I do.
I was out to eat with some friends at a local Italian joint, and the bread ended up across the table from me, just out of reach.
So… I closed my eyes, held out my hand towards the bread, and concentrated on the bread.
Suddenly it was right in my hand!
Turns out my gf (sitting next to me and closer to the bread) had picked up the bread and put it my hand. sigh… I thought I was on to something. She leaned in to me and said, “The Force is strong with you, young Jedi,” in a Grover voice ('cause she thinks Grover and Yoda are the same person).
The best explanation I’ve seen (can’t remember where) for the obi-wan and yoda fading thing is that they are in fact already dead. That is at some point between episode II and the original trilogy they both die, but hang around as jedi spirits to tutor Luke. Imagine it, if at the end of the next film yoda and obi-wan are cut down despite the fact that everyone knows they are going to survive, surely that would be the best twist ever. Unfortunately this seem’s like far to good an idea for Lucas the way he is going at the moment.
As for the OP put me down for Greebo shooting first.
sigh
The only thing keeping this from being a rambling, long-winded rant-to-end-all-rants is that I don’t have enough time, so I’ll try to keep this brief.
First of all, the precis: Everything started going slowly yet inexorably downhill after the first movie was made.
As for the slightly longer explanation:
I absolutely loved the first movie (which I first saw at the age of 11 when it originally came out and have seen many times since then). It had engaging characters, a great plot full of drama and excitement, and a good deal of humor without needing to resort to cheap puns and in-jokes. It established a whole new universe and did it in a believable fashion. The movie had a solid beginning, a well-thought out middle, and an ending that left everybody breathless and (after regaining their breaths) cheering. It was a stand-alone movie that didn’t need any backstory and didn’t need any sequels.
[First aside: The movie was largely ruined, in my opinion, by the additions and changes contained in the “Special Edition.” A year or so before the Special Edition was released, I picked up the “remastered” version that cleaned up the visual and sound effects without making any actual changes, and it was PERFECT! When the Special Edition came out, however, I was appalled and the changes that were made. Any free space on the screen was filled in with CGI critters, solely because it could be done. They “finished” the previously cut scene with Han and Jabba, even though they had to make Jabba much smaller and also had to have Han actually STEP on Jabba’s tail (gotta love the look on Jabba’s face when THAT happened). The pointless bit with Greedo shooting first. And the list goes on. Why, George? Why? I was so disgusted, I didn’t even bother watching the next two Special Editions when they were released.]
But then, Hollywood being what it is, they decided to make sequels anyway [Second aside: I refuse to believe Lucas when he says that he always planned on making 3 movies, or 6, or 9, and that the original “Star Wars” was always thought of as being the middle movie. Bull crap!] The Empire Strikes Back was, in my opinion, completely unecessary, but it was still a very enjoyable film. Except that nothing was really resolved. And it was “revealed” (or made up on the spur of the moment, if you ask me) that Obi-wan had lied about Vader killing Luke’s father and that Vader was, in fact, Luke’s father. And the really icky revelation that Leia was really Luke’s sister (the thought of having a crush on a cute girl, only to find out that she was really my sister, really creeped me out at the time). But, overall, a good movie. Just not as good as the first one.
Then came Return of the Jedi (or “Revenge of the Jedi,” as Lucas originally planned on calling it until people pointed out that revenge was a foreign concept to the whole Jedi philosophy). I thought the plot was still pretty good, but suddenly things started getting silly for no apparent reason. Whereas the first movie had the Cantina scene with realistic, often-times scary-looking aliens, in this movie we had Jabba’s Palace filled with Muppets (the blue elephant-looking critter playing the piano in particular made me want to cry). And those damn Ewoks. Don’t even get me started on the Ewoks. Why, oh why, couldn’t it have been the home planet of the Wookies (a fierce race of warriors) as was originally planned? I’ll tell you why – Ewoks were cuter, and the target demographics for the entire Star Wars franchise had suddenly and mysteriously changed from teenage boys to pre-pubescent girls. And then there’s that scene were Chewbacca swings by on a vine, yelling exactly like Tarzan. The horror, the horror…
[Third aside: OK, so things were looking pretty bleak by the end of the third movie. I could only take comfort in the knowledge that Lucas himself only directed the first movie (the “good” one), and that the blame for the second two movies must lie on the people who directed them. Which is, of course, why I was so excited to find out that Lucas was going to direct the next three movies in the series. Unfortunately, I discovered that, while Lucas may be an excellent director of one-shot movies, he is utterly incapable of plotting and directing an expanded storyline that spans multiple movies.]
And so, after many years of waiting, we were given The Phantom Menace. Everything that was wrong with this movie has, I’m sure already been said, but I was completely dumbfounded at how aggressively bad it was. The midichlorians as an “explanation” for the Force. Jar-Jar. All the fart and poop jokes. “Yippee!!!” The fact that not only did R2D2 and C3P0 know each other, but they ALSO knew Obi-Wan and didn’t remember this fact when they met him again years later. OK, so they had their memories erased, whatever. But why doesn’t Obi-Wan remember meeting them? And what on earth was the reason for having young Anakin be the CREATOR of C3PO in the first place? Oh, the pain, the pain.
And then, finally, we come to Attack of the Clones. After being soundly criticized by millions of loyal fans over the mess that was Phantom Menace, surely Lucas would get the point and clean up his act, right? In a pig’s ear. If anything, he decided to add in more cheap puns (“Oh, R2, I’m beside myself”) and anachronisms (what the @#%! was a 50’s-era diner doing on the capital planet?) And the “romance” between Amidala and Anakin was simultaneously boring, inexplicable, and downright disturbing. In the previous movie, she was a Senator, making her at least in her 20s, if not 30s, while Anakin was, what – 9? In this movie, Anakin looks to be about 18, meaning that Amidala would be in her 30s (we will ignore the fact that, while anakin changed so much in the mean time so as to be almost unrecognizable to Amidala, Amidala herself looks exactly the same). Age differences aside, there was absolutely no chemistry whatsoever between them. And then, out of the blue, Amidala shows up wearing sexy lingerie and declares her love for Anakin. WTF???
OK, this is obviously turing into a rambling, long-winded rant-to-end-all-rant after all. Sorry about that. Suffice to say that George Lucas made a wonderful, enjoyable classic of a movie many years ago, and has since devoted his life to ruining every thing about it that made it great.
On another note, I actually came up with a half-way decent explanation for why Obi-Wan disappeared at death but Qui-Gon didn’t. Basically, final mastery of the Force means the ability to let go of earthly constraints all together, you realize that you are simply part of a larger energy force, and “death” is merely a transition from a corporeal existence to a remerging with that energy. Obi-wan had achieved full mastery of the force and this is why he was able to revisit Luke as a “ghost” after being killed. Qui-Gon, while very skilled, hadn’t reach this level of mastery yet and was still too tied to his earthly existence to be able to fully “let go” at the time of death. Therefore, he perished along with his body and won’t be coming back to visit anybody. Just a thought.
Regards,
Barry
Thanks for bringing that up - I agree completely.
OK, I never noticed the Greedo shooting first thing. Maybe he missed?
What used to bug me was the whole “Kessel Run in 12 parsecs” line. Sure, the explanation is backpedaling, Lucas’s way of saying “umm…that’s not what I meant! See? See?”
Still, I can accept that. So he made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.
Let’s take another, closer look at that for a moment.
A parsec, as explained before is a parallax second of arc. A unit of distance.
[sub]from here.[/sub]
Which means (checking the calculator) that 12 parsecs is 39.144 light years. That’s pretty far! Okay, not on the galactic scale, but still, when you consider that the Millenium Falcon
which I assume means it can travel at 1.5 x light speed, or one and a half light-years a year. That’s 12 parsecs in 26-point-something-or-other years.
How does Lucas explain that one? Will he admit that he just plain screwed up?
Next: The droid torture chamber, mentioned before. Droids should be impervious to pain, being slightly mechanical.
Speaking of droids, I can accept that they may have had their memories erased, and were not able to remember a lot of their early (eps. I & II) years. Apparently, in Star Wars (the first one), Obi-Wan had had his memory erased as well. Despite the fact that Artoo claims to have once belonged to “an Obi-Wan Kenobi,” (which tells me that maybe his memory wasn’t erased, just modified) Obi-Wan didn’t remember the droid built by the prophecied one and that droids bestest buddy in the whole universe. Even though they used to hang out together for…two movies, so far. Presumably a third.
Well, he’s an old man. Maybe his memory has gone.
And from Obi-Wan, we move to…Luke bursting into Leia’s cell, and saying, “I’m Luke Skywalker! I’m here to rescue you! I’m here with Ben Kenobi!” Leia didn’t say, “Who? What? Does Obi-Wan have a brother?”
We shouldn’t talk about the recent ones. They’re not really Star Wars. Not really.
OK, maybe a little.
I feel that they both could’ve been very good, except for one major flaw. Anakin. Anything and everything about him. From the fact that he was the kind of kid who makes me want to rush out and get a vasectomy, to the fact that he was poorly acted. I’m glad I know what happens to him in RotJ. Makes me feel like there’s some justice.
And…languages. One of the things that made the “real” series so wonderful for me was the fact that each alien race spoke its own language. (I still don’t know how anyone understood one another, but it was pretty damn cool) Now they all speak English. Or “Standard.” Or whatever you want to call it. I think that takes away from the subtleties (no, not “subtitles.” Well, yeah. Them too). that made the real ones so wonderful and magical.
oh. And what everyone else said.
They call it “Basic” in the books.