[civilian_number_two]

I agree that most prequel rewrites will be lame. That doesn;t actually make the existign PT good, of course. But the problem is thqat ROTJ pretty much filled in all the important holes in the backstory (and effectively removed the mystery from it as well). So a prequel trilogy should really have been about something other than the backstory we already knew, and have that stuff as a sideline, at best.

This post has been edited by civilian_number_two: 04 August 2006 - 02:19 AM

[CowboyCurtis]

Can't deny that some fan rewrites are really tough to read through, but in honesty---some of them, or at the very least, some of the concepts TRY to stay true to the source material. Some are very creative, and I think should try to write their own SF stories. But, YES, some are written better than anything from the PT.

[georgelucas4greedo]

Barend...thank you!

And yes, alot of the rewrites stink, because not everyone has a gift for writing. But so what, at least these people are trying. At least they are using their imaginations! And thats what makes Star Wars so great; it triggers the imaginative facilities of post-adolscent people.

[barend]

Are you seriously this ignorant?

no... you?

Let me quote myself....
Explain to me how I have a lame devotion to the PT. Why can't you just accept that I enjoy pointing out flaws in all the movies?

because you're pointing out "flaws" in the OT in a PT thread discussing the worse moments of ROTS.

which not only paints you as a PT defender, but also as a hypocrit and a liar.

Just another thought, although Lucas did an extremely poor job with the PT, I sincerely question "Could any of us have done it any better?". The only reason I ask this is because recently I was reading somebody's PT rewrite, and the way Anakin experiences his deformations is from being kicked out of a space ship and having his skin burnt as a result of flying through the atmosphere. Somehow he survives the decent from space to land....

right, so because some nerd with no experience wrote a piece of crap that makes Lucas' attept the best there could ever be?

are you kidding?

the PT story is virtually told in the OT in retrospect. all the PT had to do was film those sequences and fill in the gaps.

"when i met your father he was already a terriffic pilot"

yeah like that opening scene of episode 3. which should have been the opening scene to episode 1.
you rather get the impression that when obi met ani, it was during the clone wars and in the capacity that anakin was one of many pilots under general kenobi, that totally blew obis mind with his super skills in the cockpit. NOT oh by the way here's a kid with some poolchemicals in his blood.

the problem isn't that lucas is a hack, it's that he just didn't try. and further more wasted everyone's time with bullshit.


i mean, he just didn't try very hard.

[jariten]

"The Force." You see, in the fictional universe of STAR WARS, this "Force" gave Luke an edge over the other pilots. While they relied on a purely technological solution, he went back to the old ways and in doing so destroyed the "technological terror" that the Empire had created

I have no problem with Luke using the force to deliver the final blow, Lucas stresses that pretty strongly (in a way that he oddly didnt in TPM). The "problem" is everything before that.
If Lucas wanted realism, he would've had training scenes, explained that Luke had flown in an xwing before, had some kind of combat experience etc.
Of course realism means exposition, and why bog the film down with that?
The scene is great fun. Stupid. yes, but great fun none the less. Which is presumably what you want when you put a Star Wars film on.

[barend]

no, some things you take for granted. like a girl giving her phone number to a guy who ends up calling her in a film. training to become a pilot (especially when everyone says what an awsome pilot you are).


seriously, i can't believe your still pushing this. if this were court you'd be disbared.

not only for drilling an argument that's been disprooven and had no backing, your in the wrong court

[Storm]

because you're pointing out "flaws" in the OT in a PT thread discussing the worse moments of ROTS.

which not only paints you as a PT defender, but also as a hypocrit and a liar.

*SMACK*

Scroll up to the top of the screen and you will notice "Worst Scene Ever???, The Absolute Worst From 6 films/2 Trilogies". The person who started this thread said they posted it in the ROTS forum because it was the last of the six movies. You'll also notice on page one or two I posted my list of worst moments in all six movies.

right, so because some nerd with no experience wrote a piece of crap that makes Lucas' attept the best there could ever be?

Be careful who you call a nerd. Somebody on this forum wrote the fan fiction I read...

[Helena]

I have no problem with Luke using the force to deliver the final blow, Lucas stresses that pretty strongly (in a way that he oddly didnt in TPM). The "problem" is everything before that.
If Lucas wanted realism, he would've had training scenes, explained that Luke had flown in an xwing before, had some kind of combat experience etc.

Um, why, exactly? We're repeatedly told, and shown, that he's an experienced pilot - isn't that enough? If I watch a film about someone who's supposed to be a brilliant lawyer, I just accept that he is - I don't need to see scenes of him studying law at university in order to believe it. Do we have to see Luke learning to fix droids or taking his Landspeeder Driving Test in order to believe he can do those things?

Hell, maybe we should go back and show him at the age of 4, learning to read and write - not to mention Obi-Wan training as a Jedi, Leia learning about politics from her father, Owen Lars being taught to handle moisture vaporators and Han Solo studying Huttese in order to speak to Jabba. It might not leave us much time for the actual story, but at least we'd be clear on the vital point of exactly how every major character developed the skills we see in the film!

Honestly, jariten, I have to agree with barend - you are being pretty irrational here. If there were anything particularly unlikely about Luke being a good pilot, you might have a point, but there isn't. Plenty of people in real life learn to be excellent pilots before the age of 20; in a society where flying is almost as common as driving is now, and in a place where there clearly isn't much else to do, it's all the more likely. Luke clearly sees his piloting skills as his only way out of life as a peasant farmer, so it's hardly surprising if he devoted most of his energies to developing them.

[StarWarsIsUs]

Just another thought, although Lucas did an extremely poor job with the PT, I sincerely question "Could any of us have done it any better?". The only reason I ask this is because recently I was reading somebody's PT rewrite, and the way Anakin experiences his deformations is from being kicked out of a space ship and having his skin burnt as a result of flying through the atmosphere. Somehow he survives the decent from space to land....

If you would have been a little more sincere in that statement, you could also explain to everyone that he used the Force to repel as much of the heat as he could.

And he changed to the Dark Side mainly because he was deeply impressed by the healing power of the Sith Lord, and felt the Light Side had betrayed him when it comes to survival.

right, so because some nerd with no experience wrote a piece of crap that makes Lucas' attept the best there could ever be?

I have no more respect for you barend.

You're so determined to boost your post-count that you don't even think before you blabber-off the first thing that comes to your mind.

This post has been edited by StarWarsIsUs: 07 August 2006 - 01:19 PM

[georgelucas4greedo]

I just want to know what this so-called "experience" is.

This post has been edited by georgelucas4greedo: 07 August 2006 - 01:19 PM

[Storm]

If there were anything particularly unlikely about Luke being a good pilot, you might have a point, but there isn't.

As I have tried to already explain, there are plenty of things to indicate that Luke should not be a good pilot. A lot of it has to do with where he grew up. From what I gathered, Tatooine is a planet that:

1. Is either run by gansters or the people live in complete anarchy.
2. Murdering a person in a pub is perfectly acceptable.
3. Savage sand people walk around shooting everyone they see.
4. Slavery is acceptable.


Based on this information, it is highly unlikely (nearly improbable) that Tatooine would:

1. Have an airbase where people could "borrow" vehicles and learn how to fly. Everything stored at the base would be stolen by gansters or thieves.
2. Offer any form of education whatsoever. In this case, there would be no academy on the planet that would give people the chance to learn how to pilot a vehicle, especially one in space. And seeing as how the Empire wanted to prevent people from potentially joining the Rebellion, I doubt they would allow any space training to occur aside from the training in their own academies.
3. Be a hospitable environment for Luke and his friends to practice flying.

As a result, it is logical to conclude that Luke received no space or combat training. If they met Luke on Coruscant, I wouldn't need to see any prior evidence that he could fly seeing as how Coruscant is a planet, with an environment, that could definitely produce a good pilot. But given the nature of the planet of Tatooine, there is just no way Luke could have received enough piloting experience to join in an all out assault on the Death Star.

The only thing we know about Luke's piloting is that:

1. Obi-Wan claims "He heard Luke has become quite a pilot". I have problems with this for two reasons. One, this is the same Obi-Wan who also said "Your father was betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader". Secondly, this comment seemed to be made just to encourage Luke, nothing more. And what? Obi-Wan heard that Luke could fly the landspeeder to the Tashi Station faster than Uncle Owen?
2. Luke claims he is a great pilot. I would be willing to buy this a bit more, if Luke wasn't so ridiculously cocky. He isn't modest about his skills at all.
3. Luke flew a T-16, a ship which we learn hardly anything about in the movie aside from the fact that Luke shot womp rats and likes playing with the toy model of. Apparently, this ship was only capable of hovering over a desert.
4. When Luke is in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon, he exhibits qualities that clearly show he would be incapable of adjusting from the T-16 (A desert vehicle) to a space ship without proper training. First, he has no idea what half of the alarms or buttons do in the cockpit (Yet we are expected to easily believe he can fly an X-wing on his first try, a ship with just as many different controls). Secondly, he neglects the fact that when travelling into hyperspace you need to plot a course to avoid crashing into a planet (Clear evidence that he lacks the knowledge of what it means to fly in space).

Yet, Luke gets into an X-Wing for the first time in his life and flies it better than pilots who have been in combat training situations their whole life. Like Anakin's piloting antics in TPM, it's bullshit, and you all know it.

This post has been edited by Storm: 07 August 2006 - 08:27 PM

[MyPantsAreOnFire]

Nope.

[barend]

*SMACK*

Scroll up to the top of the screen and you will notice "Worst Scene Ever???, The Absolute Worst From 6 films/2 Trilogies". The person who started this thread said they posted it in the ROTS forum because it was the last of the six movies. You'll also notice on page one or two I posted my list of worst moments in all six movies.

*KICK*

fair enough.

but virtually all PT attacks have been met with OT attacks. 9 times out of 10 the PT crack used to defend the OT crack was made in defense of a PT crack.

Be careful who you call a nerd. Somebody on this forum wrote the fan fiction I read...

we're all nerds here, we can call each other 'nerd' here.

I have no more respect for you barend.

You're so determined to boost your post-count that you don't even think before you blabber-off the first thing that comes to your mind.

ooooooookay. should i have sat down and devoted half an afternoon to responding to a single point about A BLOODY MOVIE FRANCHISE?!?

storm says some guy on wrote a rewrite that wasn't as good as lucas, so NO ONE can do a better job. AND I"M THE ONE WHOS BLABBERING OFF WITHOUT THINKING?

give me a break.

I just want to know what this so-called "experience" is.

a published script that's been considered for filming?

christ, i'm not saying the particular attept storm is refering to is crap (in fact HE was, if you were all paying attention). My point was that you can't condemn the entire worlds writing ability on the basis of one persons attempt.

As I have tried to already explain, there are plenty of things to indicate that Luke should not be a good pilot. A lot of it has to do with where he grew up. From what I gathered, Tatooine is a planet that:

1. Is either run by gansters or the people live in complete anarchy.
2. Murdering a person in a pub is perfectly acceptable.
3. Savage sand people walk around shooting everyone they see.
4. Slavery is acceptable.
Based on this information, it is highly unlikely (nearly improbable) that Tatooine would:

it was like frontier times...

and yet people still learned to ride horses out in the old west without getting shot down by banditos and cowboys...

[civilian_number_two]

As I have tried to already explain, there are plenty of things to indicate that Luke should not be a good pilot. A lot of it has to do with where he grew up.

STAR WARS is sci-fi/fantasy, and part of the story involves people hearing the voices of the dead, guiding unseen actions with their eyes closed and targeting computers turned off, and wielding laser swords in duels with nasty villains.

Your concerns are for shit. Tatooine in STAR WARS is a western frontier town, and it is NOT ruled with an iron hand by a gang of thieves. It is the perfect place for a hermit to hide from the law, and has little or no central authority. There is nothing in place specifically to keep anyone from learning to fly, and like folks here have said, flying a spaceship of some kind in that world is like driving a car in our own. If you can't buy that, fine; but that's a basic premise of the series, up there with the Force and giant lasers that can blow up entire planets.

In STAR WARS, Luke is described as quite a pilot. Your concern about the hyperspace business has nothing to do with piloting; that's the work of a navigator. So Luke may not know anything about navigating in hyperspace, but he can fly at breakneck speeds in the Death Star trench.

There is no reason not to believe he has never flown in a vehicle like an X-Wing. You're pulling that out of your ass becase you're trying to make a point. Too bad. The world of STAR WARS is a lot looser than you'd like; it is a place of fantasy where folks can operate machinery that we will never see. But to meet you halfway, ae half-assed explanation is offered IN THE FILM, by throwing in the droid assistant; we're to beleiev that it does all of the real work and that the pilot supplies the orders and the reflexes. So Luke can fly an X-Wing just as well as he flew a skyhopper, because he has droid help. Far-fetched, maybe, but come on. Looking at the rest of the fiction, I'd say if you're not going to dismiss the whole thing as outrageous and impossible, then it's crazy to fixate on Luke's ability to fly a plane. In at least that case Lucas did as much as he could to get you to accept it.

Jariten: Luke doesn't fly better than the other pilots. He SHOOTS better than they do. Again, this is because of the Force. I don't think some cheesy training montage could possibly have helped the film's credibility; I suspect in fact it would have ruined it. Once you try to justify something as simple as a guy flying a plane, you're stuck having to explain the bigger concepts too. Does it bother me thta Luke can fight with a lightsaber as expertly as we see in ESB? Sure, but that's not the sort of theing that's going to break the deal for me. For me, it's droid armies controlled from spaceshops being destroyed by kid pilots despite there being a massive gun in the hangar of the ship the kid landed on, that we saw destroy a much larger ship earlier in the film. See, it's internal errors like that, where the film forgets its own rules, that bug me. So Luke can fly a plane and fight with a sword. Ok, let's see how they destroy this Death Star.

For me, one of the worst scenes of the series was the one where Shmi described Anikin's aimmaculate conception. Shudder.

[georgelucas4greedo]

This post has brought out the worst in all of us. I agree with barend, we are all nerds to some extent, so let's try to live in relative nerd peace.