There is a basic MA training device that consists of a piece of 20mm PVC waste pipe wrapped with foam insulation. They are commonly made to simulate daggers, swords, tonfa, nunchucks and sai. They cost about $2 each. About $2.50 for sai. They are completely and utterly rigid when swung, but flex easily when they strike anything hard enough to hurt. By constructing them with joins and an internal string you can easily rig them safely come apart when they hit too hard so there is absolutely no risk.
In 20 years of MA training I have never known *anyone *to be hurt by one of these.
I can’t imagine why they would not work perfectly as a stand in for a lightsabre. They work perfectly as stand in for metal swords.
I also can’t imagine why anyone would use an expensive, heavy, rigid wooden staff when lightweight, flexible, foam coated PVC pipe is available for under 2 bucks.
Can you please send me your copy of A New Hope with Yoda in it? I’ve never seen him in that one… (Or did Lucas somehow put him into the Blu-ray? NOOOOOO!)
Just because he wasn’t on camera doesn’t mean he didn’t exist. I just meant that muppet Yoda used his knowledge of the force to be badass. He didn’t jump around like a monkey because he didn’t need to. If Dooku had pulled a lightsaber on muppet Yoda, he would have used the force to decapitate him with his own sabre.
that fight scene would have been a billion times better if, when the final force field opened up Obiwan had force grabbed the spare saber and they could have had him fight Florentine against the duel saber.
pogo-yoda was just another way of lucas coming out and saying “i have completely run out of imagination juice.”
with a mystical and omnipotent figure like yoda, using an mystican and omnipotent tool like the force, the limits of awesomeness with which he fights is unbounded. distilling down the force to “being awesome at fighting, and carrying a lightsaber” is intellectually lazy and really disappointing.
me personally? i would have no problem with someone saying “reboot” the second lucas kicks the bucket. none. in fact, i’m actively wishing for it.
As to the duel the OP was discussing, of course there isn’t anything cool about it at all, anyway, because it’s empty and meaningless. I’ve seen the movie several times and* I don’t understand what they’re fighting over*. Beyond the fact that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are Good, and Darth Maul is Bad, what’s the point of this confrontation? Why is Darth Maul there? He doesn’t appear to be assisting Sidious/Palpatine’s plan (inasmuch as you can logically divine what the hell that is) at all; he’s not guarding the chancellor, he turns down an opportunity to assassinate Amidala when she’s twenty feet away, he’s not helping in any way. He appears to be there solely to fight the two Jedi, but why? They’re just two knights out of hundreds. Does he have a personal problem with Qui-Gon? If so, why?
Similarly, there’s the problem that the Jedi Council promises Qui-Gon they’ll find out who Darth Maul is - and then sends him back to Naboo to, I think, execute that promise. Thanks, bub. If the point here is thgat they are protecting Amidala from Maul, that point was very shittily made, because Maul never threatens her; in fact, he seems happy to ignore her and face them.
The light saber duels in the original trilogy (and some of them in the new one) had some sort of logical place in the plot and character arcs. This one looks and feels like Lucas is saying “It’s the end of the movie and time for a light saber duel.” So we’re cutting to this in and out of three other parallel stories and there’s no reason to care.
I agree, though, that the few moments of Qui-Gon quietly meditating behind the shield, while Maul paces and seethes, is one of the very few good scenes inthe movies; no dialogue, just a nice few seconds of filmmaking.
His intent was the find the Jedi and eliminate them; he considerd them to be the biggest threat. Aside from which, had he killed both Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, he could have easily taken Amidala prisoner. That said, I would agree it’s tactical mistake for Maul to do that, but one which fits our limited knowledge of his character. He *personally[i/] wants to kill them.
And of course, Palpatine doesn’t care about what happens to the Trade Federation. Win or lose, they already served their purpose because… (see below).
I would disagree there. palpatine has a very good, if simple plan: create an enemy for himself to fight, and run thigns fom both ends. He was starting a bloody war, and for that he wanted a nice martyr - someone to rally the Republic loyalists. Someone like a pretty young human, a noble-hearted ruler with oodles of Charisma leading a relaxed pleasure world… so ignobly attacked by the big bad corporation.
Meanwhile, he was steadily cranking up the pressure until the galaxy’s industrial and commercial centers were ready to flip some serious shit, and all the while he was backing them, too. hence the result was that he could drag out the war exactly as long as he needed to to grab complete power, while being in total control of the situation so that the enemy couldn’t really hurt him in any way. In fact, he could use the “enemy” to commit war crimes and weaken the influence of any objectors, or heck, even come right over onto his side.
I think this was one area where Lucas did very well. Palpatine’s plan makes perfect sense given his apparent resources. The only thing he can be fauled on is that I wish they would ahve shown just a little bity more of it, but the two Clone Wars series do cover a lot more of the implications.
Yeah, it’s stage combat. One of the key tenets that actors and fight choreographers have drilled into them is that attacks are made from out of range to avoid actually hitting anyone if a parry should be missed. It’s visible in just about any filmed combat sequence you can name. The Princess Bride is a prime example; all through the duel on the Cliffs of Insanity, the duelists make nicely-formed attacks from outside of contact range and usually with their intended target somewhere above or to the side of the opponent’s body.
This is an excellent point. Fencing has gotten a little hide-bound over the centuries, disallowing side-to-side movement and the like, but a careful blend of epee and saber would be a pretty good technique with a lightsaber. You didn’t note that a lightsaber is presumably much lighter than a historical longsword, maybe even as light or lighter than a sport fencing foil. That supports your point, too.
I agree with some of the other posters that this was one of the few really good scenes. I’ve been to the zoo before and seen some of the big cats just pacing back and forth in front of the glass desperate for confrontation, that scene really captured that sort of violent frustration.
I concur. The Princess Bride, which had terrific stage fighting, was a joke from a martial arts/fencing perspective. Cite: Una. I’m a Grinch with regards to Star Wars, but I saw nothing wrong with the stage fighting linked in the OP.
Rumor has it that The Duellists and The Fencing Master had credible fencing, but I can’t vouch for that.
Palpatine’s plan makes sense: use the invasion to gain sympathy to become chancellor.
Sidious’ plan (who is of course the same person), makes no sense. If Darth Maul or anyone else Darth Sidious gave explicit orders to, had succeeded in any of the assignments they had been given, Palpatine’s plan would have failed. I could see him lying to the Trade Federation, they were patsys, but he lied constantly to Darth Maul too.
You could say that the common Jedi aren’t strong enough with the force to do this effectively, but the Jedi leaders, especially Yoda, should have made more use of this.
Telekinetic power + half a dozen lightsabers = remote control meat grinder.
Maul was ALSO a patsy, he was muscle nothing more. And right around this time was when Palpatine got voted in as chancellor, about ten years give or take before AOTC.
What happened in AOTC? Well Obiwan discovers a clone army was ordered 10 years prior by a jedi posing as a dead jedi master, Jango Fett said he was hired by a Darth Tyranus on some moon. The seperatist movement needed a famous and eloquent figurehead too, sure wasn’t going to be caged animal Maul.
All the dates add up perfectly, Palpatine wanted Maul out of the way so he could take Count Dookoo the jedi as his new apprentice. Dookoo could serve as the eloquent and charismatic leader of the seperatist moverment, he is a former jedi so he knows enough to delete Kamino from the temple computer and fool the Kaminoans into thinking he is that dead jedi master. Dookoo might even know about some jedi safe houses or credit caches or slush funds for their covert missions across the galaxy.
I think it’s more than that. Maul most definitely was the patsy, and Palpatine could easily accept the loss. However, it wasn’t part of his plan. He very much wanted Padme dead (he spent the better part of three movies and two TV series trying to make it happen), and simply wanted to use it to best advantage. However, and here’s the cool part about it…
Logically, any of these big points don’t change his plan. Whether Maul lives or dies, it won’t disrupt his plan. Maul is no threat to him, and can be used as fodder to recruit Dooku. The latter can then be used a raw material for getting Anakin. If things go one way, Palpatine gets his unifying matyr and keeps his apprentice. If things go another way, he gets a public heroine instead and an imense popularity boost, but loses nothing vital.
Actually, given the way that guy went through apprentices, you’d think he hated the Sith as much as the Jedi. I put a story concept out for exactly why that was.
And of course this is one of the biggest fuck ups in the whole movie.
Palpatine is Sidious. He’s not some lackey or boss. They are the same person.
So Palpatine wants to stage a fake war in order to become President for Life The plan is as follows:
Get the Trade Federation to set up a Blockade in response to some petty administrative detail.
Escalate that blockade into becoming a war.
Ensure that the Senate is aware of the war, yet is utterly impotent in at any attempts to end this war.
Get Princess AbuDhabi to make a personal, impassioned plea for a vote of no confidence. Nobody else will work for this, it needs to be the princess.
OK. That is overly convoluted with a lot of unanswered questions, but it makes some sort of sense
So what does Palpatine doe:
Prior to the invasion, he orders the Trade Federation to disrupt all electronic communication with the planet and set up a blockade to prevent physical communication so that no news of the war can reach the outside, including the senate. He then orders the Federation to kill the negotiators that the senate sent, so that they can not personally take news of the invasion off planet. So he has explicitly ordered actions which, if successful will remove any chance of the senate becoming aware of the war, and thus render the whole plan pointless.
He orders the Trade Federation to capture Princess Abodega and force her to sign a treaty that will end the war. If this occurs the senate will have no further role to play, and Abodega won’t be able to make any plea to the Senate. If successful this order utterly destroys the whole plan.
He orders the Trade Federation to kill the Jedi Ambassadors, sent by the Freakin’ senate. If there is one thing that you would think would be *guaranteed *to get the senate to take action, it would be the murder of their ambassadors. He could have ordered the Federation to simply refuse to negotiate or, better yet, negotiate and say that they need a couple of weeks consider the proposed deal, then sent the Ambassadors home. That would have exactly the same effect as killing them except that it allows the Ambassadors to bring news of the invasion to the senate and it wouldn’t make the senate more likely to take effective action. Stalling for time would serve the dual purpose of making the senate seem even less impotent while at the same time while making it even less likely that the senate would vote to take immediate action.
He orders Darth Yawn to prevent Princess Onnarolla from leaving Tattooine which, if it succeeds, prevents her from ever making her speech to the senate. This order comes within a literal inch of succeeding.
None of this makes any sense at all if you are aware that Palpatine and Sidous are the same person. The orders given by Sidious are almost guaranteed to destroy the plans of Palpatine.
The only way that this makes sense is if the whole thing were some ridiculous Batman Gambit wherein Sidious knew that the Jedi would escape the Federation ship, knew that the Jedi would make contact with the Gungans, knew that they would make it safely though the planet core, knew that they woudl make it to Princess Imafella before she was forced to sign the treary, knew that Imafella would refuse to sign the treaty, knew that Princess A koalas ship would make it safely through the blockade, knew that the Jedi would defeat Darth Maul on Tatooine and so forth.
This is of course absolute crap. It doesn’t make a lick of sense. Sidious could so easily have ordered the Jedi to be let go, ordered that only unconditional surrender be accepted, ordered that Armadillo be transferred to some place from which she could be easily rescued,ordered Darth Maul to assist them escape tatooine and so forth. All of those orders would have aided Palpatine’s rise to power and wouldn’t have raised questions from anyone. But instead he gives exactly the opposite orders.
This is all just nonsense. Even if everybody involved was a patsy, the orders still don’t make any sense.
First of all he doesn’t care if she lives or dies, if she lives he can manipulate her into making that impassioned rousing speech. If she is dead PALPATINE HIMSELF would have made the speech with tears in his snake eyes! Palpatine is the senator from Naboo afterall, he would cry on galactic TV about how his beloved benevolent queen was brutally murdered by those federation thugs. So now Palpatine HIMSELF would call for the vote of no confidence, or trick someone else into that, and since he has sympathy on his side he is nominated.:smack:
Second of all did you miss that Qui Gon and his padawan were NOT there on official business for the senate, in fact the senate would probably be pissed when they found out chancellor Valorum was sending his pet jedi around causing mayhem without approval. The jedi temple and Valorum would of course eventually realize they were dead, but they were on a covert mission in the first place, if it got out it would make both the jedi and Valorum subject to the senate’s anger as they are running around starting wars. Hey didn’t Palpatine want that to happen? Hmm?
Palpatine has set the board up in such a way that there is no right move, just less bad ones and no matter what Palpatine comes out ahead.
