Star Wars 7 shit talk

mb there are explanations but something does seem a bit implausible about the ~20 years between prequels and original trilogy being long enough for the force to become little more than a myth (wouldn't han solo have already been a teen at the time the jedi were wiped out?), but the story of one jedi appearing from somewhere and doing some stuff (or so we hear) seems something much easier for most to have forgotten a few decades on.

the force was sort of scoffed at even by some imperial dudes in the original trilogy who were around vader 24/7/365, in the office with him for morning meetings and rolling their eyes at him like he was this weird mascot. there were plenty of military dudes who underestimated or condescended to him to their own detriment/humiliation/death, like one could plausibly suggest that those who witnessed total jedi strength firsthand were few and far between (and many were dead) and tbh the deaths of almost all the jedi in the prequels sort of undercuts their rep as the most skilled warrior class.

one of the slash fic novels published touches on the long and uneasy relationship between Tarkin and Vader, fueled by mutual respect of the other's talents and jealousy of the other's relationship w/the Emperor.

Also: Imperial military bureaucracy didn't know quite what to make of weird metal man dude. Is he a Sith? Does he work for the Emperor? His place in the command structure isn't really set until The Empire Strikes Back when the death of Tarkin (to whom he obv reported) and knack for killing his officers makes him second in command really.

palpatine uses surviving a jedi assasination attempt as a way of completely seizing power though. really think the jedis in the prequels should've been scarce, w/ obi-wan this young, worldlier one that was arrogant enough to ignore the asceticism of his order cuz he wanted to have fun fighting in the clone wars and anakin was his best friend who was a hotshot pilot that was curious about ben's mysterious religion and so ben decided to teach him and it turned out anakin was a natural only he had none of the foundation of whatever they teach in some distant monastery and so was probably doomed to be lost to the dark side even before he ran into some machiavellian sith lord. if you ignore the prequels though it becomes very easy for ppl, esp in an entire galaxy that was previously dominated by an evil totalitarian govt and now finds itself in some kind of cold war, to know little and believe less about some space wizards. luke skywalker and han solo may only be known as some dudes that got some medals for blowing up a death star. it makes total sense that nobody may know that darth rejected the dark side and betrayed the emperor and is princess leia's father.

well, only Yoda and Ben knew; the only other one who did was one of the million voices crying out and suddenly silenced.

wookieepedia confirms - bail organa was on alderaan when it was obliterated

man there's a lot of reasons i'm happy the internet didn't exist when i was a kid but wookieepedia is one of the few non-pornographic ones

the whole seduction of the Anakin to the Dark Side was way too easy. they could have done something with the "cocksure top-ranked Jedi lacks mental discipline" angle rather than turn it into a generic teen angst tale.

also the "You were supposed to be the chosen one" bit from Obi-Wan wins the blue ribbon for over-explanatory dialogue.

xxpost

also, was Darth always intended as a Sith title as opposed to just being the character's first name? In Ep IV, Obi-Wan says "he is called Darth Vader" which implies at the time it was just seen as his first name and then retconned into being a Sith moniker.

And he calls him "Darth" during their duel.

"Dahhth" rather

the force was sort of scoffed at even by some imperial dudes in the original trilogy

iirc luke thought it was a bunch of hooey at first

I think Han's attitude towards Jedism is completely appropriate for a person who might have been just starting formal school during the clone wars. "What, those assholes who sucked and then died while defending some utopian model of governance I can barely remember? I'll have one trusty blaster, please."

I'm wondering if even when Jedis were still a thing here and there that you didn't get plenty of your officer corp not really able or wanting to comprehend these mystic robed dudes with psionic powers and weird melee weapons. It's striking a memory of Jon Pertwee's Doctor being constantly fed up with all the U.N.I.T. brass he'd have to deal with and who were only able to think in very direct, 1st-order, linear ways. "How do you like that, Jo? An example of 'the military mind!'"

So you have that table of officers in ANH sitting around and perhaps only fully grasping what Vader is/can do when he chokes out a dude for mod sass.

This whole "Jedis were forgotten between the original and prequel trilogy" thing becomes even more complicated if you accept Star Wars Rebels as canon (which if officially is), because in that series all sorts of random people know what the Jedis are/were, and don't consider them a myth, even though Rebels take place only 5 years before ANH.

Really, the easiest way to reconcile all this is to treat ANH itself as not fully canonical. Maybe it's a story told by a not-fully-reliable narrator (remember, it starts with the words "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away", so clearly the storyteller himself didn't experience these events, more likely he's repeating second or third hand accounts of things that happened centuries or even millenia ago)? This would explain all the things in ANH which feel out of place compared to the other movies and shows: the Jedis weren't totally forgotten in 20 years, Tarkin did know that the Force is a real thing and not just a religious concept, Obi-Wan would've known "Darth" is a title and not the name of a person, etc.

Then, from TESB onwards, the narrator changes into someone else, someone who had better knowledge of the events (or better history books), so there's less inconsisctencies in the story.

one of the slash fic novels published touches on the long and uneasy relationship between Tarkin and Vader, fueled by mutual respect of the other's talents and jealousy of the other's relationship w/the Emperor.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, November 8, 2015 9:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haven't read this one!

lol @ having to retroactively make the original damn film non-canonical

I dunno, I think it's fine. The Galaxy is a big place, just because Jedi have been active in the last decade in some parts of it does not mean they wouldn't be regarded as a semi-myth elsewhere.

Although Tuomas' weirdly literal metafictional musings are always a blast to read.

I got the feeling the Jedis were (no surprise, a la Kurosawa) basically like these wandering samurai, whose reputation preceded them but who were so far flung, dwindling in numbers and rarely if ever seen in action. And in so far as Darth is weirdly subservient in the first film, it's like he's been trained into Zen-like docility, not unlike Yoda - so powerful he doesn't need to use his powers. Which of course makes no sense, because whenever the Jedi roll over they die (like Darth and Yoda and Obiwan). If there's a huge hole in this narrative full of huge holes, it remains that "I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine" nonsense. Sure, in the sense that you can't kill a ghost ninja a second time, but other than that all the dead Jedi seem to do is sit on logs and mope. They seem like they'd be a lot more useful alive.

The second biggest hole in these films is why everyone is not carrying lightsabers. Sure, deflecting blaster rays seems pretty tough, but you'd think they'd still come in handy, like a fancy Swiss Army knife or laser Leatherman.

just think that... obviously the whole force/jedis thing wasn't really worked out until after the first The Star War film, and that this is probably fine? It's, like, a series of kids films about a war in space.

the whole jedi ghost thing is something that apparently took long periods of study and meditation during life, although anakin just magically shows up as a jedi ghost, so who the hell knows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eul1NlwytF4

"Who's your tailor? I *love that outfit."

I suspect Anakin's Jedi ghost was just a deliberate rule-break to tug at the heartstrings and drive home his redemption.

Or maybe Jedis are like Protestants in that deathbed changes of heart give them their old powers back.

New interview with Abrams at Wired: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/star-wars-force-awakens-jj-abrams-interview

"That’s not to say I’m not proud of my work, but the fact is I remember starting to shoot Super 8 and Star Trek Into Darkness and feeling like I hadn’t really solved some fundamental story problems."

Hah

hmm you don't say

such as i don't have an original thought in my head

one of the slash fic novels published touches on the long and uneasy relationship between Tarkin and Vader, fueled by mutual respect of the other's talents and jealousy of the other's relationship w/the Emperor.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, November 8, 2015 9:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haven't read this one!

― μpright mammal (mh

It's a novel published a few years ago that takes place before and during the destruction of the first Death Star. I read bits at an airport in Tennessee.

Wasn't Lucas' original vision/dream casting for Obi-Wan going to be Mifune? Which would make sense with Jedi being the robed, sword-wielding Zen ronin-type warrior.

Mifune's daughter apparently mentioned in a Japanese quiz show a coupla years ago that he was offered the role of Darth, too, but I haven't seen that corroborated anywhere else.

just his voice? in English?

such as i don't have an original thought in my head

Hell, at this point, I'd be happy with well-done blockbuster filmmaking.

Let Rian Johnson step up the originality level; let's just get a decent modern filmic foothold again, as it were

On a vaguely unrelated note, I just remembered that they gave the Warcraft movie to Duncan Jones, which seems a weird choice until I remember that modern genre franchise filmmaking grabs relatively newer/younger directors that the producers feel will be a bit more readily compliant and without as much a signature stamp. Maybe they took this cue from how the Broccoli family ran the Bond films.

the Warcraft trailer looks abysmal. Odd choice for Jones

No, apparently he'd be in the Darth suit w/ no face mask.

Which on reflection doesn't make any sense for the character, but this is what the actor's daughter born in 1982 said, so load of salt & all that

Yeah, the Warcraft trailer looked like their top priority was to realize the Blizzard visual aesthetic to OCD levels.

Tho I was amused that we see multiple shots of dudes riding gryphons et al, since it's an easy way to do visual grandeur, but also echoes how mounts are/were such a treasured thing in the MMO.

I have a secret hope that they'd find a way to have Robert Clotworthy in a cameo doing his full Jim Raynor-accent, but even Hollywood fan service has its limits.

The second biggest hole in these films is why everyone is not carrying lightsabers. Sure, deflecting blaster rays seems pretty tough, but you'd think they'd still come in handy, like a fancy Swiss Army knife or laser Leatherman.

Every lightsaber is hand-made, usually by its wielder, so there's no mass production mechanism and presumably some secret knowledge about how to build them that is fairly hard to come by. Hypothetically this is why Kylo Ren's saber blade looks so messed up.

yeah there's a whole bit in the Shadows of the Empire novel (don't start) about Luke building his new lightsaber based on a book he finds at Kenobi's old house. Those focusing jewels are tricky

And both a cutscene and Vader's dialogue in Jedi are about Luke constructing his new weapon

apparently Sidious let Vader use his lightsaber as a model when Obi-Wan took Vader's.

But why can only Jedis build them, apparently? Chewbacca was pretty handy, and surely a droid could do it.

Is Han the only non-Jedi we ever see using a lightsaber?

it involves semi-mystical meditating about finding the right crystal or some malarkey

I am sure anyone could make one, but iirc learning how to swordfight is a little more intense than learning how to fire a gun

Yeah, but one would come in handy when you want to open a carcass or, I dunno, a stuck ship door.

yeah there's a whole bit in the Shadows of the Empire novel (don't start) about Luke building his new lightsaber based on a book he finds at Kenobi's old house. Those focusing jewels are tricky

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/c/ce/Darkempire1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070921214400

I had this Dark Empire graphic novel that included a bunch of stuff about the force and the lightsaber crystal thing. Really don't think the movie will top that graphic novel tbh.

I can't believe the Uptown 1 still has tickets for sale on opening night. IIRC, Blade Runner: The Final Cut wasn't exactly packed when they showed it there either, so maybe the stereotype(s) about DC nerd culture are accurate.

Presumably wielding a lightsabre swiftly results in a Jedi visit - the only non-Jedi we see with one is General Grievious (who has gathered all his from killing Jedi).

this line of enquiry makes as much sense as 'in 2015, why doesn't everyone have a sword'

Yeah but in 2015 open carry culture remains confined to a few states in the US and war zones, in the SW universe, open carry is an intergalactic way of life. So in that context a lightsaber is more like I don't know, Crocodile Dundee's knife?