Forgive me for insolence, but didn’t Luke sense their (Han’s AND Leia’s) deaths–which he prevented by showing up, regardless of what he did when he got there? Luke asks Yoda: “Will they die?” and Yoda replies with something along the lines of “Reply hazy; ask again later.”
The scene in question didn’t bother me. I thought Lucus was trying to say “Look what a sick and twisted bitch you have to be to fall in love with Darth Vader! She’s almost as bad as the bastard himself!”
But then I realized Lucus probably didn’t put that muc thought into her motivations, so I then I stopped worrying about it. I suggest everybody try that. Lucus doesn’t care, why should you?
Yoda’s a magic 8 ball?
Now that I read some of the posts about it, I’m reminded that I thought the Empire of eps IV - VI was old like in Asimov’s Foundation series.
Now, we find out it’s only as old as Zimbabwe?
Do any of the novels explain how it could take over so completely so fast?
I would have to watch the movie again to be sure, but doesn’t Luke simply sense that his friends are in danger / pain? I do remember him asking if they’ll die, but that doesn’t mean their death is what he sensed. It makes sense to me that he would ask whether they would die once he’d detected they were in danger / pain.
( Sorry if I seemed a bit uppity there, I didn’t mean to. 
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pepperlandgirl, your Buffy viewing experience is showing.
I think you’re overestimating the weight I give this. I’m just here because the complaints amuse me. But to more directly answer the question, it’s because I dropped $6 on this movie against my better judgment, and was let down by shitty writing like that.
BlackKnight–
It’s not that you sounded uppity–I’m just so embarrassed that I only turned ESB off an hour ago and I’ve already forgotten the most crucial of parts! I can’t recall specifically if Luke senses pain or death–here, I’ve found the exact trascript…from here:
and later:
I took this to mean that Luke could sense their deaths, and the uncertainty Yoda and and Obi-Wan felt was due to the fact that Luke’s presence in Cloud City would prevent those deaths, and they were at present unsure if Luke was going to defy them and leave. However, I can see how it can also be taken that Luke simply sees Han’s pain, which leads me to the question–was Leia harmed? She enters Han’s cell looking rather distraught–moreso than just because she’s seeing her love in pain. (Thought we shouldn’t really go by Carrie Fisher’s expressions in ESB :rolleyes: )
Though*
Dang, I previewed, too!
I’m not a huge fan, but I’ll toss in my two cents.
Episode 1 and Episode 2 by themselves are bad-to-mediocre movies.
Jar Jar Binks.
The whole lame “Baby Boba” storyline. God. Eight year old angst.
The fact that Darth Vader, formerly Nasty McBadass of the Entire Universe, is a whiny little bitch who cries when he kills some sand people. Oh, boo hoo.
How did the Empire take over when it’s filled with useless soldiers?
Midifrickinchlorians.
All this nonsense over a trade dispute. It goes from being a great and epic struggle to being a forgotten colonial war the British would’ve fought.
Why aren’t the first three out on DVD? And I don’t want some George Lucas Special Edition, because the first two movies are idiotic and I wouldn’t trust him with good stuff.
Christopher Lee, Dracula himself, fighting a muppet. Yea, it was a good scene, but c’mon. Saruman would never put up with that.
But the thing is that they didn’t need Luke at all - he didn’t save them. Han still took that dip in the chilly carbonite, and Lando had to back the car up to save Luke.
If he had completed his training, he could have saved Han later - and possibly more capably. But as a result of dropping out of school, he only endangered himself and Leia - and he learned the truth about his father.
PS George, if you’re reading this - now do you see why we like Eps III and IV best?
I hate the Jabba’s Palace sequence in ROTJ.
Really. You should too. And why, you ask?
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It has nothing to do with fighting the Empire. That’s been the core of everything Star Wars, defeat the evil that is the Empire. And in the final movie, where the battle comes to a massive head, half the story is pissed away trying to rescue Han Solo. God forbid Jabba or somebody in his employ is shown informing Vader that they have the rebel leaders in hand, and could they all pretty please live if they hand over Luke Skywalker, the most wanted man in the galaxy?
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The rebels have no plan. Here, take our droids! Here, have Chewbacca! Hey, let’s have our more heavily armed mole drop character for a moment in the main hall so she can get captured and show off her undies! Wait, Luke’s not been captured – get in here, boy! And then, at the last possible minute, as Luke hops toward the giant vagina, R2D2 pops the lightsaber he had hidden out, Luke catches it, and the rescue officially starts. Suuure.
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Boba “Wimpy” Fett. Why is he even in the movie? He should have collected his bounty for Han and split for the next hunt. Instead, he’s crashing on Jabba’s couch and raiding his fridge for leftover frogs. He has no lines, except for “Ahhhh!” And he loses a lot of toughness points for getting killed by a blind man. And the humiliation isn’t complete until Lucas includes a new computer scene of him frolicking with tone-deaf strippers. What a loser.
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The Max Rebo band doesn’t hold a candle to “Yub-yub.” My ears, they bleed so.
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“Your Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me!” Why not? Oh, right, plot convenience. This is not something to brag about, Jabba. Someone more with it than Luke might point out you need to have a mind to trick first. Stupid Luke.
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Jabba is the most Muppetty Muppet in all the movies, until you notice Salacious Crumb. Heck, most of ROTJ is Jim Henson’s reject bin, and the Palace is the worst example.
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The droid torture chamber. Why would you need this? You gots a dumb droid, you erase its memory and reprogram. If you must be a sadist, torture your prisoners, like Han and Chewie.
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Speaking of which, Jabba hates them so much, he forgets to do anything with them until Luke shows up. God forbid he should feed them to the Rancor or something. And when it’s dead, Jabba has to leave his palace to find something equally nasty. All that outlay on droid troture devices, and the only people torture Jabba has in the whole building is one extremely stupid monster?
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Reminder: the Sarlacc is a giant vagina.
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Despite these massive faults, tons of fans love the Jabba’s Palace sequence, wish it lasted longer and had more Boba Fett, and demean the rest of the movie because the fate of the Empire hinges on an alliance with teddy bears. If the Empire was this threatened by seven lunatics who almost got slaughtered by the galaxy’s most inept gangster, then the teddy bear death squad starts making sense. The Ewoks own Jabba. I speak truth.
So, in order to fully appreciate the bad movies, we have to read the bad literature?
Um… no thanks.
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He probably did but did not see them as a threat.
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Emm…just for show?
The only explanation I could come up with for Amidala jumping Anakin’s bones was him using the Jedi Mind trick to manipulate her. In the same vein, I also thought it would make more sense rather than having them really fall in love to have Anakin secretly manipulate her with his powers over the course of the film, making him more menacing, devious, and evil. The bratty teen Vader in Ep II just didn’t work for me. But that would require a character to put more thought into things than Lucas has into his “epic” story.
Having a character meant to be foreboding because we know the evil person he will become be nicknamed “Anni” (sic?). Did he turn evil because of gender confusion issues (being constantly refered to by a girl’s name)? Little Man syndrone?
The midichlorians has been covered, but to have a psuedo-scientific explanation for the Force in the prequels and a more mystical one in IV-VI makes little sense. Did the society degrade that much under the Empire’s brief reign or was knowledge lost or even destroyed on purpose? And why, if they knew where the Force comes from, would Obi-Wan and Yoda never tell the truth to Luke? Especially if Lucas “had this planned out all along.”
If Vader could sense Luke on the Imperial shuttle going to Endor, why didn’t he sense Leia as well? If she is supposed to be “the other”, why could he never sense the Force in Leia? He was face to face with her several times.
Why hide Luke on Tatooine, and seclude yourself there if you’re Obi-Wan? Did he know Vader wouldn’t go back personally because of his past?
Boba Fett: the most overrated dangerous bounty hunter in the universe. For that matter, all “badass” characters must underwhelm when put to the test in the Lucas universe: Jango Fett, Boba Fett, Darth Maul, Count Dooku.
That 50s diner Obi-Wan went to for info, and not just the cheese factor of it. Is Obi-Wan really Peter Gunn? The newsstand guy and the shoeshine boy didn’t know anything?
The mind-numbing plots.
Ships with wings that make banked turns in space (there’s no air to push against).
The synopsis that scrolls across the screen at the beginning of the movie that’s about as exciting to read as the directions on a toothpaste tube. I love being confused before the movie even starts.
Bad acting - but not even campy-funny-bad like William Shatner - just boring-bad.
Sequels that didn’t even come close to living up to the hype.
Star Wars fan base…
mention anything versus StarWars and StarWars always wins.
Darth Vader versus God
StarWars fan picks Vader
Yoda versus a zillion hellbent flying ass monkeys thirsting for Yoda’s brain juice.
Yoda will somehow find a way using the force.
The Emperor vs Q (from StarTrek)
Emperor (no idea how this can happen, Q is immortal and god-like)
pick any scenario, StarWars will end up on top for no apparent reason. Then the fans will use StarWars science and laws, cannon and what-have-you to force the insurmountable imbalance to an advantage for the StarWars side.
once again, i firmly state that StarWars fans bug me the most.
Patently untrue. Any good Star Wars fan knows only to pick on the weak and helpless, that is, the Trekkies. Mention the Culture? We back down. Mention the Foundation? We back down. Mention the Xeelee? We back down.
Now, most of the criticisms thus far (such as “sound in space”) are a staple in mass-entertainment sci-fi… they’re hardly a criticism of Star Wars in general. Others, such as “Why’d they build a Death Star?” are answered easily by “Because they can.” (Well, also because they needed the humongous power of the Death Star to punch through planetary shields… hence the overkill).
But other stuff… the midichlorians annoyed the crap out of me. That was a telltale sign of technobabble, something that they managed to keep out of the original trilogy (they threw in some random jargon, but they never even TRIED to explain how something works. Trying to explain an advanced or mystical phenomenon or piece of technology ALWAYS leads to technobabble). Anakin’s youth in TPM pissed me off, and disturbed me (“Hi, I’m Anakin. I’m 9 years old, but I’m gonna be porkin’ you in a few years, baby!”).
But you know what REALLY bugs me? The fragility of capital ships. Sure, there’s the possibility that they equip their fighters with super-strong capship killer missiles… but do you REALLY think that there’s ANY chance of a capital ship with supposedly 25,000 years of industrial and engineering design behind it to have an easily exposed reactor that can be destroyed by an errant shot from a missile that has a yield of a few crates of TNT, at best? Hell-fucking-no. The “magic bullet” thing (barely) worked in ANH, in my opinion… and that was supported by a HUGE plot that worked up to said bullet. In TPM, Anakin’s missile was an ACCIDENT.
More: “Yippee!” (it’s said at least three times in the course of TPM), “Let’s try spinning, that’s a good trick!” (Kill me, kill me NOW!)… well, okay, Anakin Skywalker has, thus far, been a huge disappointment, and now, looking at ROTJ, I’m REALLY happy that the fucker bites the dust.
Hmm, what else…
-The poor design of AT-AT’s. Sure, they make a good visual, but just have the Rebels pull some kamikaze attacks into the sides of the things and knock 'em over. It can’t take that much kinetic energy to do the trick.
-The fact that we’re teased with such cool Jedi antics in TPM, but by AOTC the Jedi just look like a bunch of shmoes with glowing sticks. C’mon, where’s all the Force Jumping and Force Speed powers? We shoulda seen Jedi leaping around the battlefield, forty feet into the air, running around at 40 or 50 kph.
-Asteroids. Supposedly, these are ships (Star Destroyers) that can fry the entire surface of a planet within a matter of hours. That’s some punch in their main guns. And their shields are supposed to be able to take this. But throw a pebble at 'em, and the Imperial commanders crap their pants. Pussies. But then again, this happens in just about EVERY sci-fi series, so I guess it’s not THAT bad.
-Guns. Look at the dorsal structure of a Star Destroyer. That sucker’s got eight - count 'em, EIGHT - eight-barrelled heavy turrets (for a grand total of 64). We see all of ONE blast from these guns in the entire course of the films. ONE. And it’s a very brief shot, in the background (it’s when Ackbar says “Concentrate all firepower on that Super Star Destroyer!” The ISD that blows up fires a HUGE turbolaser shot just before going up in flames). C’mon, George, we all know you can’t direct your way out of a wet recycled paper bag! At least give us some snazzy shit to look at while we’re pumping your wallet full of dollars! Episode 3 had better be chock full of giant guns blasting away, dagnammit.
I’d better stop there, but holy crap… sometimes I wonder why I’m a Warsie…
I don’t remember reading anything in the novels about this - but then again I haven’t read them all. Yet. =)
My understanding is that this was not a sudden event:
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In Episode I Palpatine arranges things so that he comes into power as chancellor. Presumably he was doing things behind the scenes for many years before this to set things up.
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Ten years later in Episode II he is still in power and still manipulating the government for his own agenda.
So the corruption of the government by Palpatine seems to have been in the works for at least 10 years by Episode II and probably quite a bit longer than that.
Also remember that the Empire IS the Republic. The Empire wasn’t some other government that waged war on the Republic and took over - the Republic became the Empire as Palpatine took more and more control.
By the end of Episode II we see that much of the infastructure for Palpatine is in place - he has an army at his control and it is an army made from troopers that a genetically engineered to follow orders. Seems like a good power base for a dictator. =)
I had never before considered that. The Republic could be mellenia old. Explains the inertia of the Empire.
My understanding is that there are different kinds of shields - ray shields and particle shields.
An asteroid would be handled by the particle shield but the shields are speed sensitive - slow moving objects can get through the shields while high speed objects cannot. So in an asteroid field full of slow moving objects you’d be trouble.
I believe this is why the Federation troops were able to walk through the Gungan shields - either the Gungan shields were only ray shields or they were also particle shields but the troopers and mechs also weren’t moving very fast.
What does it say about me that I know and/or think about this? =)