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It's been less than four months and there are millions of people who sincerely believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 15:59 |
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# ? Apr 20, 2024 04:02 |
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I don't think much has been established about religion in the Star Wars galaxy outside of the Jedi order. That's a lot of what made that one guy in Rogue One so interesting (although I guess he's implied to have some latent ability?). Han knows that people talk about the force and its power and whatever, he just doesn't believe in it. Presumably he saw a number of people come and go talking about the force and seeing that didn't do them any favors.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 16:29 |
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The takeaway to that is that he's never met a jedi, nor was there existence common knowledge. Not what you'd expect when they were spacecops for a thousand years up until 20 years ago. When han would have been like 10-15.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 16:36 |
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Han has seen countless holovids of Jedi after Jedi getting shot in the back and has to be thinking "surely these people couldn't see into the future."
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 16:39 |
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Some Goon posted:The takeaway to that is that he's never met a jedi, nor was there existence common knowledge. Not what you'd expect when they were spacecops for a thousand years up until 20 years ago. When han would have been like 10-15. They were known to exist, but as figures of myth and propaganda. They’re cops in the sense that they work for the government, but there’s not a Jedi on every street corner, they’re doing special secret missions for the chancellors. They’re closer to like James Bond than Chief Wiggum. They’re remote from the common people, cloistered in their temple. Nobody outside the charmed circle of our protagonists really knows what’s up with them. Think of baby Anakin on Tatooine dreaming that someday a Jedi would come to end slavery, or the narrator of Clone Wars tooting the horn of the Jedi as defenders of the republic leading us in war against the nasty separatists (the “propaganda newsreel” style of the Clone Wars recaps is not accidental). The whole point of Palpatine’s plan against them is to take advantage of that remoteness by giving them a new identity as the leaders of a giant war raging across the galaxy. The Jedi become generals and then, when they attack him, it’s a clear cut case of attempted coup by a small military elite. If the military elite also claimed to be wizards, isn’t it likely enough that that was propaganda too, and they were really just using smoke and mirrors? Again, the twenty year gap is built into the original movie and is not something the prequels invented. I really don’t think it’s at all a stretch for a hard boiled skeptical guy like Han to not believe in the supposed wizards until he sees them.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:03 |
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skasion posted:Again, the twenty year gap is built into the original movie and is not something the prequels invented. I really don’t think it’s at all a stretch for a hard boiled skeptical guy like Han to not believe in the supposed wizards until he sees them. As a minor point, the time gap was always there, but how long it was got changed by Lucas. For example, when the EU was really getting off the ground in the early 90’s, Lucas told everyone the Clone Wars occurred approximately 50 years before A New Hope. Obviously, by the time he starts making the prequels, that’s been slashed down to just 20, but that does explain a bit of context of discussions of the Clone Wars and other events from basically everything made prior to 1999, when the new timeline started to become clear.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:13 |
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They’re not space cops, they’re space CIA. Then for a 3 year span they are space special forces who attempt a coupfartknocker posted:As a minor point, the time gap was always there, but how long it was got changed by Lucas. For example, when the EU was really getting off the ground in the early 90’s, Lucas told everyone the Clone Wars occurred approximately 50 years before A New Hope. Obviously, by the time he starts making the prequels, that’s been slashed down to just 20, but that does explain a bit of context of discussions of the Clone Wars and other events from basically everything made prior to 1999, when the new timeline started to become clear. Originally the Clone Wars weren’t the same event as the Jedi Purge, but the Jedi Purge was still 20 years ago (or Luke wouldn’t have been born from a Jedi) When people criticize the 20 year timeline of the prequels, they are usually criticizing the Jedi purge, not the clone wars themselves AdmiralViscen fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Feb 24, 2021 |
# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:13 |
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fartknocker posted:As a minor point, the time gap was always there, but how long it was got changed by Lucas. For example, when the EU was really getting off the ground in the early 90’s, Lucas told everyone the Clone Wars occurred approximately 50 years before A New Hope. Obviously, by the time he starts making the prequels, that’s been slashed down to just 20, but that does explain a bit of context of discussions of the Clone Wars and other events from basically everything made prior to 1999, when the new timeline started to become clear. The direct link between the Clone Wars and the downfall of the Jedi is the retcon here. In the original movie these are two presumably unrelated events, the wars being some unidentified stretch of time before the Jedi were wiped out (but still within Ben and Anakin’s lifetime). But the Jedi still have to have been wiped out twenty years or so ago because one of them was Luke’s dad and he died in the purge that Vader led. The farther back you push the purge in the timeline, the more special pleading is required to explain why Luke even exists.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:16 |
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skasion posted:The direct link between the Clone Wars and the downfall of the Jedi is the retcon here. In the original movie these are two presumably unrelated events, the wars being some unidentified stretch of time before the Jedi were wiped out (but still within Ben and Anakin’s lifetime). But the Jedi still have to have been wiped out twenty years or so ago because one of them was Luke’s dad and he died in the purge that Vader led. The farther back you push the purge in the timeline, the more special pleading is required to explain why Luke even exists. Yeah, both the Clone Wars and the Jedi purge (And also the rise of Palpatine/the Empire) were treated as separate events prior to Revenge of the Sith. Exactly how long it took to wipe out the Jedi is also another matter. Now, it’s pretty much a coup-de-grace that gets most of them almost instantly, but a lot of older sources took it to be something that lasted months or even years, with Jedi going into hiding and Force-sensitive people being hunted down for even longer (Elements of that still remain, of course) and left a lot open to interpretations.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 17:29 |
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skasion posted:They were known to exist, but as figures of myth and propaganda. They’re cops in the sense that they work for the government, but there’s not a Jedi on every street corner, they’re doing special secret missions for the chancellors. They’re closer to like James Bond than Chief Wiggum. They’re remote from the common people, cloistered in their temple. Nobody outside the charmed circle of our protagonists really knows what’s up with them. Think of baby Anakin on Tatooine dreaming that someday a Jedi would come to end slavery, or the narrator of Clone Wars tooting the horn of the Jedi as defenders of the republic leading us in war against the nasty separatists (the “propaganda newsreel” style of the Clone Wars recaps is not accidental). The whole point of Palpatine’s plan against them is to take advantage of that remoteness by giving them a new identity as the leaders of a giant war raging across the galaxy. The Jedi become generals and then, when they attack him, it’s a clear cut case of attempted coup by a small military elite. If the military elite also claimed to be wizards, isn’t it likely enough that that was propaganda too, and they were really just using smoke and mirrors? Basically everyone in the prequels can identify a jedi on sight. Even some lizardman on a rock in the middle of nowhere knows that jedi have mind powers, how it looks when they use them, and that he's got an special resistance to it. They were just common knowledge.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 18:20 |
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AdmiralViscen posted:They’re not space cops, they’re space CIA. Then for a 3 year span they are space special forces who attempt a coup I really don't think the Jedi are analogous to either of those things. The Jedi are Knights. They're sworn to serve the Republic and are often enlisted for special jobs, but they also go do quests and stuff on their own in the name of the Republic's ideals. I SWORE AN OATH TO DEMOCRACY ANAKIN! and such. They're kind of a weird anachronism but their unique powers, wealth and prestige allow them to keep making their weird niche relevant in modern society. The Republic has its own cops and CIA, it just also has this weird Monk Justice League that they can call in to do whatever weird job they need.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 18:23 |
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Some Goon posted:Basically everyone in the prequels can identify a jedi on sight. Even some lizardman on a rock in the middle of nowhere knows that jedi have mind powers, how it looks when they use them, and that he's got an special resistance to it. They were just common knowledge. No, Watto mocks Qui-gon for acting like “some kind of Jedi” and for using “mind tricks”. If he actually realized he was a Jedi, this joke wouldn’t make sense: the point is that it’s absurd for some fuckhead space bum on Tatooine to be acting like Jedi are supposed to act, because it’s implausible for him to really be one. I think the best guide to what the average guy thinks about jedi in the prequels is Anakin: Jedi carry laser swords, they do good deeds, and they can’t be killed. That is, they’re fairy tale figures. They’re not exactly firmly grounded in the realm of reason and knowledge. People on Coruscant can recognize a Jedi when they see one (Dexter’s waitress can recognize one, and she’s a robot). But Coruscant is probably the only place in the galaxy where people see Jedi with any regularity. The trade federation viceroy says he’s never met a Jedi Knight, though his aide has. This aide also has a reasonable appreciation that Jedi are very powerful and shouldn’t be messed with. This is a recurring theme in the Star Wars movies. Admiral Motti calls Vader a fraud who’s acting like a Jedi to scare people, but Moff Tarkin knows Vader’s Jedi senses and powers are real, even if he thinks of them as being old-fashioned and specific to Vader. Han sneers at the idea of an all powerful force at first, but after what he sees in the movie, he wishes that the force be with Luke. More directly, Admiral Ozzel in ESB thinks that he can second-guess Vader’s intuition, so Vader chokes him to death in front of his officers to make the point. The Force and the magic of the Jedi aren’t assumed by everyone to be true: only the people who want to believe and the people who see them in the flesh actually believe, everyone else is a skeptic.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 19:00 |
yeah, coruscant and corellia are the only planets that actually have jedi in residence. you might see them once or twice in your life if you're an average core-worlder. the outer rim is neglected by the republic, and therefore by the jedi who have decided to just act as an arm of the senate, so to them jedi are figures of myth from the days when they lived on dantooine, literally thousands of years ago. and the mid-rim is, uh, kind of controlled by a bunch of powerful financial interests who semi-unwittingly have ties to the sith. does this actually make sense when you can fly from coruscant to tatooine in like two days? not at all, but pretending there's a good reason for the outer rim to be a backwater is one of the key setting details that you just have to suspend your disbelief on
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 19:13 |
speaking of which it has got to burn the gently caress out of anakin that he got picked up by the branch of the jedi that's all about chastity instead of the corellian ones who are cool w/ marriage
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 19:16 |
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skasion posted:No, Watto mocks Qui-gon for acting like “some kind of Jedi” and for using “mind tricks”. If he actually realized he was a Jedi, this joke wouldn’t make sense: the point is that it’s absurd for some fuckhead space bum on Tatooine to be acting like Jedi are supposed to act, because it’s implausible for him to really be one. I think the best guide to what the average guy thinks about jedi in the prequels is Anakin: Jedi carry laser swords, they do good deeds, and they can’t be killed. That is, they’re fairy tale figures. They’re not exactly firmly grounded in the realm of reason and knowledge. Implausible for one to be there, yes, but he still knows how they act, and how being a troidarian relates to that, he's familiar with them, (especially) even though he's got almost no chance of interacting with one. Also, I don't think a starry-eyed slave boy is a good representation for the average guy. The parts about the OT are the disconnect in question, the Jedi are way too prevalent in society in the prequels for that level of unfamiliarity to be reasonable.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 19:25 |
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Sanguinia posted:I really don't think the Jedi are analogous to either of those things. The Jedi are Knights. They're sworn to serve the Republic and are often enlisted for special jobs, but they also go do quests and stuff on their own in the name of the Republic's ideals. I SWORE AN OATH TO DEMOCRACY ANAKIN! and such. Lucas straight-up referred to the Jedi as the Mafia both on-set on the prequels and in his guidance for Filoni on Clone Wars Mafia working on behalf of the government (but not its people) is close enough to CIA Edit: the Jedi only seem prevalent in the prequels because they make up most of our principal characters, and the other principal characters are high-ranking government officials that work closely with Jedi. What glimpses we see of regular people, as said above, explicitly have never met a Jedi before. Even the well-connected head of the powerful Trade Federation hasn’t. AdmiralViscen fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Feb 24, 2021 |
# ? Feb 24, 2021 20:11 |
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Cornwind Evil posted:Han Solo thinks they're a myth. Maybe that could be explained away that those born around the time don't know, but Han strikes me to have been at least a young child if not a pre-teen when Palpatine took over. At least one draft of Episode 3 had Han as a young orphan on Kashyyyk being raised by Wookiees. He even met Yoda and acted as something of a forest scout during the battle. I don't think Han necessarily believes the Jedi are a myth - he doesn't believe in the concept of destiny or the Force as something that can help you in the real world. If he personally witnessed Order 66, or was at least aware of the world around him when it happened I think that would hammer home the fact that the Jedi aren't all they're cracked up to be.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 20:21 |
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Robot Style posted:I don't think Han necessarily believes the Jedi are a myth - he doesn't believe in the concept of destiny or the Force as something that can help you in the real world. It's a little unclear. quote:REY
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 20:28 |
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AdmiralViscen posted:Lucas straight-up referred to the Jedi as the Mafia both on-set on the prequels and in his guidance for Filoni on Clone Wars Seems like Japanese Yakuza would be the best analogue in that framing. Big business, legitimized by the government in an official capacity but not in every aspect of their existence, romanticized and embraced by some communities because they make big public shows of being positive forces who stand up for the community and aid them in tough times, the reality of what they are obscured by the mythology and the code they claim to live by but constantly subvert for their own benefit.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 20:28 |
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I do think at least some of the original Star Wars drafts implied that the Jedi went through some kind of long decline before getting snuffed out, so it's a little weird weird that in the prequels they're doing fairly well with only some vague concepts of being out of touch. I think there's a problem with a lot of Star Wars works throughout the old EU and the new EU getting too hung up on the Jedi and implying that's the only unique draw of Star Wars, but it definitely didn't help that so much of the prequels were from a solely Jedi perspective.
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# ? Feb 24, 2021 20:54 |
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Jazerus posted:speaking of which it has got to burn the gently caress out of anakin that he got picked up by the branch of the jedi that's all about chastity instead of the corellian ones who are cool w/ marriage Technically, even Anakin's branch didn't practice chastity, they just forbid ATTACHMENTS. So basically you could go out and have sex with as many sex workers or one night stands as you wanted, but relationships and marriages were off the table, because if those go bad in a dozen ways, it bangs up against the fact that 95 percent of Force users cannot keep their emotions from intertwining with the Force. Seriously. Imagine if you'd been trained to have various magic powers based around controlling kinetic energies, manipulating minds and even emotions, and even the seemingly 'surely it could never be used for bad things, it must always be good' stuff like Force healing. Now imagine a relationship went really, really bad. I'm sure there's plenty of people on this forum who have had what seemed like love and stability turn into spite, hatred, and a sadistic need for dominance (seriously, it astonishes me how acrimonious family court stories tend to be: maybe relationships might not last, or fail, but so many times it seems to go Nuclear Ghandi^ in its dissolution). Now imagine if you could snap your partner's neck, or render them unable to sleep, or 'heal' when it was unneeded, inducing cancerous growths. Imagine those moments of white hot fury where all reason falls away, where all that is left, if just for a moment, is the screaming urge to HIT BACK, HURT THEM. For many of us, we deal with it because we don't have the power to do it. Jedi inherently do. Hell, it happened in the drat series: Anakin betrayed his people and killed scores of them, including children, all for his wife and to prevent her supposed death, and the minute she didn't fall in line he went right for the Force choke which contradicts absolutely everything he damned himself for, because he had no self control and his powers immediately responded. (Of course, there's also the arguments that if Anakin had REALLY done this for her, he would have lived with her rejecting him, because he did what he meant to, prevent her death. But as established, the Dark Side is nothing but selfishly justifying everything you've done. If Palpatine had just zapped Luke to death immediately, I suspect Vader would have stayed by his side. But he drew it out for his own sadistic amusement, and that finally drilled through Anakin's ability to self-justify, at least enough to switch targets. Dying shortly thereafter helped: who knows how a surviving Anakin Skywalker would have fared post Return, beyond that infamous Infinities page). * If you don't know, an infamous bug in the first Civilization game, look it up. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Feb 25, 2021 |
# ? Feb 25, 2021 10:58 |
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Sanguinia posted:Seems like Japanese Yakuza would be the best analogue in that framing. Big business, legitimized by the government in an official capacity but not in every aspect of their existence, romanticized and embraced by some communities because they make big public shows of being positive forces who stand up for the community and aid them in tough times, the reality of what they are obscured by the mythology and the code they claim to live by but constantly subvert for their own benefit. Sure. I was just responding to someone saying that Jedi were like cops - public facing and commonly seen by normal people. But they’re not portrayed as cops in the prequels, which is why people in the OT can have a range of vague ideas of what they were. AdmiralViscen fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Feb 25, 2021 |
# ? Feb 25, 2021 14:15 |
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fartknocker posted:Yeah, both the Clone Wars and the Jedi purge (And also the rise of Palpatine/the Empire) were treated as separate events prior to Revenge of the Sith. Exactly how long it took to wipe out the Jedi is also another matter. Now, it’s pretty much a coup-de-grace that gets most of them almost instantly, but a lot of older sources took it to be something that lasted months or even years, with Jedi going into hiding and Force-sensitive people being hunted down for even longer (Elements of that still remain, of course) and left a lot open to interpretations. Yeah right now the situation is they got most of the Jedi right away but Vader still spends a lot of the intervening 20ish years offscreen (and sometimes onscreen) hunting down "rogue" Jedi.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 01:33 |
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Lucas pretty overtly based the Jedi on like, old west sheriffs, because he's a movie guy more than a history guy and those were the movies he liked. This means that they're also quite a bit like samurai and the samurai historically did get basically wiped out by the empire very quickly (though that was less "one really bloody day" and more a several year long process of legal reforms). The real thing I'm learning from all of this is that Star Wars is significantly less than the sum of its parts.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 05:45 |
It really doesn't read like "Jedi aren't real" though, or even "Jedi couldn't do all the crazy poo poo we see them do," it's more that "The Force, as a metaphysical concept that binds all things together and guides destiny, isn't real." Han is basically a smug disillusioned atheist who doesn't believe the cruel selfish universe he lives in is guided by any higher benevolence. Presumably he explains all the psychic Jedi powers as them just being mutants or something, ascribing their abilities to being closer to God.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 18:18 |
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Like the real breakdown is mover and shaker Motti telling Darth Vader to eat a dick with his "sorcerer's ways." Motti is a great example of how people with no connection to the big story beats the audience is aware of treat the Jedi and the Sith. They are a bunch of sorcerers following an ancient religion. They are fools and goofs and just a different political adversary to deal with that speak in riddles.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 18:38 |
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Asterite34 posted:It really doesn't read like "Jedi aren't real" though, or even "Jedi couldn't do all the crazy poo poo we see them do," it's more that "The Force, as a metaphysical concept that binds all things together and guides destiny, isn't real." is the force even benevolent though, it’s always throwing up dark side people due to balance
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 19:47 |
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it is a benevolent omnipresent force that guides people when the plot needs it to, and then other times it's just an animistic concept that exists as part of nature. It's what you get when your ideas are a boomer's concept of Eastern religion combined with a need to have supernatural intervention get you out of corners you've written yourself into.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 20:14 |
Find/replace all instances of the word "Force" with "Plot" and you get a more honest Star Wars script. e: Regarding the Force having any sort of will, wasn't George's vaguely alluded to ideas for the Sequel Trilogy gonna be about drilling down into what the Force actually is, with the implication it was gonna be, like, a galaxy-spanning artificial construct full of its disembodied transhuman builders subtly manipulating events, and being the actual literal "will" of the Force? Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Feb 26, 2021 |
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 23:26 |
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Force abilities also grow substantially throughout the ot. Iirc the only force powers seen in anh are noise making, suggestion, and some extrasensory perception. There's no force push/pull until empire, lightning until jedi.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 23:46 |
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Some Goon posted:Force abilities also grow substantially throughout the ot. Iirc the only force powers seen in anh are noise making, suggestion, and some extrasensory perception. There's no force push/pull until empire, lightning until jedi. It depends I guess on how you interpret Vader choking a dude.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 23:49 |
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reignofevil posted:It depends I guess on how you interpret Vader choking a dude. EVIL! Somehow I forgot about that while writing, but I think the core point still stands.
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# ? Feb 26, 2021 23:53 |
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We know now that the choke is telekinetic because we know that the force lets you do that, but if they gone in a different way in Empire, it would not have been hard to say that Vader was using his power to convince his body that he was choking. We don't see his neck getting squeezed or anything like that.
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 00:01 |
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Defiance Industries posted:We know now that the choke is telekinetic because we know that the force lets you do that, but if they gone in a different way in Empire, it would not have been hard to say that Vader was using his power to convince his body that he was choking. We don't see his neck getting squeezed or anything like that. Apparently Richard LeParmentier had a neck spasm while trying to figure out how to play the choke, but then found he was able to trigger it on command so there is actually a real physical component to the choke, at least in the first movie.
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 00:17 |
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Yeah, but he was making his body do that himself, there's no like "invisible rope around his neck" going on. I think it's a clever bit of ambiguity.
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 00:31 |
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Asterite34 posted:Find/replace all instances of the word "Force" with "Plot" and you get a more honest Star Wars script. But they already made the Matrix sequels
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# ? Mar 3, 2021 06:56 |
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Hearing the term 'Force-Sensitive' used as the sole catch all for beings that can directly influence the Force has always bothered me. It seems lacking. It's fine as a term for the entirety of those who use it, but for the likes of Yoda and Anakin and Mace Windu and yes, even Rey from the Sequel Trilogy, it doesn't really convey their level of talent. While I am sure the Jedi would never officially come up with separating terms, I'm sure there would be an unofficial term for the likes of the 'beats whole army of super battle droids and command ship by themselves' and 'yanks a Star Destroyer out of low planetary orbit' to contrast them against the barely there before gone Jedi who died en masse across the Clone Wars. I have no idea what the term would be though.
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# ? Mar 7, 2021 17:51 |
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cannon fodder
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# ? Mar 7, 2021 18:44 |
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Cornwind Evil posted:Hearing the term 'Force-Sensitive' used as the sole catch all for beings that can directly influence the Force has always bothered me. It seems lacking. It's fine as a term for the entirety of those who use it, but for the likes of Yoda and Anakin and Mace Windu and yes, even Rey from the Sequel Trilogy, it doesn't really convey their level of talent. While I am sure the Jedi would never officially come up with separating terms, I'm sure there would be an unofficial term for the likes of the 'beats whole army of super battle droids and command ship by themselves' and 'yanks a Star Destroyer out of low planetary orbit' to contrast them against the barely there before gone Jedi who died en masse across the Clone Wars. I think the EU's introduced a few terms: Force Sensitive for people who are untrained but are connected to the Force and maybe have some basic subconscious abilities. Force Adepts for anyone who can consciously use the Force, but aren't part of the Jedi/Sith line, like the Witches of Dathomir Force Wielders for high-powered individuals like the Mortis Gods.
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# ? Mar 7, 2021 22:25 |
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# ? Apr 20, 2024 04:02 |
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I thought of it like being a musician, where some people just have a knack for it, while others have to study hard to reach that level. Every now and then there's a Mozart who can do everything automatically because they're a virtuoso. The people who got 66'd were like session musicians or people who wrote car advertisement jingles.
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# ? Mar 7, 2021 23:22 |