basically came up with the Luke, Rey, Kylo (not a Skywalker) and Snoke structure and introcucing Luke at the very end of VII seems to have been Arndt, not Abrams. But we don’t know where either of them were going with the trilogy and if that would have been epic enough. Lucas has talked about the Whills, but no details. But for it to work and fit in, the ST has to endanger the results of the OT. The ST we got did that, though not to some people’s liking. Snoke being a clone and Palpatine’s puppet could have used some additional foreshadowing. To me it feels like a story development hiccough. They let Rian kill of Snoke because they thought Kylo was bad ass enough and then decided he wasn’t and needed something bigger. And thanks to Zahn, they had the ready made idea of a Palpatine Clone. Unless we actually get to see Lucas’s treatments (or even Arndt’s), we won’t know what the ST was going to look like before Abrams. Was it going to be epic enough? Was it going to work?

I prefer my take on it. One that came to me from watching the PT several times. The force has grown out of balance by TPM because of the Jedi Sith split (that comes from the EU and may not be the case anymore). The two major user of the force polarized it and it comes to a head in the PT with Palpatine having the power to hide from the Jedi right under their noses. Their power is diminished (so they are not at the height of their power). Anakin comes along and his role in the PT has nothing to do with being the Chosen One. That is why Qui-gon insists on training him, but his actions and his fall have little to do with that. It was not too late to mold him into a proper Jedi when we meet him. But they don’t. Yes, they teach him the powers and skills and diciplines, but they fail to teach him anything about how to avoid the Dark Side. I don’t think they knew how. How does Yoda teach Luke? Constantly reminding him about Vader. Anakin falls because the didn’t teach him how to love and not posses. Why? Because they don’t know how any more. Their philosophy is to avoid anything that could possibly lead to the dark side. If you watch that video it is clear that Anakin falls for the most basic temptation of the dark side - the idea he can get what he wants. And the reason he wants is because his training was incomplete. And this is not a failing of Obi-wan’s training (as he believes) but in the PT era Jedi way of training. Their entire training apparatus is based on taking the very young and raising them in the Jedi order. Basically brain washing them. But even that does not work as we we see with Dooku. They do not teach anything about the dark side other than to avoid it. By Lucas’s own words in that video, a properly trained Jedi should be able to draw upon the force without worrying which side or worrying about the temptations. A properly trained Jedi would not succumb to greed and selfishness. Lucas boiled it down to selflessness and selfishness. The Sith crave power and then fear losing power.

I think the color of the saber is an indicator of where they are in that balance. The Sith only use red, so we know where that one is. It is possible that orange would go with a less polarized dark side user. Blue is on the other end. It is for a very light side focused Jedi. Green is more moderate and closer to balance. Purple is further from balance and it is interesting that Made Windu, the only one with that color, is the most polarizing Jedi we see. While Qui-gon is far more moderate. We don’t see a yellow saber until we see Rey with one, which fits her going back to the oldest Jedi teachings - from before the split. She is in balance after balancing the force. That of course is something that happened gradually. In the outside scenes in Jedi, the blue saber didn’t work as well so they went with green instead. Probably why Qui-gon had that color as well. And Jackson wanted a purple saber. But when you lay it over everything it does make sense.

And if you noticed, the notes from that meeting were from the earliest notes of the PT. And Filoni was there taking it all in and what he did in Clone Wars and Rebels fits exactly with what we hear George saying. His father, daughter, son, and Bendu all fit. The father and bendu as pure and balanced force while the daughter and son are polarized into light and dark. Balance first came up in TPM and has been part of canon ever since.

I do not see Anakin as a Jesus figure. He may or may not be the Chosen One (Qui-gon certainly believed and seems to have convinced the rest), but the issue is never really settled. He does balance the force by taking out Palpatine (and himself in the process) leaving only Luke, but is it in perfect balance or like a spring, momentarily back in the center before tipping over again. The ST never addresses the idea of the chosen one, only balance. And it ends with Rey having the ancient Jedi texts (and presumably how they did things when the force was in balance) the force might stay in balance. Though I think Luke’s lesson (the hard lesson of many failures) was the biggest point.

ShamanWhill said:

DominicCobb said:

The issue as many see with the Jedi’s approach is that they taught their students to essentially suppress any and all emotion that leads to the dark side. That’s unhealthy, and in the end we see that it leads to the dark side as well.

I don’t know if it’s “unhealthy”. It worked for 1000 years.

Try not to misconstrue Anakin’s mistakes as a result of the Jedi way. That wasn’t the case at all. Anakin was brought up the most un-Jedi way ever. He received late training. He had attachments to his mother. He disobeyed the Jedi code and got married. And he spent the majority of his Jedi life in battle. Of course he would turn to the Dark Side. He doesn’t even know what it means to be a Jedi.

Anakin’s mistakes reveal holes in the Jedi way. Watching the PT it is very clear that Anakin has never been trained on how to avoid letting his emotions rule him. I see it as a failing of the Jedi. He is too old to be trained in their view because the only way they have of teaching a padawan to stay clear of the dark side are their rules. Anakin falls because the Jedi both fail to detect the Sith master and because they fail to teach him how to truly avoid the temptation of the Dark Side. Think back to the OT and what Ben and Yoda use to teach Luke… don’t be like Darth Vader. I don’t know if Lucas deliberately built in that flaw to the Jedi, but it is there and very obvious. Anakin lacks the tools he needs to avoid the dark side. They take him from his mother and never let him go back. They don’t heed his dreams of his mother at all. They don’t comfort him on her death. They are cold and distant.

One aspect that I find now when I watch the PT is the color of the saber. Those who are polarized have blue sabers. Those who are closer to the middle have green sabers. Mace is the most legalistic of them and has a purple saber. Following the colors of the rainbow, that is furthest from the red of the sith. And yellow sabers popped up before Rey had one. They are held by those even more neutral than most active Jedi. So I really think the neutral aspect of a true Jedi is built into the saga. I found Qui-gon to be an ideal Jedi. His attitudes and what he says and what he does all point to focus on the mission and that he knows far more than he shares. He has no interest in interfering. If he was there to act, he would have freed Anakin and Shmi. But he was not there to free slaves. He is on a mission and the only interest he takes in because Anakin shows force sensitivity and has those high midichlorian levels. He thinks he is the chosen one at that point and THAT dictates his actions, not Anakin’s status as a slave. He tells the Queen that he can protect her but not fight a war for her.

It is that attitude that Rian Johnson repeated with Luke and his third training session with Rey (the deleted scene). So I don’t see where the ST has done anything new. All the stuff I keep saying comes from me watching the PT and the OT repeatedly for years. I’ve mentioned Abrams, Johnson, and Filoni becaue the have used what was already in the series. Filoni has consulted with George and worked with him closely with what he did in the various animated series. Abrams consulted with him on TROS. So there is a lot of George in what I am saying. But it comes through the filter of these others. But I think it happens to agree and paint a single picture of the flaws of the Jedi in the PT. George has said a lot of things over the years. Some of it agrees, some of it is contradictory. Some of what he has said contradicts what he put in the movies. So I prefer to take what has ended up on film as a better indication of George’s intentions. Some of what he says seems to be designed to avoid bad ideas.

For instance, you cannot have a good force user who solely uses the dark side. They are not balanced and are going to succumb to the temptations. But you can have a good force user who can tap into the dark side as needed to make use of that power in the service of good. like I said I don’t think the force is inherently good or bad, just part of nature. It is how it tends to be use and how it is used. The Sith use of it is evil. How we saw it used by the good guys in the saga is not. You cannot maintain balance if you give into the temptations of the dark side.

So I don’t see the Jedi we have seen as balanced. We may see something different a few hundred years earlier, but I think the problems with the Jedi go back to the split with the Sith (provided that piece of the EU stays accurate). It would be a natural turn of events for the Jedi to start teaching complete avoidance of anything pertaining to the dark side.

So I think the pure force is far more neutral and balanced that what we see in the Jedi. The Bendu is the best example of a being that is balanced in the force. I see the father/daughter/son trio as representing the force, the Jedi, and the Sith with the father again being a being balanced in the force. I see those three as part of Lucas’s Whills concept. The balanced, the light, and the dark. I personally would watch those episodes and use them as inspiration. Lucas had many ideas that never saw the screen and they might be Filoni’s interpretation of something Lucas shared with him. I don’t think he would have gone there without consulting George about it. So I think George’s ideas are in those characters. I wouldn’t say they are Whills, but they are related to them in some way. The Bendu might be as well. The whills should be something higher like those beings. They should be less affected by human sensibilities. They should reflect balance and nature rather than human passions.

And don’t forget the 25th season and the Cartmel master plan that never got past two stories. The two 25 Anniversary stories both hinted that the Doctor was more than he seemed. It is possible that Doctor had some hint of his past at that point.

I really hate that this story line invovled the destruction of Gallifrey, but I like most of it. There are a lot of issues with the Ruth Doctor and fitting them in. She shouldn’t have a police box Tardis and she shouldn’t be going by The Doctor. That is at odds with the early seasons and the Tardis getting stuck only when it landed in I.M. Foreman’s scrapyard. But then, any Tardis landing in the UK might sense a blue Police Box would be a good disguise and his/her choice of name might have resurfaced. It might be one reason the Timelords were so scared of him running loose.

So other than the questionable things from the first episode of the season, I loved the finale as it tied back to other stories and expanded the lore and the mystery in one go. Sometimes the series has explained too many things and shaved off some of the mystery. This time they added a bunch and only made the mystery deeper and more intriguing.

act on instinct said:

But couldn’t not taking a side produce or prolong suffering due to inaction? Wouldn’t under that definition disillusioned Luke be correct in no longer fighting? I think these philosophical questions are what the characters should be struggling with, but as the ultimate answer for me it doesn’t track, doesn’t resolve anything and I question how it even forwards the narrative. So much about Star Wars is about choosing trust and love and that being an active thing that even puts you in danger but it’s the right thing to do, balance as neutrality clashes against that for me.

It is not that a Jedi shouldn’t act, but they should carefully chose when to act. They must think rationally and not let their emotions get the better of them. They can have emotions, but must take care in how they act on them. For instance, in a war, they might elect to save one person or a small group because they can on that occasion. But they must realize that they can’t save everyone and they can’t endlessly fight someone elses battles for them. Acting in a decisive way to end a conflict or restore peace is one thing, but trying to police all of creation would be impossible. They can’t be everywhere so they must act where it will do the most good. That is really what Yoda was saying in TESB when he advised Luke not to go rescue his friends. That is what Luke was trying to teach Rey in the deleted scene. That is how Qui-gon and Obi-wan acted in TPM. Jedi don’t travel around randomly righting wrongs because there are too many to wrongs and too few Jedi. They are there to steer the course of things and maintain the balance in the galaxy. Guardians of peace and justice. They must be neutral because there is so much that they can’t do. If a Jedi happens to be around and acts to change the outcome, it is a rare thing. They are looking at the larger picture. All the OT and PT dialog confirms it.

OutboundFlight said:

yotsuya said:

OutboundFlight said:

All due respect: I’ve never understood this argument. I understand Taoist traditions, but I can’t comprehend a “good dark side user”. Love and passion aren’t equivalent to darkness, they just lead you to it if you aren’t careful.

Dare I say it, I don’t think the Jedi did anything wrong during the Clone Wars. A genius outsmarted them. Had Palpatine not been involved Anakin would have either peacefully left their order or broken off with Padme and firmly joined their cause. I just can’t see the Jedi losing the PT because they were “too good”.

And yet there is that bit that is in several of the films where the Jedi admit they are having problems with the force. How would that be the case if they were just outsmarted. There is an imbalance. I see the imbalance (and I did before the ST) as the good force users ignoring the dark side of the force. They are taught to ignore it because it is too tempting. They are never taught how to wrestle with it and stay on the light side and maintain balance. That is why Anakin fell so easily. He was never taught how to fight the temptation of the dark side. So in the PT and OT you have the force splintered into the far light and the far dark. Jedi are supposed to be closer to the center. They should know how to tap into the dark side as needed, but not let it tempt them or consume them. The Jedi need to be in balance themselves. They have banned attachments because it could lead to the dark side rather than teach the young Jedi how to be attached and not be tempted by the dark side.

If the old EU lore holds true, the Sith started out as fallen Jedi. So the order split. And to balance the force the order needs to be whole again. Since people are not easily changed, the easiest way to do that is to wipe everything out and start over. Well, Palpatine wiped out the Jedi and the Sith tradition of only two, a master and an apprentice, left the Sith side vulnerable to defeat. We see Luke learn that final balance in ROTJ as he taps into the dark side to defeat Vader and the lets it go. Vader kills Palpatine and himself in the process leaving only Luke… until someone resurrects Palpatine (everyone confirmed that he was indeed dead at the end of ROTJ). Luke is balanced, but late Republic Jedi taught. As issues arise, the balance is not maintained. The ST we got is about perfecting that balance. So Rey is NOT Jedi trained in the Old Republic traditions, but has the original Jedi text… from the age when they were balanced. Luke noted she was not afraid of the dark side. To her it is all just the force. Revelation of her origins tests that balance, but she regains it.

It isn’t a matter of which side of the force you use, it is all in how you use it and why. The user must be balanced. The user must maintain control. Anakin was consumed by the dark side. Palpatine isn’t just consumed, he is the embodiment of the dark side. He is chaos. The Late Republic Jedi have made their order all about keeping order and following rules and avoiding the dark side at any cost. They placed good an evil onto the natural order of things when the good and evil lies in how the force is used, not the force itself. So the destruction of Palaptine does bring about the balance to the force because he is chaos and evil - the embodiment of everything bad. The first time Luke has just found that balance and all is good for a time. The second time, Rey is that balance and has destroyed even the Sith loyalists leaving no one to bring it back. The Jedi order has been reset to where it was 1000 generations before.

But I still don’t understand. What does balance mean? Rey acts just like a regular Jedi only that she thinks she’s immune to the dark side in TLJ (but that’s far from the case in TROS). Luke, Obi-Wan, and Yoda were all calm and composed Jedi.

I don’t understand how you can use the dark side for good.

Balance means you don’t take sides. The central teaching of Buddhism is the middle way. It arose separately from yin and yang, but is the same in principle. Where something has two obvious sides, you have to treat them equally. The force seems to have sides, but you have to treat them the same to achieve balance. There is nothing inherently evil about the dark side or inherently good about the light side. It is a part of nature in the Star Wars universe. The character of Bendu is a true neutral force sensitive and user. He is not Jedi or Sith. He is balance. Being a balanced Jedi means to be like him while keeping in mind the frailties of the sentient beings you teach. You need to teach them to be mindful of what can trip them up and teach them how to handle those situations. The Late Republic Jedi failed to do that. Their ways was to avoid all temptation. As we saw, that way does not work well. But the key really lies in the Bendu and the Father/Daugher/Son trio, and with the origin of the Jedi and Sith.

That balance that the ST and the PT focused on means staying neutral. Anyone who falls to the dark side is not neutral or balanced. But someone can also fall to the light side and lose their balance in that way as well. I feel that is what we saw of the Late Republic Jedi. They were too focused on rules and avoiding the dark side that they made a great many errors. Their greatest was how they treated Anakin. I think one of the points of the Saga is that you are never too old to become a Jedi and anyone can become a Jedi. And that you don’t have to give up attachments to do it. It wasn’t Anakin’s attachments that led to his fall, it was how he handled them. He was not taught to accept loss, especially not such a profound loss. And we can look at how attachments and loss affected Luke, Obi-wan, and Yoda. They were not immune. Luke ran away from everything. Obi-wan and Yoda went into hiding, waiting for something to change. A properly balanced Jedi would mourn the loss and accept it as part of nature, part of life. A deleted scene in TLJ has Luke teach this to Rey. She tries to save the nuns from destruction only to find out they weren’t and for Luke to ask her what would happen if she were not there. Birth, life, death, decomposition, and the entire circle of life are part of the Force and the focus of the Jedi. Jedi are not supposed to be emotionless machines, but should live with nature and be at one with its joys and tragedies.

Cthulhunicron said:

yotsuya said:

I take a lot of what George has said with a grain of salt. He on one hand says that the force is not ying and yang, but on the other that is how he wrote the stories. That is what Dave Filoni has taken from it and what shows up in Clone Wars and Rebels and The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. The way I take the events of the PT is that the Jedi have slide too far to the light and have tipped the balance while the Sith have grown in power. So both sides are out of whack and in need of a reset. The Jedi think the Chosen One will come and wipe out the Sith. The Sith don’t care. So the Chosen one comes and the Sith lure him to the dark side and he helps wipe out the Jedi. Then 23 years later he wipes out his sith master and comes back to the light side. He balanced the force by resetting everything leaving Luke to rebuild. But there are still other force users out there. In The Last Jedi they made it very clear (Following in line with The Clone Wars and rebels - both which Lucas consulted on and okayed) that it very much is a ying and yang and they need to be in balance. They can be in balance in each person. Ignoring either side creates the imbalance. Luke set out to rebuild the Old Republic Jedi and was reintroducing the imbalance in the system. The force reset again, but this time finding balance in a relatively untrained person who has read the ancient texts - from the time when the Jedi were the balanced force users. So while he said no yin/yang a time or two, the end result of what he created is exactly yin/yang. He’s done that a time or two so taking him 100% as his word is not always a safe bet. I think he would have abandoned his Whills idea. Now if they were the race we saw in Clone Wars, that would have been cool, but microscopic? No.

I’ve heard audio recordings of Lucas talking to the Clone Wars writers, saying that the dark side basically is imbalance. In the recording, he says that destroying the Sith equates to balancing the Force. Obi-Wan says this in ROTS. I don’t see much evidence (outside of Rebels) that the audience is supposed to think it’s bad or unbalanced to embrace the light side. Otherwise, Luke would be “unbalanced” when he spares Vader. I’ve always felt that in that moment, he’s even more in touch with the light side than Yoda or Obi-wan, since they were telling Luke to just kill Vader.

I don’t see the force itself as good or bad. It’s dark side is not inherently bad, just susceptible to bad uses. It is the users and the orders that are good or bad. The Sith are the embodiment of evil. Destroying them will not automatically bring balance to the force, but it will end their line of evil. Balance can return when the force is used in balance. What I take Lucas saying is not that the force itself (the underlying energy of the universe) has an evil aspect, but that the Sith have been using it for evil and destroying them brings balance (post order 66) by ending their abuse of the power. Luke tapped into the dark side and didn’t fall. He’s seen that balance first hand.

OutboundFlight said:

All due respect: I’ve never understood this argument. I understand Taoist traditions, but I can’t comprehend a “good dark side user”. Love and passion aren’t equivalent to darkness, they just lead you to it if you aren’t careful.

Dare I say it, I don’t think the Jedi did anything wrong during the Clone Wars. A genius outsmarted them. Had Palpatine not been involved Anakin would have either peacefully left their order or broken off with Padme and firmly joined their cause. I just can’t see the Jedi losing the PT because they were “too good”.

And yet there is that bit that is in several of the films where the Jedi admit they are having problems with the force. How would that be the case if they were just outsmarted. There is an imbalance. I see the imbalance (and I did before the ST) as the good force users ignoring the dark side of the force. They are taught to ignore it because it is too tempting. They are never taught how to wrestle with it and stay on the light side and maintain balance. That is why Anakin fell so easily. He was never taught how to fight the temptation of the dark side. So in the PT and OT you have the force splintered into the far light and the far dark. Jedi are supposed to be closer to the center. They should know how to tap into the dark side as needed, but not let it tempt them or consume them. The Jedi need to be in balance themselves. They have banned attachments because it could lead to the dark side rather than teach the young Jedi how to be attached and not be tempted by the dark side.

If the old EU lore holds true, the Sith started out as fallen Jedi. So the order split. And to balance the force the order needs to be whole again. Since people are not easily changed, the easiest way to do that is to wipe everything out and start over. Well, Palpatine wiped out the Jedi and the Sith tradition of only two, a master and an apprentice, left the Sith side vulnerable to defeat. We see Luke learn that final balance in ROTJ as he taps into the dark side to defeat Vader and the lets it go. Vader kills Palpatine and himself in the process leaving only Luke… until someone resurrects Palpatine (everyone confirmed that he was indeed dead at the end of ROTJ). Luke is balanced, but late Republic Jedi taught. As issues arise, the balance is not maintained. The ST we got is about perfecting that balance. So Rey is NOT Jedi trained in the Old Republic traditions, but has the original Jedi text… from the age when they were balanced. Luke noted she was not afraid of the dark side. To her it is all just the force. Revelation of her origins tests that balance, but she regains it.

It isn’t a matter of which side of the force you use, it is all in how you use it and why. The user must be balanced. The user must maintain control. Anakin was consumed by the dark side. Palpatine isn’t just consumed, he is the embodiment of the dark side. He is chaos. The Late Republic Jedi have made their order all about keeping order and following rules and avoiding the dark side at any cost. They placed good an evil onto the natural order of things when the good and evil lies in how the force is used, not the force itself. So the destruction of Palaptine does bring about the balance to the force because he is chaos and evil - the embodiment of everything bad. The first time Luke has just found that balance and all is good for a time. The second time, Rey is that balance and has destroyed even the Sith loyalists leaving no one to bring it back. The Jedi order has been reset to where it was 1000 generations before.

Most great SF properties were build on a haphazard world building. Many of them were built up in pieces in story after story. In the case of Star Trek it was by many different people adding pieces to it. Star Wars had early input from Alan Dean Foster (Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was the first idea for a sequel) and Brian Daley (some of his terms have become movie canon). Some things from the Marvel comics got used. That was the first place we saw speeder bikes. So while many think George did a lot of that solo, he didn’t. There were a lot of ideas swirling around and some of them ended up in the films. The PT probably had more influence from the EU as it developed later. It definitely had influence from the West End RPG. And to be fair, all the EU had input from GL, but it was fleshed out with ideas that did not come from him. Many were the necessity of the story and the writer that created it. The PT is just the first time that the film’s stories were developed and fleshed out by other writers. And even Johnson was working to a story arc. He didn’t have to worry much about world building because he was writing the middle story and could focus on character development (and contrary to some opinions, the movie is full of character development).

What we do know that Kennedy and Abrams started from Lucas’s treatment and the put them through the normal story development process to take a rough idea and expand it to a workable movie trilogy. We know that some of Lucas’s ideas made it through to the final films. A lot in the movies is new and comes from the expansion of the story and new directions that they took. George would have made similar changes had he done the story development himself. We would have gotten something very different, but I bet it would have been as divisive if not more so.

ShamanWhill said:

yotsuya said:

He on one hand says that the force is not ying and yang, but on the other that is how he wrote the stories. That is what Dave Filoni has taken from it and what shows up in Clone Wars and Rebels and The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.

What stories? From all the movies George has written, it’s not that case at all. Dave Filoni is just as capable as misunderstand Star Wars lore as everyone other than George is.

yotsuya said:

The way I take the events of the PT is that the Jedi have slide too far to the light and have tipped the balance while the Sith have grown in power. So both sides are out of whack and in need of a reset. The Jedi think the Chosen One will come and wipe out the Sith. The Sith don’t care. So the Chosen one comes and the Sith lure him to the dark side and he helps wipe out the Jedi. Then 23 years later he wipes out his sith master and comes back to the light side. He balanced the force by resetting everything leaving Luke to rebuild.

I know where you’re coming from. I used to believe this too. I agree that it seems like a much nicer theory or way to view balance, but if we truly want to respect George’s vision, we have to adhere to what he defines as Balance. The Dark Side is when a person uses the Force to disrupt nature. It’s a slippery slope, because you only need to use a little of it to become a Sith. In order to preserve the Force, darkness must be eradicated completely, and this is the prophecy Anakin fulfills. If Balance to the Force means that the Dark side is just as strong as the Light, then this war would never end. The Star Wars story would never have a conclusion, which would make it pointless because it wouldn’t be going anywhere. Why even tell it? It would just be a state, not an evolution/story.

yotsuya said:

But there are still other force users out there. In The Last Jedi they made it very clear (Following in line with The Clone Wars and rebels - both which Lucas consulted on and okayed) that it very much is a ying and yang and they need to be in balance. They can be in balance in each person. Ignoring either side creates the imbalance.

Lucas consulted and Okay’d the Clone Wars. He didn’t oversee every little detail or plotline. George did not oversee or Okay the Last Jedi, which is where you’re getting the perception of Balance from. It’s incorrect. We’re not going to talk about the Sequels we got here, we’re going to talk about George’s Sequels.

yotsuya said:

I think he would have abandoned his Whills idea. Now if they were the race we saw in Clone Wars, that would have been cool, but microscopic? No.

The Whills have existed in Star Wars since the very first draft. He didn’t abandon them for almost 50 years; he wouldn’t now. He had hired screenwriter Michael Ardnt to write scripts based off this plotline. It was going to happen.

We never saw the Whills in the Clone Wars. And calling the Whills a bad idea because of how they would be executed on screen is a weak argument because we don’t know how they would’ve been presented. That’s where we can come in and come up with some cool stuff. In movies, any idea can be good enough if presented properly.

You lose some of the mystery if you explain too much. When you add in the midiclorians to the force it diminished the force. Add in the Whills as small microscopic beings and that further degrades. Portray them as some sort of spirit or ethereal being can have them act the same without ruining things. George got the magic when he did the OT. He seems to have forgotten in the PT, but what he approved from Filoni put it back again.

And the way I see it, the force is neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It has a dark side and a light side, but neither one is evil. How you use them can be and letting the force consume you is. So it is not the force itself that corrupts, but a person’s own desires. They get drunk on the power of the dark side and let out their worst. The Jedi failing is in shunning the dark side. That is what created the imbalance in my opinion. Had they maintained the balance, the Sith could never have grown so powerful. It is what GL wrote in the PT. It is all there. Filoni, Abrams, and Johnson have only confirmed that. I got this from GL himself and how he wrote the films.

No one has done the DC to these standards. That is my dream archive set.

I take a lot of what George has said with a grain of salt. He on one hand says that the force is not ying and yang, but on the other that is how he wrote the stories. That is what Dave Filoni has taken from it and what shows up in Clone Wars and Rebels and The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. The way I take the events of the PT is that the Jedi have slide too far to the light and have tipped the balance while the Sith have grown in power. So both sides are out of whack and in need of a reset. The Jedi think the Chosen One will come and wipe out the Sith. The Sith don’t care. So the Chosen one comes and the Sith lure him to the dark side and he helps wipe out the Jedi. Then 23 years later he wipes out his sith master and comes back to the light side. He balanced the force by resetting everything leaving Luke to rebuild. But there are still other force users out there. In The Last Jedi they made it very clear (Following in line with The Clone Wars and rebels - both which Lucas consulted on and okayed) that it very much is a ying and yang and they need to be in balance. They can be in balance in each person. Ignoring either side creates the imbalance. Luke set out to rebuild the Old Republic Jedi and was reintroducing the imbalance in the system. The force reset again, but this time finding balance in a relatively untrained person who has read the ancient texts - from the time when the Jedi were the balanced force users. So while he said no yin/yang a time or two, the end result of what he created is exactly yin/yang. He’s done that a time or two so taking him 100% as his word is not always a safe bet. I think he would have abandoned his Whills idea. Now if they were the race we saw in Clone Wars, that would have been cool, but microscopic? No.