Vintersorg posted:

I am so glad the EU was fired into the sun.

Holy gently caress is that bad. Just if you unironically enjoyed that.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

So, slaves, in other words.

Bongo Bill posted:

The standard reason people use slaves in the real world is willingness to participate in a slave system for the sake of convenience or expediency.

Yorkshire Tea posted:

Anyway, re: Clone Army. I think it's immoral to commission the creation of a clone army, but not immoral to use it once there is a risk of destruction in total war.

Conscription is /probably/ justified insofar as the loss of total war often represents the destruction of the state and the ideology behind it as well as the removal of a guarantee of safety for the citizens are provided by the state. But notably it is basically slavery that we justify in extreme times.

In any case, for the Republic to be able to defend itself we probably have to posit that conscription would be required. If this is unjustifiable to you then fair enough, the Republic loses the war, whatever.

If conscription is justifiable as a concept then we admit that the Republic is going to have to use slaves in some regard anyway. At the point the Republic goes to war, it has its citizens to conscript or a bunch of military commandos who have been cloned up and are really goddamn good at fighting war. Now you could let those commandos go free, or just conscript all of them. At that point you're literally just trading one set of slaves for another. It's not a decision I consider to be particularly moral, but to me it's no worse than the decision that would be made where the citizens are conscripted.

Kurzon posted:

From what I've read in the Expanded Universe, the clones were commissioned by Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas after he had a vision that the Republic would need an army. That means a single Jedi placed a very expensive order on behalf of the Republic without telling anyone. How does this happen? And how is it the people of Kamino never checked up on the Republic while they were busy making the clones ("Hello, your army is half-finished. You're still good for this, right?). How did the Republic react when the Kaminos presented them with a massive bill for an army they didn't know they ordered?

Basebf555 posted:

I think there is some novel or comic that explains all that.

I assumed Jakku itself isn't all that important it just happens to be where certain Imperial assets were lost and they couldn't come back from it. I remember in the EU the remnants of the Empire had a hierarchy pretty much based on who had command of the biggest Star Destroyer, and I think by the end of RotJ there were only one or two Super Star Destroyers left in existence. So if they lost a few of those really important ships it would have been tough to come back from, and the Jakku battle does involve a Star Destroyer crashing on the planet.

Yorkshire Tea posted:

It's the last battle by the unified Empire. They dumped all their combined resources in one on favourable terrain to beat the New Republic and then lost anyway. That broke the unified Empire's back. All the Moffs decided after that that they were the ones who knew how to win the war and gave in to infighting. So the Republic just picked them off one by one.

Silver Brushes posted:

Watching one episode a week before TFA with a housemate who has never seen them. It's interesting to see things vicariously with fresh eyes. For Star Wars we watched the bonus disc completely unedited albeit lower-quality version, and she immediately pointed out the cluster of dudes on the left of the Triumph of the Will shot. They looked even worse than that screencap, like a cardboard standup. Never noticed before. She also thought the Empire Yoda puppet was awful after seeing him last in III, which is something a few people have pointed out in this thread.

thathonkey posted:

still nobody has given a good enough theory about how finn could be trained well enough in lightsaber use to survive an encounter with kylo ren

again, luke's first saber battle with vader he would've easily easily easily been kllled if vader hadn't taken mercy on him. and that was after training with yoda, the most powerful jedi master known living in the galaxy.

Marketing New Brain posted:

Bad news, but this happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Han has been dead for light years.

Davros1 posted:

Don't forget the god awful leap Vader does in Empire. I'm honestly surprised he didn't grab his cape and try to glide.

Davros1 posted:

It looked like poo poo. Far worse, and far sillier, than the Yoda or Palpatine leaping in the prequels.

computer parts posted:

On the topic of film critics, it's interesting to read Ebert's reviews:

TPM: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-1999

AOTC: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-ii-attack-of-the-clones-2002

ROTS: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-episode-iii-revenge-of-the-sith-2005

he doesn't directly state it, but he gets the point that Star Wars is intended to be a visual and not auditory series:


Indeed, the main reason he seems to have disliked AOTC the most (it's the only one he didn't give 3.5/4 stars) is because he was watching a version transferred to film, rather than a digital projection.

ImpAtom posted:

Their relationship stays strong because they are stupid teenagers who kill themselves before it has time to die out. There's a lot of indications in R&J that it was, at best, a particularly passionate teenage romance and that is part of the tragedy of it. They're star-crossed lovers but nothing says star-crossed lovers are destined to work out. Anakin and Padme have a lot in common with them. They're horny young folks who really find the other super-hot (and the grass-rolling scene alone seems to back up this ain't all on Anakin's side.) They're also really pretty different and nothing we see of their relationship hints it has a long-term future beyond "god, you're hot and we're both pretty dumb."

In the case of R&J they both die before it can fizzle. In the case of RotS it does fizzle in the most spectacular way. Anakin goes nuts, accuses his pregnant wife of betraying him, and chokes her to death. He's only a stained wifebeater and a pickup truck away from being a stereotype of a hosed up high school romance. Still, even if R&J had survived, odds are not great their relationship would have ended up any better.

A lot of people say the prequel trilogy makes no sense but I think 'makes no sense' has increasingly become shorthand for "I don't like it and refuse to engage with it." The prequel trilogy makes perfect sense and has a strong cohesive theme behind it. Whatever flaws it has are in execution at best. Anakin's fall is clearly communicated and doesn't need cartoons or television shows to explain why it happened.

Cnut the Great posted:

Christensen's performance in Episode II is so petulantly emotional that (as many of the films' critics found) it can actually be painful to watch. There's absolutely no element of personal embarrassment or self-consciousness in the performance. Christensen doesn't do anything to try to hide the fact that he's playing a whiny teenager with severe emotional hang-ups. He's a bit like an onscreen version of Holden Caulfield, another interesting character modern audiences now love to hate. Just like Holden, Anakin either reminds you of the person you once were and are now ashamed of, or he reminds you of other people in your life who you always hated and could never stand. Either way, he was destined to be a polarizing character.

I can understand why some people would dislike the performance, but one thing it is clearly not is "wooden." People who say that don't seem to actually know what "wooden" means as a criticism; like they think it's just a catch-all term for "bad acting" or something. "Wooden" is a criticism that could be fairly applied to Natalie Portman's performance at times, but not Christensen's. People are clearly just taking their visceral (and perfectly valid) distaste toward Christensen's screen presence and throwing out random critical buzzwords they read in a magazine review one time.

Hayden Christensen is no James Dean, but the vibe he was going for with his character was clearly heavily derived from Dean's character in Rebel Without a Cause:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqGDruqXV5g&t=98s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zFg2qByF4E

Notice the mixture of cocky, cornily-affected self-assuredness juxtaposed against instances of unrestrained, petulant, almost comically over-the-top emotional outbursts. I really think people just haven't watched a lot of the older movies Star Wars is based on, and so they don't understand that acting styles really have changed. Dean's performance absolutely would not fly in a modern production. I bet it would get mocked nearly as roundly as Christensen's was. It's not ironically self-deprecating or winkingly self-aware enough for audiences today. But that's exactly the kind of throwback performance Lucas was going for.

Electromax posted:

Cnut the Great posted:

I can't take credit for this one, I just bought a publicly available e-book and used the power of fair use doctrine to copy/paste it onto the Internet with commentary! Being an Ambiguously Autistic Star Wars Scholar (™) on a dying comedy forum means this is fair use, right? I feel like if I was more autistic I would know this.

ImpAtom posted:

I think it's valid to read the scene either way.

I assumed Palpatine was faking it but my friend was sure that Windu had almost won and to be honest there's a fairly argument for either reading. Even if Palpatine later uses it to his advantage against the Jedi it's kinda hard to buy his plan involved him getting his face melted by default, and Windu did seem to legitimately be onto his tricks.

I sort of prefer the later even if it isn't how I interpreted it just because it makes it a bit more interesting that Palpatine could have hosed up and lost right there if not for Anakin's choice, rather than it being entirely "Anakin got played, son."

hemale in pain posted:

I've got a pet dog but that doesn't mean i have friends

ImpAtom posted:

In the script and the novelization for RotJ Owen Laws is Obi-Wan Kenobi's brother, so that honestly doesn't matter in the slightest.