Yeah, my reaction to Phantom Menace was, “Meh. Hate Jar Jar, kid was miscast, but other than that, okay. Great lightsaber battle.”
Into Darkness had me thinking, “What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK?!? WHAT THE FUCK?!?!? WHAT?!? THE?!? FUCK?!?” along an exponentially-increasing gradient. And people are thrilled to pieces that the guy who came up with that monstrosity—the guy who filmed engine room scenes in a fucking brewery—is going to “fix” Star Wars.
Yeah, no.
Palpatine could have been a carpetbagger.
See, if the movie was any good, you’d never have to resort to fanwankery.
In Star Wars, how is Obi-Wan, allegedly a crazy old hermit, living in what seems like a well-appointed place? Why does he not use the Jedi Mind Trick on the guys in the bar, instead slicing them up with his light saber? Why, if it’s Darth Vader’s plan to let the gang escape to lead him to the Rebel base, does he allow them to be nearly killed five or six times? Why the hell do the Rebels let Luke Skywalker, a kid they have never, ever seen before, fly a goddamn starfighter? If Leia suspects the Empire is tracking the Millennium Falcon, why does she have Han Solo fly it straight to the Rebel base, which is precisely what the Empire would want her to do and the very thing she’s trying to prevent?
You can’t really answer any of these questions; they’re all plot holes. You can do this for almost any movie, really. But they don’t really interrupt “Star Wars,” for two reasons:
The movie moves along quickly and tightly and remains entertaining.
Despite these holes, the overall story makes sense.
The motivations of the characters are clear.
None of these three things are true of either “The Phantom Menace” or “Attack of the Clones,” and only (3) is partially true of “Revenge of the Sith.” So the holes stick out, and as much as I can find holes in Star Wars or Empire, the prequels have way, way more of them, probably five times as many. There’s no point fanwanking them; you can’t. They’re there, and they help the movie suck.
“Star Trek Into Darkness” is an interesting comparison in that the movie is almost insanely stupid in terms of plot holes and terrible story decisions. Having said that, it has clear characters, a story that more or less gets you from point A to B to C ina comprehensible fashion, and it’s kind of fun, so really it’s not remotely as intolerable as the Star Wars prequels. It’s much more of a missed opportunity; a Star Trek Into Darkness written to be even mildly less asinine could have been a great movie.
I don’t know this reference.
Why is it a bad thing? Pick your angles right, a brewery could look science-fictiony. Pipes and vats and things: who’s to say that isn’t a Warp Core over there?
What am I missing?
The Force has a powerful influence–on the weak minded. Your mooks and grunts and redshirts. It only works on characters that don’t have a name. “Stormtrooper #5”, “Drug Dealer in Bar”, that sort.
Every Garden of Eden may have its serpent.
Unfortunately, we’re later shown Alderaan when the infant Leia is brought there, and it isn’t Naboo either.
Word.
The Enterprise’s Main Engineering section in Star Trek Into Darkness was actually a brewery: Star Trek’s Engineering Deck Brewery
Nifty! It’s far from the worst use of a real-world setting for SF. Certainly saves the producers a few simoleons. Thank you; I hadn’t known this.
While we’re all weighing in on the suckage, I will go ahead and say that the new Star Wars movies are going to suck. Sure, Abrams isn’t a great director, but that’s not the real issue.
“There’s been an awakening in the Force. Can you feel it?”
Oh piss off. Palpatine, Vader, and Luke are already the greatest Force users of all time according to canon (or close to it… there is certainly an endless array of “Darths” in the SW Universe…).
They just won’t be able to make up a villain other than by saying, “Oh, and here’s a real badass.” All-new thrills!
The story’s going to be a Frankenstein’s monster of different bits and some “cool” visuals and Han! Luke! Chewie! Leia! Sentimental glurge for the masses.
That said, it’s not going to be prequel-bad. Nothing could be. But it’s not going to be good.
And what happens when a Don Corleone or James Polk calmly consider it, and realise that war *is *the best option to accomplish his goals? Your entire plot relies on taking place in universe where force of arms can never, ever be best way to win your freedom or gain territory. A universe where the US would have been given Texas and California if they just asked real nice and a world where Don Corleone would be a billionaire if he just asked politely for the other families to let him take over their enterprises.
As already pointed out, the Jedi explicitly do have mind control powers.
You completely missed my point.
If the Jedi can use their powers to make the Hutts not go to war, they can use their powers to make them outlaw slavery. But they don’t. If the US could end slavery in Mexico by simply sending one ambassador to ask them, but they refused to do so, then the US would be permitting slavery in Mexico. If the Republic could end slavery on Tatooine by simply sending one ambassador to ask them, but they refused to do so, then the Republic would be permitting slavery in Mexico. It matter not one whit whether Mexico/Tatooine is an independent polity. The lack of the most basic attempt to end slavery is in itself tolerance of slavery.
Beyond that, it’s not at all clear. From the movie:
The status of the Hutts is the same as the status of the Trade Federation: some sort of consortium that controls some planets. And “The Republic doesn’t exist out here” can be interpreted as “This isn’t part of the Republic the republic” or as “This is the Wild West”.
According to Wookiepedia, the biggest Star Wars geek site in the web, the latter interpretation is correct. The “Outer Rim” worlds were part of the Republic, but to remote and close to the frontier that they were granted “greater administrative power to local and sector governments”.
It worked on Jabba’s right-hand man, and he was a named character and certainly not a mook or grunt.
Luke tried it on Jabba. If it only worked on mooks and grunts why would he try it on the most powerful gang leader in the universe?
And most importantly: the whole fanwank is that the empire doesn’t need any sort of army because the Jedi can mind control a Hitler or a Spartacus into not going to war. You can’t defend it by claiming that it won’t work on a Hitler or a Spartacus.
Actually, it’d backfire. People would be cheering Tarkin for blowing the fucking Gungans to smithereens forever.
[QUOTE=Maus Magill]
That night, the Stormtrooper was talking to his wife on the Com-link. “I knew they were the right droids, but then the old man started talking, and I got all confused. I know tomorrow, I’m going to get force choked for sure.”
[/QUOTE]
Everybody knows about TROOPS by now, right ?
That’s where the “hundreds of Jedi” option comes in.
Because Luke was a new and inexperienced Jedi and he had never had a chance to learn the power’s limitations.
What was his name? YOU DON’T KNOW! He’s “Jabba Minion #3”. He’s given a name only in the credits because Lucas liked giving aliens names, nobody calls him by name on screen. Just like nobody actually called the Ewoks “Ewoks” on screen. There are hordes of redshirt Jedi and bar-crawling aliens that have names, but those names don’t exist on screen.
And I’m not defending the fanwank that Jedi mind control the galaxy into submission, I’m attacking it. It’s clear in the movies that only lackeys and redshirts can be mind controlled. Even if the Jedi themselves don’t know that it only works on characters that have a name, they do know works on the “weak minded”, which would exclude your Hitlers and Spartacoi.
Luke trying mind control on Jabba has to fail, because mind control obeys narrative rules, not consistent rules. It can only work on characters that don’t matter. If Luke can just mind-control Jabba then there’s no point in having Han be captured by Jabba in the first place. If Qui Gon can mind control Watto then there’s no need for a pod race. Therefore, these characters are immune to the Jedi Mind Trick.
Isn’t that a war?
Hahahahah, so true!
More like a SWAT raid. The Jedi are more of a police force than a military.
It looked exactly like what it was. I did not believe for one moment that this was the engine of a 23rd century faster-than-light starship powered by matter/antimatter. It looked more like a place where beer was made.
I was also reminded of cheesy low-budget movies where similar pipe-filled locations stand in for mysterious high-tech installations (example: Futureworld).
That doesn’t hold up under the prequels, though. It is tried out, with no success, on both the Gungan leader and the spare parts merchant on Tatooine who owned Anakin.
Really, I don’t think the mind control is as difficult as people are making it out in the thread. Some people have a “strong mind” however that is defined, and the power doesn’t work on them. It makes sense that people in leadership position are more likely to be strong-minded than their mooks, but the examples from the movies also makes it clear that you can have weak-minded leaders and strong-minded mooks.
This really isn’t any different from other traits like physical strength, agility, or speed. Some people are strong, agile or fast enough and some aren’t.
Also… it would seem that Star Wars citizens accept this mind control ability with a lot more civility than I would in their shoes. If you even attempted mind control on me, I’m not about to shrug that off with “Toydarians are immune. Haha.” No, I’m sorry… you tried to mind control me. (Not to mention, rob me.) I am now your sworn enemy for life, to whatever extent lowly me can oppose the Jedi order.
C3PO is a protocol droid (diplomat?) that is a prissy, fussy, mouthy, can’t keep a secret, whiny, petulant brat. He’d be the worst diplomat ever - as demonstrated by his negotiation with Jabba the Hutt. And the Ewoks, where only Luke’s force giving him great juju kept them from being eaten.
Yes, a protocol droid that is vaguely anthropomorphic enough to give some comfort for interaction, but not overwhelmingly so to be intimidating or creepy, speaks 6 million forms of communication to interact with every species and computer system devised (or some reasonable fraction thereof), makes a lot of sense. His personality, however, is a major flaw, and probably why he was stuck supporting the captain of a diplomat’s ship instead of supporting actual diplomats.
Now R2 makes a lot of sense. He’s small, built for what his job is, but only voices in tones and whistles. That’s one major role for Protocol droids. Plugged in to an X-wing, he can communicate in text - one presumes. Why not a vocal box? Rarely talks to people, other than when in the X-wing? R2 is just plucky.
Damn, see that’s smart. Or, you know, not have Anakin build either droid.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
In Star Wars, how is Obi-Wan, allegedly a crazy old hermit, living in what seems like a well-appointed place?
[/quote]
First, he’s not crazy - that’s just Uncle Ben’s perception and part of his act to cover his traces. Second, he lives in a nice place because, even though he’s living under cover, it’s apparently a long cover and he likes nice things. No reason he has to live in a dirty cave with no power or running water.
Interesting point. The situation evolved too quickly to negotiate it down?
Ah, the old “we don’t know what’s coming, so it makes perfect sense, but in light of later revelations, we’ve moved past the point those things are on our mind.”
Explicitly covered by the fact that Biggs knows Skywalker and vouches for his piloting. Also, as a rebellion, they are hard strapped for people, and take anyone who wants to join up. Hell, maybe they give him a 5 minute shake down tutorial that we don’t witness, while Leia is busy prepping the data for the presentation.
Yes, now that is pretty stupid. If she suspects being tracked, she should divert somewhere (a) not actually connected except maybe by (b) with a small communications port/spy station to send the plans along in some manner not on her. She would then be the decoy. Alas, she goes straight for Yavin, secure in the faith that there will be a flaw in the defenses to exploit, and they will somehow have the time to uncover the flaw and create a battle plan to exploit it and deploy forces to execute said plan. Um, yeah.
Yes, we saw that in ESB. Luke reads a digital display in the X-wing cockpit of what R2’s saying on the way to Dagobah.
Just taking Star Wars by itself (because I’m sure this has been contradicted somewhere in the EU), there’s a pretty mild fanwank to get around that: once you’ve jumped to hyperspace, you can’t alter your course until you arrive at your co-ordinates. Leia didn’t realize that their escape was too easy, and that they were being tracked, until she had some breathing room to think about what had just happened, and by then it was too late. They were already locked into a course for Yavin.
