There’s no reason for an Ewok planet anyway. All that’s necessary is the death of the Emperor and the redemption of Vader.
The Academy begs to differ.
I remember when I first saw ANH, I thought it was a Western. Luke was the kid tired of being stuck on the farm, Han was the gunslinger, Obi Wan was the Chief Dan George role, Leia was the rancher’s daughter in distress, Chewie was the side-kick that was always looking for a fight, R2D2 was the quietly competent and brave sidekick, and C3PO was the incompetent comic relief sidekick.
It’s not the best of the OT, but I did like how it showed Luke slowly slipping (force choking guards, wearing black, looking forward to killing Jabba, lopping off Vader’s hand, etc) and snapping back to focus after he realizes he’s becoming his father.
There was some really nice work there, even mixed with Lucas’ increasingly poor decision making as later years would show. I mean a live action “Howard the Duck”? What was he smoking?
Nah. Everybody from Lucas on down meant it to be a new second one. At least that how all the conceptual work and canon materials presented it as.
It is much faster and easier to build the second rev of something than the first one.
However, it was lucky that the Empire died after RotJ. They would never be able to hire another contractor, ever, after the second one blowing up.
(Yes this is a reference to Clerks.)
Two points:
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Ewoks, for all the shit they get, are freakin’ BEARS. Sentient, man-eating, spear-wielding, glider-flying bears. I actually find the idea sort of terrifying.
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Credit to where credit is due. It was really Chewie commandeering one of the AT-STs that turned the tide of battle.
Is it not reasonable that a galactic civilization with the capability to build a moon-sized super weapon might actually build more than one of them?
“why build one when you can have 2 at twice the cost.”
I think he was going to use the Na’vi planet, but he didn’t like the blue color of their skin.
Plus, Na’vi dolls scared children.
The Death Star in RotJ is bigger than the one ANH. It is a new design that is under construction.
The idea that the Empire is building a second Death Star didn’t bother me so much. You know how to build Death Stars; you know how and why your first one blew up; you have a galaxy full of resources; you have an idea to set a trap but need bait; you’re evil: you build a second, bigger Death Star. Makes sense.
It has been a while since I’ve watched them but I don’t recall getting the idea that the Death Star was larger than the first one. Also, to me it looked like it still had a lot of damage from the attack rather than being a new one under construction. I also don’t recall RotJ making it clear that it was a second one, but you’re right, it would make sense to build a second one.
Well, yeah, it would, sort of, since the first one was, like, y’know, destroyed at the end of the first movie? I mean, remember that great big explosion in which thousands of people died? That kinda was the first Death Star being blown up, right?
On the other hand, you’d have thought The Empire would know better in Jedi, since the first Death Star was such a disaster? I mean, it’s kinda like the Germans building another Hindenburg after the first one blew up, right? And if you are gonna build a second one, why oh why do it way out in the boonies, where the Rebels can get to it easily, and all you have protecting it is one measly shield generator hundreds of thousands of miles distant that apparently isn’t all that difficult to knock out of commission?
One more question: If those who have mastered The Force, whether they be on the Dark or Light Side, have the ability to levitate, why did The Emperor allow himself to fall all that way down into the reactor core, or whatever it was that he eventually ended up? :dubious:
Yeah. They remind me of dropbears.
I could forgive all the flaws in Return of the Jedi, and enjoyed it as a lesser entry in the Star Wars saga. But the Ewoks totally destroyed the entire Star Wars universe for me, and for that the movie is irredeemable. It would be like ending the Godfather Trilogy by having Michael be gunned down by cigar chomping stereotype with a tommy gun and a zoot suit. It clanged so hard against my perception of what Star Wars was, that it took me instantly out of the movie - and out of caring about the Star Wars universe any longer.
I think the problem for me is that I first saw the movie in theaters as a young teenager, and it just blew me away. I saw it something like 13 times. I had been a huge science fiction geek, and the original Star Wars was a revelation. But by the time the 3rd movie came out, I was a lot older and my tastes had changed, and maybe the Ewoks just made me realize that. In any event, it was shark jumping moment for me.
Maybe if you saw Star Wars when you were a little younger or a little older, your impression might have been different.
That is, I think, Lucas’ sin. He made a movie for us. We watched it and loved it. A few years later, when we were all a bit older, he made another movie for us. It was more mature, more sophisticated. And it ended with a promise of a third movie that would continue in that same way.
But, instead, he made the third movie for the next generation. He blew us off. We, the fans who had made him rich, were left to go hang. Instead of making the movie that would have followed in logical progression – even more mature, wiser, more sophisticated, with relevance for his original fans – he said, “Sayonara, suckers, and thanks for all the money,” and made a movie for the kids we used to be.
They loved it…but we felt the cold shoulder, and didn’t like it.
Oh, man. That’s it. That is one of the most concise and compelling arguments arguments I’ve seen put forth about Star Wars ever. Imagine the “Revenge of the Jedi” film that could have been if it had followed the tonal progression!
It happened, but it took him all the way to Revenge of the Sith to go thematically dark enough, and have the guts, to embrace a (gasp!) PG-13 rating.
It’s not the “more than one” than bothers me. It’s the “exactly two”. An experimental prototype death star, you’d expect to see only one of. But once you’re in the production phase, you’d expect to see dozens of these things being built in parallel at various stages of completeness. No reason to keep all the empire’s eggs in one basket.
Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia…it’s evidently a pretty difficult point to grasp in any galaxy.
Common theme, from cute little Anakin right through to cute little ewoks, is “it’s the little things that will get you.” Little Anakin blows shit up & disables a droid army, whiny punk Luke blows up the Death Star, teddy bears are critical to successfully eliminating the shield generator, and thereby the new Death Star. Heck, as noted upthread, even a boot to the ass takes out the most lethal bounty hunter in the galaxy (temporarily, evidently). It’s only fitting that the weakest movie in the series should portray the ending of the empire…
Not purposefully, no, but that’s kinda what geniuses do … they do things so intrinsically right that in introspect they look planned, even when they weren’t. Lucas may not have been purposefully plucking at a cultural chord, I’m sure all he was thinking was, “a bad guy like Jabba would make a proud rebel princess he’d reduced to slavery dress like a hottie sex toy, just to rub it in.” It probably wasn’t something he spent more than a few seconds thinking about, if that, but thing is … he got it right.
I have actually written an article on the topic of Slave Leia’s popularity … it’s got pics of various Slave Leias so may not be safe for work, so I’ll spoiler it. Some of the articles I’ve linked to in my article are DEFINITELY NSFW, as well.
The Hindenburg was a commercial enterprise - after it’s destruction, you’d be hard pressed to sell tickets for Hindenburg II, which killed commercial blimp travel, even as technological advances were making them impractical for military use.
Government projects are a little different. When Apollo 1 burned up on the launch pad, it didn’t end the space program - they built sixteen more Apollo rockets after that.
A shield generator - and an entire Imperial fleet. Plus the Death Star itself. They put it “out in the boonies” specifically to make it look like a more inviting target to the Rebels, so they’d be more likely to walk into the trap.
When do we ever see a force user levitate himself?
The Emperor wanted the Rebels to attack the Death Star. It was bait for a trap. He wanted to give them something he knew they would have to attack. He secretly got it working ahead of schedule but gave them misinformation to make them think it was still not operational. The idea was instead of wasting resources hunting them, make the gather their resources and come to you and then crush them. He missed on the “crushing” part but otherwise it worked.