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Random thoughts

#1 User is offline   ernesttomlinson Icon

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Posted 27 April 2005 - 08:22 PM

I've known for a while that the evil, wrinkled Emperor used to be mild-mannered Senator Palpatine. I've known that for years. How?

Really. "Palpatine" isn't anywhere in any of the Star Wars movies, is it? And I haven't read any of the Star Wars novels. So where did I pick it up? Through the fan grapevine, I guess, but that doesn't answer the question of where that plot development came from in the first place.

I can say the same about "Sith", another universally accepted term that seems to have come in from the outside. And "Bail Organa". All of these are accepted as canonical but for no reason I can see. Is it some sort of oral tradition? Is this like how we know about the Trojan Horse? (The story of which exists nowhere in Homeric epic.)
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#2 User is offline   rock_dash Icon

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Posted 27 April 2005 - 08:34 PM

I know I got that same outside information from those Star Wars encyclopedias. In about 5th grade, a friend got the Guide to Vehicles, which mentioned Palpatine, the Old Republic, and some other stuff.
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Oh God, I had no idea! How can they keep it going? You mean, Return of the Children of the Corn etc? Children of the Corn 2? Children of the Corn and the Prisoner of Azkaban? I Know What You Did With The Children Of the Corn???? Yes, it's horrible!!!!
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#3 User is offline   xenduck Icon

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Posted 27 April 2005 - 08:42 PM

ya, its kinda eerie. i feel the same wbout vader's condition. in the OT there is no explanation for that. where does this stuff come from?
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Posted 27 April 2005 - 09:23 PM

The screenplay for Star Wars (ANH) and the novelisations introduce DARTH VADER THE DARK LORD OF THE SITH.

As for Palpatine and Bail Organa - I don't know.

AS for the Trojan Horse - remember that the Homeric epics were spoken - Homer was on his break when some other poet, now forgotten, recited the slaying of Achilles, the Trojan Horse, the fates of the heroes, and the story of Orestes/Agamemnon/Klytaemnestra and the lesser Aias.
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#5 User is offline   Sagacity Icon

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Posted 27 April 2005 - 09:27 PM

The name Palpatine was mentioned in the ROTJ novelization. Bail Organa could have been mentioned in the SW (ANH) novelization; I'd have to snag my beat-up copy to see.
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#6 User is offline   Michel Orla Icon

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Posted 27 April 2005 - 10:44 PM

The prolong in the New Hope novel actually explains Palpatine's rise, the birth of the Empire and extermination of the Jedi better in one page than the 4 hours plus of the 2 the two prequel trilogies

This post has been edited by Michel Orla: 27 April 2005 - 10:45 PM

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#7 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 01:22 AM

part od what made old SW great was the fact that info just somehow got to you... it added to the magic.

but i think i got 'palpatine' from an old RPG.

other info was pieced together from novilizations of the OT movies, action figure names, etc.

the OT had a buzz about it...

the PT has none of that...
just an official site with character profiles that contain data about the characters that the actors were never told!!!
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#8 User is offline   Just another wretched fan Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 01:30 AM

QUOTE (ernesttomlinson @ Apr 27 2005, 08:22 PM)
Is it some sort of oral tradition?  Is this like how we know about the Trojan Horse?  (The story of which exists nowhere in Homeric epic.)


Having read Book 2 of the Aeneid in Latin (damn AP credits), I can tell you that Virgil wrote down the story of the Trojan Horse into his epic poem.
Yeah it was a few hundred years later, during Augustus' reign, but he based it on Oral tradition. So i guess you're right.

The trojan horse is also mentioned in several lesser known ancient texts.
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#9 User is offline   ernesttomlinson Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 02:56 AM

You've got it right, JAWF. What we think of as the canonical story of the Trojan Horse comes from the Aeneid; in fact a lot of what we know of the Trojan War comes from the Aeneid. But what was Virgil working from?

It's been a while since I've studied these things but I believe there exist traces of a large epic cycle of which the Iliad and the Odyssey are the only two components that have survived more or less intact. The rest of it exists on paper only as hints. The story of the Trojan Horse comes from the "Little Iliad" as it's called that covers the events from the end of Homer's Iliad to the fall of Troy and which exists only as a collection of fragmentary references from later texts that quote it.

And you're right, barend; somehow the fact that there is a sort of oral tradition around the original Star Wars, the way that you just, well, pick up details about it, is part of what makes SW so interesting. Lucas created something greater than he intended, perhaps.

The "official biographies" are bad jokes - worse than bad jokes. I remember how, in the months surrounding the release of Episode I, you could collect Coke cans with pictures of all of the characters from the movie that we were supposed to remember. You could get a Capt. Panaka can, for example, or a Ric Olie can. (Don't remember who Ric Olie was? I didn't either - I had to look him up.) I can't think of a more pathetic exhibition of how Lucas wanted us to think that his new, cookie-cutter characters were just as intriguing and memorable as, say, Lando Calrissian or even Boba Fett. Lando seems a bit larger than the story he's in; there's more to him than you see on screen. (This may be Billy Dee Williams's doing. Frankly I think that his performance in ESB may very well be the best in all of Star Wars; he steals almost every scene he's in.) And, yeah, I think it's kind of weird how Boba Fett has become an icon thanks to a half-dozen spoken lines and a few minutes of a screen time, but for that very reason he's an example of the power that Star Wars used to have - again, you got the sense that there was more to him than you saw on the screen.

Do you get that larger-than-life feeling from any of Lucas's new characters? Any of them? Take Amidala, for example, the most important of those new characters and one of the few who is to appear in all three prequel movies. Does she ever seem like more than a plot device? Well, Anakin's got to impregnate someone - that is a crude thing for me to say but, frankly, that's how important Amidala seems to be to Lucas. Nothing else about her character makes any sense.

So instead Lucas gives us these pathetic little official profiles on starwars.com as though reading a couple of paragraphs of faked-up history on a meaningless character is supposed to make us care about him or her. You want to make us care about cyphers like Amidala or Dooku or even frickin' Jar Jar? Try using your actual movies to do that, George, not your frickin' website.
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#10 User is offline   Nicholas_Skywalker Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 04:12 AM

The original script for rotj also had lando dying and obi wan kenobi and yoda coming back alive again and saving luke from the empiror.... thank god that wasent used innocent.gif
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#11 User is offline   Helena Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 05:56 AM

QUOTE (Nicholas_Skywalker @ Apr 28 2005, 10:12 AM)
The original script for rotj also had lando dying and obi wan kenobi and yoda coming back alive again and saving luke from the empiror....  thank god that wasent used innocent.gif

Actually, I think Lando should have died. It was foreshadowed throughout the movie, then at the last moment Lucas chickened out. Typical...
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The sandpeople had women and children. We know this because Anakin killed them how could he tell? The children might be smaller but I never saw a sandperson with breasts. Did they hike their skirts and show him some leg or something?

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Also, I can see the point of wanting to kidnap a human and use her as a slave, but they didn't. They tied her to a flimsy easel for a month. It's assumed they had to feed and give her water. What for? Was she purely ornamental? I can understand them wanting the droids, you can sell those for a lot of money, but a chick who's only skills are finding non-existand mushrooms and getting randomly pregnant, you're not going to get much.

- J m HofMarN on the Sand People
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#12 User is offline   Nicholas_Skywalker Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 06:10 AM

QUOTE (Helena @ Apr 28 2005, 05:56 AM)
Actually, I think Lando should have died. It was foreshadowed throughout the movie, then at the last moment Lucas chickened out. Typical...

I bet its also where the line from han comes from about having a felling that his never gonna see the mf again. Im glad lando dying it didnt hapen though I think it would of ruined a happy ending. Seeying all the gang group up together for the last time is truly memrable and without lando being there it would of felt like there was something missing. Also I dont think it would be much of a celebration if a good friend of theres died though all throught the star wars movies dozens of chacters die but it doesent seem to bother anybody for longer like 10 seconds. blush.gif
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#13 User is offline   Helena Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 06:14 AM

QUOTE (Nicholas_Skywalker @ Apr 28 2005, 12:10 PM)
I bet its also where the line from han comes from about having a felling that his never gonna see the mf again. Im glad lando dying  it didnt hapen though I think it would of ruined a happy ending.

No it wouldn't; it would have made it a happy ending with a slightly bittersweet edge to it. Luke's friend Biggs died in ANH, so why not Lando in RotJ? This isn't a Disney movie; let's have some acknowledgement that people die in war, please.
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The sandpeople had women and children. We know this because Anakin killed them how could he tell? The children might be smaller but I never saw a sandperson with breasts. Did they hike their skirts and show him some leg or something?

QUOTE
Also, I can see the point of wanting to kidnap a human and use her as a slave, but they didn't. They tied her to a flimsy easel for a month. It's assumed they had to feed and give her water. What for? Was she purely ornamental? I can understand them wanting the droids, you can sell those for a lot of money, but a chick who's only skills are finding non-existand mushrooms and getting randomly pregnant, you're not going to get much.

- J m HofMarN on the Sand People
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#14 User is offline   Nicholas_Skywalker Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 06:19 AM

Well we did see an ewok die and a few piolets die when they where attacking the death star and might I also add that vader and the emperor died and undoubtly THOUSANDS on board the death star and also dozens of storm troopers on endor. So a lot did die! like any typical war. Plus biggs was differnt we hardly evan knew what biggs was like or anything he only featured in the death battle and a scene added back into on vhs special edition and there was evan a scene with him deleted. It wasent much a of a character. But with lando we followed him through from esb to rotj and we see how he changed from a little dobber to a hero. Like hans change.
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#15 User is offline   Helena Icon

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Posted 28 April 2005 - 06:31 AM

QUOTE (Nicholas_Skywalker @ Apr 28 2005, 12:19 PM)
Well we did see an ewok die and a few piolets die when they where attacking the death star and might I also add that vader and the emperor died and undoubtly THOUSANDS on board the death star and also dozens of storm troopers on endor. So a lot did die! like any typical war. Plus biggs was differnt we hardly evan knew what biggs was like or anything he only featured in the death battle and a scene added back into on vhs special edition and there was evan a scene with him deleted. It wasent much a of a character. But with lando we followed him through from esb to rotj and we see how he changed from a little dobber to a hero. Like hans change.

The death of the Ewok was in many people's minds a CAUSE for celebration, the pilots were anonymous redshirts, and the stormtroopers were bad guys - so none of them count. The whole point about Lando dying would be that he's a main character - it would reinforce the point that the good guys have to make sacrifices sometimes. If you can't cope with the idea of a good guy dying, I suggest you go and watch Sesame Street instead.
QUOTE
The sandpeople had women and children. We know this because Anakin killed them how could he tell? The children might be smaller but I never saw a sandperson with breasts. Did they hike their skirts and show him some leg or something?

QUOTE
Also, I can see the point of wanting to kidnap a human and use her as a slave, but they didn't. They tied her to a flimsy easel for a month. It's assumed they had to feed and give her water. What for? Was she purely ornamental? I can understand them wanting the droids, you can sell those for a lot of money, but a chick who's only skills are finding non-existand mushrooms and getting randomly pregnant, you're not going to get much.

- J m HofMarN on the Sand People
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