[azerty]

I agree with you Civ2, but it's the pretense of mathematical accuracy that goes over people's heads in this situation. Pointing out that Ozzel had "thousands" of droids as if that actually makes a difference is more ridiculous than the original argument.

But I cannot leave in defeat, so I will leave you with this original review....



June 15, 1980

'The Empire Strikes Back' Strikes a Bland Note

By VINCENT CANBY


The Force is with us but let's try to keep our heads. These things are certifiable: "The Empire Strikes Back," George Lucas's sequel to his "Star Wars," the biggest grossing motion picture of all time, has opened. On the basis of the early receipts, "The Empire Strikes Back" could make more money than any other movie in history, except, maybe, "Star Wars." It is the second film in a projected series that may last longer than the civilization that produced it.
Confession: When I went to see "The Empire Strikes Back" I found myself glancing at my watch almost as often as I did when I was sitting through a truly terrible movie called "The Island."

The Empire Strikes Back" is not a truly terrible movie. It's a nice movie. It's not, by any means, as nice as "Star Wars." It's not as fresh and funny and surprising and witty, but it is nice and inoffensive and, in a way that no one associated with it need be ashamed of, it's also silly. Attending to it is a lot like reading the middle of a comic book. It is amusing in fitful patches but you're likely to find more beauty, suspense, discipline, craft and art when watching a New York harbor pilot bring the Queen Elizabeth 2 into her Hudson River berth, which is what "The Empire Strikes Back" most reminds me of. It's a big, expensive, time-consuming, essentially mechanical operation.

Gone from "The Empire Strikes Back" are those associations that so enchanted us in "Star Wars," reminders of everything from the Passion of Jesus and the stories of Beowulf and King Arthur to those of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the Oz books, Buck Rogers and Peanuts. Strictly speaking, "The Empire Strikes Back" isn't even a complete narrative. It has no beginning or end, being simply another chapter in a serial that appears to be continuing not onward and upward but sideways. How, then, to review it?

The fact that I am here at this minute facing a reproachful typewriter and attempting to get a fix on "The Empire Strikes Back" is, perhaps, proof of something I've been suspecting for some time now. That is, that there is more nonsense being written, spoken and rumored about movies today than about any of the other so-called popular arts except rock music. The Force is with us, indeed, and a lot of it is hot air.

Ordinarily when one reviews a movie one attempts to tell a little something about the story. It's a measure of my mixed feelings about "The Empire Strikes Back" that I'm not at all sure that I understand the plot. That was actually one of the more charming conceits of "Star Wars," which began with a long, intensely complicated message about who was doing what to whom in the galactic confrontations we were about to witness and which, when we did see them, looked sort of like a game of neighborhood hide-and-seek at the Hayden Planetarium. One didn't worry about its politics. One only had to distinguish the good persons from the bad. This is pretty much the way one is supposed to feel about "The Empire Strikes Back," but one's impulse to know, to understand, cannot be arrested indefinitely without doing psychic damage or, worse, without risking boredom.

As Han Solo and Princess Leia wrestle with the forces of darkness and those of a new character played by Billy Dee Williams, an unreliable fellow who has future sainthood written all over him, Luke Skywalker finds his guru, Yoda, a small, Muppet-like troll created and operated by Frank Oz of the Muppet Show. Eventually these two stories come together for still another blazing display of special effects that, after approximately two hours, leave Han Solo, Leia and Luke no better off than they were at the beginning.

I'm not as bothered by the film's lack of resolution as I am about my suspicion that I really don't care. After one has one's fill of the special effects and after one identifies the source of the facetious banter that passes for wit between Han Solo and Leia (it's straight out of B-picture comedies of the 30's), there isn't a great deal for the eye or the mind to focus on. Ford, as cheerfully nondescript as one could wish a comic strip hero to be, and Miss Fisher, as sexlessly pretty as the base of a porcelain lamp, become (is it rude to say?) tiresome. One finally looks around them, even through them, at the decor. If Miss Fisher does much more of this sort of thing, she's going to wind up with the Vera Hruba Ralston Lifetime Achievement Award.

The other performers are no better or worse, being similarly limited by the not-super material. Hamill may one day become a real movie star, an identifiable personality, but right now it's difficult to remember what he looks like. Even the appeal of those immensely popular robots, C-3PO and R2-D2, starts to run out.

I'm also puzzled by the praise that some of my colleagues have heaped on the work of Irvin Kershner, whom Lucas, who directed "Star Wars" and who is the executive producer of this one, hired to direct "The Empire Strikes Back." Perhaps my colleagues have information denied to those of us who have to judge the movie by what is on the screen. Did Kershner oversee the screenplay, too? Did he do the special effects? After working tirelessly with Miss Fisher to get those special nuances of utter blandness, did he edit the film? Who, exactly, did what in this movie? I cannot tell, and even a certain knowledge of Kershner's past work ("Eyes of Laura Mars," "The Return of a Man Called Horse," "Loving") gives me no hints about the extent of his contributions to this movie. "The Empire Strikes Back" is about as personal as a Christmas card from a bank.

I assume that Lucas supervised the entire production and made the major decisions or, at least, approved of them. It looks like a movie that was directed at a distance. At this point the adventures of Luke, Leia and Han Solo appear to be a self-sustaining organism, beyond criticism except on a corporate level.

[georgelucas4greedo]

I dont get what your point is...are you saying that one critic is the ultimate judge of ESB? Since when is this guy God? And who knows he might even regret what he said...did you know that the Rolling Stone's best album Exile on Main Street was ripped apart by critics in 1972...only to be lauded years later....I think you are just ripping ESB to be different...btw tell me one fantasy movie that follows the rationality of everyday life...nitpicking the probe droids is just dumb...how else is the empire going to find the rebels? It was a fun story and I loved it, most SW fans do too..

[KurganX]

Ties don't have hyperdrives. X-Wings and other rebel fighters do.

They never actually say it doesn't have a hyperdrive.

The line is "it's a short range fighter" and "couldn't have gotten that far on its own" etc. The "doesn't have a hyperdrive" is an EU interpretation of the line.

Even in the EU not all TIE fighters lack hyperdrives, shields or missiles. In fact, ships that small often do have these things, so yay for consistency.

In the last two prequels we have the tiniest ships with those "hyperdrive booster rings" which are never seen again.

I dont get what your point is...are you saying that one critic is the ultimate judge of ESB? Since when is this guy God? And who knows he might even regret what he said...did you know that the Rolling Stone's best album Exile on Main Street was ripped apart by critics in 1972...only to be lauded years later....I think you are just ripping ESB to be different...btw tell me one fantasy movie that follows the rationality of everyday life...nitpicking the probe droids is just dumb...how else is the empire going to find the rebels? It was a fun story and I loved it, most SW fans do too..

I believe his point in posting the negative review is that not everyone loves ESB, and the people who don't love it are not all whiny forum kiddies either.

Supposedly, despite the vast popularity of the Star Wars Trilogy, all of them were savaged by critics at the time of their releases for the most part. Today only ROTJ gets negative reviews, with people almost universally praising the other films, thanks to their undeniable success and nostalgia surrounding them now.

On the other hand, Star Wars was nominated and won several awards: http://imdb.com/title/tt0076759/awards. ESB won an oscar for "best sound." Each Star Wars movie seems to have been less well recieved by the awards conventions than before (though by adding lots of other types of awards one can sneak in a few somewhere). AOTC was the only one to win a "Razzie" booby prize.

People have characterized the Academy and other awards programs as politics driven. When Lucas alienated those film societies after the success of Star Wars he seems to have been snubbed by them by and large. Other awards shows are little more than advertising deals writ large, so their critics say. So either winning awards means a lot, or it means nothing.

The thing about critics is that fans basically bash them, say they're idiots who know nothing, and tell them to go to hell.... when they give a negative review of the object of their fandom. But when they give a positive one, they praise them and hold the review up as proof that the stuff they like is good.

ROTS got a HUGE boost out of the critical praise heaped on it. I wonder if what ROTS got was sort of like Return of the King's johnny-come-lately bandwagon praise?

Go figure.

One thing all the Star Wars movies have done is make a TON of money. Star Wars sells, even when it's "bad."

This post has been edited by KurganX: 29 November 2005 - 10:58 AM

[Zatoichi]

Hmm, I haven't read the whole thread yet, so I can only comment on a little bit. But first I would like to remind you of something. It is a little thing called the suspension of disbelief. I tell you that very few things compared to how much is actually out there ever manage to achieve this. If you really feel the need to be so extremely and unnessesarily critical about something generally considered good by a fairly large amount of people of whom many are quite intelligent, then you should only concern yourself with real life. All clasics are filled with things that a fairly rational person would never believe. Things such as heroes accomplishing amazing feats or even Shakespearean tragedies where the main characters do some of the stupid things they could possibly imagine. Therefore it doesn't help your case to refer to them as helping your argument when it actually shows them in a negative light.

Better watch again, Wess old boy. That ion cannon blows it out of the sky.
If you want to go by what you are given, it just drifts around uselessly for awihle. The ship isn't destroyed, it doesn't even crash or anything. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think so.
-----------

Quoting BE THE REDS - "Luke isn't the leader. It should be obvious to you that..."

Better check the old scroll up again matey, it says something along the lines of "A group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker have set up a base..." Remember, the scroll up cannot lie. Read it.
Yeah, unlike others, I'll give on that a little. But, if you look at events that occur between the two films, you'll find he does a bit more to earn what was on the scrolling text.
-----------

Quoting TPOLG - "Admiral Ozzel clearly states that they have thousands of probe droids" Yes. Lets do a boring arithmetic lesson together;

400,000,000,000 stars in the galaxy. (That's billions, by the way).
999,999 probe droids (One less than 1 million)
Area of an earth sized planet 197,000,000 square miles

say one percent of the stars have 1 habitable planet. (That's one in a hundred by the way)
also say only one percent of each planet is habitable.

So .01 x 400,000,000,000 = 4,000,000,000 possible planets (That's 4 billion)
and .01 x 197,000,000 = 1,970,000 square miles of possible habitable area per planet.

total area to be searched 4,000,000,000 x 1,970,000 = 7,880,000,000,000,000 square miles. (That's 7000 trillion square miles)

OK, lets say each of the probe droids can search 10,000 square miles a minute, (100 miles by a hundred miles) Let's also say the probe droids instantly travel from planet to planet and place to place, so no time is wasted.

7,880,000,000,000,000 square miles divided by 999,999 probe droids divided by 60 minutes divided by 24 hours divided by 365 days = 149.9 years. That's a long time to be sitting on the toilet waiting for inspiration.

Don't worry, you'll be able to do these kinds of computations too, when you reach the 8th grade.

It seems you only paid what Mnesymone put down lip service, so I will repeat it and add a little.
The probes don't have to search Imperial worlds.
The probes don't have to search uninhabitable worlds.
The probes don't have to search star systems without planets, which last time anyone checked, was the vast majority.
The sensor technology in SW in good enough that the ground scanners on Yavin 4 can, at the distance the Death Star was from them, distinguish individual fighter-sized signals, then a probe droid could probably do a great deal of scanning quite quickly, especially if there was a power source a la A HUGE SHIELD GENERATOR to lock on to.
The sensor technology is also good enough for the rebels to pick up a fleet of ships coming out of hyperspace relatively nearby. The point being is that this is all advance technology here, not what we have today.
Much of the galaxy is still unexplored.
One might assume that the Rebels had to get at least some supplies from somewhere
Seeing as how the Empire rules the galaxy with an iron fist they might have something called military intelligence, and be able to narrow down the possible locations.
They are only intent on following actual leads.
-----------

Quoting TPOLG - "The ion cannon is an ion weapon. It does not work on grounded vehicles." Well I read a report from a guy who used to live next door to Clive Revill, and he said it DOES work, and he should know, so NYAH.

you're right actually, and you would think that they might have at least designed it to be able to fire at ground forces. The problem is, is that we do not know how long it takes to aim the cannon, or how long it takes in between firing off a couple of shots. Plus, I think they were intent on firing on enemy ships at the time. You know, to allow their ships to escape, because the Imperial fleet had set up a perimeter of some sorts. I would assume that they have plenty of ships to spare if one or two are disabled. The reason why you are right, is because ion weapons work when used by ground forces against other ground forces and droids and such. Being grounded so that the eletrical discharge has some place else to go without causing you harm is forming a complete circuit with something that transfers electrons easily. The ground doesn't do that. Anyone who is really interested in this sort of thing can go and take highschool chemistry.
-----------

Quoting HARVEY GLOBETROTTER - "Luke's radio can't work on Hoth, or that you don't need spacesuits in space, and all those totally lazy plot devices that the lame scriptwriters came up with. When do these issues come up?"

Well how about when Luke runs into a blizzard and nearly snuffs it instead of saying "Hey dudes, I'm in a cave, pick me up" into his radio? And Solo, Chewie and Leia all get out of the Falcon on an asteroid in space, wearing stupid respirators that your average painter would chuck in the bin as useless. Are we all watching the same movie???

My guess as to why Luke forgot to use his radio, he either went into shock or was going into it (which doesn't mean you can't keep going), or was wound weary and not thinking clearly.

-----------

Quoting HARVEY GLOBETROTTER (About my comment about Empire being a "dark" movie)

"The atmosphere is dark, other than some atmospheric lighting. Most of the planets are rarely light, unlike, say, Tatooine and Endor. This is why it is darker."

There is no answer to this one. Harvey, you're a fucking genius, I admit defeat.

I won't even go into his pseudo technological explanations about the physics of hyperdrives, etc, because he's right - you can just make up any kind of answers you want. So yes, the Empire doesn't have the cash to equip their small ships with hyperdrives, but the rebels do.

I would say that Empire is a dark movie because
A. The rebels were routed once again and barely got away (If Admiral Ozzel wasn't an idiot the Empire would have got the jump on the rebels and blasted them away from space)
B. How often do you see a movie where the good guys lose without achieving something if anything at all. Here, they got their asses handed to them on a silver platter. For main character losses, Luke loses his hand and Han is temporarily out of the picture.
C. The carbon freezing chamber - just freaking awsome

Actually, not having the hyperdrives also make the TIE able to be produced faster, go faster, and be more manuverable. Besides hyperdrives, many rebel ships also have shields, TIE fighters do not.
-----------

Quoting DILIGENT D - (In response to my statement that nothing significant happens and nobody is killed)

"Right, other than a few hundred Rebel soldiers, a shit-pot full of Stormtroopers/Snowtroopers, a dozen Tie Fighter pilots, and a handful of Imperial Officers. Other than that, I guess no one dies."

I meant nobody with a NAME, whose deaths might move you emotionally. Even Star Wars had Biggs, Obi Wan, Owen, and Beru all brutally killed, and Star Wars is considered light weight kids stuff. Even Artoo gets popped, come to think of it.

Obi-wan was brutally killed? I seem to remember him giving up and becoming a force ghost or something. Anyway, how about some of the rebel pilots we see do down on Hoth with a name. How about Dak? C-3PO gets blasted to pieces, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca all get tortured, Han gets frozen in carbonite and is temporarily out of the picture, Luke loses his hand. My point being that someone dying isn't the only thing that brings an emotional response.

-----------

Hopefully you've read this whole thing as I think you'll find it at least somewhat enlightening. As for that review, georgelucas4greedo put it nicely. To add to that, it is his opinion not emperical fact. Just as most of these things we are putting down are our opinions. Me, if I hear about a movie and decide that it is worth seeing, I go and see it. If I don't think that it is worthwhile, I won't. I don't bother listening to what film critics and newspapers have to say about films because a lot of times they promote what are in my opinion pretty bad films among other forms of entertainment.

Lastly, how many sequels and such do you think were actually pulled off well? I know that there are extremely few out there and the ESB is one of them.

[KurganX]

PS: My previous post was referring to that NY times review somebody posted. I just read the initial post and it is a FANTASTIC bit of nitpicking.

If we just applied the same critical logic to the other movies everyone likes, we'd get similar results (to the bashing against the prequels).

The key to prequel bashing logic on Chef Elf's page is that we go from the starting point that the first star wars trilogy is GREAT and therefore the standard by which the others are measured (which is a fine and consistent rule). If we look at them each just as movies, rather than as a "holy trilogy" vs. a new fangled spinoff we start to be able to bash them just as easily and rip them apart.

Maybe Star Wars IS just a "dumb movie about space wizards" as one writer put it (from "A Galaxy Not So Far Away" which I read some years back), but it's popular.

Point is, even the good ones aren't untouchable. When we like something, we like it despite its flaws. Maybe it's easy to forget or overlook them if we're a really big fan, but oh well. It's funny when people get mad when I point out gaffes on the DVD's for example. They tell me to just relax and enjoy it (as if my pointing out flaws diminishing their own enjoyment of something they already like).

It is nice to see somebody finally rip up ESB (supposedly everyone's favorite of the series) in a witty fashion, the way ROTJ has been ripped up for years (and Jedi is MY favorite!).

ESB isn't a perfect film, by any means. I like it a lot, and it's up there in the series, but I think ROTJ and ROTS are both better, even if they rely on action fx more than "character drama."

This post has been edited by KurganX: 29 November 2005 - 11:30 AM

[KurganX]

Hmm, I haven't read the whole thread yet, so I can only comment on a little bit. But first I would like to remind you of something. It is a little thing called the suspension of disbelief. I tell you that very few things compared to how much is actually out there ever manage to achieve this. If you really feel the need to be so extremely and unnessesarily critical about something generally considered good by a fairly large amount of people of whom many are quite intelligent, then you should only concern yourself with real life. All clasics are filled with things that a fairly rational person would never believe. Things such as heroes accomplishing amazing feats or even Shakespearean tragedies where the main characters do some of the stupid things they could possibly imagine. Therefore it doesn't help your case to refer to them as helping your argument when it actually shows them in a negative light.

The same logic can be used to deflect all the criticism Chef Elf has heaped onto ROTS. It got GREAT REVIEWS, and has made a TON of money. It's loved by millions of fans the world over! And the DVD is selling like hotcakes if I'm not mistaken. So is criticism of it unfair? Do people say bash it need to "get a life"? If we suspend disbelief and just relax then this entire site is pointless!

Just think about that for a minute.

Better watch again, Wess old boy. That ion cannon blows it out of the sky.
If you want to go by what you are given, it just drifts around uselessly for awihle. The ship isn't destroyed, it doesn't even crash or anything. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think so.
-----------

Yeah the electrical systems just seem disrupted for a bit. We're given the impression that the ship is either disabled (not destroyed) or at least unable to fire upon the escaping ships while it is thus occupied.

It seems you only paid what Mnesymone put down lip service, so I will repeat it and add a little.
The probes don't have to search Imperial worlds.
The probes don't have to search uninhabitable worlds.
The probes don't have to search star systems without planets, which last time anyone checked, was the vast majority.

It's really a hard thing because we don't know that much about the Star Wars Galaxy. Is it like our Galaxy exactly? How many of their stars have planets? How many of those planets are inhabitable? Note that in Star Wars we have people clearly living on non-earthlike planets, even asteroids (like Polis Massa in ROTS)! Plus, they might be hiding on Imperial worlds for all we know (ones that are sympathetic to the Rebellion, or hiding out among the local population). Yes, it would be hard to hide a big army on a loyalist world, true, but maybe they could live on some sparsely populated area.

Would we notice an Al Qaeda group that was somehow hiding out in Antarctica? Granted, we don't have the sensor technology of the Empire, but still...


The sensor technology in SW in good enough that the ground scanners on Yavin 4 can, at the distance the Death Star was from them, distinguish individual fighter-sized signals, then a probe droid could probably do a great deal of scanning quite quickly, especially if there was a power source a la A HUGE SHIELD GENERATOR to lock on to.
The sensor technology is also good enough for the rebels to pick up a fleet of ships coming out of hyperspace relatively nearby. The point being is that this is all advance technology here, not what we have today.

Much of the galaxy is still unexplored.

According to the EU yes, but in the movies we're given no indication of that. In fact, AOTC leads us to believe that they have the entire galaxy mapped out, and probably neighboring galaxies as well!

Yes, it's true Admiral Ozzel says "there are so many uncharted settlements." But that doesn't imply they don't have the galaxy explored, only that there are people settling that aren't being monitored so they know who exactly is living there. So they would know the planets, they just don't have rolls and up to date maps of the cities and such (my interpretation).

One might assume that the Rebels had to get at least some supplies from somewhere
Seeing as how the Empire rules the galaxy with an iron fist they might have something called military intelligence, and be able to narrow down the possible locations.
They are only intent on following actual leads.

One wonders why they had to settle anywhere at all. Why not keep their fleet on the run like in Battlestar Galactica? Just carry everything with them on their ships. They do settle down though, so maybe it's easier. How can they gather supplies on a wasteland like Hoth?

you're right actually, and you would think that they might have at least designed it to be able to fire at ground forces. The problem is, is that we do not know how long it takes to aim the cannon, or how long it takes in between firing off a couple of shots. Plus, I think they were intent on firing on enemy ships at the time. You know, to allow their ships to escape, because the Imperial fleet had set up a perimeter of some sorts. I would assume that they have plenty of ships to spare if one or two are disabled. The reason why you are right, is because ion weapons work when used by ground forces against other ground forces and droids and such. Being grounded so that the eletrical discharge has some place else to go without causing you harm is forming a complete circuit with something that transfers electrons easily. The ground doesn't do that. Anyone who is really interested in this sort of thing can go and take highschool chemistry.

The thing is, who's to say that Ion weapons in Star Wars function like anything in real life? The "laser" weapons they use don't function like real life lasers, despite the name. We have nothing that works quite like a lightsaber on our earth either. One wonders why they didn't use ion cannons in the clone wars either with all those droids around (or why they bothered with ground combat to begin with, other than to control populated territories they wanted to preserve or something).

I agree with your other comments though. But one wonders if they have the technology to make a giant ion cannon, why they can't make smaller ones for use in the field, that could be precision aimed so they wouldn't risk harming their own units...

My guess as to why Luke forgot to use his radio, he either went into shock or was going into it (which doesn't mean you can't keep going), or was wound weary and not thinking clearly.

I'm going with the "he wasn't thinking clearly" after the blood loss, hypothermia and adrenaline. It sounds like a flimsy excuse, but given what he went though it's not too hard to believe.

Actually, not having the hyperdrives also make the TIE able to be produced faster, go faster, and be more manuverable. Besides hyperdrives, many rebel ships also have shields, TIE fighters do not.

Again, how do we know that? The EU. We have no idea how expensive hyperdrives are to produce or how long it takes to build them. Sure in TPM they have problems getting the parts to repair their ship, but that was due to a (very contrived plot device) problem with exchanging currency and the fact that none of the people in charge were mechanics (except R2D2 I guess).

How do we know that the lack of a hyperdrive makes your ship more manuverable? We don't know anything of the kind. In the EU, the TIEs that have hyperdrives seem manuverable enough. Perhaps you're referring to some video game or RPG wherein the TIEs are given manuverability as a bonus to make up for speed? I'm sure you'd admit that games tweak those kinds of things for the sake of balance and challenge, having little to do with canon...

We don't get to hear much of the radio chatter of the TIE pilots (compared to tons of it from the Rebels) so we don't know they don't have shields. In fact, I've seen some screenshots from ANH that appear to show a TIE absorbing nearby blaster fire AS IF it had a shield of some kind. Even in the EU certain TIEs have shields, hyperdrives, missiles, or some combination. Anyway...

Obi-wan was brutally killed? I seem to remember him giving up and becoming a force ghost or something. Anyway, how about some of the rebel pilots we see do down on Hoth with a name. How about Dak? C-3PO gets blasted to pieces, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca all get tortured, Han gets frozen in carbonite and is temporarily out of the picture, Luke loses his hand. My point being that someone dying isn't the only thing that brings an emotional response.

Brutally killed isn't the same thing as "murdered in cold blood." He was killed in a duel, but getting your head sliced off is pretty brutal, armed or not. Still, it's not like we actually see a severed head (ESB shows us that, even if it was a kind of "Force Vision"!). We don't actually see the Lars being killed, we just see smoking skeletons (morbid yes, but the violence is off screen). Otherwise I agree though.

Lastly, how many sequels and such do you think were actually pulled off well? I know that there are extremely few out there and the ESB is one of them.

I agree, it's rare that a sequel is regarded as having surpassed the original. Critically ROTK surpassed TTT and FOTR in the LOTR saga, though many fans consider FOTR to be better (I guess because that was when they still held out hope that Peter Jackson would film the rest of the series according to how they wanted and change/leave out less of the book parts they liked).

A few examples of better sequels I can think of off hand (and these are still opinions of course):
Aliens, the James Bond movies (lots of them are better than the first one), Star Trek (the first movie was aweful, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is widely regarded as one of the best, and many consider VI to be the best of all, and many feel that First Contact was equal or even better)...

If we look at the Prequel Trilogy as a stand alone series, then there you go... AOTC was more well liked by fans (but not critics) than Episode I, and Episode III was the most popular of all (critically and by fan claims). Of course you can drop that example probably, if you consider these as sequels to the original Star Wars (prequels, whatever).

Evil Dead 2 is way better than the original Evil Dead, and many fans regard Army of Darkness as even better (though I like part 2 the best). Friday the 13th is mostly forgotten by fans who prefer part 2 or a later sequel.

[civilian_number_two]

Vincent Canby's review reads like a primer on Pretentious Film Criticism 101:

1. Begin by slamming something current that everyone hates, to get the reader in the mood:

"When I went to see "The Empire Strikes Back" I found myself glancing at my watch almost as often as I did when I was sitting through a truly terrible movie called "The Island." "

When praising a film, of course, it is useful to begin by praising something everyone loves. Obvious variants: Praise something everyone hates, or slam something everyone loves. Reserve these alternate tactics for confrontational reviews.


2. Follow with a non-sequter comparison whose relevance cannot be denied:

"you're likely to find more beauty, suspense, discipline, craft and art when watching a New York harbor pilot bring the Queen Elizabeth 2 into her Hudson River berth, which is what "The Empire Strikes Back" most reminds me of. It's a big, expensive, time-consuming, essentially mechanical operation."

So this movie is like parking a big boat. Got it. Alternates: compare the film with the history of French Philosophy, with cave drawings, with King Crab fishing, with seed germination, with your recent visit to a Thai bath house. It's all the same: it sounds vaguely lyrcial, and your reader has no choice but to plow on.


3. Make *really bold statements* and do nothing to back them up:

"Gone from "The Empire Strikes Back" are those associations that so enchanted us in "Star Wars," reminders of everything from the Passion of Jesus and the stories of Beowulf and King Arthur to those of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the Oz books, Buck Rogers and Peanuts."

Remember, no one wants to look like a boner, so after you compare STAR WARS to The Gospel According to John and Snoopy at the same time, you're home free. None will dare to question you now.


4. Refer to the process of writing the review:

"The fact that I am here at this minute facing a reproachful typewriter ..."

Yeesh. This guy doesn't even own a computer?

Also: Hunster S. Thompson he ain't


5. Make sage-like predictions:

"Han Solo and Princess Leia wrestle with the forces of darkness and those of a new character played by Billy Dee Williams, an unreliable fellow who has future sainthood written all over him..."

This isn't even particularly interesting. A good example would be to suggest that some lesser-known also-ran will go on to stardom, or to make a prediction for a plotline to a future sequel. That Lando's redemption comes later in *the same film* that the reviewer has admitted to having watched all the way to the end, makes this a dramatically weak example. All the same, a generally strong practice, and it should be remembered by all would-be Pretentious Film Critics.


6. Render belittling comparisons (Alternate: render Earth-shattering praise):

"Luke Skywalker finds his guru, Yoda, a small, Muppet-like troll created and operated by Frank Oz of the Muppet Show."

Ok, this is idiotic. He wants to say "Yoda reminded me of "The Muppets."" Well, Yoda IS a Muppet, so, duh. So technically, he is not a "Muppet-like troll;" at best he is "a troll-like Muppet," though I imagine most followers of mythology would have said Goblin. But now I'M splitting hairs.


7. Drop that name!

"If Miss Fisher does much more of this sort of thing, she's going to wind up with the Vera Hruba Ralston Lifetime Achievement Award."

Damn, that game never gets old. This is best played when the reader is required to look up the reference. Nothing could be cooler. Of course, if you happen to know a really famous person, you could go that way instead: "Not since I shared a burrito with Barend at Tortilla Flats have I know something so spicy..."


8. Make at least one film-specific reference:

"("Eyes of Laura Mars," "The Return of a Man Called Horse," "Loving") gives me no hints about the extent of his contributions to this movie."

Ok, so he doesn't like Kirshner's past work. Big Deal. Is the current film any good? Never mind this one; it's a part of a larger point, which follows.


9. End on the high note:

""The Empire Strikes Back" is about as personal as a Christmas card from a bank."

"At this point the adventures of Luke, Leia and Han Solo appear to be a self-sustaining organism, beyond criticism except on a corporate level."

Zing, zing! At this point, the critique actually draws some blood. Here the reviewer is apparently about to get into the real meat of his criticism, and he delivers at least one memorable phrase, although perhaps he's used it before. Naturally this is where the article ends.

[Zatoichi]

The same logic can be used to deflect all the criticism Chef Elf has heaped onto ROTS. It got GREAT REVIEWS, and has made a TON of money. It's loved by millions of fans the world over! And the DVD is selling like hotcakes if I'm not mistaken. So is criticism of it unfair? Do people say bash it need to "get a life"? If we suspend disbelief and just relax then this entire site is pointless!

Pardon me, but last time I checked suspension of disbelief is one of the most essential things when being shown/told a story or something that isn't true/real/you don't actually know/etc. It is what you do every time to allow yourself to actually experience whatever it is that you are watching. You may just want to take my word for it, many of the classes that i am and have been taking in college are theater ones or closely related. BTW I've heard from other people on this site and such (haven't actually looked myself) that ROTS can be gotten at $16. Many films that just come out cost more than that.

It's really a hard thing because we don't know that much about the Star Wars Galaxy. Is it like our Galaxy exactly? How many of their stars have planets? How many of those planets are inhabitable? Note that in Star Wars we have people clearly living on non-earthlike planets, even asteroids (like Polis Massa in ROTS)! Plus, they might be hiding on Imperial worlds for all we know (ones that are sympathetic to the Rebellion, or hiding out among the local population). Yes, it would be hard to hide a big army on a loyalist world, true, but maybe they could live on some sparsely populated area.

One wonders why they had to settle anywhere at all. Why not keep their fleet on the run like in Battlestar Galactica? Just carry everything with them on their ships. They do settle down though, so maybe it's easier. How can they gather supplies on a wasteland like Hoth?

Or maybe the Rebels skipped all of those quite possibly suicidal ideas and find an isolated out of the way place where they can maintain a relative amount of safety and gather thier strength. believe that our history has shown that you don't hide right under the nose of the enemy with such an objective in mind unless you have no choice. That is because it is far too dangerous. And why didn't they just stick to their fleet of ships? Perhaps you are unawares as to some of the main purposes of bases. They are very good for refueling, building, repairing, defense, gathering, etc. A fleet is used to attack. A fleet that is most of the time on the move and on the run makes it a fairly useless thing to have. It nowhere near fulfills the purpose of maintaining one. You may want to read up on strategy and such if you are interested in what I am saying. If so, I could suggest a few excellent books on the topic (And I don't mean anybody's Art of War).

The thing is, who's to say that Ion weapons in Star Wars function like anything in real life? The "laser" weapons they use don't function like real life lasers, despite the name. We have nothing that works quite like a lightsaber on our earth either. One wonders why they didn't use ion cannons in the clone wars either with all those droids around (or why they bothered with ground combat to begin with, other than to control populated territories they wanted to preserve or something).

I agree with your other comments though. But one wonders if they have the technology to make a giant ion cannon, why they can't make smaller ones for use in the field, that could be precision aimed so they wouldn't risk harming their own units...

Fine, this one I will just explain away, and I'm sure that I will regret doing so. They use different materials than we do for lasers and such. Different combinations of the elements and what not. Some things still ought to adhere to the basic principles of science. As for not using Ion weaponry, maybe that was an actual advance made between the two trilogies and recieved more widespread use as time went on. The last sentence begs the question of why didn't Republic forces blast the arena area on Geonosis from space? Finishing or crippling your enemies at the possible cost of 2 Jedi and a senator, and having few other if any losses at all. Gee guess what someone with half a brain would pick.

I'm going with the "he wasn't thinking clearly" after the blood loss, hypothermia and adrenaline. It sounds like a flimsy excuse, but given what he went though it's not too hard to believe.

It isn't flimsy, it is probably more spot on than anything else. Talk to people who have been in combat or other such situations before.

Again, how do we know that? The EU. We have no idea how expensive hyperdrives are to produce or how long it takes to build them. Sure in TPM they have problems getting the parts to repair their ship, but that was due to a (very contrived plot device) problem with exchanging currency and the fact that none of the people in charge were mechanics (except R2D2 I guess).
How do we know that the lack of a hyperdrive makes your ship more manuverable? We don't know anything of the kind. In the EU, the TIEs that have hyperdrives seem manuverable enough. Perhaps you're referring to some video game or RPG wherein the TIEs are given manuverability as a bonus to make up for speed? I'm sure you'd admit that games tweak those kinds of things for the sake of balance and challenge, having little to do with canon...

I'm going to go ahead and guess that a hyperdrive does not fit in the palm of my hand. Neither does a shield generator. In terms of manueverability, less amount of something to hit stuff or get shot up, capacity for greater speeds, and greater control make something more manueverable, both in terms of actual fighting and strategy.

We don't get to hear much of the radio chatter of the TIE pilots (compared to tons of it from the Rebels) so we don't know they don't have shields. In fact, I've seen some screenshots from ANH that appear to show a TIE absorbing nearby blaster fire AS IF it had a shield of some kind. Even in the EU certain TIEs have shields, hyperdrives, missiles, or some combination. Anyway...

Those TIE fighters were special ones, and were not part of the vast majority used by the Empire. Maybe I'll have to watch ANH again, but I think it was a miss. Also every hit doesn't neccesarily have to be a kill. Some of the fighters in all of the OT have several shots hitting them, and they don't blow up instantly.


Finally, if they use and approve of many things in the EU to help support any of the films, then the thing ought to be given just as much consideration as any of the other films.

[KurganX]

Zatoichi, on Nov 29 2005, 02:27 PM, said:

snip SOD snip

Arguably it's true of all fiction as well in order to enjoy it, otherwise you end up going "this isn't true" and unless you're a foolish person who likes to believe lies, you reject it. I understand that. There is a certain point at which though that a fiction has to follow its own rules that it sets up in order to be believable. Otherwise it ends up like a stream of consciousness fever dream. This is part of the reason I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan, because the reliance on magic means anything can happen and so there's no shortage of contrived threats and Deus Ex Machina. The only given is that Harry isn't going to die suddenly, despite the constantly near fatal events, due to character shields.

The suspension of disbelief only goes so far, and there's still a matter of taste. I can't say the Civil War never happened because I find the character uninteresting or because of the fact that they made stupid decisions. I have to accept it, even if my reaction to it might be different than the next person. But a made up story I'm free to spit on and ignore or call it trash and still enjoy it.

A person could look at Episode III, use certain criteria and go "wow, a work of art, I just don't like it" or using another criteria they could say "wow, what a badly made film, but it sure was popular, go figure." The criteria used to trash the prequels can equally be used to trash the original films. The ONLY way to get around this is to use as your starting point that the OT was good AND is the starting point for any discussion about Star Wars. If you use the OT as establishing the "Rules" of the Star Wars universe that the PT has to follow, then you can criticize the PT based on that and don't have to apply the same logic to the OT.

But see that's where some fans differ. Some fans say Return of the Jedi is not part of that establishing foundation, so they criticize it based on failing to live up to what was established or expected based on the first two. Or others go back even further to the original Star Wars. On the other hand you can criticize ESB or anything else just as a film, without any preconceptions that you have to accept a pure, untouchable foundation. The thing is most people accept that Star Wars itself was good. Sequels always have a tough act to follow because it's naturally assumed when evaluating them that the first movie is the foundation at the bare minimum.

Anyway, I'm rambling now, but I hope you get my point. If we can make fun of ROTS for a flaw, we can make fun of ESB when it does the same flaw.

That doesn't mean ROTS is necessarily a better film than ESB, or that ESB doesn't have more right to set the "rules" of Star Wars than it does, but again, I think you get what I'm saying.

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You may just want to take my word for it, many of the classes that i am and have been taking in college are theater ones or closely related. BTW I've heard from other people on this site and such (haven't actually looked myself) that ROTS can be gotten at $16. Many films that just come out cost more than that.

I'm not a theater major or a film maker, but I was a Thespian (insert drama sexual joke here) for the better part of high school. I did contest speech too, and took two film studies classes in college. I'm by no means an expert. I've fiddled with a camcorder on plenty of occasions and I'm a mediocre photographer (not so much anymore). I've written a few film reviews (nothing special), and none of them published (not officially I mean). But my point is, it doesn't take rocket science to be able to criticize a film. It all depends on what criteria you're using. I'm not sure if you're saying a person needs a degree in theater or filmmaking to be able to criticize a movie they've just watched, or what. Are certain critics unqualified?

I wonder how many of us here have any qualifications to make us critics? I'm sure that doesn't stop us from putting up our opinions.

As far as ROTS being cheap, yeah it is, but lots of people are buying it, that's my only point. Ticket sales were huge before. Very popular films tend to be bargain priced because they can afford to do so to move more product. The Matrix was like $18 when it came out IIRC, and it was a hugely popular movie and ground-breaking DVD at the time. More obscure titles tend to cost more, unless they're incredibly cheaply made. Of course big boxed sets cost more, but still, I hope you understand where I'm coming from here. It's not as if the Prequels aren't making money, and ROTS is no exception. The difference is that it's gotten wide critical acclaim and the fans almost universally seem to love it (our forum is of course one of the exceptions).

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Or maybe the Rebels skipped all of those quite possibly suicidal ideas and find an isolated out of the way place where they can maintain a relative amount of safety and gather thier strength. believe that our history has shown that you don't hide right under the nose of the enemy with such an objective in mind unless you have no choice.

Perhaps. Alderaan got blown up, and supposedly it was a hotbed of Rebel sympathizers. Remember Bail Organa? If it's a nice remote planet that nobody cares about, the Empire can decimate it and nobody will care. If it's a core world, they risk pissing everyone off with the collateral damage, which is exactly what happened with Alderaan. Building the Death Star and then using it, basically assured the Rebel Alliance's growth and signed the death warrant of the Empire.

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That is because it is far too dangerous. And why didn't they just stick to their fleet of ships? Perhaps you are unawares as to some of the main purposes of bases. They are very good for refueling, building, repairing, defense, gathering, etc.

Fine, but fixed fortifications in Star Wars are incredibly unsafe. Remember they have hyperdrive, a fleet can be on your position in hours or days, and utterly destroy it from orbit. They have Death Stars that make sure that no planet is safe. At least a mobile fleet would keep the Empire guessing as to their wherebouts. Planets have value, I'm not denying that, but assuming they should just sit there on one planet all the time is silly. Notice when the Empire came THEY RAN as soon as they could. We need not assume the entire Rebellion was on that planet (unless it was still really small at that time and just grew a lot for ROTJ) but still.

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A fleet is used to attack. A fleet that is most of the time on the move and on the run makes it a fairly useless thing to have.

A fleet can also be used to defend, such as a fleet to protect a planet. Fleets are also used for trade and transport. The many valuable personages, like diplomats and traders that could negotiate peoples to join the Rebellion for example need transport. They carry supplies and weapons for ground forces and mobile installations. I'm sure they gathered the fleet for the attack, but attacking is not its own purpose. I don't see how it's useless if it's on the move and on the run. You'd prefer they stayed guarding one planet? Fine, but why didn't they ever try that in the movies?

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It nowhere near fulfills the purpose of maintaining one. You may want to read up on strategy and such if you are interested in what I am saying. If so, I could suggest a few excellent books on the topic (And I don't mean anybody's Art of War).

Oh great, so now I need a degree in military strategy in order to criticize Star Wars? Let's face it, earth tactics don't always work here because we have nothing like their level of technology. We don't have space fleets, FTL, weapons of mass destruction on that scale, droids, shields, super lasers, or any of that stuff. The people in Star Wars itself are supposedly experts, and while even experts in real life make mistakes all the time, I guess we'll just have to take their "word" for it that they know what they're doing. Certain things seem silly to us though (like Troops rushing forward without regard to cover on a flat plain, like the Clones do in AOTC), and Lucas has even admitted this. Some of it can be chalked up to incompetence onscreen as well (like Palpy's arrogant plans and orders restricting his troops).



Part II (wow this post was too long, I apologize!)

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Fine, this one I will just explain away, and I'm sure that I will regret doing so. They use different materials than we do for lasers and such. Different combinations of the elements and what not.

A laser is a beam of light. It travels at c. Instead we see brightly colored "bolts" that travel at much less than c, flying through the air or through space, making explosions of sparks when they hit surfaces (and sometimes before they actually hit), bouncing off of polished surfaces, lightsaber blades, metal, whatever. They behave far more like physical projectiles than laser beams in the real world. We don't really know what they are (the EU has many contradictory descriptions of them or how they work), but they're definately not lasers! About all they have in common with real life lasers is the name. It's a common thing in sci fi. "lasers" and "plasma" weapons are all over the place, but they're just names. Lucas was supposedly inspired by seeing wartime footage of tracer rounds being fired in Vietnam and used it.

Quote

Some things still ought to adhere to the basic principles of science. As for not using Ion weaponry, maybe that was an actual advance made between the two trilogies and recieved more widespread use as time went on.

Perhaps, and that's as good an explanantion as any. The ESB Ion cannon is the only one ever seen or mentioned in the movies. In the EU they are all over the place. In the video games practically every fighter has one, and we're lead to believe that they just forgot to use them or something in the movies.

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The last sentence begs the question of why didn't Republic forces blast the arena area on Geonosis from space?

I wondered that too. Beyond that Lucas really wanted to show a big ground battle, I guess is they were afraid of hitting the Jedi (who were all sent to rescue Obi-Wan!) and possibly wanted to capture the Seperatist leaders alive. Then again they had no qualms about trying to kill Dooku, but there you go. Perhaps their plans changed and they got desperate. They also probably wanted to "try out" the clone army (Why didn't the Seperatists blast the clone army from orbit? they could always build new droids! Then again they'd probably kill lots of Geonosians if they did so and risk losing their support in the war effort). Another excuse could be that Geonosis was just so valuable a planet they didn't want to utterly decimate all its infastructure. Perhaps the Republic had some treaties that said you couldn't do that sort of thing. It is contrived, yes.

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Finishing or crippling your enemies at the possible cost of 2 Jedi and a senator, and having few other if any losses at all.

Yes, it's very foolish. It was not worth it to lose all those Jedi to rescue Obi-Wan (they didn't know that Padme an Anakin were there after all... or if they did, they didn't say anything about it). In the real world such decisions have been made before though. In the movie Blackhawk Down, based on real events in Somalia, the elite American troops risk life and limb to retrieve a couple of soldiers (or at least their dead bodies) and pay a high price for it, based on little more than their "noble code." Some see this as honorable and courageous, others as wasteful and stupid. But at least it shows that in real life people can do those sorts of things.

It isn't flimsy, it is probably more spot on than anything else. Talk to people who have been in combat or other such situations before.

Nobody has ever been in the combat situations we've seen in Star Wars, and never will (I say that with a high degree of certainty!). I mean yeah, in extremely vague and general terms they have, but again, as the example above, people have reacted similarly. It's just that in Star Wars they've shown us they have a lot more options than we do, and yet they sometimes seem to forget to use them, and we don't know why. It could be there's a legit reason we're just never told because it's obvious to the characters but they didn't want to waste screen time explaining it to us, or it could be bad writing.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that a hyperdrive does not fit in the palm of my hand. Neither does a shield generator. In terms of manueverability, less amount of something to hit stuff or get shot up, capacity for greater speeds, and greater control make something more manueverable, both in terms of actual fighting and strategy.

Yet we have no idea. Is the Falcon more manuverable than TIE Fighters? According to the movies, it is. And yet it's bigger, and has shields and hyperdrive (but it's "too small for a cloaking device" even though Darth Maul's ship has one that he never used, according to the EU!).

Those TIE fighters were special ones, and were not part of the vast majority used by the Empire.

So the Death Star stocks special TIE Fighters. That's fine. No argument with you there.

Maybe I'll have to watch ANH again, but I think it was a miss.

You have to frame by frame it to see it. It's one of (if not the) last one destroyed by their Falcon guns.

Also every hit doesn't neccesarily have to be a kill. Some of the fighters in all of the OT have several shots hitting them, and they don't blow up instantly.
Finally, if they use and approve of many things in the EU to help support any of the films, then the thing ought to be given just as much consideration as any of the other films.

Right, but how many TIEs do you see survive laser hits? This is the only one. It's destroyed, but it seems to somehow block a near shot explosion with a flash, which could be a shield interaction (sort of like the white flash seen when an asteroid impacts on a Star Destroyer or a fighter crashes into a cruiser).

The EU is all fine and dandy, except that when it's contradicted by the films, it's not much good, is it? Lucas approves everything, the trouble is, he ignores and changes a lot of it when he makes new films, or changes to his old films. So it's not always a reliable guide for how things work in Star Wars, like it or not.


Part II (wow this post was too long, I apologize!)

Fine, this one I will just explain away, and I'm sure that I will regret doing so. They use different materials than we do for lasers and such. Different combinations of the elements and what not.

A laser is a beam of light. It travels at c. Instead we see brightly colored "bolts" that travel at much less than c, flying through the air or through space, making explosions of sparks when they hit surfaces (and sometimes before they actually hit), bouncing off of polished surfaces, lightsaber blades, metal, whatever. They behave far more like physical projectiles than laser beams in the real world. We don't really know what they are (the EU has many contradictory descriptions of them or how they work), but they're definately not lasers! About all they have in common with real life lasers is the name. It's a common thing in sci fi. "lasers" and "plasma" weapons are all over the place, but they're just names. Lucas was supposedly inspired by seeing wartime footage of tracer rounds being fired in Vietnam and used it.

Some things still ought to adhere to the basic principles of science. As for not using Ion weaponry, maybe that was an actual advance made between the two trilogies and recieved more widespread use as time went on.

Perhaps, and that's as good an explanantion as any. The ESB Ion cannon is the only one ever seen or mentioned in the movies. In the EU they are all over the place. In the video games practically every fighter has one, and we're lead to believe that they just forgot to use them or something in the movies.

The last sentence begs the question of why didn't Republic forces blast the arena area on Geonosis from space?

I wondered that too. Beyond that Lucas really wanted to show a big ground battle, I guess is they were afraid of hitting the Jedi (who were all sent to rescue Obi-Wan!) and possibly wanted to capture the Seperatist leaders alive. Then again they had no qualms about trying to kill Dooku, but there you go. Perhaps their plans changed and they got desperate. They also probably wanted to "try out" the clone army (Why didn't the Seperatists blast the clone army from orbit? they could always build new droids! Then again they'd probably kill lots of Geonosians if they did so and risk losing their support in the war effort). Another excuse could be that Geonosis was just so valuable a planet they didn't want to utterly decimate all its infastructure. Perhaps the Republic had some treaties that said you couldn't do that sort of thing. It is contrived, yes.

Finishing or crippling your enemies at the possible cost of 2 Jedi and a senator, and having few other if any losses at all.

Yes, it's very foolish. It was not worth it to lose all those Jedi to rescue Obi-Wan (they didn't know that Padme an Anakin were there after all... or if they did, they didn't say anything about it). In the real world such decisions have been made before though. In the movie Blackhawk Down, based on real events in Somalia, the elite American troops risk life and limb to retrieve a couple of soldiers (or at least their dead bodies) and pay a high price for it, based on little more than their "noble code." Some see this as honorable and courageous, others as wasteful and stupid. But at least it shows that in real life people can do those sorts of things.

It isn't flimsy, it is probably more spot on than anything else. Talk to people who have been in combat or other such situations before.

Nobody has ever been in the combat situations we've seen in Star Wars, and never will (I say that with a high degree of certainty!). I mean yeah, in extremely vague and general terms they have, but again, as the example above, people have reacted similarly. It's just that in Star Wars they've shown us they have a lot more options than we do, and yet they sometimes seem to forget to use them, and we don't know why. It could be there's a legit reason we're just never told because it's obvious to the characters but they didn't want to waste screen time explaining it to us, or it could be bad writing.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that a hyperdrive does not fit in the palm of my hand. Neither does a shield generator. In terms of manueverability, less amount of something to hit stuff or get shot up, capacity for greater speeds, and greater control make something more manueverable, both in terms of actual fighting and strategy.

Yet we have no idea. Is the Falcon more manuverable than TIE Fighters? According to the movies, it is. And yet it's bigger, and has shields and hyperdrive (but it's "too small for a cloaking device" even though Darth Maul's ship has one that he never used, according to the EU!).

Those TIE fighters were special ones, and were not part of the vast majority used by the Empire.

So the Death Star stocks special TIE Fighters. That's fine. No argument with you there.

Maybe I'll have to watch ANH again, but I think it was a miss.

You have to frame by frame it to see it. It's one of (if not the) last one destroyed by their Falcon guns.

Also every hit doesn't neccesarily have to be a kill. Some of the fighters in all of the OT have several shots hitting them, and they don't blow up instantly.
Finally, if they use and approve of many things in the EU to help support any of the films, then the thing ought to be given just as much consideration as any of the other films.

Right, but how many TIEs do you see survive laser hits? This is the only one. It's destroyed, but it seems to somehow block a near shot explosion with a flash, which could be a shield interaction (sort of like the white flash seen when an asteroid impacts on a Star Destroyer or a fighter crashes into a cruiser).

The EU is all fine and dandy, except that when it's contradicted by the films, it's not much good, is it? Lucas approves everything, the trouble is, he ignores and changes a lot of it when he makes new films, or changes to his old films. So it's not always a reliable guide for how things work in Star Wars, like it or not.


Part II (wow this post was too long, I apologize!)

Also sorry for the back and forth, I really need a break. Interesting discussion though!

Fine, this one I will just explain away, and I'm sure that I will regret doing so. They use different materials than we do for lasers and such. Different combinations of the elements and what not.

A laser is a beam of light. It travels at c. Instead we see brightly colored "bolts" that travel at much less than c, flying through the air or through space, making explosions of sparks when they hit surfaces (and sometimes before they actually hit), bouncing off of polished surfaces, lightsaber blades, metal, whatever. They behave far more like physical projectiles than laser beams in the real world. We don't really know what they are (the EU has many contradictory descriptions of them or how they work), but they're definately not lasers! About all they have in common with real life lasers is the name. It's a common thing in sci fi. "lasers" and "plasma" weapons are all over the place, but they're just names. Lucas was supposedly inspired by seeing wartime footage of tracer rounds being fired in Vietnam and used it.

Some things still ought to adhere to the basic principles of science. As for not using Ion weaponry, maybe that was an actual advance made between the two trilogies and recieved more widespread use as time went on.

Perhaps, and that's as good an explanantion as any. The ESB Ion cannon is the only one ever seen or mentioned in the movies. In the EU they are all over the place. In the video games practically every fighter has one, and we're lead to believe that they just forgot to use them or something in the movies.

The last sentence begs the question of why didn't Republic forces blast the arena area on Geonosis from space?

I wondered that too. Beyond that Lucas really wanted to show a big ground battle, I guess is they were afraid of hitting the Jedi (who were all sent to rescue Obi-Wan!) and possibly wanted to capture the Seperatist leaders alive. Then again they had no qualms about trying to kill Dooku, but there you go. Perhaps their plans changed and they got desperate. They also probably wanted to "try out" the clone army (Why didn't the Seperatists blast the clone army from orbit? they could always build new droids! Then again they'd probably kill lots of Geonosians if they did so and risk losing their support in the war effort). Another excuse could be that Geonosis was just so valuable a planet they didn't want to utterly decimate all its infastructure. Perhaps the Republic had some treaties that said you couldn't do that sort of thing. It is contrived, yes.

Finishing or crippling your enemies at the possible cost of 2 Jedi and a senator, and having few other if any losses at all.

Yes, it's very foolish. It was not worth it to lose all those Jedi to rescue Obi-Wan (they didn't know that Padme an Anakin were there after all... or if they did, they didn't say anything about it). In the real world such decisions have been made before though. In the movie Blackhawk Down, based on real events in Somalia, the elite American troops risk life and limb to retrieve a couple of soldiers (or at least their dead bodies) and pay a high price for it, based on little more than their "noble code." Some see this as honorable and courageous, others as wasteful and stupid. But at least it shows that in real life people can do those sorts of things.

It isn't flimsy, it is probably more spot on than anything else. Talk to people who have been in combat or other such situations before.

Nobody has ever been in the combat situations we've seen in Star Wars, and never will (I say that with a high degree of certainty!). I mean yeah, in extremely vague and general terms they have, but again, as the example above, people have reacted similarly. It's just that in Star Wars they've shown us they have a lot more options than we do, and yet they sometimes seem to forget to use them, and we don't know why. It could be there's a legit reason we're just never told because it's obvious to the characters but they didn't want to waste screen time explaining it to us, or it could be bad writing.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that a hyperdrive does not fit in the palm of my hand. Neither does a shield generator. In terms of manueverability, less amount of something to hit stuff or get shot up, capacity for greater speeds, and greater control make something more manueverable, both in terms of actual fighting and strategy.

Yet we have no idea. Is the Falcon more manuverable than TIE Fighters? According to the movies, it is. And yet it's bigger, and has shields and hyperdrive (but it's "too small for a cloaking device" even though Darth Maul's ship has one that he never used, according to the EU!).

Those TIE fighters were special ones, and were not part of the vast majority used by the Empire.

So the Death Star stocks special TIE Fighters. That's fine. No argument with you there.

Maybe I'll have to watch ANH again, but I think it was a miss.

You have to frame by frame it to see it. It's one of (if not the) last one destroyed by their Falcon guns.

Also every hit doesn't neccesarily have to be a kill. Some of the fighters in all of the OT have several shots hitting them, and they don't blow up instantly.
Finally, if they use and approve of many things in the EU to help support any of the films, then the thing ought to be given just as much consideration as any of the other films.

Right, but how many TIEs do you see survive laser hits? This is the only one. It's destroyed, but it seems to somehow block a near shot explosion with a flash, which could be a shield interaction (sort of like the white flash seen when an asteroid impacts on a Star Destroyer or a fighter crashes into a cruiser).

The EU is all fine and dandy, except that when it's contradicted by the films, it's not much good, is it? Lucas approves everything, the trouble is, he ignores and changes a lot of it when he makes new films, or changes to his old films. So it's not always a reliable guide for how things work in Star Wars, like it or not.

[floppydisk]

The above post is the main reason that I stay far away from the SW forums now.

(no offense to you Kurgan, it's just looooooooooooooooooong)

[Zatoichi]

Especially, since about half of it was doubled. Ive got to get going, so I won't get back to it till later.

[Zatoichi]

Judging by your reactions, it seems I did not achieve what I was going for and probably threw you off when I mentioned suspension of disbelief. After rereading the parts of this conversation concerning it, it seems that I messed up indeed. So, if you will, let me try again. I brought this concept up because for some things, you just let them go to make it work as a whole. In all honesty, I would take the PT over half the crap that comes out each year any day. If the never was an OT I'm sure that I could appreciate these films more, but I don't think that they would ever be able to suck me in as the OT has. The fact remains that the OT came out first and was extremely good. There are very few films that I will ever dare to consider that are as good as or even better. The Imperial March is my favorite piece of music of all time hands down. I myself had very high expectations for the PT. Some of them may have been slightly unreasonable, but most were not. For something to be part of what I considered to be one of the greatest things of all time, I expected that it should manage to at least be able to meet that standard. Instead, I was treated to something that I would end up considering to be much less than that. The suspension of disbelief is different for everyone, and is shown by how someone can reason enough to accept what they are shown to believe it while they are experiencing whatever the product may be. It is something you must do to actually experience that product, and it is that products job to do that. I hope this explains what I think a lot better than what I have said before. Oh, and yes I would say that the OT set the rules for the Star Wars universe precisely because it did come out first.

I can understand when people criticize anything good or bad, because it is all a matter of opinion. When I watch any of the OT films, I can tell you that I am really not that bothered by any of the errors and such. Even the space worm thing in the asteroids. The fact the many things in the PT bend the rules, and even flat out contradict what you already know will happen is flat out wrong. It makes it very hard for me to believe in any of those films even during the first time I had seen it.

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That doesn't mean ROTS is necessarily a better film than ESB, or that ESB doesn't have more right to set the "rules" of Star Wars than it does, but again, I think you get what I'm saying.
...
But my point is, it doesn't take rocket science to be able to criticize a film. It all depends on what criteria you're using. I'm not sure if you're saying a person needs a degree in theater or filmmaking to be able to criticize a movie they've just watched, or what. Are certain critics unqualified?

I wonder how many of us here have any qualifications to make us critics? I'm sure that doesn't stop us from putting up our opinions.

To criticize something is to give your opinion about it, and anyone can to that. People do that all of the time in their daily lives, there is no need for a degree or anything. I just was overreacting to what you had responded to about SOD. Hopefully I've managed to clear that up now.

On the price of the films, my bad. Thanks for clearing that up.

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Perhaps. Alderaan got blown up, and supposedly it was a hotbed of Rebel sympathizers. Remember Bail Organa? If it's a nice remote planet that nobody cares about, the Empire can decimate it and nobody will care. If it's a core world, they risk pissing everyone off with the collateral damage, which is exactly what happened with Alderaan. Building the Death Star and then using it, basically assured the Rebel Alliance's growth and signed the death warrant of the Empire.

I'd call this a bad move by Tarkin in his willingness to demonstrate his brand new toy. History has shown that the threat of violence can be much more convincing than violence itself. Good point, I'd say that if they had used it against a much less populated planet and had warned them ahead of time or something, they might have achieved the desired affect.

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Fine, but fixed fortifications in Star Wars are incredibly unsafe. Remember they have hyperdrive, a fleet can be on your position in hours or days, and utterly destroy it from orbit. They have Death Stars that make sure that no planet is safe. At least a mobile fleet would keep the Empire guessing as to their wherebouts. Planets have value, I'm not denying that, but assuming they should just sit there on one planet all the time is silly. Notice when the Empire came THEY RAN as soon as they could. We need not assume the entire Rebellion was on that planet (unless it was still really small at that time and just grew a lot for ROTJ) but still.

I'd say the rebel base did a magnificent job. Especially if everyone in the Alliance wasn't there. That means that the rebels below full strength took on the entire Imperial Fleet and escaped to boot. Things such as ground to space weaponry and orbital defense platforms are a definate boon when it comes defending a base or whole planet. Echo base only had its single Ion canon, and it made out pretty well. Also, at the time there was no Death Star, and the sheild generator was sufficient enough to stop any bombardment. It was the Empire's ground superiority that won them the day, even though they failed their main objective. I would rule that if the rebels had had greater more efficient ground forces that they could have held out until supplies ran low. Much like the seige of a castle. Still, their plan of escaping as they did was a very good idea.

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A fleet can also be used to defend, such as a fleet to protect a planet. Fleets are also used for trade and transport. The many valuable personages, like diplomats and traders that could negotiate peoples to join the Rebellion for example need transport. They carry supplies and weapons for ground forces and mobile installations. I'm sure they gathered the fleet for the attack, but attacking is not its own purpose. I don't see how it's useless if it's on the move and on the run. You'd prefer they stayed guarding one planet? Fine, but why didn't they ever try that in the movies?

You don't need an entire fleet of ships for any of those functions. Especially, if you are on the run. Using a whole fleet of ships for it would just give you away, and you would end up fighting losing battle after losing battle. Unless they had a real military genius with them that could pull such an operation off against a much superior enemy, I'd say that they would get slaughtered. The functions you mention are relevant for peace time, when you are on even ground, or posses an excelent tactical advantage. As for staying and guarding one planet, no, I would have spread them out to be far less easily detectable and avoid unneccesary losses (as in not being forced to come to grips with the enemy).

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Oh great, so now I need a degree in military strategy in order to criticize Star Wars? Let's face it, earth tactics don't always work here because we have nothing like their level of technology.
...
Some of it can be chalked up to incompetence onscreen as well (like Palpy's arrogant plans and orders restricting his troops).

Actually, I just thought that you might be interested was all. I certainly don't have a degree in military strategy, I've only read some really good books and such. Mao Zedong, who possesed one of the greatest military minds of all time, did not recieve formal training, and was often opposed by his fellows for his radical strategies. We may not have these items, but using logic we can be able to deduce what might actually occur. You and I and many others have already done so in many of the things we have said whether we realize it or not. If you do not believe me, look at what you have written about what a fleet does.

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Interesting discussion though!

Here here!

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A laser is a beam of light. It travels at c. Instead we see brightly colored "bolts" that travel at much less than c, flying through the air or through space
...
Lucas was supposedly inspired by seeing wartime footage of tracer rounds being fired in Vietnam and used it.

I knew I'd regret it trying to take the easy way out. I agree

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Perhaps, and that's as good an explanantion as any. The ESB Ion cannon is the only one ever seen or mentioned in the movies. In the EU they are all over the place. In the video games practically every fighter has one, and we're lead to believe that they just forgot to use them or something in the movies.

Too True.

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...It is contrived, yes.

Yes, it's very foolish. It was not worth it to lose all those Jedi to rescue Obi-Wan (they didn't know that Padme an Anakin were there after all... or if they did, they didn't say anything about it). In the real world such decisions have been made before though. In the movie Blackhawk Down, based on real events in Somalia, the elite American troops risk life and limb to retrieve a couple of soldiers (or at least their dead bodies) and pay a high price for it, based on little more than their "noble code." Some see this as honorable and courageous, others as wasteful and stupid. But at least it shows that in real life people can do those sorts of things.

I have surmised that a strike team consisting of a dozen or so excellent snipers and a few Jedi would have sufficed. After quickly getting in and out they could have blasted the enemy from orbit (I'm guessing that they didn't have shield generators). Then again, people don't always think clearly when situations such as these are forced upon them and time is of the essance. No one is perfect after all, and you can't always think clearly. Or, like you said, George just wanted a big ground battle.

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Nobody has ever been in the combat situations we've seen in Star Wars, and never will (I say that with a high degree of certainty!).
...
but they didn't want to waste screen time explaining it to us, or it could be bad writing.

I totally agree.

Yet we have no idea. Is the Falcon more manuverable than TIE Fighters? According to the movies, it is. And yet it's bigger, and has shields and hyperdrive (but it's "too small for a cloaking device" even though Darth Maul's ship has one that he never used, according to the EU!).

What do you mean the movies show that the Falcon is more manuverable than TIE fighters? First, the Falcon is a freighter. Second as an example, you never saw the Falcon flying down the death Star trench now did you? I was only trying to point out that perhaps the empire was trying to maximise on one particular aspect in the hopes that it would give them enough of an advantage to overcome the advantages of their enemies. Other things they could have worked on were speed, defense, attack, the skill of the operators, cloaking, mobility, etc. I thought Maul's ship was bigger, but maybe not, perhaps the times had changed (as in small sized ships were no longer out fitted with the technology since they used much larger ships to carry them around, maybe the officer was thinking along those lines). Anyways, why take that guy's word for it? He gets killed for failing soon after. Perhaps he isn't as sharp as you might think.

So the Death Star stocks special TIE Fighters. That's fine. No argument with you there.

I'm not sure what you mean, I thought you were talking about fighters like the TIE Advanced x1/Darth Vader's TIE fighter. If you meant the TIE Intercepter, it was just a supposedly faster model and was more costly to produce.

Right, but how many TIEs do you see survive laser hits? This is the only one. It's destroyed, but it seems to somehow block a near shot explosion with a flash, which could be a shield interaction (sort of like the white flash seen when an asteroid impacts on a Star Destroyer or a fighter crashes into a cruiser).

I believe you, but I still want to go and watch that again.

The EU is all fine and dandy, except that when it's contradicted by the films, it's not much good, is it? Lucas approves everything, the trouble is, he ignores and changes a lot of it when he makes new films, or changes to his old films. So it's not always a reliable guide for how things work in Star Wars, like it or not.

You're absolutely right, but as you've just stated neither is the PT or the SE OT .



This was so friggin long that I first cut out chunks of quoting you, then I finally decided to make it into two posts.

what the fuck? weird, just weird.

[KurganX]

Yeesh, that sucks, I apologize. I only meant to edit my post, not repeat half of it within the same post. Now I can't edit it! (apparently you can't edit once somebody else replies)



I guess once your post reaches a certain length the board can't handle it anymore and goofs it up.

Again, my apologies! If I had the ability to edit, I'd fix it right now.... sigh

[KurganX]

Oh, and yes I would say that the OT set the rules for the Star Wars universe precisely because it did come out first.

Okay, then I'd agree with you.

As a Star Wars fan, I have the same "foundational presupposition" (and ROTJ is my favorite SW movie, so it's the classic trilogy that sets the bar for everything else, pre-special editions too of course!). On the other hand I also treat them as films, so I allow myself to like ROTS more than say ESB. That's surely a minority opinion here, but oh well! The only Star Wars film I think isn't particularly good is Episode I. I don't know if its being a Star Wars film helps it more than it hurts it or vice versa... I think it was watchable, but very cringeworthy at many points and just didn't have the inspired quality I got from the others. It was either boring, bland or offensive to me as a fan... with a few exceptions. I accept that Lucas intends it to be part of his "definitive vision" and the starting point of the saga, and I got a used dvd for completeness sake, but that's about it.

I can understand when people criticize anything good or bad, because it is all a matter of opinion. When I watch any of the OT films, I can tell you that I am really not that bothered by any of the errors and such. Even the space worm thing in the asteroids. The fact the many things in the PT bend the rules, and even flat out contradict what you already know will happen is flat out wrong. It makes it very hard for me to believe in any of those films even during the first time I had seen it.
To criticize something is to give your opinion about it, and anyone can to that. People do that all of the time in their daily lives, there is no need for a degree or anything. I just was overreacting to what you had responded to about SOD. Hopefully I've managed to clear that up now.

They all contradict physics and common sense. The real question is whether they violate the "rules" according to what was established by the previous films. In that regard they do cause a lot of problems. But I think that's more fair (to nitpick based on contradictions between say ROTS and ANH) than nitpicking based on scientific gaffes. I mean, if you're unwilling to do the same with the OT. That to me is a big difference. I'm not saying you should say "oh man that CG yoda looks fake" and then be unable to say "oh man that muppet yoda looks fake." They both do, really. But on the other hand the muppet yoda of ESB/ROTJ has the advantage in that we've never seen "a yoda" in real life, so we can only imagine what he really looks like. And given that our first view of him is the muppet, he's probably the closest we can get, with the CG version being an imitation. That I'll definately concede.

I understand that people saying it's silly to bash the OT out of a percieved need for "vengance" against PT bashers (ie: people who are angered with the nitpicks of this site, of which I am not of their company, I found them hilarious and many true) based on thematic or character elements, dialouge or acting ability (artistic stuff that's purely subjective anyway).

The contradictions require crazy rationalizations and mental gymnastics that tend to delude the saga even more or crappy EU material to fill in the gaps. Some fans love that stuff (since it forces you to read the novels or whatever to understand Star Wars). I'd rather it was all in the movies and the rest you could fill in with your imagination like we did in the early days. I know we can never really go back to that point, and I like a lot of the EU. So I guess I've just learned to live with it as a fan. Now and then it's good to make fun of that stuff though, hehe.


I'd say the rebel base did a magnificent job. Especially if everyone in the Alliance wasn't there.

Actually, I'm wondering, where was the Rebel base after they evacuated Hoth? We just see the fleet flying around after that point, and then they "win the war" (according to the movies at least). But that means (according to the official timeline) they have no base for at least a year! Or did they all live on Mon Calamari homeworld or something?

[b
That means that the rebels below full strength took on the entire Imperial Fleet and escaped to boot. Things such as ground to space weaponry and orbital defense platforms are a definate boon when it comes defending a base or whole planet.[/b]

Don't forget planetary shielding (which seems conspiciously absent in the PT, so one wonders if it wasn't new technology... or a vastly improved application of the gungan theater shield for covering a few divisons of ground troops from artillery fire).

I guess we're to assume that the Rebels didn't have the cash flow and infastructure for such niceties while on the run. My point was if they blended with the local populations the Empire would risk civilian casualties to get at them, thus leading to more atrocities, leading to more anger against the regime and (likely) more sympathy for the Alliance. Of course "loyal citizens" with fear of reprisals and knowing the Empire's ruthelessness might want to turn in their countrymen who had "turned traitor" but there you go. Not a perfect plan but you can see in history how various rebellions have done that.

Echo base only had its single Ion canon, and it made out pretty well. Also, at the time there was no Death Star, and the sheild generator was sufficient enough to stop any bombardment.

Well, they say it only protected a portion of the planet, not the entire thing. So theoretically they could just keep pounding the planet until they were floating in slag. If they could keep the Rebels there that long... I mean Vader's fleet packs some serious firepower and they could have reinforcements there within hours surely. The key is that Vader wanted prisoners. Kind of hard to do that if everyone's dead. So even if they couldn't destroy the shield outright I'm sure they could have laid waste to the planet and starved them out if they really wanted to. Might have been boring to watch though! Well said.


You don't need an entire fleet of ships for any of those functions.

The Rebels struck me as sort of making it up as they went along, so I'm not too shocked that they didn't plan ahead and just be a mobile strike fleet from day one. Obviously they started with blending with the local populations, then they moved to bases. Now they're just a bunch of people running around looking for the next super weapon to blow up. Maybe the Empire's tactics have forced them to fight this way. On the other hand maybe the EU tells us where the "new" base is supposed to be (as if they could have just one!).


Especially, if you are on the run. Using a whole fleet of ships for it would just give you away, and you would end up fighting losing battle after losing battle.

And having a single planet as a base doesn't? At least ships can run away. A planet can't exactly do that. You're trapped, even if you're under a shield. According to the EU, the Empire has tons more super weapons they can use to waste planets, but even if we don't count those, that's still a big problem.

Unless they had a real military genius with them that could pull such an operation off against a much superior enemy, I'd say that they would get slaughtered.

Supposedly they did have many Imperial defectors that knew their stuff, it's just in the movie we get all these "generals" that seem like they were handed a commission just for being the main characters.


Actually, I just thought that you might be interested was all. I certainly don't have a degree in military strategy,

The art of war (not the book title, I mean the general principle) is fascinating to study. I just figured I could still hold the conversation about Star Wars without having to take a side tour. I really don't have time to read a bunch of books about it right now, sadly.

We may not have these items, but using logic we can be able to deduce what might actually occur.

Yes, I'm just saying many variables change what that outcome would be, because they do matter with regards to how it would work.. making it far different from our Earth and its history. We can look to the movies to see how it did work out, and the official literature to see how it might (assuming everything is accurate). That's why we have all those guidebooks and stuff. Most people just use the RPG's as a shortcut, but even though they're pretty flaky a lot of the time, they can present some scenarios. But like any game, they're often skewed for the enjoyment of the player, rather than "realism." Plenty of fan sites and forums devoted to that enterprise.

You and I and many others have already done so in many of the things we have said whether we realize it or not. If you do not believe me, look at what you have written about what a fleet does.
Here here!

Sure enough. Lucas himself even agrees that the military tactics of the Clones in AOTC, though ultimately successful, were pretty foolhardy. There's plenty of ways we can rationalize Naploeonic era tactics used by their infantry in AOTC, but in any case, they tried to get real military input for ROTS to give it a more realistic feel.

I won't bother boring you with the rationalizations here, but they do exist, I'm not the first one to think of this! That's suspension of disbelief... they must have had a reason to do what we saw in the movies, even if we don't quite understand what it is. Sure, Lucas wanted this and wanted that, but that's the artistic side of things, rather than putting ourselves into the universe to see how it "works" which is the heart of SOD. Anyway...



What do you mean the movies show that the Falcon is more manuverable than TIE fighters? First, the Falcon is a freighter. Second as an example, you never saw the Falcon flying down the death Star trench now did you?

True, we don't see it fly down the trench of the Death Star itself, but we see it consistently outmanuver the smaller TIE fighters. For example the asteroid chase in ESB, the Death Star II in ROTJ, and many other instances. About the only time they stand and fight is in ANH with the Death Star escape. They win there through sheer shield stamina and firepower. But everywhere else they do it by superior manuvering. Realistic for a frieghter or not, it's what we're given in the films. Like it or not, canon!

I was only trying to point out that perhaps the empire was trying to maximise on one particular aspect in the hopes that it would give them enough of an advantage to overcome the advantages of their enemies.

I'm sure the Empire could easily have equipped all their fighters with hyperdrives, shields, and missiles. Even if they equipped only a fraction of them (we assume they have orders of magnitude more units than the Rebels) they could afford to have an equal sized force of survivable craft to engage the enemy. We really don't know that they don't... except from the EU.

It's become a brainbug that the Empire's ships don't have any features, but the Rebels all somehow do. Maybe all the crappier ships on the Rebel side got destroyed long ago, who knows!

But the arguments for why the Empire doesn't equip their ships are pretty flimsy. All from one line about a short range fighter.. then getting applied to all fighters in the Empire!

For that matter we don't really know what Vader's TIE has either. But I guess they assumed he had a hyperdrive because he appears to fly off into space by himself at the end and he doesn't die of old age out there trying to reach his pals (maybe that explains why he looks so much older than he should in ROTJ! ha). And perhaps his "bouncing" off of the other TIE fighter is supposed to be evidence for his having shields (but the other ship not?).

(continued)...

weird, I wonder why quotes don't work anymore? I've broken the forum! I give up...

This post has been edited by KurganX: 30 November 2005 - 02:43 AM

[KurganX]

Other things they could have worked on were speed, defense,
attack, the skill of the operators, cloaking, mobility, etc.
I thought Maul's ship was bigger, but maybe not, perhaps the times had
changed (as in small sized ships were no longer out fitted with the
technology since they used much larger ships to carry them around, maybe
the officer was thinking along those lines).

There's numerous rationalizations for it, but there you go. We could
just ignore it as an EU contradiction, because we never see a cloak,
period, all we have is an officer's comment that the Falcon is too small
for a cloak. The EU has even smaller ships than Maul's with working
cloaks, but conveniently the Rebels destroyed all the prototypes in a
video game.

Anyways, why take that guy's word for it? He gets killed for failing
soon after. Perhaps he isn't as sharp as you might think.

When he's our only evidence, why assume he's an idiot? That's surely the
easiest fallback solution to any controversy of course ("the guy was
spouting nonsense"). I'm sure Vader has killed people before who weren't
stupid, they just happened to be in his way while he was in a bad mood. It really wasn't the guy's fault the Falcon got away anyhow.

And Anakin has been known to go on random killing sprees before...!

I'm not sure what you mean, I thought you were talking
about fighters like the TIE Advanced x1/Darth Vader's TIE fighter. If
you meant the TIE Intercepter, it was just a supposedly faster model and
was more costly to produce.

The Empire is drowning in money and resources... they're a galactic wide
dictatorship! They can afford to build two death Stars and tons of Star
Destroyers. According to the EU they had dozens of super weapons as
well. Maybe the Emperor was bankrupting them, maybe they misappropriated
funds and resources, maybe they were inefficient, who knows! But this
one gets so overused.

The same excuse is often fielded to explain why the Trade Federation doesn't just use an army of Droidekas, since they seem to be something the Jedi can't handle.

Anyway, the excuses go on...

They couldn't give their troops quality armor because they were too
cheap.

They couldn't give their fighters shields because they were too
cheap, etc etc.

And yet in most cases the Rebels apparently could afford to, so it makes
no sense to keep using that!

In the EU we have TIEs that have all those cute features that supposedly
only Rebel ships have. But like I said, the films never say anything at
all to make us think that they're all so poorly lacking in features. So
they have one short range fighter, hip hip hooray!
The "shield interaction" idea is on a TIE Fighter destroyed by the
Falcon in ANH. A few shots pass through the bottom of the wings and
explode (not touching the craft at all) and there's a white flash, as if
a shield interaction occured. It might be a SFX gaffe, or it might be
canon proof that at least some TIE Fighters (not interceptors or
advanced prototypes mind you) have shields. We never see a shield
interaction with a rebel fighter, we just have dialouge telling them to
modify their deflector screens. We never see a TIE going into
hyperspace, but then a lot of ships we never see using hyperspace. That
doesn't necessarily mean they are incapable. Same with missiles or ion
cannons. I realize it's speculation, but basically we're assuming a
negative.

So what I'm saying is, all that stuff we think we know about the
Empire's fighters comes from the EU, and primarily from games, for that
matter (the SW RPG in 1987 set a lot of this firmly in people's minds,
including the minds of future EU writers).

I believe you, but I still want to go and watch that again.
You're absolutely right, but as you've just stated neither is the PT or
the SE OT .
This was so friggin long that I first cut out chunks of quoting you,
then I finally decided to make it into two posts.

Maybe so, but it's still the best we've got! And despite Lucas's many
changes to the OT, very few of those changes actually impacted the
"rules" of Star Wars as we understand them, say in terms of technology
and military prowess. A lot of the time the visuals and dialouge simply
didn't match up, and now thanks to the alterations they are closer (for
example the number of Rebel ships at Yavin and the manuverability of
both side's craft... which you see on the radar screens and out the
windows but not in close up).

At least now that Lucas is done making movies, he can't create anymore
contradictions (unless the TV series really screws things up and is
considered high level canon).

The thing is, the PT did contain some OT contradictions yes, but mainly
what it did was steamroll over large portions of the EU, so people have
had to rethink that part of Star Wars. Sadly, rather than a rewrite, we
got a band-aid in the form of a mountain of new EU sources that tried to
rationalize the previous contradictions and gloss over them. Lucas seems
pretty frank about what he changes, but the fans don't want to let go of
their favorite novel, video game, comic book, or theme park ride.

There, done! Sorry for the long post.

On a totaly unrelated note, here's my source for why Coruscant is unrealistic, (thanks Irregular Webcomic!).

http://www.irregular...t/starwars.html

Read the first six links under "Episode I: The Phantom Menace" including the comments that appear below each strip listed. Hilarious...

This post has been edited by KurganX: 30 November 2005 - 02:50 AM