Star Wars [2]

Sorry I've kinda drifted away from this place… Anyways, I wrote this a while ago but never seemed to post it. Here it is:

Okay, so I saw the Force Awakens the other night (would have gotten back to you guys sooner, but it was my birthday yesterday) and I must say it was fun. Nothing too special about it in my opinion. I could see why kids are liking it for the same reasons as TPM and ANH. However, maybe too many of the same reasons as ANH, only with a ridiculous pacing, and not enough time to breath with the characters.

I remember reading up on a bunch things to get ready for the movie, on the inspirations for the original movie, and I must say these things weren't in this movie. J.J. Abrams looked from the trailers like he was the director meant to do this movie, but it turns out, that he had one fatal flaw when joining the team: he can't create icons or resurrect icons from 30 years ago. After a 2 hour movie, I just wish I spent less time with characters that weren't just creating one problem after another and then immediately fixing it. It just gets in the way of characterization (which the OT was great at)

Not to mention that while watching it, I didn't feel the force. That may have been for the underwhelming music, but partly because re-explaining it just didn't work with the flawed pacing structure. It seems for me that the movie was made with the mind that everybody has seen the original movies, henceforth stripping the whole mythic element that made Star Wars what it was. Fuck you Disney. Not to mention how you ripped off A New Hope's plot. That's not how you make a sequel. Sequels should go in their own direction, without relying on old characters to make the movie good, without even giving the old characters personality (Leia)

The script… It felt a bit off to me. The dialogue certainly tried to relieve the snappy and quick tension the characters had in the original, but did it so much to the extent that the dialogue was simply reduced to a bunch of one liners. The cinematography… It was great in some parts, but it sure could have used steady cam once in a while. The camera was almost as shaky as The Hunger Games. Also, the ASL (average shot length) was way, way too short. Back during the 70's and 80's, the ASL was around 5-7 seconds. Now, 1-1.5 seconds. Takes you out of the moment for sure. It's almost as if the camera did't trust the material……

As a star wars movie, I'd give it a 5/10. As a film? Well, it ain't prefect there too. There were some things in the movie that were left too ambiguous. And if you do the math in your head, it comes out too simple… 6.5/10

Rant over. Look, like I said, at the end of the day, it's a fun movie. At this point, the sequel can only tell us how cool this movie was, or how right I was for feeling disappointed in it. The direction they seem to going in is Luke training Rey deeper in the ways of the force. Already it sounds similar to Yoda training Luke in the force, but whether or not they'll directly make references to that in the movie, just like this did with ANH, time will only tell.

Good to see you again, djh! We all drift away from time to time. We did remember your birthday though:

http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/t1242-happy-birthday-davidjoneshoward

I think a lot of people here agree with you on TFA. I saw it twice in opening weekend and even just those two or three days in between (and the lack of opening night hype) were enough for me to feel a lot more reserved about the movie the second time. If I get around to making the drive to Philly to see it in real IMAX I'll see the film a third time but I suspect the flaws will stand out to me even more there. :/

During a discussion on another forum, A few things that were pointed out about the OT that have got me   a bit, plot holes both hilarious and dumb were brought up, thinking about it some more I've realized a few more that range from amusing/silly/nitpicky to outright perplexing...any explanations?

*And yes, I'm fully aware of how silly it is looking for hard logic in Star Wars

A few confusing, amusing or just plain stupid apparent Plot Holes I've noticed...:

The continuity between the prequels and the OT isn't great either apparently:

http://filmslur.com/2015/04/10/23-discrepancies-in-the-star-wars-prequels/

R2 and Chewie were in Attack of the Clones? I just watched the damn thing and didn't notice.

As for the rest, I'll let Petty respond, since he seems to have nearly the same purist tendencies towards Star Wars OT that he has towards Tolkien.

As for most of the inconsistencies, they nearly all go away if you take ANH as stand-alone, which was what Lucas expected it would be. The bigger question is whether Empire and Jedi are consistent.

halfwise wrote:R2 and Chewie were in Attack of the Clones?   I just watched the damn thing and didn't notice.

As for the rest, I'll let Petty respond, since he seems to have nearly the same purist tendencies towards Star Wars OT that he has towards Tolkien.

Well I haven't watched the prequels in years, but that's what I recall.

Yeah, it will be interesting to see Petty's response

halfwise wrote:As for most of the inconsistencies, they nearly all go away if you take ANH as stand-alone, which was what Lucas expected it would be.  The bigger question is whether Empire and Jedi are consistent.

The plot holes in ANH can perhaps largely be ignored (or put down to editing/pacing reasons) for those reasons (though Lucas claimed from the start he had more than one story planned, at least vaguely), but continuity and hard logic were never exactly strong points in Lucas's writing.

I think the best possible explanation was 'the force did it'

He famously poked fun at logical Tom Foolery in Raiders of the Lost Ark when he had Indiana see a submarine, then we see a map of it travelling halfway across the world, and when it finally pops up we see Indiana lurking around to watch. He knew most people wouldn't even notice at the first viewing because the action was so relentless they wouldn't have time to think.

There are of course many plot holes in Star Wars and a lot of those listed are valid I'm not sure how fair some of them are.

In ANH Obi-Wan claims to have never owned a droid, and R2-D2 doesn't make the effort to confirm he was the one and same unit which served him in the clone wars...clone wars in which R2 made regular use of conveniently forgotten about leg rocket boosters...

I have always interpreted Obi-Wan's line about not recalling a droid -- delivered while giving Artoo a meaningful look -- as his way of telling Artoo to keep quiet and not say too much in front of Luke until Ben has some time to assess him and decide how much to share with him. They evidently had some interaction when Luke was younger but it seems to have been fairly long ago (perhaps Uncle Ben intervened) and Obi may well want to see if Luke shows any signs of Dark Side inclinations given what happened with his father.

No excuse for the rocket boosters though.

Am I correct in thinking there was only one copy of the Death Star plans in ANH? The opening titles in A New Hope state the plans were stolen during a battle by rebel spies...after all that effort, why would the rebels only transmit the plans to Leia's ship (which would probably be a fairly well known ship to the Empire) instead of making a few more copies?...if the plans go missing or are recovered they are unlikely to get another shot at things...

The Rebels do not seem to have transmitted the plans to Leia's ship. There's nothing resembling the Internet in the original SW trilogy, which is of course a function of the time in which it was made. (You see the same thing in a lot older sci-fi, including the Foundation trilogy.) The Rebels had to transport a physical disc/whatever thing (the one that Leia puts into Artoo) with the plans stored on it. The plans could be copied from the disc into a computer (hence, "the Death Star plans are not in the main computer") though, so the question remains why they didn't burn more copies.

Obi Wan states in ANH, that Anakin wanted luke to have his lightsaber...if Obi Wan was planning on giving it to Luke anyway, why does he wait so long to tell him about it, at this point Vader didn't even know he had kids... obviously the Vader twist wasn't thought of at this point, but even so it's a weirdly complicated lie to tell, and even if Luke were to face Vader without the emperor revealing the truth to him, surely he would have recognized his own lightsaber...

When ANH was written, Vader wasn't Luke's father, so Obi-Wan presumably wasn't lying. This got retconned later in the OT of course, leading to Obi-Wan's famous "from a certain point of view" excuse. So viewing ANH in the context of its sequels, it seems a natural lie for Ben to tell considering that (1) he's trying to convince Luke to join him, so playing to his curiosity about his father might help that and (2) he doesn't want to tell Luke the truth about his father turning evil and being left for dead. As for why Obi-Wan waited, I refer to my earlier speculation about him wanting to observe Luke for a little bit instead of telling him stuff right off the bat.

At the end of ANH the Death Star is sent to the Yavin system and poised to destroy the rebel base...the rebels have 10 minutes to scramble and destroy the Death Star, but the only reason they have those 10 minutes is because the death star has to orbit a planet that was in the way before getting in posistion...so why didn't they simply park the Death Star in a closer place to the Yavin Moon, or destroy the planet in the way as soon as they entered the system  

Yavin IV is a gas giant, it's many, many times larger than the small, rocky planets and moons that we see the Death Star destroy. It's a huge leap to assume that the DS could destroy Yavin. Hard to say why they chose that angle of approach, it's hard to say. A lot of the fluff used postulate that hyperdrive didn't work too close to gravitational bodies, but TFA has retconned this. Dunno what was going through Lucas' or other's minds back in 1977 though.

On a similar note...it's a little weird Vader didn't sense Leia was his daughter either, despite interrogating her several times in ANH, and it takes the Emperor to help him figure out Luke is his son (in ANH he would have killed him in the death star trench run if it wasn't for Han appearing at the last minute)...he's then apparently suddenly able to communicate across the vast distance of space to Luke on the Falcon and only later figures out from Luke that Leia is his daughter...Luke and Leia however figure it out of there own, despite having minimal or no jedi training...

I think Vader not realizing that Leia is his daughter is another factor of Vader not being the father of anyone when ANH was made. The TESB thing is exclusively a problem in the Special Editions. The original version of Vader and the Emperor's conversation makes no mention of Luke's parentage but it seems fairly clear, in light of their showdown at the end of the film, that Vader had figured it out at some point before the film started (hence his relentless pursuit of Luke mentioned in the opening crawl). I think it's fair to assume that Vader didn't know who Luke was in ANH though. I don't think he ever even heard Luke's name mention, and while he could sense something was up during the trench run ("the Force is strong with his one") he wasn't exactly focused on trying to figure out more about the pilot he was trying to kill (and, of course, their relationship didn't exist when this scene was written).

Original TESB conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKtciRCVpFE

For someone who is supposed to be laying low watching over Luke Ben 'I can't be bothered to change my surname either' Kenobi, he seems to be fairly well known on Tatooine...from memory Obi Wan drops off Luke to live with them in ROTS (the characters seem to age forty years in 20 when ANH roles around), presumably informing them what had happened to Anakin...yet they don't seem to reject the idea of Luke leaving to join the rebellion completely out of hand, and Obi Wan nonchantly continues to wear jedi robes in full view of imperial storm troopers as they enter mos eisley.

Not even gonna try to defend Obi-Wan's paper-thin disguise or the costume weirdness, but I think it's worth noting that Luke did not want to join the Rebellion at the start of the film, he wanted to join an Imperial Academy. It's not out of any kind of patriotism, as he admits to hating the Empire early in the film as well, but he sees it as his ticket off of Tatooine.

Kinda weird Luke was pressed into service as a pilot for the attack on the death star with no training or military experience

They tried to get Han to help too. I think it's safe to say that the Rebels would have taken anyone with even a bit of pilot experience at that point, given how desperate their situation is. And it's well-established in the film that, presumed lack of formal training aside, Luke is a pretty good pilot.

How were a tribe of ill prepared, tiny Ewoks able to defeat a superior army of technologically-advanced and armoured Stormtroopers at such short notice?

It's worth noting that the Ewoks and Rebels planned their attack so that they were only fighting a small fraction of the Stormtroopers present (that's why they were attacking the relatively lightly-guarded back door). Even so, the Stormtroopers were completely dominating the Ewoks (despite taking casualties) until Chewie got his hands on an AT-ST walker. 'Course on a thematic note, the point is that the Empire's arrogance and bigotry left them ill-prepared to fight the indigenous opposition that would inevitable rise up against their imperialist forces. The Ewoks are supposed to be a "warrior tribe", and remember that the whole Empire-Rebel dynamic was consciously patterned after the United States and the Viet Cong (hence why the rebel base in the first film is in a jungle).

halfwise wrote:R2 and Chewie were in Attack of the Clones?   I just watched the damn thing and didn't notice.

Artoo is in all three of the prequels. He follows Padme around for most of AOTC since he's her droid, and is with her and Anakin on Tatooine and Geonosis in the third act. Revenge of the Sith is where Chewie makes his sole prequel appearance in a very minor role alongside Yoda on Kashyyk.

As for the rest, I'll let Petty respond, since he seems to have nearly the same purist tendencies towards Star Wars OT that he has towards Tolkien.

I hope I am an acceptable Petty substitute for the time being.

malickfan wrote:The plot holes in ANH can perhaps largely be ignored (or put down to editing/pacing reasons) for those reasons (though Lucas claimed from the start he had more than one story planned, at least vaguely), but continuity and hard logic were never exactly strong points in Lucas's writing.

Lucas lies about how much he had planned out. The number of films that he claims to have been planning kept switching up, and the evolution of ideas post-ANH into the Star Wars we know today are fairly well-documented.

Eldorion wrote:

malickfan wrote:The plot holes in ANH can perhaps largely be ignored (or put down to editing/pacing reasons) for those reasons (though Lucas claimed from the start he had more than one story planned, at least vaguely), but continuity and hard logic were never exactly strong points in Lucas's writing.

Lucas lies about how much he had planned out. The number of films that he claims to have been planning kept switching up, and the evolution of ideas post-ANH into the Star Wars we know today are fairly well-documented.

Yeah that is true (Mark Hamill mentioned the sequel trilogy back in a 1983 interview), probably explains why he couldn't keep track of his own continuity.

Eldorion wrote:

I hope I am an acceptable Petty substitute for the time being.

You are doing all right and most of the explanations make sense 'from a certain point' of view though the crappy continuity with the prequels is somewhat harder to defend...

I'll read through the prequel article later and see if I feel up to taking a crack at it.

I mean, the prequels are bad movies, but some of the things that people shit on them for are really dumb. Like the whole "only a Sith deals in absolutes" line. Yes, it's a contradiction in terms, but you know what? That's the point. The entire prequel trilogy repeatedly comes back to the theme that the Jedi are insular, arrogant, and out-of-touch, and that is why Sidious/Palpatine is able to defeat them. Watch AOTC again if you don't believe me. Padme says to a bunch of members of the Jedi Council that she thinks Dooku is behind the attempt on her life, and the only response is that Dooku couldn't have possibly done it because he's a former Jedi. I'd call it an allegory for the Catholic sex abuse scandal, except that AOTC was actually written before that became a big news story.

Eldorion wrote:

I have always interpreted Obi-Wan's line about not recalling a droid -- delivered while giving Artoo a meaningful look -- as his way of telling Artoo to keep quiet and not say too much in front of Luke until Ben has some time to assess him and decide how much to share with him. They evidently had some interaction when Luke was younger but it seems to have been fairly long ago (perhaps Uncle Ben intervened) and Obi may well want to see if Luke shows any signs of Dark Side inclinations given what happened with his father.

No excuse for the rocket boosters though.

Hmm...that would make sense, but it's personal interpretation, I haven't seen the films in ages (and least not through a 'critics' lense), so I'll have to pay more attention to that scene next time...

I do rather like the imagery of a bearded, greying sunburnt Obi Wan breaking into Uncle's Ben's homestead to pay a 'surprise' visit to Luke...Luke dosen't seem to know him very well, or think of him that highly and you have to wonder why he kept a distance...

The Rebels do not seem to have transmitted the plans to Leia's ship. There's nothing resembling the Internet in the original SW trilogy, which is of course a function of the time in which it was made. (You see the same thing in a lot older sci-fi, including the Foundation trilogy.) The Rebels had to transport a physical disc/whatever thing (the one that Leia puts into Artoo) with the plans stored on it. The plans could be copied from the disc into a computer (hence, "the Death Star plans are not in the main computer") though, so the question remains why they didn't burn more copies.

Yeah I used trasmat as a general word for storing/copying/sending etc, but my point still stands they were rather blase about the safety of those plans...I suppose Rogue One might clear up just how small a timeframe their was between their theft and the Empire tracking Leia's ship down...

I actually bought a copy of the Foundation trilogy ages ago but never got round to reading it...

This got retconned later in the OT of course, leading to Obi-Wan's famous "from a certain point of view" excuse. So viewing ANH in the context of its sequels, it seems a natural lie for Ben to tell considering that (1) he's trying to convince Luke to join him, so playing to his curiosity about his father might help that and (2) he doesn't want to tell Luke the truth about his father turning evil and being left for dead. As for why Obi-Wan waited, I refer to my earlier speculation about him wanting to observe Luke for a little bit instead of telling him stuff right off the bat.

Plausible explanation

Yavin IV is a gas giant, it's many, many times larger than the small, rocky planets and moons that we see the Death Star destroy. It's a huge leap to assume that the DS could destroy Yavin.

I get where you are coming from, but if the Empire was arrogant/stupid enough to leave such a (small admittedly) gaping hole in the Death Star's defense it's easy to doubt their finesse in actions like this...wouldn't the gas be more flammable anyway?

I think Vader not realizing that Leia is his daughter is another factor of Vader not being the father of anyone when ANH was made. The TESB thing is exclusively a problem in the Special Editions...

Again good explanation that works..it's sad to think for 'special editions' Lucas's additions to the films seemed to have added more problems...

Not even gonna try to defend Obi-Wan's paper-thin disguise or the costume weirdness

The combination of poor diet, Heat stroke and sexual frustration that faces all desert dwelling hermits would probably cover this...

but I think it's worth noting that Luke did not want to join the Rebellion at the start of the film, he wanted to join an Imperial Academy.

My mistake...odd to think if it weren't for the droids, Luke may well have bumped into Vader much anyway under much different circumstances...

And it's well-established in the film that, presumed lack of formal training aside, Luke is a pretty good pilot.

True.

[quoteIt's worth noting that the Ewoks and Rebels planned their attack so that they were only fighting a small fraction of the Stormtroopers present (that's why they were attacking the relatively lightly-guarded back door)][/quote]

That is true, but they didn't have alot of time to set up all the various booby traps

Course on a thematic note, the point is that the Empire's arrogance and bigotry left them ill-prepared to fight the indigenous opposition that would inevitable rise up against their imperialist forces. The Ewoks are supposed to be a "warrior tribe", and remember that the whole Empire-Rebel dynamic was consciously patterned after the United States and the Viet Cong (hence why the rebel base in the first film is in a jungle).

True again...they were also great for basing a new range of kids toy on...

Eldorion wrote:I'll read through the prequel article later and see if I feel up to taking a crack at it.

I mean, the prequels are bad movies, but some of the things that people shit on them for are really dumb

The OT tells a simple story very well, the PT tells a much deeper story fairly badly, but there's certainly alot I appreciate about the prequels, at the very least it's too their credit people remain fairly dissapointed rather than completely indifferent.

The entire prequel trilogy repeatedly comes back to the theme that the Jedi are insular, arrogant, and out-of-touch, and that is why Sidious/Palpatine is able to defeat them

True, dumb luck and evil old Jar Jar persuading the senate to vote through emergency powers also played a part.

I no longer own copies of the PT (though I do rather surprisingly, own a copy of the Holiday Special ), but I do want to force myself to rewatch them at some point-the central story, though flawed is pretty heavy and fascinating, and there's enough thematic material/creative art direction/brilliant music to make up for (at least a little) the dismal editing, acting and dialogue, I don't think they will quite be as bad as I think they are...

malickfan wrote:Hmm...that would make sense, but it's personal interpretation, I haven't seen the films in ages (and least not through a 'critics' lense), so I'll have to pay more attention to that scene next time...

I do rather like the imagery of a bearded, greying sunburnt Obi Wan breaking into Uncle's Ben's homestead to pay a 'surprise' visit to Luke...Luke dosen't seem to know him very well, or think of him that highly and you have to wonder why he kept a distance...

I think Family Guy's Star Wars parody went in the direction you're implying with their version of Obi-Wan, though that wasn't what I had in mind.

I get where you are coming from, but if the Empire was arrogant/stupid enough to leave such a (small admittedly) gaping hole in the Death Star's defense it's easy to doubt their finesse in actions like this...wouldn't the gas be more flammable anyway?

The films don't explain exactly how the Death Star's weapon works. I suppose it's possible that it would cause the hydrogen in it to burn, but there are other gases in there too. Hard to say how much ejecta could result from such a huge entity, which could cause trouble for the Death Star, plus the weapon would have to recharge afterwards, resulting in most likely a longer wait time before firing on the moon than just waiting to get around the planet.

I think the exhaust port thing gets blown out of proportion when people try to use it to make conclusions about the Empire as a whole. I mean, 30 years ago this month, the US lost the space shuttle Challenger and seven lives because of an obvious design flaw that had been pointed out but went unaddressed because too many individuals and institutions were too lazy, ass-covering, or rushed to bother with it. This sort of thing happens in all sorts of cultures without everyone being a moron, but an authoritarian regime that stifles dissent and disagreement is particularly vulnerable to it (see also: numerous examples from the Soviet space program).

That is true, but they didn't have alot of time to set up all the various booby traps

Some of them might have been present already to protect the Ewok's forest. There was the trap that our heroes got caught in, for one.

True again...they were also great for basing a new range of kids toy on...

I think it would have been better if they'd gone with the original idea of having the Death Star II built above the Wookiee home planet. But yeah, pandering and toys.

malickfan wrote:The OT tells a simple story very well, the PT tells a much deeper story fairly badly, but there's certainly alot I appreciate about the prequels, at the very least it's too their credit people remain fairly dissapointed rather than completely indifferent.

I don't really like how Palpatine is made to be behind everything that happens. Having him be a chessmaster is fine and manipulating the Republic into war for his own ends would be a plausible enough villainous plot. But to have him actively directing his military opponents as well just makes him too powerful and the outcome seem even more inevitable (which is kinda hard to do in a prequel ). But in general, I do think there is a lot of interesting stuff in the prequels. I like getting to see more of the Galaxy, especially cities and the Core Worlds. It makes a nice change of pace from scruffy frontier planets for a while, and it also lends more meaning to Obi-Wan's reminiscing for "a more civilized age".

True, dumb luck and evil old Jar Jar persuading the senate to vote through emergency powers also played a part.

Yeah, it's not like it's surprising that Jar Jar fell for such a transparent ploy, but putting him in that crucial of a role undermines the gravity of that part of the story. As does having the speech that leads directly to the Empire include the words "dellow felegates".

Alright, I read through the whole article on the prequels, and there's a bunch of stuff there that I agree with. It's obvious to anyone paying attention that Lucas' ideas changed over 20 years and the two trilogies don't together perfectly. Basically a larger version of the inconsistencies between ANH and the other two films in the OT. However, there's also a number of points that I feel differently on. I'm only gonna bother quoting stuff from the article that I would dispute, or where I feel I could add something. I'll leave their numbering intact though, in case anyone wants to go refer to their full words and images.

1) “Magnificent, aren’t they.” – The Imperial Stormtroopers in the Original Trilogy were the bumbling, idiotic soldiers of the Galactic Empire, unable to hit a target even at close range. In the prequels, however (...) these troops were elite warriors, cloned from the ruthless bounty hunter, Jango Fett.

This is one of the most common complaints against the OT, but it's usually one of the most willfully ignorant as well. I wrote an entire essay responding to criticisms of the Stormtroopers a number of years ago, and I don't want to restate it all, but suffice to say that the complaints about Stormtrooper accuracy primarily use the Death Star escape in ANH as their Exhibit A, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Stormies there were ordered to let our heroes escape because Vader and Tarkin were plotting to track them to the Rebel base. This is explicitly stated in the film at least twice but a lot of people seem to forget it entirely.

http://eldorion.com/personal/stormtroopers/

This prequel discrepancy identified by this point is that the elite clones were replaced by poorly-trained schlubs. I dispute the poorly-trained part, but I also think it makes sense that the Empire would do away with cloning. The cost of raising a clone for 10 years from birth (they have accelerated aging, as stated in AOTC) and caring for their every need during that time is exorbitant compared to putting a recruit through basic training for a few months and maybe a more advanced infantry school if they are selected for the Stormtrooper Corps. Palpatine needed an army to be prepared in secret so that it would be ready when the Republic's ban on a Galaxy-wide military was repealed, but once he was Emperor, he could have as large a standing army as he liked, within the realms of economic and logistical feasibility.

2) “Always two, there are. No more, no less.” – In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader conspires with the Emperor to turn Luke to the Dark Side, suggesting that they’ll all have a dandy time as an awesome bad-guy triumvirate. That was before The Phantom Menace established the Rule of Two, which basically means that there can only be two Sith Lords at a time (otherwise the films would get too exciting).

Look, I think the Rule of Two is kind of dumb; there's no coincidence that it's been ignored in basically all SW media that has come out since the prequels, but this is really reaching. They acknowledge that the Emperor wants Luke to replace Vader as his apprentice in ROTJ, but for some reason act like, because the Emperor didn't explicitly state this in TESB, he wasn't thinking it. Also worth noting is that Vader invites Luke to help him overthrow the Emperor in TESB, so both Sith Lords in the OT are respecting the Rule of Two (even though it probably didn't exist at the time of writing).

3) “Look, your Worshipfulness…” – (...) The Original Trilogy never even attempts to explain to us why Leia is a princess, or how she became one. She just is. (...) After poking around Wookieepedia, I discovered that Leia inherits her royal title from her adoptive mother, the Queen of Alderaan. This seems a bit fishy. Why would George make Leia’s biological mother a Queen, if not to establish her royalty?

This is just making up a problem that doesn't exist, I guess maybe in order to meet the number of entries they wanted for this article. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for Leia's title that exists. There is every indication in the films themselves that her title is an Alderaanian one. Who care if both her biological mother and her adoptive mother held the title of Queen (of different planets)?

6) “What about that blue one?” – After being captured by Jawas, Artoo and Threepio are sold to Owen Lars, who doesn’t seem to notice anything familiar about them. But of course, in Attack of the Clones, we see that C-3PO lived with the Lars family after they bought Shmi as a slave. Surely he would remember a droid as whiny and annoying as that.

This is actually an interesting point to bring up, and one that I'm not sure if I've heard before. However, I think the most likely explanation lies in the way that people in the Star Wars universe view droids. The vast majority of biological beings do not view droids as sentient beings or real persons (though they clearly are), but simply as tools to be used for a given job. Even Luke Skywalker, who is established to be kind and empathetic, reacts with amusement at being introduced to a droid, when cleaning Artoo and Threepio. With that in mind, I don't think it's that implausible that Owen and Beru wouldn't remember him.

9) “To Tatooine, to his family send him.” – In the Original Trilogy, Luke lives with his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. It is clear that the Lars family know Luke’s father, particularly as Beru points out that “he has too much of his father in him”. However, what appears to be a familial link turns out to be tenuous at best. Luke is the grandson of Owen Lars’ stepmother, which makes them unrelated biologically. Also, given that Anakin only visits the Lars family once (during which he makes a terrible first impression), Luke can hardly be seen as even vaguely related.

I don't disagree that sending Luke to live with the Larses was a kinda weird move, but as someone who grew up with two step-parents after both my biological parents remarried, I seriously resent the implication that only biological relations can make someone family.

11) “This is how liberty dies…” – In A New Hope, Tarkin announces the final liquidation of the Old Republic, and the total destruction of democracy within the galaxy.

Every little paragraph within this section has something wrong with it, but I'm only gonna quote the first one. Okay, so Tarkin says that "the last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away", because the Senate is a (sorta) democratic institution that was being kept around by the Empire for show. It's dissolution meant that the last pretense of Republican government had been purged from the New Order. This is a significant change, even though the Senate had been reduced to a rubber stamp and was almost to that point even before the end of the Clone Wars. They also complain that Leia's rebelliousness and her comment that other Senators would support her is incompatible with how the Senate works in Revenge of the Sith, but this ignores that the Senate was the main base for resistance to Palpatine's expanding power during that movie, although unfortunately the scenes fleshing this out were deleted from the final cut, but in the finished film we still see Padme and Bail Organa (Leia's birth mother and adoptive father, mind you) doing much the same thing as Leia would do two decades later.

13) “And he was a good friend.” – In A New Hope, Obi-Wan recalls that his apprentice, Anakin, was a so-called “good friend”. Ignoring the time they tried to kill each other on Mustafar, most of what we see of these two characters seems to be petty bickering. Or is that just friendly banter that got a bit out of hand?

Come on. Obviously their friendship had ended by the time of their duel; they keep yelling at each other about this fact before and after the duel itself. We see the origins of Anakin and Obi-Wan's friendship at the end of TPM, and while I won't disagree that they're pretty catty towards each other a lot of the time, we do still get glimpses of friendship, such as in the opening sequence of ROTS.

15) “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.” – By the time of A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi looks old. Between the two trilogies, nineteen years are supposed to have passed.

I've discussed before on this forum how I think there are a lot of things that in the OT that imply the Old Republic and the Clone Wars took place considerably more than two decades prior (for context, that's about how long it's been since the later part of the Yugoslav Wars). However, you can't blame this one on the prequels. Lucas locked himself into this one by making Luke a 19-year-old. Even when Vader and Luke's father were conceived of as different people, the war couldn't have ended more than nine months before Luke's birth or he would never have been able to be born.

17) “That boy is our last hope…” – (...) When Luke leaves Dagobah to confront Vader on Cloud City, Obi-Wan describes him as “our last hope”, with only Yoda acknowledging the fact that “there is another”. But (...) Obi-Wan would have surely known that the female child could also have developed force powers. It makes no sense that she was not also part of the exiled Jedi’s master plan for defeating the Empire once and for all.

That's a hell of an assumption that Obi-Wan can detect Force potential in babies just by holding them, and there's no evidence to support this whatsoever. Qui-Gon's use of the midi-chlorian analysis thing on Anakin in TPM rather implies that it's not possible to be certain of Force potential, though one might have suspicions. But it's hard to see what a baby might do to evoke such suspicions. Simply being in the presence of a Force-adept is clearly not enough, given that the Jedi didn't know that Palpatine was one (though you could make the argument that he was somehow masking himself from this unstated Jedi ability, but that's creating even more speculative Force abilities and I'm not comfortable with that kind of analysis).

19) “If we work together, I know we can discover the secret.” – In Revenge of the Sith, it is revealed that Anakin fell to the Dark Side in order to attain the power to “cheat death”, and save his wife from the death he has prophesised. Darth Sidious is well aware that to gain such a power will be difficult to achieve, but he promises Anakin, “If we work together, I know we can discover the secret.”

Umm, I guess this might come as a surprise to the writers of this article, but Palpatine was lying to Anakin in order to seduce him to the Dark Side. Sorta like he lied about everything to everyone he interacted with for the entire trilogy, y'know. (And yes, I know that the old EU established Darth Plagueis as a real person, but that doesn't change the fact that Palpatine is clearly lying about his ability to help Anakin cheat death.)

21) “An old friend has learned the path to immortality.” – (...) if Obi-Wan had been able to communicate with his former master, would he not have introduced him to Luke at some point? Why does Obi-Wan want to go it alone? Even when Luke does meet Master Yoda, would it not make sense to have brought Qui-Gon as a third teacher.

Obi-Wan himself doesn't train Luke any further after he dies and becomes a Force ghost, he only shows up briefly and occasionally to give advice or answer questions. The apparent inability or unwillingness of Force ghosts to act as teachers is the whole reason why Obi sends Luke to find Yoda in the first place, otherwise he could've trained Luke himself.

22) “I don’t seem to remember owning a droid.” – In A New Hope, R2-D2 claims to belong to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan, however, has no recollection of owning a droid.

I discussed this is an earlier post, but yeah, I don't think Obi-Wan wanted to let Luke in on his whole life story right off the bat.

Interesting article, and it definitely made me think about Star Wars (as well as do a little bit of research to double check quotes and stuff). Fun times.

Malickfan wrote:I actually bought a copy of the Foundation trilogy ages ago but never got round to reading it...

Though admittedly it starts slow, being separate serialized stories at first.  It kicks into gear around the middle of the second book, though.

I only read the original trilogy of Foundation novels (well, story compendiums, as halfy says) but I really enjoyed it. The main attraction is the idea of psychohistory and the large-scale view of everything that's going on, but I found most of the characters enjoyable and several of them (Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, and the Mule especially) remain remarkably clear in my memory given that I read the books almost 10 years ago.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/27/disney-star-wars-saga-trilogy-han-solo-chewbacca

We don't need a Star Wars film a year forever. It won't be special anymore, audiences will get fatigued.

George, whenever I think you couldn't have been more asinine, you go and top yourself. But I'm glad he didn't go through with that terrible idea.

After sitting with this new movie for a while I feel like I've really reconnected with IV, V, and VI, almost to the point where I don't feel like these new movies are really for me. They're "being made for a new generation blah blah blah," I really feel disconnected from it and the upcoming films. I don't feel interested in seeing the anthology movies, I'll probably end up seeing them, but it just doesn't seem like it's for me.

Yeah, this was my biggest concern immediately following the Disney purchase and their initial announcement. I am curious about Rogue One, but I'm skeptical of Han Solo- and Boba Fett-based origin films. I do kinda see the OT as somewhat separate in my mind: it's what made me a fan of SW, and it'll be great no matter what, and I won't let follow-ups made later tarnish my view of the originals even if they introduce retcons in them (sorta the approach I had to take with The Hobbit and The Legend of Korra).

bungobaggins wrote:http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/27/disney-star-wars-saga-trilogy-han-solo-chewbacca

Disney will stretch the franchise as far as they can before people get bored of it, in another 30 years from now we'll probably be looking at Episode 47-52 or something.

We don't need a Star Wars film a year forever. It won't be special anymore, audiences will get fatigued

I get where you are coming from, but I've never been a huge fan of the franchise, the OT are classic films certainly, but I've never considered them high art, and if they were released today I don't think they would have been held up as high...for me the franchise has above all just been a few hours of rollicking sci-fi escapism, TFA played things safe, but for someone who never had much emotional attachment to the franchise one way or another, I ended up really enjoying it, I'm very much looking forward to seeing the universe expanded and reinterpreted for a modern audience, and although TFA did feel like it was missing some of the magic or earlier films I'm rather glad Lucas has moved on to be honest...

If the new films turn out to be crabbit inducing dreck, I'll just do what I did with the hobbit films, either swiftly forget them, or treat things as a cynical badly put together joke...

After sitting with this new movie for a while I feel like I've really reconnected with IV, V, and VI, almost to the point where I don't feel like these new movies are really for me. They're "being made for a new generation blah blah blah," I really feel disconnected from it and the upcoming films.

Oddly enough I had the opposite reaction, TFA actually reawakened my interest/love of the franchise in a way I hadn't felt in years, obviously it was a flawed partial rehash, but it certainly reminded me of the joy I got from the OT as a kid...I suppose I may simply be easyier to please, or just have a different interpretation of Star Wars.

I was burnt by The Hobbit, so I was perhaps cynical/wise enough to realise that Disney's Star Wars would feel very different.

But I'm not going to judge things completely after just one new movie.

Eldorion wrote: I am curious about Rogue One, but I'm skeptical of Han Solo- and Boba Fett-based origin films.

Rogue One certainly has the potential to be a good film-I'm picturing Where Eagles Dare in the star wars universe, the Han Solo spin off just sounds like a dumb idea, whilst Boba Fett can go either way-we could get a great gritty 'space western' of sorts as he tracks down targets and proves himself as a man to be feared, on the other hand...as a casual fan he's fairly boring, generic character who happens to have a cool looking suit of armour...

The cool suit of armor (and sense of mystique that comes from knowing almost nothing about him before the prequels) is basically the entire reason why he's popular. Same with Darth Maul and (possibly, we'll see how it plays out) Captain Phasma.