I haven't posted here in years, and I haven't really cared for Star Wars a lot at all (the sole exception of watching the Droids cartoon, but that was over a year ago). So I might as well give my two cents on what has already been said.
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When did George Lucas become so literal minded about everything in the Star Wars universe? You know, Greedo was a Rodian and he was a bounty hunter, ergo all Rodians are bounty hunters. A Jawa once used the word "Ooteenee" so now Jawas use this word to convey 90 % of what they want to say. It's hard to put a precise date on it but at some stage he applied it to the Jedi as well. In Star Wars, Ben tells Luke that the Jedi are all but extinct and Lucas seems to interpret this later as meaning there are absolutely no Jedi left in the galaxy besides Ben and Yoda.
There's an actual effect in fiction that basically dictates that at least SOME aspect of a character's behaviors and characteristics would have a chance to become the dominant thing even if it was originally portrayed as something minor. For Example, Jedi did not wear brown robes as a 'uniform'. I mean look at Luke, he never wore a robe at all, he was in whatever the Rebels were wearing in ESB and had that cool all-black outfit in ROTJ. Obi-Wan could have conceivably wore a brown robe because it seemed to be fairly common on Tatooine to wear robes, and Yoda wore one that was so old it seemed to be falling apart. In fact, he could have made it himself out of old materials as there wasn't exactly any shopping malls around where he could drop in and pick up new outfits or anything, so it could have been more out of practicality than a uniform.
Yet the PT, Jedi wear robes as a matter of principle than anything else. That's just one example of making one seemingly coincidental thing a main focus.
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Now, maybe this sounds crazy but if they were such a large social group, I find it hard to believe that every last member of it is dead by the time the movies begin. There's also another line in that scene that I think Lucas forgot about, when Ben says, "I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father." I don't know about the rest of you but from that scene, it doesn't sound as though all the Jedi are gone. It sounds like they certainly took a hiding from Vader and the Empire but completely wiped out? Come off it. It's very easy to imagine from that scene that there are heaps of former Jedi Knights like Ben around the galaxy… living as hermits, maybe holding day jobs, almost certainly regaling their grandkids with stories of the good old days.
The weirder thing about it is that Obi-Wan and Yoda were the Jedi that were most important to Vader in the PT. Wouldn't Vader be interested in hearing about the capture of his old mentors? Instead he ignores it and just assumes that if he's old that all known Jedi are dead, then they must be all gone. This is even stupider when you realize there were about 10,000 Jedi in existence in TPM. Considering that that's hardly what you'd call an unaccountable army, there must have existed a database of such people during ROTS (Yoda never mentions it erased, just the order made public to all surviving Jedi so they can go into hiding). It isn't difficult for any Jedi Hunters to keep a list and cross it out every time they find and eliminate a Jedi. Leaving those two seemed like a glaring oversight than a simple mistake.
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Yeah, I know. He, Leia and Chewie destroyed the shield generator. But ask yourself, is this something that called on someone with Han's characteristics? Look at Star Wars. Han helps out because he's strapped for cash and he could do with the money. He helps Luke during the Death Star attack as a favour to the kid because he's his friend. In The Empire Strikes Back, Han's actions revolve around protecting a woman he cares about but is too shy to admit he really loves. In Return of the Jedi, Han's leading a commando squad to carry out a job… that a commando squad would probably know far more about than he would. Er… come again?
The way how I see it is that, with Jabba the Hutt out of the way after Leia strangled him and Luke effectively blew up his entire entourage, Han felt he was too deeply involved in the Alliance at that point to just turn his back on them. Also let's not forget the fact that he crossed the Empire in the worst possible way imaginable. Before signing on to transport Luke and Obi-Wan, he was just a smuggler. Sure he might have been a good smuggler, but in the grand scheme of things he was just a petty criminal, and probably a minor player in even Jabba's crime ring. He might have gotten into gun and space battles with the Imperial fleet and probably killed more than a dozen Imperial stormtroopers and officers, but that wouldn't make the Empire prioritize him any more than Ted Bundy would have been seen as a major threat to national security, so might have probably been able to land on planets with nominal Imperial control once the heat was off, anyways.
Or maybe at that point he decided that he wanted to go straight. Since the Rebels became the new government, and he contributed a lot to them (hell, even saving the entire Alliance at one point), they would gladly issue him and Chewie a pardon for any and all acts of crime he might have committed up to that point.
But you're right, a commando raid didn't seem to be Han's fortay at all. He would have been better off either as a pilot in the battle or gathering information through underground sources or corrupt Imperial officers.
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Has any one got the impression that Luke, Han and Leia work for a different group of employers in every single movie? I mean, sure the alliance must have divisions but how is it that not a single recognisable leader appears more than once. I mean, without Wedge Antilles, there wouldn't be a single link between any of the alliance groups.
A couple of years ago I made a post question as to how in the world is it even possible for the Rebel Alliance to stand a chance against the Empire to being with. Let's start with a few pointers.
1: The Empire is HUGE, they control most of the Galaxy and their army and navy are so big that they have thousands and thousands of capital ships and millions of soldiers and pilots at the ready at all systems at all times.
2: The Rebel Alliance is... tiny. They control ONE planet at a time, the base isn't particularly big, and they seem to have only a few squadrons of fighters and bombers, and their fleet is so tiny that it was the bulk, if not all, of the ships shown in the big space battle in ROTJ.
This isn't a David Vs Goliath battle here. This is more along the lines of a wide awake guy with a can of raid, a fly swatter, and a severe fear of malaria vs a mosquito that doesn't even carry malaria to begin with. It might be an annoyance, but it isn't going to stand a chance.
How is the war fought to begin with? How much industrial capacity does the Rebel Alliance have? What's their recruitment and training scheme for pilots and soldiers? How they convince people that the Empire is not for their best interest and it is better for them to risk everything and join up with the Rebels? How is the war conducted? It can't be done in terms of attrition since the Empire can afford to lost 10 or even 20 ships for every kill they make and still come out strong at the end. Do the Rebels practice a form of piracy and raid Imperial shipping? How do they conduct that Commerce war effectively? I should mention that in the X-wing series of games, they bring it up, saying that the Empire doesn't think the Rebels would care to attack merchant ships and bulk freighters, so they send huge fleets of those unescorted! Ironically making them not only a target for any military leader with even a few living brain cells, but also every single unaffiliated pirate in the galaxy looking for easy money.
Also since they only hold one planet, and are forced to abandon it every time the Empire finds them out, how are they supposed to effectively liberate the thousands, possibly millions, of planets under Imperial control? What kind of propaganda scheme do the Empire and Alliance have in an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the people in the galaxy?
These questions are never answered in the movies. Ironically, this means, basically, that the games are a better source of information than the movies. The X-wing series definitely made the war look more realistic (and to its favor, X-wing Vs Tie fighter kicked ass. It's a pity I can't get the games to work anymore), and explained it more in depth.
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Just a little mystery to finish up but whatever happened to the B-Wings in Return of the Jedi? These new ships looked so cool, like massive gunboats as opposed to regular fighters. We see one in the hangar before Han and his buddies go off to have their picnic on Endor, we see them as the fleet prepares to go to lightspeed and as it comes out of lightspeed. We see their attack wings fold out (and they look really cool) and then…... we don't see them for the rest of the movie.
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Thank god they weren't used more in the movies, because if you've ever flown one, you know that they're total and utter crap. Let them rot in the hangar for all I care. Advanced tactical bomber my ass, those things are nowhere near an improvement to the Y-Wings. What's the use of guns en masse like that in a close combat fighter if it's as maneuverable as a corvette?
![:angry2:](http://www.chefelf.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/angry.gif)
They're bombers, not fighters. Their mission to carry heavier payloads of ordnance and attack the big ships. Ironically, they don't show this capacity anywhere in the movies.
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Many people think Boba Fett is the bee's knees. I'd argue that he doesn't warrant the status of any of the bee's appendages. In fact, he's an idiot. When he found Han, he could have taken him straight to Jabba the Hutt but he decided that he'd try to get even more money out of the deal by turning him over to the Empire first. It sounds clever but if you watch the scenes with him and Vader on Bespin, you'll see that he spends most of the time walking about in frustration and impotence as he realises that Vader can do whatever he damn well pleases. He was damn lucky to get anything out of that deal and he knew it.
Boba Fett was just stupid in my opinion, to top it all, he didn't seem bad ass or more dangerous than any other outlaw or crook out there. How and why he was elevated to a demi-god status is beyond my reasoning. First of all, I'm 100% sure that NONE of the bounty hunters who answered the call were interested in the reward money that the Empire had to offer, or their favor either. It was Jabba's shit that they were interested in. In a snippet of a novel, I heard that the reward for Han's head was 250,000 credits (compare that to Chewie's 25,000). The only clue as to how much money that really is, is the price that Han demands for passage to Alderan in ANH (10,000 credits, according to Luke is enough to buy a brand new, long-range ship, so 250K is probably equal to 10 or 20 million dollars or something).
Though to his defense, his so called meek behavior is perfectly consistent with how any crook would behave. Criminals have no integrity, they're only interested in two things: Cash, and living long enough to spend that cash. I'm pretty sure that Boba Fett wouldn't have a problem blowing away some Stormtroopers or officers if he needs to, but Darth Vader was the big shot of the whole gang, and he can't afford to piss him off anymore than a common street thug can afford to piss off a Mafia Don. Such a thing would mean instant death to say the least. He might not have known what Darth Vader wanted with Han, but he was at least sure that if they were desperate enough to hire bounty hunters, they'd probably pay up.
The only really stupid thing is just why the hell did Boba Fett try to shoot Chewie to begin with? Why did he even care if the guy went berserk and killed a couple of stormtroopers by throwing them off the ledge (and where in the mother of God are the railings? Don't they have safety precautions in places like that?)? If I were there, I'd probably just watch with amusement as they struggle to keep that 213cm walking carpet under control without injecting him with sedatives (and why didn't they to begin with?).
And the less said about Boba Fett's surprising display of non-importance in ROTJ the better. Though to say something good about him his plan of flying so close to Luke and shoot him at a range where he couldn't hope to deflect the blaster bolt took nerves of steel.
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Nope. That was the stuff of old-school sci-fi, looking back to the pulp SF days when noone much cared about the science. When Star Wars was an homage to those old serials and dimestore paperbacks, it was on solid ground. When Lucs claimed he'd read Joseph Campbell, had used universal themes to try to convey some sort of message, and when he created a symbiotic life-form as his explanation for the Force, then the space slug became stupid.
Not stupid in EMPIRE. Stupid only if you watch the prequels.
That’s pretty much one of the biggest flaws of the Prequels. The OT had a mission in mind, as did Indiana Jones: To pay homage to old Sci-Fi serials, pulp fiction, as well as older westerns and samurai movies (Indiana Jones did the same thing to old adventure/treasure hunt-in-exotic-locales serials that were popular in the 30’s to the 50’s. Indiana’s vest and fedora hat were actually commonly used outfits in those old serials).
So what did the new stuff have to offer? Nothing, George just went nuts with the CGI, gave it a bare minimum story (if it can be called minimum) and more time paying tribute to the original series than he did paying homage to the source material for the original Star Wars mythos.
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Why did Lukes X wing have a hyperdrive, even though according to Obi Wan a fighter that size couldn't get deep into space on it's own?
The only known explanation I have to give to this is that the Tie-fighters were much smaller than the X-wings and other ‘alphabet’ ships of the Rebel fleet, hence having no space for a hyperdrive, but since the Rebel ships are bigger, they have the capacity for such stuff.
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Why does Luke not stay in the Wampa's cave until morning, like any cub scout should know? (He is from a desert planet, too, he should know about survival techniques). Doesn't he have a radio? Yes, it's good for talking across the reaches of space, but won't make it the 5 miles back to the base.
When the rebels are looking for Luke,why do they have Artoo standing INSIDE the door with a three inch antenna waving around 6 inches above his head searching for a signal? For Christ sake, my Satellite TV antenna is bigger than that, and I'm smart enough to put it on the roof, not in the garage. Then Artoo decides that the chances of survival are 725 to 1. What the hell is he basing that estimate on?
Let’s take it to a whole new level. Ever since at least World War 2, they had radio direction finders, meaning that if you’re transmitting anything on radio, they’ll know where it’s coming from. Now fast forward to the future, with homing beacons with pin-point accuracy. There’s no reason that Luke wouldn’t be having such a thing pinned in his clothes as long as he’s out of the base (considering how dangerous the outside is, there’s no reason why he should have one in case he gets lost or attacked). They should have been able to find him and send for help even during nighttime. I guess they don’t adhere to the old Marine saying ‘no one gets left behind… especially not our war heroes!’