34 new of 50 responses total.
Personally I liked the additions made to Jabba's palace. If you've read the books then it appears that some of the things they mentioned in the books appeared in Jedi... (Although my sister and I were trying to find Mara Jade and found it very hard.)
I'm reviving this old Star Wars item because recently, for no good reason, I've gotten fascinated with Star Wars. Largely I just noticed that the Lego Star Wars models are cool, and now that I'm a grown up I can afford to buy all the toys I want. But also the movies themselves are interesting under their varnish of cheap commercialism. Episode I is an interesting case in point. Before it was made, I'd been wondering how Lucas was going to handle the first trilogy. After all, the hero has to be Anakin Skywalker, and we already know that he's going to become a traitor to all his friends and ideals, and turn into a murderous monster. Hardly the kind of uplifting story of dewy-eyed heros bravely beating back the forces of evil that made the original Star Wars movie such a popular success. The question in my mind is, how is Lucas going to tell such a dark nasty story while maintaining the popularity that is necessary to finance the project and win it the attention it needs to stand out from the the crowd? So on first viewing, I was disappointed in Episode I. Nothing much happens. The good guys win and have a big celebration in the end, just like the first movie. Lucas had dodged the problem of convincingly showing a hero turn evil without losing his popular audience by postponing the whole issue. There's no sign yet of the decent into evil that will turn Anakin into Vader and the Republic in to the Empire. But on second viewing, I belatedly noticed that the good guys didn't win. They think they did, and most casual viewers of the film would think so, but in fact, the forces of evil take a whomping. Probably all real fans (not me) noticed that the Senator from Naboo, who get elected to be the new leader of the Republic as a result of the Naboo/Trade Federation war has the same name as the future Emperor. It's obvious that he manipulated the Trade Federation into attacking his home planet so that he could embarrass the current leaders and create enough sympathy for him to win him control of the Republic. The scheme came off perfectly, and the fact that the Naboo won the war only fed into his plans. All the bravery of the heros really only ends up advancing the plans of the future emperor. In other words, Lucas found a way to have it both ways. He depicted the Emperor's rise to power, while making it look to the casual viewer as if they were watching an ordinary, victory-of-the-good-guys kind of movie. Rather a clever bit of cinematic sneakiness. Make big box office money with a movie parents happily bring their kids to, that depicts evil conquering good. Can Lucas play this double game with the next two movies? It's hard to see how. You can't exactly turn Anakin into Vader without people noticing. But can you cast it as noble self-sacrifice? This seems improbable. But recall the scene where Yoda tells Luke that if he goes to rescue Han & Leia than he is taking a step down the path to the dark side. Evidentally you can go a long ways toward the dark side by acting heroically. (Obviously Anakin's mom has been set up as the victim who needs rescuing or avenging and draws him closer to the dark side.) Curiously, there seems to be more information around about what happens in the last trilogy than in the rest of first trilogy. (If you don't want to hear official Lucasfilm spoilers for films that probably won't be out for a decade, stop here.) Leia marries Han and becomes the leader of the New Republic, built from the ashes of the Empire. Luke marries someone (R2D2 is his best man) and starts a Jedi school. The Emperor, however, is not dead and gets himself resurrected in a cloned body. He draws Luke to him, and Luke pledges himself to serve the Emperor, embracing the Dark Side of the force in hopes that by pretending to server the Emperor he can find an opportunity to destroy him. He finds, however, that he has underestimated the power of the Dark Side, and that once in its clutches he can't escape and he begins to serve it in truth. Eventually Leia manages to break him loose, much as Luke got Anakin out, just in time to save Luke's kids from continuing the cycle. So not only does Lucas want to make a popular film about a hero decending into evil, he wants to do it twice. The plot summary above pretty clearly shows that most of the decent into evil will involve good motives, so he'll be able to depict most of the trip as an act of rousing heroism, with the good guy appearing to win all sorts of battles while quietly losing his soul. So the heros, in guise of good deads are actually doing evil, and the movies in guise of family entertainmnet are actually rather nasty. So the Star Wars films are interestingly attractive and repulsive. Even the comic relief characters (Ewoks, Jar Jar) whom everyone thinks are put in to improve marketability to kids are actually rather repulsive upon nearer inspection (the Ewoks are vicious when they aren't being cute, and Jar Jar is a moronic step-and-fetch-it sterotype). Everything likable is dispicable and everything dispicable is likable. Well, not everything. Leia and R2D2 seem to be perfect beings. Han Solo was supposed to be a good/bad guy in the original movie, but Lucas seems to have later shifted him to the small pile of purely good guys - note that when he remade the original Star Wars, the only actual telling change was that Han Solo no longer shoots first when he kills the bounty hunter in the Cantina, changing an act of pre-emptive murder into self-defense.
Interesting. I may have to go back and watch Episode I again. I really
didn't like it the first time I saw it, for all the reasons you cited.
But you make it sound both thoughtful and exciting.
Watch it on that "I can afford to buy all the toys I want" stuff. Arlo
is going to learn to read some day, and the very day he does, he will
home in on that comment and cite it endlessly to you. ("But Dad! I
think we ought to have a *blue* twisty slide *too*! You said you could
afford any toys you want.") Even just sticking to Legos, some of those
sets cost a couple of hundred bucks, and there's *no end* to them.
Of course Leia (body by Fisher) is perfect!
The last I'd heard, Lucas had decided not to make the third trilogy after all. Possibly I'm mistaken: I don't pay much attention to these things. "Phantom Menace" was quite possibly the most boring movie I've ever sat all the way through, and I'm disinclined to go through an experience like that again. Numbers 2 and 3 will be a real hard sell to me. However, I think the analysis in resp:18 is on target. The seeds of the devastation we see at the start of "New Hope" are indeed sown in P.M. And, given the events that Luke went through in its sequels, and what Yoda said about it, it would be flatly impossible for Lucas to make a third trilogy in which Luke does not turn to the Dark Side. Unless he cheats. So yeah, I'd give Lucas credit for a darker, more nuanced imagination than simply a "good guys win, film's over" attitude. Except that his Dark Side's repeated revivals somehow remind me more of the pop-ups of a plastic bouncing clown.
To my knowldge, Lucas never intended to do the third trillogy, which is why they sold, or rather, loaned the rights to the authors for the books and for the roll playing games, among other things. Everything still has to go through Lucas, to his specs, but he never planned on film.
Not being an actual fan, I'd only heard that the Lucas wasn't going to make the third trilogy recently. Frankly, given the potential income of those films, I'd say guess that if he doesn't make those films, someone else will. In fact, I'd be surprised if there weren't more films done after that. It's too profitable a franchise. Actually, I can't claim Episode I is a good film. Basically, my argument above says that it plays a useful and interesting part in the 9-film story arc. I also think it's interesting that while it's role in the story arc is to show "the begining of the end" for the Empire, with key victories for the villians and vital blunders for the good guys, the film itself seems like an upbeat victory for the heros. I think this was done purely for marketability reasons, but it's enough of an interesting little trick that it adds some abstract interest to the film. But standing on it's own, it's rather a lame film. A cliched plot, and not one single character that anyone could manage to care about (OK, I'll allow Padmi/Amadala partial credit). The non-cliched story arc and the engaging characters are all carefully hidden under a bushel basket. You need to be a fan to know they are there, and you need to be a moderately dim 12-year-old or a computer graphics buff to get a thrill out of what is out in plain site. In this case, the fans who disect the film are the only ones having any legitimate fun. There is no "magic" to lose by putting it on the disecting table. Personally, I think the first two films were terrific. The original film was a great "recapture the wonder" kind of thing. The second film was dark and dramatic, and supplied one of the most famous lines in cinema history. "I am your father" isn't famous because it's a catchy phrase on it's own right, but because of the emotional charge that the movie put behind it. It lacked an ending, but we knew a sequel was coming, so we forgave it that. The third film has only a couple good scenes. I like the scene where Leia wakens Han. The weird alien person turning out to be Leia, Hans distress and disorientation, the emotion between them all work. And the final confrontation between Luke and Vader is OK too. But aside from these little wrap ups of loose ends from "The Empire Strikes Back", there isn't much here. Well, I guess I kind of like the general idea of a high-tech/low-tech battle and the speeder bikes were cool. But I still find the series as a whole fascinating.
Wonder if the advances of IRL cloning will lend any fascination to whichever movie deals with "The Clone Wars"...
Probably not. I saw a reference on the offical SW web site that says that the Emperor's dark side power tends to cause his body to decay at an accelerated rate. To avoid this, he moves his conscioiusness from clone body to clone body. That's how he survives being killed by Vader. His body is destroyed, so his mind lives disembodied in the force for a while until he is able to re-inhabit one of his stored clone. This doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with "the clone wars" whatever they are, but they do hint at an attitude toward cloning that has little or nothing to do with IRL cloning. This is a thing that really annoyed me in the recent Schwartzenegger film, sixth day. It starts with some references to the cloning of the sheep dolly and the completion of the human genome map, and states that this film is going to deal with the near future, and things that are on the verge of being possible. In the movie, a nefarious company has secretly invented a process where (1) they grow "blanks" - human bodies without consciousness from which all individual genetic traits have been removed (whatever *that* means). Then (2) they can take a blood sample from a person, and, in seconds, superimpose the genetic traits from the blood sample onto the blank body, causing it to turn into a duplicate of the donor's body. Then (3) they can record the entire contents of a person's brain in a second just by having them look into a machine. This recording can be stored on disk, and downloaded, again in seconds, into the blank body. The astute observer will notice that none of these three processes are cloning (well creating a second "blank" body once you have created one would probably be cloning, but that's the easiest part of it). None of these things are likely to be possible in the near future. Quite probably none of them will ever be possible. Saying that the Dolly project gets us close to this is like saying being able to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together means you are going to have portable pocket fusion reactors next week. I dislike the fact that the media is popularizing such nonsense as "cloning". Cloning really is close, in fact, I wouldn't be amazed to hear that some rich millionare or millionaress has already had him or herself cloned. And I wouldn't be bothered either. So you can have a baby that is genetically a twin to you. No big deal. It's still a separate person, just as ordinary twins are. Why wrap all this sensationalism around "cloning"? So anyway, the mere fact that they are having wars about cloning suggests that there is more than mere cloning going on. Maybe instant duplication of living people, as in Sixth Day or in the Emperor's reincarnation process. Maybe mass production of genetically engineered clones. Neither of these have anything much to do with real life cloning, so it'd be astonishing if real life cloning had any impact on the film. Clone movies are about other clone movies, not about real life.
I'm not sure about the clone wars, but I do know that they'll deal with the Slave population on Tatooene <sp?>, so if not 2, then 3 of the re-quals. I don't think I have heard a detailed description of the "clone wars" from any die hard lucas fan (and I've known a couple) and I think Lucas wants to keep it that way. perhaps it doesn't even involve genetic clones as we think of them?
resp:22 - are the novels set after "Return of the Jedi" part of a consistent storyline? If so, what happens to Luke? Does he indeed fall into the Dark Side?
Actually, yes they are. If I remember correctly, He does not, he actually finds more Jedi, trains, and starts a Jedi school. Han and Leah have twins, names both start with J and I don't remember them at this time, a boy and a girl, and some relative of Chewy is ALSO in the Jedi school. And yeah, the Emperor comes back in another cloned body, there were BIG debates about if he could do that, but apparently he could.
Well if the emporer could, what about Anakin, Kenobi, Yoda, etc.?
Probably could, but he may be happy to be Kenobi the freindly ghost.
The Emperor comes back? After that gory finish? Plastic bouncing clowns, like I said. Surely, if this is possible, then Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, master of the Dark Side of the Force, should have known how pointless his disposal of the Emperor would be before he performed it. But then, I don't buy half the stuff in "Phantom Menace" either.
Well, the Emperor apparantly doesn't bounce back any too easily. He's out of commision for a long time. Even if Vader knew this was possible (not obvious that he would), he might consider buying Lucas a couple decades to mature before the Emperor could have another whack at him a fair deal. I don't think Vader was a master of the Dark Side of the Force. I think he was a slave of the Dark Side of the Force. Anakin, Kenobi, and Yoda don't have clone bodies. But it does seem clear that at least some Jedi are able to maintain some sort of spectral existance after death. Mostly it seems to be the more contemplative types who do so. Kenobi and Yoda both die voluntarily with their bodies vanishing after death. Anakin makes a spectral appearance, but I'm guessing he needed help from Kenobi and Yoda to do that. "If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you can imagine," or something like that says Kenobi before he lets Vader kill him. There is no evidence in the movie that his power extends to more than giving Luke posthumorous advice, but presumably there is more to it. Yoda and Kenobi had each been sitting around alone for a few decades doing nothing while the Empire takes over the universe. Presumably they weren't really doing nothing, but were in some way preparing to go into ghost mode and do some really impressive stuff. All the other Jedi, good and bad, leave corpses. Hard to tell if the Emperor did. Apparantly not.
If I understand correctly, there is something in the way they're bound to the force, the midiclorian count, and the total power of the jedi if they dissapear after they die. They're tied into the force so tight that their body ends up being absorbed by the force, hence the astral projections. Vader woudln't have known about the clones, because being the only one of the Sith to survive the original parting of the "good" jedi and the "bad" jedi, the Emperor decided that the less the subordinant knows, the less likly they are to rebel against you. For those who don't know the parting, here it goes: One Jedi found the power of the darkside and when he was told that he couldn't use the dark powers by the jedi council, he wanted to know why, if there is balance in everything, then there should be balance in themselves as well. They forbid it, and he ended up leacing to practice the dark arts, and many jedi followed him. They learned the dark force powers, and the time came when he was old and had about 50 followers and he died. Well, all of the apprentices began fighting over who was to rule. All but one. The Sith ended up killing each other, all but the one, and the "good" jedi thought that it was over. Evil kills itself. But the one had watched and learned and he knew what the error was. Never show your pupil everything, and never have more than one. That way YOU are in control, and they're dispensible. So, this one, eventually became Palpitane and the Emperor, and he trained Maul, and then Vader, and some in the middle, but that's that point of the Sith. The cloning is something that he had a LOT of time to come up with. And it takes decades to get "into" the other body. It's not something that happens instantaneously. The only reason, to backtrack, that we saw the projections of Anakin, kenobi, and Yoda, is because they're the only ones that had a connection to Luke. But others do fade into the force.
I also got the impression that at the end of Return of the Jedi that Anakin, Kenobi and Yoda where ready for the next place in the force after watching over Luke (and Leia). Something they could not do for a long time.
resp:32 - Vader can be a master and a slave of the Dark Side at the same time. "Master: a person very skilled in some work, profession, science, etc."
In other words, he's a middle manager. ;)
35: There is one Master, one Apprentice. Vader was not the master.
Jeez Louise. I said "master" with a small m, not with a large M. All I meant was that Vader is knowledgable about the Force. Good grief. This is the kind of obnoxious hairsplitting that gives science-fiction fans a bad name. In any case, he said to Obi-Wan, "Now I am the Master." Maybe he was mistaken.
he only meant that because Obi-Wan was his master in the good side of the force, he trained him, and in some thoughts, the only way to truly become a master is the death of the one who taught you, otherwise you are forever a student to them.
Just watched Empire Strikes Back last night. Now recall from the Episode I novel and movie that the syth fought among each other, killed each other off, so that "in the end" there were only 2 syth lords existing at once, a master and an aprentice. But in ESB (episode 5) Darth Vader and the Emporer are talking about turning Luke to the dark side, so that he could become a powerful ally. Based on past history, that couldn't work. So the Emporer should just have had Vader kill Luke to end the threat, since there were already the 2 syth in place - the Emporer as master, and Vader as apprentice. I could see Vader secretly plotting - as he proposed to Luke - to have Luke join him to overthrow the Emporer, thus yielding Vader as master and Luke as apprentice syth. But I can't see the Emporer actively supporting trying to turn Luke to the dark side. I can only chalk this up to ESB coming out 20+ years before Phantom Menace, where all this syth stuff got worked out. :-)
But you're forgetting Jedi, and how while the emperor wanted Luke to give in to his dark side, he wanted him to either kill Vader OR kill the emperor himself. He can clone himself again after a time. Luke was Vader's only weakness, and by turning him to the darkside there was nothing that could redeem Anakin/Vader's good side.
Also if Luke had turned and managed to kill Vader they would have been back to 2, master and aprentice. If you haven't seen it yet find the Star Wars fan-film Duality for an interesting look at Sith apprentice training techniques.
The Saga Begins (Al Yankovic) To the tune of "American Pie" From the CD "Running with Scissors" A long, long time ago In a galaxy far away Naboo was under an attack And I thought me and Qui-Gon Jinn Could talk the Federation into Maybe cutting them a little slack But their response, it didn't thrill us They locked the doors and tried to kill us We escaped from that gas Then met jar Jar and Boss Nass We took a bongo from the scene And we went to Theed to see the queen We all wound up on Tatooine That's where we found this boy... Oh my my, this here Anakin guy May be Vader someday later - now he's just a small fry And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye Saying "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" Did you know this junkyard slave Isn't even old enough to shave But he can use the Force, they say Ahh, do yo usee him hitting on the queen Though he's just nine and she's fourteen Yeah, he's probably gonna marry her someday Well, I know he built C-PO And I've heard how fast his pod can go And we were broke, it's true So we made a wager or two He was a prepubescent flyin' ace And the moment Jabba started off that race Well, I knew who would win first place Oh yes, it was our boy We started singin'... My my, this here Anakin guy May be Vader someday later - now he's just a small fry And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye Saying "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" Now we finally got to Coruscant The Jedi Council we knew would want To see how good the boy could be So we took him there and we told the tale How his midi-chlorians were off the scale And he might fill that prophecy Oh, the council was impresed, of course Could he bring balance to the Force? They interviewed the kid Oh, training they forbid Because Yoda sensed in him much fear And Qui-Gon said "Now listen here Just stick it in your pointy ear I still will teach this boy" He was singin'... My my, this here Anakin guy May be Vader someday later - now he's just a small fry And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye Saying "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" We caught a ride back to Naboo 'Cause Queen Amidala wanted to I frankly would've liked to stay We all fought in that epic war And it wasn't long at all before Little Hotshot flew his plane and saved the day And in the end some Gungans died Some ships blew up and some pilots fried A lot of folks were croakin' The battle droids were broken And the Jedi I admire most Met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast Well, I'm still here and he's a ghost I guess I'll train this boy And I was singin'... My my, this here Anakin guy May be Vader someday later - now he's just a small fry And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye Saying "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" We were singin'... My my, this here Anakin guy May be Vader someday later - now he's just a small fry And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye Saying "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi" "Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi"
I was impressed by how accurately Weird Al told the story of "The Phantom Menace", and how much he covered in a song only a few minutes long. He does a pretty nice job, I think.
A few posts back I mentioned the fan film Duality. Once you watch that watch Two-Ness. They are both available on www.theforce.net
The superior pleasure of listening to this song over actually watching the movie is immeasurable.
Now, that's going a bit too far. It's a nice song, but not at all a bad movie.
Okay, "Weird Al" would get a passing grade in his Filking 101 class. He told the story in the song. That's it. Frankly, I had a hard time figureing out who the point of view singer is; Ben does not know of Anakin's future at this point. Only us fen and George Lucas know that.
I may be a seriously geeky SF fan, but even I'm not worried that the singer of the song (clearly young Kenobi) is referring to things that won't happen until later movies. It's just a funny song, not a dramatic novel...
resp:47 - not a bad movie? Indeed not: that's far too mild. It's one of the two or three very worst films I've ever watched all the way through, ghod knows why I bothered.
You have several choices: