Random thoughts
#1
Posted 27 April 2005 - 08:22 PM
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.)
#2
Posted 27 April 2005 - 08:34 PM
#4
Posted 27 April 2005 - 09:23 PM
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.
#6
Posted 27 April 2005 - 10:44 PM
This post has been edited by Michel Orla: 27 April 2005 - 10:45 PM
#7
Posted 28 April 2005 - 01:22 AM
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
Posted 28 April 2005 - 01:30 AM
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.
#9
Posted 28 April 2005 - 02:56 AM
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.
#11
Posted 28 April 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...
- J m HofMarN on the Sand People
#12
Posted 28 April 2005 - 06:10 AM
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.
#13
Posted 28 April 2005 - 06:14 AM
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.
- J m HofMarN on the Sand People
#14
Posted 28 April 2005 - 06:19 AM
#15
Posted 28 April 2005 - 06:31 AM
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.
- J m HofMarN on the Sand People