Again, a plea to those convinced they will hate ROTS (unboxed spoilers)

The BBQ Pit
1

Yes, I made a thread similar to this one about a year ago. But now that the movie is a month away and we know most of what goes down, I feel it needs to be reiterated. Taken from this thread, since I would have probably gotten a little too riled up.

Yes, Anakin falls because he is obsessed with Padme. He envisions her dying and decides he will stop at nothing to save her. Palpatine, the dark lord, claims he can give Anakin the power he needs to save her. Anakin ends up falling to the Dark Side trying to save Padme from his vision of her death, but tragically ends up being a contributing factor to her death.

If you have a problem with this,

don’t see the fucking movie.

Yes, Anakin contributes to the death of Mace Windu. Mace bests Palpatine in battle, and Anakin is present and forced to make a choice: save the man who claims he can give him the power to save his wife (Palpatine), or save the man who has been nothing but an untrusting douchebag to him since he arrived at the Jedi Temple (Mace). Anakin is selfish and possessive of Padme, and makes the selfish choice.

If you have a problem with this,

don’t see the fucking movie.

Yes, Anakin Force chokes Padme. After Anakin ruthlessly slaughters the remaining Separatist leaders on Mustafar, Padme flies there to confront him. Obi Wan tags along. Anakin begs Padme not to turn against him the way the Jedi did, and when he sees that Padme led Obi Wan to him, he loses his control and Force chokes her. However, this apparently does not cause enough trauma to kill her.

She dies of a “broken heart.” And before any of you get pissy about that (and I know there are some of you who will), note that this is a condition that has been documented by John Hopkin’s University. Times of extreme stress (childbirth, getting force choked, your husband falling to the Dark Side, and your entire life’s work of defending democracy being swept away) can be enough to send people into a trauma that resembles cardiac arrest.

But still, if you have a problem with this,

don’t see the fucking movie.

How can Leia possibly have memories of her mother? Gee, I don’t know. How did Luke have visions of his friends’ suffering while he was on the opposite side of the galaxy? How is it that the story takes place in a universe where sound actually exists in space? How is it possible that the laser blasts in this universe seem to travel significantly slower than the speed of light? How is it that you can harness a beam of light into a convenient, compact blade of about 3 feet in length? Why is it that the majority of the species in this universe are human, and most of them speak English?

You’re telling me that you can take all of this for granted, but can’t accept that Leia, who is the descendent of the most powerful Force user in history (oh, yeah, let’s not get you started on midichlorians and how they raped the entire essence of the Force!) could retain “just images really, feelings” by being in her mother’s arms as she dies?

Oh, and you’re complaining because Suited Vader is only in it for 5 minutes? Boo fucking hoo! You do realized that, just like Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus, Darth Vader is merely a sith title for Anakin, right? Anakin becomes Darth Vader long before he requires the walking iron lung.

Guess that’s just another way Lucas will have raped your childhood. Poor you.

Please, if there are any of you here who are so thoroughly convinced you will loathe this movie, don’t pollute the theaters with your presence on May 19th. I, and many other enthusiastic fans will greatly appreciate it.

2

You really need to get a grip, Soapbox. It’s just a movie. People not liking a movie you like is Not A Big Deal. You keep freaking out every time someone disses Star Wars, you’re going to give yourself an anyeurism. Christ. I never thought I’d say this to another geek, but you need to get out more.

3

Well, thanks. Having no idea what “ROTS” stood for, I unwisely opened your post.

I had no idea what the plot line (beyond the barest outline) was going to be and was right into your spoiler before I figured it out. I would have enjoyed the movie more without seeing that. Would it kill you to use a proper spoiler, especially for a movie that hasn’t even come out yet?

4

It’s the Pit, right?

USE A FUCKING SPOILER!

I had no idea what it was either, and I’m desperately trying not to learn a thing about the upcoming movie because, I’m one of the few Americans who doesn’t know!!

So again,

USE A FUCKING SPOILER BOX!

5

Thank you. Miller, I get what you’re saying, but I think some of us SW fans are tired of people always bitching and moaning about how SW sucks, Lucas raped their childhood, blah blah blah. So yeah, it’s just a movie, but every SW topic is full of people pissing about how much the prequels suck.

I love SW, I LOVE the prequels, and if people don’t like it, they can kiss my Wookiee.

6

I can arrange that.

7

I said unboxed spoilers.

And there wasn’t enough room left in the title to write out the whole thing.

That and you can’t edit here.

Mods, feel free to put spoilers around…whatever.

And change the title too I guess.

8

That’s sort of why I started this. The people who feel Lucas has done irreversible damage to a saga they love out number the actual fans of the prequels at least 20 to 1. Therefore our voices need to be a bit louder.

What the fuck am I supposed to do, just sit there and do nothing as people harp in unison about how Lucas should be burned at the stake?

These people actually think Lucas owes them something. He owes you nothing. If you don’t like his story, stop watching.

9

So what? You just agreed with me that it’s just a movie. Why does the fact that people disagree with you about it bother you at all?

Oh, and those people bitching and moaning in those threads? They’re all Star Wars fans, too. People who aren’t Star Wars fans aren’t going to waste their time complaining about how much the new movies suck.

10

I’m just pissed because the negative feelings are already starting. People seem to be doing everything they can to insure that they will hate this movie. Just like they hated the last two.

But they will see it anyway. And then I will come here, and there will be at least 3 threads (that’s what I’m banking my money on anyway) about what a travesty the film was. So rather than defend any of that after the fact, I figured I would defend the film before it even comes out. I chose all the major points that it seems most likely that people will have a problem with, and argued my view of it.

That makes much less work for me in the long run.

11

I mostly agree with you. Mostly. However, you’re wrong about this:

This was the dealbreaker for me. Who cares about the shitty acting, the wooden characters, the pathetic dialogue, or Anakin riding an enormous flea over the rolling hills? The entire idea of Star Wars was completely and utterly destroyed the second Lucas decided to have a physical cause for the Force.

The one reason I always thought that SW might go down in history as a Great Work of Art was that it started out as much a work of scholarship as anything else. Yes, it was a space opera. But it was a space opera based on the ingenious mythological ideas of Joseph Campbell, among other things. It had it all. Fantastic action. Likeable characters. A sense of history. Humor. The Hero’s Quest. The Descent to the Underworld. The Redemption. Lucas did his homework. He knew that the series was really about human spirituality.

That was the whole point of inventing a completely new spiritual system and imbuing it with all those characteristics that make REAL spiritual systems so compelling. And it worked. It worked brilliantly.

The instant he removed that spirituality, the entire series became the fucking Ice Pirates, except without the charm. It became the same as a million other space operas or trivial serial space films made since movies were invented.

12

He didn’t remove anything spiritual. Midichlorians are not little Force tablets that float in our blood. They are conduits for spiritual energy. They are not the Force itself. They are organisms that help individuals communicate with the Force.

Yes, Anakin has the most midichlorians and therefore the most Force potential, just the same as someone with a higher IQ has greater learning potential than someone with a lesser IQ. Does it make the person with the higher IQ smarter?

No where does Lucas equate midichlorian levels to actual Force talent.

The fact that midichlorians could come together and conceive a child (Anakin) in the womb of a woman who does not appear to have any Force ability whatsoever (Shmi) seems to indicate to me at least some level of divine spiritual intervention when it comes to Anakin’s immaculate conception.

The Force is still spiritual energy. It is created by all living things. Midichlorians just help to communicate with that energy.

13

It doesn’t bother me when people disagree, I just feel annoyed that if I even mention anything about SW, people (not you, and not necessarily anyone here, either), will go on an hour long rant about how much it sucks and all that. For example, someone asks me what I’m listening to, I say, the new SW soundtrack, and then everyone’s, “The prequels suck, Lucas sucks, blah blah blah.” I didn’t ask for your opinion.

Or people who DO like the movie are looked at as stupid.

14

I gotta go with Ogre here. Lucas has ruined what was at one time something I really liked. He won’t get any more of my money. I’ll stay home and read my copy of Hero With a Thousand Faces again. :smiley:

15

Yeah, she could use a good kiss.

16

Whatever. Even if what you say is 100% true, midichlorians are still superfluous to the theme of the movies. Utterly unnecessary. Can you think of one good reason that Lucas had to invent midichlorians that couldn’t be addressed much more compellingly by simply sticking with a nebulous, mysterious idea of The Force?

Me either. Why have a mechanism at all? It’s distracting and stupid.

However, I still say that you’re wrong. Midichlorians, as they’re presented in the The Phantom Menace (are they ever even mentioned again, btw?,) are, in fact, exactly like little Force Tablets - or more accurately, little Force-generating mitochondria. Channels for communication, my ass. We have brains for that. The Force “surrounds us and binds us.” The idea relates directly to the ideas of karma, ka, ba, Kaballah, and a thousand other human ways of saying the same thing. We ARE the Force.

Why do we need little Force-o-plasts?

We don’t. Bad idea.

17

At least you’re taking the right approach. I know people who loathed Episodes 1 and 2, yet still managed to see them multiple times, and they also plan on seeing Episode 3.

How is Lucas supposed to get the “overwhelming” message that the prequels suck if the same people who think that still keep dishing out the cash to see them?

18

Why the fuck would you open a thread that said unboxed spoilers if you didn’t know what was being spoiled? Just to piss and moan?

19

Well clearly YOU are the one who is wrong, based on evidence from the movies. Surely when Obi Wan, Anakin, and Yoda are in ghost form, there is no possible way for them to be composed of, or contain, midichlorians. They exist in purely spiritual form (at least to Luke, if no one else can see them). They wouldn’t be able to appear like that if midichlorians were the physical manifestation of the Force.

As I said, conduits for spiritual energy.

And why did Lucas feel it was necessary? Oh, I don’t know, maybe he thought too many people would find the straight-up Jesus-figure role for Anakin to be too cliche so he decided to actual explain it with science. Afterall, there is no central God figure in the Force, so there has to be something to build up a reservoir of Force energy inside a random woman’s uterus.

Unless you think there should be Force “currents” that just happened to get stuck up there.

Either way, he needed Anakin to be the result of an immaculate conception, and he felt he needed at least some way of explaining how that could have been a possibility.

20

Well, that’s pretty contemptuous, sure. But I don’t see much of that happening on the boards, and the OP was framed as specific to this board. Which, relative to the first part of your post, is a debate board first and foremost, so by posting your opinion of just about anything here, means you are inviting debate and, like it or not, dissent.

And, to Soapbox Monkey, yeah, I’m going to see the third movie. Opening night, likely as not. And I fully expect it to suck. From what I’ve heard from people who have seen advanced screenings, it’s far and away the worst of the three. Why am I going? Because, I desperately want those early reports to be wrong. Dammit, I don’t want to dislike the prequels, but I can’t help that everything I see up there on the screen is just total shit. I keep hoping that somehow, Lucas is going to get his act together and remember how to make a good movie. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’m more than willing to sit through any number of abominable movies in the hopes of seeing something that’s just half as good as the original Star Wars. Yeah, it’s probably dumb of me. So what? The more suckers who hate the new movies but go anyway, the more likely Lucas is to make even more movies/cartoons/video game/whatever that you can enjoy. Stop whining about people helping to support something you treasure so dearly, even when they themselves despise it.