General Star Wars Thread

Give or take twenty years and a few missing limbs, pretty much.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

UUUUUUUNLIIIIIMITEEEED...POOOOOWAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Though there were several EU/Legends authors like Denning that preferred a balance/Yin-Yang interpretation which just opens up a big ol' Continuity Snarl.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

Well the Chosen One was supposed to bring balance to the Force. That's probably where they got it from.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

And bringing balance is destroying the Sith. Should basically spell "DARK SIDE IS BAD" to the writers.

"If you weren't so crazy I'd think you were insane."

The problem is that the "Light Side" is presented as sterile. The Jedi have these boring, non-emotive, asexual personalities that make them seem alien and unrelatable, even at a most basic level. It's like saying the only way to avoid alcoholism is to be a teetotaler. We have ample evidence why the Dark Side is bad — why is the Light Side good? It just seems bland and lifeless.

edited 26th May '15 8:34:31 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Because most Jedi aren't assholes? That part of the reason the Old Republic stood so long was because of them? Because while the Republic was crumbling during the New Sith Wars the Jedi Lords fought back and gave their territory stability?

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

"The Dark Side is to The Force what too much alcohol is to the human body, basically. "

So... fuckin awesome?

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

Not being an asshole is the bare minimum. Are we giving out prizes for basic decency?

Also, moral goodness isn't necessary to allow a state to function, or maintain territorial integrity.

edited 26th May '15 9:04:05 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Until the first Episode VII trailer, the idea that there is a "Light Side" of the force was not canon. The Jedi are not strictly the Light Side of the force, and neither is the Sith strictly the Dark Side. There are other Force-based groups/organizations/societies who do not belong to either side. The Force itself is basically Blue-and-Orange Morality, the Sith is an imbalance, but in what exact manner is not entirely clear. Closest I can figure is that they are warmongers responsible for the worst conflicts in the galaxy, and they have alchemy and rituals that can corrupt life on a fundamental level.

I might misremembering, but wasn't the whole balance thing only brought up in the prequels?

The movies only explain the Force very vaguely which gives room for a lot of interpretation.

Is it? Lucas' statements about it have about as much weight as those of my niece at this point. What "bringing balance" means or if it means anything at all, is up for debate. There were people in this very Forum argumenting that the whole chosen one and prophecy crap was actually a deconstruction, that it was meant to be bogus.

Pretty much. And the Jedi are not only teetotalers but they hunt down anyone who dares to drink alcohol. As religious fanatics tend to do.

And yes, the Jedi are boring and unrelatable. Though I'm not sure if it's just their philosophy or if it's just because anyone in the PT was boring and unrelatable. Luke's new Jedi order was much better though.

That's exactly what I meant with cheapening and infantilizing conflict. Instead of adressing the issues and intentions of Revan, Jacen or Anakin, they get corrupted by the dark side, are clearly evil now and have to be stopped.

And the whole fear-anger-hate complex and dark side corrupting you is a total Space Whale Aesop. That's not how humans work and just enhances the unrelatableness of the Jedi.

edited 26th May '15 10:35:52 PM by Antiteilchen

Unrelatable is one way to put it, and for various reasons. My own was that they're essentially indoctrinated into service, making their choices and motivations little more than extensions of whatever training they'd received beforehand. Third party intrigues notwithstanding, that's what got me disinterested in The Clone Wars - on one side, you have religious fanatics leading inhuman killing machines designed only for war... and on the other side, there's the Sith acolytes and battle droids. Regional conflicts aside, there were no volunteers in that war, no Han Solos with personal or even national loyalties to relate to.

Honestly, I think they should have made Star Wars Rebels in place of that show all along, and by now we could have already be getting a pre-VII tie-in series as well, much like the other Clone Wars cartoon. Eh, a guy can dream.

Han Solo had a personal or national loyalty we could relate to? He got sucked into the war by accident and only stayed after a bunch of fighting. Not much different from Jedi and clones getting involved by a result of their occupation.

"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim

Han Solo signed up for a simple courier job to pay off a debt - which is not particularly glamorous but at least understandable on a personal level - but actually joined the war effort on his own, by returning to help Luke. That's where his personal loyalty shined through. He was neither bred nor indoctrinated to fight, nor held allegiance to the Republic or "democracy". He could have just left the rebels to get blown up at no further personal expense, being a wanted man already. From there on, getting involved in the war wasn't a matter of occupation, but of choice - which is what the audience could relate to.

It's a similar thing with Luke - whether out of idealism or plain wanderlust, he wanted to join the rebels. He wanted to follow his father's legacy, and after the big reveal, he still wanted to save him. He had a personal stake in the war, and that's also something to relate to.

Again, in a world of Black-and-White Morality, well-intentioned evil is still evil, but note that the movies also dodged around tricky morality in the case of Anakin's fall. He was forced to be evil for sympathetic but selfish purposes (believing he needed Palpatine alive to save Padme). His fall was a good example of jumping off the slippery slope with the dark side, because at first, he did nothing worse than cutting off Mace Windu's hand to stop him from killing someone. It's Palpatine who makes that good-seeming action into an evil one by quickly killing Windu outright and then declaring that they need to kill *all* the Jedi to save him now. The death of Windu is actually what pushes Anakin over the side, because the sunk-cost fallacy comes in, and then it becomes easier for him to justify the terrible things he's doing.

So in Anakin's case, he simply wandered up to the ledge of the Dark Side and Palpatine pushed him over, not like EU stories told of a deliberate choice to make morally grey decisions that led to a gradual slide into cackling wickedness.

He's already slipping even before then because he was arguing in favor of letting Palpatine live, and even used the phrase "I need him!" even after Mace says that he has undisputed control of the Senate and Courts that they wouldn't be able to convict him, even with all of the evidence of him being a Sith Lord.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Maybe we just have different life experiences, because falling in with a rebellion because I befriended the dude I was being paid to haul somewhere else has never been something I've seen and went, "Yeah! I can relate to that."

I see and talk to soldiers who've been enlisted all their adult lives get deployed all the time though.

While you are right, I cannot relate to the clones troopers' backstory, I nonetheless find them very interesting character. People born and bred to fight a war, all the exact same person on the outside, put in a galaxy that doesn't really know how to treat them. This is all the stuff a good sci-fi character is made of. I can certainly feel for them.

I like Han. Han is cool. He's a refreshingly Lovable Rogue in a galaxy where magic warriors dominate the screen time. But I don't see why as an audience member I'd find him more relatable.

"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim

He's practical. He uses sneak attacks, he boosts the power on his blaster, he shoots without waiting for Vader to arm himself.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Sneak attacks? Han hates sneaking. He hates skulking around on the Death Star when they're trying to rescue Leia, saying that he'd rather get into a straight up fight.

Hey, give Han some credit, he learned from that! Instead of charging into a gaggle of Storm Troopers like in IV he sneaked onto Endor and at least tried to infiltrate the shield base quietly.

"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim

Joining something because of a friend is certainly more relatable to me than being a specifically bred slave soldier who grew up in a training facility. And how are they relatable? They're nothing more than statists and canon fodder in the movies. They have less personality than the battle droids or the stormtroopers.

The battle at the end of Episode II is the most boring in the whole saga and exemplifies everything wrong with the PT. Faceless, identical mooks with no personality vs faceless, identical mooks with no personality. And the "good" guys have to catch the bad guy to stop the war they themselves just started.

Only if you agree with either the author or the characters. Just because a work says something is bad, evil, uncool, sexy, silly or whatever doesn't mean it is. Values can only be presented as something they never "are" because they are not objective.

They get plenty of characterization in the Clone Wars series. If you haven't watched it, then I'm afraid we'll be talking past each other. I don't see how the Storm Troopers had more personality, or the rebel soldiers and pilots for that matter. I think the only thing Wedge had going for him was a name. Battle droids in Clone Wars and and Episode III do have their own quirks. Honestly, of all the mooks in the main movies, the Ewoks had the most personality.

"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim

He was antsy about being almost completely alone in the Death Star surrounded by tens of thousands of Imperials. The dread of waiting is unbearable. Also. Greedo. Sneak attack.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

Actually, when it comes to mooks the Battle droids are the best in Star Wars. They can be hilariously incompetent one moment , but deadly the next. This is different from a show like Rebels making the Stormtroopers completely incompetent because in-universe Stormtroopers are supposed to be the pinnacle of military might, such that even Obi-Wan acknowledged them, while battledroids are incompetent in-universe too.

The Clonetroopers are better than the Stormtroopers by virtue of them actually removing their helmets and being able to get the job done.

"If you weren't so crazy I'd think you were insane."

To be fair, isn't that one reference by Obi-Wan basically the ONLY in-film reference to Stormtroopers being competent?

Also, Tuskens can hit speeding racing pods...

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."