25-05-2005 09:01									#151
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Well, the main problem with that is that one has to be trained in the force already to contact the dead jedi...

	25-05-2005 09:09									#152
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quote: Originally posted by pchang Well, the main problem with that is that one has to be trained in the force already to contact the dead jedi...

Luke sure seemed surprised to 'see' an apparation of obi-wan in ESB. I doubt he had or required training to see ben. We might assume he had to be force sensitive (no I refuse to say 'had a lot of midichlorions') in order to sense it but I think he mainly just had to be the target of the communication effort from the dead guy doing the talking.

	25-05-2005 09:17									#153
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It's been suggested somewhere that seeing the force ghosts is a issue of familarity. Luke saw ben because he became such a big part of his life in a short period in the same way he saw Yoda and Anikin at the end of ROTJ when Leia could not since she had known none of them. (Leia also being force sensitive) She knew Vader but not the man behind the mask. It could also be why we don't see Qui Gon because Luke had no affiliation to him but Qui Gon could talk to Anikin at least in a limited way.


stretch perhaps. No wonder Lucus doesn't spend too much time on the plot. He doesn't have to with fans reaching to explain the loopholes in the movies.

	25-05-2005 09:33									#154
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The biggest question I have is how did Palpatine fool the entire Republic into letting him take over in the first place? Is the rest of the galaxy a bunch of idiots?

	25-05-2005 09:49									#155
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quote: Originally posted by pchang The biggest question I have is how did Palpatine fool the entire Republic into letting him take over in the first place? Is the rest of the galaxy a bunch of idiots?

Episode 1 pretty much explains all of that. Palpatine was a master manipulator.

	25-05-2005 09:53									#156
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quote: As for explaining how Obi-Wan could give advice to Luke, nah. That never required explanation I think. It was readily accepted as part of the way of the force by all who saw the original movies.

The problem with that is then why didn't other, past Jedi masters come to advice Luke, since he was the last hope (well, there was another, but really it was Luke). There had to be another explination. All those Jedi who perished in the Clone Wars should have been tutoring Luke if it was just a part of the force.

	25-05-2005 09:55									#157
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Palpatine is the only character that shined in the PT and It's a shame that his character wasn't explored more in the OT. My impression of Vader has dropped immensly. The PT has diminished Vader in my mind.

All Obi won and Palpatine are really the only ones I enjoyed seeing in the first three movies. Here is a little article I came across that pretty much sums up my views on it.

quote: A long time ago, in a cinema far, far away... EVIL. EVIL wore a black cloak and an obsidian mask. EVIL rasped for breath and enforced his will with basso-toned threats and a dark gauntlet crushing the throats of any who dared fail him. That was EVIL in 1977. Twenty-eight years later, EVIL is a plastic potato-shaped doll with press-on armor. EVIL is posing with the M&M guys. EVIL is clutching at Cheez-Its. Or throwing them. It's kinda hard to tell by the box. How the mighty have fallen. EVIL ain't even "evil." EVIL's a bigger corporate whore than James Lipton. All of the intimidation, all of the black enamel paint so glossy that the dark lord of the Sith was nothing so much as a walking LaBrea Tar Pit of CERTAIN DOOM... is gone. I mean, how serious can you take a guy when his head is being offered for use as a cookie jar on specially marked packages of Rice Krispie Treats? You're a marshmallow, Darth Vader. A Twinkie! Well, maybe not a Twinkie; Hostess hasn't had a Star Wars tie-in since 1980. Obviously none of this is particularly new. Cartoon characters, TV shows and movies, etc., graced lunchpails and cereal boxes for decades prior to George Lucas' little film. But "Star Wars" -- back when that was the only title, because that was the only movie -- took the ambling oxcart of cross-promotion and gave it hyperdrive. Of course, he had good reason to do so. Rather than accept a fat studio check from 20th Century Fox for all his work on "Star Wars," Lucas negotiated for sequel and merchandizing rights, an unheard of proposition in the mid-'70s. Studio execs must have thought he was barmy. Turns out he was brilliant. In a recent interview for Money magazine, Jim Silver, publisher of Toy Wishes magazine, estimated that Lucas has raked in more from his cut of sales of the films' products than from the movies themselves. He expects the trend to continue with Episode III. "The key to this movie is Darth Vader," said Silver. "He is the best-selling villain of all time." What's that? "Best-selling villain"? Wow. Meesa shaking in my boots. I'm afraid that's got me rethinking this whole intimidation business. What was Vader's line to Luke in Return of the Jedi? Oh yeah... "Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you will not shop, you will face your destiny." See? Now right there we should all have gotten a clue where this was headed. Okay, okay, so the line was "turn," not "shop," but thinking about it, the operative word is "destiny," which is being used to nauseating repetition in the marketing of "Revenge of the Sith." But check it: Vader says "face your destiny." Again, wow. Big threat. Not, "If you will not turn, I will kill you" or "If you will not turn, I'm gonna get medieval on your ass." No. "Destiny." Tell you what, I'm pretty well destined to eat lunch in about an hour, and I think that, in comparison to turning to the Dark Side, that's a destiny I'd readily embrace. My respect for Vader was additionally diminished when we learned that the behind the grim visage was not a once great and powerful Jedi, but Anakin Crankypants. Whiny momma's boy should've been left on Tatooine. Now we're left in the interregnum between "Sith" and "A New Hope," and all I can picture is Vader skulking around his command ship, looking for a droid to kick, or sitting in his rejuvenation chamber, cutting Padme's head out of all of their snapshots. How appropriate, then, that Anakin and Vader appear together on a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. The vanilla ice cream of breakfast cereals. The good guys aren't without their faults, either. There's Chewbacca recording ringtones for Verizon. There's Mace Windu on a box of Honey Smacks, a doubly-damning display, as both the Jedi Master and Sam Jackson lose serious points on the bad-ass scale. But the worst indictment of all? Yoda attempting to steal some poor schmuck's Diet Pepsi. Have you seen the commercial? Yoda's in a diner, where he pulls the ol' Jedi Mind Trick to fleece some guy out of his burger and fries. It's not till Master Yoda pushes his luck and goes for the Diet Pepsi that the guy is able to resist. That's just sad. Disillusioning. All those nutjobs who listed "Jedi" as their official religion on the last British census are going to be doing a lot of soul-searching. At least there's one hold out, one honorable character who has stayed above the fray and remained entirely true to his character: Emperor Palpatine. Never anything less than manipulative and wretched, Darth Sidious glowers not from Pop-Tarts boxes or soda cans. (It's a fait accompli that he'd've beaten the Rebels handily if he hadn't picked Darth Marketability as his apprentice. Vader only chucked the Emperor down that bottomless shaft so he could score more consumer amity: my bet is that Kenner had a surplus of original Vader action figures from '78, but they all had broken hands. A script rewrite later, and -- ba-da-bing! -- the Repentant Vader action figure was born.) Still, I've got faith. Lucas may brush off rumors of a third trilogy, busying himself with cameos on "The O.C." and political pontificating at Cannes, but I know there's more to the story. The villain's never really dead unless there's a body. Vader is gone, but Palpatine survived, and in a dark chamber on a shadowy world, he is nursing a new, more ruthless Sith Lord who also survived a harrowing fall, but whose body was never shown. "Darth Hans Gruber." "Yes, master." "RIIIIIIISE." Now that's EVIL.

	25-05-2005 10:00									#158
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quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui quote: As for explaining how Obi-Wan could give advice to Luke, nah. That never required explanation I think. It was readily accepted as part of the way of the force by all who saw the original movies. The problem with that is then why didn't other, past Jedi masters come to advice Luke, since he was the last hope (well, there was another, but really it was Luke). There had to be another explination. All those Jedi who perished in the Clone Wars should have been tutoring Luke if it was just a part of the force.

Well I didn't mean or say it was just part of the force, but that it didn't need explaining when seeing ESB, that's why the point is moot with respect to Yoda mentioning Qui-Gon in RotS.

Also, consider that at the time of the original films we didn't know anything about any other Jedis of the past (and neither did Luke), so it'd have been pretty weird to suddenly have e.g. Mace Windu showing up to give him advice.

	25-05-2005 10:14									#159
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Well, I think people really started questioning when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan fought Darth Maul. Maul killed Qui-Gon and he didn't disappear. His corpse was on the ground. I think it may have been part of the backstory Lucas created when he started the prequals, but since that moment, that question has been always there.

As for wierdness of other Jedi's being introduced. Well they could have given themselves a little introduction . Or Obi-Wan could say this guy can help you too.

	25-05-2005 10:31									#160
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Why would you want advice from the other Jedi? They were all *****es and got they punk asses killed. Obi-Wan and Yoda are the only true gangstas who ended up living, therefore making them the only ones worth learning from.

	25-05-2005 16:09									#161
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quote: Rather than accept a fat studio check from 20th Century Fox for all his work on "Star Wars," Lucas negotiated for sequel and merchandizing rights, an unheard of proposition in the mid-'70s. Studio execs must have thought he was barmy.

This one ranks up there with "MS stole DOS from poor Tim Patterson, who, after selling QDOS for $50k saw MS make billions off his creation while he was left gasping for money" in terms of BS financial lore.

Lucas had a standard contract which paid him $500,000 to direct, plus gross points in the movie (10, iirc, but I could look it up later.) The only difference between his SW contract and other directors contracts at the time was that Lucas demanded, in addition, to have the merchandising rights for the entire series in his name. The studio execs thought he was crazy - nobody made any real money off merchandising as it took 18 months for the toys to be designed, manufactured, and distributed, and surely the movie, like all movies, would play out by then. Lucas's agent thought he could demand more up front money and points, but Lucas decided not to press it if he got the merchandising rights - which the studio execs were glad to give him.

	25-05-2005 16:22									#162
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Oooh, that's evil

	25-05-2005 16:41									#163
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quote: Palpatine is the only character that shined in the PT and It's a shame that his character wasn't explored more in the OT. My impression of Vader has dropped immensly. The PT has diminished Vader in my mind.

PT - Prequel trilogy? OT - Original trilogy?

I agree. The trilogy has pretty much ruined Vader as a character, changing him from an evil person who does evil things because he believes in an evil religion to a pathetic person who does evil things because he has Mommy issues and was wrongly convinced that he killed his wife (Hey, dipshit, good job on asking about your children!)

As I mentioned earlier, for the first time I actually went and bought the original movie this past Sunday 'cause my daughter wanted to see it. Watching Star Wars now, after seeing all the prequels, is nowhere near as fun because you realize that you're really just watching a family squabble, made even more pathetic because they don't even know that they're related - though they should, given the SW Universe's assumptions. You see Vader and Leia face-to-face and you're thinking "Hey, Force Sensitives! Can't y'all feel the love????"

The PT completely destroyed Vader by changing his motivations - where he once was evil, he is now petulant. Where he once was threatening, he is now whiny.

And one thing I completely forgot - it wasn't Vader who wanted to blow up Alderaan, it was that other guy, Vader's boss.

And how did he become Vaders boss? Wasn't Vader second to the Emperor himself?

Fah! Lucas ruined a decent story with some of the strongest stock characters in American movie history by tacking on this useless trilogy.

(However, it does explain why some of the other generals felt up to the task of mocking Vader - after seeing the prequels, I want to mock Vader.)

	25-05-2005 20:52									#164
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The new movies do create a whole set of stupid question with no answers.

Any moviemaker will have to limit the scale of things given time and budgetary constraints. In the first three movies, this works: fine, we are supposedly dealing with a grand Galactic empire, but the reason it makes sense to focus on this small group of people is because its a small rebellion..that eventually, by one single strategic attack beheads the snake.

BUt the new trilogy deals directly with the politics of creating a Galactic Empire as it also explains the Skywalker family history. Here it fails, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. What follows is a short list of questyion left unanswered for me, including really basic ones:

1. We were told the ability to use the force is based on having lots of midichlorians: it seems people strong in the force can sense others also strong with the Force. Fine, then why was no one able to sense Palpatines strength with the force? Its obvious he is as strong as Yoda with the force, yet until he told Anikin, the Jedi had no clue.

2. Why did the Republic need the creation of the Clone army in the first place? In this new story line, the Republic is made up of who knows how many world,s and the central authority had only the Jedi's to police the whole thing. But we also know that indepedent parts of the Republic could and did have military forces: The Trade Federations sure did, even little Naboo had its own little army and a small space force. Well, when the seperatists start making trouble, did not the worlds still loyal to the Republic have theior own forces to oppose them?? If not, why were the Trade Federations allowed to build military forces when no one else did?

3. In Sith, we see a Republican army made up of clones being commanded by Jedis. Fine, then where did this whole Imperial military command spring up from? You now, like the Grand Moff, or the Admirals and Captains who ran the Imperial Navy- they are obviously not clones. Also, why did the Imperials start cutting back on clones? Cause again, the guys running the walkers and such in the firt three movies did not look Maori to me in the slightest.

	25-05-2005 20:53									#165
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4. What's the point of aging Palpatine unnaturally? He was old in the movie anyways-he would have looked the same as he did in the originals without the whole incident. I mean, just look at Kenobi.

	01-06-2005 18:14									#166
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Interesting point you've made here in the real Star Wars discussion thread, GePap.

	01-06-2005 18:20									#167
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And the Award for Most Convoluted, Roundabout Way of Saying "Bump" goes to...

	01-06-2005 18:26									#168
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I am the only person who watches them just for a bit of entertainment/escapism?

	01-06-2005 18:44									#169
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All i remember from Episode1 is Jar Jar binks+ lots of effects (it was over two years ago when i last saw it though)

All i remember from Episode2 is...........lots of robots+lots of effects?

not a ringing enditement from a SW fan.

Will I(you) forget Han, Chewie, Luke, Artoo, Yoda etc and their stories? I dont think so.

Its like George got so wrapped up in trying to 'show' us his visions, he forgot all about telling a good story with characters you could emperthise with?

These new movies suck dogs

	01-06-2005 18:55									#170
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I quite liked AOTC and ROTS, some people seem to want the new films to mean as much to them at 25-30 as the old films did when they were kids.

Let it go and just enjoy the films (or not case the case may be)

	02-06-2005 01:55									#171
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quote: We were told the ability to use the force is based on having lots of midichlorians: it seems people strong in the force can sense others also strong with the Force. Fine, then why was no one able to sense Palpatines strength with the force? Its obvious he is as strong as Yoda with the force, yet until he told Anikin, the Jedi had no clue.

The Dark Side clouds the Jedi's abilities to see using the force. I believe that was stated in TPM by Yoda. The Dark Side has an hiding ability from the Light Side practioners. They can sense it is around, but from where, they don't know.

	02-06-2005 02:14									#172
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But do they also have to be without the ability to realize the freaking obvious that's going on right before their eyes?

An 8-year old watching any one of Episodes I-III is able to figure out there's something not quite right with that Palpatine fellow. And that's even with him paying more attention to his popcorn and candybag than the movie.

	02-06-2005 02:26									#173
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Thats what cartoon baddies are about, guess what, I even sussed that Darth Vader was a bad un' back in '77 when I was 8

	02-06-2005 02:50									#174
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	02-06-2005 03:31									#175
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quote: Originally posted by Winston But do they also have to be without the ability to realize the freaking obvious that's going on right before their eyes? An 8-year old watching any one of Episodes I-III is able to figure out there's something not quite right with that Palpatine fellow. And that's even with him paying more attention to his popcorn and candybag than the movie.

Well, the kind of focusing on Palpatine may have done it . Though 'something wrong' doesn't necessarily mean Sith Lord.

	02-06-2005 04:00									#176
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quote: Originally posted by reds4ever I am the only person who watches them just for a bit of entertainment/escapism?

quote: I quite liked AOTC and ROTS, some people seem to want the new films to mean as much to them at 25-30 as the old films did when they were kids. Let it go and just enjoy the films (or not case the case may be)

Like you, I went to see ROTS to be entertained. (Agreed, some people here take this crap way to seriously) Well, ROTS was somewhat intertaining, but a lot less so than the Empire Strikes Back. Surprise, suprise: Lucas didn't write all by himself the script for Empire Strikes Back and he didn't even direct the damn thing. Figures...

	02-06-2005 04:40									#177
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quote: Originally posted by reds4ever Let it go and just enjoy the films (or not case the case may be)

I could not agree with you more.

	03-06-2005 02:47									#178
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quote: Originally posted by reds4ever I quite liked AOTC and ROTS, some people seem to want the new films to mean as much to them at 25-30 as the old films did when they were kids. Let it go and just enjoy the films (or not case the case may be)

Ok i tried - i really did.

I've seen EpisodeIV about 20 times(maybe more?) and EpisodeI 1.5 times.

So this weekend between games of Xwing i decide to bite the bullet.

EpisodeI goes on during dinner time and things are ok, Liam Neeson is by far and away the best actor, MacGregor just somehow doesn't work that well as Obi-wan. And the other actors give a pretty bad account of themselves. I wont talk about the computer 'Actors'

Ok i can't help but mention them! They suck terribly, 'Meesa sooo stooopid and looksie messa flopsie ears! Iza be for grownsie ups as well as likle oneszies'

If from this start you cant see the cynical marketing attempt then well never mind.

I really sufferd over the next 2 hours - on many occasions resisting the urge to put my boot in the tv, or at calmer momments trying hard not to switch it off.

Next day at dinner again, and its time for EpisodeIV.

Well its in a different class. All the actors make you feel like you give a s**t. Amongst the ok acting are some class performances(Grand Mof Tarkin, Han, Obi-wan).

The only slightly 'blatent pandering to kids/sugar frosty coating' stuff can be possibly leveled at Artoo with his cuteish bleeps and bloops, but if he played a major role in the new movies you can't help feel he would have been subtitled(the viewer being judged to be too dim to read between the lines and work out possibly what he is saying).

The first two(4+5) movies(especialy) weren't kids movies, even if they were for kids. And as a kid you appriciated not being patronised. As an adult you can just enjoy the drama of it.

Even after the +20 time EpisodeIV is just a much better crafted/filmed movie in comparison to EpisodeI.

And sadly EpisodeII also left me feeling un-moved. They just sort of wash over you in a constant blur of not quite convincing often garish CGI and high speed action sequences.

Where's the drama gone? What happend to the interesting story that thrilled us in EpisodeIV+V?

well this is a much longer post than i like to read - so thats it.
I'm sure if it was possible to scientificaly prove how bad these new movies are in comparison to the first ones, then we would find i cant be wrong

Edit: I forced my gf to sit through them both during dinner(she isnt a Star Wars fan either poor thing), and she also found EpisodeIV more interesting than EpisodeI. Thats about as scientific as i could make my test

Summery

Episode IV-VI PWN Episode I-II(definately), and no doubt EpisodeIII as well .