Hey, don't look at me! It's not my job to explain this movie!

But actually, having just reviewed the scene in question, I have to retract my proposed explanation.

He's right, I'm wrong. Vader is obviously referring to the fact that they just failed to retrieve the plans.

I cracked up when I saw the title:  Star Wars.  Dammit. 

        I’ve listened to your Star Wars’ (plural) commentaries and have noticed one or two instances of Lucas bashing in there.  I agree with it.  Mostly because of what ended up on screen when he had full control of the process, and a document titled “The Secret History of Star Wars” that examines the saga using early interviews and scripts that contradict the more published and official history of Lucas writing the saga.  There’s a pdf of the book around, and it was eventually published.

    That text lays the successes of the first two films (I haven’t seen ROTJ in many years, and don’t think much of it) at the feet of the few capable people that happened to be around and told George to stuff it.  Any thoughts? Agree/Disagree?  Is the Secret History just a better written version of Supershadow (well worth googling if you’re not familiar with the name)?  Does Lucas have any talents/strengths or was he just lucky to have some competent friends?

Discuss.

The radio dramas fill in quite a bit of background, particularly ANH; well worth obtaining a copy.

I actually made edited versions of each, so that the whole thing plays at once; e.g., ANH now runs just under 5 hours as an Audiobook file.  It's simple enough to do in iTunes and/or Audacity.

I'm getting to this one late 'cause I just now this very minute discovered you can do an RSS thing with the forum (hi, I'm an idiot).

I think it's fair to call out the whole "Luke has magical powers" thing. Tim's right, that his tapping into those powers is the whole arc of the movie, but at the same time, it's never given more than a handwave. Some people can use the Force, and some can't, and that's just an axiom of the universe. It's not much of a stretch to say it's hereditary, given Luke's parentage, but if I remember right that's only hinted at in the movies, and only by Luke himself in Jedi. "The Force is strong in my family," he says, or something like that.

It's far easier to point and laugh at Han's line that he's never seen anything to make him believe in the Force, given that he would have been a teenager during the Clone Wars when armies of Jedi Knights swept across the galaxy. But hey, maybe he was just especially cynical. A flock of angels could sweep down from the sky and give everybody free cupcakes and lattes right now, and a lot of people (myself probably included) would declare the whole thing a viral marketing hoax by Starbucks, so who knows.

When I first saw eps 1 and 2, I thought they were setting up the Jedi as a decadent and proud order so lost in their own navel-gazing that they were headed for a tragic fall. And past all the awkward writing and overpowering VFX, I thought that was a bold move, to make them flawed and arrogant rather than god-like.

Except they never got their comeuppance in part 3. There's a sort of head-fake toward Palpatine blaming the Jedi for a coup that never happened, but that's all we got. I would rather the Jedi HAD tried to assassinate the chancellor, doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons, and being galactically discredited because of it. Some historical allegories would have been uncomfortably fun too, maybe throwing in a little dialogue to allege that the Jedi use the blood of human children as part of their dark rituals inside that mysterious temple.

Not sure how that would have worked in a movie, though. It might be great in a novel, but too expository for a film. I dunno.

(Pre-coffee edit for clarity: Yes, I remember the whole Mace Windu fight thing, much as I've tried to put it behind me. I guess what I meant was that I wish the Jedi had spent two movies smug and overconfident, only to realize what was up and be driven to the point of desperation by it. And that they'd decided not to try to arrest the chancellor or play by the rules, but that he just had to be flat-out murdered for the good of the galaxy. Plan backfires, Jedi discredited, blah blah blah.)

Last edited by Jeffery Harrell (2010-03-20 13:07:34)

Yeah, that's the missing piece - the prequels certainly seem to suggest that everybody knows about Jedi, they've got their own office building downtown in the capital of the Galaxy.

If the prequels had only suggested the Jedi were a secret to the general public, the basic plot could have stayed exactly the same.     QuiGon and ObiWan could have done everything they do, just not openly as Jedi...     

"Hey, there are two guys in the lobby, they're kinda creepy and calm and they're freaking me out."
"Crap, maybe they're Jedi."
"Oh come on, Jedi aren't even real.  Are they?"

If it had been established that the Jedi did their thing in secret, and then were just as secretly exterminated, it would have been perfectly understandable that twenty years later folks like Han and Motti would believe Jedi weren't that big a deal and maybe never existed at all.

Wrong thread?

The Force is strong with you...

a interesting note on the alumium falcon, part of that oddness of the design that was not used was that it was supposed to rotate once out of orbit to a sun fish like position so the cockpit would ride at the top and the guns would cover the sides rather then top bottom. but like star treks TNG original romulan ships, aliens 4, planet of the apes they realized that vertical large ships didn't work too well. But this is still part of the design and influenced the B wings.

Obi-Wan said that the Jedi were the "guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic". They couldn't be that unless they were prevalent. I always saw them as being a large force.
The reason that Motti mouthed off was probably because the Jedi were supposed to have been completely wiped out by then and he figured Vader was overrated. As far as he was concerned the Stormtroopers easily took the Jedi out despite their "sorcerer ways". Han probably felt the same way. No one had seen a Force user (except Vader)  in around 18 years.
Also, The Jedi weren't an army. They mostly led the Clones as Generals and were seen in groups of two for the most part. They were more like warrior ambassadors.

And to 3pointedit. When did Luke say that the model was what his father fought in?

Last edited by fardawg (2010-07-07 22:17:40)

Someone said in he commentary that Luke fighting Vader to avenge his father was the hero's journey and implied that Vader being his father wasn't part of the hero's journey. Well... Actually Campbell said the following regarding the step known as the "Atonement with the Father".
"The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands – and the two are atoned."
Vader as Luke's father perfectly fits the Journey.

And Lucas didn't meet Campbell until after the Trilogy was complete.
Here is what Lucas said about Campbell's influence.
(from Campbell's authorized biography. quoted from Wiki)
"...I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore, and mythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books...It was very eerie because in reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classic motifs...so I modified my next draft [of Star Wars] according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent...I went on to read 'The Masks of God' and many other books"

Last edited by fardawg (2010-07-11 06:16:48)

Hmm... read the 'Secret History of Star Wars', that will lay to rest any doubts that Vader was never even dreamt as being Luke's father until ESB was being written.