How to argue about Star Wars movies the right way!

[urluckyday]

@ urluckyday: You're right, if someone young enough watched it in episode order with no knowledge of Star Wars beforehand, midichlorians wouldn't even register for them as an issue. But then, the lines "No, I am your father" and "Leia is my sister" would have no meaning or impact for them either since they already know that Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader and that Padme gave birth to the twins, Luke and Leia.

 

Yeah, but even when I watched ESB for the first time, it didn't completely register for me either. The surprise was gone, but the fact that he was still Luke's/Leia's father was still there. At the time (when I was 5 or 6), I was more interested in killing stormtroopers and blowing ships up than dialogue (that's why ESB was my least favorite as a kid).

 

I guess the atmosphere, and the scale of the movies is what mystified me the most about Star Wars - not so much the lore. I'm absolutely in love with all facets of Star Wars, but speaking from childhood experience, none of that stuff really concerned me - I just wanted to see good defeat evil and whoever could use the force, could use it and whoever couldn't, couldn't.

[Sith Holocron]

 

This might be a good place to start about arguments about . . . anything.

[Quanon]

The Pod Race is awesome even if it does ruin the pacing of the film and the lightsaber fight between maul, qui-gonn and obi-wan is entertaining even if it is presented in a "and suddenly a sith appears and a lightsaber battle happens... because reasons."

 

 

The funny thing about that is other people (ILM and stunt specialists) created and layed out most of those scenes and not Lucas himself.

 

@OT:

 

I understand the feeling, the whole PT trashing has been done to death. Just like ME3 ending bashing and whining. Saddly I'm biased; I saw the OT when I was just 6 on VHS together with my dad and a friend. It left a pretty big impact on me

So, yeah, the nostalgia rules suprime.

 

 

Though, once you start to disect most movies, none of them make much sense and most have some big plot holes or other sillyness that 'break' the magic. I guess it's really all on a personal level, in how deep you want to look into a structure of any given movie.

 

Star Wars and most Hollywood things are just pure entertainment and CGI fest, so you get a fun ride, a few good laughs, just don't look for any 'sense'.

Sometimes you just have to enjoy this stuff for what it is.

[Lynk Former]

Finding out that Darth Vader was Luke's father and that Leia was his sister were pretty big shocks for me when I first watched the OT. I remember I asked my dad if Vader was lying but he wouldn't tell me. I didn't want to believe it until Yoda finally confirmed it in RotJ where I finally had to accept it much like Luke did.

 

I mean, the Vader was basically evil incarnate from what I understood about Star Wars as a child. He was the bad guy doing evil things and Luke was the good guy, saving the galaxy. To have the bad guy be the good guys father was mindblowing to me, even with the shootbangs and such going on around it.

 

 

 

@ Sith Holocron: Or we can shut down the entire Internet just to spare peoples feelings and be nice nice with each other so that none of us get into arguments with people we can't see.

 

For humans, there's no such thing as a rational debate, only debates in which people tolerate others a little more than they do in other debates. All of our arguments are flawed in many ways, mine, Alexrd, urluckyday, everyone. It's just a bunch of Internet people arguing about Internet things... and you know what? This is the thread that is actually getting people to talk about stuff as inane as it all may seem to the outside observer and as pointless as debating fiction is, it's fun.

 

There's certainly no hard feelings between myself and Alexrd and urluckyday or anyone else despite what it may seem. Believe me, I don't hold grudges, and when I do... it's for a VERY serious reason, not something so trivial as an argument about Star Wars or video games or whatever XD I can argue all day about all of this stuff with a vengeance and still like the people I've been debating with or against, or whatever *looks around*

[Al_Ciao]

To jump in...

 

Adamqd: You watched it "1138" times? Pretty specific number, and I like the choice xD

 

Jonathan7: Your idea of the Anakin/Vader portrayal in the PT actually sounds really awesome. You should totally write fanfiction of the PT from that viewpoint >.>

 

The OP mentioned at one point that the reason some Jedi disappear and others don't is never explained. This is in fact NOT true. It's explained at the end of RotS. Qui-Gon's spirit is the one who figured out how to do (after he died, apparently), and passed on his knowledge to Yoda and Obi-wan, who thus disappeared when they died. I honestly wish this aspect had been explored a bit more.

 

Midi-chlorians: Meh. It is a bit too biological, I think, but I'm not really one to talk, as I explain things to death in my own stories xD What REALLY frustrates me about Force potential and such, is not midi-chlorians at all, but Qui-gon's telling the Council that Anakin is a "vergence in the Force". That statement is never explained, and never mentioned again. Even in Terry Brooks' novelization, he says it the one time and that's it.

 

"Vergence" isn't even a word. I assume he means some kind of "convergence", but "divergence" could apply as well, from a certain point of view. GAH!

 

1. RotS

2-4. OT (no particular faves)

5. AotC

6. TPM

 

I actually enjoyed some of the politics and such in the prequels, but it took WAAAAY too much precedence over the adventurous aspect that has been Star Wars' strength from the beginning. In the EU, for example, everything NJO and afterwards has been WAAAAAAAAAAAYYY too focused on politics and grey morality, and it SUCKS. A lot of cool stuff happens, but the grey morality and politics ruins so very much of it.

 

Sorry, that was a tangent, I'll stop now.

[urluckyday]

I mean, the Vader was basically evil incarnate from what I understood about Star Wars as a child. He was the bad guy doing evil things and Luke was the good guy, saving the galaxy. To have the bad guy be the good guys father was mindblowing to me, even with the shootbangs and such going on around it.

 

Maybe I was just a sick kid who loved Vader and wanted him to win anyway. I used to think that Stormtroopers were the coolest!

[Totenkopf]

Yeah, but they only seemed to be able to shoot straight when it came to sandpeople. I always thought they kinda needed to go back to the firing range at basic.

[jonathan7]

Finding out that Darth Vader was Luke's father and that Leia was his sister were pretty big shocks for me when I first watched the OT. I remember I asked my dad if Vader was lying but he wouldn't tell me. I didn't want to believe it until Yoda finally confirmed it in RotJ where I finally had to accept it much like Luke did.

 

I mean, the Vader was basically evil incarnate from what I understood about Star Wars as a child. He was the bad guy doing evil things and Luke was the good guy, saving the galaxy. To have the bad guy be the good guys father was mindblowing to me, even with the shootbangs and such going on around it.

 

I remember this too, and this really should have been kept for future generations...

 

There's certainly no hard feelings between myself and Alexrd and urluckyday or anyone else despite what it may seem. Believe me, I don't hold grudges, and when I do... it's for a VERY serious reason, not something so trivial as an argument about Star Wars or video games or whatever XD I can argue all day about all of this stuff with a vengeance and still like the people I've been debating with or against, or whatever *looks around*

 

Yeah, speaking for me, I really like and respect Alexrd, urluckyday; none of my posts were meant to seem aggressive, angry or indeed attacking the individual. The forums contain many people I greatly respect - adamqd for example has the most in depth knowledge of anyone I know about Star Wars, and there is no-one on the forus I dislike (well except for MIMARTIN ).

 

Jonathan7: Your idea of the Anakin/Vader portrayal in the PT actually sounds really awesome. You should totally write fanfiction of the PT from that viewpoint >.>

 

I'll consider it, if others are interested I could post a general plotline as I (and Lynk, we were chatting about this the other day) would have done the Prequels...

 

Here's a little taster art;

 

 

Maybe I was just a sick kid who loved Vader and wanted him to win anyway. I used to think that Stormtroopers were the coolest!

 

Star Destroyers are so cool too, every other Starship sucks compared to them...

[Sith Holocron]

By the way folks, I was just joking around in my last post. I wasn't making any comment any person's post.

[Lynk Former]

@ urluckyday: For me, it was the X-Wing pilots that did it. Ever since I first saw Star Wars, I wanted to be an X-Wing pilot. So much so that when I was in primary school, I came up with a character who was basically a representation of me in the Star Wars universe named "Lynk Former" ...an X-Wing pilot.

 

XD

[urluckyday]

@ urluckyday: For me, it was the X-Wing pilots that did it. Ever since I first saw Star Wars, I wanted to be an X-Wing pilot. So much so that when I was in primary school, I came up with a character who was basically a representation of me in the Star Wars universe named "Lynk Former" ...an X-Wing pilot.

 

XD

 

lol *off topic* where does the name Lynk Former come from?

[Lynk Former]

I actually go into that in great detail here: http://www.lynkformer.com/2012/11/20/the-former-legacy-lynk-former/

 

As for the name itself... it came from the words "stay in formation" and the idea of "linking your lasers together" in the game X-Wing which I played constantly... or perhaps I just wanted a way to pun the idea of forming links

 

Eventually I realised this same name is ideal to use on the Internet as well.

[machievelli]

As the local critic, I hate to say it, Lynk, but even before I was asked to do it, I always critiqued books I read and movies I saw. One of my favorite producer/directors right now is Josh Whelan because he allows something I truly enjoy; being surprised.

 

As the original poster commented, people denigrate the stories because of how old the ideas are, but there has not been a seriously brand new idea for fiction in centuries. You will notice I use the term Generic a lot, and that is because a lot of authors just 'go with the flow' of how they are usually done. Making the Mandalorians wannabe Nazi Einzatztruppen, making every Sith wannabe some sociopath who was just waiting to go to the darkside and start torturing people, that kind of thing.

 

I feel that if I can tell what's going to happen in the next scene, the writer has not really failed, but has fallen off that pedestal a good writer has. GL was in a way a storyteller of the old school, wanting to tell his story even if people didn't like it. I had heard (back before they started numbering them) that he had shown the original producer a full twelve episode story arc, and that man had chosen ANH because it was the most saleable at the time. Sort of like publishing the Acts of The Apostles first instead of the Gospels.

 

My pet peeves are simple, and linked to what I do know, and my tendency to shoot down ideas that are not close to realistic; midi-chlorians doesn't enter into that because it merely give us a way to quantify the effects, like the system used in a laboratory to determine which medium is better for growth of bacterium or mold. This type of testing is also used to discover what will kill them most efficiently, or what conditions to change to make it less invasive.

 

Those peeves are;

 

Speed of travel. In ANH you have at least several hours from Tatooine to Alderaan, long enough for Kenobi to at least start training Luke. Yet in ROTS you have Anakin injured on Mustafar, have the Emperor know it, and get there before Anakin is cooked to death. Since you have to go from the location, to a ship, fly it out of the atmosphere, hyper out, hyper in, land, then locate him, you're talking hours, not the few minutes it was on screen. The same is true in TESB where you have the Millenium Falcon in the Hoth system, but without hyperdrive, making it to the Bespin system. As I commented about a week ago, that is like taking off in an F6F Hellcat in the South China Sea, and flying it to San Francisco without refueling.

 

Second; Military reactions. In AOTC you have Padme fall out of the ship. The clone troopers arrive, intending to take her to safety. She countermands that, and orders them to go with her. This is due, when you think about it, to the programming they received in training, because there is no logical reason for it beyond that. However, look at this instead:

 

You are in a truck convoy in Iraq, you see a helicopter crash, and go to assist. In it you find someone, let's say Sara Palin. Your first reaction would be, get the Senator to Safety. She refuses, then orders you to go with her on her own unexplained mission. You snap to attention, and do what she tells you.

 

What is wrong with this picture? The woman maybe a government official, but she is nowhere near your chain of command. An American Senator can no more give a legal order in a combat situation than one of us civvies. Let's just say that I was not surprised when Order 66 was passed.

 

Anakin to Vader: While he had done things that would be Dark, why did Anakin immediately follow a Caedite Eos order from Palpatine? It would be like a modern General in our army accepting 'kill them all, and let God sort it out'. The order was illegal yet obeyed within less than an hour.

 

That is what ticked me off about the prequels.

[Pho3nix]

Eh, midichlorians never really bothered me that much to be honest... but there's one thing about the prequels that always kinda bugged me;

 

The whole concept of the Clone Wars.

 

That's right, in Episode IV we're introduced to the myth itself by Obi-Wan - and as he talked about it and actually named it 'the Clone Wars', I naturally assumed it would be a war set between the Jedi and some terrible Clone force. I dunno why but it just made sense to me years before I saw the PT... definitely did not expect a bunch of useless droids that get cut down like butter. The reason why it irks me is because I always thought of the Republic as being this sci-fi version of ancient Rome pretty much, so it would make sense for it to have its own galactic army spanning multiple systems with respective generals for each planet or something. Made up from a myriad of different alien species which would also juxtapose the system set by Palpatine with only human Stormtrooper recruits.

 

1. Why would an intergalactic Republic have the need for an external bred army of Clones which take years to mature?

 

2. Why would the Jedi and the senate representatives etc. suddenly be a-okay with said Clone army? they just went: "oh well I guess we'll just roll with it then even if we don't even know who the hell this Sifo-Dyas dude is and why someone authorized for this whole operation at all".

 

Just my two cents.

[urluckyday]

1. Why would an intergalactic Republic have the need for an external bred army of Clones which take years to mature?

 

2. Why would the Jedi and the senate representatives etc. suddenly be a-okay with said Clone army? they just went: "oh well I guess we'll just roll with it then even if we don't even know who the hell this Sifo-Dyas dude is and why someone authorized for this whole operation at all".

 

Just my two cents.

 

In response to your questions:

 

1. Well, Palpatine didn't want people to know that he had a giant army until the time was right. Additionally, an army comprised of clones is more willing to carry out orders (i.e. killing Jedi, young and old)...and in order for his plan to succeed, he needed an army that wouldn't splinter into pro and anti-Jedi factions when the order was given. These are my assumptions anyway.

 

2. The Jedi may not have been okay with a clone army; however, because they played no role in the political aspect of the Republic (peace keepers after all), I can only imagine that the politicians felt a sense of relief to know that an army was ready and waiting to fight the Separatist aggressors. The Jedi were always wary of what exactly was going on, but they knew that things were spiraling out of control quickly.

[machievelli]

Eh, midichlorians never really bothered me that much to be honest... but there's one thing about the prequels that always kinda bugged me;

 

The whole concept of the Clone Wars.

 

That's right, in Episode IV we're introduced to the myth itself by Obi-Wan - and as he talked about it and actually named it 'the Clone Wars', I naturally assumed it would be a war set between the Jedi and some terrible Clone force. I dunno why but it just made sense to me years before I saw the PT... definitely did not expect a bunch of useless droids that get cut down like butter. The reason why it irks me is because I always thought of the Republic as being this sci-fi version of ancient Rome pretty much, so it would make sense for it to have its own galactic army spanning multiple systems with respective generals for each planet or something. Made up from a myriad of different alien species which would also juxtapose the system set by Palpatine with only human Stormtrooper recruits.

 

1. Why would an intergalactic Republic have the need for an external bred army of Clones which take years to mature?

 

2. Why would the Jedi and the senate representatives etc. suddenly be a-okay with said Clone army? they just went: "oh well I guess we'll just roll with it then even if we don't even know who the hell this Sifo-Dyas dude is and why someone authorized for this whole operation at all".

 

Just my two cents.

 

I was 24 and saw SW in the theater when it was first released. I have to agree with you on all points.

 

Knowing how the US government is, I could see them dithering even over who had them created long before they deployed them, But you fail to notice that the 'Clone Army' is an army by our modern definition, but it is too small to be used for anything but shock troops.

 

Assuming say only ten percent of the galaxies known worlds have populations equal to our own, you have a lot more troops on every one of those planets. I didn't add the entire possible military force of our own planet but if you want to do the match http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel.

 

If you look at the total of all forces, five of the nations of our own planet can equip and maintain armies that make the entire originally deployed clone troops a drop in the bucket.

[Tommycat]

My problems with the prequels are fairly limited. I think that if they were their own movies unattached to the Star Wars I grew up with I would have loved them. It's kinda like how some on here really don't like Bioware finishing the story of Revan off the way they did. I liked having that mystery of the Republic before the Empire to a degree. And no matter how they did it, it would never match up to the expectations I had in my mind.

 

Then there's Jar-Jar... nuff said.

 

Then there's midichlorians. Now, there's some good explanations as to why they aren't actually the Force, but it seemed as though they were trying to take the mysticism out of the Force.

 

Then there's the little things that if you watched straight through in episode order would ruin the surprises. And at least a couple things that broke continuity. Leah knew their mother, who died when she was young, but apparently old enough to know who she was... even though (spoiler alert) Padme dies when she's born. Then there's the whole Ben Kenobi that apparently forgot about the sister he gave to the Organas. And how Anakin was supposedly an accomplished pilot when he met Obi-wan. Oh, and Vader built C3-PO and somehow Obi-Wan didn't recognize him or R2D2? I saw my old car on the road the other day and recognized that, and it never came to my rescue.

[Shem]

Then there's midichlorians. Now, there's some good explanations as to why they aren't actually the Force, but it seemed as though they were trying to take the mysticism out of the Force.

By explaining why some people can use the Force and some can't? I mean they already established that in the Star Wars universe... all they did was given a genetic name to why.

 

And at least a couple things that broke continuity. Leah knew their mother, who died when she was young, but apparently old enough to know who she was... even though (spoiler alert) Padme dies when she's born.

It's Leia. And I'll let Yoda answer this one:

 

 

 

 

 

Then there's the whole Ben Kenobi that apparently forgot about the sister he gave to the Organas.

Not true. People misunderstand that one like how some people misunderstood that the Force is genetic and that it was established in the OT.

 

So, let's revisit the scene you're talking about in ESB:

 

 

 

So, now it is established that if Obi-Wan didn't know, he knows now. Then we go to ROTJ when Obi-Wan reveals to Luke about Leia:

 

 

 

 

So, he knows about Leia, yet still calls Luke the only hope. Is it possible in Obi-Wan's opinion that he didn't believe in Leia, but Yoda did? Jedi can disagree you know.

 

And how Anakin was supposedly an accomplished pilot when he met Obi-wan.

 

 

 

 

 

When he first met Anakin on Padme's starship right after Qui-Gon fought Darth Maul, Anakin had already won a pod race. And "accomplished" isn't a word used to describe Anakin's piloting as Obi-Wan said (though winning a pod race qualifies that remark); he called him a GREAT pilot.

 

 

Oh, and Vader built C3-PO and somehow Obi-Wan didn't recognize him or R2D2? I saw my old car on the road the other day and recognized that, and it never came to my rescue.

Just because Obi-Wan didn't say anything, doesn't mean he didn't recognize them.

[Lynk Former]

I wish Obi-wan and Anakin had more interaction in TPM. For the most part it was just a "he was there in the same general space" kind of thing with the two of them throughout the entire movie.

 

I was chatting with J7 about this, alternate takes on TPM, and I think it would have been interesting if when the Jedi are escaping Naboo with Amidala, Qui-gon had died in order for his Padawan to escape and take the gang back to Coruscant. Just line in the original version, they hare to stop at Tatooine to refrain their engines... but instead of meetIng a child Anakin, they meet a 17 year old Anakin who is a scrappy young Pod Racer on Tatooine, gets into trouble, but helps the offworld strangers and forms a friendship with Obi-wanwhere Obi-wan comes to respect Annkin and his abilities while Padme and Anakin begin to form a different relationship, though they're not consciously aware of it at the time. Would make for an interesting alternate take of the movie.

[Totenkopf]

Smells like someone's engaging in the writing of fan fiction.

[HED]

I felt like having Anakin be a child pod-racing prodigy (as ridiculous as it was) in TPM was Lucas trying to square that original line about Anakin being a great pilot with his decision to have all the Jedi Padawan in the Old Republic start as children.

[Lynk Former]

@ tot: Exactly... and that's why I'm not presenting it foolishly as an example of an improvement that could be made to TPM or as an argument as to why TPM may suck or anything like that. I only see it as an alternate take that I find interesting to think about and not something I can use in any sort of debate

 

I also wonder how the galaxy would have turned out if Anakin hadn't turned to the dark side and instead saved Mace Windu and caused the death of Palpatine (I can't see him outright killing him on purpose in any scenario that follows along the lines of the events of RotS)... Padme may not have died, Luke and Leia may have grown up with their parents, Anakin would've been expelled from the Jedi order and possibly exiled due to the whole business with Palpatine. If we're going to go into an era where the sequel trilogy completely destroys the current Expanded Universe in such a way that multiple universes need to exist to reconcile the differences the sequel trilogy will bring, I think I would like to see an alternate timeline in which Anakin Skywalker never becomes Darth Vader.

 

But hey, that's just me thinking out loud

[machievelli]

Oh, and Vader built C3-PO and somehow Obi-Wan didn't recognize him or R2D2? I saw my old car on the road the other day and recognized that, and it never came to my rescue.

 

What happened in the scene where Obi Wan 'fails to recognize' R2 and C3PO is simple. He knew C3PO had been wiped, and he was asked if the droid was his, so he said (honestly in this case) That he didn't remember owning a droid. He didn't except for the one that managed his star fighter during the war.

 

@ tot: Exactly... and that's why I'm not presenting it foolishly as an example of an improvement that could be made to TPM or as an argument as to why TPM may suck or anything like that. I only see it as an alternate take that I find interesting to think about and not something I can use in any sort of debate .

 

I also wonder how the galaxy would have turned out if Anakin hadn't turned to the dark side and instead saved Mace Windu and caused the death of Palpatine (I can't see him outright killing him on purpose in any scenario that follows along the lines of the events of RotS)... Padme may not have died, Luke and Leia may have grown up with their parents, Anakin would've been expelled from the Jedi order and possibly exiled due to the whole business with Palpatine. If we're going to go into an era where the sequel trilogy completely destroys the current Expanded Universe in such a way that multiple universes need to exist to reconcile the differences the sequel trilogy will bring, I think I would like to see an alternate timeline in which Anakin Skywalker never becomes Darth Vader.

 

But hey, that's just me thinking out loud

 

We as the audience hate spoilers, but they happen when the author (Or director) hasn't kept abreast of what happened in what was already portrayed

 

A perfect example is the TV version of Star Trek. In the first season, you see a cloaking device for the first time, and Spock is as shocked as everyone else. But then you get to the second season of Star Trek Enterprise, where the ship is trapped due to a mine that will explode if they try to warp out, and a Romulan Warship decloaks a century too early.

 

I had written two scripts hoping to sell them to TNG, and in one I was told I had violated the 'bible' of the show. Back when Soap Operas were first created, the shows started keeping listings of characters and scenarios to avoid bringing back characters that were dead, relationships that had failed, that kind of thing. Most series that lasted more than two years these days also keep one. So the last scene above violated that canon, but was used anyway.

 

My favorite scene from a movie that explains this is the movie Soapdish where the main writer complains because they are bringing back a character, and she complains 'The man was decapitated!'.

[Totenkopf]

@ tot: Exactly... and that's why I'm not presenting it foolishly as an example of an improvement that could be made to TPM or as an argument as to why TPM may suck or anything like that. I only see it as an alternate take that I find interesting to think about and not something I can use in any sort of debate

 

But hey, that's just me thinking out loud

 

No worries....just tweaking ya. Improvement is a loaded word anyway. What works for some doesn't for others. Just interesting to see where others think something could have gone....whether SW, ST, ME, etc... Outside of identifying continuity errors or internal contradictions, most "improvements" will always be subjective anyway. TPM could have been improved by less Jar-Jar and less silly robots for example.....but others might disagree. Doesn't make it foolish to say so though.

[Al_Ciao]

Lynk: I also have mulled over an alternate timeline where Anakin lets Mace kill Palpatine. I see Anakin being expelled over his marriage, but NOT exiled... he didn't actually do anything bad with Palpatine up until the point he killed Mace Windu. So if he didn't kill Mace Windu, with all that followed that, no reason for utter exile, eh?

 

However, in my alternate timeline, I do see Anakin being allowed back into the Jedi Order, and becoming a Master of the council, as Mace Windu and Obi-wan had promised him. Maybe paving the way for marriage to become acceptable.

 

I imagine Bail Organa becoming chancellor after Palpatine, and then Padme after him. Leia and Luke indeed grow up together, though Leia takes a political route, eventually becoming the first Jedi chancellor in 1000 years (in EU, there used to be Jedi politicians). Luke takes the Jedi path, and meets Mara Jade as a fellow Padawan in the Temple.

 

Han Solo is a decorated Captain in the Republic, and Leia as the youngest Senator ever meets him on a mission where they're both disguised undercover but slowly fall in love despite originally thinking that they're on opposite sides (since neither one knows that the other is undercover as well).

 

So you'd still have the pairings, in my mind. Jacen would never go bad, Anakin Solo and Chewbacca wouldn't die, etc. Basically, with my take on the Anakin-stayed-good alternate path, I go all-out in making everything rosy.