[Just your average movie goer]

I've often used dialogues from the original movies to argue that the story of the prequels contradicts the back story that was given. Obviously the back story was not told in its entirety but the original trilogy does give us a substantial amount of information regarding it. I'd like to use this thread to discuss these.

For now, this being my lunch break and all, I will just keep it simple by writing out the various quotes that provide our information on the back story.

Quote

Oh my father didn't fight in the war.  He was a navigator on a spice freighter.

That's what your uncle told you.  He didn't hold with your father's ideals.  He thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.

You fought in the Clone Wars?

Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father.

I wish I'd known him.

He was the best star pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior.  I understand you've become quite a good pilot yourself.  And he was a good friend - which reminds me, I have something for you.  Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough but your uncle wouldn't allow it.  He feared you might follow old Obi Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did.

Quote

The force is what gives a Jedi's power.  It's an energy field created by all living things, that surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together.

Quote

General Kenobi.  Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars.

Quote

You will go to the Dagobah system.  There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instruced me.

Quote

Much anger in him, like his father.

Was I any different when you taught me?

Quote

If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.  And consume you, it will - as it did Obi Wan's apprentice (not padawan).

Vader.  Is the dark side stronger?

No.  No.  No.  Quicker.  Easier.  More seductive.

Quote

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

Quote

If you end your training now.  If you choose the quick and easy path, as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil.

Quote

Do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor.  Or suffer your father's fate, you will.

Quote

Anakin was a good friend.  When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot - but I was amazed at how strongly the force was with him (not how high his midichlorian count was).  I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi.  I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda.  I was wrong.

To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born.

Leia.  Do you remember your mother?  Your real mother?

Just a little bit.  She died when I was very young.

Of these quotes, I gathered the following as being the most important pieces of information -

Anakin and Owen were quite close and they lived on Tatooine together. Obi Wan, who according to the earliest drafts of the original movie scripts, was Owen's brother - so he probably met Anakin through him.

Anakin was already a great pilot, and at some stage, he was the best pilot in the galaxy.

Tatooine sounds as if it was pretty much the same and relatively safe. There was a large war going on, maybe the Clone Wars, maybe another war. But Owen wanted Anakin to stay on Tatooine and not get involved.

It was probably Obi Wan who took Anakin away, on his damn fool idealistic crusade.

Obi Wan took it upon himself to train him as a Jedi. There was no third party involvement with this - I would go as far as to say Obi Wan did not get an opportunity to discuss this with Yoda. I believe Yoda would have always been on Dagobah - but in this argument, this is only speculation on my part. But the fact that Obi Wan took it upon himself to train Anakin is definitely part of the fossil I'm unearthing here.

During the wars, Obi Wan at one stage was a general who served Leia's 'father' on Alderaan. This suggests close ties with the Alderaan royal family.

Anakin made a conscious decision to take the quick and easy path, which probably suggests that he did it to deal with difficult circumstances. Perhaps he saw a way of stopping a war that was killing millions of people and thought that using the dark side to achieve this was an acceptable sacrifice to make for the greater good.

Yoda's advice to Luke not to underestimate the powers of the Emperor actually sounds as though Anakin took the Emperor on at some stage and lost - and in the process the Emperor destroyed him (from a certain point of view) and reshaped him into an unfeeling killing machine that retained Anakin's strength in the force... and a tiny shred of his humanity that would grow during the original movies until he could conquer the darkness that had consumed him.

Lastly, Leia's mother would have lived with her on Alderaan for a little while - and perhaps the reason she died so young could be from illness.

The fact that Vader's children were hidden from him suggests that he knew his ex-wife or lover (whatever their relationship was) was pregnant and that he was looking for her and her child. He clearly didn't know he had twins. And somehow he was able to work out that Luke was his missing son.

Anyway. I will leave it open to you. What do you guys make of all this?

[Madam Corvax]

JYAMG - it is quite simple, all this bits and pieces constitute quite a logical backstory. They should have all been used, so in the end it all should "click" together like magic. Like a puzzle. There is, of course quite a lot of missing pieces, but these you mentioned should have fallen into their own places. That would make prequels that I would love to see.

There are more such bits and pieces. Remember Luke landing on Dagobah
"This place looks familiar". Maybe Obi-Wan at some point took Luke there? I can't remember any more right now, but there are more .

But how I feel now, is that I have been left with all these pieces and told to go to hell by GL, because all he needs is some cool GCI and vent for his own childhood obsession with small people.

And perhaps it is the right place to say that I AM OT worshipper? And I proudly admit that. They are absolutely part of my childhood.

But I understand that some people do not have the same feeling. It is like films made from comics to me. They are basically meaningless to me, I could not sit through Batman, Superman, Spiderman or any other X-man, and I thougth it is perhaps because I never read these comics and they were totally absent from the culture when and where I grew up.

As I said in one of JYAMG films - I hate those who screw up my childhood memories.

[Just your average movie goer]

It is good to know that there are other people on this forum who DID worship the old movies, Madam. I guess if I only liked them as a casual fan, the new movies would not offend me the way they do. But these movies were a big part of my childhood. I can still remember, before we bought the videos, taping them off the television. We didn't cut out the ads - and I watched these movies so often that I would automatically fast forward the ads with perfect precision. I knew exactly when to leap out of my chair to start fast forwarding. And I stopped it right as the film started up again with perfect precision.

I drew lots and lots of Star Wars pictures, made my own Star Wars illustrated books and even tried my hand at making Star Wars toys out of cardboard... because when I was a kid, they didn't make Tie Interceptor toys.

I was also a bustling amateur novel and comic writer in my teenage years - and still am today .... although now I'm more or less committed to one major project at a time. But I'd say without a doubt that it was Star Wars that got me started. It made me want to create my own stories. It made me wish I could be a writer or a director. And I always thought that the Star Wars movies were the kinds of movies cinema was made for.

So yeah... when Lucas came along and made this CGI bonanza with dislikeable characters and empty stories, I felt betrayed. He's destroyed a part of my childhood.

Is he allowed to do this? Of course he is. They're his movies - he can do whatever he wants.

Next question - am I allowed to hate him for it? Hell yes!


Okay. Let's return to the topic.

[Paladin]

You should have been the writer of the the PT with skills like that... actually, it's pretty simple ain't it? Watching the old trilogy, gathering bits of information here and there and making a trilogy out of it.

But did George do this? Nooooooooooooooo, he just HAD to give in to the lowest common demoniator and throw logic and the OT out the window.

And when the PT doesn't fit in to the OT, what does the old coot do? He bastardizes the OT by releasing the DVD version of it and making so many changes it might as well be a whole different movie! Stupid, stupid and even more stupid!

And yes, you are allowed to hate him for it, since *I* hate him for it too. And not only that, I can't get myself to watch the Star WArs movies alone, which makes my planned 6 movie marathon (once Episode III comes out on DVD) a difficult task indeed.

This post has been edited by Paladin: 07 September 2004 - 04:36 AM

[Just your average movie goer]

Altering the original movies to fit in with the new ones is the final straw with me. He should allow fans of the original movies to enjoy them - and give everybody to right to choose whether they acknowledge the prequels or not.

And as for the back story, large parts of it seemed to be written out already. All Lucas had to do was stay consistent with the existing chapters of his story - which ANY author would do.

[jariten]

correct me if im wrong, but arnt the new changes to 4, 5 and 6 fairly minimal? like how was greedo shooting first a resulｔ of lucas trying to create continuity between the two trilogies? or are there more changes that I dont know about? ive already preordered my copy anyway. 2 1/2 hour documentary, commentaries from Kasdan, Lucas, Fisher...cant wait.

i still have really fond, vivid recollections about my childhood with star wars. buying tonnes of the toys cheap, burying them in the garden, endlessly watching the films on video, arguing over who got to be Boba Fett with my friends.

Then I see my little 6 year old nephew after he watched TPM, swinging round a stick like it was a lightsabre, pretending to cut down battle droids, and watching kids with straws (!) in the foyer after the film doing the same, and despite all the things I disliked about TPM I thought "Lucas has done it again". then i bought a ticket to see it again.

[Just your average movie goer]

Ah, Jariten. You may be in for a surprise. There will be A LOT of changes to the original movies in the DVD editions -

- Hayden Christensen replacing Sebastian Shaw.
- Temeura Morrison dubbing the voice of Boba Fett and all the stormtroopers.
- Awful new dialogue between the Emperor and Vader in The Empire Strikes Back.

And I have heard that the conversation between Luke and Leia about their mother is being altered as well.

Damn - we had a thread about this, with links and everything... but for the life of me, I can't find it. I did have a look for you though.

Perhaps somebody else may be able to direct you to further information sources.

[HK 47]

Hayden Christensen replacing Sebastian Shaw.

I can't even begin to imagine how embarrasing the "take off my helmet" scene will be. It's probably gonna be the most horrible change to the DVD edition. Just imagine it, Hayden Unleashed™! "You were right about me Luke, you were right...." AHAHAHAHA!!!! Die George, die!

This post has been edited by HK 47: 07 September 2004 - 08:03 AM

[jariten]

i wonder how on earth, even with good cgi, theyve managed to duplicate Seb Shaws head with an artificially aged Hayden head?!

the stormtrooper thing sounds pretty minor though, and i`ve yet to hear the new Vader/Palpatine dialogue. still though, not much longer to wait.

i wonder if the jabba/han scene from ep4 has been redone? the bit where han walked on jabbas tail looked awful.

[Just your average movie goer]

Oh yes, it has. Jabba now looks like he did in Episode I.

Come on, guys! Can't anyone provide Jariten with a link so he can see and hear some of the new changes? I know it was on this forum - but it seems to have disappeared into obscurity.

EDIT - OK. I found it! Jariten have a look on the thread "New version of ROTJ leaked online". I added a reply to it to bring it onto the main page of the forum.
But be warned - it is awful.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 07 September 2004 - 10:14 AM

[HK 47]

i wonder how on earth, even with good cgi, theyve managed to duplicate Seb Shaws head with an artificially aged Hayden head?!

the stormtrooper thing sounds pretty minor though, and i`ve yet to hear the new Vader/Palpatine dialogue. still though, not much longer to wait.

i wonder if the jabba/han scene from ep4 has been redone? the bit where han walked on jabbas tail looked awful.

The stormtrooper thing isn't minor. Temuera Morrison has a very pronounced New Zealand accent, and it gives the troopers personality. Bad. They're supposed to be the faceless clones/soldiers or rather creatures of the Empire. Now you'll imagine Temuera behind every damn white helmet, not to mention Boba Fett. Why did they ALL need to be cloned from one single individual? If the stormtroopers are supposed to be clones, wouldn't it be more likely that the Empire used many genetic sources? Jango f**king Fett can't possibly have the ultimate dna for every type of trooper? I'm sure a Tie Fighter pilots skills differ greatly from a sandtroopers or a snowtroopers.

Damn you George!!!

This post has been edited by HK 47: 07 September 2004 - 10:33 AM

[civilian_number_two]

This clone nonsense is nonsense. It's like Lucas thinks we're all six years old, and we just heard the word the first time. "Clones" aren't robots or hive-minded automatons; they're just people with a different genetic origin than most. We don't even think TWINS are signifacantly similar to one another, and they're the same age, usually with the same upbringing!

Why would it make any sense to clone people to make soldiers out of them? The old business of recruiting soldiers has worked for thousands of years. The only advantage of cloning is you determine the general physique and the gender; the disadvantage is that you have to wait for them to grow up! This is fantastically inefficient, and of course the idea that the clone army was developed in secret is nuts nuts nuts. If the Republic was so surprised by turns of events, why did they know to spend twenty years raising clones to go to war? And again, wouldn't it be easier to do some open recruiting, and then train for one year?

gaaaaaaaah.

PS: No clones in the rebellion right? They go from being Yoda's guys to being stormtroopers or something?

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO STAR WASR $$$^&*(^%^&$!!!!!?

[Paladin]

I was also a bustling amateur novel and comic writer in my teenage years - and still am today .... although now I'm more or less committed to one major project at a time. But I'd say without a doubt that it was Star Wars that got me started. It made me want to create my own stories.

What got me started into story writing is Quest for Glory. If it weren't for that, I would never have started writing and never have the writing skills that I have now. Nor would I have a motivation/reason to create my own world which I will do someday when I have the correct materials to do it.

Speaking of which, I'm 2/3 done with the first chapter of my new story. I'll finish off the remainder and polish the chapter till it looks better than it is now and publish it. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Oh, and one little nagging question, JYAMG, would you like to choose what kind of weapons your character uses in the story? or do you want me to choose them for you?

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO STAR WASR $$$^&*(^%^&$!!!!!?

It's being screwed up, bastardized and mashed beyond recognition, that's what's happening to Star Wars!! :angry:

This post has been edited by Paladin: 07 September 2004 - 04:56 PM

[Just your average movie goer]

I thought I chose the traps and things... but you can choose my weapons for me if you'd like.

[Paladin]

I know you chose your standard techniques, but that doesn't mean he doesn't pack heat!