William Shatner: You know, before I answer any more questions there’s something I wanted to say. Having received all your letters over the years, and I’ve spoken to many of you, and some of you have traveled… y’know… hundreds of miles to be here, I’d just like to say… GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it’s just a TV show! I mean, look at you, look at the way you’re dressed! You’ve turned an enjoyable little job, that I did as a lark for a few years, into a COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME!
[ a crowd of shocked and dismayed Trekkies… ]
I mean, how old are you people? What have you done with yourselves?
[ to “Ears” ] You, you must be almost 30… have you ever kissed a girl?
[ “Ears” hangs his head ]
Just a bit of fun, for the record I do love Star Wars.
If you don’t mind a slight hijack, I’d like to share a memory from seeing the original Star Wars movie. Believe me, movies just weren’t like that thirty years ago.
In the opening shot, when the space ship came on the screen, and it just seemed to go on and on forever – seeming to fill up the screen – the effect on the crowd was audible.
Now, in retrospect, it is nothing. And there is no way to see with our perspective. But it is an awesome thing to have cinema history unexpectedly change before your eyes.
I was thinking this when I heard Leia was Luke’s sister. I just could not jive it within the context of the movie. There was absolutely no foreshadowing AT ALL. He must have just added it while writing the script to ROTJ. My first reaction:
“Looks like Lucas found a way to avoid a love triangle.”
That’s probably at least half of the reason for it. If you figured that out in sixth grade, hat’s off. When I saw the flick my bullshit meter was indeed pinned, but it was simply an aesthetic objection. Vader and his long-lost twins…it just seemed like such a cheap gimmick, and it was so cheesy.
Now, if you’re an astute youth such as yourself, or maybe a studio exec., you’re going to be thinking: In the corner to my right is Harrison Ford, charismatic, talented ascendant superstar who launched himself from SW to the Indiana Jones franchise and other great flicks like Blade Runner. In the corner to my left is…Mark Hamill…who, of course, plays the hero of this piece…aaaand that’s about all we’ve got to say about our buddy Mark. So, every adventure needs a love story. Who’re we gonna pair up the with our ravishing Princes, as portrayed by the fetching Carrie Fischer? Who, in other words, will best attract the female demographic with fantasies of celestial romance, and hence maximize our ticket sales?
If you’ve seen how Lucas deals with the problem of C3PO not recognizing Obi Wan in Revenge of the Sith, you’d be more conviced than ever that he’s just making it up as he goes along.
In fact, in the DVD commentary for, uh, “A New Hope” they reveal that Obi Wan wasn’t even supposed to die in the first draft of the script. The main reason Lucas wrote that in was because Obi Wan wasn’t doing anything interesting for the whole second half of the movie and was just sort of in the background most of the time.
I saw the movie when I was really little, but it was still after the whole trilogy had been out on video for a decade, so I don’t even remember whether or not I knew the Big Twist. I must’ve seen it when I was really young and didn’t really understand what was happening, because when I watched Return of the Jedi a long time later and heard that Leia was Luke’s sister, I thought “Wait a minute, I don’t remember that…that doesn’t make any sense! They’re just trying to cash in on the big plot twist in the last movie! How lame.”
I think I also knew that Yoda was the little green guy. Watching the movie nowadays, it suddenly occurs to me that people didn’t even know it was supposed to be him at first.
Sir Alec Guiness always claimed that he pushed Lucas to kill off Obi Wan so he wouldn’t have to worry about reprising the role if they ever made a sequel.
Don’t mean to be snippy, really, but this reminds me of one of the ‘What was so great about the Beatles’ threads.
Seriously, pick a current movie with a twist, wait fifteen years and ask a kid if they are moved by it…
Ya had to be there.
The thing about the Sith is, evil and self-aggrandizing as it is, it’s still an ethos. It’s every bit as much a religion as the Jedi, and has it’s own ideas about how the universe works and what its adherents role in it is. To them, the strong not only have the right to dominate the weak, they have the duty to do so. By always being willing to betray and destroy their masters, they are ensuring that only the strong flourish, almost like eugenics. An apprentice who does not plot to kill his master shows weakness, hesitance, and lack of ambition, and as such is unworthy to be Sith. At the same time, a master seeks always the strongest possible assistant, and how else to prove that you have the strongest except by always testing him. Of course, an apprentice who fails a test is weak, and deserves to be snuffed out. But by the same measure, neither does a master who cannot predict and foil his apprentice’s plots deserve to be a master.
All Sith are dedicated to the ideal of their order, which includes (but is not limited to) the utter destruction of the Jedi. This ideal is more important than their own lives. But at the same time, the arrogance and hunger for power that are the hallmarks of the Sith order means that each Sith is absolutely convinced that they are the absolute best person to fulfil their order’s purpose. They are so convinced, in fact, that they are more than happy to stake their lives on it. If they are wrong, then they die, and they die knowing that the Sith are made stronger by being purged of their weakness.
I only skimmed this thread so apologies if it’s been covered. Before the release there was this whole media effort, posters, advertising, etc for Revenge of the Jedi. Then the opening day it changed to Return of the Jedi.
Of course, the “return” was Darth Vader giving up the darkside.
Lucas had a whole media campaign to throw viewers of the scent.
BTW, I can’t remember if I was shocked or surprised or what by the revelation.
Except, there it is in the early drafts of Star Wars. Luke and Leia being raised as siblings, (complete with blocking instructions specifying that he makes a move to kiss her before he heads off on his big quest, leaving her at home. The cliffhanger/teaser crawl for that version of the script revealed that his family had been kidnapped, and there was going to be a search for the missing Princess Organa. So Leia has likely always been conceived as a farmboy’s sister, and as a Princess – he just ended up reversing the order of the “twists.” Hell, it’s not even such an astonishing twist, when it comes to the fairy-tale form. Remember the mindfuck Frank Baum pulled on us with his orphan farm boy, Tip, when he had to find the missing Princess? [spoiler, if you want one]
While of course the “problem” of Threepio being out-of-the-loop in Star Wars was created by something Lucas made up earlier, I don’t have any qualms about the way it was dealt with, since that solution to problems like that is first mentioned in the 1977 movie.
As I recall, the change had something to do with the release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which originally had the shooting title Vengeance of Khan. Both films’ titles were changed because the studios didn’t want fans confusing the two. Dunno whether or not this is true, but I read it in a fan magazine in the early '80s.
Ha! Don’t worry, La Llorona. This is a great thread.
As if aging geeks mind being asked to offer their memories of the things they held dear a few decades ago. (And might still today.) “Cha, right!”
I think it’s really interesting to compare how different generations experience the same thing. I can’t imagine what it must be like seeing Star Wars as something fresh. A while back someone was asking what the proper viewing order is for people who have never seen a single Star Wars movie. My gut reaction was that the natural order is the release order – to preserve suspense. Of course, that’s not entirely rational. People over the age of six or so have generally picked up the “twists” by osmosis – our culture is pretty much saturated with Star Wars references.
I think it would be neat to watch them in episode order for the first time. It would really make the original trilogy into different films (quite apart from the literal ways in which they’re different films.) There are so many palindromic punchlines between the two trilogies, now. For me, Threepio’s line in the original Star Wars, “I’ve forgotten how much I hate space travel,” is a setup for a punchline that came decades later. For kids who watch the movies in episodic order, it is the punchline. Aha Aha! (Palindromic chuckle.)
Yes, I was shocked and horrified. I was born in 1977, and so I didn’t see the movies in the theaters because I was too young. But the neighbors had a projection TV and a big screen in the basement, which was almost as good.
I am pretty sure I saw The Empire Strikes Back at their house when my mom was in the hospital having my youngest sister. That was 1983 and I was five and a half. The first movie was scary enough–Darth Vader was the ultimate boogeyman–but finding out he was actually the hero’s father? Nightmares for months.
