Hmmm. Never mind! A trip over to Wookieepedia tells me that significant chunks of the Imperial military were ‘recruited in the traditional manner.’
I always figured Luke wanted to be a pilot, but not necessarily a military pilot. He does say early on that he hates the Empire. (It’s when he’s talking to Ben, right? Can I keep my geek badge?) I always just figured the Academy was where you went to be a pilot, even a civilian one.
This.
My grandfather was an old time SF nerd. He let me read his ancient magazines and paperbacks, over the protests of my parents, who thought that it wasn’t suitable reading for any child, let alone a girl. I read Lensmans and similar novels and serials. Star Wars was very much a return to science fiction of the 30s, both movie and written version. In those days, there was a lot of talk about the “sense of wonder” that SF was supposed to generate, and SW episodes IV-VI did have that sense of wonder. In TPM, at least, the sense of wonder was completely missing.
I wish I could remember her name, but one of the actresses who appeared in the old “Our Gang” shows has a web site, and she talks about being a science fiction fan as a girl. She said science fiction was such “unacceptable” reading material that she had to hide her science fiction mags inside comic books so nobody would know what she was reading 
“I wonder how this story will end?”
Yeah, I see what you mean.
That’s a valid point, and it was made even at the time. I actually think someone on the SDMB pointed out that while you can make more Star Wars movies, you can’t recreate the EXPERIENCE of watching “Star Wars” in 1977 (please, let’s drop this “A New Hope” nonsense.)
But that said, I don’t think that necessarily has to doom the prequels. After all, “The Empire Strikes Back” was wildly popular and is still regarded as the best of all the films, and “Return of the Jedi” was also wildly popular and isn’t despised the way the prequels are, and they came out a reasonably good period of time after the first movie; by 1983, the big time popcorn flick was no longer a new thing.
The prequels are disliked because they’re bad movies. There’s just no other way around it; they’re bad. They’re very, very badly written by any standard; forget the fanwanking, they have terrible pacing, dull characters, too many sub-villians, awful comic relief, and they’re too long. We’ve gone on for over 100 posts talking about WHY they’re bad, but that’s what it comes down to; they’re bad movies. They’re not bad sequels/prequels or bad in the Star Wars canon, they’re just simply bad. If you made the same movies with the same scripts and same budget and altered the names and details juuuuuust enough so that they weren’t recognizable as the Star Wars prequels they would have been ripped apart by critics and moviegoes alike , and to be honest I think the third one would have gone straight to video assuming it had been made at all.
When you try to understand them in the context of the original trilogy they get WORSE, for many of the reasons cited so far - the inexplicable behaviour of Vader and Palpatine, the disconnects in logic, the ridiculous shoehorning of facts and characters from the first movies, the fact that the characters age at different rates between the trilogies, so on and so forth. But even if you could wave all that way, the second trilogy would still be bad. They’re just not well-written movies.
And that’s why fans have a hate on for George Lucas; he promised more Star Wars movies about a zillion years ago, had people drooling for them, even had cool movie posters, and when you sat down and watched it, CLUNK. It was bad. “The Phantom Menace” might well have beenh the most long- and eagerly-anticipated movie that has ever been made in the entire history of cinema, and it wsa a turkey. And its sequels were turkeys. That’s inevitably going to piss people off.
Okay, on the subject of the “Academy” Luke whines about in Star Wars, I remembered that there was some deleted scene or something where he talks it over with Biggs, so I looked it up -
So it looks like I was wrong. The Academy is apparently pilot school or something, with the Empire drafting promising students into the army (air force? Does the Empire have different branches of the service?). Of course, being a gifted pilot Luke would have been drafted, so he would have wound up in the Imperial army anyway, but apparently that wasn’t his goal.
Cite?
Slightly different dialog from the script that shy guy posted, but the gist is the same.
Nope. They were on the bridge of what looked like a primitive Star Destroyer, looking at the Death Star under construction. Here’s a clip, start about 50 seconds in. That actually was a neat scene, though it didn’t come anywhere near making up for the NOOOOOO!!! that preceded it.
In Baird Searles’ review of Star Wars in F&SF, IIRC, he said that he was enjoying it until the cantina scene, when he went totally gaga and lost all his critical faculties - because that in particular was such a classic Space Opera scene, and it was done so well. It came earlier for me - right at the beginning, when we saw how big that Star Destroyer was.
V and VI didn’t quite have the same sense of wonder, but they continued the story very nicely, and explored the universe. One big problem with the first three is that almost everyone who cared had ideas about the Republic and the Jedi, and the reality according to Lucas did not live up to it. Same reason why so many movies based on beloved books fail.
My response is a little bit different. I didn’t dislike the prequels, but I immediately saw that, geez, this isn’t going on as BIG as it ought to be. I diasgree that Lucas should have stopped. He should have blody well kept going. He pulled back and did the “safe” things.
I like them too, and so does my seven year old son. No shame in my game.
Sure, I was let down by TPM some, but I thought the next two were great. I guess I’m a sucker for laser battles and lightsaber duels.
I even watch the Clone Wars series that’s on cable right now, yes that’s right, the animated one, and I like that too.
I think that the expectations for the prequels was so high because of how much time had elapsed between the first three that it was almost impossible to meet them.
If I had to order the films in my preference, it would be:
Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars
Episode V
Episode IV
Return Of The Jedi
TPM.
See? I’m not THAT much of a geek…I can’t even remember what the names of Episode IV (Clone Wars?) and V even are! So there, nyah, nyah.
OT, but…
Okay, that’s the coolest damn thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve loved SW since I saw it eleven times in the theaters (I think I’m the same age as Mister Rik) but I’m not really all that knowledgable in the ‘ephemera’. I had no idea there were deleted scenes of this length floating around.
Thanks so much for posting this!
I’ve seen the script, but never actually the deleted scene before. That’s really cool. It’s a shame it got cut; Mark Hamill did more convincing acting in those 3 minutes than he did in all 3 movies.
I like how, at 2:36, Luke gets a pat on the ass.
BTW, those deleted scenes were included in the Star Wars radio series that ran on NPR a long time back. I don’t know if they were word for word, though.
I really think they started in the wrong place with the prequels. I didn’t like the fact that it started off with wittle Anakin Skywalker as a cute wittle kid, and I hated the characters of Qui-Gon Jinn and I hated all of the villains like Darth Maul, and I hated the whole Clone War plot. I know the fans are all obsessed with the clone part, but I just think it’s a stupid story. (Clones are a way played-out concept in science fiction…enough with the fucking clones!) Fuck the droid armies, fuck the clone troopers, fuck Naboo, whatever.
Revenge of the Sith should have been the FIRST of the prequels. The next two prequels should have focused on the founding of the Galactic Empire under Palpatine, and on the other side, the founding of the Rebel Alliance. There were a lot of great characters that they could have given more back story to. Grand Moff Tarkin, for one (Hugh Laurie would have been phenomenal as the younger version of him.) General Veers (the badass AT-AT commander from Empire Strikes Back) could have been given a backstory as well. Some of the other Imperial guys like the Emperor’s Guard could have had some background too - show how the red guards were formed, etc. And Han Solo, as I understand it, started out as a TIE pilot, and it would have been super-badass to show that part of his life. (I know someone will probably say that it’s not “canon,” or whatever, but I don’t care. Han Solo is badass, and TIE pilots with their black-skull helmets are badass. Han Solo + TIE pilots = megabadass.)
On the Rebel side, they should have shown the formation of the Rebel fleet, with all those generals who command everything in Empire Strikes Back and towards the end of “A New Hope.” (I assume those guys are mostly Imperial officers who defected.) The mass defection of Imperial troops to support the Rebellion, and the subsequent recruiting of people from all over the galaxy to join the cause, would also make a good storyline in a movie.
The final prequel could have been about Han Solo’s criminal career working for Jabba the Hutt, the adolescent Princess Leia on Alderaan, and other backstories for the original characters. (NOT Boba Fett - a character like that SHOULD NOT HAVE BACKSTORY because it makes him more mysterious - I wish they had grasped that very simple concept!)
I know my idea would be thrown right in the trash can though, by the vast majority of Star Wars superfans. Most of them are obsessed with the Clone Wars storyline, even while they trash George Lucas (who spoon-fed it to them in the first place.) THE CLONE WARS IS A LAME STORY!
You don’t even qualify as an apprentice geek. “Star Wars” is episode IV, unless you meant the fourth one filmed, which would be TPM. “The Empire Strikes Back” was labeled as episode V, but the fifth one filmed was “Attack of the Clones.” “Clone Wars” was animated.
Okay, I had it wrong. I remembered there was a scene with the Death Star and Vader and Tarkin standing on the bridge. I guess my brain had gone numb by that point.
I think this was another mainfestation of Lucas’ “Greedo shot first” revisionism. People had commented over the years about how scores of anonymous storm troopers would get slaughtered by our heroes. So Lucas wanted to revise history to show that the storm troopers were just clones so they didn’t “count” and it was okay to kill them.
:eek:
That bastard!
Clones are people, two!
d&r