Star Wars VII - Open spoilers

[Cordeos]

They tend to remove C (books and comics) and S (most games) canon when it "directly conflicts" with newer or higher canon, and some editors seem to be taking a broader view of the term "conflict." It's supposed to be bumped down to the bottom of the article, under a separate heading, but it's been removed completely in some articles, at least to my eyes.

 

They are deleting all the history I learned in my childhood. This new Disney regime is pretty brutal.

 

[Badfinger]

I'd have been much more interested if Yoda fought without being physical.  Yoda is the oldest and wisest of the Jedi, but the strongest in terms of combat ability was Sam Jackson... I mean Mace Windu*.  He would have killed the Emperor if not for Anakin's intervention.  Instead I saw Yoda and Palpatine throw the Senate at each other.

 

*I'm tempted to use this as a lame segue into lightsaber combat forms but I've already put way too much dorky stuff in this thread.

 

A scene where you back into Mace Windu's arm. "Oh, it's you..."

[Ben X]

I'd have been much more interested if Yoda fought without being physical.  Yoda is the oldest and wisest of the Jedi, but the strongest in terms of combat ability was Sam Jackson... I mean Mace Windu*.  He would have killed the Emperor if not for Anakin's intervention.  Instead I saw Yoda and Palpatine throw the Senate at each other.

 

No way; Palpatine allowed Windu to put him in that compromised position, in order to force Anakin's hand and secure his fall to the dark side. He's acting like a feeble old man one second, then as soon as Mace's arm is off, he drops the act.

[Griddlelol]

I'm pretty sure the running theme of the prequels is that the Jedi are actually really, really, dumb. They like to sit around and discuss how wise they are, but in reality they're just ninjas who happened to gain authority. 

 

I can't see how else they didn't figure out that Anakin was a jerk, and Palpatine was also a jerk.

 

It even fits with the events of the original trilogy. The Jedi/Sith conflict actually had little to do with why the Rebellion won. It was essentially a side story, while the non-psychic members did all the work. 

I mean, Luke did do the only thing worth while in A New Hope, but he wasn't even close to being a trained Jedi at that point. It was probably just luck. While in 5 and 6, Luke spent most of his time either dicking about with Yoda and failing to save his friends (who were found by a bounty hunter, not a force user) or he was fighting talking with the Emperor, while his friends took down the death star shield, fought off the Imperial armada and blew up another space station, killing the Emperor in the process. 

At best, Luke was a distraction, at worst he was a hindrance. Just imagine if he'd missed that small pipe! Any sensible person would have left the targeting computer on and used the force (it's not like Obi wan said "Turn off the computer Luke.")

[Ben X]

I'm pretty sure the running theme of the prequels is that the Jedi are actually really, really, dumb. They like to sit around and discuss how wise they are, but in reality they're just ninjas who happened to gain authority. 

 

Yeah, that was something I found interesting about the prequels - you assume from the original trilogy that the jedi will be right about everything all the time, but they're hugely flawed: Qui Gon Jinn gives up on freeing Anakin's mum without even thinking, because he's so focused on getting Anakin; Obi-wan patterns his teaching style of Anakin on Qui Gon's strict, no-nonsense approach, which worked well with Obi-wan but is wholly the wrong way to deal with Anakin; meanwhile, the jedi go against all their better judgement because they're greedily chasing a prophecy like they're Macbeth or something. Another interesting thing was how occasionally the Sith would talk about bringing peace and order to the galaxy as if that was truly their goal - the stuff Palpatine says at the opera about how from his point of view the jedi are evil or something is clunkily written, but it hints at where Lucas could have gone with a good co-writer for that feel of a more complex trilogy where we see the reality that had become simplified myth by the time of the original trilogy (to the point that "the Force is strong with this one" can be scientifically proven). He didn't get anywhere close to achieving this satisfyingly, of course, but there are tantalising aspects of it here and there.

[SecretAsianMan]

No way; Palpatine allowed Windu to put him in that compromised position, in order to force Anakin's hand and secure his fall to the dark side. He's acting like a feeble old man one second, then as soon as Mace's arm is off, he drops the act.

 

Mace had essentially won the fight by the time Anakin even walked into the room.  He had knocked Palpatine's lightsaber out the window and was pretty much ready to finish him off when Anakin showed up.  It wasn't until Anakin was right there that he used his Force lightening (god I hate Force lightening, that shit is so dumb) which Mace redirected back at him.  He played up the weak old man angle goad Anakin into taking his side, but he had basically lost the fight already by that point.  He was saved by Anakin's intervention.

[dartmonkey]

It would be interesting to know how much of Windu was on the page before Jackson got involved. I know the purple lightsaber was his request but I wonder if he was always going to be the one who took down Palpatine. It feels like Lucas adapted to his badass persona. He's Samuel L with a lightsaber.

[SecretAsianMan]

Sam Jackson knew that his character would die before even signing on, so one of his conditions for doing the role was that he not go out "like some punk".  So he got into a big fight with the Emperor.

[eot]

If Yoda doing politics would've been so boring, maybe they shouldn't have devoted so many minutes to Jar-Jar doing politics.

I forgot about that.

The prequels are irredeemable.

[Dewar]

I remember, at the time, thinking the third prequel was pretty rad and it almost making up for how crappy the second prequel was. I'm afraid to watch them again to remember them better.

[dium]

My initial opinions of the Star Wars prequels were all (at least somewhat) positive, but that had a lot to do with being a child. I was 9 years old when I saw Phantom Menace, and I loved it. I was 12 for Attack of the Clones, and I remember enjoying that too. Revenge of the Sith came out when I was 15, and by then I had revised my opinions of the first two prequels as being pretty lame... but then I thought RotS was "measurably better".

 

The only reason I'm now comfortable saying that the prequels are bad movies that I don't like (besides the fact that everyone else says it too), is that we bought all of them on DVD when they came out. So I had the "luxury" of revisiting these movies after developing some degree of adult cognizance and critical taste.

[Dewar]

I was 17 for the Phantom Menace, so I don't have youthful exuberance as an excuse. I was already a cynical brat by then 

[natellite]

This isn't strictly related to the movie, but did y'all read this postmortem on Star Wars Galaxies from Raph Koster? Holy shit, it's tragic.

[Dewar]

Yet another reason to hate Jedi.

[Bjorn]

This isn't strictly related to the movie, but did y'all read this postmortem on Star Wars Galaxies from Raph Koster? Holy shit, it's tragic.

 

I want to cry a little bit every time I read about SWG.  It was the last MMO I'll ever play, it was one of the things that helped kill my love of Star Wars (I'm still fond of SW, but not like my younger self) and for awhile it really was something special, as broken and incomplete as it was. 

[Henroid]

Sam Jackson knew that his character would die before even signing on, so one of his conditions for doing the role was that he not go out "like some punk".  So he got into a big fight with the Emperor.

Sadly he still went out like a punk getting electrocuted and looking like a goof.

[Zeusthecat]

Sadly he still went out like a punk getting electrocuted and looking like a goof.

 

So why couldn't he like, use his force powers to direct his fall and land softly somewhere. Don't Jedi do that shit all the time? All Palpatine really did was shock him a bit and toss him out the window.

 

It's almost like Jedi derive all of their powers from their arms. Every time a Jedi loses an arm, they become completely useless and just collapse or jump off a ledge. Palpatine didn't kill Mace Windu, he was dead the second Anakin sliced his arm off. And I bet the force awakens in this movie because someone finds Sam Jackson's severed arm still brimming with force power.

[Akidu]

If I were to come up with a fan theory type thing id just say that losing a limb is such a great trauma that Jackson's character would just be overwhelmed mentally and his brain would be too scrambled to do anything. But yah its star wars and its full things like that. It seems like any character that has excessive power becomes more and more likely to create plot holes/weird moments. 

[tegan]

So Giant Bomb did a video thing today where they started talking about the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

 

My experience with the depths of ridiculousness in the SWEU was always stuff like the Hutt jedi. I was not aware of the horse that piloted an X-Wing, or Chewie being crushed to death by a moon, or the time Han Solo fought a giant ferret.

 

I am okay with the new movies abandoning canon.

[Twig]

That all sounds way more interesting than anything that ever happened in the original trilogy, though!

[Henroid]

And I bet the force awakens in this movie because someone finds Sam Jackson's severed arm still brimming with force power.

"I live on, through this arm! MOTHERFUCKER."

[Gaizokubanou]

"I live on, through this arm! MOTHERFUCKER."

 

Oh wow that's so good XD

 

So who gets the arm then?  Luke?  Then does Luke say MOTHERFUCKER in Samuel L Jackson's voice few times then revert back to saying that in his voice?

[Gormongous]

Chewie being crushed to death by a moon...

 

I remember the novel where this happened. It was, not incidentally, the last Star Wars novel that I ever read, though my interest had already been flagging badly since The Phantom Menace. They were starting a new time period, the ultimately quite soapy New Jedi Order series for which a genocidal invasion of the galaxy by the Yuuzhan Vong was planned, and the order came down from somewhere on the heights of Lucasfilm and Del Rey that the author needed to show that they meant business when they called it the new Jedi Order. They chose to kill Chewbacca, because he had the double bonus of both the longest-lived and the most incidental of the main non-droid cast from the movies. The entire thing just dripped with stupid to read: they're evacuating a planet because a moon is falling from orbit, I can't remember if it's by accident or enemy action, and Chewie just... stays behind? He can't make it to the shuttle for hand-waving reasons, so he just stands there and tries to stop the moon from falling on him with his arms. I'm not even sure I finished the book, not because I didn't want anyone from the original trilogy killed, but because the message sent by killing Chewie like that was just so awful.

 

Still, I'll always stand behind a big chunk of the EU. The Thrawn trilogy, the X-Wing series and its spinoffs, and even parts of the Corellian and Dark Empire trilogies are irrefutably solid, particularly in the otherwise shaky realm of franchise novel tie-ins, and I hope that they at least inspire parts of the new movies, although I'm probably more willing to bet money that "not invented here" syndrome will rule the day.

[Henroid]

This isn't strictly related to the movie, but did y'all read this postmortem on Star Wars Galaxies from Raph Koster? Holy shit, it's tragic.

That makes me really sad. I mean, the thing that must be a kick in the nuts is how Knights of the Old Republic and The Old Republic have successfully made it an accepted EU fact that maybe the Jedi (and Sith alike) weren't all that and definitely defeatable by a soldier or whoever else. I was torn on SWG as a game when it first came out because, on the one hand, it would be neat to just live in that setting. On the other though, there definitely is a valid point in Star Wars being action and adventure. I think a Minecraft / Terraria style game would fill the niche of what SWG was meant to bring. Doesn't necessarily have to be an "MMO."

[SecretAsianMan]

Oh wow that's so good XD

 

So who gets the arm then?  Luke?  Then does Luke say MOTHERFUCKER in Samuel L Jackson's voice few times then revert back to saying that in his voice?

 

I want the arm to be grafted onto someone and have it slowly take them over, like in Metal Gear Solid 2.

 

Or even better: his arm gains sentience and becomes the Star Wars version of Thing from the Addams Family.